by Roman Payne
Chapter Thirteen
“My dear,” I said to the floor in the darkness, “You cannot sleep on the wood. Take your bed, I will sleep down there.”
The girl rolled a little and opened her delicate eyes. “No, no,” she purred, “you need the bed. You were sleeping on the hard stones in the street. So I get the hard wood. Let’s sleep, both of us. Goodnight….”
“Goodnight.” I rolled onto my back in the dark and contemplated this magical child who had taken me unconscious into her home and sacrificed her bed. Her parents were no doubt asleep in a nearby room. I worried about them entering. Her poor old father would bring his sword, and I had no such weapon to meet him with. How was this my fault? I was recently sleeping in the street. This bed came by surprise.
Daylight flooded the room and the warm Barcelona sun cracked the mud on the windowpane where it had rained in the night—it was the only window in the little apartment and it went out to the little balcony. The window was behind my head. The girl brought me coffee and was surprised that I took sugar. This was the first day we spoke as two people. “Somehow I thought you would take it black,” she said.
“I am a man. I like to taste sweet things: honey and roseoil, a woman’s skin scented with amber, vanilla and myrrh, and other things that are feminine. You are a woman. You enjoy musky men, and black coffee.”
“You are right,” she laughed. Her clothes were changed now and she wore a pink dress that was so short that I noticed she had on underneath white cotton panties with a pink trim. There was no jewelry on her fingers, neither on her wrists, although around her neck she wore a golden locket shaped like a heart. It appeared to be fairly precious. After she brushed her hair by the mirror, she sat beside me on the bed, showing perfect confidence.
I asked her, “Are your parents in the house?”
“Nope. They are… They’re not here.”
“Then how did you get me up into your room?”
“Golya, the maid, she helped me. We both carried you inside and undressed you.”
“Undressed me?” I looked past her and noticed my suit of evening clothes and silk foulard; they’d been ironed and were hung on the wall behind her empty wooden chair. “Golya and I carried you, then I sent her away. She won’t be coming back. I sent her to her parents in the country. She usually sleeps here though.”
“Here, where?” I looked around the room. There wasn’t so much as a cubby hole for a maid to sleep in. Near the wall where my clothes were hanging, a limp curtain was strung to conceal, rather poorly, a makeshift kitchen. “So there are many other rooms in this house?”
“No, no! Not many! Not even one more! This is it! It’s just a room in a building with other tenants. But Golya sleeps in the common stairwell. There is a little closet with a bed only so big. See that door over there? In it is a little bathroom. And behind you is the window that goes out to the balcony where I play my guitar at night.”
“Hmm,” I said, “How long have you lived here? And, dear girl, excuse me for asking, but you don’t seem to be of any great age—where are your parents?”
“I’ve lived here nine months! Can you believe it by looking around the room? So you know, every night these last nine months—that is to say every night since I’ve been in Barcelona— I’ve spent every evening, and most of every night, playing my guitar on my balcony. And every night sleeping in this tiny bed you’re in. But now I can stop and give this room back to the landlord because I found you, just as I knew I would find you: sleeping in the road in fine clothes.”
With this last phrase of hers, I became convinced that the girl was mad.
“My parents, you ask? That’s a long story—a story for another time. Just don’t think about them. Don’t trouble yourself about anything. Except don’t forget one thing… don’t forget where you were born! Where were you born, anyway? Your Spanish is good but I can tell you’re not Spanish—just like I am not Spanish. How do you feel, by the way? The jaundice is finally leaving your skin….”
“Jaundice?!” I stood up so quickly that the poor girl rattled on her bed. Grabbing at my skin, my hands trembled. I looked in the mirror… So terrified I was! My entire skin was dark yellow!
“I believe you were poisoned with copper,” she told me, “‘Vert-de-gris’, I think it’s called in French—in English I believe it’s called ‘verdigris.’ I read about this poison in a novel once… that in itself is a funny story… I was walking home to this room one evening when a strange man came from the shadows, a very tall man in a black suit, and he handed me a novel… a book, you see… and he said, ‘I think you dropped this, Miss.’ Well I hadn’t dropped it. It wasn’t even mine; but before I could say so, the stranger disappeared. I looked closely at the novel. It looked new, like it hadn’t even been on the ground. I think he lied about the whole thing. Anyways, I took this novel home and read it cover-to-cover in one night. It was a strange novel indeed! When it began, the hero had been poisoned with copper vert-de-gris. I was so shocked by the descriptions of the poisoning, and so afraid that such a thing was possible, that I went out first thing the next morning and bought all the proper antidotes for copper poisoning—you know, chelating agents1 and such. I was horrified that I might need them someday; and I did end-up needing them… to help you! So, you did eat copper!, didn’t you?!”
“I ate opium,” I said, “Poisoned opium. It was green.”
“Oh!” She then blushed as much as a girl can blush, and she hid her face in the blanket that was against my legs. I felt a warm tingling vibration rise through the limbs of my body.
“No,” I said, “you are probably right about your diagnosis of vert-de-gris. In any case, you’d better get back in your chair. You’re too beautiful of a girl to be lounging next to a grown man naked in a bed—even if he does have a blanket over him.”
“Oh, Monsieur! You are naïve!” The child patted me on the forehead as though I were the child. Then returning to her chair a few meters away, she said, “In any case, Mister, I’m the one who brought you here—to Barcelona, I mean—and to this very room. It is now that you are found! Do you hear?” …This statement made me paranoid, then she added, “Now I am found too! Oh, I’ll worry about you, Sir! …but don’t you worry about me…” She then tossed her head back and laughed. “You are a naïve man—yellow skin and all!”
1 CHELATING AGENTS: Used to detoxify the body of metal poisoning by converting the metals to chemically inert forms.
With these strange words of hers, I knew now for sure the girl was mad.
Chapter Fourteen
The Gypsy and the poison…
The poison wasn’t finished with me. I had a high fever the next morning before dawn. I thought I had recovered from whatever I’d ingested, the dizziness was gone, my jaundice had disappeared. Then the fever returned: sweat, delirium, and ranting.
The previous day had been joyous and gay. After I decided that the girl was crazy, we giggled a lot together, and seeing that I was in good spirits, she played songs for me on her guitar. She plucked a haunting Spanish piece in a minor key; then she sang a song that she wrote in English, which she’d sung on her balcony the night of my accident: “Ceylon,” it was called. She then played a Romanian gypsy song. Her voice was enchanting, melodic, it pranced from note to note with ease and fluidity.
Now it was night. The moon outside her window was halffull and waning. ‘That moon says I’ve been here a whole week,’ I said to myself, ‘Do you remember the fullness of the moon on my birthday? Now the moon is cut in half. In a week there will be no moon at all. When it starts to grow again, I know I can begin drinking again; and I can begin seducing women again! …I won’t be here with this little girl at that time…
‘Although she is certainly lovely!—one can’t deny it. No, one couldn’t find a more exquisite youth anywhere. Although, she is just that, a youth—and nothing more…
‘Yet where does she come from, this sweet child? She strums her eastern songs as though she’s been sin
ging them since she was a babe… I’m sure she grew up with a tambourine at her feet to collect tips from the passers-by. It seems she has no parents. I’ve heard her speak several languages—and all with a mysterious accent… I can’t place her anywhere. Doubtless, she is a nomad of sorts, like the gypsy in that Romanian song she sings: the one about that female drifter who is a pickpocket, and who amuses herself by stealing the souls of men. A “vagari vulgaris1,” I told myself, “that’s what she is, and nothing more!”
‘No, I didn’t come to Barcelona to meet a transient. I came to Barcelona to devote myself to pleasure. To carouse with blackeyed beauties, Latinate she-wolves, fire-eyed Spanish seductresses with snakelike bodies and an equal devotion to pleasure, women well-versed in matters of love… I dreamt of Spain while I was unconscious tonight. Now that I’m awake I ask myself: What am I doing here?! Why am I lying in the bed of this teenaged Calypso1?, this young, guitar-strumming girl who escaped from a gypsy encampment!’
1 VAGARI VULGARIS: (Latin) Meaning a ‘common vagabond.’ This phrase is of Payne’s coinage: Construction of the Latin verb ‘vagor’ (‘to wander’), and ‘vulgaris’ (‘common’).
…Thus ran my thoughts as I drifted to sweet sleep in the girl’s little bed that night. While she, dear self-sacrificing angel, slept on a pile of her girlish clothes on the floor.
It was then about four in the morning that I awoke with a terrible fever. She awoke too and spent the rest of the night boiling herbal infusions to drink, to bring my fever down.
With the attention she paid me, I felt shame for having dismissed her the night before as a mere runaway gypsy-child getting in the way of my fun. Carousing with mature Spanish women was the furthest thing from my thoughts as I lay with a fever, an invalid, fortunate to have someone to take care of me. The fever started with my hallucinating of strange things: animals that looked like men, the presence of ghosts in the room, looming monsters, and the like. The poor girl had become afraid by my thrashing-about, screaming nonsense: “Do you see them?! Do you see them?!”
“See what?!”
“Those beardless fish! Why are they building fires in the room?! Where are we now?! Greece?! [And so on….]”
Sleepy-eyed, and docile as a lamb, she went and boiled water. She gave me to drink a bicarbonate solution. She fed me chelating agents. Then she put a cold compress on my forehead. She declared I had a ‘dangerous temperature.’ And the next hours were spent with her cooking me hot teas and infusions to sip, preparing poultices for my back, my stiff arms, and my legs.
1 CALYPSO: The name in Greek (Καλυψώ) means “I shall hide,” which is what the nymph-goddess did when Odysseus shipwrecked on her island in The Odyssey. She hid him from the world for seven years.
“Drink some tea,” she said to me, “and tell me where you were you born.”
She pressed a wet washcloth to my forehead.
“Drink some water.”
“I am going to die,” I told her.
“You are not going to die. You were meant to fall sleep in the street dressed in fine clothes. And right now, we are meant to be here in this room, you and I. Soon you will take me to the town where your father was born. We will travel together.”
“Don’t you think it is weird to speak to a man like this?” “No, I need to help you.”
“How do you know it is you who needs to help me and not the other way around?”
“You are in greater need than I am at the moment. And it is important that you stay alive, since your life is an important one—although right now, your life is a puzzle to me.”
“Right now ‘my life’ is a puzzle to me as well.”
“That is why I need you to help me. Give me information so I can put the puzzle together.”
“Why?”
“Why?!” Suddenly she was filled with exaltation, “Because everything depends on it! Our destinies are entwined, yours and mine!”
I waved my hands in annoyance. She had begun to sound like one of those young girls in a convent who reads too many novels. She went on…
“Do you really think I would have spent the nine months of my life living in this tiny room in Barcelona if I weren’t waiting for you to appear as you did? I like Barcelona well enough, but I like Paris better. I could have spent these last two years in Paris looking for Adélaïse. But instead I spent two years playing my guitar to an empty street at night, waiting for you to stumble into view.
You would think from these strange words of hers that my hostess was a complete fanatic, a gullible nutcase who was madly in love with me, (or ‘the idea of me’ at least); but I would soon learn that this was not the case. The truth of our situation was much more interesting than my intuition had picked-up on. She knew what she was doing. She was a clever child, crafty and wild—but not at all crazy…
“Who is Adélaïse?” I asked.
“Oh, Adélaïse! She is my best friend! We haven’t seen each other since we were eleven. We were classmates at the boarding school in London, we were inseparable. I loved her and she loved me. To know about her, you have to know about my life… I grew up in Holland, in a small city not far from Amsterdam. My parents had one goal for me as a child: they wanted me to learn English. So when I was very young, (only six years old), they used all of their savings—making tremendous sacrifices, and depriving themselves of all of life’s comforts so they could afford it—and they sent me to a private boarding school in London. During the five years I spent at that school, Adélaïse and I had a perfect friendship. We discovered together what it meant to be girls …to be people of all things—and of all things, what it meant to be alive! …This sensation lasted until my final spring at the boarding school: That sad spring. Oh, it was the saddest spring one could imagine!
“…At the end of winter, my parents travelled down to see me from Holland. They had an accident on the road. Both were killed. When I was told the news, I cried so hard that I had to be watched day and night for a long time. People at the school thought that I would choke to death on my tears …or else they thought I might simply kill myself…
“I remember my obsession with the last two letters I received from my two parents. They each wrote me these letters separately—my mother hers and my father his—which they often did. Neither of them had any close friends, and I was their only child, so they were both very intimate with me and sent me letters about their private lives that often resembled confessions. The only letters I received written by both of them on the same stationery were the inevitable cards sent for Christmas and Easter. Those are times when one is supposed to act joyfully in spite of everything. The rest of the year, they wrote to me secretly and in private. They never hesitated to pour their hearts out, sharing their lives and private thoughts with me. From those two final letters written while they were alive, I learned from both my father and mother that each had been suffering in private for years. So, I knew when they died just a few days after their letters arrived, that both my father and my mother died poor and alone. All of a sudden, I found myself, ‘alive and alone,’ and ‘an orphan’ to boot, all in one single day. It’s true that I had spent the previous five years living without my parents, but they were always a ‘constant’ in my life. I knew their death would change my life, but I wasn’t certain how it would change my life. Because my parents died penniless, consequently leaving me penniless as well, the only thing that I was certain of right away when they died, was that I would have to leave my boarding school…
“‘To go where?!’ I asked myself over and again. The answer came from outside. I had an uncle, the brother of my mother. He was a bachelor of about fifty years, living in Italy, in Verona to be exact. He was wealthy, but his health was starting to turn bad. He learned of my mother’s death, and learned of my situation, through some indifferent relatives of ours. So just two days after my parents died, this uncle took legal custody of me. Being wealthy, he could have easily paid for me to stay at my boarding school in England, but he liked my company
so much in the two days we spent touring around London to visit the monuments, that he wanted me to come live in his mansion. It was a beautiful converted-monastery atop a hill, overlooking the city of Verona. So at age eleven I moved to Italy. That was the last time I saw my best friend, Adélaïse.”
“You never went back to London?” I asked.
“Yes, yes… after I stopped living in Italy, I would go to London when it was more convenient than going to Italy. I had to go to one of those places… You see, my uncle was a very generous man. And he adored me to the heavens. I would certainly still be with him in Verona if he hadn’t died ‘all of a sudden.’
“…Unlike my parents, who had no will, my uncle’s will was complete and he updated it every six-months. He had arranged things in it so that when he died, I would benefit from an annual income of two-hundred pounds sterling, which I could draw from every three months for the rest of my life. You know the value of two-hundred pounds… it’s a respectable income even for somebody with a family, so just think how a young person on her own could benefit!
“…Before coming to Barcelona, I sought a new life by travelling to new cities, destinations I chose according to the caprices of my wanderlust at any given time. All my wanderings were funded, thanks to my dear, loving uncle, without whom I would only have an eleven-year-old kid’s education; and I would be working as a waitress in some miserable café in London, or back in Holland…
“…But just as my uncle was generous in his protection of me, he was also generous in his jealousy. He had his lawyer add it to his will that should it ever be discovered that I live with a man, or were to marry a man, or do anything with a man, I would no longer receive my two-hundred pound income. His will explained it in nice enough terms: when a girl is a demoiselle, her parents or guardian should take care of her, be they living or deceased; but once she is a lady, a dame, it is her husband who must take financial responsibility. That was the legal, rational, explanation, although it only covered marriage. Elsewhere in the will it explained—always in well-intentioned terms—that his estate was free of obligations to pay me my income after his death if it were discovered that I was ‘involved in any romantic way’ with a man.”