by Roman Payne
“Because you said to me that you were going to get champagne upstairs only so you could come up here to get in bed with some stupid girl! You are an monster, Saul…”
“What?!” I said, “If I wanted to be in bed with that girl, then why then would I have left and come back with a doctor?” “What doctor?!”
The doctor came out in the hall then to tell me that the girl had a fever, but that she would recover soon. He stopped talking when he saw Saskia crying before me. She looked up at him and instantly stopped crying and smiled at him, recognizing him as the same doctor whom she consulted when she was miserable because I went to Montmartre without her. He of course recognized her instantly as well, and his face grew very kind. He asked her why she was now crying, and said, “This must be the man you came to see me about.”
“Yes, it is the same man. I was only crying just now because I didn’t understand what this girl was doing in our spare bed. But now I’m figuring it out…”
“Yes, well, this good man came to find me because he found a girl collapsed here in the hallway. Go and see for yourself.” Saskia went into the little room, and with her gone, the doctor said to me in a hushed voice, “Your young lady is a rare person. I know you are aware of this. So please, always treat her good. This is the one favor I ask of you… always treat her good.”
“I thank you, doctor. I am aware of how rare she is. I will always treat her good… Please tell me how much I owe you for helping the sick girl in the bed.”
“There is no charge,” he said.
The doctor went to say goodbye to Saskia. He also told me he gave the young woman his address in case she didn’t recover as well as he thought she would.
Saskia and I went to sleep, too tired for champagne. By morning, the patient in our garçonnière was well and she said goodbye to us. I gave her money to keep food in her stomach, and she left without trying to see if her boyfriend had come back home. This was our last day living on the quai of the Seine.
Saskia and I decided that the story of Sarah Lingot probably had enough truth in it make it a fact that Adélaïse no longer lived in Paris. Without her, we were not needed in Paris. Our hopes remained with Juhani, as we were almost completely broke and had no money to leave town. We slept late that next day, waking at noon, and when we awoke Saskia and I left our tidy apartment for about two hours. Among other things, we went to La Poste to see if we had a letter from Juhani. They told us that the mail from Spain would be arriving later that day. When we returned in front of our apartment house, we both grew uncomfortable—a strange premonition came over us. We climbed the stairs to the fifth-floor and went down the hall to our door. It was strangely ajar. I opened it slowly, thinking there might be someone in our apartment. Saskia waited in the hall while I searched. There wasn’t a soul in our apartment, but what I did find was bad news: our entire home had been destroyed. All the furniture was turned upside-down. Our few possessions were smashed and lay on the floor. Saskia’s clothes lay torn and flung around. My papers were scattered, and some of the pages were burned. Shreds of broken glass lay everywhere on the floor. The only thing unharmed was the most important thing: Saskia’s guitar. It was perched in the armoire as it always was when she didn’t play it. Saskia came in to our room crying.
“I’m going to go mad!” she cried, looking through her torn clothing, “Burglars! …although what did they steal?!—nothing at all!” It’s true, nothing seemed to be missing. Everything that we had was simply broken or set fire to. The little money we had, I kept on me at all times. Saskia’s joy was restored when she found her diamond earrings. Apparently the thieves hadn’t seen them. She said that since her earrings and her guitar were safe, the rest of her things didn’t matter, and she was happy. Since I kept my clothing and many of my things up in our garçonnière—to give the impression to visitors that Saskia lived alone—I went up to the sixth-floor to see if that little room had been broken into as well. Everything upstairs was untouched, the room was exactly how the sick girl had left it when she left at noon that day. I changed into clothes for travel, and went back down to get Saskia… “We’re leaving,” I said. We still had another week left in our apartment, the rent already paid; but I knew we shouldn’t stay there. “Besides,” I said, “the last week of rent will help pay Mme Gazonette for the damage done to her furniture. It wasn’t much to reimburse her for the furniture, but I couldn’t be bothered about this. We had no more money left anyway, and how was it our fault if somebody broke in?—the locks should have been sturdier…
“Take your guitar and a your suitcase and your most important things,” I said to Saskia, “We’re leaving.” I told her we would go have lunch in a café to calm down, and then we would go back to the post office to see if word came from Juhani. The Spanish mail was due that afternoon.
While we were eating inexpensive dishes at a bistro near La Poste, Saskia repeated again and again, “It was Andrea. I know it. He arrived in Paris just as the rumors had predicted he would, and he found out where I was living—I have no idea how he found it out. Then he came to break everything apart and read any papers he could find to have some proof that you and I are living together.” I too shared her belief that it was Andrea, although this idea fell apart completely when we arrived at the post office…
There were two letters. To our great joy, the first we opened was from Juhani. He addressed his letter directly to me as though I were alone in Paris, although I had told him about Saskia in my last letter to him. He began by making extensive apologies for his delay in responding, saying that he had been away in the countryside evaluating the value of a piece of land for his bank; and he just now returned to Madrid and wrote me this reply as quickly as he could, even before taking off his coat.
Juhani wrote that he would see about advancing me money and buying me a couple tickets to Italy, although he needed three days to do this. He wrote that he was sorry if this put me in an embarrassing situation—could I wait three days? Signed, His Truly, Juhani. Underneath his signature there was a postscript: he wrote that if I wanted to be a guest at his home in Madrid, I could come immediately and stay as long as I wished. All I had to do was go to a certain friend of his in Paris and ask him for a ticket to go see Juhani in Madrid, and I would have a first-class ticket immediately. “I hope this offer appeals to you,” he wrote, “It would be like old times to have you back here.”
I folded the letter and said, “This gives us the hope that our financial problems will be over in a few days.”
Saskia seemed sad and pensive. So much so, that I didn’t open the second letter to see who wrote it. I folded it and put it in my pocket, and asked what she was thinking about.
“Nothing,” she said, “I’m cold.”
“Let’s find a café somewhere.” We took our suitcases and Saskia’s guitar and walked a few streets until we found a warm café glowing amber-colored from the light of a large fireplace in the center of the room. We found an intimate table near the fire and ordered two cups of chocolate.
“It’s nice here,” I said. Saskia was still silent, however, appearing sad and pensive.
“What is wrong?”
“You know, Saul, you fulfilled your promise to me. From here on out we can be quits.”
“‘Quits?!’… Why do you say that?!”
“Because you promised me you would come with me to Paris to find Adélaïse. We found out last night that she isn’t in Paris. She’s in Tuscany—on her way she might be visiting Verona or Milan. Who knows, maybe she will leave her new ‘friends’ in Verona and stay there to look for me. I don’t need your help anymore to find her. I can visit the cities and villages of Tuscany myself. I can visit Verona myself. You’ve done your part. I’ll write you a letter of honorable dismissal. Then you can go off on your own.”
“‘Honorable dismissal?!’ Saskia, have you gone out of your mind?!”
She didn’t reply, she looked cold and unfeeling. Then she said to me, “Yes, Saul. Honorable dismissal. Y
ou have to realize it will be better for me if you’re not in my life. Now we know that Andrea is in Paris. You know he has a talent for finding out my address when I don’t leave any traces or any clues. It’s only a matter of time before he finds us here. And then I will lose my inheritance. You see? It is better if you leave now.”
I stood there, stunned. For a long time I stood there, looking at her cold, unfeeling face that was, however, trembling each time our eyes fixed on each other. I said to her then, “Saskia, what is this about? I know you are too poetic of a soul to care more about inheritance money than you care about a relationship like ours. I know you know that if you lost your inheritance, I would take care of you and offer all you need in the way of money. You know that we might even find relief if you lose your inheritance. We wouldn’t have to worry anymore about living together out in the open. We would be fully alive together. No, Saskia, there is another reason why you are telling me to leave. What is it?”
“You are right,” she said, and she buried her face in her hands; then she lifted her face, her hands were covered in tears, “I cannot lie to you, I see. It doesn’t work. The real reason why I say we should be quits, and the reason why I say this only now—not after our conversation with Sarah Lingot, nor after Andrea came and ruined everything in our apartment and destroyed our possessions and read your papers—the reason I am sad about this only now is because the reason I am sad is because of Juhani’s letter to you.”
“Why, because he only wrote it to me and not to us?”
“That’s only a small part of it. Of course, I wouldn’t be sad if he’d invited the two of us to come to Madrid to stay with him for awhile. But the fact that he invited you, and he said you could have your ticket tonight... Look, Saul, if you stay with me, we are going to have to go find a cheap, miserable place to stay for a few nights with the hope that Juhani will come through to advance us money in a few days. If he doesn’t come through with money, we will be stuck and who knows what will happen! This way, you can leave tonight, travel in comfort, and soon you will be with your dear friend whom you’ve known since Malta. You won’t be obliged to hang out in dirty rooms with your little gypsy girl.” At this, she broke into tears that fell like two waterfalls, “That is why I say you’ve fulfilled your contract, and now we can be quits.”
Now that she was crying heavily, I took her hand and led her away from our table, away from the other tables. I took her behind the chimney where I could see only her. I took my sad gypsy girl into my arms, and stood there holding her, if only so her tears could soak into the fabric of my scarf and not stay wet on her beautiful face. I then stepped back to look into her eyes. I asked her then to tell me if there was another reason she wanted me to stay with her, other than simply to find her friend Adélaïse. She had said to me once that she needed me to realize her ‘fortune’; that without me she would not find what she was looking for. I said that she knew all along that her fortune wasn’t merely to find her lost best-friend. If it were just that, she could’ve used part of her income to hire a private detective. A private detective would be more efficient and easier to manage than trying to stabilize a capricious adventurer on his way to find the white nights of Saint Petersburg. “No,” I said, “there’s something that you’re seeking beyond simply Adélaïse and you’re not telling me what it is. You need me for this, you know that. So, what is it you are seeking, Saskia?”
“My destiny,” she replied, “and I can’t have it if we are apart.”
“Why should we be apart? You are my sister, my love, my wife, my undefiled1… I will stay with you, and our life will be a good one. I shall follow your caprices, and you shall follow mine. But never will a caprice of mine take me away from you.”
“I believe you,” she said and pressed the side of her face hard against my chest and kept it there. We stayed silent for several moments.
When we returned to the table, she smiled. We both smiled. I took the second letter out of my pocket, which was addressed to her, and I handed it to her. She examined the sealed envelope and couldn’t determine who had sent it. She opened the envelope and began to read it to herself. She then lowered the paper with a steady hand and said to me calmly, “It’s a letter from my uncle’s trust.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It couldn’t have been Andrea who broke into our apartment this morning.”
“Why couldn’t it have been him?”
“Because he’s dead.”
1This phrase is a variation on verse 5:2 of Song of Solomon, King James Version.
Chapter Twenty-six
Saskia had informed her uncle’s estate that she would be in Paris for several months but she didn’t give them an address where she could be reached. They sent the letter because Andrea claimed Saskia as his last of kin; although he didn’t explain exactly how they were part of the same family—if they were related at all. As last of kin, they were obliged to contact Saskia immediately following his death. They wrote that, not finding an exact address in Paris for her, they made some failed inquiries about her address before finally deciding to write her via the central post office. This was the one letter they sent to the central post office: it confirmed that Andrea had in fact been on his way up to Paris from Rome on some “family business” after learning she was there; but that passing through Genoa, he was killed in an accident. His death occurred about ten days before our apartment was broken into.
“Are you a little sad?”
“I’m relieved!” she smiled, “and worried.”
“Worried? Why?”
“I never really thought of Andrea as being part of my family. After my uncle died, I considered myself an orphan. If Andrea was a relation, he was a bad relation; as family members are supposed to help each other out, not try to steal money from the other family members… Still, now that he is dead. If I wasn’t an orphan before, now I truly am an orphan. No one can even claim to be part of my family. I truly am a wanderess now!”
“You are a wanderess,” I said, “but now you and I are part of the same family. We won’t ever wander alone anymore.”
“I just can’t figure it out,” she said, “since the estate didn’t have our address, Andrea couldn’t have had it either. Otherwise, I might think he hired some men in advance to come destroy our apartment. So then… who did it?”
“A mystery. Let’s not go back to see.”
We didn’t go back. We walked around, bundled-up warm, carrying our luggage. We asked here and there for the most inexpensive place to stay imaginable, where we could pay by the day. People looked at us strangely when we asked this, since I was dressed like a gentleman and Saskia like a lady of the first-rank. If I judged that the astonished people were fools who didn’t deserve a response, I simply laughed at them. If they seemed to be good souls who might try to help, I would point to Saskia’s guitar case and tell them, “We are poor travelling musicians. We are obliged to dress in these bourgeois costumes.” The worthy souls took this as a worthy explanation, and after a couple hours of searching, we were led to a place off the rue Saint-Denis that announced itself as a sort of hostelry for people with very low means. We decided to spend three nights there and no more; as we were convinced of the fidelity of Juhani, we believed he would soon come through to save us.
The outside of the hostelry gave the appearance of a prison. Residence structures on either side were loaded with barred windows. There was a closed entrance gate in the center of the structure. Once inside the gate, the place didn’t look any less discouraging: ugly walls with windows surrounded a cold courtyard. In front of the courtyard, in the center, sat a stoopy little box where an attendant waited behind a grill. At the rear of the courtyard there were no windows, just a high, solid wall of stone that was as black as the gate, while the residence halls on the left and the right side were white-washed, and each contained windows that were closely spaced together, suggesting that the rooms were very small.
At the grill of the box, the attendant t
old us that there were rooms available, and that each room cost two francs per day. We didn’t think it was possible to find a room so cheap, and had counted on paying at least five francs; however it turned out it was forbidden for women and men to share a room, so we would therefore need two rooms at a total of four francs per night. In addition, there was the displeasure that we couldn’t share a bed. Even married couples had to sleep in separate parts of the hostelry. The women’s quarters were in the building on the left side of the courtyard, walking in. The men’s quarters were on the right side. Each building had a separate entrance, and men were forbidden to pass through the women’s gate, and women through the men’s gate. There was a curfew every night at ten o’clock, all tenants were required to be in their rooms, the lights automatically shut off.
We could afford more than four francs per day, but we were exhausted from looking for lodging morning till night. We didn’t pay any money at first. I gave the attendant a two-franc tip when we first arrived on condition that he watch our luggage for a half-hour while we talked it over. Before leaving him, I asked, “What kind of people stay here?”
“Travelers mostly, travelers on a tight budget.” “What kinds of travelers?”
“We don’t let riffraff through, if that’s what you want to know. Still, I’d advise you both to lock your rooms from the inside at night.”
“Thank you, we will be back in a half-hour to let you know.”
Outside, the wind had died down, and we were dressed warmly, making for an agreeable walk—although the neighborhood was bad.
“If you want, I will leave you the rest of our money,” I said, “I’m sure you can buy a ticket to London or Italy, since you will only need one… I could go down to Madrid today.”
“I was just thinking how I don’t like it that we will have to sleep in separate rooms these next few nights.”