I wanted to look at my father, but I couldn’t bring myself even to turn my head. It was his private moment. I heard, though, that he did not sob aloud.
She stopped and seemed to draw a breath. “Paul, when we visited Saint-Matthieu and I learned about their traditions-the abbot who had risen from the dead and Brother Kiril, who guarded him-I was filled with despair, and also with a terrible curiosity. I felt that it could not be coincidence that I had wanted to see the place, had longed for it. Before we went to France, I had been doing more research in New York-without telling you, Paul-hoping to find Dracula’s second hiding place and to avenge my father’s death. But I had never seen anything about Saint-Matthieu. My longing to go there began only when I read about it in your guidebook. It was just a longing, with no scholarly basis.”
She looked around at us, her beautiful profile drooping. “I had taken up my research again in New York because I felt that I had been the cause of my father’s death-through my desire to outshine him, to reveal his betrayal of my mother-and I could not bear the thought. Then I began to feel that it was my evil blood-Dracula’s blood-that had caused me to do this, and I realized that I had passed this blood to my baby, even if I seemed to have healed from the touch of the undead myself.”
She paused to stroke my cheek and to take my hand in hers. I quivered under her touch, the closeness of this strange, familiar woman leaning against my shoulder on the divan. “I felt more and more unworthy, and when I heard Brother Kiril’s explanation of the legend at Saint-Matthieu, I felt that I would never be able to rest until I knew more. I believed that if I could find Dracula and exterminate him I might be completely well again, a good mother, a person with a new life.
“After you fell asleep, Paul, I went out to the cloisters. I had considered going into the crypt again with my gun, trying to open the sarcophagus, but I thought I could not do it alone. While I was trying to decide whether or not to wake you, to beg you to help me, I sat on the cloister bench, looking over the cliff. I knew I should not be there alone, but I was drawn to the place. There was beautiful moonlight, and mist creeping along the walls of the mountains.”
Helen’s eyes had grown strangely wide. “As I sat there, I felt the crawling of the skin on my back, as if something stood just behind me. I turned quickly, and on the other side of the cloister, where the moonlight could not fall, I seemed to see a dark figure. His face was in shadow, but I could feel, rather than see, burning eyes upon me. It was only the work of a moment more before he would spread his wings and reach me, and I was completely alone on the parapet. Suddenly I seemed to hear voices, agonizing voices in my own head that told me I could never overcome Dracula, that this was his world, not mine. They told me to jump while I was still myself, and I stood up like a person in a dream and jumped.”
She sat very straight now, looking into the fire, and my father drew his hand over his face. “I wanted to fall free, like Lucifer, like an angel, but I had not seen those rocks. I fell on them instead and cut my head and arms, but there was a large cushion of grass there, too, and the fall did not kill me or break my bones. After some hours, I think, I woke to the cold night, and felt blood seeping around my face and neck, and saw the moon setting and the drop below. My God, if I had rolled instead of fainting -” She paused. “I knew I could not explain to you what I had tried to do, and the shame of it came over me like a kind of madness. I felt I could never be worthy, after that, of you or our daughter. When I could stand, I got up, and I found that I had not bled so much. And although I was very sore, I had not broken anything and I could feel that he had not swooped down upon me-he must have given me up for lost, too, when I jumped. I was terribly weak and it was hard for me to walk, but I went around the monastery walls and down the road, in the dark.”
I thought my father might weep again, but he was quiet, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I went out into the world. It was not so hard to do. I had brought my purse with me-out of habit, I suppose, and because I had my gun and my silver bullets in it. I remember almost laughing when I found the purse still on my arm, on the precipice. I had money in it, too, a lot of money in the lining, and I used it carefully. My mother always carried all her money, too. I suppose it was the way the peasants in her village did things. She never trusted banks. Much later, when I needed more, I drew from our account in New York and put some in a Swiss bank. Then I left Switzerland as quickly as I could, in case you should try to trace me, Paul. Ah, forgive me!” she cried out suddenly, tightening her grip on my fingers, and I knew she meant her absence, not the money.
My father clenched his hands together. “That withdrawal gave me hope for a few months, or at least put a question into my mind, but my bank could not trace it. I got the money back.” But not you, he could have added, and didn’t. His face shone, weary and glad.
Helen dropped her eyes. “In any case, I found a place to stay for a few days, away from Les Bains, until my cuts could heal. I hid myself until I could go out into the world.”
Her fingers strayed to her throat and I saw the small white scar I had already noticed many times. “I knew in my bones that Dracula had not forgotten about me, and that he might search for me again. I filled my pockets with garlic and my mind with strength. I kept my gun with me, my dagger, my crucifix. Everywhere I went I stopped in the village churches and asked for a blessing, although sometimes even entering their doors made my old wound throb. I was careful to keep my neck covered. Eventually I cut my hair short and colored it, changed my clothes, wore dark glasses. For a long time I stayed away from cities, and then I began little by little to go to the archives where I had always wanted to do my research.
“I was thorough. I found him everywhere I went-in Rome in the 1620s, in Florence under the Medici, in Madrid, in Paris during the Revolution. Sometimes it was the report of a strange plague, sometimes an outbreak of vampirism in a great cemetery-Père Lachaise, for example. He seemed always to have liked scribes, archivists, librarians, historians-anyone who handled the past through books. I tried to deduce from his movements where his new tomb was, where he had hidden himself after we opened his tomb at Sveti Georgi, but I couldn’t discover any pattern. I thought that once I found him, once I killed him, I would come back and tell you how safe the world had become. I would earn you. I lived in fear that he would find me before I could find him. And everywhere I went I missed you-oh, I was so lonely.”
She picked up my hand again and caressed it like a fortune-teller, and I felt, in spite of myself, a surge of anger-all those years without her. “Finally I thought that even if I was not worthy, I wanted to have just a glimpse of you. Both of you. I had read about your foundation in the papers, Paul, and I knew you were in Amsterdam. It was not hard to find you, or to sit in a café near your office, or to follow you on a trip or two-very carefully-very, very carefully. I never let myself see either of you face-to-face, for fear you would see me. I came and went. If my research was going well, I allowed myself a visit to Amsterdam and followed you from there. Then one day-in Italy, at Monteperduto-I saw him on the piazza. He was following you, too, watching you. That was when I realized he had become strong enough to go out in broad daylight sometimes. I knew that you were in danger, but I thought that if I went to you, to warn you, I might bring the danger closer. After all, he might be looking for me, not you, or he might be trying to make me lead him to you. It was an agony. I knew that you must be doing some kind of research again-that you must be interested in him again, Paul-to attract his notice. I could not decide what to do.”