by Roman Payne
“Why?!” asked Saskia.
“That is too bad,” said his wife.
The innkeeper then excused himself to use the bathroom and limped out of the dining room. While he was gone, his wife made a comment to Saskia: “His limp is getting better every week. He used to barely be able to walk, right after his accident…” Saskia sat still looking frightened. The woman kept talking until, a few moments later, her husband reappeared and interrupted her… “What luck that whoever used the bathroom before me didn’t pull out the stopper after splashing water on her face! Look what I found…” Everyone at the table peered into his hand. “Before I pulled out the stopper to wash my hands, I noticed a gemstone at the bottom of the sink. I think she would miss this!”
Saskia immediately felt in her ears for the earrings I gave her. She was about to take them out to see if the stones were missing until I informed her that all the diamonds were in place. None had fallen out. The innkeeper held up the stone and said, “It looks to be a very precious sapphire!”
Saskia made a loud gasp. She reached for her necklace: a gold heart-shaped locket she always wore—except for when she slept beside me. I had never seen inside the locket before. Now she opened it and showed the interior. It had two settings: one had a blue sapphire, the same size as the one the innkeeper had found; the other setting was empty. “I bought two sapphires when I traveled to Ceylon—sapphires are everywhere in Ceylon, and they are not expensive. One of the sapphires is for me, and the other is to give to Adélaïse as soon as I find her” She then turned to the innkeeper, “You saved my life by finding that… If I’d lost it, that would surely mean that I’d lost Adélaïse forever. I couldn’t live with that truth!”
The innkeeper went to find a box to put the stone, as well as the locket, in—since the locket didn’t shut correctly anymore. Saskia would need to find a jeweler to repair it, and return the stray sapphire to its setting. I thought about Saskia’s statement: that she couldn’t live with the truth should it be known that she would never see Adélaïse again. Don’t we all say that, and isn’t it an empty phrase: that we couldn’t live knowing we could never have the other again. Saskia could certainly live if she knew she couldn’t see me again, likewise I without her… but would I want to live, had I known the truth to be my life would be without her? Maybe the test of a man, or of a woman, is if he or she is brave enough to refuse life, were it a life without the beloved.
That whole story of the innkeeper finding Saskia’s sapphire and returning it to her convinced me of one thing: that he was a noble farmer. He was a man of honesty and integrity. And that knowledge would prove important for reasons you’ll soon find out.
The only time that evening when someone other than us four appeared in that dining room is when the head cook at the inn brought the plates of food in. We were by now on familiar terms with each other, so I ventured to ask the innkeeper why he limped when he walked. Saskia translated his response, saying that… “…he had a bad accident out in his fields last June… while he was fixing one of his farming machines…”,
“You see, the machine jumped one of the gears on the wheel,” said the innkeeper, “and the blade that cuts the grain struck my thigh. It made a deep gash... So I came back here to the inn. I bandaged my leg. I went to bed. My wife was visiting our son in a neighboring village where he lives with his wife and our grandchildren. She was spending the night there, so I slept alone here. I woke up in a lot of pain. My whole thigh was swollen, the pain was really bad. It was already infected. I was worried I was going to lose my leg—you see, one of my friends growing up, his father lost his arm because it got cut by a farming machine… it got infected and then turned to gangrene…
“Mid-morning, my wife was still gone. So I decided to get to a doctor myself. It took me hours to hobble to the nearest doctor. He’s in another village. When I got there, I found out the doctor left that morning to deliver a baby somewhere. My leg was now so badly infected, parts of it that had been painful before started to grow numb. I had every reason to fear gangrene. I went to the apothecary in that village where the doctor lives and I asked for some medicine. They didn’t know what to do other than clean the wound. But there was a woman customer there—a lady, a foreigner, about sixty years old, with long grey hair and kind eyes—who said she could help me—and, she did help me! She suggested we go to my house because I would need to lie down somewhere for several days without moving. Before we left, she bought some medicines and some herbs from the apothecary—medicines and herbs that I had never heard of…
“She helped me get back here to our inn. My wife still wasn’t back, so this lady stayed to care for me, waiting till my wife was back so she could give her instructions on what to do. This lady, I tell you, she was a great healer! She stayed that whole day caring for my wound, having me take different medicines, tinctures of special herbs. My wife came back in the evening and she was very afraid for me. She was grateful to this lady who was helping me. By evening, the infection was under control. The good lady said that the risk of gangrene was gone as long as I continued the treatment. My wife admitted that she didn’t know the first thing about treating such a wound. She asked the good lady if there was a way to convince her to stay a few days in case the infection came back. Since we run an inn, we offered her our best room to sleep in. We had our cook go to great lengths to prepare elaborate meals for her. After a few such meals, she told us she preferred simpler meals, as she wasn’t demanding in her tastes.
“…And so,” he continued, “to make a long story short, this woman, this lady, saved my leg last spring. She became a great friend to my wife and to me, and I am in debt to her forever. I may still limp, but I have my leg; and the limp is going away. She was back here a month ago and stayed with us, and she checkedup on my leg. She said the limp will soon be gone and I’ll be like new. As for her, I pray that she’ll recover just as I have. You see, she just suffered the most horrible shock. I’m afraid I’m partly responsible, although I was only trying to help her. She was the healthiest person I ever met, I know she will recover quickly. I pray to God that she will. She’s back in Florence now, ill from shock. But tomorrow, early morning, my wife and I are going to set off for Florence to care for her as she cared for me.”
Of course the innkeeper’s story reminded me of how Saskia saved me in Barcelona, how she cared for me there just like the lady in this story cared for the innkeeper. And so I offered to tell the story of my meeting Saskia to the innkeeper. Saskia said she would have trouble being the translator of such a story, as she preferred to be humble, but I begged her, asking her to be proud for having saved someone’s life. I wanted to tell the story also to remind myself of how Saskia saved me, so that my gratitude to her would never fade away. I know that retelling a story to others is the way to make a story immortal.
The innkeeper begged Saskia to translate it, saying that nothing could interest him more than to hear the story of how a couple such as she and I came to meet. And so, the innkeeper’s wife cleared the dishes from the meal we had eaten. She put water on the stove for tea. And I told the story of our fateful night in Barcelona accurately and in full—except that I left out Penelope Baena, and I left out the opium. I kept the poisoning part of my story as vague as possible.
Once my story was told, we all realized we had forgotten about the tea. The innkeeper’s wife brought the water to a boil once more. Her husband then took over, setting a large clay pot on the table in which a sack full of medicinal herbs was steeping. The innkeeper’s wife set empty clay cups before each person at the table, and her husband lifted the heavy pot and poured out four cups of the herbal infusion to drink…
That was the moment I realized just why the inn smelled as it did, and why I was so drawn to its odor; I realized why it reminded me of my home. I sat looking at my cup of tea with the swirling herbs, smelling it; and I realized it was the exact same tea my mother made for me as a child and adolescent. I had a nervous stomach as a child, and she gav
e me this tea saying it would calm my stomach. The tea was an infusion of various herbs native to my country. At that farmer’s-innkeeper’s table, I sat in a sort of revelry of memory… a fog of nostalgia enclosing me… and then... down. I was plunged into melancholy. Then, up! I was lifted up in rapture. Then I was sent to walk in my mind. It was a strange landscape. I looked around me for clues as to where I was. My mind trailed off, while my voice too, it trailed off. Then I said to the innkeeper and his wife in a voice full of melancholy and rapture, “Thank you… thank you both for this excellent tea.”
“Saul? Are you okay?!” Saskia looked frightened. I realized then that I was scaring her, and that I didn’t want to scare her. So I put all my energy into smiling. And when she saw me smile, she sighed with relief… “Oh, goodness, Saul!… You’re back… please, don’t scare me anymore!”
“Saskia,” I said to her with a very calm, steady voice, “Tell the innkeeper and his wife that I realize now why I couldn’t bear to leave their inn today to go look at the castle with you. Tell them that I now realize why I suddenly feel like I’m at home. It was just like my mother told me when I was last with her: ‘Saul, my son, once you have the chance to leave our country, take it… go to Italy… go to Florence… There you will find happiness, there you will find peace, there you will find joy. And there, come one day, you will find me, and we will be a family again.’ Tell that to the innkeeper, and tell it to his wife, and tell them that I found her again; I found my home and my family… all in this cup of tea.”
Saskia looked at me and said nothing. Great confusion displayed in her eyes. Those eyes, that mouth, that gently quivering face… She didn’t know how to react to what I was saying.
“Tell him,” I asked once more of Saskia.
With that she turned from me to the innkeeper and his wife. She placed her hands on the heavy wooden table and began reciting words in Italian. The two of them looked at me with alarm. I held my clay cup between my hands, and they their cups between theirs… and I looked down into my cup, into the dregs that the tea left behind once drunk. I looked over at Saskia. Then I looked back across the table at the innkeeper and his wife. Their looks of alarm had now turned into looks of infinite kindness. They now looked at me smiling radiant smiles, what kindness in their faces! While the innkeeper’s eyes remained on me, he put his heavy, rustic hand on the hands of Saskia that were placed on the table. He turned to her and he spoke a string of Italian phrases…
Saskia listened to his words, and then looked at me with a look so tender—at once joyful and sorrowful—she then began to cry. Thus she looked at me while the tears toppled down her face, each one catching up with the last, each tear hunting down the tear before it…
As water is born high-up on a mountain spring, secreted from a hidden place within the rocks so as to tumble down in streams and waterfalls, to gather below together once again in the ocean, so were Saskia’s tears born high-up on her perfect face, secreted from a hidden place within her eyes, so as to topple down in streams upon her cheeks, to topple from her chin… Then the tears gather whole to form oceans of hope in the cups of her hands.
“What is it Saskia?” I asked of her, I begged of her, pleaded, “What is it?!” She looked back to the innkeeper. Then to his wife, her eyes remained on me. While my own eyes remained focused on the empty tea bowl in my hands. All of this happened in one confused moment. Finally, Saskia said to me with tenderness in her voice… “They say it’s true then, Saul. They say it’s true.”
“What is true?”
“They say that you are the one.”
Chapter Thirty-three
We continued to sit in complete silence at that table: Saskia sobbed into her napkin, the innkeeper and his wife looked wideeyed at me while whispering in Italian or in Tuscan together. I, meanwhile, didn’t care why they were looking, or why Saskia was sobbing; I was busy musing on the phenomenon of nostalgia1. It is definitely an “aching,” as the definition suggests. Part of the original sensation—in this case, the smell of the tea—is there. But the original elements of the scene when the experience firstoccurred are long-gone. For me, this was at my home in our fishing village. I was but a child or adolescent; and my mother brewed this tea with the knowledge that it would heal all my woes—and it did. Now it was the source of my woes, although the smell remained healing. But why was this tea here in Tuscany? I would soon find out…
At first, I felt suddenly separated from all three of my companions—almost as though I were an intruder at the table. Saskia was crying, obviously about me, had I done something wrong? Apparently, I was no longer in their eyes the person who I was minutes before. Something was said about me in that language I couldn’t understand… what was it?! Something powerful… Just look at the way the farmer-innkeeper stared at me! And his wife too! I felt incredibly uneasy all of a sudden. I wanted to excuse myself and go walk in the yard. They, however, quickly excused themselves for treating me strangely. But it didn’t help. Now I too was a stranger to me. All because I was then ignorant of something which now—telling you this story—I consider essential to understanding myself. What was it? Well, it all began when I told Saskia and the innkeeper and his wife that “I found the home of my youth in the cup of tea they prepared for me.” After they said, “I am the one.” And so, impatient to know all, I implored them to know…
“I had guessed you were the one,” the innkeeper told me, “when you came to our inn and said your name is Saul… And then when I saw you out in the garden painting with the pastels… Now with tea that put you in a sort-of trance, I know you are the one.” “Which one?!”
1 NOSTALGIA: The etymology of ‘nostalgia’ is from the Homeric Greek νόστος (nóstos), meaning ‘homecoming,’ and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning ‘aching pain.’
Saskia repeated my question in Italian, and the innkeeper said something to her in a low, and serious voice. Saskia looked stunned, and instead of translating it, she began to cry more heavily than before.
“Translate what he said, Saskia.”
“I cannot!” she cried, “Give me a minute…”
We all sat silent around the table. When Saskia cleared her voice from the crying, she said to me, “The woman who healed the innkeepers leg, and who became their friend… it is…”
“ Who, Saskia?!”
“It is your mother!”
“My mother?!” Hearing this sent a freezing shiver across my body. I guessed that some very bad news would follow, since whatever they said to Saskia had made her cry. She insisted that there was no bad news that I didn’t already know. That she was crying because I had found my mother, just as I had hoped to do, although I didn’t believe I could do it in a region as large as Tuscany. I told the three of them that I didn’t believe them. “How do you know… Rather, why did you think that she was my mother?!”
“I don’t think… I know!” said the innkeeper, “She is your mother!” As he spoke, Saskia translated sentence by sentence…
“The innkeeper says that your mother has stayed at their inn for at least three of the last six months, and that she is back in Florence now but when she left last time, she said she was planning to return to their inn this winter. She had never heard of their inn before she met the owner here at the apothecary after he injured his leg. You see, your mother, she was his nurse! The innkeeper and his wife begged her to stay with them, at least until his leg was on the mend. She hesitated though… she was busy trying to find you. But then she learned that Staggia—and this inn in particular—is a crossroads for people travelling south to north, or vice-versa, in Italy. And of the travelers from the South, she found out that a good portion are foreigners who land port in Civitavecchia… people that come from everywhere, from every country in the Mediterranean! And unless their destinations are Rome or Naples, they’ll probably pass through Staggia on their way up to Genoa, or Milan, or Venice, or to Florence. Very often to Florence. Your mother lives in Florence, and has for years, although she travels—
too much, they say—wandering endlessly throughout Tuscany, looking for her only son. When she comes to this inn, she talks with the guests. She inquires if they might have heard of you. Of course, she doesn’t give your patronymic. She doesn’t tell anyone who your father is, she just calls you Saul. The innkeeper was the only one in Europe, your mother said, who knew the real story about you. She and he have perfect trust in one another, and they have since the first day they met at the apothecary. She told him all about your childhood, and life in the village where you were raised. At her new home, in Florence, he said, she spends all day Sunday, every Sunday, walking around the Piazza della Signoria, and across the Ponte Vecchio bridge... she said that you knew that’s where you could find her in Florence…’”
“The innkeeper is telling the truth,” I said, “How else would he know about the Ponte Vecchio? It must be my mother.” “It is your mother,” said the innkeeper, “and you are Saul, the son of Solarus.”
“Enough!” I said, I stood up from the table, emotions were wrapped tightly around my neck, I could hardly breathe. All six eyes were upon me: Saskia, the innkeeper, his wife; they all sat with their teacups still in hand, and their eyes upwards at me. “Please,” I said, “Everyone, let’s sit quietly for a little while. I need to take this all in.”
I sat back down and didn’t say a word. I could tell the others wanted to speak, but they didn’t. I had asked them for silence. I asked for more tea. The innkeeper’s wife promptly poured boiling water into my cup over a fresh dose of herbs. I inhaled the scent again and thought of my home and my mother.
“Your mother made me this same tea each day when my leg was infected,” said the innkeeper, “It is supposed to heal everything from infected wounds to infected souls to infected hearts. She bought the herbs at the apothecary where she met me, but they are herbs that are common throughout the Mediterranean. They are sold in the marketplace in the village where you grew up. Most of the herbs are common, but the mixture is important. Acacia honey is added for sweetness; but its secret ingredient—that which gives it a special flavor, and which is said to add years to a person’s life, slow the body from growing old, heal wounds, create strengths and kill diseases, is due to a plant that grows only in your country. She brought several hundred grams of it dried when she came to Italy. She gave me some to make my own tea, and I’ve never been in better health. Your mother has a great talent for healing.