The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you’ve seen that truth—really seen it—you can’t look away.

Saint Mary’s Church, my father said, was a homely little piece of Victoriana that lingered at the edge of the old section of campus. I’d passed it hundreds of times without ever going in, but it seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn’t look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line—something limited to the neighbors.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

His room was the largest of these, an admirable period display of Dutch furniture. He had mixed the spartan furnishings with an Ottoman carpet and bed hangings, a minor sketch by van Gogh, and twelve copper pans from a French farmhouse—these made a gallery on one wall and picked up glints of light from the canal below. I realize now what a remarkable room this was, not only for its display of eclectic tastes but also for its monastic simplicity. It did not contain a single book; those had all been relegated to the library downstairs. No clothing ever hung over the back of the seventeenth-century chair; no newspaper ever profaned the looming desk. There was no telephone and not even a clock—my father woke naturally in the early hours every morning. It was pure living space, a chamber in which to sleep, wake, and perhaps pray—although

“If a thing is impossible, it can be done.”’