An Uncertain Place

blue quilt. Adamsberg let himself relax on to it, and put his hands behind his neck. Fatigue from the journey had made his limbs feel heavy, but he smiled, his eyes closed, happy at having unearthed the roots of the Plog clan, but incapable of understanding their story. He didn’t have the strength to ring up Danglard and talk about it. He sent him two short text messages instead. Danglard pedantically insisted on using Latin for the plural of text messages, texti, since the usual word in French is texto. The first message read: ‘Ancestor is Peter Plogojowitz’, and the second: ‘†1725’.

Danica, who on closer inspection was buxom and pretty and probably no more than forty-two, knocked on his door, waking him up a little after eight, according to both his watches.

‘Vecera je na stolu,’ she said with a broad smile, indicating with gestures that she meant ‘come’ and ‘eat’.

Sign language easily dealt with most basic functions.

People seemed to smile a lot here in Kisilova and perhaps that was the explanation of the ‘sunny disposition’ shared by Uncle Sladko and his grandson Vladislav. Family ties made Adamsberg remember his own son. He sent a few thoughts towards little Tom, on holiday somewhere in Normandy, and lay back on the eiderdown. He had immediately taken to it: pale blue with cord piping and worn at the corners, it was nicer than the bright red one his sister had given him. This one smelt of hay, dandelions and possibly even donkey. As he went down the narrow wooden stairs, his phone vibrated in his back pocket like a nervous cricket tickling him. He looked at Danglard’s reply: one word – ‘Irrelevant’.

Vladislav was waiting for him at the table, his knife and fork poised for action. ‘Dunajski zrezek, Wiener schnitzel,’ he said, pointing to the dish impatiently. He had put on a white T-shirt and his dark body hair looked even more striking. It stopped at his wrists like a wave that has run out of strength, leaving his hands smooth and pale.

‘Been looking at the scenery?’ he asked.

‘I went down by the Danube and then to the edge of the forest. A woman came along and tried to stop me going there. Towards the woods.’

He tried to see the expression on Vlad’s face, but he was busily eating, looking down at the food.

‘But I went there all the same,’ Adamsberg continued.

‘Wow.’

‘What’s this mean?’ asked Adamsberg, putting on the table the paper on which he had copied the inscription from the grave.

Vlad picked up his napkin and slowly wiped his lips. ‘A load of old codswallop,’ he said.

‘If you like, but what does it mean?’

Vlad snorted his disapproval.

‘You’d have seen it sooner or later. Impossible not to really, once you’re here.’

‘And?’

‘Like I said. They don’t like talking about it, that’s all. It’s already not so good that that woman saw you out there. If tomorrow they ask you to leave, don’t be surprised. And if you want to carry on with the Vaudel inquiry, don’t provoke them with this stuff. Or with the war.’

‘I didn’t mention the war.’

‘See the guy behind us? See what he’s doing?’

‘Yes, I noticed. He’s drawing on the back of his hand with a felt pen.’

‘All day long. He draws circles and squares, orange, green and brown. He was in the war,’ Vlad added, lowering his voice. ‘And now he does nothing but colour in shapes on his hand without speaking a word.’

‘What about the other men?’

‘Kiseljevo was relatively spared. Because here, women and children aren’t left alone in the village. Some people hid, others stayed. Don’t talk about your trip to the woods, commissaire.’

‘But, Vlad, it has to do with this murder investigation.’

‘Plog,’ said Vlad, sticking his middle finger in the air, which gave a new meaning to the onomatopoeia. ‘Nothing to do with it.’

Danica, her blonde hair now neatly combed, brought them their desserts and put two small glasses in front of them.

‘Look out,’ Vlad advised. ‘This is rakija.’

‘What’s it mean?’

‘It’s strong spirits, made from fruit.’

‘No, I’m talking about the inscription on the gravestone.’

Vlad pushed away the sheet of paper with a smile. He knew the inscription by heart, as did anyone who knew anything about Kiseljevo.

‘Only an ignorant Frenchman wouldn’t jump with fear at the terrible name of Peter Plogojowitz. The story’s so famous in Europe that people don’t tell it any more. Ask Danglard, he’s bound to know.’

‘I did tell him about it. He seemed to know.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. And what did he say?’

‘Irrelevant.’

‘Adrianus never lets me down.’

‘Vlad, just tell me what’s written on the stone.’

‘“You who stand before this stone,”’ Vlad recited, ‘“go your way without listening and cut no plant hereby. Here lies the damned soul Petar Blagojevic, who died in 1725 aged 62. May his accursed spirit now make way for peace.”’

‘Why does he have two names?’

‘They’re the same name. Plogojowitz is the Austrian version of Blagojevic. When he lived here, the whole region was under the Habsburgs.’

‘Why was he damned?’

‘Because, in 1725, the peasant Petar Blagojevic died here, in his native village.’

‘Don’t start with his death, tell me what he did when he was alive.’

‘But it was only after his death that his life was cursed. Three days after his burial, Plogojowitz came to visit his wife at night and asked her for a pair of shoes so that he could travel the world.’

‘Shoes?’

‘Yes. He had left them behind. Do you want to know any more or is it irrelevant?’

‘Tell me the rest, Vlad. I vaguely remember hearing something about a dead man coming back for his shoes.’

‘In the ten weeks after that, there were nine sudden deaths in the village, all close relatives or associates of Plogojowitz. They lost their blood, and died of exhaustion. During their death throes, they claimed to have seen Plogojowitz leaning over them, even lying on top of them. The villagers panicked and thought Plogojowitz had become a vampire who was going to suck the life out of everyone. And then suddenly, all Europe was talking about him. It’s because of Plogojowitz and Kisilova, where you are sitting drinking rakija this evening, that the word vampyr first appeared outside this region.’

‘Really? As famous as that?’

‘Plog. After two months, the villagers had resolved to open his grave and annihilate him, but the Church formally forbade that. Tempers ran high, the Empire sent out some religious and civic officials to try and calm things down. The authorities had to stand by powerless when the exhumation took place. But they observed it and wrote a report. Peter’s body showed no sign of decomposition. It was intact, the skin looked like new.’

‘Like that woman in London, Elizabeth something, whose husband opened her grave after seven years to get his poems out. She looked like new as well.’

‘And she was a vampire?’

‘So I was told.’

‘Normal then. Plogojowitz’s old skin and fingernails were in the bottom of the grave. And there was blood coming out of his mouth, nostrils and eyes. The Austrian officials wrote it all down scrupulously. He had eaten his shroud and he had an erection, though later versions usually leave that bit out. The peasants were terrified, and they took a stake and plunged it into his heart.’