Chapter 8 Chapter VII

My father was in Amsterdam for the next few weeks, and during that time I felt like he was following me in a new way.Every time I came home late, he would call Mrs. Clay and ask. Once, Mrs. Clay and I explained that I wanted to go to tea with some classmates and do my homework.She said yes. I hung up the phone and went straight to the university library.I found "Historical Records of Central Europe" and copied the following passage in my notebook: Vlad Dracula had extraordinary courage in addition to his appalling cruelty. In 1462, he rode across the Danube and attacked Sultan Memed II and his troops at night.They were assembled there to attack Wallachia.In that very attack, Dracula killed several thousand Turkish soldiers, and the sultan himself barely escaped, before the Ottoman guards repelled the Wallachians.

The European princesses of his time could do the same thing—maybe more than that in many cases, and a few of them might kill more.What is special about Dracula is that there are never enough stories to tell about him-that is, he refused to disappear from history, and there are always endless legends about him.In England there are several sources which refer, directly or indirectly, to other sources in a variety of ways that would keep any historian curious.He was already notorious in Europe during his lifetime——by our standards today, Europe was still a big fragmented world, and the governments of various places still relied on horseback and ships to keep in touch. It's not an uncommon thing, but it's a huge achievement to be so famous.Dracula's notoriety did not end with his mysterious death and strange funeral in 1476, and it was not until the Western world entered the bright enlightenment period that the various opinions about him gradually faded.

So much for the entry on Dracula.Enough for me to digest for a day. I went back to the English literature collection and was delighted to find that the library had Bran Stoker's Dracula.It took me many trips to the library to finish reading this book. I just sat in that chair and let Stoker's other kind of gothic horror novel and sweet Victorian love story slowly embrace me.I don't know what I want from the book.According to my father, Professor Rossi said that this book is useless to understand the real Dracula.I think the urbane and obnoxious Count Dracula is a memorable character in the novel, even if he doesn't have much in common with Vlad Terbis.But Rossi himself believed that in life Dracula had become a vampire in the course of history.I don't know if fiction is capable of making something so bizarre come true.After all, Rossi made his discovery long after Dracula was published.On the other hand, Vlad Dracula was a force of evil for four hundred years before Stoker was born.It's all very confusing.

Didn't Professor Rossi also say that Stoker found a lot of useful information for the legend of vampires?I'd never seen a vampire movie—my father didn't like anything scary—and the clichés of the novel were new to me. According to Stoker, vampires are only active between sunset and sunrise.Vampires are immortal and drink the blood of the living, turning them into their own kind.He can turn into a bat, a wolf, or a cloud of fog.Garlic flowers and crosses can be used to avoid vampire attacks, and when he is asleep during the day, he can be killed by inserting a wooden stick into his heart and stuffing his mouth with garlic.Shooting a silver bullet through his heart would have the same effect.

None of this intimidated me.It all seemed to me too remote, too superstitious, too weird.But every time I read it, remember the page number I've read, and put the book back on the shelf, there's always something in the story that follows me out of the library, across the canal, and back home. In Stoker's stories, Dracula always likes to attack one target: the girl. My father said that he was more eager than ever to go to the South in the spring, and he wanted me to see its beauty. My vacation is coming up and his meeting in Paris is only a few days away.I have already learned not to push him, whether it is traveling or telling me stories.When he is ready, he will naturally continue to speak.He never talks about it at home.I think he didn't want to bring dark things into the house.

We took the train to Paris and then drove south into the Cévennes.After about a day or two, we went up to the cooler mountains. "Eastern Pyrenees," my father told me at a picnic, opening a map. "I've wanted to come here again for years." I traced the route we had taken on the map with my finger and was amazed at how close we were to Spain.The idea, and this beautiful French word for "east," thrilled me. Father wanted to see a monastery.He said, "I think we can reach the small town at the foot of the mountain by tonight and walk up tomorrow." "Is it tall?" I asked.

"It's halfway up the mountain. So there's no outside disturbance. It was built in 1000 AD. It's unbelievable—it's such a small place, it's literally embedded in the rock. It's hard for the most eager pilgrims to climb Go up. But you will also like the town down the mountain, it is an old hot spring town, really beautiful." Father said with a smile.But I can tell he's fidgeting a little, from the way he folds up the map so quickly.I think he's about to tell me another story.Maybe this time I don't need to ask him anymore. We ate in the restaurant on the ground floor of a nineteenth-century hotel in town, happily drinking gazpacho and eating schnitzel.

The restaurant manager put his foot on the brass railing next to our table and asked casually and politely about our itinerary.He was plain-looking, in an immaculate black uniform, with a long face and very distinct olive skin.He spoke broken French with accents I had never heard before, and my father, who understood better than I, translated for me. "Ah, of course—our monastery," replied the manager to my father's question, "and you know that St. Matthew's Abbey attracts eight thousand visitors every summer? Yes, it is. They are all so friendly, It's quiet, many foreign Christians go up on foot by themselves, a real pilgrimage. They make their own beds in the morning, come and go quietly, we don't even know. Of course, many people come for the hot springs. You're going to the hot springs, aren't you?"

My father said that we will go north after staying for two nights, and we plan to stay in the monastery the next day. "You know there are many legends about this place, some of which are unbelievable, but they are all true." The manager said with a smile, his face suddenly became handsome, "Can this lady understand? She may want to know these What about the story?" "I understand, thank you," I replied politely in French. "Well, I'll tell you a story. They call me the town historian. You can eat and listen. Our monastery was founded in AD 1000, as you all know. Actually, it was It was built in 999 AD, when the monks chose this place to prepare for the arrival of the millennium apocalypse. They climbed the mountains here to find a suitable place for their church. One day, one of them had a dream , in a dream they saw St. Matthew descend from the sky and put a white rose on the peak above their heads. The next day they climbed up there, said their prayers, and turned it into a holy place. Very beautiful——you will I like it. The monastery and its chapel turned a hundred years old. One of the most devout monks died suddenly and mysteriously. He was only in middle age and was responsible for educating the younger generation of monks. His name was Miguel de Kou Ha. They gave him a great funeral and buried him in their crypt. Soon a curse fell on the whole monastery. Several monks died of a strange plague. They were found dead one by one in the On the cloister—it's a beautiful cloister, you'll like it, the most beautiful cloister in Europe. And then the dead friars were found to have ghost faces, as if they had no blood in their veins. Everyone suspected that they had been killed Poisoned.

"Finally, a young monk—the beloved pupil of the dead monk—went to dig up his teacher in the basement against the abbot's objections. The abbot was terrified. Then they found that the teacher was still alive, but Not really alive, if you know what I mean. He lived, but died again. He got up at night to take the lives of other monks. In order to send the soul of the poor man to the right place, they came from a place in the mountains. The Holy Land brought holy water and a very sharp wooden stick—" He made a dramatic gesture in the air to show me how sharp the stick was.I've been watching him intently, straining to listen to his strange French, trying my best to connect the stories he's telling.

Father had stopped his translation, the manager said, his fork clattering down onto his plate.When I looked up, I suddenly found him staring at our new friend with a blank face. "Can we—" He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with a napkin once or twice, "Can we have coffee?" When we came out, the lowest part of the dusty square was filled with monotonous trumpet music.Below us, the streetlights began to come on, and swallows flew in and out of the church bell tower, circling it, as if drawing invisible silhouettes in the air.I noticed that one of them was doing sideways somersaults as if drunk, without the lightness and agility of a swallow at all.It was later discovered by the light that it turned out to be a single bat. Father sighed and stood against the wall, one foot on a rock. I didn't dare ask him why he reacted so strangely to the restaurant manager's story, but I figured that some stories were scarier for my father than he'd ever told me.This time, without me asking him, he's about to start, as if he's into something scarier now.