I looked down into the olive groves, gray-white now instead of peach and silver. Each tree was twisted, straining up toward the ruins of a fortress that had once guarded it-or its ancestors, anyway-from Saracen torches. “No,” I answered, “I wouldn’t.”
Chapter 16
It was early December, we were on the road again, and the lassitude of our summer trips to the Mediterranean seemed far behind us. The high Adriatic wind was combing my hair again and I liked the feel of it, its awkward roughness; it was as if a beast with heavy paws clambered over everything in the harbor, making flags snap sharply in front of the modern hotel and straining the topmost branches of the plane trees along the promenade. “What?” I shouted. My father again said something unintelligible, pointing at the top story of the emperor’s palace. We both craned back to look.
Diocletian’s elegant stronghold towered over us in the morning sunlight, and I almost fell over backward trying to see the upper edge of it. Many of the spaces between its beautiful columns had been filled in-often by people dividing up the building for apartments, my father had explained earlier-so that a patchwork of stone, much of it Roman-hewn marble plundered from other structures, shone across the whole strange facade. Here and there water or earthquake had broken long cracks in it. Tenacious little plants, even some trees, hung out of the fissures. The wind whipped up the broad collars of sailors strolling along the quay in twos and threes, their faces brass colored against white uniforms and their crew-cut dark hair shining like wire brushes. I followed my father around the edge of the building, over fallen black walnuts and the litter from sycamore trees, to the monument-lined square behind it, which smelled of urine. Just in front of us rose a fantastic tower, open to the winds and decorated like a piece of pastry, a tall thin wedding cake. It was quieter back here and we could stop shouting.
“I’ve always wanted to see this,” my father said in his normal voice. “Would you like to climb to the top?”
I led the way, taking the iron steps with gusto. In the open-air market near the quay, which I glimpsed from time to time through a marble frame, the trees had turned gold-brown, so that the cypresses along the water looked more black than green against them. As we rose I could see the water of the harbor navy blue beneath us, the small white shapes of the sailors on leave roaming among the outdoor cafes. Distant curving land, beyond our big hotel, pointed like an arrow to the interior region of the Slavic-speaking world, where my father would soon be drawn into the flood of detente spreading across it.
Just under the roof of the tower, we stood catching our breath. Only an iron platform suspended us above the drop to earth; from there we could see all the way to the ground through a spiderweb of plaited iron steps, which we’d just climbed. The world around us stretched out beyond stone-framed openings, each possibly low enough to let an unwary tourist topple nine stories to the paved courtyard below. We chose a bench in the center instead, looking out toward the water, and sat so quietly that a swift came in, its wings arched against the blustering sea wind, and disappeared under the eaves. It had something bright in its beak, something that caught the glint of the sun as it flew in off the water.
Iwoke early, my father said, the morning after I’d finished reading through Rossi’s papers. I’ve never been so glad to see sunshine as I was that morning. My first and very sad business was to bury Rembrandt. After that, I had no trouble arriving at the library just when the doors were opening. I wanted this whole day to ready myself for the next night, the next onslaught of darkness. For many years, night had been friendly to me, the cocoon of quiet in which I read and wrote. Now it was a threat, an inevitable danger just hours away. I might also be setting out on a journey soon, with all the preparations that would entail. It would be a little easier, I thought ruefully, if I just knew where I’d be going.
The main hall of the library was very still except for the echoing steps of librarians going about their business; few students got here this early, and I would have peace and quiet for at least half an hour. I went into the maze of the card catalog, opened my notebook, and began pulling out the drawers I needed. There were several listings for the Carpathians, one on Transylvanian folklore. One book on vampires-legends from the Egyptian tradition. I wondered how much vampires had in common around the world. Were Egyptian vampires anything like East European vampires? It was a study for an archaeologist, not for me, but I copied down the call number of the book on Egyptian tradition anyway.
Then I looked up Dracula. Subjects and titles were mixed together in the catalog; between “Drab-Ali the Great” and “Dragons, Asia,” there would be at least one entry: the title card for Bram Stoker’sDracula, which I had seen the dark-haired young woman reading here the day before. Perhaps the library even had two copies of such a classic. I needed it right away; Rossi had said it was the distillation of Stoker’s research on vampire lore, and it might contain suggestions for protection I could use myself. I hunted backward and forward. There was not a single entry under “Dracula”-nothing, nothing whatsoever. I hadn’t expected the legend to be a major topic of scholarship, but surely that one book would be listed somewhere.
Then I caught sight of what actually lay between “Drab-Ali” and “Dragons.” A little shard of twisted paper at the bottom of the drawer showed clearly that at least one card had been wrenched out. I hurried to the “St” drawer. No entries for “Stoker” appeared there-only further signs of a hasty theft. I sat down hard on the nearest wooden stool. This was too strange. Why would anyone have ripped out these particular cards?
The dark-haired girl had checked out the book last, I knew that. Had she wanted to remove the evidence of what she had checked out? But if she’d wanted to steal or hide the copy, why had she been reading it publicly, in the middle of the library? Someone else must have pulled the cards out, perhaps somebody-but why?-who didn’t want anyone looking up the book here. Whoever it was had done it hurriedly, neglecting to remove traces of the job. I thought it through again. The card catalog was sacrosanct here; any student who even left a drawer out on the tables and was caught in this error got a sharp lecture from the clerks or librarians. Any violation of the catalog would have to be accomplished quickly, that was certain, at some odd moment when no one was around or looking in that direction. If the young woman hadn’t committed this crime herself, then maybe she didn’t know that someone else didn’t want that book checked out. And she probably still had it in her possession. I almost ran to the main desk.
This library, built in the highest of high Gothic-revival styles about the time Rossi was finishing his studies at Oxford (where he was surrounded by the real thing, of course), had always appealed to me as both beautiful and comical. To reach the main desk, I had to hurry up a long cathedral nave. The circulation desk stood where the altar would have in a real cathedral, under a mural of Our Lady-of Knowledge, presumably-in sky blue robes, her arms full of heavenly tomes. Checking out a book there had all the sanctity of taking communion. Today this seemed to me the most cynical of jokes, and I ignored Our Lady’s bland, unhelpful face as I addressed the librarian, trying not to seem ruffled myself.
“I’m looking for a book that’s not on the shelves at the moment,” I began, “and I wonder if it’s actually checked out right now, or on its way back.”
The librarian, a short, unsmiling woman of sixty, glanced up from her work. “The title, please,” she said.
“Dracula,by Bram Stoker.”
“Just a minute, please; I’ll see if it’s in.” She thumbed through a little box, her face expressionless. “I’m sorry. It’s currently checked out.”
“Oh, what a shame,” I said heartily. “When will it be coming back?”
“In three weeks. It was checked out yesterday.”
“I’m afraid I simply can’t wait that long. You see I’mteaching a course…” These were usually the magic words.
“You are welcome to put it on reserve, if you like,” the librarian said coldly. She turned her coiffed gray head away from me, as if she wanted to get back to her work.
“Maybe one of my students has checked it out, to read ahead for the course. If you’d just let me have his name, I’ll get in touch with him myself.”
