by Roman Payne
“Your uncle was in the unfortunate position of being in love with you,” I told her, “But what if word gets around that you are keeping me in your apartment?”
“I would lose my income.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“It’s not something of importance to me right now. It’s just an income, and nothing more.”
I envied her that statement. I too have said phrases like, “It’s just money, nothing more.” Although it was always something more. I was an adventurer, living an adventurer’s life. It was always of great concern to me, and of great uncertainty, where the next money would come from, and where it would get me. Sure, I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a wanderess. Thus, she didn’t care about money, only experiences. Whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her.
Chapter Fifteen
The days that followed were filled with fever and nausea, and during the nights I suffered tormenting dreams. After one such night, I woke up in panic. I had recalled that when I left the Hotel Sant Felip Neri on my birthday, I’d filled my pockets with my entire fortune: all my savings and all my jewelry. I had left nothing behind me at the hotel. I was awake now and the girl was standing over me, her hands trembling to press a wet cloth to my forehead. I panicked, and cursed in French, (French is the nativelanguage of my mother, as she grew-up in royal and diplomatic circles; thus it is also my native-language in a sense, it is the language that comes easiest to me when I panic)…
“Putain ! Mais il est où, mon argent ? Je l’ai perdu !” 1 “De quoi parles-tu, mon cher ? 2 What money? “My money! It’s gone!”
“What money?”
“In the pockets of my suit! Before I fell in the street… I had several rolls of gold coins and some bank exchange-letters…”
“Oh?... several rolls of coins and bank exchange-letters…?” she tumbled her head, then burst into laughter, “Don’t worry, my little paranoiac, your money is safe…” and crossing the room to where my suit was hanging on her wall, she took from the pockets the many rolls of gold doubloons and an equal amount of money in lettres de change for a bank in Barcelona. I looked it over, it was all there. Nothing had been lost. I was still rich. I exhaled with relief and felt better all in all, though I couldn’t understand why she’d called me her ‘little paranoiac.’
“Don’t panic, Saul. Everything is in order. When you fell in the street, I was the first person that came to you. No one stole so much as a button from your jacket before I took you inside our apartment.”
“Wait, girl…”
“What?”
“How do you know my name?”
“You told me.”
“I did?”
1 PUTAIN … PERDU ! : Translation: “Fuck! Where is my money? I lost it!” 2 DE QUOI … MON CHER ? : Translation: “What are you talking about, my dear?”
“You don’t remember? When you first thought you were going to die, you told me your name was Saul. ‘I am Saul,’ you said, ‘the son of Solarus. Please remember my name and patronymic to pass them on to those who will have survived me.’ …I asked you then to tell me about your father, Solarus, but you wouldn’t tell me. Will you tell me now? Where did your father come from?”
“Did the money and jewelry fall in the street when I fell?”
“No, it stayed in your pockets. Will you forgive me for going through your pockets while you were unconscious? I thought I might find in them the reason as to why you were unconscious, and that it would help me to revive you.”
“You are a good girl. Take half of the money. It’s yours.”
“No, I don’t want your money.” She put my gold pieces and exchange letters back in my pocket and her cool body fell on my feverish limbs and I felt a great peace with her on top of me. There was no sexuality in her embrace, only friendship. She asked me again in which country I was born, and about the home where my father was raised. Again I dodged the question. This will come up again. My father’s origins were an obsession of hers. You will see why in time, I still didn’t know why myself.
I remembered then what Dragomir had said about the mania parents have about giving their children names that mean bright, shining, or famous, or all three. I had to agree. Over the many years of my amorous life, I had had intimate relations with such creatures of the sweet-smelling sex who were called Alina, Brigitte, Claire and Clarissa, Eleanor, and Ellen, Helen, Lucy, Phaedra, and Phoebe, etc., which all meant more or less: clear, bright, and celebrated. This is the trick that Dragomir had used to guess correctly the meaning of the name of the pubescent girl whom Pulpawrecho had followed through the streets of Málaga. With that in mind, I scrawled: ‘clear, bright, and celebrated’ on a piece of paper, and asked my young hostess what her name was. “Saskia.”
“Saskia?!”
“Yes… Why…? Why do you sound so shocked?” “Does Saskia mean ‘clear, bright, and celebrated?’” “What?”
“Is that what Saskia means?, ‘clear, bright, and celebrated?’” “Nope, not at all. It means: ‘from the Saxon people.’”
Defeated, I wadded-up the paper where I had my divination written down, and I tore it into little shreds and threw the shreds into the stove.
A sadness fell over me then. It was not that I hoped to amaze the girl by guessing the meaning of her name. I just wanted to relate my new friend in Barcelona to the same whimsical girl who visited Dragomir and Pulpawrecho years ago in Málaga, but there was no correlation. I guess I was sad because that story didn’t have an end, and I wanted it to. I wondered where that girl was, and if our paths would ever cross.
I looked at Saskia after my eyes drifted away for a while. I tried to lighten-up. “Saskia was the first-name of the wife of the painter Rembrandt.”
“It was! I’m impressed that you know that. The only reason I know that is because she had my name.”
“Both you and his Saskia are Dutch.”
“No, I am Dutch, but Rembrandt’s wife was from Friesland. They are like Dutch people, except they speak funny.”
“So Rembrandt’s wife… that’s where I’ve heard your name before. Saskia is a beautiful name.” It was no use. Finding out that Saskia didn’t mean ‘clear, bright, and celebrated’, made me depressed. I was sullen after that and went to sleep for an hour. When I woke up, Saskia was touching my forehead: “Your fever has broken, my dear friend. You have recovered. Now we can go to sleep and not worry.”
You can imagine how I hated it when she called me ‘dear friend!’
Saskia spread herself on her nest of girlish clothes on the wooden floor beside my bed and covered herself with a wool jacket to sleep.
‘It’s too bad she insists on sleeping on the floor,’ I thought as I drifted to sleep, ‘It’s also too bad her name doesn’t mean ‘clear, bright, and celebrated.’ If it did, we would have a lot to talk about.’
Chapter Sixteen
Waking up abandoned…
I woke up in a clear, lighted— and empty—room. I saw no girl, received no coffee. Nevertheless, I felt my strength returning— that renewal of health which healthy men take for granted. I got up and walked the four steps to the bathroom. It was the first day in over a week that I got out of bed without help from Saskia. I looked back on the floor to the nest where she slept, and saw not a soul, only clothes. I was used to her by now. Where had she gone? I was suddenly ‘alive and alone’—as hopeless as an orphan!—“Saskia!”
She was gone.
“Saskia!” I screamed again, “Where are you, my little gypsy girl?!” I looked for her in her bathroom, then in the empty hole of a kitchen that was partitioned from her bedroom only by a curtain. I looked for her on her balcony, though since I’d been there she hadn’t gone out even once to play her guitar. She played it several times each day, but always by my bedside. I started to get dressed, and while dressing, I noticed a slice of paper on the table, written in neat, legible handwriting:
Dearest Saul, there is absolutely
nothing for us to eat at home. So I went to buy provisions. Back soon! Your friend, Saskia.
‘Hmm… eat!’ I thought, ‘food…’ I rummaged around her kitchen looking for a scrap of something. I was very hungry. But more than hungry, I was thirsty for a drink of coffee. I also was thirsty for wine. True, I told myself, the moon was in its waning phase and I always avoid alcohol when the moon is growing smaller or not in the sky at all, but this was a special occasion. This was the first day I was well after a particularly messy convalescence. I was well, yes, but I knew I could increase my wellness with a bottle of strong, bubbling wine! I continued to rummage around her kitchen assuming the girl must have stashed at least one bottle of wine. I was wrong. No wine, no food, no coffee, no whisky, nothing. “Back soon,” she says, “…went to buy provisions.” I looked in the pockets of my suit and found in each the rolls of doubloons and my lettres-de-change. “Poor girl, she could have at least used my money to buy the provisions. Why didn’t she use my money?!” I suddenly felt bad for her.
“After all, what are you doing here, Saul?” I asked myself “Saskia suffers every night on a nest of clothing on a wooden floor. She would probably like her bed back. She has been suffering in silence for over a week on the hard floor. She is just like her parents were, with their habit of ‘suffering privately.’ She has taken care of me, she cleaned my suit, she bathes me with a warm washcloth, she depleted her kitchen by feeding me broth when I was weak; and when I was strong, with large European meals she cooked with care. And now she is buying us both food with her own money. I feel bad.”
I decided then that I should leave. I was a burden on the young girl. It was lamentable. Nothing to do but leave. So I finished dressing in my fine suit, tied my silk foulard around my neck, found my shoes, and made to leave.
“Perhaps I should leave her a note?” I wrote a brief explanation in French and left it on the table…
“Saskia, ma chère amie, je suis parti. Vous m’avez beaucoup aidé et, grâce à vous, je suis à nouveau en grande forme. A présent vous devez retrouver la jouissance de votre lit, de votre espace, de votre vie privée. Ainsi, je vous la rends. Adieu, Saul.” 1
With that, I made for the door. I went out into a corridor I’d never consciously seen before, and made to close her front door which, if it clicked, it would lock. But before I closed it I thought, ‘Perhaps Saskia would like to know where I’m going. Would she? Perhaps. Who knows. So I went back inside and amended my note, writing this postscript in English:
“PS: If you want to see me again, for whatever reason, I am staying at the Hotel Saint Felip Neri.”
With that I left Saskia’s home and wandered through the bright morning streets of Barcelona, gaiety in my heart for I’d survived yet another misadventure, no sense of direction as my mind entertained only visions of soft, bubbling wine and a hot bath in a real tub at my hotel suite. I crossed Las Ramblas with haste and felt my money and my future bulging brightly in my pockets. I was healthy again and wore my destiny like a flower in my buttonhole. Little did I know then that dark winds of trouble were brewing on the horizon and they were soon rip my destiny’s petals clean off its stem.
1 TRANSLATION: “Saskia, my dear friend, I left. You* really helped me and, thanks to you, I’m healthy again. But you need your bed, your space, your private life back. Thus, I am leaving them to you. Farewell, Saul.” (*You [vous]: Non-familiar form of address hints that Saul is demonstrating his distancing himself emotionally from Saskia’s care and the intimacy of her bedroom [at least in the modern usage of the French vous/tu.] [Ed.])
Being lost, I stumbled on Hotel Sant Felip Neri by fluke, and greeted the concierge. He was shoveling snuff into his nose and looked at me strangely, as though he at once knew me but had never seen me before. I asked for the key to my room and he stumbled into the back and returned with my two valises and my case of wine.
“You were gone a week, sir. Certainly you didn’t think your room would still be reserved for you.”
I was stupefied; I stared at my valises, at the case, and all I could think of to say was, “At least you didn’t drink my wine.” “No, sir. I have my own wine.”
I asked him for another room, he said “Impossible. It’s high-season. We are all booked-up.”
This made me angry. I waved my arms. I insisted he evict some other guests to make room for me—no avail. He told me that the entire town was booked-up and I would have a hard time finding a room anywhere. This made me absolutely furious and I contemplated beating him across the face. I wanted my bath and my wine in peace.
The concierge apparently gauged my anger and thought it was in his interest to cool me down. He said, “There was a messenger stopped by this morning. He was from the Urquinaona Hotel, not a very nice hotel... rather precarious place. He stopped by to say that their hotel had several vacancies and that if we had to turn any guests away it would be most kind of us to send them to the Urquinaona. Here is their card.”
I took the card which read nothing other than a street address, and room-rates which were very cheap. “How far is it?” “You can walk there. Just go up this way…”
I mumbled some insults at the rat, gathered my valises and my case of wine, and took leave, my mind set on catching the next ship out of Barcelona. Dismissing the idea of taking new lodgings, I walked the opposite direction of this so-called Urquinaona, going instead towards the Mediterranean. I was hoping to leave immediately for Florence, via Corsica.
I’d mentioned my plans were to visit Helsinki and then Saint Petersburg for the white-nights; but in Madrid, my friend Juhani described to me how fast it is to cross the Balearic Sea and the Mediterranean from Barcelona by way of the French paquebots that sail between Corsica and Barcelona; and Corsica and Italy. I had a very good reason to visit Florence…
Already fifteen years had passed, from this time I narrate, since I had last seen my mother. Last time we were together, she was already white-haired and nostalgic. While there I was, in the first flower of my youth, in prime physical shape, and was preparing to leave home to go live in Tripoli to become a fresco painter and work on the side for money as a gold-leafier, gilding the city’s mosques, Christian churches, and temples. My mother would stay behind with the old fisherman and his elderly wife who long ago delivered me from my mother’s umbilical cord and raised me, and who continued to help provide for my mother, and for me my entire life up till that point. My mother fell into my arms and cried. She wished me luck in Tripoli but begged me for both of our sakes to save my money and set my sights on Europe—the continent where life was healthier and a man could easily reach old age. She specifically wanted me to go to Florence, the city of art, for at that age I wanted to be a painter.
When she was a child, my mother travelled with the royal family to Florence and she said it was the most magical city on earth. While raising me, she often talked of the day I’d be grown and wouldn’t need her anymore. She would travel alone to Florence, she said, to finish out her own days in the one city she loved. When I left for Tripoli, she warned me of the intrigues in that place: “Saul,” she made me promise, “Remember to never tell anyone in Tripoli who your father was. But all the while, have inward pride in the fact that you are the son of Solarus—noble Solarus—for he was a great and charismatic man, a leader of men, and his greatness cannot be exaggerated. But in Tripoli, your father has many enemies, and you will be punished wrongly if they learn you are his son. When you are abroad, however, you should reassert your self-awareness and spread your kleos1 far and wide, telling one and all that you are Saul, the son of Solarus. Be proud, my son. It’s a shame you never knew your father.” My mother always amazed me with her heroic temperament. She’d had an aristocratic education, and believed in kleos as she believed in Homer.
Afterwards, my mother talked more about Florence. She said, “And if you decide to leave Tripoli and you come back here to our village, and this house still stands but I am not in it, come to look for me in Florence. I will surely
go to Italy come the day that, from my humble work here in the village, I can afford the trip.” My mother wove nets that were sold to the fishermen of the village, earning a few coppers a day.
I embraced my mother then and I vowed to myself to help her when I earned money in the city. Unfortunately, I was washed away with personal ambition, circumstance, folly, and the vanity of youth, all which took me to Malta and kept me from returning home for a long time—my mother had already left our village by the time I back-tracked through it. Yet looking in retrospect on my life in those days, I sigh; the caprice of youth goes with the wind, I’ve no regrets.
Thus not having seen my dear old mother in fifteen years, and the paquebots being so fast from Barcelona through Corsica to Florence, I decided to put my Russian dream of daylitmidnights on hold for a year and venture to Italy to see if my mother had realized her own dream and was living there, happy.
Thus cursing Barcelona to hell, I walked along the boardwalk towards the boat docks, where a tall, sun-burnt seaman informed me that a shipwreck in Corsica would delay all travel. There were not enough paquebots for the demand. Other travelers had tickets and were waiting. The captain of the searoute confirmed his statement. Since I had no ticket, I would have to wait longer than the others. I tried to bribe my way ahead of those honest passengers. No use. Too much impatience all around, even among the poorest ticket holders. So I bought a first-class passage to Florence via Corsica; but because of that damned shipwreck, I would have to wait three more days and nights in Barcelona. What games fate would play with me under that Catalan sun! At least I had money, and plenty of wine. The weather was good. I turned on my heels and returned to the statue of Cristóbal Colón, and headed up Las Ramblas, asking here and there for vacancies with no luck whatsoever, until I reached the bleak quarter of Urquinaona. There, on a shabby side-street, beneath a dingy awning, I found the Urquinaona House, which was apparently the only hotel in Barcelona with nothing but vacancies.