Free The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova Page B

1920s or ‗30s. Next, two receipts for a hotel and for meals taken there.
    Istanbul, in fact. Then a large old road map of the Balkans, untidily printed in two colors.
    The last item was a little ivory envelope, sealed and unlabeled. I set it aside, heroically, without touching the flap.
    That was it. I turned the big brown envelope upside down, even shook it, so that not so much as a dead fly could go unnoticed. While I was doing this I suddenly (and for the first time) had a sensation that would accompany me through all the ensuing efforts required of me: I felt Rossi‘s presence, his pride in my thoroughness, something like his spirit living and speaking to me through the careful methods he himself had taught me. I knew he worked swiftly, as a researcher, but also that he abused nothing and neglected nothing—not a single document, not an archive, however far from home it was located, and certainly not an idea, however unfashionable it might be among his colleagues. His disappearance, and—I thought wildly—his very need of me, had suddenly made us almost equals. I had the sense, also, that he had been promising me this outcome, this equality, all along, and waiting for the time when I would earn it.
    I now had every dry-smelling item spread on the table in front of me. I began with the letters, those long dense epistles typed on onionskin with few mistakes and few corrections. There was one copy of each, and they seemed to be in chronological order already. Each was carefully dated, all from December 1930, more than twenty years before. Each was headed TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, without any further address. I glanced through the first letter. It told the story of his discovery of the mysterious book, and of his initial research at Oxford. The letter was signed, ―Yours in grief, Bartholomew Rossi.‖ And it began—I held the onionskin carefully even when my hand started to shake a little—it began affectionately: ―My dear and unfortunate successor—‖
    My father suddenly stopped, and the trembling of his voice made me turn tactfully away before he could force himself to say anything more. By unspoken consent, we gathered our jackets and strolled across the famous little piazza, pretending the facade of the church still held some interest for us.

Chapter 7
    My father did not leave Amsterdam again for several weeks, and during that time I felt that he shadowed me in a new way. I came home from school a little later than usual one day and found Mrs. Clay on the phone with him. She put me on at once. ―Where have you been?‖ my father asked. He was calling from his office at the Center for Peace and Democracy. ―I phoned twice and Mrs. Clay hadn‘t seen you. You‘ve put her in a big pother.‖
    He was the one in a pother, I could tell, although he kept his voice level. ―I was reading at a new coffee shop near school,‖ I said.
    ―All right,‖ my father said. ―Why don‘t you just call Mrs. Clay or me if you‘re going to be late, that‘s all.‖

    I didn‘t like to agree, but I said I would call. My father came home early for dinner that night and read aloud to me from Great Expectations . Then he got out some of our photograph albums and we looked through them together: Paris, London, Boston, my first roller skates, my graduation from third grade, Paris, London, Rome. It was always just me, standing in front of the Pantheon or the gates of Père Lachaise, because my father took the pictures and there were only two of us. At nine o‘clock he checked all the doors and windows and let me go to bed.
    The next time I was going to be late, I did call Mrs. Clay. I explained to her that some of my classmates and I were going to do our homework together over tea. She said that was fine. I hung up and went by myself to the university library. Johan Binnerts, the librarian in the medieval collection in Amsterdam, was getting used to the sight of me, I thought; at least he smiled gravely whenever I stopped by