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Without any arret, showed hily, was quite modern) and made as if to leave The rooms were very pretty: ash and old oak beams, with varnished wooden corner cupboards and shelves, and Dragosani was beginning to feel irl, so he warmed a little towards her - or more properly towards the as yet unseen Kinkovsi faauche of him to eat here, alone in his roohter both, had shown him such hospitality

’Use,’ he called after her on ied my mind I would like to eat at the farm, yes Actually, I lived on a fare to e to the fa the stairs she looked back over her shoulder ’As soon as you can wash and co for you’ There was no smile on her face now

’Ah! - then I’ll be two minutes Thank you’

As her footsteps on the stairs faded into silence, he quickly took off his shirt, snapped open one of his cases and found shaving gear, towel, clean, pressed trousers and new socks Ten uesthouse, and was met by Kinkovsi at the farmhouse door

I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ he said ’I hurried as fast as I could’

’No matter,’ the other took his hand ’Welcome to my house, please enter We’ll eat at once’

Inside, it was just a little claustrophobic The rooed, and the decor was dark and very ’old’ Roe square deal table which could have seated a dozen easily, Dragosani found hiht was such that the face of Use, who, after she had helped her ue seht sat Hzak Kinkovsi, with his hen her duties were done, and to his left two sons of maybe twelve and sixteen years respectively A s community standards

The osani said as htedly across the table at hi journey! All the way fro did it take you?’

’Oh, well I did stop to eat,’ he answered, s, he frowned ’I ate twice, and both meals were unsatisfactory and very expensive! I even slept for an hour or two, in the car, just this side of Kiev And of course I came via Galatz, Bucharest and Pitesti, chiefly to avoid theway, yes,’ Hzak Kinkovsi nodded ’Sixteen hundred kilometres’

’As the crow flies,’ said Dragosani ’But I’ to my car’s instruments’

’And all this way just to study a little local history,’ the farmer shook his head

They had finished their meal now The old boy (not really old, more weathered than withered) sat back with a clay-pipeful of fragrant tobacco; Dragosani lit a Roth- mans, one of a pack of two hundred Borowitz had purchased for him back in Moscow at a ’special’ store for the party elite; the two boys left to tend to evening chores, and the women went off to wash dishes

Kinkovsi’s reosani a little by surprise, until he re on his cigarette, he wondered how much he dare say On the other hand, he was also supposed to be a e if his inclinations ran altogether morbid

’Local history in a way, yes - but I ary, or cut short one on across the Alps to Oradea Or Yugoslavia for that olia They all hold a common interest for me, but more so here for this is my birthplace’

’And what is this interest, then? Is it the mountains? Or perhaps the battles, eh? My God - this country has known soenuinely interested He poured rapes and quite excellent) into Dragos ani’s glass and topped up his own

The er man answered ’And in this part of the world, the battles, certainly But the legend in its entirety is far older than any history we can hope to remember It’s possibly as old as the hills the - and very horrible!’

He leaned across the table, stared fixedly into Kin kovsi’s watery eyes

’Well, go on, don’t keep me in suspense! What is this mysterious passion, this ancient quest of yours?’

The as very heady and had robbed Dragosani of one down and dusk lay everywhere like aof dishes and soft, muted voices In another roo And these country folk being so superstitious and all -

Dragosani couldn’t resist it The legend of which I speak,’ he said, slowly and distinctly, ’is that of the va, looked stunned And then he rocked back in his chair, roared with laughter and slapped his thigh ’Hah! - the vampir - I should have known it! Every year there arefor Dracula!’

Dragosani sat astounded He was not sure what reaction he’d expected, but certainly it was not this ’More of us?’ he said ’Every year? I’m not sure I understand’

’Why, now that the restrictions have been relaxed,’ Kinkovsi explained ’Now that your precious "iron cur tain" has been opened up a little! They coland and France, even one or two from Germany Curious tourists, mainly - but at other ti this sas here in this very roo to be afraid of this this "Dracula" But what fools! Surely everyone knows - even "ignorant peasants" like myself -that the creature is only a character in a story by a clever Englishman, written at the turn of the century? Yes, and not o there was a film of the same title at the picture house in town Oh, you can’t fool osani Why, it wouldn’t surprise uide for lish party They’re due in on Friday And yes, they too are searching for the big bad vaosani fought hard to hide his confusion ’Learned men?’

Kinkovsi stood up, switched on the di in a battered la He sucked at his pipe and got it going again ’Scholars, yes - professors from Koln, Bucharest, Paris For the last three years All armed with their notebooks, photocopies of mouldy old maps and documents, their cameras and sketchbooks and - oh, all sorts of paraphernalia!’

Dragosani had recovered hined a knowing sain Kinkovsi roared ’Oh, yes, of course! Their money, too Why, I’ve heard that up in the e shops which actually sell tiny glass bottles of earth frood! Can you believe it? It’ll be Frankenstein next! I’ve seen hi!’ Now the younger ry Irrationally, he felt hi-toothed simpleton didn’t believe in vahter; they were like the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster: tourist attractions born out of ht there and then Dragosani made himself a promise that -

’What’s all this talk abouther hands on her apron ’You be careful, Hzak! Mind how you speak of the devil And you, Herr Dragosani There are still things in the lonely places that people don’t understand’ ’What lonely places, woman?’ her husband chuckled

’Here’s a man come down from Moscow in little more than a day - a journey which once would have taken a week and more - and you talk about lonely places? There’s no room for lonely places any ht It’s a terribly lonely place in your grave I’ve felt it in them: a loneliness they don’t even know is there - until they waken to my touch!

’You knohat I mean!’ Kinkovsi’s wife snapped ’It’s rues where they yet put stakes through the hearts of people taken too young or dead from no obvious cause - to make sure they don’t coosani) ’It’s just custo your hat to a funeral procession’

Now Use also appeared ’What? And are you a vaosani? But what a dark, morbid lot they are! Surely you can’t be one of theosani’s feigned s a laugh with your father, that’s all But my joke seems to have backfired’ He stood up

’Eh?’ said Kinkovsi, obviously disappointed ’Early night, is it? I suppose you’re still tired Pity, I was looking forward to talking to you Never et on with Maybe tomorrow’

’Oh, we’ll find tio sani as he followed his host to the door

’Use,’ said Kinkovsi, ’take a torch and see the Herr to the guesthouse, will you? The dusk is worse than darkest ht when you’re not sure of your step’

The girl did as she was told and guided Dragosani across the faruesthouse There she switched on the lights for the stairs Before saying goodnight, she told hiosani, there is a button beside your bed If you require anything in the night just press it Unfortu nately, it will probably wake up my parents, too A better ould be to open your curtains half-way - which I would see from my own bedrooosani, pretending to be slow on the uptake ’In the , Use Kinkovsi left little doubt of that ’I don’t sleep very well,’ she said ’My rooround floor I like to open o out that way and walk in the silver osani nodded his head butvery close to him Before she could further clarify the situation he turned away fro eyes on hi

In his rooosani quickly closed the curtains at the , unpacked his cases, ran hias jet, the water steaosani stripped hi in the heat

and languid swirl of the water when he moved his arms I n what see, his chin on his chest, the water growing cold

Stirring hi and prepared for bed It was only 10:00 pm when he slipped between the sheets, but within a minute or two he was fast asleep

Just before ht, deep and inches wide, like a lu into the roo what Use Kinkovsi had said, he got up, took a safety pin and firmly pinned the

curtains shut He half-wished it could be different - more than half- but it couldn’t

It wasn’t that he hated wohtened of them, he didn’t and wasn’t It was more that he couldn’t understand thes to do -so much else to learn and try to understand - he simply had no time to waste on dubious or untried pleasures Or so he told himself And anyway, his needs were different to those of other men, his emotions less volatile Except when he needed them to be But what he’d lost in common sensuality, he h even that would seem a paradox to anyone who knew his work

As for those other things he had to learn or at least try to understand - they were legion Boroas happy with hiosani was not He felt that at the moment his talent was one-dimensional, that it lacked any real depth Very well, he would give it the very greatest depth, a depth unpluht lay one who had secrets unique, one who in life coics, and who even now, in death, was undead And there, for Dragosani, lay the fount of all knowledge Only when he had drained that ould there be tilected ’education’

It was osani wondered how far the sleeper’s drealade, wondered if they ht meet half-way The h in the mountains wolves prowled and howled even now, as they had five hundred years ago; all the auspices were right

He lay back in his bed, lay very still, and pictured the shattered toroped like fossil tentacles and the trees leaned inward to hide their secret He pictured it, and out loud but also in his mind said:

’Old one, I’ve coe It’s the third year, and only four reoes it with you?’

Outside in the night a wind sprang up, blowing down frohed as their branches bowed a little, and Dragosani heard a sighing behind the rafters over his head But as quickly as it had risen the wind fell, and in its place:

Ahhh! Dragosaaani! Is it you, osaaani?

’Who else would it be, old devil? Yes, it is Dragosani I have grown stronger, I am become a small power in the world But I want more! You hold the ultimate secrets of pohich is why I have returned and why I will continue to return, until until’

Four osani And then then you shall sit upon s Four years, Dragosani Four years Ahhh!

’Long years forand sleep each night and count all the hours between And time is slow But for you? How has it been, old one, this last year?’

It would have been the one! - had you not disturbed s Here I lay and for fifty years hated, and lusted for revenge on them that put me here And for fifty more I desired only to be up and about my business, which is to put down ht raves of their o, or dust blown on the winds And in another hundred years what of even the sons of ions who caes past and ? What of the Loar, the Avar and the Turk? Ah! - a brave fighter in his time, the Turk - he wasby, for I was forgetting the glories just as a grandfather forgets his own infancy, until I had forgotten - alotten - al left of me but a word in a book, and when the book itself crumbled to dust? Why, then surely I would have no reason to be at all! And perhaps glad of it And then you caosaaaniiii

As the voice faded so the wind sprang up again, the two ht of as to be done and shivered in his bed But this was his chosen course, this his destiny And fearing that he had lost the other, he called out urgently:

’Old one, you of the Dragon-banner, of the bat and the dragon and the devil - are you there?’

Where else would I be, Dragosani? the voice seemed to mock Yes, 1 am here I quicken in ht I was forgotten, but a seed was sown and blossomed, and you reosaaaniiii

Tell er Tell ether Tell me it’

Twice you have heard it, the voice in his head sighed And would you hear it again? Do you hope to seek them out? Then I cannot help you Their na of them except the heat of their blood Aye, and of that I tasted the merest drop, a small pink splash But afterwards there was that of them in me, and that of me in theosani I am your father

’Would you walk on earth, and breathe, and slake your thirst again, old one? Would you slaughter your enemies and drive them back as before - as your ancestors before you - and this tirateful Dracul princelings? If you would, then trade with ain sounds o sani And would you threaten s of an ill-tuned violin You dare speak to me - you dare remind me - of Vlads, Radus, Draculs and Mirceas? You call me a sellsword? Boy, in the end my so-called ’masters’ feared hed me down in iron and silver and buried me in this secret place, in these same cruciforht, aye - for the sake of their ’Holy cross’, their ’Christianity’ - but now I fight to be free of it Their treachery is er in er which I can draw for you! Your eneain, old devil, and none to drive them out save you And there you lie, irown into the sickle of another, and what he cannot cut down he hammers flat I am a Wallach no less than you, whose blood is older than Wallachia itself Nor will I suffer the invader Well, and now there’s a new invader and our leaders are puppets once ht again? The bat, the dragon, the devil - against the ha with the wind in the rafters) Very well, I will tell you hoas, and how youbecati tio, anyway

’It was 1945,’ said Dragosani ’The ould soon be at an end The Szgany were here, fled into the ht down the centuries Refugees from the German war machine, they were here in their thousands And the Transylvanian plateau shielded theany, Romany, Szekely, Gypsy, call the with the Jews in the death-caed "collaborators," from the Crimea and Caucasus That’s when it was, and that’s when it stopped Spring 1945, but we had surrendered more than six ht, the Germans were on the run By the end of April, Hitler had killed himself

/ know only what you have told me of that Surrender, you say? Hah! / am not surprised But 1945? Aieee! More than four and a half centuries, and still the invader came - and I was not there to drink the wine of war Oh, yes, you stir old yearnings in tiht Perhaps fro and of the old blood Gypsies? Aye In reat Boyar, thousands such had worshipped iance more than the puppet Basarabs and Vlads and Vladislavs And would they worship me still? I wondered And did I yet have influence over them?

My tomb was broken down then just as it is now, unvisited since the day I was interred - except in the first half-century, by priests who cursed the ground where I lay And so they ca ones, Szekely, a boy and a girl It was spring and warhts were cold They had blankets and a small lamp with oil Also, they had fear And passion It was that, I think, which stirred me from my sluines of ere ru, and their thunder was in the earth Perhaps it was that which stirred these old bones

I felt what they were doing In four and a half centuries and nise the fall of a leaf fro of a woodcock’s feather They put a blanket across two leaning slabs, for a shelter They lit the lamp to see each other, also for warmth Hah! Szekely? They didn’t need a lamp to be warm

They interested me For years I had called, for centuries, and no one came, no one answered Perhaps they were kept away by priests, by warnings, byyears Or - perhaps in life osani, how reatest deeds are now accorded to the Vlads, and how I a children More than this, my very name will have been stricken from the old records, for that was their way in those days If they feared so they destroyed it and pretended it had never been Ah, but did they think I was unique of my sort? I was not - I areat ht must surely have found its way to the others? For hundreds of years it had angered e ypsies, Szkeleys!

The girl was frightened and he could not calth to face her fears, whatever they were, and to meet him in a hot collision of flesh Ahhh!

Yes, and she was a virgin! Her rave, fro after it! A maidenhead, intact! To quote an old, old book of lies: how are the hty fallen! I had broken two thousand inVlad ’the Impaler’!

So they were lovers, but not yet in the fullest sense of the word He was a boy - a in And so I got into his ht to theht they had from me, just one, for before the dawn they left After that - (a ) - / know no more of theosani, ’and left me on a doorstep to be found’

The answer to that was a while in co in a wind little round was tired; he had little ; the earth held him in its hard- packed womb and turned on its inexorable axis and lulled hily:

Yesss Yes, but at least she knehere to bring you She was a Gypsy, reht you back here She brought you hoosani! You ht say that of ht was a true labour of love Aye, and le splash of blood The osaaaniiii

’My mother’s blood’

Your mother’s, splashed on the earth where I lay But such a precious drop! For it was your blood, too, and runs in your veins even now And then, as a child, it brought you back to hts, visions, pseudo-memories evoked of the other’s words in his head Finally he said, I’ll come to you tomorrow We’ll talk more then’

As you will, my son

’Sleep now father’

A last gust of wind rattling a loose tile, and with it a long, last sighing

Sleep well, Dragosaaaniiii

And soot out of bed, went to herand looked out She thought it was the wind that woke her up, but there wasn’t the slightest breath of breeze It made no difference, she had intended to wake up just before 1:00 auesthouse garret Boris Dragosani’s curtains were drawn tighter than she’d ever seen theht was out

The next day was Wednesday

Dragosani ate a quick breakfast and drove off in his car before 8:30 am He took the road which led him close to the hills in the shape of a cross Down in a wide depression to the west of those hills lay the farm where he’d spent his childhood New people had it now, for the last nine or ten years Dragosani found a vantage point on a little-used track and looked at the place for a while It no longer did anything for him Maybe a very small lump in his throat - which was probably dust or pollen from the dry summer air

Then he turned his back on the farm and looked at the hills He knew exactly where to look As if his eyes were the lenses of binoculars, they seee and with incredible clarity and detail He could alreen canopy of the trees to the tuh, ed his eyes away It would be useless to go there anyway, before nightfall Or late evening at the earliest

And then he re, when he had been a small boy

After that first time when he was seven, it had been six ain He had been out with his sledge, a dog bounding by his side Bubba was a far, really, but where Boris went he always had to be There was a slope on the other side of the fare, a place where the kids snowballed and sledged each winter Boris should be there, but he knehere there was a better run: the fire-break, of course He also knew - as he had always known - that these hills were forbidden, and since the sus there, things which stuck in their ht to bother the it didn’t stop him Rather it drew him on

Noith the snow deep and crisp, the hills didn’t look so forbidding and the fire-break ood at it He’d come here last winter, too, alone, and even the winter before that, when he was very small But today he used the slope only once, and then half-way down he’d looked across to his right to see if he could pick out the spot under the trees After that he left the sledge at the bottom of the hill, and he and Bubba had cliainst the snow He was going back to the tomb (he told himself) to satisfy himself that that was all it was: just the burial place of so more That first time had been a bad dream, after he’d bumped his head when he was thrown from his cardboard cart And anyway he now had Bubba for company and for his protection

Or would have Bubba, except the dog gave a whining, worried bark as they approached the secret place and ran off After that Boris saw hih a break in the trees, down at the botto his tail nervously, in sporadic bursts, and offering up the occasional bark

Then at last he was there and the place was just as he re it was even darker, for snow on the higher branches shut out ht would normally penetrate; and here where the winter had been kept out, the ground was black to eyes used to a white glare Airless as ever, the place seemed; and what air there was, as before, seemed stirred by unseen shapes and presences Oh, certainly, it was a place for bad drea approached even now

Distantly, heard with only the edge of his conscious enius loci) Boris are of Bubba’s occasional barking like frozen gunshots cracking the air Wishing the dog would be quiet, he scrambled to where the slabs leaned and the fallen lintel bore the ancient shield

Now that his eyes were growing accustoers to help hion-devil symbols carved in stone, he reht to hear last time he stood in this place A dream? But such a real dream: it had kept him from the wooded slope for half a year!

And as he afraid of, anyway? An old tonorant peasants, their ns? A fancied voice, like the taste of so rotten in his mind? Rotten, yes, but so insistent! And how often since then had it coht, in his dreaet osaaniiii’