The Wanderess

by Roman Payne

  “I was wrong to blame you last night,” I told Saskia, “I don’t know why, but it hadn’t occurred to me then that I too am hiding things from you. Since I am not telling you where I am from, nor where my father came from, why should you have been expected to tell me that your fortune teller is Dragomir?”

  “So now you will tell me where you are from?”

  “I don’t know. Will you first answer a question for me? You have been saying to me all along that the most important thing to you in this world is your destiny. And last night, I said to you in my anger, ‘how can I ever trust you again,’ and you replied, ‘You can’t! You shouldn’t trust me!’ After all that’s been said, I want to know where your allegiance truly lies… is it to me and your friend Adélaïse? Or is it to your fortune?”

  “Saul! My fortune is my destiny… and without a destiny I wouldn’t be alive. How can I neglect destiny? It’s impossible!”

  ‘What kind of reasoning is that?’ I wondered. “You could forget your fortune now,” I told her, “and you will still be alive. And all that happens to you in the future will be your destiny. We will find Adélaïse, we will live wherever you and I want to live, we will be happy. And soon you will laugh when you remember this drama about your fortune. You will laugh when you discover that you have a beautiful destiny all the same without it.”

  “Saul, will you help me? Will we go to your country? To the place your father was raised?”

  “No, we will not.”

  Saskia looked at me in horror. “But you said you would help me realize my fortune!”

  “I said I would help you find Adélaïse. Until this morning, I didn’t even know what your fortune was.”

  Saskia grew flustered. “Why won’t you help me?”

  I told Saskia then that she would have done better to keep to her lie about the garden woman. I admitted that Dragomir was a clever man, that he was even a brilliant and gifted man who has a knack for reading people, and for knowing their weaknesses and their fears… I told Saskia that his fortune was so well-conceived that I agreed with her for believing in it. “It’s a perfect fortune,” I said, “you would be foolish not to believe in it! Only a true visionary could know these things about you on first sight.”

  But I went on to say that in spite of this, I could not support her continuing the search for this Dragomir-conceived destiny. “My opinion of Dragomir,” I said, “is that he is a villain. He is a very clever and ingenious villain, but he is a villain all the same… He constructed your fortune with brilliance, but he gave you steps for you to realize your destiny that I cannot go along with because they involve me, and to what end, I don’t know. He gave you instructions for you to follow so he could watch you dance—just as he came to me at the hour before dawn with a pistol so that he could make me dance. If he wanted to keep Pulpawrecho from raping you, he had a million ways to prevent it other than choreographing that drama with me firing bullets at him from across the courtyard. Moreover, he had some reason to have me kill his servant which eludes me. He didn’t prevent the rape out of concern for you or for me. He wanted his servant done away with and he didn’t want to do it himself...

  “Lastly, who else would have broken into our apartment in Paris? Andrea was dead somewhere on the Riviera when it happened. It had nothing to do with your inheritance. You noticed that nothing was stolen?, that they only rummaged through our papers?… I think what happened was clear: Dragomir happened to be in Paris at the same time we were there… He first saw us on the Île Saint-Louis, then at the theatre, then he had us followed and found out where we lived…

  “He had met each of us in Málaga, and knew our personalities, so we made for an interesting target. He knew he could make you dance by telling you your fortune. He saw that he could make me dance when he sent me on an errand to poison his friend Penelope Baena in Barcelona. So when he found out where we lived, he organized the break-in so that he could read our papers, diaries, letters and what-not, to have information about us that he could use to his advantage. If he knows more about your personal life, he can better tell you your fortune the next time you two meet…”

  “No, no, no,” Saskia interrupted, “I’m sure it was friends of Andrea who broke in to our place. But it doesn’t matter. All of my fortune has come true so far… to the point where I found you sleeping in the road in fine clothes. Now I’m supposed to go to visit the place you are from, so I will go visit it.”

  “Again, I ask you Saskia… where does your allegiance lie? Is it to me and Adélaïse? Or is it to your fortune?”

  “Again, Saul… my fortune is my destiny. It is our destiny. My allegiance is to you, of course; but it you don’t choose to help me, don’t be surprised if one day you find me gone. You asked me how you can trust me, and I said you couldn’t. I said that you shouldn’t… I’ll never lie to you, but I have been faithful to my destiny ever since I was a little girl, as you are faithful to yours. Don’t ask me to cheat on my destiny.”

  “You have spoken, Saskia.”

  That conversation ended our happy time in Siena, although that was not the worst calamity that struck us. It disturbed me to think that Saskia would choose Dragomir over me, yet that conversation was only the first gust of wind that signaled the hurricane.

  Here’s a funny incident that I’ll tell you about to take the edge off after hearing so many stories of treachery and disillusionment… It was a couple of weeks after the fateful conversation I just narrated. It was the beginning of fall, a time we were preparing to leave Siena to live in Florence… we were out for a walk together when we met a poet on the lawn of the University of Siena…

  The poet was sitting in a bathtub on the lawn. He was bare-chested, garlanded with ivy and flowers, and while he sat in his tub, he recited lines from The Iliad with such a fervor that I had to approach him. I needed to see what kind of man this was who appreciated so much the eternal Homer—father of beauty and god of literature…

  The poet greeted us with exceptional friendliness. He was slightly younger than me. He was handsome of figure, strong of build, and had such a heroic and noble way in his conduct, that I asked him if he was related to the hero Theseus. He replied to me with a great effusion of apology, saying that he was not in any way related to the hero Theseus, but that he was in fact a direct descendant of the immortal Sappho. Saskia had by now also taken a great interest in him, although it was not so much his beautiful appearance, nor the fact that he recited ancient poetry while seated in a bathtub on the lawn of an Italian university… rather, she was attracted to one certain poem he had written. After his Homeric soliloquy, I asked him for another verse. He leafed through his papers, tempted by his translations of Horace, until he finally settled on a poem he wrote to a girl he loved. Her name was Adélaïse.

  It was a fine poem, and Saskia couldn’t contain herself. She asked him a million questions… “But what is this?! Who is your Adélaïse…?!” The poet responded, “She is my English lady, Madame.” But she has to be French,” Saskia said, “with the name ‘Adélaïse!’” To this, the fine poet said, “I know not. We only spoke English together. But she spoke such beautiful English… and with a wonderful English accent, that I was led to address her as ‘my English lady.’”

  “My, that is something!” Saskia then asked him where his Adélaïse was now, upon which, he wept tears of lament and said ‘that she had gone'… simply… ‘that she had gone.’ Saskia told him not to worry, that we ourselves would find her. She asked the poet then where we could find him again, once we found Adélaïse. He said that he would be here—in his bathtub.

  “I was on my way to Rome to meet the pope,” he told us, “I doubt in all truth that I could win his favor, faithful as I am to the almighty Zeus. Alas!, it’s hard to find patronage in our time… Here in Siena, I am lucky. Like Diogenes, I have this bathtub to sleep in. Only the company of my English lady do I lack...”

  “Don’t worry, we will find her!” Saskia said, almost crying, so full of emotion
was she. I then asked the poet how we were to call on him when we returned, and he told us his name. It turned out that our Homeric bathtubber was none other than the great poet, Pietros Maneos. Both Saskia and I greatly admired his poetry that was famous throughout Europe, and we told him so… and with that we were gone!

  Chapter Thirty-two

  We left Siena then with most of our worries behind us. I say “most” of our worries, because there were two black clouds on the horizon hunting down the sun, two things that threatened our relationship. The first was our conversation back in Siena where Saskia said to me in effect that her allegiance to me came after her allegiance to her fortune. The second came in an envelope whose sender and contents remained a secret that Saskia guarded from me the whole time we were in Italy. This envelope had been delivered through her estate and was given to her at her bank when we stopped on our way out of Florence to collect her income. She wouldn’t tell me who’d sent the letter. I asked several times, and each time she said to me, “I’ll not only tell you, but I’ll give you the letter so you can read it yourself. All you have to do first is tell the driver to turn around and take us to the country where you were raised…”

  “I’m sorry my love, but our driver is not capable of taking us to my country. We would need a boat for such a task.” “So you are from Malta!”

  “No, not from Malta.” We were back on this story once again.

  “From where then?”

  I kept silent.

  “I see you’re not going to tell me. Very well, forget it.” So we carried on, travelling northwards.

  We soon arrived in a place called Staggia: a quaint little village with a magnificent castle, one third of the way to Florence. There we stopped and said farewell to our driver. It was a village recommended to us in Siena, a place to stop not only for the castle, but to stay at a certain travelers’ inn: Il Focolare1. It was said to be a famous stopover for people travelling from southern Italy to Florence.

  It was afternoon when we checked-in to Il Focolare. The inn was very rustic. Everything was made of wood. A little boy who appeared dim-witted came outside to fetch our bags. He brought them inside to the innkeeper who greeted us with his wife. Both were light-eyed and jovial, dressed in peasant clothes. Near the check-in counter, a fire crackled away in a giant stone hearth. It was now autumn and the air had become chilly. A number of elegantly-dressed travelers were gathered downstairs in the dining room which adjoined the lobby. They were eating, as it was still lunch hour.

  1 IL FOCOLARE: ‘Il Focolare’ is Italian for ‘The Hearth.’

  The innkeeper only spoke Tuscan and Italian, so Saskia had to translate everything he and I said to each other. I checkedin with my real first name and an assumed last name, as I was now paranoid that word of my travels would get to Tripoli. Saskia used an entirely false name to protect her inheritance, since we were sharing a room.

  When I said that my name was Saul, the innkeeper looked at me long and steady. There was something singular about his gaze. It wasn’t unfriendly… it was just singular. He finally smiled, gave me our key, and explained to Saskia in Italian how to find our room.

  In the hallway, we passed two Parisian ladies, they were dressed elegantly. They complimented Saskia on her beauty. She thanked them and gave equal compliments and asked if they liked staying here at this inn.

  “Oh, it’s very fashionable!” one exclaimed, “All of the best people come here. Of course it is very rustic, and the innkeeper and his wife are humble to the point of being eccentric… the innkeeper walks with a limp, and his wife makes her own clothes! …but all that goes to make this place as charming as it is!”

  “That’s very nice,” we said, and left the two ladies and went to our room. Saskia wanted to visit the castle right away, then go for dinner in a restaurant in the village—we were only planning to be in Staggia one night and were anxious to get back on the road to Florence early the next morning. I pleaded with Saskia to stay with me at the inn that afternoon and evening, suggesting that we extend our stay in Staggia an extra day to visit the castle in the morning. There was something about the inn that attracted me in a strange way; it reminded me of my life from a long time ago; it reminded me of home. I’m not sure if it was a home I ever really knew, or a home I only dreamed of. Something, if only the way it smelled, urged me to remain close and not leave too soon. Saskia was urgent to travel on, for reasons I didn’t know, but she agreed to stay a second night. I left the room and went to the counter to reserve for a second night; then I met Saskia and we went to the dining room to eat a late lunch.

  Our two French ladies were not in the dining room, and it seemed that all the other diners were Italian. The talk of our neighbors grew lively. As I couldn’t understand any of what they were saying, Saskia amused me by translating the gossip she heard around us. She then got into a conversation with two Italian girls of her age. They were from Rome, and they were with their mother; and none of the three spoke French—nor English, nor Spanish, nor any other language that I knew—so I quickly grew tired of this meeting and told Saskia I was going to go out to the yard of the inn to sketch with my new pastels that she bought me. She said she would be out soon.

  I went into our room to get my tablet and box of pastels, and when I came down again, I passed the innkeeper who was staring at me with the most curious look. I proceeded out to the yard and entered the garden where I found a bench and sat to begin sketching a wild scene of all that I saw: the hills on the horizon the colors of fire and ash, the sun descending towards those hills where it would extinguish itself in a few hours. And in that garden, I sketched the flourishes of wildflowers; the strings of ivy, those necklaces of nature; and the vines of the red and green grapes, those succulent jewels of the gods.

  I was lost in my picture. Only once did I look up from my work. I looked over to the inn and there I saw the innkeeper looking out at me through the tall window. He saw me notice him and made a faint smile, then bowed his head and turned and walked away. It may have been an hour after that when I heard little footsteps crunching the gravel on the path in the garden. I tucked my sketch away, I didn’t want Saskia to see it until it was finished.

  “There you are!” she laughed. She was cheerful. She told me that after she stopped talking to the family from Rome, she started heading out here to find me. While on the way, the innkeeper and his wife approached her and asked if we would accept an invitation to have dinner with them.

  “Why us?”

  “They said that they find us interesting.”

  “Where do they want to dine?”

  “Here at the inn… but in their private dining room.”

  “Well, let’s accept then,” I said, and Saskia took my arm and we went back inside Il Focolare.

  At dinnertime, the innkeeper led us down a long stone hallway to a circular stairway. We walked behind him and he limped as he walked, thus we walked very slowly. Atop the circular stairway, in a circular dining room with a vaulted stone ceiling, a table was laid for a meal for four. It was a massive table, and there was a stove in the room emanating heat. A pot on the stove erupted steam. The steam poured out of small windows carved in the stone; they brought in a comfortable breeze in that room, and it was not too hot. On the table was a decanter of white wine, another of red, some antipasti, fresh-cut flowers. Our hosts thanked us for giving them the honor of our company, and we responded that the honor was ours. Saskia told me she felt faint and needed to splash water on her face, then she whispered in Italian to the innkeeper and his wife. We asked if she needed to rest, but she said no, that she was hungry. While she was in the bathroom, I sat dumb, not being able to speak Italian. Our hosts looked at me with curiosity. When Saskia returned, her hair was tied back and her face was damp. She said she felt much better, and she ate the antipasti with great appetite.

  “How did you both come to be innkeepers?” I asked. Saskia translated my question and then said to me, “They say that they are not really innkeepers.
Or rather, that they didn’t set out to become innkeepers. It all happened by accident.”

  “We are originally farmers,” explained the man, “My wife’s parents and my parents were all farmers. And this inn used to be a giant family farm that my grandparents built seventy years ago. We inherited it when they died, and we continued farming— mostly grains, root vegetables, herbs, and milk-goats for their cheese. Then, four years ago, the government closed the main road joining Rome to Siena and Siena to Florence; so travelers began taking the road that goes through our village of Staggia. Overnight, the whole village changed: our castle, for example, began to resemble an anthill in a desert, with all the visitors scurrying around it morning till night. At this same time, people started coming to our farm to ask if they could pay to stay the night …you see, there are no inns in Staggia. So little by little, we started changing old barns and animal sheds into guest rooms. Then, before you know it, we had the town’s one and only inn!”

  “That is the way most things seem to happen in life,” I said to the innkeepers, or ‘farmers,’ rather, “Our most interesting life changes seem to arrive by complete accident. A chance meeting will inspire a new venture that one would never have considered before.”

  “But you and Saul are in Tuscany for a reason…” the innkeeper said to Saskia, “I mean… a very important reason.”

  “Yes,” she smiled, “We are searching for my best friend. I haven’t seen her since I was eleven. We were told that she is now living somewhere in Tuscany. Have you ever had a French girl stay here named Adélaïse?”

  “Oh,” the innkeeper frowned, “perhaps we have made a mistake.”