Chapter 42 Chapter Forty-One

"Hugh got a book," I whispered. Helen stared at me puzzled, "Hugh?" I nodded quickly to our companion, who glared at us.Helen curled her lips, and Xio glared at her again, "She also—?" "No," I whispered, "she's come to help me. This is Miss Helen Rossi, the anthropologist." "Hugh shook hands with her very warmly, and was still staring at her. At this moment, Professor Sandow turned and waited for us, and we had no choice but to follow. Helen and Hugh followed me closely, and we crowded together, just Like a flock of sheep. The lecture hall was beginning to fill up, and I took a seat in the front row, taking my lecture notes out of my briefcase with my less trembling hand.

"Good afternoon, colleagues and historians," I began.I felt that was too egotistical, so I lowered my voice and said, "It's an honor to speak here today, thank you." And I carried on like that. After the opening remarks, I briefly introduce the commercial routes of Turkey and describe the kings and nobles who resisted Turkish aggression.I included Vlad Dracula as naturally as possible.Helen and I agree that if we exclude him entirely, any historian who understands his importance in the fight against the Turkish army will be suspicious.Saying the name in front of a group of strangers, though, cost me more than I thought, and I began to describe him piercing the bodies of twenty thousand Turkish warriors with spikes, and with a swipe of the hand, he poured a glass of water knocked over.

"Ah, I'm sorry!" I exclaimed, glancing uncomfortably at a mass of sympathetic faces—except for two: Helen, who looked tense and pale, and Gazel Joseph, who leaned forward a little, without any expression. Smiling, as if he was extremely interested in my miss. I pointed out that while the Turks eventually wiped out Vlad Dracula and many of his comrades—a term I suppose should be weighed—yet similar resistance was passed down through generations, and local revolutions eventually overthrew the empire.It was the national character of these resistances and uprisings, and it was the ability of the resisters to reclaim their territory after each attack that finally brought down the great imperial machine.

I was going to come up with a stronger ending, but this ending seems to have pleased the audience, and the applause roared. I was amazed, I finished speaking and nothing terrible happened.Helen leaned heavily on the back of the chair, obviously heaving a sigh of relief.However, something seemed to be missing in the hall, and after a while, I realized that it was Ge Zuo's stalwart body that had disappeared.I didn't notice him slipping out, but the end of my speech was probably too dry for him. Eva came up to shake my hand.I didn't know whether to shake hands or kiss them, but in the end I decided to shake hands.Among a group of poorly dressed men, she looked slimmer and more dignified today.

Helen also came up to talk to her.On such an occasion, the two of them appear very formal. Helen translated her aunt's congratulations to me, "Very well, young man. I can see from everyone's faces that you have offended no one, and you may not have said much, but you stand upright and stand in the speech On stage, looking the audience in the eye—it says a lot.” Aunt Eva's neat teeth and charming smile added rhythm to these words, "I have to talk to my niece. If you can give her some time tonight, Helen can come to my place." Helen Translated with guilt. "Of course," I said, smiling back at Aunt Eva.

"Very well," she held out her hand to me again, and this time I kissed her hand like a Hungarian. After this interruption, the next speaker was on a peasant uprising in early modern France, and Helen told me in a low voice that we had stayed long enough to go, "The library closes in an hour, and we will now Let's go." "Wait a minute," I said, "I have to fix my dinner time." It took me a while to find Hugh James, who was apparently looking for me too.We agreed to meet in the lobby of the school hotel at seven o'clock. We came to the school library, its ocher walls pure and shiny.Once again, I am amazed that Hungary recovered so quickly after the war.

"What are you thinking?" Helen asked me. "I was thinking of your aunt." "If you like my aunt that much, my mother is probably the kind of person you like." She gave a seductive laugh, "but let's see tomorrow. Now, we have to look at other things here. " "What are you looking at? Don't be so mysterious." She ignores me.Together we walked through the heavy carved doors into the library. "Renaissance?" I whispered to Helen.She shook her head. Entering the library again is like entering home, and it feels good.But what attracted me was the rows of books, thousands of them.I wondered how they had escaped the war and how long it would take them to return to the bookshelves.

Several students sat reading at long tables, and a young man sat behind a large table sorting stacks of books. Helen stopped to talk to him, and he nodded, beckoning us to follow him into a large reading room.He brought us a large folio, put it on the table, and went away. Helen sat down and took off her gloves. "Yes," she said softly, "I think that's all I remember. I saw it last year before I left Budapest, but didn't think it made any sense at the time." "What's this?" I pointed to what I thought was the title of the book.The pages are thick fine paper, printed in brown ink.

"It's Romanian," she told me. "Do you understand?" "Of course." She put her hand on the page. "Here," she said, "have you ever studied French?" "Learned," I admitted.I began to decipher the title, "Songs of the Carpathians, 1799." "Good," she said. "I thought you didn't speak Romanian," I said. "I can't speak well, but I can read a little." "Then what book is this?" She turned the first page lightly.I saw a long line of text, and I didn't recognize any of them at a glance, "I have read this book, and when I was preparing to go to England, I wanted to do my research with all my strength one last time before leaving. At that time, this library Not much is known about him yet. I have found a few documents related to vampires, because our king Matthias Cornuvius was a bibliophile and he was interested in vampires."

"That's what Hugh said," I murmured. "what?" "I'll explain it to you later. Go on." "Well, I didn't want to miss anything before I left, so I spent a few months reading a lot about the history of Wallachia and Transylvania." I'm a little disappointed.I was expecting to see the precious historical materials related to Dracula, "Is there any mention of our friend in it?" "No, I'm afraid not. But here's a song I've always remembered. You told me what Selim Axo wanted us to see in the archives, and it was that passage about some monks driving mule carts, Came from the Carpathians to the city of Istanbul, remember? That reminds me of this book. If only we could ask Turgut to help us write the translation of that letter."

She began to turn the pages carefully.Some of the long poems have woodcuts at the tops, mostly folk decorations, but also some broad strokes of trees, houses, and animals.The pages are clean, but the book itself is rough, as if handmade. Helen scratched the first few lines of the poem, moved her lips, and shook her head. "Some poems are very sad," she said. "You know, at heart, we Romanians and Hungarians are very different." "how to say?" "Well, there's a saying in Hungary, 'A Magyar, even when he's happy, has a sad face.' It's true. I think we're sad not because of life, but because of nature." She looked down at the old book , "Listen to this one, it's very typical." She stuttered and translated, which came from a thin nineteenth-century translation.Now, this book is in my study. The dead child had been lovely and beautiful. Now my sister's smile is equally sweet. She said to her mother, "Oh, mother, my God, My dead sister told me not to be afraid. She gave me the unfinished life, In this way I can bring you a happy life. " But, alas, the mother could not lift her head, Sitting there, crying over the dead one. "Christ," I said with a shudder, "it's easy to imagine a culture that would sing a song like that, but also believe in vampires, and even produce vampires." "Yes," Helen shook her head, "wait a minute," she stopped suddenly, "it might be this one." She points to a short poem adorned with a woodcut of a thorny grove wrapping houses and animals. Helen read silently, and I sat there for a long time, anxiously waiting. Finally, she raised her head, her face flashed with excitement, her eyes sparkled, "Listen to this," They rode to the city and came to the gate. They came from the kingdom of death to the great city. "We are servants of God, from the Carpathians. We are monks, we are saints, but we bring only bad news. We bring news of the plague to the great city. We serve our master and weep for his death. " They rode to Ayutthaya.they entered the door Dacheng wept with them. This strange poem makes me tremble, but I have to object, "This is too general. There is a reference to the Carpathians, but this will be in many old songs. And this "big city" can Means anything, maybe the city of God, heaven." Helen shook her head. "I don't see it that way," she said. "For the peoples of the Balkans and Central Europe—Christian and Muslim alike—the Great City always means Constantinople, unless you count hundreds of The number of people who make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem or Mecca each year.The mention of the plague and monks here seems to have some connection with the story in Selim's words.Could it not be that the master they spoke of was Vlad Terbis? " "I'm just guessing," I said suspiciously, "but I wish we had more data to investigate further. How old do you think the song is?" "It's always difficult to judge the history of folk songs." Helen pondered. "There's something odd about this woodcut," I said, looking closer. "There are woodcuts everywhere in the book," Helen murmured, "This picture doesn't seem to have anything to do with the poem itself." "Yes," I said slowly, "but take a closer look." We leaned over the little illustration, "I wish I had a magnifying glass," I said, "don't you think there's something hiding in this forest? There's no big city here, but if you look closely, there's There's a building, like a church, with a cross on the dome, and next to it—" "Some kind of small animal," she narrowed her eyes.Then, "My God," she said, "it's a dragon." I nodded and we leaned over, holding our breath. The vague little thing was both familiar and scary—wings outstretched, tail curled up.I didn't have to pull that book out of my briefcase to go, "What does that mean?" My heart was pounding uncomfortably just looking at this tiny dragon. "Oh, my God," she said, "I could hardly read, but I think there is a word here, and the letters are scattered among the bushes, coming out one at a time, small but certainly letters." "Dracula?" I said as softly as I could. She shook her head, "No, but it might be a name - Ivi-Ivireanu. I don't know what it means, I've never seen the word, but the 'u' is a common ending in Romanian names .What the hell does that mean?" I sighed, "I don't know, but I think your intuition is right. This page has something to do with Dracula, otherwise this dragon wouldn't be here, at least not this dragon." "The librarians didn't know anything about the book," Helen said. "I remember asking them because it was so rare." "Well, we can't answer it ourselves," I said finally. "Let's translate it and bring it with us, so we at least know what we've seen." She dictated, and I wrote her translation into my notebook and scribbled the woodcut. "I have to go back to the hotel," she said. "Me too, or miss out with Hugh James." We packed up our things and returned the books to the shelves with reverence for the sacred. Maybe it was the poem and its illustrations that got me thinking, maybe it was just that I hadn't realized that travel, staying late at restaurants with Aunt Eva, and speaking to a bunch of strangers was wearing me out. After I entered the room, it took me a long time to understand what I saw, and it took even longer to realize that Helen, who was two floors above me, might have seen the same scene in her room.I was suddenly worried about her safety, and I ran upstairs before I had time to look at my things. My room was thoroughly searched, drawers, cupboards, bed sheets, every crevice was spared, and every piece of my material was scattered and hastily torn apart with malicious intent.