The Historian

Chapter 43

If I hadn't shaken Barley awake, or if he had been alone, he would have passed in slumber across the border into Spain, I think, to be rudely awakened by the Spanish customs officers. As it was, he stumbled onto the platform at Perpignan half asleep, so that I was the one who asked the way to the bus station. The blue-coated conductor frowned, as if he thought we should be at home in the nursery by this hour, but he was kind enough to find our orphaned bags behind the station counter. Where were we going? I told him we wanted a bus to Les Bains, and he shook his head. For that we would have to wait till morning - didn't I know it was almost midnight? There was a clean hotel up the street where I and my - "Brother," I supplied quickly - could find a room. The conductor looked us over, observing my darkness and extreme youth, I supposed, and Barley's lanky blondness, but he only made a clicking sound with his tongue and walked on.
"The next morning dawned even fairer and more beautiful than the one before, and when I met Helen in the hotel dining room for breakfast, my forebodings of the previous night were already a distant dream. Sun came through the dusty windows and lit the white tablecloths and heavy coffee cups. Helen was making some notes in a little notebook at the table. 'Good morning,' she said affably as I sat down and poured myself coffee. 'Are you ready to meet my mother?'
"'I haven't thought about anything else since we reached Budapest,' I confessed. 'How are we going to get there?'
"'Her village is on a bus route that is north of the city. There is only one bus there on Sunday mornings, so we must be sure we do not miss it. The ride is about an hour through very boring suburbs.'
"I doubted anything about this excursion could bore me, but I held my peace. One thing still troubled me, however. 'Helen, are you sure you want me to come along? You could go talk with her alone. Maybe that would be less embarrassing to her than your showing up with a total stranger - an American, to boot. And what if my presence got her in trouble?'
"'It is exactly your presence that will make it easier for her to talk,' Helen said firmly. 'She is very reserved around me, you know. You will charm her.' "'Well, I've certainly never been accused of being charming before.' I helped myself to three slices of bread and a plate of butter.
"'Don't worry - you are not.' Helen gave me her most sardonic smile, but I thought I saw a glint of affection in her eyes. 'It is just that my mother is easy to charm.'
"She did not add, Rossi charmed her, so why not you? I thought it better to leave the subject there. "'I hope you let her know we're coming.' I wondered, looking at her across the table, if she would tell her mother about the librarian's attack on her. The little scarf was wound firmly around her neck, and I tried hard not to glance at it.
"'Aunt ?va sent a message to her last night,' Helen said calmly, and passed me the preserves. "The bus, when we caught it at the northern edge of the city, wound slowly in and out of suburbs, as Helen had predicted - first old outlying neighborhoods much damaged by the war, and then a host of newer buildings, rising high and white like tombstones for giants. This was the communist progress that was often elaborated upon with hostility in the Western press, I thought - the herding of millions of people all over Eastern Europe into sterile high-rise apartments. The bus stopped at several of these complexes, and I found myself wondering how sterile they really were; around the base of each lay homely gardens full of vegetables and herbs, bright flowers and butterflies. On a bench outside one building, close to the bus stop, two old men in white shirts and dark vests were playing a board game - what, I couldn't make out at a distance. Several women got on the bus in brightly embroidered blouses - a Sunday costume? - and one carried a cage with a live hen inside it. The driver waved the hen in with everyone else, and her owner settled in the back of the bus with some knitting.
"When we had left the suburbs behind, the bus lumbered out onto a country road, and here I saw fertile fields and wide, dusty roads. Sometimes we passed a horse-drawn wagon - the wagon made like a simple basket of wooden boughs - driven by a farmer in a black fedora and vest. Now and then we caught up with an automobile that would have been in a museum in the United States. The land was beautifully green and fresh, and yellow-leaved willows hung over the little streams that wound through it. From time to time we rode into a village; sometimes I could pick out the onion cupolas of an Orthodox church among the other church towers. Helen leaned across me for a view, too. 'If we kept on this road, we'd reach Esztergom, the first capital of the Hungarian kings. That's certainly worth seeing, if only we had the time.'
"'Next time,' I lied. 'Why did your mother choose to live out here?'
"'Oh, she moved here when I was still in high school, to be close to the mountains. I did not want to go with her - I stayed in Budapest with ?va. She has never liked the city, and she said the B?rzs?ny Mountains, north of here, remind her of Transylvania. She goes there with a hiking club every Sunday, except when the snows are heavy.'
"This added another little piece to the mosaic portrait of Helen's mother that I was constructing in my mind. 'Why didn't she move to the mountains themselves?'
"'There is no work there - it is mostly a national park. Besides, my aunt would have forbidden it, and she can be very stern. She thinks my mother has isolated herself too much already.'
"'Where does your mother work?' I peered out at a village bus stop; the only person standing there was an old woman dressed completely in black, with a black kerchief on her head and a bunch of red and pink flowers in one hand. She didn't get on the bus when we pulled up, nor did she greet anyone who got off. As we drove away I could see her staring after us, holding up her nosegay.
"'She works at the village cultural center, filing papers and typing a little and making coffee for the mayors of the bigger towns when they drop by. I have told her it is degrading work for someone of her intelligence, but she always shrugs and goes on doing it. My mother has made a career of remaining simple.' There was a note of bitterness in Helen's voice, and I wondered if she thought this simplicity had harmed not only the mother's career but also the daughter's opportunities. Those had been provided abundantly by Aunt ?va, I reflected. Helen was smiling her upside-down smile, a chilling one. 'You will see for yourself.'
"Helen's mother's village was identified by a sign on the outskirts, and in a few minutes our bus pulled into a square surrounded by dusty sycamores, with a boarded-up church at one side. An old woman, twin of that black-garbed grandmother I'd seen in the last village, waited alone under the bus shelter. I looked a question at Helen, but she shook her head, and, sure enough, the old lady embraced a soldier who got off ahead of us.
"Helen seemed to take our lonely arrival for granted, and she led me briskly down side streets past the quiet houses with flowers in their window boxes and shutters drawn against the bright sunlight. An elderly man sitting on a wooden chair outside one house nodded and touched his hat. Near the end of the street a gray horse was tied to a post, drinking water greedily from a bucket. Two women in housedresses and slippers talked outside a caf¨¦, which seemed to be closed. From across the fields I could hear church bells, and closer by, the songs of birds in the linden trees. Everywhere there was a drowsy humming in the air; nature was only a step away, if you knew which direction to step.
"Then the street ended abruptly in a weedy field, and Helen knocked at the door of the last house. It was very small, a yellow stucco cottage with a red-tiled roof, and looked freshly painted outside. The roof overhung the front, making a natural porch, and the front door was dark wood with a big rusted handle. The house stood slightly apart from its neighbors, and with no colorful kitchen garden or newly laid sidewalk leading to it, as many of the other houses on the street had. Because of a heavy shadow from the eaves, for a minute I could not see the face of the woman who answered Helen's summons. Then I saw her clearly, and a moment later she was embracing Helen and kissing her cheek, calmly and almost formally, and turning to shake my hand.
"I don't know exactly what I had expected; perhaps the story of Rossi's desertion and Helen's birth had led me to imagine a sad-eyed, aging beauty, wistful or even helpless. The real woman before me had Helen's upright carriage, although she was shorter and heavier than her daughter, and a firm, cheerful countenance, round cheeked and dark eyed. Her plain dark hair was drawn back in a knot. She had on a striped cotton dress and a flowered apron. Unlike Aunt ?va, she wore no makeup or jewelry, and her clothing was similar to that of the housewives I'd seen in the street outside. She had been doing some kind of housework, in fact, for her sleeves were rolled to the elbow. She shook my hand with a friendly grip, saying nothing but looking right into my eyes. Then, for just a moment, I saw the shy girl she must have been more than two decades before, hidden in the depths of those dark eyes with the crow's-feet around them. "She ushered us in and gestured for us to sit at the table, where she had set three chipped cups and a plate of rolls. I could smell coffee brewing. She had been cutting up vegetables, too, and a sharp aroma of raw onions and potatoes hung in the room. "It was her only room, I now saw, trying not to look around too conspicuously  - it served as her kitchen, bedroom, and sitting area. It was immaculately clean, the narrow bed in one corner made up with a white quilt and ornamented with several white pillows embroidered in bright colors. Next to the bed stood a table that held a book, a lamp with a glass chimney, and a pair of eyeglasses, and beside that a small chair. At the foot of the bed was a wooden chest, painted with flowers. The kitchen area, where we sat, consisted of a simple cookstove and a table and chairs. There was no electricity, nor was there a bathroom (I learned about the outhouse in the back garden only later in the visit). On one wall hung a calendar with a photograph of workers in a factory, and on another wall hung a piece of embroidery in red and white. There were flowers in a jar and white curtains at the windows. A tiny woodstove stood near the kitchen table, with sticks of wood piled next to it.
"Helen's mother smiled at me, still a little shyly, and then I saw for the first time her resemblance to Aunt ?va, and perhaps also some of what might have attracted Rossi. She had a smile of exceptional warmth, which began slowly and then dawned on its recipient with complete openness, almost radiance. It faded only slowly, too, as she sat down to cut more vegetables. She glanced up at me again and said something in Hungarian to Helen.
"'She wants me to give you your coffee.' Helen busied herself at the stove and served up a cup, stirring in sugar from a tin. Helen's mother put down her knife to push the plate of rolls toward me. I took one politely and thanked her in my awkward two words of Hungarian. That radiant, slow smile began to flicker again, and she looked from me to Helen, again telling her something I could not understand. Helen reddened and turned back to the coffee.
"'What is it?'
"'Nothing. Just my mother's village ideas, that is all.' She came to seat herself at the table, setting coffee before her mother and pouring some for herself.
'Now, Paul, if you will excuse us, I'll ask her for news of herself and what is happening in the village.'
"While they talked, Helen in her quick alto and her mother in murmured responses, I let my gaze wander over the room again. This woman lived not only in remarkable simplicity - perhaps her neighbors here did, too - but also in great solitude. There were only two or three books in sight, no animals, not even a potted plant. It was like the cell of a nun.
"Glancing back at her, I saw how young she was, far younger than my own mother. Her hair held a few gray threads where it was parted on top, and her face was lined with years, but there was something remarkably sound and healthy about her, an attractiveness completely apart from fashion or age. She could have married many times over, I reflected, and yet she chose to live in this conventual silence. She was smiling at me again and I smiled back; her face was so warm that I had to resist an urge to stretch out my hand and hold one of hers where it gently whittled a potato.
"'My mother would like to know all about you,' Helen told me, and with her help I answered every question as fully as I could, each put to me in quiet Hungarian, with a searching look from the interlocutor, as if she could make me understand by the power of her gaze. Where in America was I from? Why had I come here? Who were my parents? Did they mind my traveling far away? How had I met Helen? Here she inserted several other questions that Helen seemed disinclined to translate, one of them accompanied by a motherly hand smoothing Helen's cheek. Helen looked indignant, and I didn't press her to explain. Instead, we went on to my studies, my plans, my favorite foods.
"When Helen's mother was satisfied, she got up and began putting vegetables and pieces of meat in a big dish, which she spiced with something red from a jar over the stove and slid into the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat down again, looking from one of us to the other without speaking, as if we had all the time in the world. At last Helen stirred, and I guessed from the way she cleared her throat that she meant to broach the purpose of our visit. Her mother watched her quietly, with no change of expression until Helen gestured at me on the word Rossi. It took all my nerve, sitting at a village table far from everything familiar to me, to fix my eyes on that tranquil face without flinching. Helen's mother blinked, once, almost as if someone had threatened to strike her, and for a second her eyes flew to my face. Then she nodded thoughtfully and posed some question to Helen. 'She asks how long you have known Professor Rossi.'
"'For three years,' I said.
"'Now,' Helen said, 'I will explain to her about his disappearance.' Gently and deliberately, not so much as if talking to a child but as if urging herself on against her own will, Helen spoke to her mother, sometimes gesturing at me and sometimes forming a picture in the air with her hands. At last I caught the wordDracula, and at that sound I saw Helen's mother blanch and catch the edge of the table. Helen and I both jumped to our feet, and Helen quickly poured a cup of water from the pitcher on the stove. Her mother said something quick and harsh. Helen turned to me. 'She says she always knew this would happen.'
"I stood by helplessly, but when Helen's mother had taken a few sips of water, she seemed partly recovered. She looked up, and then, to my surprise, took my hand as I had wanted to take hers a few minutes before and drew me back down to my chair. She held my hand fondly, simply, caressing it as if soothing a child. I couldn't imagine any woman in my own culture doing this on first meeting a man, and yet nothing could have seemed more natural to me. I understood then what Helen had meant when she'd said that of the two older women in her family, her mother was the one I would like best.
"'My mother wants to know if you honestly believe that Professor Rossi was taken by Dracula.'
"I inhaled deeply. 'I do.'
"'And she wishes to know if you love Professor Rossi.' Helen's voice was faintly disdainful, but her face was earnest. If I could safely have taken her hand in my free one, I would have.
"'I would die for him,' I said.
"She repeated this to her mother, who suddenly squeezed my fingers in a grip of iron; I realized later that hers was a hand strengthened by endless work. I could feel the roughness of her fingers, the calluses on her palms, the swollen knuckles. Looking down at that powerful small hand, I saw that it was years older than the woman it belonged to.
"After a moment, Helen's mother released me and went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She opened it slowly, moved several items inside, and took out what I immediately saw was a packet of letters. Helen's eyes widened and she spoke a sharp question; her mother said nothing, only returning in silence to the table and putting the package into my hand.
"The letters were in envelopes, without stamps, yellowing with age and bound together by a frayed red cord. As she gave them to me, Helen's mother closed my fingers over the cord with both her hands, as if urging me to cherish them. It took me only a second's glance at the handwriting on the first envelope to see that it was Rossi's, and to read the name to which they were addressed. That name I already knew, in the recesses of my memory, and the address was Trinity College, Oxford University, England."