The Wanderess (4 page)

Saul and I took a private dining-room at the
Lion d’Argent
; its
windows looked out over the sea, and at all the boats in the port.
From where we sat, we could see everyone who was leaving, or
coming into, the port of Calais, right down to the clothes they
were wearing; although I told Saul I needed my new eyeglasses to
see anything in detail. I informed him that this elegant restaurant
where we were dining used to be a cabaret where ambassadors
and ministers passing between England and France could enjoy
the most expensive French and English girls in the North of
France. Saul informed me with a laugh that he was glad his days
of debauchery were past. “My
wanderess
cured me of my
transient heart,” he said, that used to need to go wandering itself
to find those short-lived pleasures and the mediocre love among
les filles de joie
¹
.

Saul and I dined on the fine delicacies fished from the
coast of northern France, and washed our feast down with
champagne and white wine from
Sancerre
. After we had stayed
desire for food and drink, I pressed Saul to tell me his story. He
began telling me of the events that followed what I knew: After
he went to Florence without Saskia, after he came back and I
drove his miserable soul down to the port at Civitavecchia to sail
to Tripoli. I knew when I heard the start of his adventures in
Tripoli that it was going to be an amazing story, so I begged he
stop his tale, that the dishes be cleared, that the wine be finished
with haste, and a good bottle of cognac be brought.

I asked Saul to tell his tale in full, and to tell it right. And
since I am a literary man, I begged permission to transcribe all
that I heard. He gave me his word that he would tell me all from
beginning to end, and leave nothing out.

“Spare me no detail!” I said, “Just, for all that’s holy, tell it
true and don’t leave anything out… And you needn’t talk slow, I
am a fast writer. My pen is ready!” So while the sun beyond our
window made its slow and colorful descent over the curve of the
earth, and the candles on our table chugged their tall flames, and
with no worries to worry me and no hurries to hurry me, I
transcribed over the next twenty-four hours, in my new leatherbound notebook
The Story of Saul and Saskia
from beginning to
end. Before we began, Saul took a pipe from his coat and filled it
with a smoking mixture
²
and he lit the pipe and offered it to me.

“À votre santé
¹
!”
“Santé!”

And so we sipped the beautiful liquor while Saul settled
into his chair with his pipe and glass, and began to tell the
fabulous story which I recount to you now, word for word as he
told it to me that day in Calais, with not a single syllable left out,
nor changed. Here is what he said…

I am Saul, the son of Solarus. My mother was the niece of the
Christian king of Tripoli. My father grew up at court in close
proximity to the king, but his forbidden relations with my mother
brought a death sentence upon him. He was forced to commit
suicide—obliged, like Socrates, to drink hemlock. My mother
meanwhile, pregnant with me, escaped into exile. She
relinquished her wealth at court to raise me herself, living by her
own hands as well as the generosity of an old peasant couple, far
from the city in a small fishing village on the sunny coast of Libya.
I grew up there, tall and strong, with a vigorous spirit; I reached
the age of manhood with a good constitution and a curious mind.

Biding my time in travel and adventure, for these were the
ways I knew to fill the heart with joy, there came a day when the
call to adventure
—that mysterious call that arrives to certain
young people—beckoned me to set out on a journey to Europe.

Now please understand… I am going to tell you this story
as I felt it at the time...
If I offend you with mention of past
vices—although I do not believe that I could offend you—please
realize that these were
past vices
; vices that belonged to a spirited
creature who had to go through many troubles to become the
man he is today. Back in those days I loved too many things in
abundance. Women, wine, and opium were the delicacies I
devoured in large quantities, for with them, I did not feel like a
mortal man, but like a god. Fortunately, since then my manhood
has matured. I have tamed those old appetites. Perhaps I could
almost
even be called “virtuous”? Well!, you will be the judge of
that from my tale…

Yes, today I am faithful to one woman. She is my
morning, she is my evening; we have a love that blooms over and
again, more beautifully each time than the last. You will see that
we are not lovers like others, for whom love is both a punishment
and
a gift… Our love has never punished, only rewarded. Such
love therein lies the
eudaimonic life
¹
.
But when our story begins, I
hadn’t known anyone like her. I was just a reckless adventurer.
“Pleasure!”—
that was my only concern as I embarked on this
voyage to Europe several years ago. Then I met the woman of my
heart… true, she was then young as a girl, though she was wiser
than all women of age who have never ventured out into the
world on their own. As a child, my love carried a roadmap in her
hand the way other girls her age carried handkerchiefs. And so
she knew the way, and it is thanks to her guidance that I became a
man. And it is thanks to her that I am alive today to narrate this
tale.
But let me begin at the beginning…

It was in the 3—
^th
year of my stay on this, our fruitful earth, while
traveling through Cataluña on my way north to a country whereto
Fortune would never bring me, that I met a brave, young orphan
girl who was like me,
a wanderer
. With her enchanting songs, her
rare beauty, and clever tricks, this wild “wanderess” ensnared my
soul like a gypsy-thief, and led me foolish and blind to where you
find me now. The first time I saw her, fires were alight. It was a
spicy night in Barcelona. The air was fragrant and free. But my
adventures began shortly before that. Here is how…

It was the new moon, the night was pitch black. My
clothes were dirty from sleeping in a ditch since the inn near the
boat docks was closed when I arrived too late at night. I had some
money in my pocket: two hundred silver
piastres
, a few pieces of
gold, as well as some banknotes. I’d been acting like a rascal for a
period of time but I blamed it on the season.

I had crossed the Mediterranean on a boat, from Egypt to
Crete; and from Crete I sailed to the Greek island of Hydra on the
invitation of an old and rich export-merchant who asked me to be
his guest at his home. And having arrived and dined at his house
with him and his young daughter, as well as the ugly man his
daughter was engaged to marry, I inquired about the quaint little
island where I had come to find myself. Later, after dinner, while
wandering alone up the long road that wound high over the sheer
rocky cliffs, with the Aegean Sea on one side and the lonely whitewashed houses where mules were roped-up on the other, I spied a
plump pigeon on the dusty road happily munching a piece of
cord. I thought how even he was free to take flight and sail away.
He could fly to Athens, or farther yet—whereas I was bound to
this barren island, and no boats in the harbor were scheduled to
sail that night.

I wandered back to the house and could hear my host
talking loudly with his daughter’s pock-marked fiancé in the
dining-room. They were busy smoking after-dinner cigars and
clinking their glasses of
digestifs
. I passed to the kitchen and
found his daughter wearing a short sleeping-robe, reaching for
something on a high-up shelf. I came behind her and pressed my
hand to her bare calf and felt that her skin was burning hot. The
sensation of her skin made me forget all about her husband-to-be
who was coughing in the other room while her father was telling
him a story in an overloud voice. I lifted the light fabric of the
daughter’s sleeping-robe and put my hand under the steamy
mound of her groin, and I could feel moist liquid dropping from
the hairy mound like steam that shoots out of the spout of a
piping-hot wine keg.

Amid barrels of saffron and white pepper, I nestled with
my host’s young daughter and pulled her happy buttocks over me
and drifted in and out of her moist groin—my throbbing sex
rocking languidly inside her own sex like a docked skiff that rocks
languidly against the piers lapping the salty waters in the dark
night. When she came, she uttered a little screech and I could see
the whites of her eyes disappearing in her head in the dim light of
the spice-room; and a few minutes later, I was alone in the
upstairs room securing my valises to travel on in the morning.

While I tried to sleep that night, still excited from my
sexual adventure, the source of my pleasure snuck in to kiss me
good night, and I once again cupped her smoldering sex in my
large hand and she uttered a pleasurable screech.

I don’t know how it happened, whether a servant betrayed
us, or if the tearful girl confessed all after the lunacy and passion
of night had left her, but I didn’t meet with happy-breakfast the
next morning, neither welcome words-upon-parting. The father
and his future son-in-law somehow discovered that I had had
intercourse with the girl of the house in the spice-room the night
before, and it being rather impossible to marry a girl off in that
part of the country without her being a virgin, the men decided to
hunt me down and, quote, “lop off my head,” unquote. (I learned
this from the driver who took me down to the pier.) I bribed the
driver well so he wouldn’t betray me to the merchant or to the
girl’s ugly fiancé, and a few minutes later I was alone and free,
sailing from Hydra to the mainland of Greece. My valises were
safe by my side and I marveled at my luck for having escaped from
that island without losing either property or obtaining bodily
injury. Success!, I cheered—for I had both health and possession,
along with the blessèd memory of the merchant’s young daughter
to make me smile and look forward to glorious nights to come—
for when you see the first sprouts, I think you know the grain that
follows. My luck in the past was always good. True, there was no
ligne de chance
¹
on my left hand, but I didn’t believe that that
mattered.

After arriving in Piraeus, I traveled up to Athens; then into
the country of Albania, meeting no hardship, and took the boat
from Vlorë to the sunny shores of Italy.

I soon arrived in the town of M****, and found lodging
and explained the business of my filthy appearance to the
innkeeper. I gave her a large tip to show her I wasn’t some
vagabond without money and she gave my bundle of dirty clothes
to the blind washerwoman to be cleaned. After eating a meal of
cold eggs, I stretched out naked on the bed in the room I’d let.
My eyes drifted from the ceiling to the window. Beyond the
window stood a pleasant courtyard square, adorned in the center
with a fountain. The courtyard wasn’t large, but the walls on
either side were tall and they both had arched doorways that led
away into the common streets of the town. In the back was a
portico supported by stone pillars. The courtyard seemed rather
ornate considering the humble, almost plain, character of the
town surrounding it; the bubbling fountain beneath my window
seemed to me rather peaceful and overall I liked the room and the
inn, although the meal was bad.

Lying naked on the bed, I chewed a piece of leather for
want of something to put in my mouth; all the while I thumbed
through the only book I had in my possession. It was a copy of
The Odyssey
in Greek. I was having the damnedest time
deciphering the Greek. I’d had a perfectly good French
translation of
The Odyssey
when I was in Alexandria, but I traded
it for this Greek copy while on the ship crossing the sea because it
was to be an even trade—book for book—and it seemed to me
that I was getting the more ‘authentic’ item in the bargain.

I slept all evening and only awoke when the innkeeper
brought the dinner. The meal was a bland stew
gratiné
with
cabbage. I didn’t complain about the cooking, but asked that she
knock next time before entering, as I had been asleep naked on
the bed, and my sex grew hard when I awoke—as naturally
happens to men when roused from sleep; but she informed me
that such things didn’t bother her—she grew up in a house with
eight brothers; and, anyway, her curious years were, quote, “driedup,” as she put it, and the handsome sight of a nude man stirred
her heart no more than the sight of two dogs playing in the yard.
This bit of news didn’t interest me, and I begged she leave me
alone after dressing the table and setting the stew down along
with a half-liter of red wine. I read from Homer all evening—
keeping to the passages I knew by heart to relieve me of having to
know each word of the Greek—and when night came, I saw the
full moon rising outside the window: a magnificent silver disc
hovering in the black abyss of sky. I thought of a vision I’d seen
recently before in which the ocean at night had been as black and
as deep as that eternal night’s sky, and I fancied my luck to be
witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full
moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts
thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again
to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life
goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling
a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of
The
Odyssey.

Around midnight, I met my neighbor in the inn. He was a
skittish specimen, dwarfish and emaciated, who’d been staying
there for two weeks. He also had issues with the moon—though
his weren’t positive like mine. The full moon made him a basketcase, he told me. It shook his nerves and boiled his blood and he
couldn’t sleep a wink during a full moon without taking drugs to
calm himself down. I invited him into my room, and to make
acquaintance we each drank a glass of Spanish brandy together
and talked. Never had I seen a man’s eyes bulge so much as he
spoke…

To this, I smiled and bared my teeth.
“How does one get a good night’s sleep in this world?”

“It’s like this,” I told my neighbor, “I met this Chinaman
once, and we practiced yoga together, although neither of us had
been to India. He was actually from Singapore, but we all called
him ‘The Chinaman.’ He had come from Asia in a train baggage
car with a sack full of opium that he was going to sell in Europe
for a good profit (this was the first time I ever tasted that
pernicious, though unbelievably beautiful, drug). He was an
adroit yogi and the two of us spent hours balancing on our heads,
letting the muscles in the faces slacken, our heart-rates deepen.
The Chinaman bragged that he could concentrate on whatever he
wanted to such an extent, that everything else ceased to exist.
You know, they say not to practice yoga much during the full
moon because people get excited during the full moon and one
risks going too far with the poses to the extent of injury you see…

“Anyway, to the point, this Chinaman was able to ‘forget’
the full moon. Such mind power he had, that his ‘forgetting the
moon’ actually caused his eyes to
not see it!—
you see what I’m
saying, neighbor? The Chinaman looked into the sky and saw a
pit of blackness, whereas we other men on the ship—(I met him
on a ship in the Mediterranean on my way to Malta)—we other
men saw the moon and pointed it out to him. But he had
forgotten the moon to the extent that his eyes couldn’t see it any
longer. You see what I’m getting at? All you need to do, my good
neighbor, is ‘forget’ the moon! Then you’ll be able to stop your
pacing at night and get a good night’s sleep…”

My neighbor drooled a little, then lathered the drool on
his chin with his fingertips, forming a froth, like shaving cream.
“Ah!” he replied, “worth a try! You see I believe in that stuff too:
yoga and mystical powers. I once knew a man who could kill
himself on command. Can you believe that? Why do you laugh?
Believe it! By will of his own mind, he could make his heart stop
beating for good…” My neighbor poised and looked seriously at
me, searching in my eyes. “You laugh!” he repeated once more…
“You laugh, but he was a master at it! He could commit suicide at
his own will!”

Indeed, hearty laughter streamed through my nose.
“Could he do it perpetually?” I asked.
“Perpetually…?” My neighbor rubbed his waxy chin.
“I mean, is he still able to do it?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well? Then is he dead…?!”

My neighbor’s puzzled face slowly began to transform into
a look of realization. “But sir,” he said, “Of course he’s dead! I
mean to say… this man could
kill
himself on command, you see.
And you don’t come back from the dead!”

The two of us found ourselves crossing to the door so I
could let my visitor out. I slapped him with friendliness on the
shoulder.

“No, you don’t come back from the dead,” I agreed.
“Thank you for the brandy.”

The two of us had finished on friendly terms and parted
company. I had no intention of meeting this character again, as I
hoped to leave the inn early the next morning and travel on, and
sure enough, that is what I did.