by Roman Payne
“Mademoiselle… or perhaps, Madame… Please just instruct me on one thing… This handsome gentleman you just abandoned in Tuscany… I could see by your tears you were shedding back at the inn, and continue to spill in my car just now, that he is no simple companion nor casual affection, but a great lover and friend. And no doubt from his appearance, and from his own sorrowful face and shedding of tears—which although were fewer than your own, were just as potent and showed to come from a heart just as broken, for no doubt his masculinity restricted some of the tears he would have liked to shed, for I as a man myself know that whatever didn’t pour from his eyes in the way of brine, poured in his heart in the way of blood, and so he was ever deserving of your love and pity… So why on earth should you abandon a man so deserving?! You will let him come back tomorrow at daybreak to a cold Tuscan inn filled with strangers to find his one true love is gone! The hotel keepers will keep the truth from him for the gold that you filled their pockets with. Please tell me why you left him.”
“Dear Sir,” responded the girl with a voice so clear and light and so very feminine that hearing it sent shudders of joy through the masculine chambers of my heart; she looked up at me modestly, soft as a lamb, and her tender cheeks shone with fresh stains of the tears she neglected to wipe, she spoke thus: “Please, Sir, I will tell you all that you ask, for I am deeply indebted to you for driving me down to the port where I can set sail and leave Italy alone, anonymous, and unfollowed… I will surely tell you all and I will not lie to you about whatever you ask of me… never will I lie to you! …for I always acknowledge the generosity of others; only I beg of you that you do not ask me where I am going, nor why! For if I tell you the truth, it will put you in a terribly awkward position. The story is so sad, and its participants are such undeserving victims, that you will certainly feel obliged to tell Saul—(‘Saul’ is the name of the man with whom you saw me this morning)—you will feel obliged to drive back to Tuscany to find him and tell him all that I told you and where I am sailing to, for he does not deserve the fate that awaits him, neither do I. So please, Sir, again I will tell you the truth if you ask, only please… please… do not ask!” With these words spoken, she resumed spilling tears. I kept my silence, and remarked to myself the rare nobility of this remarkable girl for the fact that she begged me not to ask her about her secret for the mere reason alone that she would refuse me no favor and tell me no lie, but that she thought it better for the outcome of her story for me to remain ignorant. She and I continued down the Italian road, as the golden evening sun made its heavenly fall.
Only once more did the girl and I speak before reaching the port at Civitavecchia. It was a moment she had stopped crying and was looking sadly out at the landscape passing by. I took the opportunity to ask her name, and she turned her big eyes to me which were still soft with tears. She fluttered her eyelashes, her eyes sparkling—a slight hesitation—then she answered: “Saskia.”
I, who am a seasoned studier of characters, took this hesitation and fluttering of eyelashes to be a sign that she was deciding whether or not to lie to me about her name, but in the end she had told me the truth. Saskia, I knew, was a name that belonged to the Saxon people. The only Saskia I’d ever heard of was the wife of the painter Rembrandt. She smiled after she told me her name, as though she were happy she had not lied to me, that she had told me the truth after all. She then asked me my name. I told her.
“Enchantée1,” she replied in French, and then turned back to look out at the road and the world passing outside the window.
1 ENCHANTÉE: (Fr) "Nice to meet you." (Feminine form. Root of English word “enchanted”)
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.
Once Saskia’s boat was out of sight, I approached the dock where the boat had launched to enquire about its destination. “Yes, Sir? That boat, you ask? It is bound direct for Tripoli, Sir, in Libya.”
“Tripoli?!”
“Yes, Sir! First and final destination!”
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.
Chapter Two
Excited by the intrigue, I ordered my driver to take us quickly back to Tuscany, back to the inn at Petrognano.
“Wouldn’t it be more reasonable, sir, to find a hotel here and stay for the night? We could leave at the point of day.” “I’m not interested in reason, but in literature! Thank you, though, for your input. Off we go!”
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.
Sau
l 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.
Chapter Three
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….”
“I am the other man she went away with.”
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.”
“What do you say? She is in Rome?”
“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 f
or 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!”