Dragosani supposed that somewhere in the land ordinances governing these parts, there must be a clause which still forbade farming or hewing or gaming on the green cross of the hills. Yes, for despite old Kinkovsi’s lack of more typical peasant superstition (which was doubtless a direct spin-off of the relative tourist boom) the old fears still lived. The taboos were still there, even if their origins were forgotten. They still existed, as surely as the thing in the ground existed. Laws which were intended to isolate it now protected it, preserved it.
The thing in the ground. That was how he thought of it. Not as ‘he’ but ‘it’. The old devil, the dragon, the vampir. The real vampire and not merely a creature of sensational novels and films. Still there, lying in the ground, waiting.
Again Dragosani let his mind slip back through the years . . .
When he was nine the local school in Lonesti had closed and his step-father had boarded him out to a school in Ploiesti. There in a very short time it had been discovered that his intelligence was of a high order, and the State had stepped in and sent him to a college in Bucharest. Always on the lookout for talent in the young of their satellite nations, Soviet officials from the Ministry of Education had eventually found him there and ‘recommended’ that he go on to higher education in Moscow. What they meant by ‘higher education’ was in fact intensive indoctrination, following which he would one day be sent back to Romania as a puppet official in a puppet government.
But before that – when he had first learned that he was to board in Ploiesti, and that he could only come home once or twice a year – then he had gone back to the dark glade under the trees to ask the advice of the thing in the ground. Now he went there again, on the wings of memory, and saw himself as he had been: a boy, sobbing into his hands where he kneeled beside a broken slab and poured his tears over the bas-relief motif of bat-dragon-devil.
What? Knowing I seek iron and strong meat, you offer me salt and gruel? Can this be you, Dragosani, who has the seed of greatness in him? Was I mistaken, then? And am I doomed to lie here forever?
Tm to go to school in Ploiesti. I’m to live there and only come back now and then.’ And this is the cause of your grief? ‘Yes.’
Then you are a girl! How would you hope to learn the ways of the world here in the shadow of the mountains? Why, even the birds that fly see more and farther than you have seen! The world is wide, Dragosani, and to know its ways you must walk them. And Ploiesti? But I know this Ploiesti: it is distant by only a hard day’s riding – two at the most! And is this a good reason to weep?’
‘But I don’t want to go . . .’
I did not want to be put in the ground, but they put me here. Dragosani, I have seen a sister with her head cut off, with a stake through her breast and her eyes hanging on her cheeks, and I did not weep. No, but I pursued her payers and skinned them and made them eat their skins, and I raped them with hot irons and before they could die soaked them in oil and put them to the torch and hurled them from the cliffs at Brasov! Only then did I cry – tears of sheerest joy! What? And did I call you my son, Dragosani?
‘I’m not your son!’ Boris snapped, tears angrily flying. I’m no one’s son. And I have to go to Ploiesti. And it’s not two days away but only three or four hours, in a car! You pretend you know so much, but you’ve never even seen a car, have you?’
No, I never have – until now. Now I see it, in your mind, Dragosani! I’ve seen a great many things in your mind. Some have surprised me, but none have awed me. So, your step-father’s ‘car’ will make it easier for you to get to Ploiesti, eh? Good! And it will make it easier for you to come back again when the time comes . . .