Stoker's Manuscript (14 page)

“This is how you get things
done
.” He said it in such a way as to distinguish
done
from
trying
. “If you can pick up the phone and make things happen to conclude a transaction before walking into negotiations, that’s getting things
done
.”

I shrugged and nodded.

“As opposed to doing nothing and hoping that when you get there it works out for the best.”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“Found out what the agent thinks it will take to close the deal without letting it get to auction.”

“And the curator?”

“He’s not in on the deal.”

I nodded. “Good—didn’t want to soil a good referral source.”

“So when you were here before, you figured a million or so at Christie’s. He thinks the family is looking for twice that. Your buyer in for that much?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“How much did he authorize?”

I held up four fingers.

“Perfect. What we have is the ideal scenario to consummate a deal—equally motivated buyer and seller. So here’s how you play it, Joseph: You offer two-point-six . . .” He stopped. “You tracking?”

I was reminded how weary and worn I must have appeared. I acknowledged with a nod. “Two-six.”

“You offer two-point-six and let the agent run that by the family. He’ll suggest that he thinks he can get more. At six hundred large, he knows that you’re halfway raised, and he’ll talk them into three million two.”

I was thinking four. “What about the rest?”

“Joey,
stunod
, your deal is for four mil. That’s what you wire to the agent’s escrow account. This is not like a real estate purchase, where the seller gets a copy of the escrow settlement sheet from the title company; the seller just gets a wire out of escrow.”

“So . . . the rest falls to the agent for pushing through the deal.”

“You’re a quick study.” He pointed a finger at me. “And a couple nice donations to the museums will go a long way toward your next referral.”

“How nice is nice?”

“Fifty should do it.” I must have looked blank, because he clarified, “Large. That would be fifty large.”

My life was simple before that phone call came in, just a merchant dealing with markups and keeping dust off the jackets, tending to a closed shop with plenty of time to read. “Would I be rude to ask where your take comes from all this, Doug?”

“You don’t worry about that, my friend, but I’d really like to hold that manuscript in my hands, just once. A treasure for the ages, you know.”

That I would not be able to pull off unless he wanted to accompany me to Philadelphia the next day. “I’m going directly from the museum back to Europe the day after transacting, so you may have to go there if you want to hold it.”

Doug shrugged. “One more thing,” he said, pointing his nose down and staring over his reading glasses. “When I said family, I mean you’re dealing with . . . a
family
.”

I looked at him for clarification.

“What I mean is, you already made your deal. You have to go through with it.”

Don’t I know it . . .

I thanked Doug as heartily as I could and left.

My last stop for the day was to visit my brother, who was reading in the rectory from the front of the book—must have been the Old Testament. I didn’t know if he would have a fatherly scowl for my decision or be happy to see me, and I was pleased to see him excited as I held out his gift bag. But when he looked at my face, he quickly placed the offering on the table.

“You have the widow’s stare,” he said. “Come in, tell me what you saw.”

“Padoc de
.” The Paddock of the Damned.

He nodded. “So you met the caretaker, too.”

“Yeah.” I accepted Bernhardt’s offer of bottled water. “A bunch of memories came flooding back in, none of them nice.”

“Eight years later and I still see that place.” He looked down and shook his head. “When I was there I stopped in front of an orphanage. There were a dozen or so little boys, maybe five or six years old, with their little fingers gripping a chain-link fence. They were naked and in diapers.” He choked up. “I was too ashamed to stop and see if I could help.”

“What could you have possibly done?”

“Same thing someone did for us once. But I failed, Joseph. I failed my test.”

“You can’t save everyone. Especially in that country.”

He nodded. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Lot of strange things happen there.”

“Easy to see why those people are so superstitious.”

“Yeah.” I drained the water bottle, and for the first time in my life I had an off-limits topic separating me and my brother. I started to ask him if he had any other strange encounters there, but instead pointed to his gift bag to change the topic. “Go ahead.”

He spread the handles apart and looked in, and the smile returned to his face. He unwrapped the cross. “Old Believer.”

“I thought it fit.”

“A treasure from home. A good memory.”

I nodded. “The square, at Stephen’s Tower.”

He turned it over and over before kissing it, and his eyes watered.

“And something to wear,” I said.

He reached in the bag and unwrapped the embroidered shirt and held it up in front of him. “It’s perfect. I’ve been invited to a Serbian wedding out in Mundelein next month. I shall wear it to the party.”

“Careful, Berns, some girl will ask you to dance.”

“Girls ask more than that these days, Joseph.” He pointed toward his Bible. “I was just reading Sodom and Gomorrah again.”

“The part where the whole town’s doin’ the lowdown, or the part where the lady turns to salt?”

“The part where God agrees that if there’s only one righteous man . . . Where did you get
that
?”

He saw my crucifix after I unzipped my jacket. “A gift from the buyer.”

“Saint Olga.” He reached his hand out, wanting to see it. “This is magnificent. Nice ruby.”

“A spinel, actually.”

“Amazing.” He looked closer and turned it over. “Serve and protect.”

“Maybe the police should wear these.”

“This is really old.”

I dummied up. “You were saying?”

“Oh . . . yes. I’ve been thinking that you’ve been granted a very special gift, and here in the prime of your life when you have no obligations except to yourself, this . . . opportunity comes in the form of some solicitation from afar.”

“And you’re thinking it’s no coincidence that it’s our homeland.”

“That’s right. You didn’t think that someone from the old country just opened up the Chicago directory of booksellers and landed on you?”

“No.”

“It’s God’s way of testing you, to see if you’d go to the one forbidden place in pursuit of wealth.”

I looked down. “Only a fool would dismiss the coincidence, and I . . . I didn’t listen to your advice.”

“It was not
my
advice,” he said.

I nodded. It was the nuns who raised us that warned against ever returning there, that we would not be welcome. This was told to the Don by our benefactor, the person who arranged our immigration.

“You’d be surprised, Joseph. There are a whole lot more fools out there than sages.”

“So I’m being tested.”

“God tests hermits, too, you know.”

I nodded. This I knew.

“Joseph, I don’t go out looking for calamity in my life; it just comes into my confessional and spills every Saturday. I’m here to tell you that every single sin someone confesses is some test they failed. At first I thought it was just random bad behavior and giving in to temptation. Now I see they have patterns—a person’s going along minding his own day-to-day, and
wham
, he gets tested.”

“And fails.”

“And fails, yes,” he said. “It starts a pattern of sin.”

“So what’s my test?”

“You’ve been working on your business half of your life already, and out of nowhere comes this offer for a lot of money. I assume you’re getting a large consulting fee out of this, a lot more than your standard fare.”

“Mult mai mult.” Much more.

“But you were told never to return there. The
one
place.” He strummed his fingers in that way that told me I should have already gotten it. Just in case, he continued, “My son, I have given you all you could want, just stay away from that one tree, that one fruit.”

Adam being tested; I knew what he was getting at. “I look at it another way, Berns.”

He gave me a look. “Sinners always do.”

“No, really,” I said. “God gives me a special talent so that I don’t have to live like those other
orfani
on the streets over there, and now He opens a door to give me a comfortable life for the rest of my days, not to mention helping others, like a good father who wishes better for his son.”

“I see.” My brother nodded. “I’m sure most people who win the lottery overlook their sin of gambling on their way to thanking God for finally picking their Ping-Pong balls.”

He had a point, but this was not some game of chance; it was the result of a lot of work. Or perhaps I just didn’t want to heed his advice.

I asked, “Then how would you say I should recognize the difference between the culmination of hard work versus staying away from the tree?”

“You’ll know,” he said. “You probably already know.”

“How?”

“When things start happening that you cannot explain, things that confound humans or seem outside of natural law.” They already had done that, and more. “When what comes next is evil,” Berns said, “you’ll know where that came from.” He pointed downward.

“Maybe something good’ll come out of it.” I changed the subject. “Like selling the Knowles?”

“Oh, the Don thanks you very much. Sold the Secker and Warburg edition.”

“Hope it helps.”

“Every bit helps,” he said. “They’ve got medical bills ahead.”

I
had never flown on a private jet before, but with business concluded at the Rosenbach, Arthur arranged logistics, including armed guards and movers who crated and loaded the documents and display case into an armored truck bound for the airport. There we boarded some sort of large aircraft (I wouldn’t know a Gulfstream from a Greyhound, except maybe for the wings), and I shared a quiet cabin with the workers and crew bound for Bucharest. I settled into a reclining leather chair and fell asleep before takeoff.

The transaction had gone as if choreographed. Following pleasantries and legal formalities that essentially cleared the museum of its bailment, my $2.6 million offer was countered and accepted at $3.2 million, and I placed a call to Arthur to authorize the $4 million wire. Waiting had proved to be the most difficult part, as the international wire desks close at noon local. I spent a sleepless night in the hotel until the bank confirmed receipt the following morning.

All too soon I awoke, still aboard a jet. And as is often the case with me, worry moved in and hogged my blankets. Mentally I had not spent any of the money, since I had yet to receive my fees. I could have made it legit and insist on a reasonable fee inside escrow with a side deal, or I could have insisted on the payment being upon delivery, but I signed the contract “upon delivery
and
acceptance.” Then I made the mistake of not clarifying the term
acceptance
in the body of the contract. I realized too late that I should have inserted a proviso stating it meant acceptable as I had purported it to be. As written, the contract remained silent as to what constituted the buyer’s acceptance. Alas, in the eventuality of legal contest, I, like the goods, would not be in a Chicago court, but rather dealing with the likes of Escu & Escu, Esq.

I took the opportunity afforded by the long flight to commit to memory snippets from the epilogue verses that described the supposed location of Dracula’s tomb:

From Dreptu . . . Ladies River . . . last chestnuts . . . Bethany Home . . . see their fate at sunrise . . . wicked Men’s destination . . . five minutes . . . Juden await judgement . . . batter across the first building . . . beyond the stone bridge . . . path not to miss . . . seconds . . . shading eyes at sunrise . . . tripping over stones.

Like my original impression, I continued to find the references odd, as they seemed at once both specific and cryptic, with the sequence strangely brief, as well. So much ink had spilled on the great battle that produced Dracula’s demise; why so little on his interrment ceremony? No encomiums over the grave, no celebrations staged; it seemed almost as if the pallbearers wished to finish and exit with haste. What seemed more important to me as I inspected the document was that the riddle content was verbatim from the assistant’s notes, and then Stoker wrote different verses in what seemed to be an attempt at metering, only to have them boldly lined through and replaced by the original words. I surmised the assistant won out on this closing page and insisted on precise obscurity, but I felt puzzled. Why in his novel’s final scene would the author accede to the assistant?

The jet put down in Bucharest and, rather than approaching a terminal, taxied toward a hangar. It slowed to a stop, then one last nudge and the plane rolled inside with the great door closing behind us. I stepped outside into a spotless hangar as an armored truck backed up to receive its cargo.

Arthur was quick to extend a hand and smile. “This is an historic day.”

“Indeed,” I said.

In fact I wished he would have handed me a check and seen to it that the jet was refueled and homeward bound. But instead I found the open door to a black Suburban. It was not until we departed the airport grounds that I realized we had not passed through Customs, nor were we southbound toward the city, but northbound toward
in the SUV tailing the armored truck. Outside occasional rain splattered the windshield on an overcast day. They drove in a way as not to bring attention to themselves, although the armored vehicle was the only one on the road. Rather than take the road to
, the drivers opted for the more direct but treacherous route up 73A at the town of Predeal. We climbed the hill past several small villages while mud splashed the wheel wells and decorated the black paint. It turned to late evening, and the rutted road snaked steeply in the woods before reuniting with a road that had a number, but still no pavement. Just as I was trying to figure out our location, the sight of Castel Bran loomed above in an overcast evening. Had I been a first-time tourist, I would have marveled at the sight.

The vehicles drove through the lower gate, and I missed out on my carriage ride. Inside I was seen to my corner tower suite and informed that dinner would be room-served within the hour. Arthur left before I had the opportunity to get clarification on the balance of the transaction.

A thin, wiry man whom I had not previously met delivered my dinner. He was malodorous and I hoped he didn’t get any on the food. When he left he locked the door behind him, and despite my unease I ate like a starving man. Two hours passed awaiting Arthur’s return, and I spent the time gazing out the window until all I could see was a dense cloud cover. Then the door lock clicked.

Arthur entered and said, “I trust your stay is pleasant.”

“Of course.” I offered him a chair in the parlor section.

“We cannot stay,” he said. “The Master is reviewing the manuscript.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about concluding the transaction.”

Arthur smiled. Not the most convincing of looks, but a smile. “You need not worry, Mr. Barkeley, you will be taken care of.”

“And the timing?”

“The Master operates . . . let us say, in his own time. Till then you are to here wait. You will receive your meals promptly.”

He left and locked the door. I didn’t like the idea of
meals
, as in plural. Not long ago I sat at the window in that very room wondering what blessings had been bestowed upon me that I might spend nights in Dracula’s Castle as honored guest, yet now I connived my escape in a room identical to the one where Jonathan Harker was driven mad. Perhaps that account was not fiction.

Sleep came hard, both from the time change and worry. More than a week passed with only my Romanian dictionary and phrase book and a map of the country, the latter delivered with a breakfast. Several more meals came and went, and I looked upon a night so clear, it looked like fresh paint, and with only days before a full moon it appeared as if searchlights looked down into the hills. Worry and dread have a creeping effect and provoke physical responses, so I exercised by walking the room. For excitement I watched occasional rain and lightning roll through the valley and memorized the map.

When you lose your freedom of movement, the cadence of time changes, for it is more deliberate, less relative. You always know what time it is when you are not free. When all else fails . . .

“When all else fails,” my brother used to say, “don’t start praying. You should have been praying a long time ago.”

“I know, Berns, I know.” My mumble crossed the room and echoed back, startling me slightly. That was not the time to pray; that was the time to figure out what had ensnared me.

Here is what I knew: That I was perhaps the only human in the last hundred years or so to see the original epilogue, that the original had made it to first edition printing, and that following the fire it was replaced with a different ending. The epilogue obviously pointed to the burial site of the fictional character, but the deeds of the manuscript buyer suggested strongly that the site was not fictional. If that was in fact true, then the buyer was convinced he could locate the reliquary that held the remains of his ancestor, Dracula. If so, then the bones of Dracula would hold many times more value than the literary treasure. Who knew how much more value? For the buyer, the value would probably not even be measured in dollars.

But why this talk of warring families? Both Mara and Alexandru alluded to it. Could it be that I was helping only one family member over another, or even more, to find the treasure? That would certainly explain the buyer’s insistence of anonymity.

I thought of Berns and wished for his counsel. What would he have been doing at that time? Probably reading Scripture. And then it hit me: The passages in the epilogue were similar to what I had tackled in Bible study, the King James Version. It was written in similar style to what my brother had taught me—that the dates, structure, and form were equally important to understanding the meaning of a passage. So I decided to try to decipher what I could of the directions. The trick to these was not necessarily to start at the beginning, but anywhere you can solve, like a crossword puzzle. Just get one piece of it down on paper and build from there.

Where the Juden await judgement.
I noticed that the assistant left out the middle
e
in
judgment
in his notes. But Stoker’s spelling, by contrast, always followed British convention, which included the extra vowel. Maybe a clue, maybe not; I filed it away in my head.

Juden
is the German word for Jews, and where they awaited judgment would be in a cemetery.

The grave lies in a Jewish cemetery?

Commonly in European history, Christians refused to be buried alongside nonbelievers. One could often find Jews and people of other religions interred down the road from a cross-filled ossuary. Unlike Christian burial grounds, which often encircled their wooden churches, the Jewish cemeteries took the form of a classic potter’s field: no caretaker, and only periodically tended to by volunteers. So it made sense that the workers in the epilogue could perform their task and flee without being seen.

Most directions dictate generalities first, leading the reader to an area, followed by specific directions involving landmarks, such as a natural outcropping or some other geological feature that should last for at least a couple centuries. If the direction-writer wrote in the present tense it referred to something he was looking at, whereas if he wrote in the past tense it normally meant a place that history had landmarked.

I also reminded myself that if the author chose singular he meant singular, and plural meant plural.

Finally, I thought, when the author uses an action verb, it is important to visualize the act.

Shading their eyes in the sunrise.
They, plural, are looking east.

I heard the door unlock, and a grim-looking Arthur walked toward me. “The Master is not satisfied.”

“I cannot give the documents a stronger opinion of authenticity than—”

He interrupted. “That it is real is not at issue. That he can use it matters only.”

Having begun the treasure hunt myself, I knew exactly what he meant, and guessed that the buyer was stuck on the directions. I shrugged. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

“I shall return,” Arthur said.

He left and returned within an hour, instructing me to follow and bring any reading glasses I might need. Down the long hallway to the wooden door, again descending the stone stairwell with the red lanterns to the earthen basement, I stepped inside and was immediately assaulted by a horrible smell—carrion. The wall sconces again dimly lit three of the room’s boundaries. On one of the large wooden tables lay the original manuscript open to the epilogue. Beside it was a detailed topographical map of Romania and a lantern.