The Wanderess (26 page)

Now it was dawn. Rosy and yellow patches of sky alighted
over the river Seine, the air was frosty and clean. Saskia carried
her suitcase and guitar case. I had my two valises. Dragomir
carried nothing. At the river, we saw the tops of the trees
crowned with the light of dawn on the oriental side of the Île
Saint-Louis. Dragomir turned to us…

“Saul, do you remember when you saw me on the Île
Saint-Louis a few months ago? I was speaking through the
window to that old broom-woman. You do? Good. Well, the
woman in the yard had good reason when she warned you that
you two are being followed. The truth is you
are
being followed,
both of you. That is why I want to urge you to leave the country
right away.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two rolls
of coins—each containing ten gold louis.

“I don’t take gifts, especially not from you. I saw what
your last so-called ‘gift’ brought me—it was a poison that almost
killed me.”

“That is exactly why I want to help you get to Italy. I
didn’t mean for you to be poisoned. I wanted revenge on Señorita
Baena…
only on her.”

“Saul,” said Saskia, “Take the money, we need it.”
“I don’t want anymore gifts from this man.”
“It’s not a gift,” said Dragomir, “It’s a loan.”
“I’m not sure if I can pay it back.”

“Oh, you will pay it back,” Dragomir smiled his sly smile,
“You will pay it back, and you won’t even have to work for it. If
I’m lending you twenty louis now, it’s only because I know that
you’re going to pay me back a thousand-fold.”

I didn’t understand that morning what Dragomir meant
when he said I would pay him back a thousand-fold. If I had
understood… had I known the future, I would have taken every
precaution to see that Dragomir would never come into my life
again. As you will see, I didn’t take those precautions…

“Before we part ways,” said Dragomir to both Saskia and
me, “let me be one last time who I truly am: a clairvoyant.” So
saying, he asked us there on the bridge over the Seine, to hold our
hands out. We did and he put his hands on our palms, inhaled
and said: “I see you both in Italy. In Tuscany you two will have
the best luck, your lives will be the richest there…

“But in Tuscany you will be tempted to remain, either to
live, or to stay long. But do not fully unpack your luggage.
Always be ready to go again on the road. You shall not remain in
Tuscany very long, for your destinies await you elsewhere.”

After his prediction, I said to Saskia in a loud voice so that
our clairvoyant would hear my words clearly: “Dragomir here tells
us our future… though he confessed to me in Málaga that he
wasn’t a real clairvoyant, and that he didn’t know anyone’s future.
He confessed he used that form of witchcraft known as
‘manipulation and guessing.’”

“I told you that in Málaga, Saul, because you made it clear
that you don’t believe in clairvoyants. How else could I have
entered your spirit other than by showing faith then in
your
beliefs? The fact that I told you that all clairvoyants are rascals,
and that I myself admit to being a rascal, or at least posing as one,
for pretending that I am a clairvoyant, this led you to believe that
I wasn’t a rascal because I made it clear who I was. Even if you did
change your mind about it after the opium incident—you decided
I was a rascal after all…”

“Oh, I’d forgotten. I’d meant to give it to you hours ago…
Here is your gold watch back.” So saying, he handed me my dear,
beautiful Breguet watch, the possession that meant everything to
me! It belonged to my father, it had been in my mother’s
possession, and she gave it to me when I came of age. I found it
missing, as you remember, the morning after the night when I
met first Pulpawrecho, then Dragomir. Dragomir had told me
that Pulpawrecho stole it.

“That is why I wanted to go back to visit the body of
Pulpawrecho,” Dragomir said to Saskia and me, “It was not to
make sure that Pulpy was dead, I was sure of that; but I knew he
had your watch on him. You deserved to have it back…”

“Thank you, Dragomir,” I said, admiring my watch, “You
don’t make it easy for me to think you’re a rascal. Although you
still are a rascal!”

“Mr. Dragomir,” Saskia broke in, “You obviously don’t
know who I am. And I don’t know who you are either. But since
you are the one who gave Saul the gun to use on that man who
broke into my room last night, well then I am in your debt. I
thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will always be in your
debt. Goodbye.”

With that, Dragomir silently lifted his hat, bowed to us
both, and turned on his heels. We watched him disappear across
the bridge to the Right Bank from where we had come. Saskia
and I continued on to Left Bank, and walked eastward down the
quai—that quai that gave us so many souvenirs of a carefree time
forever past. Occasionally, we would look over our shoulders to
make sure we weren’t being followed—either by criminals or by
the law.

The sun was now overhead. The day was crisp and not too cold.
Saskia and I walked along the quai until we were far enough away
from that infamous hostelry on the rue Saint-Denis, far enough
away from the Île Saint-Louis, as from the Comédie-Française.

During the walk, Saskia asked me a million questions. She
wasn’t happy to let that encounter with Dragomir fade into the
past…

“Strange that he should guess that. And to guess that we
would have the best luck if we went specifically to Tuscany…
‘There we will find,’ he says, ‘old friends and family.’ Strange
seeing how I’m looking for an old friend and you are looking for
your family. Florence is in Tuscany, and Florence is where you
believe your mother is living… strange that he should guess all of
that!”

“He didn’t guess it,” I told her, “But he also didn’t find out
by magic, the way clairvoyants are supposed to find things out…
he learned of it somewhere, somehow… but I’m not really sure
where or how.”

“Hmm,” Saskia said, more interested in fiddling with my
clothes than with talking. “That’s a really beautiful watch. How
did you come to lose in to Mr. Dragomir in the first place?”

I thereupon told Saskia the story of how and why I ended
up at Dragomir’s house in Málaga. I didn’t, however, tell her the
part about how Pulpawrecho came to meet his master—about
him stalking a girl—as that seemed irrelevant. But I did tell her
that Dragomir spoke that night about a certain ‘Clara’ girl who
came to consult him years before. I found it amusing that
Dragomir really believed Saskia was the girl who led Pulpawrecho
to him, that she was the girl whose name meant
clear, bright, and
celebrated,
and whose fortune he read to her so as ‘to play with
her a little,’ so as to give her some ‘direction in life. Then, four
years later, he runs into a young woman who reminds him of this
girl from his past, and whose age the girl would have now, and he
figures it is she. I remembered how Pulpawrecho’s story struck a
chord with me with that one detail: how the baffled little girl
stumbled upon the plaque that read: ‘Dragomir – Clairvoyant,’
and,
as if it were fate bringing her there
, she kissed her hands.
I
liked that part about the girl kissing her hands, and wished then
that Saskia’s name
was
Clara. In telling Saskia about Málaga on
that famous walk away from the hostelry in Paris, she asked me…

“Remember when we first met—or rather, when I first told
you my name is Saskia, and you asked me over and over again if it
meant ‘clear, bright, and celebrated?’”

“Did you ask me that because of this girl? I mean, did you
ask me this because Dragomir spoke to you of this Clara girl in
Málaga, and you thought I might be her?”

“But why did you come to speak to Dragomir of this other
girl? …This ‘Clara’ person? And why do
we
speak of her? What
does she matter to us?”

Our road took us to
Le Marais
, a neighborhood of dark
intersecting roads, with obscure alleys behind the markets of
immigrant merchants, and the busy workshops of artisans. It was
a quarter we had never been in, and it seemed like a perfect place
to hide two fugitives. We hoped, in staying there, that we would
attract no more attention than the mice in the street, we hoped
our past would not catch up with us.

There in the Marais, we rented a small apartment in an old
medieval townhouse on the rue de Vieille du Temple. Dragomir’s
twenty-louis was plenty to live comfortably for a little while. And
soon after, Juhani came through with an advance of threehundred louis. As soon as this arrived, we bought tickets to Italy,
with no date assigned to them, so that we could leave if we
needed to collect on Saskia’s inheritance.

Our mornings were happy, our evenings full of laughter.
The murder of Pulpawrecho soon left our thoughts, along with all
other unpleasant memories. Several times Saskia asked me why, if
we were not looking for Adélaïse anymore in Paris, didn’t we go
immediately to Tuscany to look for my mother and Adélaïse there.
Whenever Saskia brought this up, I would remind her that she
loves Paris. I would tell her that we were not going to travel to
Tuscany just because Dragomir told us we would have good luck
and a rich healthy life there.

“Oh, so it’s Dragomir who decides in favor of us staying in
Paris now?” would be the response of the clever girl, “I should
thank him for his decision.”

I told Saskia that I was ready to leave Paris as well, but
that travel would be easier in spring. It was already winter when
we came to live in the Marais, and the months seemed only to
grow colder as they progressed. We waited on, and slowly time
went by.

I didn’t see anymore of my “messenger” in Paris, except
one event occurred in late March that made me wonder if we were
still being followed or not…

There was a wine merchant at the great marketplace of Les
Halles, about a quarter-hour on foot from our house. There one
could find the best prices in all of Paris on the good wines of
Bourgogne and Bordeaux. Maurice, the patron, was an old man
with a large stomach who told nothing but jokes with his great
accent from Marseille. It was already almost April, but this night
was as cold as a night in the dead of winter. The moon was
growing fuller, it was almost full. I left a café near Les Halles
where I smoked a pipe of opium and drank a pitcher of
vin chaud
¹
;
and although it was already very late, I decided to buy some wine
for when I got home.

It was the first and only time that I went to this wine
merchant’s that Maurice wasn’t in. A woman of about fifty years
was keeping the shop. I asked where Maurice was and she said he
was ill. I asked for a bottle of the Bourgogne that I always bought,
and she told me that they had none, that the shipment didn’t
come in. She recommended a bottle of Bordeaux that she said
was just as good, it was about the same price; I didn’t want to take
the time to look further. I bought a bottle of her wine and braved
the cold streets home.

Outside the window of our kitchen, a single lantern
burned in the alley where there was a printing shop down below.
Some stray gutter cats foraged for food in the alley, above the
moon burned in the sky like melted silver cooling in an almost
round black mould. Saskia was asleep and didn’t wake up when I
came in making noise. Alone in the kitchen I uncorked the bottle
of wine that woman sold me and poured a full glass. The color
was deep red, with no purple in it, which meant it was old enough
to drink. I was always picky about red wine… never so young that
there should be a hint of purple in the color.

As was my custom, I spilt the first large swallow from my
glass out for the god of wine to enjoy, as superstition says that he
who does not honor the gods will someday find his wine keg dry
and no food in the pantry. His bed will be empty of his wife or his
mistress…

Since I was next to the window, I spilt the swallow on the
windowsill looking out on the alley. The puddle of wine reflected
the light and shape of the lantern burning. It was then, before I
drank from my glass, that a stray cat jumped down from the
gutter and began to lick my offering to the gods. “I wouldn’t do
that if I were you, cat,” I said, “that wine is for mighty Zeus and
Apollo.” Shortly after I said this, the cat fell on its side. I pulled it
in close to the windowsill so his death would not be caused by
falling. The cat began to convulse slowly, his breathing was
labored.

I watched that cat for sometime. He didn’t grow any
worse, but he didn’t get any better. I wasn’t completely sure if the
wine was poisoned, or if it was the fact that the cat licked an
offering to a god that made him sick. That bottle was all the wine
in the house, so I hoped that it was a curse from the gods that
struck him down. I didn’t look forward to pouring the wine down
the drain. I decided then to test it on another cat, from wine that
was not offered to a god. I found a piece of bread in the pantry
and tore a piece off. I then poured a nice swallow of wine that
thoroughly soaked the piece of bread; then I threw the bread into
the alley. I saw a couple cats fight for it, then one cat—having
won—ate the bread, let out a little cry, and then fell on its side.

“Poisoned wine!” I decided to go to bed. But first I wrote
on a little square of paper these words: “Don’t Drink Me!”—I then
stuck the note to the bottle, tying a string around it to make the
note stay. I then put the bottle under the sink where there were
bottles of various household poisons. I went to bed thoroughly
disgusted with the way my evening had to go.

It was late when I woke, I had a headache. Saskia was
already awake and was moving around in the kitchen. I jumped
out of bed and ran to her and asked her if she had by any chance
drunk any of the poisons under the sink. She looked at me with
the strangest look! She asked me why on earth would she ever
drink the things under the sink?! I reinforced her thinking, telling
her one more time not to drink anything we kept under the sink;
then I left her alone. Scratching my head in wonder, I went down
to the alley to see about my cat.

The printer’s shop was open and a worker was out in the
alley eating his lunch. I bid him good day and looked around
until I spotted the cat. He was stiff and silent, lying on his side on
the dirty ground.

Inspecting the cat, I found that he was still alive. His
breathing was regular, although he looked ill and had a pained
expression on his face. I thought the matter over… ‘That was
twelve hours ago that I fed him that bread, and he is still alive!
This poison is not strong…’

Back upstairs at our windowsill, it looked as though the
first cat had tumbled to his death in the night, as he was no longer
on the windowsill. I eventually spotted him, however, on the
ledge of the roof that sloped down beneath the window. He had
apparently crawled on his own out to the ledge to sleep. I threw a
walnut at him and it pounced off his body, he glanced around. He
looked only half-sick. I knew he would be in fine shape, but I had
to know for sure…

So I took the bottle of poisoned wine and went into our
bedroom where Saskia was tuning her guitar. That was good, I
told her, as I needed to hear a song that morning. Once it was
tuned, she played me a beautiful song about two wayfarers
travelling through a rainforest together; and after it was over she
asked me if I was going to get drunk for breakfast.

For the second time that morning, she gave me the
strangest look! I left her there on the bed with her guitar and
walked out with the wine bottle through the cold, icy morning,
down to the marketplace at Les Halles.

Once at the market, I passed the wine merchant’s and
noticed it was closed; so neither the woman who sold me the wine
nor Maurice were there to question. It was just as well, I hadn’t
come for that.

I came to the
Halle des Blés
, where they sold flours and
seeds, and I found a solitary donkey roped-up. Around him were
piles of dried corn. I got on my knees, quickly made friends with
the ass, and grabbed his snout. He resisted at first, but when I
stuck the mouth of the bottle into his gourd, he obediently drank
the wine.

“Now I need to wait,” I said. I left the ass and went for a
stroll and came back. As was expected, the ass was sick, lying on
his side, labored breathing, slight convulsions, a desperate look on
his donkey face. I left him there again. I went and ate breakfast
in a bistro. I walked around awhile. I went then to drink a
pitcher of vin chaud in a café. I took my time. Some hours later, I
went back to visit the donkey. As before, he was lying on the
corn. He was like before, but the desperate look on his face had
relaxed—it appeared he’d gotten used to his condition by now.
There was no doubt he would survive.

‘He’s a little donkey,’ I said to myself, ‘Perhaps it’s a
donkyesse?… anyway, she’s smaller than I am, weighs a bit less
than me, so she’d be easier to kill—yet she’s just sick. Whoever it
is who wants to poison me… first off, it wasn’t that woman at the
wine store. I’d never seen her nor wronged her in my life. And
she alone couldn’t have influenced Maurice to take the day off
from work—unless she’d poisoned him too, of course…

‘No, I can bet safely… whoever wanted to poison me did
so not to kill me, but only to make me sick. And the last person
to poison me was Dragomir. Still, the two can’t be related,’ I told
myself, ‘I believe this was just an accident; Dragomir had no
motive to poison me. I haven’t seen or heard from him since last
fall. If it wasn’t an accident, then it was those same people who
trashed our apartment on the quai… they’ve tracked me down in
the Marais—bad news…”

Thus I threw my hands up on the matter. But I did not
stop giving the matter thought… it was because of this poisoning
attempt that I decided we should leave our apartment on the rue
de Vieille du Temple in the Marais, without delay, and with great
secrecy.

I told Saskia about the drunken donkyesse. She was sad
that I had to poison a donkey of all creatures, but said that I did
right; and that given the recent events in our lives, it was perfectly
natural that somebody should poison our wine. They failed at
making us ill, but they succeeded in chasing us out of France.

We therefore moved our belongings from our apartment
little by little, to not be suspected of moving. Each time we went
out, we carried an extra bag with us, which we kept safe until our
escape, in a storage attic owned by Madame Gazonette, on the rue
des Fossés Saint-Bernard in the fifth arrondissement. Madame
Gazonette was no longer furious with us. In fact, she loved us
more than ever, since we were now in funds and we could afford
to pay her handsomely to replace all that was destroyed when
those people broke into our apartment. She wanted us to move
back in, yet our hearts were set on Italy. And so, on the twelfth of
April of that year, we took our things from Mme. Gazonette’s
attic, and left Paris in the utmost secrecy.