The Wanderess

by Roman Payne

  “Now, if you hear pounding on your floor, like a broom handle mutilating the wood, it’s because I am I’m rapping on your floor, Monsieur. This means you must hurry up to your garçonnière!” Waving my hands in annoyance, I rushed our landlady into the hall and slammed the door.

  Alone, Saskia turned to me naïvely, “Saul?” she asked, “What is a garçonnière?”

  With great flourish, I recounted the history of the French ‘garçonnière,’ assuring her it is an old national custom, very acceptable to many people; that it is a room rented by a married man where he can rendezvous with his mistresses. It can also be a room where a brave wife can visit her amants.1

  “Why do you need one of those?” she asked me, “If you want to cheat on me so badly, you can just pick a time when I’m on the island looking for Adélaïse.”

  1 AMANTS: (Fr) ‘Lovers,’ principally used by engaged or married females to describe their extramarital sexual partners.

  This response left me baffled. Was she jealous? Or did she not care? Oh, womankind, you will never cease to confuse me! To prove my faithfulness, I led Saskia by the hand up to the sixth floor and opened the door to our garçonnière.

  “This is where the world is to believe I sleep,” I told her, “I am your tutor only—Saul the tutor!” She lit up a smile, understanding what this was about, and threw her arms around me. We stepped into the room and since all the bare floor was covered by the mattress, we climbed up on the it, she bounced a little on it as though it were a trampoline. I saw then an honest tear roll down her cheek…

  “That is touching, Saul. You are looking out for me. You want me to be safe.”

  “I want you to keep from losing your money.” “You are protective,” she said, “You want my life to turn out well. Oh, why don’t you tell me where you are from!”

  Then she sighed, “Oh, never mind.” She put her arms solemnly against my chest. I released her to light the candle by the mattress. I lay down and urged her down beside me. She asked me to close the door. “Does it lock?”

  “Of course it does. The landlady and myself are the only people with keys.”

  “I want a key to this room,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s called a ‘garçonnière.’ I don’t trust that word.”

  Okay, little fox, I’ll have a key made for you tomorrow. But don’t put it on your keychain. Hide it carefully, away from spies.

  “Saul?”

  “Yes, Saskia.”

  “Lock the door.”

  I knelt and locked the door. I locked the door locking the world and time outside. I stretched my body across the mattress and Saskia drew in close to me and placed her open hand on my chest, her mouth near my shoulder; her breath, my breath blew out the candle, and I held my lost Wanderess with tenderness until sweet sleep overcame us.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I had to carry Saskia like a rabbit downstairs from our garçonnière to the apartment in the morning, she was so sleepy. She went out onto the terrace with her coffee, came back, and commented on how nice it was that we had this magnificent apartment, yet that we chose instead to sleep in a broom closet on our first night in Paris. She then suggested we drink champagne for breakfast, complaining that time was slipping by. I thought this the most ridiculous thing anyone could say. I learned after, while she tried to get me drunk, that she was using champagne as a truth serum. She urged me to drink again and again, but I laughed at her childish tricks. She asked me again where I was born. I told her, “In a country.” She thought that was very funny. I told her my country was on the Mediterranean Sea.

  “Well that narrows it down… Are you from a big city?” “I’m from a little village. A fishing village on the Mediterranean. A village with one school and one church.”

  “Was your father born in this fishing village?”

  “No, he was from the city, from the capital.”

  “Athens?”

  “No!”

  “Hmm… Okay, what were your favorite things to do when you were a boy?”

  “I liked to paint, and make weapons out of things found around the house, and make weapons out of things found in nature… you know, normal boy-things.”

  “Yes, you boys are weird. More about your country, what kind of place is it. What are you famous for?”

  “Making war.”

  “War?! What kind of war? A peculiar sort of war?” “All wars are a little peculiar, don’t you think?”

  “This is hard, Saul.” Saskia frowned and looked discouraged. I laughed at her, then I said, “We’re also famous for fishing, in my fishing village. We’re famous around the world for a certain species of fish that only we have.”

  “Really!” she cheered, “That’s great! What kind of fish? Is it a fish peculiar to a certain country?”

  I laughed at this. “My girl, what peculiar questions you ask! Don’t you know, fish are peculiar to oceans, not to countries…”

  “Darn it, Saul! Ach, I’m no good at this…”

  “Yes you are, don’t stop. Keep going…”

  “Your father… I imagine your father was a very handsome man.”

  “He had that reputation,” I said, “Although I never met him. I’ve seen paintings, and portraits… he was a strange-looking man. They say, to some women, he was considered as handsome as a god. To others, he was too exotic-looking. He made them uneasy. When I picture him, I don’t picture him like the paintings, because I know paintings lie. Sometimes before sleeping or while I dream, I picture my father’s face. What I see is a giant shield, polished like a mirror, reflecting the sun. But the sun is reflected so brightly that I don’t know if it is a shield, or if it is the sun itself. I picture his wild hair streaming-out from all sides around the shield and sun. You know, my father lived his whole life in the capital of my country…”

  “But which country?! Which capital?! Tell me, Saul!…”

  “…It was fashionable at the court of my country,” I went on, “for royalty to buy exotic slaves that come from around the world. These slaves become ‘curiosities’ of the court. Some are purchased because they are hideous, and they are treated badly. Some are put in cages so that tickets can be sold for the public to come gawk at them. Other court ‘curiosities’ are fortunate: purchased because they have a special talent, or great beauty. These ‘curiosities,’ if they are still children, are given an education at the royal school, and raised together with the royal children. They themselves are treated as nobility. Many gain their freedom as well as rank and honor. One such ‘curiosity’ was acquired when our navy captured a pleasure-boat on the Black Sea. Her name was Polinichka: a beautiful aristocrat from Saint Petersburg. She was blonde, white-skinned, with piercing blue eyes; and a grace, they say she walked the way snow floats down… unlike anything the Mediterranean had seen before. Just before she died, she became my grandmother.

  Another such ‘curiosity’ arrived from the Americas around the same time. His skin was red, his hair was black. He was an Indian of the Cherokee tribe. A strong man, no one could outwrestle him. He was brave, learnèd in botany, he had wisdom in healing.

  Because this Russian and the Indian were both exceptional in beauty, and each had talents and manners that were valuable and admired, each was treated like the nobility, educated at court, and eventually they were granted freedman status…

  “The Cherokee never thought of marriage; as favors from women arrived to him too easily, he never had to bother with the thought, and his desires were kept on low-flame. But when Polinichka fell in love with the Cherokee, he sensed this, and his desire flamed-up to a lust he had never felt before. Yet this one time, he felt his lust dominated by something much deeper: he admired her.

  “…And so, wanting to marry her before he spent his desire by seducing her, he left court and hid himself away and taught himself Russian. When he returned to the court, he used her native language to court her—it was their secret language, no else spoke Russian. Now while the
king’s brothers and cousins all were fond of the Cherokee, the king himself—barely an adolescent at this time—was jealous of the Indian and hated him…

  “The Cherokee courted Polinichka at night beneath the Mediterranean stars, and described the stars of the Americas. He told her which animals they represented. She in turn described to him the white-nights of Petersburg: those nights when the sun dips barely over the horizon at sunset, and gives rise to the same sun only minutes later. I remember when as a boy my mother made up stories about these white-nights to tell to me as I fell asleep, I was at once mesmerized and hypnotized, pacified and terrified. The stories of these ‘endless days called nights’ so left an impression on me, that they are the goal, the destination, of this European journey I am taking now. Once I see those whitenights, I can let the earth swallow me up, I can drift out to sea alone, it won’t really matter…

  “It is too late in the year to see the white nights this year,” I told Saskia, “but, then again, why hurry to one’s own end? I will go to Petersburg next year, after we find your friend… And after I visit Florence… I need to see my mother once more. She must be old now...

  “Well, back to my story,” I resumed, “It wasn’t long before Polinichka and the Cherokee were married. All of the royal family, except for the king and the queen, attended. They were married without the blessings of the Catholic church, but they didn’t care. Polinichka was Russian Orthodox. And my grandfather, the Indian, believed in Nature and Spirits. They were happy and in love their entire life together. They had one child, a vigorous boy whom they named Solarus. He was my father.”

  With that, I stopped my storytelling, and I went to find some wine in the cupboard.

  “Hey, go on with the story!”

  “There is no wine here,” I said, “Let’s go to a café.”

  “Nope, bad plan. First, we go to the Île Saint-Louis to look for Adélaïse, then we go to a café. You can wait to have your wine.”

  “I can not wait for my wine,” I told her; thinking how to avoid that island to drink some wine in a café, I tried persuasion… “Saskia, listen… when you and Adélaïse find each other again, you will want it to be an intimate moment. You should be alone together. She is your best friend, your twin.”

  Saskia chewed her nails, biting off flakes of polish. “Okay, go drink your wine,” she said, “I’ll go alone.” I laughed to myself about her fingernails: a collage of colors like layers of the Earth, each color representing a different date of application of polish, a different time in her life. Yes, it was true that Saskia had the lifeexperience of a grown woman, but her fingers were those of a teenage girl.

  “It’s going to take me a couple hours to get ready… I have to bathe and get dressed… Give me two hours.”

  “Two hours!” If she needed that to bathe, I told her, then she should let me go first to the island. I would go drink my wine in a café there for an hour or so. Surely with my head full of wine, I would be more effective walking around looking for her friend.

  “Why do you suggest that?!” Her mouth dropped open, “Why drink your wine on that island? You can’t look for her when you’ve never seen her—are you crazy?! And if you were to pass her?! And if she saw you?! Not knowing what the other one looks like, you two will pass as strangers! Then she will be gone forever!”

  She threw her head in her hands then in complete despair. I told her to calm down. “Go bathe and dress and give yourself time, Saskia. How’s this for a plan to find her… You said that not many people your age in Paris understand English. You said this island is residential, and very peaceful. So, if I see a girl there that could possibly be Adélaïse, I will walk up and greet her in French; then I will say to her in bad English, with a terrible accent:

  “‘Miss, excuse me but I’m curious… I just thought I overheard you mumbling something to yourself in English before I approached you. Am I wrong?’ … ‘No, Sir, I wasn’t mumbling to myself in English,’ she may answer. ‘But you do speak English?’ I will ask. ‘Yes, I do.’ … ‘And you can write in English?’ … ‘Yes, of course, they teach us that in school.’ … ‘Then you are in a position to do me the greatest favor! It will only take you five minutes and I will pay you an écu for your trouble…’

  “…The girl may be too proud to work for an écu, or too rich; she may consider herself too busy to help me, but I will insist with the pitiful nature of an unrequited lover… ‘You see I’m in a desperate situation! I’m from Portugal, and neither my French nor my English is good at all… My problem is, I’m in love with this French girl that lives here on this island. I have a rendezvous with her in an hour… on that bridge over there, you see. Since I cannot explain my feelings for her in good French or in good English. I would like to give her a letter expressing my love for her. Just one page, two at the most, but not more. All you need to write to her is this—it must be in English, because I won’t have a chance at communicating with her if the two of us meet, if she doesn’t know English…

  “‘Dear Adélaïse… (you see her name is Adélaïse), for many months now I have admired you from afar, etc….’”

  I stopped narrating my plan and took Saskia’s hands… “You see what genius this idea is?” I, at least, admired my own plan tremendously. “If the girl I ask the favor of is your friend Adélaïse, I will know for certain the moment I say that Adélaïse is the name of my sweetheart.”

  “Oh!”

  “If it is not Adélaïse… well, it may be a friend of hers and she may say… ‘Wait! I know an Adélaïse who lives near here… could your sweetheart be the same Adélaïse?’”

  “Yes!”

  “…And even if the young girl doesn’t know a soul named Adélaïse, our écu may still have bought us a good connection with someone who knows various families established on the island…”

  “It will also have bought you a love letter you can give to some French girl!”

  I smiled and laughed, “I can write my own love letters in French, thank you.”

  Saskia laughed and agreed, adding that I did write very charming letters—when they weren’t letters of farewell. She kissed both of my hands over and again. She was thoroughly convinced that my strategy would work. “Saul, you are clever beyond belief! I should have asked you to plan this with me from the beginning. Okay, please go now to the island, I will bathe and get dressed. Don’t drink too much wine!”

  Saskia’s faith in my idea gave me enormous pleasure, so much that I convinced myself I would find Adélaïse that very morning. I was soon to be discouraged, however, when an hour and a half went by of my wandering the Île Saint-Louis and I did not see a single girl that could have possibly been her friend Adélaïse. The island was empty, except for some uninteresting characters. I would have left altogether unaffected by the island, except when leaving I came upon two figures that confused me and left me in a daze for the entire afternoon to follow…

  I passed a gated garden on the occidental side of the island where a plump, old woman, with the body and face of a peasant, was sweeping debris from the stones with a thatched broom. She acknowledged me, and then resumed her loud conversation with a man at the open window of the house to which the garden belonged. The man was mostly concealed from my view by the dirty glass of the open windowpane, but I could see enough of his features and stature to know I’d seen him before, and under strange circumstances. But where before?, when?, I couldn’t place it. His thin, sallow face, his dark cloak and hat. I then recalled it, and became convinced that it was the same man that followed me in Valencia, from the restaurant to my hotel… ‘What a strangelooking man,’ I thought. He eyed me briefly, without showing any interest or recognition, said adieu to the woman in the garden, and shut the window.

  As far as Adélaïse was concerned, I would have been completely forlorn after my fruitless search on the Île Saint Louis, but one happy event happened after the encounter with the man and woman in the house and garden: I made an acquaintance while still on the island,
walking down the rue des Deux Ponts to go back home where I believed Saskia was still dressing. I finally passed a girl of about Saskia’s age. She was alone and I greeted her with my intended script: “Mademoiselle, pardon me… I thought I overheard you mumbling to yourself in English, etc., etc…” It turned out that it would have been impossible that the girl mumbled to herself in English since she didn’t understand a word of what I was saying in English, and didn’t even understand the word ‘Hello.’ She was friendly though, in French; her name was Sarah Lingot, and she’d lived her whole life on the Île SaintLouis. Her father, she explained as we stood on the sidewalk, talking as though we were already friends, had just retired from a long military career where he had been of high rank, perhaps even a general. We spoke, and I was glad Mademoiselle Lingot was not Adélaïse, since Mademoiselle Lingot was neither pretty, nor very captivating in her manner. I mentioned to her that I had important business with a family on the island. I offered her an écu, which she refused; but she said that I could come visit her at her parents’ home whenever I wished; and as long as my affairs were honest and out in the open, she would help me where she could.

  I left delighted by the encounter and returned around noon to our home on the quai. Saskia had never left, she had only finished dressing. I was charmed to see her dressed in a way I had never seen her before. She looked like a beautiful piece of candy—color on her lips, long lacquered eyelashes, her hair back in braids. I kissed her forehead and she wrapped her arms around my neck.