The Wanderess

by Roman Payne

  Then you recall how Saskia was that day: in the yard of the inn in Petrognano, she cried more than was appropriate to see me off for the one day and one night in Florence I would be spending without her. She told me to kiss her one last time, and when she kissed me, she kissed me on the mouth, admitting to me that we were lovers. We never admitted to one another that we were lovers. We never kissed one another on the mouth—at least not as she kissed me that day you saw us in the yard of La Locanda Villa B***. I should have understood then that she was saying farewell to me. Yet how could she have said farewell to me then, when I needed her more than ever? Still, I didn’t think of her that day. All my thoughts were with my mother.

  Saul resumes his tale: “On the way to Florence…”

  And so I left Saskia there at the inn in Petrognano. I left her there with all of our money. We had just finished all of Juhani’s money, and now our only funds were what Saskia drew from her inheritance in Siena. We paid the driver in advance to take me to Florence and back to the inn at Petrognano. When I left her, I only had enough in my pocket to pay a meal or two while I was in Florence. I planned to stay the night at my mother’s, so I didn’t see a need to ask Saskia for money. Thus I left her there with all her money and all her tears; and the driver and I went on to Florence.

  I arrived in the city-centre of Florence and went to the address given to me by the innkeeper. I found my mother’s residence. It was an inexpensive housing place for widows. I rang, my mother’s nurse came to let me in. She wore a solemn expression on her bone-white face. She only spoke Italian, so she could not express herself to me. She motioned to me that my mother wasn’t at home and gave me an address to where I could find her. I bowed my head to the nurse and went out to where my driver was waiting for me.

  I handed the address to him, and we started off slowly. The road took us out of the city. ‘Is it a country resting place?’ I wondered, ‘away from the noise of the city?’ It was while on that road, void of landmarks and signs, that a gnawing fear began to eat at me. Call it the air, call it intuition, call it whatever you like, it was overall a fear that justified itself when we came to a large pastoral plain, a field of grass and stones. The grass was green, the stones were white. They were tombstones.

  Thus we came to a graveyard. And there with my driver I broke down and wept. I didn’t know how to react—does one ever know in this situation? With all the words I could muster, I told my driver to leave me… “Go, please,” I said. I then followed the smell of incense. I saw a small group of mourners—four elderly women and one little girl—they were following behind a priest and an altar boy carrying incense. I went up to the priest and said the name of my mother. He signaled to a headstone that was some twenty meters away. The women mourners glanced up at me and nodded with respect. I took them for Italians, no doubt friends of my mother during the last five years of her life.

  I watched the priest and the altar boy with his trail of smoke, together with the mourners. I watched my mother’s small funeral procession disappear down the gravel path while I made my way to the headstone from which they came. And by a fresh grave, I fell down and wept. Her name was written clearly on the headstone, together with the epitaph:

  She wandered and wandered, looking for her son. She lies now buried, in a city close to her heart.

  I lay on that grave for the entire evening and all of the night, sighing, crying, lamenting that I did not arrive sooner to prevent her early death. “Happily, she must have died,” I said aloud for the earth to hear, “for she finished her life in Florence, the one city she loved.” ‘Why though did it take four days for the last message to arrive to the innkeeper?’ I wondered, ‘Well, it’s for the best. If the innkeeper and his wife had received news the day after my mother’s condition worsened, they would have gone to Florence while Saskia and I were still in Siena, and I would never have met them: they who led me to her. Ah, she must have died two days ago—so as to be buried today… So why did I take so long to come? What was I doing of such great importance? I know what my mother would say to that: “You were living, my son. You were living. Go on and live some more.”

  And so that is what I did, I went and lived some more; although that entire day and the night to come, I stayed and mourned by her holy graveside. The moon was half-full and growing, the sky was clear, the night was fresh, yet comfortable to the skin; thus, it was a wanderer’s night. Where to was my mother wandering now?—I wondered this and wandered far into my memories as the night progressed and my tears bleached my skin cleaner and more white.

  By morning, I was drained of tears, soaked in sadness, I considered my mother lucky for having survived this world until free of it. I too wanted to be free of it. I took the tea from my pocket: the tea that my mother had blended for the innkeeper— that which was called: ‘Eternal Life,’ and I sprinkled it on her grave, so that now my mother too could go and live some more.

  I left then my mother’s grave. I saw no other living souls as I made my way through the cemetery. I was surprised to see my driver parked near the road. He had been asleep, but the sound of the gravel crunching under my feet was enough to wake him. He said, “Oh, signore! I know you sent me away but I wondered how you’d get back to Petrognano… I know that Signora has all of Signore’s money with her!”

  “You are right, Signora does have all of Signore’s money. I thank you… but tell me, did you stay out here waiting for me all afternoon and evening yesterday and all night too?”

  “Of course, Signore. Where else was I supposed to go?” “You’re a good man,” I said. And we started off driving back down the road to Petrognano.

  Now is the part that you all recall: when I came back to La Locanda Villa B***, I let our driver go for good and went to the check-in desk to inquire which room Saskia was in. That was when the despairing news came: It was known that Saskia had definitely left the inn, and that she had left with another man, but nothing was known about the route she had taken, or destination to where she went. They were certain, however, that she was not coming back.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Saul takes a break and fills our glasses for a last drink while he finishes his story…

  “It is the part of the story when I met you,” Saul said to me as he lit another pipe, “that the nobility of my tale begins. You heralded all the good that followed…

  “It is when I came back alone to the inn in Petrognano... You found me as I was giving up on life. I was in despair to a degree that would have killed me had you not helped me. I’d just lost my mother and Saskia. The fact that you helped me to learn where Saskia had gone; that you drove me to Civitavecchia, bought me passage on that boat to Tripoli—you then lent me money for my journey, once I’d arrived in North Africa. All of this was—and is—extraordinary to me.”

  To this, I told Saul: “I was a witness to a scene of great beauty and tenderness between you and Saskia in the yard of the inn in Petrognano. I merely believed that you and Saskia each deserved the happiness of seeing the other one again. I didn’t know then what was dividing you two. Now you’ve just finished telling me about your sojourn in Staggia where you learned from the innkeeper about the bounty on your head. I didn’t know about that when I took you to the boat docks. I did, however, learn about it when I got back to Paris that next spring. I revisited an old newspaper article I’d saved that told of the magnificent bounty on your head should you or your corpse be sent to Tripoli… I had clipped the article out years before, as I found your case interesting. Had I remembered that clipping on the way to Civitavecchia, I would have never let you go to Tripoli.”

  “And so all this time, you must have thought you drove me to my death that day!”

  “Precisely!”

  “You know, though, I was fully aware of the money one would get for killing me—I knew that boat ride to Tripoli was a voyage to my own death… Even if you had remembered that newspaper clipping, I would have begged you to buy me a ticket for Tripoli. Why, you ask? You cou
ld think that I was going to Tripoli to save Saskia. After all, if any bounty hunters knew that I loved her, she would have been taken hostage. They would have beaten her, tortured her, and what have you, until I came to offer myself up for execution. Sure, you could think this was the reason, but it wasn’t…

  “While we were riding to the port near Rome, I thought about my reasons for going to my suicide. It wasn’t to save Saskia—we kept our relationship such a secret, I didn’t believe it was possible that anyone knew about her and me. How could they have known?! You see, I gave my enemies way too little credit. They knew about Saskia and me. At least one knew! You’ll find this very interesting. I’m going to resume telling you the story of my life from the point where you got me to Civitavecchia and bought me passage on the boat to Tripoli—a favor for which I owe you my life…”

  * * *

  Saul’s adventures in Tripoli, and all that followed until the end of his tale…

  The boat was crowded with passengers. Almost all were men, and by all appearances, of dubious character. Such it seemed was the Italian passage to Tripoli—a passage of scoundrels.

  The voyage was very long, time dragged on and on. The Mediterranean is blown by chilly winds in the autumn, but this year the weather was hot and fierce. There were no cabins on the ship so we were forced to stand all crowded together on the deck under that pitiless sun. I kept a scowl on my face to avoid conversing with other men. When there was enough room to pace, I would think during that horrible pace about the worst things: my mother’s death, Saskia’s betrayal, and my own imminent death looming over me… “As soon as we reach the shore,” I mumbled under my breath. Then I turned and saw a man standing in front of me, looking solemnly at me…

  “You seem to be the only person on this boat who isn’t speaking Italian,” he said to me in French.

  “That may be true, since I wasn’t speaking at all.”

  “Oh well, I see we both speak French…” He then went on to ask me all sorts of questions, at which I grew hostile and annoyed. I didn’t want him near me, couldn’t he see this? I was a dying man, I wanted to be alone…

  It was just before I grabbed his collar to threaten him, that I looked clearly at his face. I paled then with a feeling of great sorrow, and fear too. He was a desperate-looking creature—one to find on such a boat—he was the perfect portrait of the wandering failure, the itinerant outsider, a rejected traveler, lonely and cast down into the depths of a world that becomes everyday more miserable to live in.

  …Yet it is not this that disturbed me. What gave me sorrow and fear when I looked at his face was the fact that he and I looked so much alike.

  “My name is Alfred Pion1,” he said, “I’m from Paris.”

  I shook his hand and looked curiously at him. His mouth and his eyes both resembled mine, although his showed a suffering that had never been a part of my features. But beyond the face, I saw we had similar clothes and hair, we were almost the same height, the same color of skin-tone… and yet he looked like a miserable wretch. Was it the suffering in his eyes?

  “Why are you going to Tripoli?” he asked me.

  “I’m from there. Going back home.”

  “Oh. I’ve never been. You should show me around. I keeping getting kicked around in this world. I moved to Germany and had really bad luck there, so I went to Spain—more of the same—then to Rome. Always the worst things happen to me, my luck is terrible. Oh, but don’t worry, I still have a bit of money… don’t think I’m trying to beg or get anything for free, I just wanted to talk to someone… You see, it’s travelling that has dragged me down. I should have stayed somewhere and married. But here I am… after suffering in Rome for the last two weeks, I decided to give Tripoli a try. I hear it’s cheap and the people are good. Do you want some tobacco?”

  1ALFRED PION: “Pion” is French for “Pawn.”

  I said no, and looked more at the pathetic creature in front of me, at how ashamed he was to be alive. Then it occurred to me how much in vain my own travels in life had been, since in the end I lost Saskia. I looked at that wasted remnant of a man standing in front of me, and I knew that it was best to die in Tripoli without her. For if I went on living in hiding after she had betrayed me, I would come to resemble this pathetic soul standing in front of me…

  And so, my meeting this Monsieur Pion gave me some courage to die in Tripoli that day. I hadn’t had the courage before, only the necessity. Now I had the courage…

  Still I’ve always been a dreamer who believes in impossible hopes—miracles that will never fail to guide me to paradise. I always believed that Fortune was on my side, and that she would stay by my side; and it is for this reason that I’ve always sacrificed my dear wine to the gods.

  The captain announced we would soon arrive. The fear of execution then crept back into my belly. I turned to Alfred Pion, “Well, it was a pleasure talking with you… I have a feeling you’re going to have good luck in Tripoli… Take care.” I hoped he would leave me then, but he stayed close by my side.

  From the waters of the Mediterranean, I watched the familiar sight of the African coastline enlarge and grow defined as we approached Tripoli, the city where my father was raised and was killed. Now that I was walking into my own execution, it of course occurred to me to go hide somewhere in the belly of the ship until we left port again, maybe then I could save my life. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. There was nothing left of me at this point. I already lost my life my last night in Italy and I now had more than enough courage to die.

  So I shuffled slowly across the deck as the boat was brought to shore. Alfred Pion begged me to meet him that night in town to have drinks, seeing as he knew no one in Tripoli, nor his way around. I said no, that I wouldn’t be there that night, “I am only going to stay in Tripoli for a couple hours before I continue on with my travels.” I didn’t think I was lying. Doesn’t a man’s execution and death force him to continue on with his travels? ‘Sure, death forces you to give up familiar things. And from then on out, it’s languages you can’t understand and nights sleeping in strange beds…’

  We were finally docked at the Port of Tripoli. Now I had nothing to do but wait with the dirty herd of passengers while they led us through and checked our names off the registration to let us disembark. I looked out at that busy port with people everywhere—that city full of poor people, city full of people who would murder a man just for a meal… ‘And just think, people!… Who is arriving in town but me: the jewel of the Mediterranean with the six hundred thousand franc price on his head!…’

  And so I continued shuffling along, while Alfred kept his lost soul pinned to me.

  We were part of the first herd of passengers to disembark from the boat. Alfred kept by me. As soon as we were on firm land, I looked around me, and soon enough I saw it: at the gates of the Libyan customs, some men had already spotted me: five Libyan guards, all armed to their teeth. They were approaching us.

  “You are a poor man, my friend,” I whispered to Alfred, “this is the price you pay for having chosen me for a companion. You’re probably about to go to prison, you know…” Alfred didn’t understand a thing I was saying, and in a moment we were enveloped by the five guards. They whisked us quickly away from the bustling port to some corridor nearby where no one could interfere with their business.

  “Which of you is the son of Solarus?” asked a guard. “I am.”

  “And he? Your friend?”

  “Never saw him,” I said, but he didn’t believe me. “You two are friends of some sort.”

  “No, he’s innocent,” I told him. But the guard didn’t believe me and ordered two of his men to chain Alfred and haul him off somewhere. ‘The poor wretch!’ I thought, ‘the way he turned pale when they chained him and bobbed his head at me and cried like a child as they dragged him away—as though he were the one being executed! I had no doubt they would question him a while about me, hear only ridiculous answers, and then let him go on his way. But who cares!’ I n
ever did see Alfred de Pion again. You’ll hear soon enough how he ended-up…

  As for me, I was stuck in that corridor with the remaining three guards. The one who had given the orders to the others, I figured he was their chief. His uniform was a little cleaner than the others, his face wasn’t as ugly, and he wore a moustache. The other two, his henchmen, were short, stocky beasts with necks that resembled the gnarled trunks of trees. They both smelled badly, and their faces were horribly pockmarked. It was these two who wanted to put me in chains before they led me wherever I was to go. The chief, however, said not to chain me…

  “He will not run away,” he told his men, “He gave his real name in the ship’s registry when he arrived on that boat from Italy. He obviously came to Tripoli to be captured. Don’t chain him… he won’t try to run.”

  “Very well,” they told me, “Walk in between us. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The Revelation…

  For a long time we walked under the scorching sun. The guards and I were all silent. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood we were in, which was strange as I thought I knew all of Tripoli by sight. Then came the birds of prey circling over in the sky, and the smell of brine, so I knew we weren’t far from the beach.

  “This is it,” said the chief of the guards, pointing ahead to a very small palace with a gold dome. It looked like it used to be an embassy. I thought back to the time years and years ago, when I worked in Tripoli earning slave’s wages, painting gold leaf on the domes of all the palaces around the city. I thought I’d seen every palace in the city, though I’d never seen this one.