The Wanderess (21 page)

We didn’t see any ships on our way to Africa, and we
weren’t controlled as we docked. I bade farewell and thanks to
the pilot of the boat and set out on land for Alexandria. There, I
lived in poverty for many years. Egypt was a strange country to
find myself suddenly living alone in. Alexandria was dirty, and
the neighborhood in Alexandria where I lived was very poor and
sad. The men of my neighborhood worked as either laborers, or
criminals; and the women mostly dancers in nightclubs, or
prostitutes on corners.

“It took years, but Juhani proved to be a better detective
than the Maltese ambassador; and he proved to be a man of
virtue, and the finest friend anyone could ever hope to have. He
tracked me down in Alexandria this last winter—I don’t know
how he did!—and he sent me a letter to announce my fortune of
ten thousand scudi. He told me he could transfer the money to a
bank in Alexandria; or else, I could use the advanced money
enclosed in the letter to travel to Madrid and accept my fortune in
person. You know the rest of the story. Do you want more wine?”

“I want to hear more of your story,” Saskia said, “Tell me
about your mother. What kinds of things did she tell you when
you were a little boy?”

“Well, back on the subject of executions… My mother told
me the truth about my father and his execution, although she
believed the legend was true about the executioner giving him
barley to drink and helping him to escape. She said that everyone
loved my father so much that only the king’s presence at the
execution could have forced someone to kill him; but that the
king was too cowardly to attend the executions he ordered. She
told me a gruesome story to show how cowardly and barbaric the
king was: when she was a young girl, the king made her witness
an execution out at sea...

“My mother was a mere adolescent; the king, her uncle, was only a
few years older. He had ordered the execution of a young
nobleman for treason, and he conceived of the most barbarous
way to do it. My mother was among the royal family that was
brought along to witness the execution. They often brought noble
children along to witness executions in my country. The children
weren’t told beforehand where they were going or why. The story
my mother told me went as follows…

“The execution was held on a boat set adrift in the
Mediterranean one early summer morning when the sun was not
yet scorching the sky. Besides the soldiers, the spectators
numbered only ten or so. The condemned man was accompanied
by the closest members of his family: his sisters, brothers, and his
parents. They were all brought onboard to see their close son and
brother shot dead and dumped into the sea. The king was not
present, he always avoided his own executions, although he had
given instructions to his soldiers. The soldiers were a hoard of
heavily-armed guards. They had the condemned man in chains.
While his family sat on boat’s deck, crying, his mother and father
tried to approach their son, to caress his hands one last time
before they lost him forever. The guards were ordered to prevent
this. The condemned man was not to be touched. My mother
said, ‘As soon as the boat was a ways from shore, the most evil
thing imaginable in this world occurred: the chief executioner
ordered the prisoner’s family to draw lots. They didn’t know why,
but did as they were told. The loser was the prisoner’s little sister.
As loser, she was handed a pistol and was instructed to shoot her
brother in the chest, or in the head, or anywhere else until he be
dead; then his body would be dumped in the sea. If she failed to
do this, the soldiers would shoot
her
and dump
her
body in the
sea. After which, the funeral lots would continue and the next
member of the surviving family to lose lots would be faced to kill
the young man, or else refuse and be killed as well…

“His sister dropped the pistol at once. She could not shoot
her older brother. The girl fell in tears in the boat. A guard shot
her in the head and he dumped her body into the sea. All
members of her family collapsed in tears.

“The lots fell to one of his brothers next. A guard forced
the pistol into his hand. The brother, trembling, made ready to
drop the gun as his sister had. Before he dropped it, the
condemned prisoner stopped him and said, ‘Brother, I will die
today no matter what. I will never see the shore again. Salt will
eat my flesh and fish will pick my bones. Tonight I shall dine in
the underworld, while in this world, waves will tumble my
skeleton. There is no reason for you to die as well. Save our
family yet another grief and pull that trigger, Brother. Kill me
now!’

“His brother stood a long time, he then crossed himself,
pulled the trigger and killed his brother; but then immediately he
fell onto the planks of the boat and fired one more bullet… this
one, into his own brain. The cries of the family of the dead roared
like the waves as they lost their minds. They had lost two sons
and a daughter on this trip out to sea, and never would their
happiness or their minds be returned to them. Slowly, languidly,
the boat made its way back to shore.”

Saskia’s face retained a look of horror throughout my story. “Your
poor mother!” she cried, “But why did she tell you that horrible
story?!”

“I told my mother that when I was grown, I was going to
go to the capital and kill our king, to avenge my father’s death.
She knew that such a mission would end in my own death, and
that she could not survive that. So she told me this story to show
how cruel our king was, how insane… she said that by forcing my
father to drink hemlock, that was our king’s way of ‘being lenient.’
No, she urged me to avoid insanity altogether, and instead to
leave our country as soon as I was grown and seek a better life in
Europe. It is because of stories like this that I will stay here in
Europe. And why I will never return to the country of my birth.”

“But you have to return!” she cried, “
We
have to!” As she
said this, she fell in tears into her hands. I didn’t know what to
say. I didn’t know then that in Saskia’s mind this was the key to
everything… “
We
have to,” she cried again; for in her eyes, this was
the key to our fortune, to her fortune, to her life.

Saskia was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and
laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain
angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She was brave, and I never
once saw her cry out of fear. She never cried because she was
afraid that something would happen; she would cry because she
feared something that could render the world more beautiful,
would
not
happen… She believed if I gave in to make her fortune
become realized, the world would be ultimately profound and
beautiful. I guess I held out because I feared the realization of her
fortune would mean the destruction of us together. And each
time she cried, I fell a little more deeply in love with her.

Saskia was my entire world when we lived in Paris. I lived
for her pleasure, for her happiness. Every caprice she had, it was
my joy to indulge her. Whatever she saw in a shop window that
made her eyes light up, I would go in and buy it for her. The
money Juhani had paid me was just about finished. It was now
the end of August, and the white nights of Petersburg were long
past and Russia was forgotten entirely. We still had twenty louis,
although with our nights at the theatre, restaurants and cabarets,
I knew this would not last through autumn. Still, I kept my
cheerful constitution. I kept it in my head that I if we could
stumble on two-thousand louis, we would be able to travel and
could live on this money for the next ten years. I was preoccupied
with this idea. Saskia could have gone to her bank in England for
money, but she would have had to go alone. Saskia could also
draw on her income in Italy, and I was free to enter Italy. But the
cost of the voyage; well, we didn’t have enough money left to
both
travel together
to Italy.

As for Saskia, I knew that she felt actual,
physical pain
when she was away from me. She confessed this to a doctor she
visited, as she said ‘at random one day.’ He was a general
practitioner who lived and worked a few apartment houses down
from us. I had told Saskia that morning that I would be gone the
entire day, meeting with a friend of Juhani who was a travel agent
in Montmartre. I hoped to arrange a small advance from Juhani
so we could live together without being dependent on her income,
without hiding. I also hoped to get Juhani to advance us tickets
for Florence to leave immediately. You will soon see why I gave
up hope in finding her friend Adélaïse in Paris. But first…

While I was away in Montmartre, Saskia missed me and
didn’t know what to do without me. She told me after the event
that she went to the doctor to tell him about her pain—I was very
touched by this! The doctor didn’t prescribe her anything. He
simply told her: “If it causes you physical pain to be away from
him, then
simply do not be away from him!
” Saskia thought this
was logical, and even laughed at herself for not thinking of it
before. She confessed this merry story to me once I returned from
my mission, and the two of us laughed together and we rolled on
the floor and I gave her a million caresses and swore to her that
we needn’t be apart ever again.

There were only two dark clouds in our sky: one was that
Saskia was stubborn in her search for Adélaïse and she didn’t want
to go to London or Italy until we found her. The second cloud
was that I didn’t yet have word from Juhani about an advance, and
it was rumored that Andrea had heard about our concubinage in
Paris and was coming to investigate himself. How could he not
hear about us? Saskia and I were on everybody’s lips at the
theatre: the new mysterious couple in Paris.
Le tout-Paris
¹
believed that we were lovers, it amused itself by gossiping; and
you can believe that gossip in the city of Paris is gossip to be
devoured the entire world over…

“I’m glad we don’t have enough money to send me to
London,” she told me one night, “I’m finished wandering alone
without you.”

“Better we starve together?”
“Yes, better we starve together.”

My hope rested always on Juhani sending word from
Madrid that he would advance me money, after which I would
book us tickets to Florence leaving immediately. I told Saskia it
was pointless to stay in Paris, since she didn’t want to return to
the Île Saint-Louis to look for Adélaïse. Saskia was forever
haunted by the words of that old broom-woman who claimed she
was being followed, talked about, etc. So she asked my advice on
other ways to find her friend. Our efforts weren’t needed,
however, as we soon learned a hint about the whereabouts of
Adélaïse.

It was now late autumn. Every morning brought ice to the
streets of Paris. Saskia and I were poor, and we lived only for each
other. We no longer had money to go to the theatre. We drank
wine at home together, and we ate only once a day, only at
dinnertime, and only in inexpensive bistros. We feared the
looming day when our rent would be up and we would be
required to pay again. There was still no response from Juhani. I
was afraid, and rightly so, that he was away travelling who-knowswhere, for who-knows-how-long…

Saskia seemed happier than ever just to be in the present
moment. She stopped asking me about the home where I grew
up, and about the birthplace of my father. I was under the
illusion at this time that she cared more about me than about her
fortune. We dressed warmly every night, and after dinner we took
long walks together around Paris. Eventually came that singular
night—that fateful night that all the events in Paris had been
leading up to—that night that convinced us to leave Paris once
and for all…

It was the six month anniversary of the first night Saskia
and I had met. Unlike when we met, the moon was only half-full
and waning; but we would drink anyway. We would spend more
than usual: splurge on the theatre and go to a more expensive
bistro afterwards to celebrate. We were greeted by a character
while we were leaving the theatre whom we knew already, he was
a silver-haired man of sixty, though still very handsome, named
Monsieur de Charmolit
¹
.

M de Charmolit obliged us to go to the souper he was
hosting near the theatre. Although we had a special occasion to
celebrate in private, we agreed to go for one drink. The souper
was in a noisy hall on the quai of the Seine. We drank some
champagne and then agreed to leave to find a quiet restaurant for
the two of us. I went to the coat-check with Saskia to help her
retrieve her coat and scarf. And when I came back alone to the
table to say goodbye to M de Charmolit and his friends, I noticed
a new face sitting with them: the Maltese ambassador to England!