The Historian

The narrator’s father, Paul, lives an increasingly harried itinerant existence, running from the fears and sorrows of his past. While he tells his story, he whisks his daughter across Europe, moving quickly and anxiously from place to place, outpacing the shadows that inevitably fall upon him. He is overly protective of his daughter, though he recognizes her intelligence and resilience. Thus, he entrusts her with the writing of his story.

Paul is not only a well-respected historian but also an ambassador of sorts. He “founded the Center for Peace and Democracy” (3) and works tirelessly to negotiate amity between ideologically divided factions. His work travels reveal his commitment to the ideals expressed in the name of his foundation. In the “Epilogue,” the reader learns that he is killed in Sarajevo via a land mine. Primarily, though, Paul is understood through his youthful search for his mentor, Professor Rossi, which coincides with his fascination with Dracula and infatuation with Helen.

When Paul first gleans the terrible truths behind Rossi’s disappearance, he feels flattered that he is the one chosen to find him: “His disappearance, and—I thought wildly—his very need of me, had suddenly made us almost equals” (54). As a mentee, he is eager to win the approval of his mentor, to earn his reputation alongside him. Later, he literally stands in for Rossi when Helen’s mother offers him Rossi’s ring: “I bent and kissed her again, but this time on the mouth” (389). He becomes, briefly, the Rossi who once fell in love with Helen’s mother. He, in turn, falls deeply in love with Rossi’s daughter, marrying her and taking care of the narrator after her disappearance. Indeed, Paul’s noblest act comes in ending the fruitless search for his beloved Helen to nurture his infant daughter. He keeps her safe in a world where her undead ancestor still roams.

As a romantic interest, Helen is initially harsh with Paul; he finds her mannerisms and manner of dress masculine. He eventually acknowledges her beauty, but it is dark and brooding. Once he has confirmation that she is indeed a descendant of Dracula, he can always discern his strong, cruel features in her face. Yet, the mark of that familial connection, her dragon tattoo, fascinates him: “In time it became for me part of the geography of your smooth back, but at that first moment it fueled the awe of my desire” (435). This is notable both for its ardor and for the fact that his passion is inextricably linked to the vampiric parts of her. Dracula’s mesmerizing qualities have been passed down through the generations.

Helen is highly intelligent and resourceful, like her daughter. Her presence, in her physical absence, becomes mythological to the narrator: “It was a name I had always liked,” the narrator notes after her father introduces Helen Rossi within his story; “it evoked for me something valiant and beautiful, like the Pre-Raphaelite frontispiece showing Helen of Troy in my Children’s Book of the Iliad” (125). Helen is beautiful, even magical, but relegated to the distant past. Later, Helen takes on even more legendary overtones as her relation to Dracula is confirmed. In fact, her connection to him is stronger even than her own mother’s: She is bitten, twice, by one of his acolytes, and that corruption becomes the defining feature of her life. She feels herself too polluted to raise her infant daughter, and she dedicates herself to the eradication of the fiend who ruptured her family. Her obsession takes her to the brink of death, then on a 16-plus year hunt for the monster.

Only her postcards reveal a more loving, maternal version of Helen. In them, she tells her daughter how much she loves her, how much she misses her, and how much she wishes to speak to her—another act complicated by Dracula’s shadow: “Romanian is the language of the fiend I am seeking, but even that has not spoiled it for me” (539). She still wishes to speak this language, the tongue of “brave, kind, sad people” (539) to her daughter, linking her to the history of her homeland.