The Historian

“Next to the vest hung a pair of daggers. I wanted to ask who’d worn it, who’d caught those bullets, who’d carried those daggers. Someone had filled a ceramic jug on a table below them with roses and fronds of green, which looked supernaturally alive among all those fading treasures. The floor was highly polished. I could see another, similar room beyond.

“Ranov was looking around, too, and now he snorted. ‘In my opinion, Professor Stoichev is permitted to keep too many national possessions. These should be sold for the benefit of the people.’

“Either Irina understood no English or she didn’t deign to respond to this; she turned away and led us out of the room and up a narrow flight of stairs. I don’t know what I expected to see at the top. Perhaps we would find a littered den, a cave where the old professor hibernated, or perhaps, I thought-with that now-familiar twinge of misery-we might find a neat, orderly office of the sort that had masked Professor Rossi’s tumultuous and splendid mind. I had all but put this vision behind me when the door at the top of the stairs opened, and a white-haired man, small but erect, came out on the landing. Irina hurried to him, grasping his arm with both hands and addressing him in quick Bulgarian mixed with some excited laughter.

“The old man turned to us, calm, quiet, his face deeply withdrawn, so that I had for a minute the sense that he was gazing down at the floor, although he looked directly at us. I stepped forward then and offered my hand. He shook it gravely and turned to Helen and shook hers as well. He was polite, he was formal, he had the kind of deference that is not really deference but dignity, and his large, dark eyes went from one of us to the other, and then took in Ranov, who hung back watching the scene. At this Ranov came up and shook hands with him, too-patronizingly, I thought, disliking our guide more every minute. I wished with all my heart that he would leave, so that we could speak alone with Professor Stoichev. I wondered how on earth we were going to accomplish any kind of honest discussion, learn anything from Stoichev at all, with Ranov hovering behind us like a fly.

“Professor Stoichev turned slowly and ushered us into the room. This room, as it turned out, was one of several on the top floor of the house. It was never clear to me, during our two visits there, where its inhabitants slept. As far as I could see, the upper story of the house contained only the long, narrow sitting room that we were entering, and several smaller rooms opening off it. The doors to the other rooms stood ajar, and sunlight filtered into them through the green trees in the windows opposite and caressed the bindings of i

“On one wall of the sitting room hung a primitive map, painted, to my amazement, on leather. I couldn’t help stepping toward it, and Stoichev smiled. ‘Do you like that?’ he asked. ‘It is the Byzantine Empire in about 1150.’ It was the first time he had spoken, and he used a quiet, correct English.

“‘While Bulgaria was still among its territories,’ Helen mused.

“Stoichev glanced at her, clearly pleased. ‘Yes, exactly. I think this map was made in Venice or Genoa and brought to Constantinople, perhaps as a gift to the emperor or someone in his court. This is a copy which a friend has made for me.’

“Helen smiled, touching her chin in thought. Then she almost winked at him. ‘The emperor Manuel I Comnenus, perhaps?’

“I was stu

“Stoichev said nothing else for a while, although he looked intently at us, and I wondered what he thought of our appearing there, and whether he pla

“He looked at his hands on the table-they were fine and freckled with age spots-and then at me. His eyes, as I’ve said, were hugely dark, and they were the eyes of a young man, although his clean-shaven olive face was old. His ears were unusually large and stuck out from the sides of his head in the midst of neatly clipped white hair; they actually caught some of the light from the windows, so that they looked translucent, pinkish around the edges like a rabbit’s. Those eyes, with their combined mildness and wariness, had something of the animal in them, too. His teeth were yellow and crooked, and one of them, in the front, was covered in gold. But they were all there, and his face was startling when he smiled, as if a wild animal had suddenly formed a human expression. It was a wonderful face, a face that in its youth must have had an unusual radiance, a great visible enthusiasm-it must have been an irresistible face.

“Stoichev smiled now, with such force that it made Helen and me smile, too. Irina dimpled at us. She had settled herself in a chair under an icon of someone-I assumed it was Saint George-putting his spear with vigor through an undernourished dragon. ‘I am very glad that you have come to see me,’ Stoichev said. ‘We don’t get so many visitors, and visitors who speak English are even more rare. I am very glad to be able to practice my English with you, although it is not as good as it was, I am afraid.’

“‘Your English is excellent,’ I said. ‘Where did you learn it, if you don’t mind my asking?’

“‘Oh, I do not mind,’ said Professor Stoichev. ‘I had the good fortune to study abroad when I was young, and some of my studies were conducted in London. Is there anything with which I can help you, or did you only wish to visit my library?’ He said this so simply that it took me by surprise.

“‘Both,’ I said. ‘We wished to visit it, and we wished to ask you some questions for our research.’ I paused to hunt for words. ‘Miss Rossi and I are very much interested in the history of your country in the Middle Ages, although I know far less about it than I ought to, and we have been writing some-ah -’ I began to falter, because it swept over me that despite Helen’s brief lecture on the plane I actually knew nothing about Bulgarian history, or so little that it could only sound absurd to this erudite man who was the guardian of his country’s past; and also because what we had to discuss was highly personal, terribly improbable, and not at all something that I wanted to broach with Ranov sneering down at the table.