The Historian (54 page)

―‗Suddenly, I understood that he would leave soon and that I would never see him again, or anyone like him, and my eyes filled with tears. I had not meant to cry—I never cried over the annoying young men in the village—but my tears would not obey me and they ran down my cheeks. He looked very distressed and pulled a white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and gave it to me. What was the problem? I shook my head. He rose slowly and gave me his hand to help me up, as he had the night before. While I was getting up, I stumbled and fell against him without meaning to, and when he caught me we kissed each other. Then I turned and ran through the woods. At the path, I looked back. He was standing there, as still as a tree, looking after me. I ran all the way to the village and lay awake during the night with his handkerchief hidden in my hand.

―‗The next evening he was there in the same place, as if he had never moved from the spot where I had left him. I ran to him and he opened his arms to me and caught me.

When we could not kiss each other anymore, he spread his jacket on the ground and we lay down together. In that hour, I learned about love, one moment at a time. Up close, his eyes were as blue as the sky. He put flowers in my braids and kissed my fingers. I was surprised by many things he did, and things I did, and I knew it was wrong, a sin, but I felt the joy of heaven opening around us.

―‗After that there were three nights until he left. We met earlier each evening. I told my mother and father any excuse I could think of, and I always came home with herbs from the woods as if I had gone there to gather them. Every night Bartolomeo told me he loved me and begged me to come with him when he left the village. I wanted to, but I was afraid of the large world he came from, and I could not imagine how I would escape my father. Every night I asked him why he couldn‘t stay with me in the village, and he shook his head and said he had to return to his home and his work.

―‗On the last night before he left the village, I began to cry as soon as we touched each other. He held me and kissed my hair. I had never met any man so gentle and kind. When I had stopped crying, he drew from his finger a little silver ring with a seal on it. I don‘t know for certain, but I think now it was the seal of his university. He wore it on the smallest finger of his left hand. He took it off and put it on my ring finger. Then he asked me to marry him. He must have been studying his dictionary, because I understood him right away.

―‗At first it seemed so impossible an idea that I simply began to cry again—I was very young—but then I agreed. He made me understand that he would return for me in four weeks. He would go to Greece to take care of something there—what, I could not understand. Then he would come back for me and would give my father some money to make him happy. I tried to explain that I had no dowry, but he would not listen. Smiling, he showed me the dagger and coin I had given him, and then made a circle of his hands around my face and kissed me.

―‗I should have felt happy, but I had a sense that evil spirits were present, and I was afraid something might happen to keep him from returning. Every moment we spent together that evening was very sweet, because I thought each was the last. He was so confident, so sure that we would see each other again soon. I could not say good-bye until it was almost dark in the woods, but I began to fear my father‘s anger and at last I kissed Bartolomeo one more time, made sure the garlic flowers were in his pocket, and left him.

I turned back again and again. Each time I looked back, I saw him standing in the woods, holding his hat in his hand. He looked very lonely.

―‗I cried as I walked along, and I took the little ring off my finger, kissing it, and knotted it in my kerchief. When I reached home my father was angry and wanted to know where I had been after dark without permission. I told him that my friend Maria had lost a goat and I had been helping her search for it. I went to bed with a heavy heart, feeling sometimes hopeful and then sad again.

―‗The next morning I heard that Bartolomeo had left the village, traveling with a farmer in his cart toward Târgoviste. The day was very long and sad for me, and in the evening I went to our meeting place in the woods, to be alone there. Seeing it made me weep again.

I sat on our rocks and finally lay down where we had lain every evening. I put my face against the earth and sobbed. Then I felt my hand brush against something among the ferns, and to my surprise I found there a package of letters in envelopes. I could not read the handwriting on them, where they were addressed to someone, but on the flap of each his beautiful name was printed, as in a book. I opened some of them and kissed his writing, although I could see that they were not addressed to me. I wondered for a moment if they could have been written to another woman, but I put this thought out of my mind as soon as it came. I realized the letters must have fallen out of his knapsack when he had opened it to show me he had the dagger and coin I‘d given him.

―‗I thought of trying to mail them to Oxford in the island of England, but I could not think of any way to send them unnoticed. Also, I didn‘t know how I could pay to send something. It would cost money to mail a package to his faraway island, and I had never owned any money apart from the little coin I had given to Bartolomeo. I decided to save the letters to give him when he returned for me.

―‗Four weeks passed very, very slowly. I made notches on a tree near our secret place, so that I could keep track of the days. I worked in the field, helped my mother, spun and wove for our next winter‘s clothing, went to church, and listened wherever I could for news of Bartolomeo. At first the old men talked about him a little, and shook their heads over his interest in vampires. ‖No good can come of that,― one of them would say, and the rest would agree. It gave me a terrible mixture of happiness and pain to hear this. I was glad to listen to someone else talking about him, since I could never speak a word to anyone, but it also sent a chill through me to think that he might be attracting the attention of
pricolici
.

―‗I wondered constantly what would happen when he came back. Would he walk up to my father‘s door, knock on it, and ask my father for my hand in marriage? I imagined how surprised my family would be. They would all gather at the door and stare while Bartolomeo gave them gifts and I kissed them good-bye. Then he would lead me away to a waiting wagon, maybe even to an automobile. We would ride out of the village and across lands I could not imagine, beyond the mountains, beyond the great city where my sister Éva lived. I hoped we would stop to see Éva, because I had always loved her best.

Bartolomeo would love her, too, because she was strong and brave, a traveler like him.

―‗I passed four weeks in this way, and by end of the fourth week I was tired and could not eat or sleep very much. When I had cut almost four weeks of notches in my tree, I began to wait and watch for a sign of his return. Whenever a wagon came into the village, the sound of its wheels made my heart jump. I went for water three times a day, watching and listening for news. I told myself that he probably would not come after exactly four weeks, and that I should wait a week more. After the fifth week, I felt ill and I was certain that the prince of the
pricolici
had killed him. Once I even had the thought that my beloved might return to me in the form of a vampire himself. I ran to the church in the middle of the day and prayed in front of the icon of the blessed Virgin to take away this horrible idea.

―‗In the sixth and seventh weeks I began to give up hope. In the eighth week I knew suddenly by many signs I had heard about among the married women that I would have a child. Then I cried silently in my sisters‘ bed at night and I felt the whole world, even God and the Holy Mother, had forgotten about me. I did not know what had happened to Bartolomeo, but I believed it must have been something terrible, because I knew he had truly loved me. In secret I gathered the herbs and roots that were said to prevent a child from coming into the world, but it was no use. My child was strong inside me, stronger than I was, and I began to love that strength in spite of myself. When I secretly placed my hand on my belly, I felt Bartolomeo‘s love and I believed he could not have forgotten about me.

―‗I knew I had to leave the village before I brought shame on my family and my father‘s anger on myself. I thought of trying to find the old woman who had given me the coin.

Perhaps she would take me in and let me cook and clean for her. She had come from one of the villages above the Arges, near the castle of thepricolic, but I did not know which village, or whether she was still alive. There were bears and wolves in the mountains, and many evil spirits, and I did not dare wander through the forest all alone.

―‗At last I decided to write my sister Éva, something I had done once or twice before. I took some paper and an envelope from the house of the priest, where I worked in the kitchen sometimes. In the letter, I told her my situation and begged her to come for me. It took another five weeks for her answer to arrive. Thank the Lord, the farmer who brought it in with some supplies gave it to me and not to my father, and I read it in secret, in the woods. The middle of my body was growing round already, so that it felt strange when I sat down on a log, although I could still hide my roundness with my apron.

―‗There was some money in the letter, Romanian money, more than I had ever seen, and Éva‘s note was short and practical. She said I should leave the village on foot, walk to the next village, about five kilometers away, and then get a ride in a wagon or truck to Târgoviste. From there I could find a ride to Bucharest, and from Bucharest I could travel by train to the Hungarian border. Her husband would meet me at the border office in T—

on September 20—I still remember the date. She said I should plan my travel as well as I could to arrive there on that day. Enclosed in her letter I would find a stamped invitation from the government of Hungary, which would help me enter the country. She sent me love, told me to be very careful, and wished me a safe journey. When I came to the end of the letter, I kissed her signature and blessed her with all my heart.

―‗I packed my few belongings in a little bag, including my good shoes to save for the train journey, the letters Bartolomeo had lost, and his silver ring. One morning as I was leaving our cottage, I hugged and kissed my mother, who was getting old and sicker. I wanted her to know later that I had said good-bye to her in some way. I think she was surprised, but she didn‘t ask me any questions. Instead of going to the fields that morning, I set out through the woods, avoiding the road. I stopped to say good-bye to the secret place in the woods where I had lain with Bartolomeo. The four weeks of notches on the tree were already fading. At that spot I put his ring on my finger and tied a kerchief over my head, like a married woman. I could feel winter coming in the yellowing leaves and cool air. I stood there for a few moments, and then I set out along the path to the next village.

―‗I don‘t remember all of that trip, only that I was very tired and sometimes very hungry.

One night I slept in the house of an old woman who gave me a good soup and told me my husband should not let me travel alone. Another time I had to sleep in a barn. At last I found a ride to Târgoviste, and then another to Bucharest. When I could I bought bread, but I did not know how much money I would need for the train, so I was very careful.

Bucharest was very large and beautiful, but it frightened me because there were so many people, all in fine clothes, and men who looked boldly at me on the street. I had to sleep in the train station. The train was frightening, too, a huge black monster. Once I was sitting inside, next to a window, I felt my heart lifting a little bit. We rode past many wonderful sights—mountains and rivers and open fields, very different from our Transylvanian forests.

―‗At the border station, I learned that it was September 19, and I slept on a bench until one of the guards let me come into his booth and gave me some hot coffee. He asked me where my husband was, and I said I was going to Hungary to see him. The next morning a man in a black suit and hat came looking for me. He had a very kind face and he kissed me on both cheeks and called me ‖sister.― I loved my brother-in-law from that moment until the day he died, and I love him still. He was more my brother than any brother in my own family. He took care of everything, buying me a hot dinner on the train, which we ate at a table with a tablecloth. We could eat and look out the train window at everything passing by.

―‗At the Budapest station, Éva was waiting for us. She wore a suit and a beautiful hat, and I thought she looked like a queen. She hugged and kissed me many times. My baby was born at the best hospital in Budapest. I wanted to name her Éva, but Éva said she would rather name her herself, and she called her Elena. She was a lovely baby, with big dark eyes, and she smiled very early, when she was only five days old. People said they had never seen a baby smile so young. I had hoped she would have Bartolomeo‘s blue eyes, but she looked only like my family.

―‗I waited to write to him until after the baby was born, because I wanted to tell him about a real baby, not to tell him only about my pregnancy. When Elena was one month old, I asked my brother-in-law to help me find an address for Bartolomeo‘s university, Oxford, and I wrote the strange words myself on the envelope. My brother-in-law penned the letter for me in German, and I signed it with my own hand. In the letter I told Bartolomeo that I had waited for him for three months and then had left the village because I knew I would have his child. I told him about my travels and about my sister‘s home in Budapest. I told him about our Elena, how sweet she was, how happy. I told him I loved him and was frightened that something terrible had happened to prevent his returning. I asked him when I would see him, and whether he could come to Budapest to get me and Elena. I told him that no matter what had happened, I would love him to the end of my life.