“It was an easy promise to make.
“Selim Aksoy wanted Turgut to put a question to us, and Turgut listened to him gravely. ‘We are wondering,’ he told us, ‘if in the midst of all that danger and chaos you saw the book that Professor Rossi described-a life of Saint George, was it not? Did the Bulgarians take it to the university in Sofia?’
“Helen’s laugh could be surprisingly girlish when she was really delighted, and I refrained from kissing her soundly in front of all of them. She had barely smiled since we’d left Rossi’s grave. ‘It is in my briefcase,’ I said. ‘For the moment.’
“Turgut stared, astounded, and it took him a long minute to recollect his duties as interpreter. ‘And how did it find a home there?’
“Helen was mute, smiling, so I explained. ‘I didn’t think of it again myself until we were back in Sofia, at the hotel.’ No, I couldn’t tell them the whole truth, so I gave them a polite version.
“The whole truth was that when we had finally been alone together for ten minutes in Helen’s hotel room, I took her into my arms and kissed her smoky dark hair, pulled her against my shoulder, fitting her to me through our soiled travel clothes like the other part of myself-Plato’s missing half, I thought-and then I felt not only the relief of our having survived together to embrace there, and the beauty of her long bones, her breath against my neck, but also something inexplicably wrong about her body, something lumpy and hard. I drew back and looked at her, fearful, and saw her wry smile. She laid her finger to her lips. It was merely a reminder; we both knew the room was probably bugged.
“After a second she put my hands on the buttons of her blouse, which was now shabby and dirty from our adventures. I unbuttoned it without letting myself dare to think, and drew it off. I’ve said that women’s undergarments were more complicated in those days, with secret wires and hooks and strange compartments-an inner armor. Wrapped in a handkerchief and warmed against Helen’s skin was a book-not the great folio I’d imagined when Rossi had told us about its existence, but a volume small enough to fit in my hand. Its casing was elaborately patterned gold over painted wood and leather. The gold was set with emeralds, rubies, sapphires, lapis, fine pearls-a little firmament of jewels, all to honor the face of the saint at the center. His delicate Byzantine features looked as if they’d been painted a few days earlier, rather than centuries, and his wide, sad, dragon-forgiving eyes seemed to follow mine. His eyebrows rose in fine arches above them, the nose was long and straight, his mouth sadly severe. The portrait had a roundness, a fullness, a realism I hadn’t seen in Byzantine art before, a look of Roman ancestry. If I had not been in love already, I would have said this was the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, human but also celestial, or celestial but also human. Across the neck of his robe I saw finely inked words. ‘Greek,’ Helen said. Her voice was less than a whisper, hovering at my ear. ‘Saint George.’
“Inside were small sheets of parchment in breathtakingly good condition, each covered in a fine medieval hand, also Greek. Here and there I saw exquisite pages of illustration: Saint George driving his spear into the maw of a writhing dragon while a crowd of nobles looked on; Saint George receiving a tiny gilded crown from Christ, who reached down with it from his heavenly throne; Saint George on his deathbed, mourned by red-winged angels. Each was filled with astounding, miniature detail. Helen nodded and drew my ear close to her mouth again, barely breathing. ‘I am no expert on this,’ she whispered, ‘but I think it might have been made for the emperor of Constantinople-exactly which one remains to be seen. This is the seal of the later emperors.’ Sure enough, on the inside front cover was painted a double-headed eagle, the bird that looked backward into Byzantium’s august past and forward into its limitless future; it hadn’t been sharp-eyed enough to see ahead to the toppling of the Empire by an upstart infidel.
“‘That means it dates at least from the first half of the fifteenth century,’ I breathed. ‘Before the conquest.’
“‘Oh, I think it is much older than that,’ Helen whispered, gently touching the seal. ‘My father-my father said it was very old. And you see the insignia here indicates Constantine Porphyrogenitus. He reigned in’-she searched an inner file-‘the first half of the tenth century. He was in power beforeBachkovski manastir was founded. The eagle must have been added later.’
“I scarcely breathed the words. ‘You mean that this is more than a thousand years old?’ Holding the book carefully in both hands, I sat down on the edge of the bed next to Helen. Neither of us made a sound; we were speaking more or less with our eyes. ‘It’s in nearly perfect condition. And you intend to smuggle such a treasure out of Bulgaria? Helen,’ I told her with a glance, ‘you are out of your mind. And what about the fact that it belongs to the Bulgarian people?’
“She kissed me, took the book out of my hands, and opened it to the front. ‘It was a gift from my father,’ she whispered. The inside front cover had a deep flap of leather over it, and she reached carefully inside this. ‘I have waited to look at this until we could open it together.’ She drew out a packet of thin paper covered with dense typing. Then we read together, in silence, Rossi’s agonized journal. When we were done, neither of us spoke, although we were both weeping. At last Helen wrapped the book in the handkerchief again and put it carefully back in its hiding place against her skin.
“Turgut smiled as I finished a diluted version of this story. ‘But there is more I have to tell you, and it is very important,’ I said. I described Rossi’s terrible imprisonment in the library. They listened with still, grave faces, and when I came to the fact that Dracula knew of the continued existence of a guard formed by the sultan to pursue him, Turgut drew a sharp breath. ‘I am sorry,’ I said.
“He translated quickly for Selim, who bowed his head and then said something in a soft voice. Turgut nodded. ‘He says the thing I most feel. This terrible news only means we must be the more diligent in pursuing the Impaler, and in keeping his influence from our city. His Gloriousness the Refuge of the World would command us in just this way, if he were alive. This is true. And what will you do with this book when you go home?’
“‘I know someone who has a connection with an auction house,’ I said. ‘We will be very careful, of course, and we’ll wait a while before we do anything. I expect some museum will get it, sooner or later.’
“‘And the money?’ Turgut shook his head. ‘What will you do with so much?’
“‘We’re thinking it over,’ I said. ‘Something in the service of good. We don’t yet know what.’
“Our plane to New York left at five, and Turgut began looking at his watch as soon as we’d finished our last enormous lunch on the divans. He had an evening class to teach, alas, alack, but Mr. Aksoy would ride with us to the airport in a taxicab. When we stood to go, Mrs. Bora brought out a scarf of the finest cream-colored silk, embroidered with silver, and put it around Helen’s neck. It hid the shabbiness of her black jacket and soiled collar and we all gasped-at least I did, and I can’t have been alone. Her face above the scarf was the countenance of an empress. ‘For your marriage day,’ Mrs. Bora said, standing on tiptoe to kiss her.
“Turgut kissed Helen’s hand. ‘It belonged to my mother,’ he said simply, and Helen could not speak. I spoke for both of us, shaking their hands. We would write, we would think of them. Life being long, we would see one another again.”
Chapter 76
“The last part of my story is perhaps the hardest for me to tell, since it begins with so much happiness, in spite of everything. We returned quietly to the university and took up our work again. I was questioned by the police once more, but they seemed satisfied that my trip abroad had been connected with research, and not with Rossi’s vanishing. The newspapers had seized upon his disappearance by then and made a local mystery of it, which the university did its best to ignore. My chairman questioned me, too, of course, and of course I told him nothing, except to say that I grieved as much as anyone for Rossi. Helen and I were married in my parents’ church in Boston that autumn-even in the midst of the ceremony I couldn’t help noticing how bare and plain it was, how devoid of incense.