The Wanderess (3 page)

Combining mankind’s love of habit with the frequency of the
déjà-vu phenomenon, it seems like we are creatures of repetition.
Here I was again on the road from Tuscany to the seaport at
Civitavecchia. Inspired by love and compassion, we traveled
ventre à terre
¹
, kicking up dust. This time, I didn’t have a beautiful
young girl crying beside me. I had a handsome gentleman crying
beside me—and how he cried! My Italian research trip was
certainly taking an interesting turn. I begged Saul to tell me his
story and that of his mistress, but he was in no condition to talk.
His sadness brought him a fever, and I had to order my driver to
fetch cold compresses for him at several intervals during the
journey. Only one time did he speak on the way to the port, when
he swore on his honor that he would remember his debt to me
until he saw me again and could repay me. “We are certain to
meet again,” he said, “I will pay you then all that I can. Remember
my name is my word of honor.
I am Saul, the son of Solarus
.”

The devil set the table that day when Saul told me his
patronymic:
The son of Solarus.
“The son of Solarus?!” …Where
had I heard that name before?! I couldn’t place it. It sounded so
familiar! Unsure of the reason, although haunted by the
unsettling feeling that this story concerned me more than I
initially suspected, I sat pensive and turned my eyes to look at the
countryside as we rode along.

Arriving at the port of Civitavecchia, I helped Saul find a
boat to Tripoli. I paid for his ticket and asked if he had much
money to get him by. He shrugged his shoulders and said that all
the money that they had, he and his mistress, happened to be in
her purse at the moment. I took out fifteen
sequins
to offer to get
him by. He politely refused saying that he could accept no further
favors from me. His pride and nobility made him too polite to
accept even the smallest banknote as charity, let alone a handful
of gold sequins. But I forced the money on him anyway with the
argument that should all my efforts to first bring his girlfriend to
the port and find out through spying where she was going, then to
return to Tuscany and pull him from his deathbed to drive him
down to the port and get him on a boat so he could follow her to
another continent; if somewhere along the way his efforts to
reunite with his mistress met with failure because of a lack of
money, I would feel that all my charity work would have been for
naught, in which case I’d be greatly annoyed. One doesn’t risk
one’s life to save a cat from a burning house only to take him
down afterwards to the cat-kennel where he will die from neglect
a month later like the strays that share his lot. After he is saved
from the flames, one must find him a loving old widow to adopt
him. This winning argument convinced the unhappy gentleman
to accept the fifteen sequins; then, praising me to the fullest
extent that his energy would allow, he swore he would never
forget the, quote, “sublime generosity of my heart.” Then,
embracing me, the poor devil said for as long as he lived he would
remember me, anticipating the day when he could return the
fifteen sequins I gave him, and perhaps save my life as well.

We both said goodbye and Saul reminded me of his name
fearing I would otherwise forget. Once more hearing his
patronymic made my shoulders tighten-up. I felt confusion. I
racked my brains trying to remember where I’d heard his title
before:
The son of Solarus.
Meanwhile, the porter helped steady
Saul as he walked up the plank, his luggage trailing behind him,
and all disappeared into the ship. As the horn blew and the sun
shone, and the waves turned up on the beach, and a tear rolled
down my cheek, I watched the departing ship for Tripoli and
hoped in my heart that this miserable man would soon reunite
with his beautiful princess. I hoped too that that girl wasn’t the
treacherous and vile creature that she had seemed to be that
morning, rather that she was faithful and virtuous and would have
a good excuse for having left him the way she did. I hoped that
she was good and pure, and their future be a happy one.

Marveling on the nature of love, I headed back to find my
driver so he could take me up that now-familiar road to Tuscany.
This adventure had cost me a little money and a couple days of
my non-infinite life. I was exhausted from lack of sleep, but
overall I was happy to have taken part in this event that would
have turned out differently had I not been there.

I didn’t hear anything else about the matter, and had almost
forgotten about Saul and Saskia, when, back in Paris a couple
months later, I ran across the reason why Saul’s name had struck
me with such familiarity. I’d just returned from Corsica and
Mallorca, and was back home in Paris on a late winter day looking
through some old novel notes from several years back. Attached
to these notes was a newspaper clipping from
The Spy Telegraph.
(The reader will note that in my literary research, I often scour
police reports and espionage newspapers such as
L’Espion
and
The
Spy Telegraph
, as detective and criminal accounts often provoke
interesting ideas for characters.)
¹

ENORMOUS BOUNTY TO BE PAID FOR THE DELIVERANCE
TO TRIPOLI, ALIVE OR DEAD, OF A CERTAIN OUTLAW, A
MAN KNOWN AS ‘THE SON OF SOLARUS,’ GUILTY OF
CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THE KING OF THAT LAND.
THE REWARD: 25,000 LOUIS D’OR, (CURRENTLY VALUED
AT: 600,000 FRANCS).

“Good God!” I cried, “Twenty-five thousand gold louis! Why,
that’s enough to make the wealth of an entire family!—oh, that
poor, handsome young gentleman, he couldn’t have been guilty of
anything that bad…”

The announcement then went on to describe this “son of
Solarus,” and it even showed an artist’s depiction of the wantedman that resembled Saul more or less. The happy announcement
concluded by saying, “Should the son of Solarus be brought-in
alive, he will be promptly executed in one of Tripoli’s fine public
squares for the enjoyment of all citizens present.”

Attached to that saved newspaper clipping was a note
where I jotted a reminder to myself to “someday” write a story
about this “son of Solarus” character, as his sort interested me.
Needless to say, I never got around to writing the story, and over
the years I had completely forgotten about him; but now I realized
why when back in Italy on the road to Civitavecchia, hearing his
name startled and unnerved me.

I read the clipping again and pounded the surface of my
writing desk with my fist. “I put him on the boat, damn it! I
therefore led him to slaughter! …He couldn’t have known there
was a warrant for his head—or else he wouldn’t have gone to
Tripoli the way he did!

“…Maybe he did know,” I further mused, “and it was the
love of his fair Saskia that drove him there despite the risk? Could
it have been so?! Nonsense! How could Saul anticipate lying in a
bed with his beloved without a head?! No, he certainly couldn’t
have known about the bounty on his head. When I put him on
that boat, he didn’t know I was sending him to be butchered…”

I then buried my head in my hands… ‘Now Saul is dead.
That fine, handsome young man with such beautiful manners is
dead…
and I am to blame!
Why didn’t I remember this newspaper
clipping when I was in Italy? My generous altruism combined
with my lousy memory brought an ignoble death to that most
noble of gentlemen! If anyone deserved to live to a happy old age,
it was he. Oh, I am a foolish, old monster, etc…’

While lamenting my goodwill,
I tucked that newspaper
clipping away from my sight and went on with my life. Remorse
passes quickly in winter and nothing was further from my
thoughts when, a year and some months later, while the spring
flowers were in bloom, I ran into both Saul and Saskia again
together in the French town of Calais.

I’d mentioned that I’d had some literary research that was
calling me to the north of France. A mysterious inn called
Au
Bras d’Or
, where the adventurer Casanova claimed to have lodged
while laid-up with venereal disease in Calais after his ten-month
sojourn in England, has stumped scholars for years.
¹
I planned to
solve the mystery by finally locating this elusive inn and detailing
its surroundings. So after the autumn in Tuscany, and the winter
in Corsica and the Balearic Islands I went back to Paris and
worked on a new book for another year. At last, when the first
rays of the glorious spring filled my cheeks at the beginning of
April in the year ****, I collected my literary notes to record my
travels and made my way across French soil to the northern tip of
this illustrious country.

It was a fine day. I had only been in the town for a few
hours when, while strolling down by the piers where the ferries
and freight ships come in and out, I caught a glimpse of England
across the Strait of Dover. The day was bright and the white cliffs
of Dover shone like a shield on the water. I thought how I would
soon need to cross that body of water to meet with the English
ambassador to France and visit a specific garden; but I still had a
few days in Calais to wander around the town, to visit the taverns
and meet local people and travelers, and to fathom the mystery of
Au Bras d’Or.

It was while I was gazing on Dover that I noticed a ferry
some twenty meters down from the elevated deck where I was
standing that was ready to disembark for England. It was the
same ferry that I would take in a few days; so with the aim of
reading the timetable, so as to know when to arrive at the dock to
catch my own boat to England, I wandered down the steps. It was
then I saw something that made me rub my eyes with disbelief:

The crew was about to untie the ropes so the boat could
set sail, but they were waiting for a couple—a young woman and a
man, both very well-dressed—to stop kissing and caressing each
other where they stood on the passenger plank, so that the crew
could pull the plank onto the boat. It became clear as they tried
to separate from each other a half-dozen times, always
unsuccessfully, that the man was going to return to land and the
woman was going to stay on the boat to cross the Channel to
England. She obviously didn’t want him to go, and kept holding
him with all her might as she smothered his face and body with
innumerable kisses. He likewise demonstrated a distaste for her
departure as he returned her kisses with a million testimonies of
his own love. Finally, the captain announced that the plank
absolutely needed to be pulled. The gentleman acquiesced and
stepped down onto the land so the boat could disembark.
Squinting my eyes to see more clearly, I noticed that this man was
the same man I met in Italy a year and a half before! It was Saul!
He was alive!…

As you remember… the last time I saw Saul, I was putting
our dear adventurer on a boat in Italy bound for Tripoli—(Tripoli:
where it had slipped by me that there was a twenty-five thousand
louis d’or bounty on his head [some six hundred thousand
francs…] …where I believed he’d been arrested, tortured, and
finally executed…). But now it was a fine spring day, and Saul was
alive!

Then I saw
her!—
it was Saskia! She was standing on the
ship, separated from her love by a few meters of sea-water,
beautiful as a goddess—Ô, Heavenly Saskia! And to tell how she
had changed in only a year and a half… She was no longer a gypsy
child, now she commanded her full femininity, she had bloomed
into the beautiful perfection of womanhood!

I recall the day I put her on that boat in Italy to sail to
Tripoli, her eyes were then filled with tears of despair. Now her
tears were of love and hope. She blew one more kiss to Saul as the
boat made to disembark. The last time I had seen Saul, it was the
day after a terrible tragedy; he was miserable and disheveled.
Now, he was happy, elegantly dressed in a fine, tailored suit. He
observed Saskia who was still just a few meters away. She was
leaning over the railing, blowing him kiss after kiss, crying,
“See
you soon, my love!”

“À bientôt!, mon amour!”
Saul called back to her. As he
said this, Saskia’s face lit-up as though struck by a sudden,
wonderful idea. I squinted to see. What was she up to? I then
watched the clever girl reach into her purse and pull out a handful
of money. I could not tell how much money as things were a little
blurry from where I stood, but it appeared to be no small sum.
The gold gleamed in the sunshine. Money in hand, she ran over
to the captain who was ordering that the last rope connecting the
boat to France be untied to set sail. Saskia stood on her tip-toes
and put her little gloved-hand to her mouth and whispered
something into the ear of the captain. I saw him then glance
down; and seeing a handful of silver coins in her palm, he smiled
to his ears. She pressed the money into his hand and he called
aloud to his crew: “Throw ‘em ropes back to shore! Send back
yore boardin’ plank!” With these orders, the crew re-connected
the boat with the shore. Saskia laughed with joy, as her plan was
ingenious; she ran across the plank and leapt back into the arms
of Saul so that she could embrace him one final time. With
adoring hands, she gave him a hundred caresses. She kissed his
face all over. She rubbed her eyes against his forehead, her lips
against his arms, and wherever there was skin, or no skin, clothes
or no clothes, the couple embraced and shed happy tears that flew
from their eyes and spilled all over the place.

As soon as the two were satiated to have said yet another
loving goodbye, Saskia cried a final time,
“See you soon, my love!”
and ran back up the plank, and onto the boat, and stationed
herself at the rail to watch her love while the captain and crew
once again pulled-in the ropes, cables and planks. Now the vessel
began to sail, and I watched from afar the beautiful figure of
Saskia growing smaller and smaller, her boat becoming as subtle
as a whitecap on a distant swell of the wild sea. Thus the vessel
made its voyage for the country of England.

As you can guess, this tender scene between a couple
whom I last saw in despair made me curious and very happy. I
couldn’t wait to ask Saul a million questions: What happened
after Italy? How did they reunite? What happened in Tripoli?
Why is Saul’s head still attached to his body? What the devil are
they doing they in Calais? Why is Saskia sailing to England? How
come their goodbye is so joyful this time? When is she coming
back? …With these and more questions nagging at my heart, I
made my way towards the pier, where Saul was walking with a
great smile on his handsome face. As soon as he saw me, he
recognized me immediately. His eyes grew large and he
embraced me. “Dear old friend! What are the chances of seeing
you here? In
this
town of all places?”

“Fortune is back on my side, I’m happy to say! Today I am
in a position to pay you back for the kindness you showed me in
Italy… that kindness saved my life! Here, first take this…” He dug
into his pocket so fast that he nearly tore the fabric. He pulled
out ten gold louis d’or and pressed them into my hand.

“What pleasure to be able to pay back this debt!” He then
tried to give me more than the value of the fifteen sequins I had
given him, but I refused any profit on goodwill. “Let me invite
you to dine,” he said, “Are you hungry? I have so much to
celebrate. How is it that we’re both in Calais? The chances of
this! I am so
happy
to see you! I’m happy for so many reasons!”

I replied to Saul that it would be the greatest pleasure to
eat with him and hear all the stories that had gone on between
himself and his beautiful mistress. I told him I was staying at the
Lion d’Argent
and to meet me there in a quarter of an hour, I
would just go wash-up first… I also wanted to get my leatherbound notebook, as I had a feeling I would want to take notes on
what I heard. And I was right, for it was there at the
Lion d’Argent
that I would hear the most remarkable story I had ever heard.
Now, dear reader, it is with great pleasure that I retell the story to
you….