“He never told me he’d been to Romania.” I was croaking, not speaking.
“Not surprising.” She smoked bitterly. “My mother wrote him from Hungary, to the address he’d left her, and told him about their baby. He wrote her back saying he had no idea who she was or how she’d found his name, and that he’d never been to Romania. Can you imagine anything so cruel?” Her eyes bored into me, huge and starkly black now.
“What year were you born?” It didn’t occur to me to apologize before asking the lady this question; she was so unlike anyone I’d ever encountered that the usual rules didn’t seem to apply.
“In 1931,” she said flatly. “My mother took me to Romania for a few days once, before I even knew about Dracula, but even then she would not go back to Transylvania.”
“My God.” I whispered it to the Formica tabletop. “My God. I thought he’d told me everything, but he didn’t tell me that.”
“He told you-what?” she asked sharply.
“Why haven’t you met him? Doesn’t he know you’re here?”
She looked at me strangely but answered without demurring. “It’s a game, I guess you could say. Just a fancy of mine.” She paused. “I was not doing so badly in the university in Budapest. In fact, they considered me a genius.” She announced this almost modestly. Her English was phenomenally good, I realized for the first time-supernaturally good. Maybe shewas a genius.
“My mother did not finish grade school, if you can believe it, although she got some more education later in life, but I was attending the university by the time I was sixteen. Of course, my mother told me my paternal heritage, and we do know Professor Rossi’s outstanding books even in the murky depths of the East Bloc-Minoan civilization, Mediterranean religious cults, the age of Rembrandt. Because he wrote sympathetically on British socialism, our government allows the distribution of his works. I studied English throughout high school-would you like to know why? So I could read the amazing Dr. Rossi’s work in the original. It wasn’t exactly hard to find out where he was, either, you know; I used to stare at the university name on the jackets of his books and vow to go there one day. I thought things through. I made all the right connections, politically-I started by pretending I wanted to study the glorious labor revolution in England. And when the time came, I had my pick of scholarships. We have been enjoying some freedom in Hungary these days, although everyone wonders how long the Soviets will tolerate that. Speaking of impalers. In any case, I went to London first, for six months, and then got my fellowship to come here, four months ago.”
She blew out a curl of gray smoke, thinking, but her eyes never left mine. It occurred to me that Helen Rossi was likelier to run into persecution by the communist governments she referred to with such cynicism than by Dracula. Perhaps she had actually defected to the West. I made a mental note to ask her about this later. Later? And what had become of her mother? And had she made all of this up, in Hungary, in order to attach herself to the reputation of a famous Western academic?
She was following her own train of thought. “Isn’t it a pretty picture? The long-lost daughter turns out to be a great credit, finds her father, happy reunion.” The bitterness in her smile turned my stomach. “But that is not quite what I had in mind. I have come here to let him hear about me, as if by accident-my publications, my lectures. We will see if he can hide from his past then, ignore me as he ignored my mother. And about this Dracula thing -” She pointed her cigarette at me. “My mother, bless her simple soul for thinking of it, told me something about that.”
“Told you what?” I asked faintly.
“Told me about Rossi’s special research on the subject. I had not known about it, not until last summer, just before I left for London. That is how they met; he was asking around in the village about vampire lore, and she had heard something about local vampires from her father and his cronies-not that a man alone should have been addressing a young girl in public, you understand, in that culture. But I suppose he did not know any better. Historian, you know-not an anthropologist. He was in Romania looking for information on Vlad the Impaler, our own dear Count Dracula. And don’t you think it’s strange”-she leaned forward suddenly, bringing her face closer to mine than it had been yet, but ferociously, not in appeal-“don’t you think it is downright weird that he has not published a thing on the subject? Not one thing, as you surely know. Why? I asked myself. Why should the famous explorer of historical territories-and women, apparently, since who knows how many other genius daughters he has out there-why should he not have published anything out of this very unusual research?”
“Why?” I asked, not moving.
“I’ll tell you. Because he is saving it up for a grand finale. It is his secret, his passion. Why else would a scholar remain silent? But he has a surprise coming to him.” Her lovely smile was a grin this time, and I didn’t like it. “You would not believe how much ground I have covered in a year, since I learned about this little interest of his. I have not contacted Professor Rossi, but I have been careful to make my expertise known in my department. What a shame it will be for him when someone else publishes the definitive work on the subject first-someone with his own name, too. It is beautiful. You see, I even took his name, once I arrived here-an academic nom de plume, you might say. Besides, in the East Bloc, we do not like other people stealing our heritage and commenting on it; they usually misunderstand it.”
I must have groaned out loud, because she paused momentarily and frowned at me. “By the end of this summer, I will know more than anyone in the world about the legend of Dracula. You can have your old book, by the way.” She opened the bag again and thumped it horribly, publicly, on the table between us. “I was simply checking something in it yesterday and I did not have time to go home for my own copy. You see, I do not even need it. It is only literature, in any case, and I know the whole damn thing almost by heart.”
My father looked around him like a man in a dream. We’d been standing on the Acropolis in silence for a quarter of an hour now, our feet planted on that crest of ancient civilization. I was awed by the muscular columns above us, and surprised to find that the most distant view on the horizon was of mountains, long dry ridges that hung darkly over the city at this sunset hour. But as we started back down, and he came out of his reverie to ask how I liked the great panorama, it took me a minute to collect my thoughts and answer. I had been thinking about the night before.
I’d gone into his room a little later than usual so that he could look through my algebra homework, and I found him writing, mulling over the day’s paperwork, as he often did in the evening. That night he sat very still with his head bent above the desk, drooping toward some documents, not upright and paging through them with his usual efficiency. I couldn’t tell from the doorway whether he was intently scanning something he’d just written, almost without seeing it, or simply trying not to doze. His form cast a great shadow on the undecorated hotel-room wall, the figure of a man slumped dully over another, darker desk. If I hadn’t known his fatigue, and the familiar shape of his shoulders sloping above the page, I might for a second-not knowing him-have said he was dead.
Chapter 18