letters here, from - from an unusual historical source - and they mention Dracula. They're about Dracula."
A faint interest dawned inside her gaze, as if the amber light had won out and was turned reluctantly on me. She slumped slightly in her chair, relaxed into something like masculine ease, without taking her hands off her book. It struck me that this was a gesture I had seen a hundred times before, this slackening of tension that accompanied thought, this settling into a conversation. Where had I seen it?
"What are those letters, exactly?" she asked, in her quiet foreign voice. I thought with regret that I should have introduced myself and my credentials before getting into any of this. For some reason, I felt I couldn't start over at this point - couldn't suddenly put out my hand to shake hers and tell her what department I was in, and so on. It also occurred to me that I'd never seen her before, so she certainly wasn't in history, unless she was new, a transfer from some other university. And should I lie to protect Rossi? I decided, at random, not to. I simply left his name out of the equation.
"I'm working with someone who's - having some problems, and he wrote these letters more than twenty years ago. He gave them to me thinking I might be able to help him out of his current - situation - which has to do with - he studies, I mean he was studying - "
"I see," she said with cold politeness. She stood up and started collecting her books, deliberately and without haste. Now she was picking up her briefcase. Standing, she looked as tall as I'd imagined her, a little sinewy, with broad shoulders.
"Why are you studying Dracula?" I asked in desperation.
"Well, I must say it is not any of your business," she told me shortly, turning away, "but I am planning a future trip, although I do not know when I will take it."
"To the Carpathians?" I felt suddenly rattled by the whole conversation.
"No." She flung that last word back at me, disdainfully. And then, as if she couldn't help herself, but so contemptuously that I didn't dare follow her: "To Istanbul."
"Good Lord," my father prayed suddenly against the twittering sky. The last swallows were homing in above us, the town with its diminished lights settling heavily into the valley. "We shouldn't be sitting around here with a hike ahead of us tomorrow. Pilgrims are supposed to turn in early, I'm sure. With the coming of dark, or something like that."
I shifted my legs; one foot had fallen asleep under me and the stones of the churchyard wall felt suddenly sharp, impossibly uncomfortable, especially with the thought of bed looming ahead of me. I would have pins and needles on the stumbling walk downhill to the hotel. I felt a boiling irritation, too, far sharper than the sensations in my feet. My father had stopped his story too soon, again.
"Look," my father said, pointing straight out from our perch. "I think that must be Saint-Matthieu." I followed his gesture to the dark, massed mountains and saw, halfway up, a small, steady light. No other light appeared close to it; no other habitation seemed anywhere near it. It was like a single spark on immense folds of black cloth, high up but not close to the highest peaks - it hung between the town and the night sky. "Yes, that's just where the monastery must be, I think," my father said again. "And we'll have a real climb tomorrow, even if we go by the road." As we set off along moonless streets, I felt that sadness that comes with dropping down from a height, leaving anything lofty. Before we turned the corner of the old bell tower, I glanced back once, to pin that tiny spot of light in my memory. There it was again, gleaming above a house wall tumbled over with dark bougainvillea. Standing still for a moment, I looked hard at it. Then, just once, the light winked.
Part One Chapter 9
December 14, 1930
Trinity College, Oxford
My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to - ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries,