by Roman Payne
“I missed you, kiddo,” I said, “I found a beautiful island in the city. An island with many a bridge. And now I come back to find you in braids, what a pleasure! You know, a girl without braids is like a city without bridges…”
“That’s nice. Did you find someone to help you write your love letter?”
“Nay,” I said, and let her fall away from my neck, where she stayed clinging, “The island was empty. Too early, I guess.” “I kind of thought it would be. That’s why I didn’t dress so fast. Later it will be better.”
“I met a girl, though,” I told Saskia, and described my meeting with Mademoiselle Lingot, saying that we now had an entry into a good home on the island. Saskia seemed jealous, although she only replied, “That’s good you talk to girls. You don’t want to forget what they sound like… I’m going to the Île Saint Louis now for my own detective work. Will you be good?”
“A saint,” I said, “I might go for a walk and drink more wine. Let me give you some money.” I knew that Saskia was out of funds until she went abroad to draw on her inheritance. I searched through my pockets to give her a handful of écus, and in doing so I realized that our wealth was quickly diminishing. For her it was clothes and guitar sheet-music, for me in was opium and wine. I needed to think of ways to fill our purse without depending on Saskia’s inheritance, which we could only draw-on abroad. Paris had us glued to it, the way that city glues so many wanderers. I knew that Paris was reputable for gaming rooms where they say that ruined adventurers often made back lost fortunes in a single day. I think we had under a hundred louis at that time. ‘If only I could get my hands on two-thousand gold louis d’or,’ I thought. ‘With two thousand louis, Saskia and could live in comfort long enough to find Adélaïse and find my mother in Florence; it would take us all the way to Saint Petersburg to see the white nights. Just two-thousand louis d’or, and we will no longer need Saskia’s uncle’s money. We can live together openly for the whole world to know…’
Still, and no doubt wisely, I decided to not go to the gaming tables that day. As far as adventurers go, I had always been one of the more successful. But as for gamblers, I was a disaster. With my passionate temperament, I knew a day at a roulette table would leave me and Saskia in the street: two paupers without bread or clothes.
“I’ll be back when I can!” Saskia planted a kiss with her candy mouth on the tip of my nose and skipped out of our apartment. Her gaiety, her freshness, made me infinitely happy. I think that this time with her, with us living together in Paris in that apartment on the quai of the river Seine, was the happiest time I had ever known up till then in my life. I stood at the window and watched her bouncing happily across the bridge over the Seine. And I thanked then the generosity of the gods for my luck, and my life, and the city of Paris, and I thanked Saskia and all that had led up to her finding me that night in Barcelona.
Chapter Twenty-three
I was indeed a saint while Saskia was tramping around Paris looking for Adélaïse. I smoked myself to heaven in an opium den on the rue Saint-Honoré. I then got lost in my fog of pleasure and explored the old streets of the Rive Droite1. I contemplated all the possible reasons why the sun shines. I contemplated the moon too, knowing that the day is beautiful but that night would soon come and the moon would be almost full. I knew that some adventures would present themselves in the coming days, and new adventures are always exciting when one is in a new city.
I sold my sword on the rue de Rivoli—that beauty of silver and steel with the emerald handle which I bought in Barcelona the day of that horrible night at the theatre in Barcelona—a night I hoped to erase forever from my memory. With the money I received for the sword, I purchased a pair of diamond earrings for Saskia at the Place Vendôme.
When I returned home, everything was quiet. Saskia was still out. I poured a glass of wine to drink, and before I sat down to enjoy it, I opened the door to our patio and spilled the first sip on the ground to appease the gods, as is my custom. That was when Saskia entered. She was all in a tizzy…
“That stupid island!” she huffed, throwing her purse down. “You go there and the people are nice. You meet people. One girl even picks up on you and invites you to her home! Why aren’t people nice to me?”
“Drink some wine, Saskia.”
“No, no, that won’t help… First of all, the island was empty and desolate. I was desolate too. Nowhere was there anyone or anything that had to do with Adélaïse. Oh, I did see a few people! There were some here and there, and I tried your trick. I went up to each one and asked if they spoke English. They all shook their heads and said, “Français!” So I then asked them in French if they knew a lot of people on the island. One lady growled at me. “Ça ne vous regarde pas,2” she howled at me.
1 RIVE DROITE: (Fr) The “Right Bank.” This is the section of Paris north of the river Seine, which flows from the east to the west. The neighborhoods south of the Seine form the Rive Gauche.
2 ÇA NE VOUS REGARDE PAS: (Fr) "That is none of your business.
One man responded to my question by sneering at me: “Vous êtes bien trop jeune et trop jolie pour être inspectrice de police!1” Just then I’d had enough! I decided to come home. So when I was leaving the island, I passed a yard where an woman was sweeping up leaves. Her grey hair was all knotty and she had a dirty old broom. She reminded me a lot of the old gardener woman I met on that exact same island years before…”
“The woman who told you your famous fortune that you refuse to share with me?”
“Yes, that one… my famous fortune that is the reason you and I are together. Both women had similar faces, both had icy grey eyes; although the one today looked like a mule, whereas the fortune teller didn’t look like a mule. Anyway, I decided to talk to her, not thinking that there was any way in the world she too would humiliate me. Boy, I was sure wrong…
“‘Bonjour Madame!’ I greeted her cheerfully, ‘Did we not see each other here once before?’ She set down her old broom and looked at me in a mean way and said, ‘All I can tell you, little girl, is that you are being followed. Not just here on this island, where you’ve been coming every day for over a week now on some kind of unknown business, but you are being followed elsewhere too.’…
“I was speechless! The old broom-lady continued, ‘You know the people on the Île Saint-Louis talk about you, don’t you? Many close their shutters when you approach their houses. Have you not noticed all the closed shutters? Isn’t it a little hot out to be closing shutters?’…
“I didn’t reply to the old witch, she made me furious! I simply turned around and headed to the bridge to come back home, deciding never to return to that stupid island again. How come I don’t have your talent for getting people to open up to me?”
“You have the talent. You just crossed the wrong people today. Happens to me too some days.”
1 VOUS ÊTES BIEN TROP… (FR) “You are far too young and too pretty to be a police inspector.”
“Still, I think you should take over the job of finding Adélaïse. The only way I will ever find her is if I spot her with my own eyes, whereas you can charm somebody who might know her.”
“Do you want to go to the theatre tonight?” I asked. “Oh yes!”
I was glad to have changed the subject away from the Île Saint-Louis and Adélaïse, and Saskia was in heaven when I presented her the diamond earrings I bought for her. “No man ever offered me earrings! Not even my uncle. And these are so beautiful!” She threw her lovely arms around me and hugged me with all her might. I was thrilled that I made her happy and it was with great joy we dressed for the theatre that night.
* * *
At the Comédie-Française…
That night, Saskia was as beautiful as the sky when night’s phase possesses the moon and every constellation. When she appeared at the Comédie-Française, wearing a silk taffeta gown, her shoulders nude and neck perfumed, with diamonds in her ears, she excited all of Paris. The production was Molière’s Do
m Juan. At intermission, we drank champagne, and many came up to us to pay compliment to Saskia’s beauty. Afterwards, we returned to the parterre where our seats were; but before we sat down, I saw something very disturbing: Above us, in a box at the right of the stage, a man was seated alone, no lady beside him. I recognized him as the same man who had been in the house that morning on the Île Saint-Louis, talking to the peasant woman through the plate-glass window—he looked different now as he wasn’t wearing a hat. But this was not what disturbed me. It was that even that morning, when he was at the window, I decided he was the same man who followed me in Valencia. That morning I made other connections, but nothing that grasped me. Now, seeing him clearly, his face, stature, the serious way he composed himself, I realized that this was the man! …not just the man from Valencia, but from Barcelona too; and not just Barcelona, but elsewhere…
Watching him flashed pictures in my mind: tangible memories arranged with vague associations. I flashed-back to the night I met Saskia, remembering that strange man on Las Ramblas who stopped me when I was poisoned; and, telling me how sick I looked, he advised me to go to the hospital that was on the very street where I would meet Saskia. If he hadn’t stopped me and told me about that hospital, Saskia and I would have never met. Looking in the theatre that night at that long face with those dark, gaunt features, I recalled the ship captain in Barcelona at the port who announced that all boats to Florence were either canceled or heavily delayed. It was also thanks to this announcement that Saskia and I reunited after I escaped from her apartment in El Ravel. Had the boats been running, I would have left Barcelona on the spot, damning that city to the dogs. And I would probably have forgotten Saskia.
They say that when we dream at night and see a figure who tells us the path we need to follow, the direction we need to take in life, it is always the same figure in each dream. He or she may vary slightly in form between dreams, but it is always the same figure. It seemed to me that the messengers in my life—the ones who have guided me towards unbelievable experiences, led me to the people I’ve cared about—these messengers all resembled the same man, a man I now saw outside of a dream. He was in the same theatre as me, seated in a box for a performance of Molière’s Dom Juan, on my first night at the Comédie-Française in Paris: that strange city that would forever leave its mark on me.
The presence of this man in the theatre made me uneasy. “Let’s go to the bar to get some champagne,” I said to Saskia. She didn’t reply, so I excused myself, saying I would come back with champagne. Saskia was talking to two other girls when I returned. They were about her age, both elegantly dressed. Saskia appeared very jealous when I arrived—a strange thing, considering the girls were not as beautiful as she. She didn’t introduce me to them, so one of the girls introduced herself to me. Saskia stared at her with angry eyes when she did this, and without further conversation, she uttered an insincere goodbye to them and turned to face me, her back turned to them in a way that seemed very impolite. She then began to tell me how wonderful she thought the play was. This show of jealousy charmed me completely. Saskia was now more beautiful than ever in my eyes. So I told Saskia how beautiful she was to me, and how I loved her more than Molière. She took my arm and we wandered away from the two girls, and from all other people, and we found a corner of the theatre where we could be alone. Saskia hugged my shoulders, and she asked me if I was a little tipsy. Before I could answer, she said, “Not now, I meant then. When you said you loved me more than Molière.” I tried to respond but she hushed me, saying that it didn’t matter. She didn’t care if I was a little tipsy when I said I loved her. Either way she said she was happier at that moment than she had ever been in her entire life. I told her that she herself was tipsy to say such a thing, and she admitted that she was a little tipsy… “More than a little,” she said. Then she smiled in a sneaky way, and she said, “Regardless…” and she told me that she loved me too… more than Molière, and more than Racine and more than Beaumarchais, even more than Shakespeare. Her words made me dizzy with pleasure, and I gave her a hundred caresses and covered her hands in kisses. My heart was aflame when we left the ComédieFrançaise that night, and I gave no more thought to the presence of my “messenger” in that theatre. I only thought of that gypsy child named Saskia.
Chapter Twenty-four
That night after the theatre, Saskia told me the first part of her fortune. It was her fortune, I came to realize, that had seduced her; her fortune that had seduced me. It was her fortune that was the true author of our lives. It was just as intangible as love, as intangible as disease; and just as love and disease are invisible entities that take over the mind and body of the infected, so did that fortune work like an invisible disease: it worked through the body and mind to construct our mysterious relationship and build the outcome of this story. You will see as I go on…
After the theatre, we found a restaurant on the quai of the Seine which looked elegant, called Chez Lefèvre1. Inside, it was dim. Every single table was empty, but we didn’t take that as a bad sign. There was a summer storm that night and a blustery wind had cleared the entire quai of all souls. The restaurant only had one waiter. He heard us come in and came from the back patio and welcomed us to a table. He was a small, tired-looking man: an Italian from Mantua, he told us. He explained that the owner of the restaurant wasn’t in; that the chef was there, but there had been no customers all evening. The waiter showed that he was a little drunk as he opened up to us…
“I received some very bad news today,” he said, “I don’t want to spoil your meal… it was personal news about my family. So if you don’t mind, except when you need me, I’ll be out back on the patio smoking and drinking.”
His frankness was endearing. Saskia, always moved by tender scenes, asked the waiter if he wanted us to leave so he could be alone… “Since we are the only customers,” she said, “if we leave, you can close up and go home to be alone.” The sad waiter replied that he didn’t want to be alone; that he wanted most of all to be out on that patio smoking and drinking, knowing all the while that the chef was there in the kitchen and that we were here in the dining room. Saskia thanked him, with damp eyes she whispered to me that he was breaking her heart. I ordered a bottle of Bourgogne; and a moment later, she and I were alone at a table with good wine to drink.
1 CHEZ LEFÈVRE: Payne may be referring to the restaurant ‘Lapérouse,’ founded by a monsieur ‘Lefèvre.’ Located at the current 51 quai des Grands Augustins in Paris’ sixth arrondissement, Lapérouse has the same approximate location (‘on the quai of the Seine’) as ‘Chez Lefèvre’ in this novel. Lapérouse was founded in 1766 by Lefèvre, a celebrated wine-merchant, and is still in business today at the time of this publication. The original name of the restaurant was ‘Limonadier du Roy.’ It was changed to ‘Lapérouse’ in 1878 in honor of the famous navigator: Le Comte de Lapérouse. [Ed.]
We talked and drank. Saskia was moved to emotion by the red wine and our solemn waiter. After he took our order, he returned to the patio where we could see him drinking spirits and smoking the thin, generic cigarillos that the waiters along the quai smoke. After a while, the chef appeared from the kitchen and called to the patio, “Guido? Eh, Guido?…” But our waiter didn’t seem to hear him. The chef proceeded to our table carrying two plates of pasta. Halfway to our table, he stopped and stood still, and stared at me. I looked at the chef and at our plates of pasta expectantly. A minute passed before the dumbfounded chef approached us finally and set the plates down in front of us; he said…
“Sir, I’m sorry… I couldn’t stop staring at you just now.” “I noticed. Why?”
“I mean, I’m not sure we’ve met before. Or, rather… Have you come to our restaurant before? No, I’m sure that you haven’t. Where have I seen you before?”
I told the chef that I had never been to his restaurant before tonight, and that it was unlikely we’d met anywhere considering I was new in Paris.
“It must have been a pictu
re of you I’ve seen somewhere… published in the press, in some journal if you’ll forgive me saying. Yes, I’m intruding. It’s just that your face is unmistakable.”
“Well, never mind,” I said and waved my hand, “our dinner will get cold.”
“Yes, excuse me please, sir. And you, madame. Bon appétit.”
“Merci.”
Once he left, Saskia turned to me with fascination in her eyes… “Saul! What are they saying about you in the press?” “How would I know? I don’t read the press.”
“Huh, that’s true,” she said, “Neither of us read that rubbish. Though, I wonder what they’re saying about you.”
“How do you know it’s not about us?” I laughed, “You know your boy, Andrea, he certainly has our relationship covered in the press.”
Saskia smiled at this. “No, no, no! I think it’s about you, and only about you… I bet they’re saying fantastic things in the press about you.”
I didn’t know then that Saskia’s guess was right. I didn’t give any thought to what she said at the restaurant, not knowing how serious things would become later. Later, when she and I were apart from each other, I grew convinced that she had known all along about those articles in the press… that she knew about them that night we dined at Lefèvre’s restaurant in Paris. You will see in time what I mean.
“You have your pasta and wine now,” Saskia went on, “…wine always puts you in a mood to talk. Our waiter is away on the patio drinking and smoking. The place is vacant, we have the whole restaurant to ourselves. I think you should tell me about your parents and your childhood. That will solve everything. Then I will know where you grew up and where your father was born, and then I can tell you my fortune. That will help us find Adélaïse… then we can go to Florence!”