The Wanderess

by Roman Payne

  Chapter Four

  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 terre1, 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.

  1 VENTRE À TERRE: (Fr) “Belly to the ground,” very fast.

  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.

  Chapter Five

  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

  …And there it was!

  In a newspaper clipping I had saved from over three years back, there was the following announcement:

  * * *

  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.”

  1 Payne describes this mania for scouring newspapers for character ideas as a trait common among certain novelists, the best of them being Fyodor Dostoevsky. The reader will note that Payne doesn’t uses this method and takes almost no interest in current events. He relies almost completely on his imagination for character invention. If a woman or friend in his life doesn’t supply a character, then it might be a stranger, but never a newspaper. [Editor]

  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 o
f 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.

  1 Histoire de ma vie, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Vol. 10 – Ch. II, Ed. Robert Laffont.

  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?”

  “I have some literary research to do here in Calais.”

  “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….

  Chapter Six

  Saul and I took a private dining-room at the Lion d’Argent; its windows looked out over the sea, and at all the boats in the port. From where we sat, we could see everyone who was leaving, or
coming into, the port of Calais, right down to the clothes they were wearing; although I told Saul I needed my new eyeglasses to see anything in detail. I informed him that this elegant restaurant where we were dining used to be a cabaret where ambassadors and ministers passing between England and France could enjoy the most expensive French and English girls in the North of France. Saul informed me with a laugh that he was glad his days of debauchery were past. “My wanderess cured me of my transient heart,” he said, that used to need to go wandering itself to find those short-lived pleasures and the mediocre love among les filles de joie1.

  Saul and I dined on the fine delicacies fished from the coast of northern France, and washed our feast down with champagne and white wine from Sancerre. After we had stayed desire for food and drink, I pressed Saul to tell me his story. He began telling me of the events that followed what I knew: After he went to Florence without Saskia, after he came back and I drove his miserable soul down to the port at Civitavecchia to sail to Tripoli. I knew when I heard the start of his adventures in Tripoli that it was going to be an amazing story, so I begged he stop his tale, that the dishes be cleared, that the wine be finished with haste, and a good bottle of cognac be brought.

  I asked Saul to tell his tale in full, and to tell it right. And since I am a literary man, I begged permission to transcribe all that I heard. He gave me his word that he would tell me all from beginning to end, and leave nothing out.

  “Spare me no detail!” I said, “Just, for all that’s holy, tell it true and don’t leave anything out… And you needn’t talk slow, I am a fast writer. My pen is ready!” So while the sun beyond our window made its slow and colorful descent over the curve of the earth, and the candles on our table chugged their tall flames, and with no worries to worry me and no hurries to hurry me, I transcribed over the next twenty-four hours, in my new leatherbound notebook The Story of Saul and Saskia from beginning to end. Before we began, Saul took a pipe from his coat and filled it with a smoking mixture2 and he lit the pipe and offered it to me.