Authors: Roman Payne
We arrived at Civitavecchia where all kinds of ships were
present, large and miniscule, ready to take passengers and
fishermen here and there over the girth of this great and pleasant
earth. I asked Saskia if she did not want me to help her find the
ship that was going where she wanted to go, but she again begged
me to remain ignorant. She turned to me and called me with
familiarity by my first name and clasped my hands and with tears
in her eyes she asked that I demand my driver to stop far up from
the piers so that she could wander alone to her ship. She would
find the right ship alone. There were porters and guides who
carried bags for two sous lining the streets. I told my driver to
stop and help the girl get her bags, and as soon as a uniformed
porter came to help her with her bags, she paid him some coins
and he helped her disappear into the crowds of the seaport, off in
the direction of the water.
I who had the whole sphere of literature on my shoulders
the way Atlas bore the earth on his, needed to find out the secret
of this couple named Saul and Saskia. I refused to let it end there.
My curiosity was eating my insides. I told my driver to wait for
me, and slinked off into the crowds towards the port.
It wasn’t difficult to find Saskia again, walking with a hired
porter, as the porter had quite a lot of bags to carry and so walked
slow enough to be overtaken quickly. I lurched in the throngs of
passengers and laborers so as not to be seen should Saskia have
the intuition to turn suddenly around and look to see if she were
being followed. I soon saw her walking with the porter straight
for an enormous vessel that was preparing to leave the harbor.
Her little feet stepped up the ramp and the ship captain’s crew
took the bags from her porter; then, in an instant, the country of
Italy lost its most beautiful inhabitant as Miss Saskia stood on a
surface that had no nationality but belonged to the holy blue sea.
With that, I turned on my heels and walked back to the
car with an imagination that swam wildly in my head. I had no
doubt about where I was headed next.
I was hoping to make it back by daybreak the next day, but
my obedient driver pledged to do his best so that we would arrive
sooner, in the middle of the night. With that we were off with
great speed back to Petrognano. While the scenery passed
outside, I thought about the girl’s voyage to Tripoli. What would
she find when she arrived in Africa? Who would be greeting her?
For what
, or for whom
, was she making this voyage? I wondered
about her story. A beautiful child like that travelling alone to
Libya? I was certain that this story had an unusual mystery, and it
wouldn’t be too long before I would find out that I was right.
There
was
a mystery—one stranger than I could imagine.
In the darkest hour of night, we arrived back in
Petrognano. The inn looked different on this moonless night,
illuminated only by the numerous stars. The black forms of the
olive trees rustling in the wind seemed to pass like ghosts over the
elusive landscape. The air smelled of dying grass. A weary porter
came in the silent yard to usher me to my room. I bid him
goodnight and requested to be woken a half-hour before dawn.
He said of course, that he would be seeing me very soon.
I read a little bit by a candle and then blew it out and fell
asleep. The room was still dark when I awoke, and the bluish
light of dawn was soaking into the blackness of the night sky as I
entered the cold yard where the dew was dropping down on the
fence, the lawn, the tables and chairs. I asked that my coffee be
brought to me.
The coffee was strong, and despite the lack of sleep, I felt
strangely refreshed. I enjoyed taking notes about this beautiful
country in my leather writing-book at the onset of dawn as the
autumn birds sang timidly in their dark nests. A half-hour passed,
the sun began to rise, bold and beautiful. I saw golden dust
picking-up on the horizon with the arrival of a car.
Saul returned to the inn at daybreak as promised. His
driver opened the door and Saul’s tall figure stepped out and
began to walk towards the inn. His suit that had looked elegant
the day before was now wrinkled as though he had not changed
out of it during the night. I gathered that he hadn’t slept at all.
His face was puffy and white, like the skin of a cadaver. The only
color shone in various splotches of red on his cheeks. Now that
he gazed at the inn where he mistakenly believed his beloved lay
sleeping, waiting for him, his face grew hopeful, his eyes widened,
a uniform complexion filled-out his cheeks and he beamed with
health and joy. While Saul walked through the yard to the Villa
B***, the porter chased after him with his luggage. I watched Saul
disappear behind the front door of the inn where the reception
desk was. The door closed. I heard a moment of silence. My eyes
made a cursory inspection around the entryway to the inn and I
saw various workers, porters, attendants, maids and valets and the
like, all busy at simple tasks as they began the day of work. As
soon as everyone heard the sound of a human body fall and
thump loudly against a hollow wooden floor, these valets and
attendants and porters dropped their tasks, their buckets and
ladders, and scurried in to see what had happened.
I too joined the bustle at the reception. We were quite a
crowd. We saw the gentleman had lost consciousness, had fallen
on the floor and hit his head. He looked quite dead. The porters
scurried to find a nurse. I asked the concierge what had
happened. He told me that he had informed the gentleman that
the young girl who had been staying with him at the inn had left
the day before and that she had given no word as to where she
was going. She had checked out, taking all her luggage with her,
and left in the car belonging to some, quote: ‘other man.’ He
apparently didn’t recognize
me
as that other man. The concierge
said the gentleman suffered some kind of seizure, then fainted.
This whole scene gave me a feeling of disgust. I looked at the
calm expression of the concierge to whom these events meant
nothing as the girl’s gold clinked in his pockets, and with the
greatest sorrow and pity at seeing the unconscious gentleman
lying on the ground, I thought of how sorrowful he would still be
when he would wake up and learn from me that the news is true,
that his mistress is no longer in the country, that she is sailing
away from Europe, coasting along over the hot, blue sea.
Before the gentleman regained consciousness, he was carried by
four porters into an empty bedroom that was down the hall from
the concierge. I went into the café to drink another coffee and
asked that I be informed when the man’s health allowed that I pay
him a visit. When I was told that he was awake and receiving
visitors, I walked down the hall and stationed myself outside the
door of the bedroom where I overheard the owner of the inn
repeating to Saul that the girl had definitely left the inn, that she
had left with some other man, and no one at the inn had any idea
where she had gone to, although it was certain that she wasn’t
coming back. I heard a groan so horrible in pitch; I stepped back
and watched the owner of the inn appear in the doorway before
me, clutching his hat, looking pensive and unhappy. He glanced
at me, bowed deep with respect, and passed. I followed him with
my eyes and then introduced myself into the room that was
empty except for a single bed upon which Saul was sprawled-out,
fully-clothed, a nightstand beside him. He looked as though he
would die at any moment. His face and neck were flushed bonewhite except for the lump of pink on his neck where his Adam’s
apple rose and dropped as he took feeble swallows of air. The rest
was white and lifeless, except for the rims of his eyelids, which
were purple with sleeplessness and an excess of tears.
I approached the bedside, “Forgive me for entering
unannounced. (I recall we spoke in French, as he didn’t speak
Italian.) I heard about your situation with your charming
companion, and since I was present yesterday when the two of
you said your touching farewell in the yard before you left for
Florence, and was witness to the strong emotions and vows of love
exchanged between you two, I cannot help taking a great interest
in your case, and the outcome of your affair.”
“It’s awful,” he said to me, “It has to be a lie! She is not
this cruel…
Is she
this cruel?! It is true then! This woman is going
to kill me…”
“I myself have been witness to the cruelty of women,” I
told him, “and am constantly amazed at womankind’s threshold
for cruelty; however, I was also a witness to the tears and amount
of love and devotion this particular young creature showed for
you as she left here yesterday. And in my experience, when a
woman’s cruelty is combined with love and devotion, it is almost
always without exception an act performed not out of treachery,
but as a painful self-sacrifice for the good of her beloved, to obtain
for him a future bounty where he would not know how to obtain
it for himself, or have the courage, patience, or foresight to obtain
it. Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into
the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have
strength where we do not.”
The poor devil’s face did not react positively to what I was
saying. He remained pale and lifeless. “I just came back from
Florence,” he told me, “where I learned that I had lost all that was
important to me in this world, other than my mistress. Last night
was the most painful… I spent the night in a graveyard, trembling
beside a small tomb where there were no flowers, only a simple
stone etched with a phrase that tore my soul to pieces every time I
read it. I read it and reread it thousands of times until nothing
remained of my soul except tiny scraps that were held together by
the consolation that my beloved was here at this inn waiting for
me. Then in the dark hours before dawn, I left that tomb and that
person who lies beneath it forever and I returned here to find my
beloved mistress has left me too. It appears she went away with
another man. I don’t understand how it is possible….”
When I said this, Saul shot upright in bed. He shook
violently. His face that had been pale turned red and his eyes
burned like fire. His lips curled with both the hope that there
now stood before him someone who knew where his mistress
might be, and the rage that he was now looking at the devil who
stole his beloved. He reached into his pocket, muttering about a
knife, then a pistol, “I’ll kill you!” he shouted. But finding neither
knife nor pistol, he tore the blanket off his body and leapt from
his bed, “I’ll strangle you!”
“Settle down! Listen to me carefully, please lie back in
your bed. I’ll tell you the rest of the story…” I approached the
bedside, sat down and urged Saul to listen calmly. “This is the
reason why I came back to find you: Yesterday your mistress was
determined to leave this inn
by herself
as soon as you left for
Florence. She arranged for a car to take her in the evening to go
to Rome…
“Because I took a liking to you two, at noontime yesterday
when I observed you from afar as you told her you would be back
for her in the morning at daybreak, whereupon you two would
never again part company—you see, sir, I have a tender heart for
such romantic moments, even when I am not a lucky
participant—so, because I took a liking to you two as a couple, I
decided that I needed to take her to Rome
myself
, so that I could
find out where she was ultimately going, and why, so as to return
here and report this information to you. Don’t you realize, if it
hadn’t been I who had taken her, it would have been someone
else? And that someone certainly wouldn’t have come back to tell
you
about it—for very few men have tender hearts when they have
nothing to gain, but much to lose. And that girl of yours is much
to lose.”
“No, she is not in Rome because there are no boats in
Rome. Your mistress wasn’t sure exactly
how
to leave Italy. In
Civitavecchia, I told her she could catch a foreign-bound boat,
and so to Civitavecchia I took her. The whole trip down, she
cried, and cried. She appeared no less miserable than you do now.
And the reason for her sorrow was simply because she was leaving
you. This I promise. Oh, women!—you
are
mysterious creatures!
I did find out
to where
she was leaving you to, but I did not find
out
why.
She tried to conceal from me her destination, asking me
not to inquire for she did not want you to know. She foresaw that
should she tell me her destination I would be inclined to come
find you and inform you of the fact. She knew I wouldn’t hide this
information from you because she said that you were undeserving
of the misery of which I would judge you an unfortunate victim
upon hearing the story. She tried to hide her destination from
me, but my duties to humanity obliged me to investigate. I found
out that she was going to Tripoli; and it is to Tripoli she is now
travelling at this very moment we speak.”
“Tripoli!” Saul cried. His face contorted with the awful
realization of what the world was doing to his poor life. “Insane
gods have written this story!” he cried, “Ô, why?, I ask, why would
Saskia have gone to Tripoli of all places?!” Hearing Saul rant like
this, I couldn’t help smiling. ‘It just keeps on getting better and
better,’ I thought. The miserable man then quit his bed and ran
for the door. Before he could escape, however, I grabbed hold of
his shirt… “Don’t rush, old boy—I’ll help you! I helped
her
, after
all, so I can equally help
you
. Now tell the porter to ready your
bags. I will have my driver take us to Civitavecchia this very
instant.” I turned away and shook my head wondering why I was
getting involved in such a drama. It had already been a long week
of travel for me. I turned back to Saul and said, “I should really
stay off the road, but… I’m a foolish romantic at heart, and a
literary man besides; I want to get you on the next boat to Tripoli
so you can reunite with your beloved Saskia.”
When I said this, Saul stopped weeping and embraced me.
“That’s right!” he trembled, “Her name is Saskia! How did you
know?”
“She told me!” I laughed, charmed by the simplicity of his
question, “And she told me that you are named Saul. But don’t
worry about me. Come, let us drive you to the Italian port. We
must set you to sail, old boy. You are on your quest—and I am on
my chore; you will find your girl again—down on the African
shore!”