The Wanderess (14 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Why do we mortals wonder if it is through
human chaos
or
through
divine perfection
when the world guides us to some
magical event? In either case, is not the result the same? Is the
result not
divine perfection?

Dusk had already fallen when I reached cobbled streets of
the Barrio Gòtico. The lanterns were lit. I passed the Cathedral of
Sant Jaume
where a shabby red scarf was tied to one of the ironbarred windows. I wondered if the old man was right about my
dropping my foulard in front of the hotel. If so, why didn’t he
pick it up and chase after me to return it to me? A likely story!

I was drawn back to that square where the hotel was and
through the narrow streets I walked and it was now fully night.
This was the first moment I realized that
I didn’t have to
sleep in
that filthy room at the Urquinaona at all. I
could
take one of the
new vacancies at the Hotel Sant Felip Neri. I would have a bath,
and sleep tonight in a good bed. Why had I just then thought of
that? What is the harm in taking a dead man’s room, so long as
it’s clean? I got angry at myself for not taking a suite after the
accident, and for being so slow to react to new opportunities that
presented themselves. Over the past few years, it had become a
habit that was proving dangerous to my well-being. My thoughts
were interrupted, I heard the sound of a guitar. Over the last
couple days, my biggest disappointments had come in the shape
of guitar players, and I assumed this one would be as lame and
shabby as the others. I then heard the words sung as I entered the
square, they were in English…

Ceylon, Ceylon... So Long, So Long…
To your far distant shores
To that long away time
When our eyes were for the heavens
And our lips were for each other
And our flesh was for the world
And our dreams kept us wandering on…

“Saskia!” I cried, my eyes falling on her standing on the iron
wrought balcony two stories above the Plaça Sant Felip Neri.
There on the balcony of the hotel, wearing a pale nightdress, was
my friend: the lost orphan-girl, holding her guitar, singing
‘Ceylon’ into the night. She heard my voice cry her name. Her
eyes grew wide, she looked at me; and she set her guitar down and
disappeared from the balcony. A moment later, she came running
to me through the square, from the hotel…

“Saul,” she cried, “you came back! Just like that!” She
threw her arms around me. I picked her up so her bare feet no
longer touched the ground. Her feet flapped and she sobbed and
between sobs she asked, “Why did you run off from me? I went to
buy the foods that you said you love! And coffee, and wine too!
But you left!—just like that!”

“I felt sorry for you, my dear Saskia. You were a little
housecat sleeping on the floor of your room every night. It was
time for me to give you your bed back.”

“You felt sorry for me! You should have felt sorry for me
these last few days, not being anywhere where I could find you…”

“You’re crying, Saskia!…
I went looking in your
neighborhood for you… I spent most of the day everyday looking,
but I couldn’t find your balcony, I couldn’t find your house…”

She pulled away from me, then looked up into my eyes,
“Did you really come looking for me?”

“I looked and looked! First, I tried to take my hotel room
back, so you could come to me when you wanted, but they gave it
to someone else.”

“I know, they told me. They told me which suite had been
yours and so this morning when I found out it was available all of
a sudden, I booked it indefinitely. You chose a beautiful hotel.
It’s ours now. We can sleep here tonight. Come on….”

She took my arm and we started walking towards the
hotel. “You know that I keep hearing songs,” I told her, “played
on the Spanish guitar. I walked and walked this whole week
through, constantly thinking of you.”

“And?!”
“And… I was wondering why I ever left your apartment. I
missed you. And so I listened. I hoped I would hear you
somewhere, hear you playing your guitar.”

“And you did hear me. Promise me you won’t leave again.”

I then made a million promises as we entered the hotel.
The concierge was a new one whom I’d never seen. He was
courteous and didn’t show astonishment at a girl so young being
dressed in so light a nightdress coming in from the square at
night. I noticed her hair was arranged, as though she had been
expecting a visitor, she looked older than she did at her
apartment, and more beautiful. We ordered some food to be
brought up to our room and inside the room she cleared her
guitar and clothes from the dining table.

A waiter from the hotel restaurant came and placed our
dinner on the table. There were Spanish cheeses, some grilled
pescaditos
, a loaf of bread, a bottle of cold wine. We drank a glass
and I said that I had a strange feeling after seeing Saskia playing
her guitar on the balcony of the hotel, as though there were some
destiny at work after all.

Saskia’s voice then turned serious, and strange… She told
me that I should get used to my strange feeling, because there
would always be destiny at work for us. She told me then that she
would never let me disappear again. She said she needed me.

“Oh, my poor girl!” I told her, “It can’t be this way—not
this way!” I got up from the table and began pacing the floor with
thundering feet in that enormous room… back and forth, I
walked, shaking my head, blowing steam, until I took the girl
firmly by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes and said,
“Listen to me closely, Saskia. You cannot talk to a man you’ve
only recently met like this, telling him
you need him
; it won’t do!
You will frighten him away!…”

She just laughed, “You men!
You are frightened so easily!”
She then freed her shoulders from my hands, “but it’s good that
you teach me these things,” she said, “I have so little experience in
these matters.”

“I have quite a lot of experience in these matters. Look,

Saskia, when a man meets a woman, he needs to feel like he is the
hunter
, like she is the
prey
. She is a wild prey that looks good to
eat, like you… But if his prey just hops into his hunting net and
says:
‘I am yours, let’s travel together!’
he feels like he hasn’t
earned his prey through honest ‘hunting’; consequently, he
doesn’t feel like a man. When a man doesn’t feel like a man,
neither sexual feelings nor romantic feelings can emerge in him.”

“Have you checked your net recently, my good huntsman?,
because I didn’t hop anywhere near it!” She laughed again and
had the nerve to roll her eyes.

“Remember that this hunting expedition was
mine
, the net
of concern was
my net
, and when I said
‘we are going to travel
together’
that was me telling you what’s going to happen. You
would be a fool not to obey because
your life depends on it…
But
in any case, I am a long way from being in your net, Monsieur the
hunter… in fact, I think your prey just outran you.”

With these final words, Saskia shot me a cold, firing look
with her eyes that showed both irony and condescension. In one
swift move, she overwhelmed me, she blew me across the room.
A thunderclap of feminine power charmed and diminished me. I
remember thinking then that this was the first time in a long
time—where it concerned my dealings with women—that it was
obvious I needed to go back to school. I told her I was impressed.
She asked me if I knew
why
she wanted me in her net. I told her it
was odd that I should be so important to her.

“I want you to help me find my friend.”
“Find your friend?”

“I know it is a selfish reason, but you have to help me. She
is my best friend. Her name is Adélaïse…”

Saskia then explained to me her story: “Ever since my
uncle died, I have been wandering around Europe. I even went to
Asia. I wandered all the way to Ceylon. That is where I wrote the
song I sing. And all the time I wander because I don’t know why I
should stay any place? What’s to stop me from wandering? I
haven’t had any reason to do anything in this world, or
not to do
anything. Money comes to me every few months without fail—
more than enough to live on, plenty enough to amuse myself with,
so I don’t need think about money or managing a household. I
never liked that concept… what they call ‘the household.’ The
word alone is horrible, industrious and binding. I think I am a
nomad by nature… but that aside, what should stop me? I have
no family, no friends whatsoever, never a lover… Adélaïse is all
I’ve had. She is the only person still living with whom I’ve shared
my heart. When I went back to the boarding school in London
after my uncle’s death, I was told that she had already left our
school to return to her parents’. They wouldn’t tell me why she
left, but I thought I overheard the dean mention something to his
administrator about how, because of her parents’ divorce and all
the legal fees, etc., they no longer had enough money to pay her
tuition. Anyway, I did find out from them that her father was
living in Marseille near the Place de Lenche, and that her mother
lived in Paris on the Île Saint-Louis
¹
. They refused to give me
exact addresses of either. So with that information, I went to both
cities: to Paris and Marseille, and hung around waiting to run into
my friend, to bump into her on the street or something, but I
never did. Once, while wandering that quiet, little residential
island they call Île Saint-Louis, an old gardener woman sweeping
leaves in a garden apron, called to me. She wanted to tell me
something. She looked like a witch with that broom and that
apron covered with leaves, and her dark, deep wrinkles. She told
me she could read my life. And what she told me about is
you.
She knew all about you, Saul!…”

“How could this Parisian witch know all about me? I have
never been to Paris.”

“She didn’t know your name, of course, but she knew all
about you, and that you could help me reunite with Adélaïse. She
told me if I went to Barcelona, I would, quote: ‘find a man
sleeping in the street in fine clothes.’ She said that his destiny is
intertwined with mine. She said a lot more things. But don’t you
see how I feel Saul? I feel like I need something or someone from
my past to make the present make sense to me… Adélaïse is the
only person from my past I want to see again. If I don’t see her, I
don’t know ‘
why it is
’ that I should stay alive!”

“So that explains why you always talk about how you were
meant to find me
just as you did
: ‘
sleeping in the street in fine
clothes,’ …
You know this
‘in fine clothes’
thing made me think you
might be totally nuts. But Saskia, why did you choose
me
of all
the people who pass-out in your street? It seems that the men
here in Barcelona drink so much that on any given night, one can
trip over a dozen of them sleeping in the street
…and in fine
clothes too!”

“It wasn’t a sleeping drunk I was supposed to find. And I
cannot tell you any more, Saul. The woman in the garden said
that if you learn too much of the puzzle before it’s solved, my
work will have been for nothing. You and I both will be doomed.
I, of course, know the whole puzzle in its entirety, but I cannot
tell you more. I promise I will tell you all though—
just as soon as
we find Adélaïse.”

I wanted to know more about this puzzle
before
we found
her friend, but Saskia wouldn’t tell me any more.

“You are a crafty girl,” I told her, “You know, I was once
overly-confident about my hunter’s net. Since I was five years
old—that beautiful age when I became actively interested in the
female sex—I thought my net was good enough to catch virtually
any prey. But now I see that it isn’t going to be enough to catch a
creature as wild as you.”

To this, the rascal simply smiled at me. She then said,
“You can try other weapons, you know …other than that stupid
net of yours.”

* * *

We both felt heavy from the food we ate. Now that we were
finished, the dinner table resembled a battlefield: carcasses of fish,
spines and skins, rinds of mouldy cheeses. My body ached and I
felt hollow and exhausted from the past days of self-isolation and
alcoholic depression. My body was like that table: a half-eaten
battlefield, filled with bones and skin torn apart. I told Saskia I
wanted to rest a moment. “I just want to close my eyes for a
minute. It’s still long before midnight. I won’t go to sleep for the
whole night now.” But I didn’t realize how truly drained I was. I
fell into a deep sleep the instant I lay down, and it was well after
dawn when I awoke.

The white sun flooded into the hotel suite. I glanced over
at Saskia. She was beneath the sheets as I was. The bed was made
when I fell asleep on it the night before, and I knew that Saskia
had put the sheets over me. We were lying far apart. No one
observing us that morning could say we were lovers. I was fully
dressed—she hadn’t dared to take off my clothes—while she wore
pajamas. She on her side, I on mine, were tucked-in as innocently
as two young children who’ve not yet learned of the existence of
the sexual body.

I was glad I didn’t try to kiss her or touch her the night
before. And glad that we hadn’t made love. For this morning we
didn’t have anything to feel embarrassed about. And what was
better, we didn’t have to worry that terrible worry: the worry that
we’d begun the game too early, and that consequently, we would
have to end it early. That was a worry only I would have had.
Saskia was too inexperienced to have that unhappy worry about
her relationship with me. I was glad she had trusted me enough
to sleep in the same bed as me, instead of suffering on a mound of
clothes on the floor like a cat.

I went back to sleep. And when I awoke, Saskia was at the
dining table eating a pastry, drinking coffee. I stirred and got out
of bed, and then I went over to her to say good morning.

“Thank you for letting me sleep.”

“It’s normal. You were tired,” she said, “I think that your
tiredness has been following you around for many months
demanding a night’s sleep like last night. Finally you gave in.”
She took her guitar from where it stood by the door and asked if I
minded if she played. “Your fingers are made for the strings,” I
told her, “Please play me something.”

“How did you know about that?!” she ask me, frightened.
“Know about what?”

“Fingers are made for strings? The… the gardener woman
in Paris… she said just that…
‘Your fingers were not made for keys
but for strings,’
were her exact words. I had never met her, I
didn’t have my guitar with me, yet she said to me,
‘you love song
and you sing.’
How could she have known that if she couldn’t
read my life?”

I urged her then to sing and to play. She sat on the edge of
the bed and played for me the song she wrote in Ceylon…

Ceylon, Ceylon... so long, so long…
It was then in the springtime
She explored in the orchards
Where the trees gave her fruit
and the streams bathed her body
while the sun warmed her skin
and her youth bore her dreams
then when night came a falling
Her lost lover came down to her dreams.

Saskia set her guitar aside. “I was so young when I wrote that. Do
you like the words?”
“That depends on who your lost lover was… the one who
came down to your dreams…”

She laughed. “I guess he was the lover that all fourteen
year old girls dream about… I went to Ceylon for three months,
on a whim, after my uncle died. It was three years ago, seems like
forever ago. Everyone thought that fourteen was too young to be
travelling alone, but I didn’t care. I was a wild girl. I found
Ceylon to be the most magical country on earth, I wanted to
immortalize it in my memory: the vibrancy of the colors, the
humidity that allows trees of all kinds to produce splendid fruit…

“…As for the lover, I certainly didn’t have anyone in mind.
I think girls always dream up love stories, though—no?”

Her innocence made me smile. She was innocent to the
very fibre of her, and I didn’t want to damage that innocence.
This was the first time in my adult life that I was near a beautiful
female whom I didn’t feel the desire to make love to. She was too
young to have the feminine charms that mature women possess
and use so beautifully, for as I grow older I find that the charms of
adult women ripen to perfection as they age too. Saskia was still a
great beauty, and I should have lusted after her like after any
woman; yet I thought that morning, waking up beside her,
‘Sooner would I protect her as my child than as my wife.’ This was
probably for the best. Unless I was in love with her, I would often
tire of a woman as soon as I’d slept with her. I did not want to tire
of Saskia, and I knew that if I didn’t make love to her, I would
never grow tired of her. I wasn’t sure then if I would ever love her
like a woman, I hoped I would love her someday. I wondered if
she wanted to leave right away for Marseille, and then for Paris,
where we could try our luck together in the search for this lost
friend of hers, Adélaïse.

“Marseille is useless,” she said, “I spent one month in that
city, asking all around for information about Adélaïse’s relatives. I
knew that Adélaïse had the same family-name as her father; I
found out that there was only one Monsieur Letheux who was old
enough to have a child and who lived in the second
arrondissement of Marseille, where the Place de Lenche is. I
found out that, if this man was in fact her father, he left Marseille
during the time I was there to take up residence again in Paris. So
it’s fair to say that unless Adélaïse is off at another boarding
school somewhere she’s with one of her parents in Paris.”

“So we will leave for Paris then, kid. I was just heading
there myself anyway…”

“Yes, but Saul, my dear, after we finish our breakfast… I
have to leave you for a little while… I won’t be able to come back
to see you until the day after tomorrow.”

“The day after tomorrow!”

I was taken aback by her words. ‘The day after tomorrow?’
Was this sudden indifference to our knowing each other coming
from the same girl who played her guitar every night for nine
months so she could find me?… the same girl who was so obsessed
with me during my illness that she never took her eyes off me day
or night?… I remember, I thought she was going to be a burden to
me during my adventures, and that I’d never get rid of her… but
now it was
she
who was abandoning
me!

“Today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, let’s see… I can
meet you here on Sunday night…” She went for her guitar to lock
it in its case, “I have a few personal things I need to take care of,
some important things.”

I sat stupefied. She stood next to me, rubbing my head
like I was a pet.

“So eight o’clock Sunday night? We can meet in here. The
concierge gave me two keys. Here’s yours. You’re going to be
good when I’m gone, right? You’re not going to have friends over,
are you?—I’m kidding, you do what you want. But you won’t
leave this hotel before Sunday, will you? I mean
leave for good.
You can go out to have fun, of course… But you won’t disappear
from my life, will you? Promise me, Saul… I don’t want to come
on Sunday and find another one of your terrible notes written in
French—
God, that was the saddest thing
ever!
—promise me,
please, Saul, that you won’t disappear again.”

“I won’t disappear again,” I promised. But all of this left
me in a foul mood. I sat in a state of shock as Saskia left our hotel,
leaving me by myself.

‘You can go out and have fun,’ she had told me as she
rubbed my head like a pet—
why would I want to go have fun?!
I
knew then I was attracted to her more than I had thought. The
skillful hunter meets the wild gypsy girl, and that’s what happens.
He catches her in his net, thinks she is caught for sure, and then
she jumps out and is gone. It sounds like a silly thing: her leaving
me alone for a weekend was tearing me to pieces—but that’s how
it began.

She said I could go out… The last thing I was going to do
was leave that hotel. Not even for five minutes. An obsession
grew hold of me. Where was she going for two days, for two
nights?! I didn’t care, didn’t want to know; yet I wanted to be
with her. I knew I shouldn’t leave the hotel even for a minute.
What if she were to come back before Sunday and I wasn’t there
to greet her? You see what a mess that girl put me in when she
turned the tables on me? It was on that Friday that I really began
to
need
her, that she began to take possession of my soul. I have
never been the same since.