Authors: Roman Payne
We left Siena then with most of our worries behind us. I say
“most” of our worries, because there were two black clouds on the
horizon hunting down the sun, two things that threatened our
relationship. The first was our conversation back in Siena where
Saskia said to me in effect that her allegiance to me came
after
her
allegiance to her fortune. The second came in an envelope whose
sender and contents remained a secret that Saskia guarded from
me the whole time we were in Italy. This envelope had been
delivered through her estate and was given to her at her bank
when we stopped on our way out of Florence to collect her
income. She wouldn’t tell me who’d sent the letter. I asked
several times, and each time she said to me, “I’ll not only tell you,
but I’ll give you the letter so you can read it yourself. All you have
to do first is tell the driver to turn around and take us to the
country where you were raised…”
“From where then?”
I kept silent.
“I see you’re not going to tell me. Very well, forget it.”
So we carried on, travelling northwards.
We soon arrived in a place called Staggia: a quaint little
village with a magnificent castle, one third of the way to Florence.
There we stopped and said farewell to our driver. It was a village
recommended to us in Siena, a place to stop not only for the
castle, but to stay at a certain travelers’ inn: Il Focolare
1
. It was
said to be a famous stopover for people travelling from southern
Italy to Florence.
It was afternoon when we checked-in to Il Focolare. The
inn was very rustic. Everything was made of wood. A little boy
who appeared dim-witted came outside to fetch our bags. He
brought them inside to the innkeeper who greeted us with his
wife. Both were light-eyed and jovial, dressed in peasant clothes.
Near the check-in counter, a fire crackled away in a giant stone
hearth. It was now autumn and the air had become chilly. A
number of elegantly-dressed travelers were gathered downstairs
in the dining room which adjoined the lobby. They were eating,
as it was still lunch hour.
The innkeeper only spoke Tuscan and Italian, so Saskia
had to translate everything he and I said to each other. I checkedin with my real first name and an assumed last name, as I was now
paranoid that word of my travels would get to Tripoli. Saskia used
an entirely false name to protect her inheritance, since we were
sharing a room.
When I said that my name was Saul, the innkeeper looked
at me long and steady. There was something singular about his
gaze. It wasn’t
unfriendly
… it was just
singular
. He finally smiled,
gave me our key, and explained to Saskia in Italian how to find
our room.
In the hallway, we passed two Parisian ladies, they were
dressed elegantly. They complimented Saskia on her beauty. She
thanked them and gave equal compliments and asked if they liked
staying here at this inn.
“Oh, it’s very fashionable!” one exclaimed, “All of the best
people come here. Of course it is very rustic, and the innkeeper
and his wife are humble to the point of being eccentric… the
innkeeper walks with a limp, and his wife makes her own clothes!
…but all that goes to make this place as charming as it is!”
“That’s very nice,” we said, and left the two ladies and
went to our room.
Saskia wanted to visit the castle right away,
then go for dinner in a restaurant in the village—we were only
planning to be in Staggia one night and were anxious to get back
on the road to Florence early the next morning. I pleaded with
Saskia to stay with me at the inn that afternoon and evening,
suggesting that we extend our stay in Staggia an extra day to visit
the castle in the morning. There was something about the inn
that attracted me in a strange way; it reminded me of my life from
a long time ago; it reminded me of home. I’m not sure if it was a
home I ever really knew, or a home I only dreamed of.
Something, if only the way it smelled, urged me to remain close
and not leave too soon. Saskia was urgent to travel on, for reasons
I didn’t know, but she agreed to stay a second night. I left the
room and went to the counter to reserve for a second night; then I
met Saskia and we went to the dining room to eat a late lunch.
Our two French ladies were not in the dining room, and it
seemed that all the other diners were Italian. The talk of our
neighbors grew lively. As I couldn’t understand any of what they
were saying, Saskia amused me by translating the gossip she heard
around us. She then got into a conversation with two Italian girls
of her age. They were from Rome, and they were with their
mother; and none of the three spoke French—nor English, nor
Spanish, nor any other language that I knew—so I quickly grew
tired of this meeting and told Saskia I was going to go out to the
yard of the inn to sketch with my new pastels that she bought me.
She said she would be out soon.
I went into our room to get my tablet and box of pastels,
and when I came down again, I passed the innkeeper who was
staring at me with the most curious look. I proceeded out to the
yard and entered the garden where I found a bench and sat to
begin sketching a wild scene of all that I saw: the hills on the
horizon the colors of fire and ash, the sun descending towards
those hills where it would extinguish itself in a few hours. And in
that garden, I sketched the flourishes of wildflowers; the strings of
ivy, those necklaces of nature; and the vines of the red and green
grapes, those succulent jewels of the gods.
I was lost in my picture. Only once did I look up from my
work. I looked over to the inn and there I saw the innkeeper
looking out at me through the tall window. He saw me notice
him and made a faint smile, then bowed his head and turned and
walked away. It may have been an hour after that when I heard
little footsteps crunching the gravel on the path in the garden. I
tucked my sketch away, I didn’t want Saskia to see it until it was
finished.
“There you are!” she laughed. She was cheerful. She told
me that after she stopped talking to the family from Rome, she
started heading out here to find me. While on the way, the
innkeeper and his wife approached her and asked if we would
accept an invitation to have dinner with them.
“Why us?”
“They said that they find us interesting.”
“Where do they want to dine?”
“Here at the inn… but in their private dining room.”
At dinnertime, the innkeeper led us down a long stone
hallway to a circular stairway. We walked behind him and he
limped as he walked, thus we walked very slowly. Atop the
circular stairway, in a circular dining room with a vaulted stone
ceiling, a table was laid for a meal for four. It was a massive table,
and there was a stove in the room emanating heat. A pot on the
stove erupted steam. The steam poured out of small windows
carved in the stone; they brought in a comfortable breeze in that
room, and it was not too hot. On the table was a decanter of
white wine, another of red, some antipasti, fresh-cut flowers.
Our hosts thanked us for giving them the honor of our company,
and we responded that the honor was ours. Saskia told me she
felt faint and needed to splash water on her face, then she
whispered in Italian to the innkeeper and his wife. We asked if
she needed to rest, but she said no, that she was hungry. While
she was in the bathroom, I sat dumb, not being able to speak
Italian. Our hosts looked at me with curiosity. When Saskia
returned, her hair was tied back and her face was damp. She said
she felt much better, and she ate the antipasti with great appetite.
“How did you both come to be innkeepers?” I asked.
Saskia translated my question and then said to me, “They say that
they are not really innkeepers. Or rather, that they didn’t set out
to become innkeepers. It all happened by accident.”
“We are originally farmers,” explained the man, “My wife’s
parents and my parents were all farmers. And this inn used to be
a giant family farm that my grandparents built seventy years ago.
We inherited it when they died, and we continued farming—
mostly grains, root vegetables, herbs, and milk-goats for their
cheese. Then, four years ago, the government closed the main
road joining Rome to Siena and Siena to Florence; so travelers
began taking the road that goes through our village of Staggia.
Overnight, the whole village changed: our castle, for example,
began to resemble an anthill in a desert, with all the visitors
scurrying around it morning till night. At this same time, people
started coming to our farm to ask if they could pay to stay the
night …you see, there are no inns in Staggia. So little by little, we
started changing old barns and animal sheds into guest rooms.
Then, before you know it, we had the town’s one and only inn!”
“That is the way most things seem to happen in life,” I said
to the innkeepers, or ‘farmers,’ rather, “Our most interesting life
changes seem to arrive by complete accident. A chance meeting
will inspire a new venture that one would never have considered
before.”
“Yes,” she smiled, “We are searching for my best friend. I
haven’t seen her since I was eleven. We were told that she is now
living somewhere in Tuscany. Have you ever had a French girl
stay here named Adélaïse?”
“Why?!” asked Saskia.
“That is too bad,” said his wife.
The innkeeper then excused himself to use the bathroom
and limped out of the dining room. While he was gone, his wife
made a comment to Saskia: “His limp is getting better every
week. He used to barely be able to walk, right after his accident…”
Saskia sat still looking frightened. The woman kept talking until,
a few moments later, her husband reappeared and interrupted
her… “What luck that whoever used the bathroom before me
didn’t pull out the stopper after splashing water on her face!
Look
what I found…
” Everyone at the table peered into his hand.
“Before I pulled out the stopper to wash my hands, I noticed a
gemstone at the bottom of the sink. I think she would miss this!”
Saskia immediately felt in her ears for the earrings I gave
her. She was about to take them out to see if the stones were
missing until I informed her that all the diamonds were in place.
None had fallen out. The innkeeper held up the stone and said,
“It looks to be a very precious sapphire!”
Saskia made a loud gasp. She reached for her necklace: a
gold heart-shaped locket she always wore—except for when she
slept beside me. I had never seen inside the locket before. Now
she opened it and showed the interior. It had two settings: one
had a blue sapphire, the same size as the one the innkeeper had
found; the other setting was empty. “I bought two sapphires
when I traveled to Ceylon—sapphires are everywhere in Ceylon,
and they are not expensive. One of the sapphires is for me, and
the other is to give to Adélaïse as soon as I find her” She then
turned to the innkeeper, “You saved my life by finding that… If I’d
lost it, that would surely mean that I’d lost Adélaïse forever. I
couldn’t live with that truth!”
The innkeeper went to find a box to put the stone, as well
as the locket, in—since the locket didn’t shut correctly anymore.
Saskia would need to find a jeweler to repair it, and return the
stray sapphire to its setting. I thought about Saskia’s statement:
that she couldn’t live with the truth should it be known that she
would never see Adélaïse again. Don’t we all say that, and isn’t it
an empty phrase: that we couldn’t live knowing we could never
have the other again. Saskia could certainly live if she knew she
couldn’t see me again, likewise I without her… but would I
want
to
live, had I known the truth to be my life would be without her?
Maybe the test of a man, or of a woman, is if he or she is
brave
enough to refuse life
, were it a life without the beloved.
That whole story of the innkeeper finding Saskia’s
sapphire and returning it to her convinced me of one thing: that
he was a noble farmer. He was a man of honesty and integrity.
And that knowledge would prove important for reasons you’ll
soon find out.
The only time that evening when someone other than us
four appeared in that dining room is when the head cook at the
inn brought the plates of food in. We were by now on familiar
terms with each other, so I ventured to ask the innkeeper why he
limped when he walked. Saskia translated his response, saying
that… “…he had a bad accident out in his fields last June… while he
was fixing one of his farming machines…”,
“You see, the machine jumped one of the gears on the
wheel,” said the innkeeper, “and the blade that cuts the grain
struck my thigh. It made a deep gash... So I came back here to
the inn. I bandaged my leg. I went to bed. My wife was visiting
our son in a neighboring village where he lives with his wife and
our grandchildren. She was spending the night there, so I slept
alone here. I woke up in a lot of pain. My whole thigh was
swollen, the pain was really bad. It was already infected. I was
worried I was going to lose my leg—you see, one of my friends
growing up, his father lost his arm because it got cut by a farming
machine… it got infected and then turned to gangrene…
“Mid-morning, my wife was still gone. So I decided to get
to a doctor myself. It took me hours to hobble to the nearest
doctor. He’s in another village. When I got there, I found out the
doctor left that morning to deliver a baby somewhere. My leg was
now so badly infected, parts of it that had been painful before
started to grow numb. I had every reason to fear gangrene. I
went to the apothecary in that village where the doctor lives and I
asked for some medicine. They didn’t know what to do other
than clean the wound. But there was a woman customer there—a
lady, a foreigner, about sixty years old, with long grey hair and
kind eyes—who said she could help me—
and, she did help me!
She suggested we go to my house because I would need to lie
down somewhere for several days without moving. Before we
left, she bought some medicines and some herbs from the
apothecary—medicines and herbs that I had never heard of…
“She helped me get back here to our inn. My wife still
wasn’t back, so this lady stayed to care for me, waiting till my wife
was back so she could give her instructions on what to do. This
lady, I tell you, she was a great healer! She stayed that whole day
caring for my wound, having me take different medicines,
tinctures of special herbs. My wife came back in the evening and
she was very afraid for me. She was grateful to this lady who was
helping me. By evening, the infection was under control. The
good lady said that the risk of gangrene was gone as long as I
continued the treatment. My wife admitted that she didn’t know
the first thing about treating such a wound. She asked the good
lady if there was a way to convince her to stay a few days in case
the infection came back. Since we run an inn, we offered her our
best room to sleep in. We had our cook go to great lengths to
prepare elaborate meals for her. After a few such meals, she told
us she preferred simpler meals, as she wasn’t demanding in her
tastes.
“…And so,” he continued, “to make a long story short, this
woman, this lady, saved my leg last spring. She became a great
friend to my wife and to me, and I am in debt to her forever. I
may still limp, but I have my leg; and the limp is going away. She
was back here a month ago and stayed with us, and she checkedup on my leg. She said the limp will soon be gone and I’ll be like
new. As for her, I pray that she’ll recover just as I have. You see,
she just suffered the most horrible shock. I’m afraid I’m partly
responsible, although I was only trying to help her. She was the
healthiest person I ever met, I know she will recover quickly. I
pray to God that she will. She’s back in Florence now, ill from
shock. But tomorrow, early morning, my wife and I are going to
set off for Florence to care for her as she cared for me.”