The Wanderess (22 page)

He paled when he saw me. The color soon returned to his
face and he left the table of Monsieur de Charmolit and came to
have a word with me in private. I stopped him and said in
hushed-tones, “If you want to settle this once and for all, we can
take two pistols and go down to the Seine.” He waved his hands…

“None of that! None of that!” he said, “I don’t have a
problem with you anymore, son of Solarus. I handed my problem
with you over to the English and Maltese governments. Try to set
foot in those places, you’ll be arrested and maybe executed. I hear
you will also be executed if you try to come near your fatherland,
your capital city of Tripoli… that is, you will be tried and executed
if the fortune-hunters don’t kill you first to claim their prize.”

“So I’ve heard as well,” I told him, feeling regret about my
past. One part of the story that I left out when I was telling Saskia
of my escape from Malta was my arrival in Tripoli. I didn’t want
to mention Tripoli or Libya to Saskia because I didn’t want her to
know I was from there. Before I went to Alexandria, I first went to
Tripoli thinking I could settle there. It was night when I arrived
and I met a beggar on the steps of a temple. He recognized me as
the son of Solarus, and he warned me to leave the city unseen, as
soon as possible, for the police had been after me for years. I did
leave Tripoli, as I took the beggar’s words as an omen, having
them be the first words spoken to me upon my arrival. Though I
didn’t think about that beggar since. Now I had the same warning
from both a beggar
and
an ambassador, so I had no reason to
disbelieve them. I looked at the gentle face of the old
ambassador. I had no more quarrels with him. I told him I was
sorry for the errors in my youth, adding that I couldn’t help
myself… his wife
was
very beautiful.

“And she
is still
as beautiful as she was then, my son of
Solarus. It is because of my wife’s beauty that I forgive you for
being a bit ‘dizzy’ that night. I’m afraid it’s out of my hands now.
England and Malta consider you a traitor. They won’t forgive you
as easily as I did. But Tripoli, it seems, has you on the list of top
criminals. They have a desire to kill you that outshines all the
rest. I would watch out for Tripoli if I were you… that is where
your family comes from, is it not? Anyway, I hope you can stay
out of the nets they’ve laid for you.”

I thanked him, said goodnight, and walked solemnly to
the door where Saskia was waiting for me. We exited into the
street and started walking together down the quai of the Seine.

“Do you have a preference for a restaurant?” I asked her.

“I liked that place we went last summer. Chez Lefèvre,
remember? The place with the sad waiter who spent the evening
drinking and smoking.”

Chez Lefèvre was nearby. I didn’t speak to Saskia on the
way. All I could think about was my conversation with the
ambassador… ‘The beggar said that police have been looking for
me for years,’ I thought, ‘And now the ambassador says that I am
on the list of top criminals. Fortunately, I never need to return to
Tripoli again… But wait!’ a horrible thought then passed through
my mind, ‘When I left Tripoli for Alexandria, I stopped in our
village to see if my mother still lived there. Our house, the house
of the old fisherman and his wife, was in ruins…’ At the time, I
believed that fisherman and his wife had died of old age, and my
mother took whatever money she had and went to live in
Florence. With tonight’s warning from the ambassador, I
wondered if perhaps the police didn’t find my mother and arrest
her. Perhaps they arrested everyone in our house and left the
place in ruins… ‘Impossible!’ I decided, ‘That is a thought too ugly
to imagine. No, she is alive and happy and living in Florence.’

Inside Lefèvre’s there was a crowd. It wasn’t like that
pleasant night in summer when we were alone except for the chef
and the waiter. Guido wasn’t there this night, and we didn’t see
the chef. We took a table in the back, I ordered apéritifs and
champagne. We drank our apéritifs; and fueled by the alcohol, I
decided to tell Saskia what the ambassador had said, to admit that
it was Tripoli where my father was born, where my mother was
exiled from, where I had lived as a young man, and why I should
do all I can never to go back there. Before I could speak, however,
she started fidgeting and staring around her, muttering broken
phrases in connection with a nearby table. I looked at the table
that had caught her attention. I didn’t see much of interest there.
There were three people dining silently together: an old couple,
obviously married, both carrying solemn expressions, together
with their daughter, who also looked solemn and didn’t speak.
The girl was half turned away and I couldn’t see her face. The old
man looked very sad. I saw he wore French military dress with a
few medals of honor on his chest. Seeing their sad faces made me
forget about the ambassador. When the champagne arrived,
Saskia and I toasted to six months of companionship dating from
the night I almost died. We drank, and Saskia said to me, “That
girl at the table keeps staring at you.”

“She’s probably jealous because you are more beautiful
than she is.”
“I don’t know. She is very beautiful.”

I looked then to see her face closely; it is then I recognized
her as the girl I met that day long ago on the Île Saint-Louis. “It’s
that girl I told you about,” I whispered to Saskia, “Sarah Lingot.”
The girl looked again at me, uneasily, and I raised my glass to her
and her family; then I stood up to go reintroduce myself to Sarah.
After her parents showed their approval for her to be speaking to
me, she asked them to be excused so she could come meet Saskia
at our table. Saskia introduced herself to Sarah and for the first
time Saskia treated another woman in a friendly manner in front
of me. The two girls joked and laughed, and Sarah said to me,
“You were looking for someone when you were on Saint-Louis,
no?”

“Yes, I was. We were, and still are… it’s Saskia’s friend, a
girl about your age named Adélaïse… she is said to have lived on
the island with her parents—or her mother at least—before and
after she went to school in London for some years…”

“Are you sure her name wasn’t
Adélaïde
?, rather than
Adélaïse… because some of my friends told me about a girl-friend
of theirs named Adélaïde who went to England for school a long
time ago. It must be the same person. They said she came home
to Paris last spring, but she was different than before… moody and
unhappy with everyone around her. Then, they said, she met a
couple of strange people and left with them for Italy. They were
going to go somewhere in Tuscany eventually, but Adélaïde
wanted to stop in the north somewhere—in Milan, or Verona, I
think…”

“Verona?!” asked Saskia, “Are you sure?! And are you sure
her name isn’t, rather,
Adélaïse
?”
“No, I’m not sure… not about any of it.”

After hearing this story, Saskia sat pensive for a long time,
not moving. I looked over at Sarah’s table and noticed an empty
bottle of champagne, as well as some open gift-boxes. I asked
Sarah then what they were celebrating on this night. She told me
they were celebrating the retirement of her father who just
finished a long and honorable military career. I remarked again to
myself how strange it was that he and his wife looked so sad.
Saskia interrupted our conversation to ask Sarah how she knew
this girl—“Adélaïde,” as Sarah called her—went to Tuscany by
way of Milan or Verona. Sarah repeated again that she didn’t
know
any of it for certain, but that her friends told her that after
she came back from England, there came a day when she started
frequenting an older couple: a man and a woman, whom they
called “strange,” and that one day they stopped seeing her in
public except in the company of this couple. “Then suddenly,” my
friends said, “she left her home and family. It was rumored that
she went to Italy after this couple suggested she come with
them…”

Saskia was sure by Sarah’s account that her friends were
talking about Adélaïse… the fact that their first names were
practically identical, that both had gone to private school in
England, and that Sarah said this girl left for Northern Italy, the
place where Adélaïse surely imagined Saskia was living still… “She
would have gone to look for me,” Saskia said to me later that
night, “just as I came to France to look for her. We were such
close friends, she simply
must
be in Italy…”

When we left Chez Lefèvre, we said goodbye to Sarah’s
parents, congratulating the father on his retirement and his
military career. We promised Sarah we would come visit her on
the Île Saint-Louis. We then left the restaurant and walked home.
Saskia remained pensive the entire way back. At home, trying to
cheer her up, I suggested that some more champagne would do
her good. She wasn’t eager, but she said she would be fine to
drink some. It was now cold in Paris, and since ‘maid’s quarters’
on the top floors of Parisian apartment houses usually retain the
extreme cold in winter, as they retain the extreme heat in
summer, we stored our cool wine and champagne that autumn in
our garçonnière. So I went up to the sixth floor to get some
champagne.

As soon as I climbed the staircase, I found a young woman
collapsed on the floor in front of a shabby apartment door. It
appeared she’d fainted, or was only just sleeping. Once I’d revived
her I asked what she was doing collapsed in front of a door, she
started to cry. She said to me that her boyfriend lived in the
apartment before which she’d collapsed, and that he hadn’t
contacted her for several days after she had told him she was weak
from illness and hunger. She told him she had no money for food,
and didn’t know anyone else in Paris, or what to do… So having
no news from him, she finally walked to his apartment that
evening, determined to either find him or else to wait for him.
She’d been there for several hours, she told me, waiting… then
finally she collapsed from sickness and starvation among other
things, though mostly from sadness. And she didn’t wake up until
I came and found her. I told the girl not to worry; that I would get
her some food and a doctor. “In the meantime,” I said, “you can
sleep safe from worry in our spare room on this floor.” The poor
soul cried in gratitude and followed me to our garçonnière where
she collapsed on the bed and went straight to sleep. I shut the
door quietly and locked it so she would be safe, and hurried down
the back stairs to see about finding a doctor.

There was a brass plaque in front of a nearby building
stating that a doctor had his business there, perhaps he lived there
too. Although it was night, I rang and roused the doctor from
sleep, begging him to come out to assist a young woman who
needed him. He came right away and was friendly, saying that he
didn’t mind waking up if there was an emergency, and asked me
what was going on. I recounted the story of the sick and starving
girl to him. What happened during this time, Saskia told me later
that night…

Having waited for me for a long time, to come back to our
apartment with champagne, she finally grew worried and went to
find me. She climbed the stairs; and since she now had a key to
our garçonnière, she unlocked the door and saw the sleeping girl
on the bed. Of course, she became angry—and confused. At first
she closed the door without waking her, locked it again, and
started pacing back and forth in the hallway in front of our
garçonnière, as she tugged her hair in fury. She then decided to
get to the bottom of the matter and reopened the door to the
room, looked for me behind the door, and then yelled at the girl
to wake up and explain to her what she was doing there. The girl
was feverish, and so tired, that she didn’t wake up to Saskia’s
shouting. Saskia yelled at her that she was a stupid girl. Furious,
she then slammed the door and sat down in the hallway near the
door and sobbed in her hands. That is how the doctor and I
eventually found her there. At first, we didn’t see Saskia. The hall
was dark, and we went straight into the garçonnière to attend to
the sick girl. I finally found Saskia in tears when I came out alone
to light the lamp in the hall. I went to her on my knees to ask her
why she was crying.

“Because you said to me that you were going to get
champagne upstairs only so you could come up here to get in bed
with some stupid girl! You are an monster, Saul…”

“What?!” I said, “If I wanted to be in bed with that girl,
then why then would I have left and come back with a doctor?”
“What doctor?!”

The doctor came out in the hall then to tell me that the
girl had a fever, but that she would recover soon. He stopped
talking when he saw Saskia crying before me. She looked up at
him and instantly stopped crying and smiled at him, recognizing
him as the same doctor whom she consulted when she was
miserable because I went to Montmartre without her. He of
course recognized her instantly as well, and his face grew very
kind. He asked her why she was now crying, and said, “This must
be the man you came to see me about.”

“Yes, it is the same man. I was only crying just now
because I didn’t understand what this girl was doing in our spare
bed. But now I’m figuring it out…”

“Yes, well, this good man came to find me because he
found a girl collapsed here in the hallway. Go and see for
yourself.” Saskia went into the little room, and with her gone, the
doctor said to me in a hushed voice, “Your young lady is a rare
person. I know you are aware of this. So please, always treat her
good. This is the one favor I ask of you…
always treat her good.
”

“I thank you, doctor. I am aware of how rare she is. I will
always treat her good… Please tell me how much I owe you for
helping the sick girl in the bed.”