The Wanderess (31 page)

“And so your mother wandered everywhere. Then she
wandered here last spring, and told me all about you while my leg
was healing. That is how I recognized you… I saw you painting in
the garden. She said you had always loved to paint, that you
painted the boats of the old fisherman who raised you. She said
you left home to become a painter in Tripoli. Everything about
you was identical to her description. If only I had been more
cautious before! It is my fault for the state your mother is in
now!…”

“Eight days ago, a young man—he was about your age, but
he was a little younger—passed through Staggia. He was also
from your country, born just outside of Tripoli. He had a light
complexion, and your hair color. He also was a Christian. He was
of European descent. You are much taller though; and now that I
see you, I see how many differences there are. Never could it be
said by someone who’s seen you both that you two look similar. If
I just could have known his name, that would have prevented this
whole disaster… The man who called me down to see this
gentleman from Tripoli was my friend who owns the café where
the gentleman had lunch and a few drinks. I had a good look at
the man and thought that he could be you: the son of Solarus.
But when I tried to flag him down to inquire, he was already down
the road and gone…

“I gave up all hope until I asked my friend the café owner if
he could guess where he might be off to. He said that he didn’t
need to guess, he knew for sure... the gentleman told the owner of
the café that he was headed to La Locanda Villa B*** in
Petrognano. He mentioned this to ask the café owner if he
thought it was a nice place to stay. The café owner knew La
Locanda Villa B*** very well and said that it was one of the very
finest country inns in all of Tuscany. The gentleman seemed
pleased, and I was too. I quickly sent word to Florence to tell your
mother that I believed I had just found her son, and that she
should go quickly!… ‘Look for him at La Locanda Villa B*** in
Petrognano!…’ Oh, if only I hadn’t been so enthusiastic! Looking
back I’m ashamed. I too went to the Villa B*** just after dinner. I
was hoping to see her happily reunited with her son. Instead I
found her there in Petrognano, collapsed in a fever!…

“I took her back to Florence. The shock slowly left her and
her fever cooled. As soon as she was coherent, I begged her to
forgive my rashness. I feared my rashness was going to cost her
her life. When her fever dropped, I no longer feared that my
rashness would cost her her life, but I knew it might cost her her
sanity… your poor mother was raving!

“And so I came back here to the inn. That was four days
ago. Now the boy comes in here tonight to worry us again. He
said that your mother’s nurse just sent word from Florence that
your mother’s fever came back and it is higher than it was at first,
and that she is now in danger. She was at her residence in the
centre of Florence. The nurse said she was delirious but awake;
repeating often the phrase, ‘Send for Saul.’”

“I know, but you cannot,” the innkeeper told me, “No
matter how badly you want to go, there is no one here who can
drive you.”

“We must find a driver!” I said.
“A driver will be here at dawn, that much is certain…”

“We will wait,” I said to them both. Then, “Goodnight.”
Saskia and I bid them a sorrowful farewell and took leave of them
to go to our room and wait for the dawn. They were good people,
the innkeeper and his wife. I wasn’t sure about Saskia, but I knew
I would remember them always.

Neither Saskia nor I slept that night. She lay on our bed with her
eyes wide open while I paced the floor. At dawn we went out into
the yard to greet the driver. The innkeeper also was there in his
pyjamas; he woke to say another farewell to us and to instruct the
driver to do as we told him. As we were leaving he told us once
more that he would come to Florence that night, as soon as his
obligations in Staggia were taken care of.

Saskia was quiet when we set off. For a long time, she sat
rereading the letter that she picked up at her bank the day we left
Siena. I asked her to please tell me who the letter was from and
how they knew she was in Siena when she’d told me clearly before
that no one knew she was in Siena, or in Italy for that matter, but
she wouldn’t tell me. I asked her what was in the letter that made
her want to read it over and over so many times, but she said that
it was of no importance compared to the health of my mother.
She told me that after we saw my mother and had that worry
behind us she would even show the letter to me so I could read it
myself in its entirety, although she insisted that the letter would
bore me. I found this statement of hers bizarre, but I didn’t press
the point. I was too worried about my mother. The innkeeper
said that he feared for my mother’s life in the beginning, and here
the boy says that her fever was now worse than it was in the
beginning. Now after fifteen years away from her, I would come
to her new home in Florence to find her with whom? With a
doctor?, or with a priest? Tears welled in my eyes, while my arms
and legs trembled—both because of my mother and because I
hadn’t gone to bed the entire night before.

Saskia interrupted my gloomy thoughts to tell me that she
planned to get off at the next town which had an inn, where she
would wait for me. I asked her whatever for, and she told me that
it was for the same reason that I refused to go with her to the Île
Saint-Louis to look for Adélaïse: “So many years have passed since
you were last with your mother, I want you to have some time to
be alone together. If I were there, you both would feel as though I
were an intruder.”

“That is fine. I can meet my mother alone. But why do
you want to find an inn along the way? We can get a hotel room
in Florence. I can visit my mother and then come back
afterwards.”

“I know, kiddo. I’ll ask the driver to find an inn for you.”
Looking back on what Saskia had just said, she was announcing
the arrival of the two black storm clouds that had followed us
from Siena. To be honest, I didn’t really give the matter any
thought at the time. I was only thinking about the health of my
mother. I didn’t care at that moment whether Saskia came with
me to Florence, or stayed to sleep off her fatigue at some country
inn while I made the voyage myself. This was one day that I
didn’t put Saskia above everyone else in my heart and my mind.

I asked the driver if we would be approaching an inn. He
said yes, that the main road was closed this year, so we were
forced to take the side road that went through the villages of
Petrognano and Certaldo. I knew of Certaldo, at least by name; it
is the celebrated birthplace of Boccaccio. But Petrognano I hadn’t
heard of—until I remembered that it was the village where the
innkeeper said my mother fell ill when she went to see a man she
thought was me, but who wasn’t.

“We have one of the best inns in all of Tuscany in
Petrognano,” said the driver, “a place called ‘La Locanda Villa
B***.’”

‘There you have it,’ I thought, ‘it’s the same inn where my
mother took sick. A perfect place for Saskia to sleep her weariness
away while I go spend the day and night at the bedside of my sick
mother whom I haven’t seen in fifteen years.’ I told the driver
that it was perfect... “Please stop at La Locanda Villa B***!”

As you know well, my dear friend, La Locanda Villa B*** is the
place where you and I met for the first time. And you remember
the state I was in?… clothes disheveled, my face torn with grief,
tired as the devil, in short: completely ruined. And now you know
why… I didn’t sleep the night before. Between Siena and Staggia I
was in despair over Saskia, then in Staggia I became a nervous
wreck about my mother whom I believed to be terminally ill. The
brief period of happiness I knew in Paris had slipped through my
fingers, although I held my fingers like a net so as to catch the
remnants of the world that was so beautifully falling all around
me. Now apparently my fingers were spread too far apart to catch
any beauty, all I caught now was those remnants of ugliness, the
staple that makes up the daily meal of the unlucky.

Then you recall how Saskia was that day: in the yard of the
inn in Petrognano, she cried more than was appropriate to see me
off for the one day and one night in Florence I would be spending
without her. She told me to kiss her one last time, and when she
kissed me, she kissed me on the mouth, admitting to me that we
were lovers. We never admitted to one another that we were
lovers. We never kissed one another on the mouth—at least not
as she kissed me that day you saw us in the yard of La Locanda
Villa B***. I should have understood then that she was saying
farewell to me. Yet how could she have said farewell to me then,
when I needed her more than ever? Still, I didn’t think of her that
day. All my thoughts were with my mother.

And so I left Saskia there at the inn in Petrognano. I left her
there with all of our money. We had just finished all of Juhani’s
money, and now our only funds were what Saskia drew from her
inheritance in Siena. We paid the driver in advance to take me to
Florence and back to the inn at Petrognano. When I left her, I
only had enough in my pocket to pay a meal or two while I was in
Florence. I planned to stay the night at my mother’s, so I didn’t
see a need to ask Saskia for money. Thus I left her there with all
her money and all her tears; and the driver and I went on to
Florence.

I arrived in the city-centre of Florence and went to the
address given to me by the innkeeper. I found my mother’s
residence. It was an inexpensive housing place for widows. I
rang, my mother’s nurse came to let me in. She wore a solemn
expression on her bone-white face. She only spoke Italian, so she
could not express herself to me. She motioned to me that my
mother wasn’t at home and gave me an address to where I could
find her. I bowed my head to the nurse and went out to where my
driver was waiting for me.

I handed the address to him, and we started off slowly.
The road took us out of the city. ‘Is it a country resting place?’ I
wondered, ‘away from the noise of the city?’ It was while on that
road, void of landmarks and signs, that a gnawing fear began to
eat at me. Call it the air, call it intuition, call it whatever you like,
it was overall a fear that justified itself when we came to a large
pastoral plain, a field of grass and stones. The grass was green,
the stones were white. They were tombstones.

Thus we came to a graveyard. And there with my driver I
broke down and wept. I didn’t know how to react—does one ever
know in this situation? With all the words I could muster, I told
my driver to leave me… “Go, please,” I said. I then followed the
smell of incense. I saw a small group of mourners—four elderly
women and one little girl—they were following behind a priest
and an altar boy carrying incense. I went up to the priest and said
the name of my mother. He signaled to a headstone that was
some twenty meters away. The women mourners glanced up at
me and nodded with respect. I took them for Italians, no doubt
friends of my mother during the last five years of her life.

I watched the priest and the altar boy with his trail of
smoke, together with the mourners. I watched my mother’s small
funeral procession disappear down the gravel path while I made
my way to the headstone from which they came. And by a fresh
grave, I fell down and wept. Her name was written clearly on the
headstone, together with the epitaph:

I lay on that grave for the entire evening and all of the night,
sighing, crying, lamenting that I did not arrive sooner to prevent
her early death. “Happily, she must have died,” I said aloud for
the earth to hear, “for she finished her life in Florence, the one
city she loved.” ‘Why though did it take four days for the last
message to arrive to the innkeeper?’ I wondered, ‘Well, it’s for the
best. If the innkeeper and his wife had received news the day
after my mother’s condition worsened, they would have gone to
Florence while Saskia and I were still in Siena, and I would never
have met them: they who led me to her. Ah, she must have died
two days ago—so as to be buried today… So why did
I
take so
long to come? What was I doing of such great importance? I
know what my mother would say to that: “You were living, my
son. You were living. Go on and live some more.”

And so that is what I did, I went and lived some more;
although that entire day and the night to come, I stayed and
mourned by her holy graveside. The moon was half-full and
growing, the sky was clear, the night was fresh, yet comfortable to
the skin; thus, it was a wanderer’s night. Where to was my
mother wandering now?—I wondered this and wandered far into
my memories as the night progressed and my tears bleached my
skin cleaner and more white.

By morning, I was drained of tears, soaked in sadness, I
considered my mother lucky for having survived this world until
free of it. I too wanted to be free of it. I took the tea from my
pocket: the tea that my mother had blended for the innkeeper—
that which was called: ‘Eternal Life,’ and I sprinkled it on her
grave, so that now my mother too could go and live some more.

I left then my mother’s grave. I saw no other living souls
as I made my way through the cemetery. I was surprised to see my
driver parked near the road. He had been asleep, but the sound of
the gravel crunching under my feet was enough to wake him. He
said, “Oh, signore! I know you sent me away but I wondered how
you’d get back to Petrognano… I know that Signora has all of
Signore’s money with her!”

“You are right, Signora does have all of Signore’s money. I
thank you… but tell me, did you stay out here waiting for me all
afternoon and evening yesterday and all night too?”

Now is the part that you all recall: when I came back to La
Locanda Villa B***, I let our driver go for good and went to the
check-in desk to inquire which room Saskia was in. That was
when the despairing news came: It was known that Saskia had
definitely left the inn, and that she had left with another man, but
nothing was known about the route she had taken, or destination
to where she went. They were certain, however, that she was not
coming back.