The Wanderess (10 page)

Fortunately, these crises of autoscopy lasted only
moments and I would soon come back to myself enough to
register my surroundings. I passed a young couple kissing away
on the street. Between embraces they whispered to each other;
they giggled pleasantries, and they laughed away
that world
that
was outside of
their world
, the world of their love. And I heard
what they were saying between kisses. They were discussing
me!
Those stupid animals! I,
Saul,
who is
after all a human being,
yet a
human being who has lived his whole life with a great respect for
philosophy, while striving to live the eudaimonic life, was now in
the process of giving up his soul, of dying. Meanwhile, these
lovers were amusing themselves by painting my death into their
tryst as some sort of ornament to the scene.

“You will not have it!” I growled, loud as I could as I passed
the two lovers, “
You
will not have it, and
I
will not have a banal
ending by going out
here
, like
this
… and with
you
!” So I spoke as
they huddled in fear. Though I did not understand it then, that
the end had not come yet, that it was now the very beginning; and
that my poisoned body was struggling to bloom, and not to die.

The sound of my new life began, as begins the sound of a
solitary Spanish guitar. Imagine if you will, a classical guitarist
who is highly skilled in his art, and who strums the one guitar he
loves, and has had for most his life; he strums from his solitude, a
single soul lost in the Spanish night. His song is in a minor key, it
speaks of travel, of loneliness, of love.

As I walked that night, and
wherever
I walked, the sound
grew stronger and more beautiful. Gone were all the symptoms of
my,
malaise;
I no longer travelled from my body and I no longer
feared to die. I simply walked and listened to the classical guitar,
imagining the scene of the player who was playing.

A scene formed itself in my imagination… It was one of
some handsome, olive-faced youth playing beneath the balcony of
some lady, who may fall in love with him, he hopes, if he plays
well enough. He is perfumed and is wearing his finest suit for the
occasion. The lady may listen by the window with eagerness, or
she may fall asleep in her bed if his singing voice doesn’t match
the charm of his rosewood guitar. So the youth will play his song
and she will either be enchanted or annoyed by his nighttime
serenade. It will all depend on the condition of her heart, and the
direction of its affections.

I was meanwhile floating along in my own universe—a
cloud of anesthesia, a euphoria of harmony. The guitar piece was
progressing nicely and I knew I would soon overtake the youth in
the street. I would stop to watch him play his song, guitar on his
knee, his face tilted amorously, upwards!—towards his one love’s
balcony.

I was soon to be brought to light, though, and shown the
falseness and foolishness of the idyll my mind had conceived. As I
gained pace and the guitarist played on, keeping his great wheel
of a song rolling along in the minor key, and when his song came
‘round again, and the wheel came ‘round again, that would be the
moment I would pass the trees that blocked the part of that house
where the balcony was, where the player was playing.

Two, or perhaps three times in a person’s life, usually not
more, does it happen that everything aligns together in poetic
perfection to allow his and her destiny to become for a time, as
beautiful as we say, it
had to become.

That was how it was this night. When the singing began,
not a moment later or a moment sooner, was when I caught sight
of the guitarist…

It was that it was
her
voice, that it was
her
touch on the
strings, that had seduced me up until I caught sight of
her
: I saw a
young girl sitting alone on a balcony, at a moment when she
began to sing. No other way to describe her voice other than:
It
was feminine
. It was feminine and healthy, without a blemish
though not over-practiced. The songs of Orpheus may have
moved rocks and snakes, and killed his lover, but this goddess’
song moved my heart to a kind of love that ten-thousand vipers
could never poison. Here is my impression of seeing her for the
first time:

A very young girl was seated on a balcony, a mere two floors up
from the street. She finished her song on the classical guitar, and
now she’s stopped and sits still, as though caught by a sudden idea.
She is the very portrait of youthful perfection, including all the
charming defects of youth. Her feet were bare (I noticed them
first), and were smudged with dirt. Her legs dangled over the
balcony’s edge. Both were tanned, and her knees had scratches on
them. Her skirt was the color of cracked-cream. It was bunched-up
and was dirty at the hems as though she’d been out tramping in the
streets. Now she was apparently at home and at her ease, certainly
at her father’s house. I imagined they were a rather poor family.
Husband and wife were asleep in bed, while their daughter had
decided to fetch her guitar and step out onto the balcony to
serenade herself in the light of the full moon…

On her small thighs sits her Spanish guitar. Her fingers
resume plucking the strings. Her song resumes on the minor key.
Her head is lowered in concentration, her face is obscured by long
falling hair. A simple cotton nightshirt, two straps on tiny, bronzed
shoulders, clings to the forms of her body, a body that has just
begun to show the first early, promising signs of an upcoming
womanhood. Her small breasts tremble slightly over the pumping
of her young heart. Her ballad turns round-and-round, the great
wheel that always falls on the same low refrain, only to rise again.
Each time the cycle turns, I expect her to resume singing.

It was only when she prepared herself to sing again—raising
her chin, letting her forehead ascend, bathing her face in the
moonlight, an act which sent her mass of hair tumbling back over
her shoulders—that I saw her face for the first time… it was the
most sensual, holy, and angelic face that heaven or earth e’er did
create. The first sight of her face made my heart evaporate in my
chest.

Could I neither die then nor gaze at her face every day, I
would need to recreate it through painting or sculpture, or through
fatherhood, until a second such face could be born. It was a face at
once innocent and feral, soft and wild… Her mouth voluptuous,
eyes deep as oceans, her eyes as wide as planets. I likened her to the
slender Psyché and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled
everything unclean around her: the dusty hems of her bunched-up
skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her
bare feet, and the soot-covered balcony on which she perched. All
this and the pungent air! Ô this night, sweet pungent night! Hébé
¹
may come but a season. But this girl’s season would know a hot
spring and an Indian summer.

When I achieved to separate my eyes from my angel, I
looked around at the street that was otherwise dark and deserted. I
felt then a strange heat penetrating my body, and the pleasure I had
felt from gazing at my girl turned into an intense fear. The poison
in my blood made itself felt again. My heart pushed at the cage of
bones in my chest. The vertigo that one experiences before losing
consciousness increased to overwhelm me. My vision failed me—
now the world was blurry, now it was black! And what if I am to die
now? Oh, no! Don’t make me die just now!

I felt myself sleeping while standing, I wanted to look at my
guitar player again. But eyes fluttered... between blackouts and
blizzards of blur… I couldn’t focus on her anymore.
All I could see
was myself: my own dead body dressed in funereal clothes. I was
keeping vigil over it. The girl with the guitar was gone from my life,
but I was happy! I had died, but I was happy… For I had died the
sweetest death of my life!

I didn’t wake up until very late the next day. Or maybe it was two
days later. I was in a small, unknown room, dimly lit, lying on a
small, unknown bed. The room was warm and smelled fresh and
sweet, like amber and sugar, like teenage perfume.

I was numb and at peace. Although I seemed to not be in
command of my body, I was not afraid. I strained to move my
eyes so as to look around and understand my environment. At
first I thought I was alone in the room. I flashed back in my
memory to think where I could be. Was I back in Malta or
Alexandria?, I wondered. Then I remembered I’d arrived in Spain.
I felt myself smile as I remembered the vision I had had on the
street, watching that girl playing and singing on her guitar.

The schism I’d experienced out on the street replayed
itself in my memory with great clarity. I had separated saint from
devil in myself out in the street. From now on I would live the
ascetic life. This thought made me laugh. It was a small laugh,
but it sounded giant in that bedroom. What room was I in? I
rolled my head and felt a pillow propped beneath it, a pillow that
smelled sweeter, fresher, better than anything I had ever smelled
before. I rolled my nose into the pillow, tasting it with my mouth.
I realized the mobility of my head. Then a sudden fear came and I
shot my head up and looked around.

Girl’s clothes were scattered everywhere, strewn all over
the chairs, the floor, an old trunk stood in the corner. It was then
I noticed, sitting in a small chair of light-colored wood, several
paces away from me, a young girl. She was staring at me with
great intention, her two fists plopped in the lap of her crumpled
skirt. Her eyes were wide open. Her lips trembled slightly and
were glossy and pink. She said, “Good then! You are awake now!”

“I am awake?!” I asked her, surprised. But
who was I
to be
awake?! So, it seemed when we die, we meet no agèd man with a
white beard seated on a throne in the clouds. Instead, we meet a
young girl sitting in a chair of light-colored wood, in a room
where feminine clothing and girlish possessions lie scattered
around; the air is filled with the enchanting smells of teenage
perfume… this is death.

As though someone were handing you clues to a riddle,
which becomes ever more clear each clue you are given, so did my
memory piece itself together as the moments flit by. I
remembered arriving in Barcelona, the commotion in the street,
buying wine in the Barrio Gòtico, leaving my money and jewels at
my hotel, being poisoned at an herborista’s house. I remembered
dressing for my birthday and going out and seeing this same girl,
this soft adolescent, who seemed to me
an angel dancing on glass.
then to be carved in ivory or white marble. My angel was dressed
in ivory and white marble, and sat on a balcony in a poor quarter
of town on a road where I was told I would find a hospital. Now,
to-night, the light was different. Everything in this scene now was
more real, more sober. The girl with the guitar, now my guardian,
was still a creature of youthful perfection. But she was no deity.
A nymph, yes. But she was no goddess holding her womanhood
before man as honey and poison, the gift of life, and the gift of
death. I didn’t have to fear for my life, I knew, for my guardian
was just a young girl wearing a little pale-yellow summer shirt: all
damp from the Barcelona humidity, its straps clinging to bronzed
shoulders rolling down into the fabric covering a young girl’s
chest, breasts small as two ripe apples, a small little tummy.
Bunches of white lace on her cotton skirt shone bright against
smooth, golden legs bearing only a down of fine, light-colored
hair.

I gasped and had a flashback from that night on the street.
I remembered, as I stood there, my blood pumping poison into
my heart; my wild heart pounding with insanity—her clothes
were a little dirty that night. Just as the exquisite angel in the
graveyard where many storms and foul days leave their filthy
imprint in the folds of marble cloth, sticking in the cracks of
stone; so this girl with her guitar appeared that night in my
intoxication, perfect then too as now—except now she was no
ivory goddess, no immortal angel, she was merely a young girl
who had recently bathed, and whose face was fresh and charming,
who sat on the edge of her seat in a very small and cluttered little
room that smelled of sweet perfume.

She asked me the most bizarre questions: “How did you
come to fall in the road in fine clothes? You were sleeping…” She
sat patient and seemed to look inward at herself; until suddenly
she cried out: “So it’s true! I knew that you would fall in this
road, I knew it had to be in Barcelona, and on this road!”

Was she crazy? I of course had no idea what the girl was
talking about. I let her go on talking about how she found me in
the road—“sleeping in fine clothes,” as she put it—and I said
nothing.

“Did you know you were going to fall there?” her face kept
searching in mine, “
How long have you known
you were going to
fall there?! Do you know Adélaïse? You’ve never heard of her?
Neither Adélaïse from Marseille nor Adélaïse from Paris?”

“I was poisoned. It wasn’t planned. They forced me to eat
the opium. It has a strange green shimmer. I wanted to find the
hospital to get an antidote. I was close, I think. It seems there is a
hospital at the end of your street. A man wanted me to find it, a
tall and thin figure; he said I looked like I was dying.
And I knew
then that I would fall—and I did fall!
…I guess I did, who really
knows …Listen, I won’t trouble you anymore. I’ll leave now.”

“Don’t!” She rushed to me and threw herself against me,
which caused me to fall backwards on the bed. I felt then an
incredibly soft body and the sensation was so sweet that I let her
breathe against me, her chest on my chest; her scent was some
soporific drug that I breathed until I fell into a deep sleep.

I sat up in the small bed, weak from fever and fearing it
had been a dream, and that the girl had never been there. While
travelling, I occasionally lodged in inns where I was put-up in the
bedrooms of my hostess’ young daughters, during the time they
were away studying or doing something. I was probably at one
such inn now, I was sure of it. As I considered this, the sound of
breathing caught my ear. I rolled and looked down over the edge
of my little twin bed and saw that there on the ground, curled up
and sleeping softly like a squirrel in a pretty little ball, was the
young girl, my guardian.