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Vladimir Dragan looked very trendy in a washed-out blue open-necked shirt, flared grey trousers cut in Western style, shiny black shoes with sharply pointed toes (unlike the customary square-cut imported Russian footwear in the local shops) and a fawn-checkered jacked with large patch pockets. In the hot Romanian noon, especially at this farm on the outskirts of a tiny village some way off the Corabia-Calinesti highway, he stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Leaning on his car and scanning the huddled rooftops and snail-shell cupolas of the village, which stood a little way down the gently sloping fields to the south, he could only be one of three things: a rich tourist from the West, one from Turkey, or one from Greece.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpZ4w9xC0ce
"Rudolf?" the young man inquired, eyeing him up and down. "Zobor Rudolf? They told me in Ionestasi that you have rooms. I take it that place---" (a nod towards a tottering three-storied stone-built house by the cobbled village road) "----is your guesthouse?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHMbGI7lknM
Rudolf deliberately looked blank, faked a look of understanding, frowned as he stared at Dragan. He didn't always declare his earnings from tourism---not all of them, at least. Finally, he said: "I am Rudolf, yes, and I do have rooms. But...."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIsvUv9ceVX
Early by a month! Now Rudolf remembered.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyXCZ0av6yV
"Ah! You must be the Herr from Moscow? The one who made inquiry in April? The one who booked lodgings----but sent no money in advance! Is it you, then, that Herr Dragan who has the name of the town down the highway? But you are indeed early---though welcome for all that! I shall have to prepare a room for you. Or maybe I can put you in the English room, for a night or two anyway. How long will you stay?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcT6BYBfWoa
"Mein Herr," he began with a growl, "my rooms are so clean you could eat off the floor. My wife is an excellent cook. My beer is the best under all the Carpatii Meridoionali! What's more, our manners are good up here---which seems to be more than can be said of you Muscovites! Now, do you want a room or not?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIloLbX2mn6
Rudolf briefly studied the other's face, looking him up and down, decided he liked him. The man had a sense of humor, anyway, which in itself made a welcome change. "My grandfather's grandfather was from Hungary," he said, taking Dragan's hand and giving it a firm shake, "but my grandmother's grandmother was a Wallach. 400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJFgLxuPfO0
"Heavens, no! Not that!" Dragan answered immediately.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeioe7Ri11K
" 'Mein Herr' will do nicely, thanks." He too laughed. "Come on, show me this English room of yours."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvZpjXXumRP
Rudolf led the way from the big Volga to the tall, high-peaked guesthouse. "Rooms?" he grumbled. "Oh, I've plenty of rooms, all right! Four to each floor. You can have a whole suite of rooms, if you wish."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6sDdpwazj1
"One will do nicely, thank you," Dragan answered, "as long as it has its own bath and toilet."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS9Tavk271P
"Ah--en suite, is it? Well, then, that's the top floor. A room with its own loo and bath up under the roof. Very modern."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEvLCisFx5p
"Of course," said Dragan, not too dryly.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbgg2VgPaC6
He saw that the ground floor of the house had been rendered and pebble-dashed on top of the sand-colored cement. Rising damp, no doubt. But the upper levels showed their original stone construction. The house must be three hundred years old if it's a day. Very suitable. It took him back in time---back to his roots and beyond them.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNWT3Jtfjgh
"How long have you been away?" Rudolf asked, letting him in and showing him to a room on the ground floor. "You'll have to stay here for now," he explained, "until I can get the upstairs room ready. One hour, perhaps two, that's all."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqZsqvupB1b
Dragan kicked off his shoes, hung his jacket over a wooden chair, dropped onto a bed in a square of sunlight where it came through an oval window. "I've been away half of my life," he said. "But it's always good to come back. I've been back for the last three summers now, and four more to go."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGoXGnWGtB9
"Oh? Got your future all figured out, have you? Four more to go? That sounds sort of final. What do you mean by it?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXl2nE30fGb
Dragan lay back, put his hands behind his head, looked at the other through eyes slitted against the glancing sunlight. "Research," he finally said. "Local history. At only two weeks per year, it should take me another four years."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyTwoVBG4Js
"History? This country is rich in it! But it's not your job, then? I mean, you don't do it for a living?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGkYhf6aGyk
"Oh, no," the man on the bed shook his head. "In Moscow I'm---a mortician." Well, that was close enough.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoXvdwqTcvT
"Huh!" Rudolf snorted. "It takes all kinds to make the world what it is. Right, I'm off now to sort out your room. And I'll make arrangements for a meal. If you want the loo, it's just out here in the corridor. Just take it easy...."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQiXhgVQkmI
When there was no answer he glanced again and Dragan, saw that his eyes were shut---the warm sunshine and the silence of the room. Rudolf picked up his guest's car keys from where he'd tossed them down at the foot of the bed, quietly left the room and eased the door shut behind him. One final glance as he went; the rise and fall of Dragan's chest had taken on the slow rhythm of sleep. That was good. Rudolf nodded to himself and smiled. Obviously he felt at home here.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbHkshsVHsv
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Dragan chose new lodgings each time he came here. Always in the vicinity of the town he called home---within spitting distance---but not so close to the last place that he'd remembered from the previous year. He'd thought of using a pseudonym, a false name, but had thrown out the idea untried. He was proud of his name, probably in defiance of its origin. Not in defiance of Dragan the town, his geographical origin, but the fact that he'd been found there. As for his parents: his father was that almost impregnable mountain range to the north, the Transylvanian Alps, and his mother the rich dark earth itself.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqWgWxoJHCl
Oh, he had his own theories about his real parents; what they'd done had likely been for the best. The way he imagined them, they had been Szgany, "Romany," "Gypsies; young lovers out of feuding camps, their love had not the power to reconcile old slights and spites. But they had loved. Dragan had been born, and he had been left. As to actually tracking them down, those unknown parents: he had thought to do that three years ago and had come here for just that reason. But---it had been utterly hopeless. A task enormous, impossible. There were as many gypsies in Romania now as ever there had been in the old days. Despite their "satellite" designation, old Wallachia, Transylvania, Moldavia and all the lands around had retained something of autonomy, of self-determination. Gypsies had as much right to be here as the mountains themselves.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBJozGQ4U4P
These had been the thoughts in Dragan's mind as he drifted into sleep, but the dream he dreamed then was not of his parents at all but of scenes from his childhood, before he'd been sent out of Romania to complete his education. He had been a loner even then, had kept to himself, and sometimes he'd wandered where others feared to go. Or where they had been forbidden to go....400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe2RpITNsKf
The woods were deep and dark on hillsides steep and winding as fairground roller-coasters. Vladimir had only ever seen a roller-coaster once, three days ago on his seventh birthday (his seventh "found-day", as his foster father would have it) when his treat had been to go into Dragan and visit the little cinema there. A short Russian film had been shot entirely from fairground rides, and the roller-coaster had been so real that Vladimir had actually suffered from vertigo, so that he'd nearly fallen out of his seat. It'd been very frightening, but exciting, too; so much so that he'd devised his own game to simulate the thrill of the ride. It wasn't as good and it was hard work, but it was better than nothing. And you could do it right here, on the slopes of the wooded hills not a mile from the estate.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjSSsUzlAna
This was a place where no wise man dared to go, a completely lonely place. No wonder Vladimir liked it so much. The woods had not been cut here for almost five hundred years; no gamekeeper had ever penetrated the pine-grown slopes, where only the rarest sunbeams ever cut through to lighten up the dusty gloom; only the muted cooing and occasional flapping of wood pigeons disturbed the deep silence, and the rustle of small, creeping creatures; it was a place of dancing dust motes, of pinecones and needles, of fungi and a few swift, strangely silent squirrels.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT4oHJB7N4U
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It was there now as he clambered up the steep slope near the middle of the cross, clawing his way upward from close-grown tree to tree, puffing, panting, dragging behind him the big cardboard box which was his conveyance, his roller-coaster car without wheels. A long climb, yes, but well worth it. He would have one final ride, this time from the very top, before setting off for home. The sun was low in the sky now and it seemed likely that he was in trouble already for being late, so one more ride couldn't hurt.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYiCfvE5wUI
At the top he paused to draw breath, sat for a moment swatting at midges in the pale beams of sunlight lancing down through tall, dark pines, then dragged the box along the crest of the ridge to a place where he could see a track running clear to the bottom. In some forgotten yesteryear, a fire-break had been cut here before the lumbermen had remembered or been told about the nature of the place; since then saplings had sprung up once more to almost (but not quite) obscure the scar. Now that scar was about to become the track of Vladimir's daredevil ride.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdW3hyl34kX
The box rode smoothly and well at first, slipping easily over a bed of pine needles and coarse grasses, between low bushes and slender saplings, following the old scar of the fire-break. But----Vladimir was a child. He'd seen no danger, hadn't reckoned on the steepness of the slope or rate of acceleration.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4PRCF2yLd
Now the box picked up speed, and now his ride more closely approximated the terrifying, dizzy rush of the car on the roller-coaster. He hit a hummock of grass and the box jumped clear of the slope. It came down, struck a glancing blow at a sapling, shot off sideways into the denser pines where they marched breakneck down the almost sheer hillside alongside the scar. 400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNQGcsbInaf
There was no controlling the careening of his "car" now. Vladimir had neither brakes nor guidance system. He could only go where the box took him.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYJye1Brgwl
With many a jolting crash and sideways slide, more bruised and shaken with every passing second, he was rattled in his box like a cork in the water. And now, away from the scar of the fire-break, the failing light was shut out almost totally; so that Vladimir ducked his head, a precaution against unseen, whipping branches, as his nightmare descent continued. But with the trees grown so close, it could only go on for a little while longer. 400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJalibsypJn
At least, in a place where the ground beneath the trees was of sliding shale and scree, where their humped roots stuck up above the surface like thick-bodied sea serpents, suddenly the ride (such as it was) came to a stop. With a jarring crash the bottom of the box was ripped out from beneath Vladimir and the sides quite literally disintegrated in his clutching, horrified fingers. He was thrown not quite head-on into the bole of a tree and sent spinning. Tumbling head over heels, bouncing and sliding, Vladimir hardly felt the many brittle branches flying into shards as he plunged through them; he was aware only of glimpses of a whirling sky scanned through the tops of frowning pines, of a sick plunging and jolting that seemed to go on forever, and finally of shooting over a lip or ledge of rock and hurtling into dark, dusty space.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1kBP2iP14P
Then the impact and after that----nothing. Nothing for a time, at least....400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXfAXR9e9QA
"Who are you?" asked a voice in his reeling head. "Why have you come here? Are you---offering yourself to me?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdUJbyymNE5
Once, in the deepest cellar under the far, where his foster-father kept wines in racks and cheeses wrapped in muslin on cool shelves, Vladimir had heard the rustling cheep of crickets. In the beam of a tiny torch he'd seen one, leprous gray from the lightlessness of its habitation. As he moved closer, to step on it, the insect jumped and disappeared. He found another and the same thing happened. And another, and so on. He saw a dozen, but he stepped on none of them. They had all disappeared. Climbing the steps out of the place, as daylight filtered down from on high, a cricket had jumped into Vladimir's shorts. They were on him! They had jumped onto him! That way he couldn't step on them. And oh how Vladimir had danced then!400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRE36uhcBQT
"Ah-ha!" said the voice, stronger now. "Ah-ha! So you are one of mine! And because you are one of mine, you came here. Because you knew where to find me...."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoKGZus88jM
But he could picture the mouth which spoke those guttural, clotted, sly and insinuating words in his head. And he knew why it was clotted and gurgling. In his mind's eye the picture was vivid, monstrous: the mouth dripped blood like liquid rubies, and its gleaming incisors were pointed as those of a great dog!400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVIONesHMz7
"What is your name, boy?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxrvkNn1eYw
"Uh---Vladimir Dragan----sir."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5AqUDsNQCp
Vladimir sat up, started frightenedly about in the gloom, his eyes darting, his head reeling. He was more than halfway down the hillside on a sort of flat ledge of rock beneath the trees. He had never been here before, never guessed the place existed. Then, as his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom and his senses came back to him more fully, he saw that in fact he sat upon lichen-clad stone flags before what could only be----a mausoleum!400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTQXINjHncH
Vladimir had seen its like before: his uncle (at least, his foster-father's brother) had died a month ago and had been interred in just such a place; but that had been in sacred ground, in the churchyard in Slatina. This place, in contrast---this was not sacred ground. No, not by any stretch of the imagination....400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLhBKLP6d2j
Behind Vladimir, hewn from a great outcrop of rock, the tomb itself had long since caved in, its roof of massive slabs lying in a heap of masonry. In his hurtling rush from above, Vladimir must've flown over the jumble of stone, or doubtless he'd have brained himself. Maybe he had anyway, for surely he was feeling and hearing things where there was nothing to be felt or heard. Or where there shouldn't be anything.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYlrtAs7L9O
He pricked up his ears and squinted his eyes in the dark of this enclosed place, but---there was nothing.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXscsUpePz3
Vladimir had tried to stand up, managed it on his third attempt. He leaned his trembling weight on a sloping slab which had once formed the front lintel of the tomb's door. Then he listened and looked again, straining ears and eyes in the gloom. But no voice now, no mouth dripping blood in the mirror of his mind. He sighed his relief, his breath rasping in his throat.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ95FsWYqA7i
A thickly matted crust of dirt, lichens and pine needles fell away from the slab beneath his hands, partly revealing a motif or coat of arms. Vladimir cleared away more of the grime of centuries and....400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdGjbfw6hfL
He snatched his hands at once, reeled back, tripped and sat down again, gasping. The arms had consisted of a shield bearing in bas-relief a dragon, one forepaw raised in threat; and riding upon its back, a bat with triangular eyes of carnelian; and surmounting both of these figures, the leering horned head of Satan himself, forked tongue protruding and dripping gouts of carnelian blood!400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRts0iYrRZu
All three symbols---dragon, bat, Satan---now came together in Vladimir's mind. They became amalgamated as the author of the voice in his head, a voice which chose that exact moment in time to speak to him yet again.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSFEUTraG0y
"Run, little one, run----be away from here. You are too small, too young, too innocent, and I am far too week and oh so very old...."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOQPvjP5S85
On legs that trembled so fearfully he was sure he would fall, Vladimir stood up and backed away. Then he turned and fled the place full tilt---away from the pine-needle-strewn flagstones, which the gnarled roots of centuries were pushing upward; away from the tumbled tomb and whatever buried secrets it contained; away from the gloom of the place, so menacing as to seem to have physical substance.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6ktzIvFoZU
And as he went---under the dark, uncut trees and down the steep hillside, torn by whipping branches and bruised from fall after fall, so the voice chuckled in his mind like a file on glass or chalk on a blackboard, obscene in its ancient knowledge. 400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzkQnVn0etB
"Aye! Run---run! But never forget me, Dragan. And know that I shall never forget you. No, for I shall wait for you while you grow strong. And when your blood has iron in it and you know what you do---for it must be of your own free will, Dragan---then we shall see. And now I must sleep....."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRiPsvLRWYV
Bursting from the trees at the foot of the hill, bounding a low fence where the top bar was broken down, Vladimir flew forward into long grass and thistles, and blessed, blessed light! But even then he didn't pause, but scrambled to his feet and ran for home. Only the middle of the field, with no breath remaining in him to carry him on, did he stop, collapse to the earth, turn his face and look back at the looming hills. Away in the west the sun was setting, its final lances of fire turning the topmost pines to gold; but Vladimir knew that in the secret place, the tree-shrouded glade of the tomb, all was clammy and crawly and dark with dread. And only then did he dare ask:400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpKndwrCzrw
"What---who---who are you?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEghdLU6RjD
And as if from a million miles away---carried on the evening breeze, which has blown over the hills and fields of Transylvania since the beginning of time----the answer came to him in the back of his mind.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzikmEU03TF
"Ahhhhhh!---but you know that, Vladimir Dragan. You know that. Ask now who I am, but who you are. Then again, what does it matter? The answer is the same. I am your past, Dragan. And you----are---my----fuuuuutuuuuure!"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ84sIz1VzG8
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"What---who----are you?" Repeating his question from the dream, Dragan came awake. Eyes gazed at him, almost triangular, unblinking, searing in the unexpected gloom of the room; so that for a moment, a single second, he almost fancied himself back in the glade of the tomb. But they were green eyes, like a cat's. Dragan stared at them and they stared back, unabashed. They were framed by a white face in an oval of raven-black hair. A female face.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7mx1dtuiZO
He sat up, stretched, swung his feet down to the floor. The owner of the eyes curtsied peasant fashion---inelegantly, Dragan thought. He sneered at her. Rising from sleep, he was always testy; waking before his time, as by an intrusion, just like now, he was especially so.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS46YUgLb9c
"Are you deaf?" he stretched again, pointed directly at her nose. "I asked you who you are. Also, why have I been permitted to sleep so late?" (He could also be contrary.)400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡakQUkAJtOu
His rigidly pointing finger didn't seem to impress her at all. She smiled, one eyebrow arching delicately, almost insolently. "I'm Zsa-Zsa, Herr Dragan. Zsa-Zsa Rudolf. You've been asleep for three hours. Since you were obviously very tired, my father said I should leave you sleeping and prepare your room in the garret. That's been done."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbbk463d32k
"Oh? So? And what do you wish of me now?" Dragan refused to be polite. And this wasn't the same game he'd played with her father; no, for there was that about her which generally annoyed him. She was far too self-assured, too knowing, for one thing. And for another she was pretty. She must be, oh---twenty? It was odd that she wasn't married, but there was no ring on her finger.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7j1BhcMLwY
Dragan looked about the room, used his delicate fingertips to brush the crusts of sleep from the corners of his eyes. He stood up, patted the pocket of his jacket where it hung over the back of the chair. "Where are my keys? And---my cases?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQg6Ny8yJzY
"What?" Dragan hissed, probably giving himself away completely. "What---did---you---say?"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnXypJGaG1B
"What is?" he snapped, following her up the stairs.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3jCy71kLif
"A bloody stupid saying!" Dragan scowled.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjuvf4dGRgY
"And you are too familiar with your guests!" he grumbled, feeling that he'd been let off the hook, as if she'd taken pity on him.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxvPjKC1GMI
"I'll eat in my room," he growled immediately. "If we ever get to it!"400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB0rssP7IEz
She shrugged, turned and started up the second flight. Here the stairs climbed more steeply.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJSNToFe7lX
Zsa-Zsa Rudolf was dressed in a fashion quite out of date in the towns but still affected in the smaller villages and farming communities. She wore a slightly longer than knee-length pleated cotton dress, gathered in tightly at the waist, a short-sleeved black bodice buttoned down the front, with puffs at the shoulders and elbows, and (absurdly, as Dragan thought) calf-boots of rubber; but doubtless they were fine in the farmyard. In winter she would also wear stockings to the tops of her thighs. But it wasn't winter.....400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnZjxEAzulS
At the second landing she paused, deliberately turned to wait for him at the top of the stairs. Dragan stopped dead in his tracks, held his breath. Looking down at him---and looking as cool as ever---she leaned her weight on one foot more than the other, rubbed at the inside of her thigh with her knee, flashed her green eyes at him. "I'm sure you'll like it---here," she said, and slowly shifted her weight to the other foot.400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfM1oVIX25P
Dragan looked away. "Yes, yes---I'm sure I....I...."400Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPB35UaBaPE
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