Authors: Roman Payne
The Wanderess (18 page)
1
GARÇONNIÈRE:
(Fr)
There is no accurate translation for this French word that refers
to a discreet apartment or room (usually in the city) that a married man keeps in order to
engage in infidelity with his mistress or mistresses.
At thirteen, Saskia lost everything in her world in a single
moment of confusion. At fourteen she was sent off into this
world; she was given her wandering shoes, some money for the
road, and a premature adulthood. Now, at seventeen, the only
thing in her life besides her lost friend, was this mysterious
‘fortune’ that was supposed to solve everything for her, and which
I still didn’t understand. I pitied her and agreed to tell her all she
wanted to know… All, that is, except:
where I grew up, and where
my father was born…
“Because it doesn’t suit me. And I’m stubborn,” I told her,
“Where I grew up and where my father was born are the two
things you want to know most. And what I want to know most is:
why you want to know these things! Why is it,
you want this
information so badly? If I can’t have what I want, you cannot
either.”
“Child!” she exhaled with impatience, “The gardener
woman said I cannot explain the puzzle to you, or else it will be
ruined, the fortune will be ruined, we will be ruined, and our
future will be terrible!”
“This was the gardener-woman on the Île Saint-Louis?”
“Yes.”
I gave a long breath and reclined in my chair, “As a rule,” I
told her, “gardener-women are easy to spot—since they lurk in
gardens. I will go to the Île Saint-Louis tomorrow and torture
every garden-woman I find until I get one to speak up and tell me
what this is all about.”
This joke of mine made Saskia cry. I hated seeing her cry,
seeing her soft cheeks attacked by tears. She said she was fed up.
She told me how scared she was all the times she almost lost me:
when I left her apartment in Barcelona after she’d healed me and I
almost left for Florence without trying to find her; when I became
furious because I thought she was having a romance with this
Andrea boy—she was sure I would either kill him and go to
prison, or else distrust her forever and abandon her; and there
were many other times she was afraid I would leave her. She said
to be kind to her. And even if her ‘stupid fortune’ was just that:
a
stupid fortune
, it was all she had to grasp onto in this world
besides the memory of her friendship with Adélaïse. Without her
fortune, she told me, she wasn’t anybody. She cried again and I
hugged her in my arms and told her I would tell her everything. I
would tell her everything, I promised, except of course for the
name of the country where I was born and the place where my
father was raised.
It was still our first day in Paris. Saskia and I had yet to
share a bed together in Paris. We were on the bed together,
distant. Never had we ever kissed as lovers; if we touched lips it
was as brother and sister. In one moment of emotion, our lips fell
together by accident, but we quickly removed ourselves as though
we were children touching glass with dirty hands. We were
sacred to one another. We were frightened by the influence each
was having on the other, more and more every day. ‘I love her no
longer as a child,’ I told myself, ‘Since our last night in Barcelona, I
love her as a woman, and I want her.’ But mine was a difficult
task, I knew. It was probably the hardest task I ever set for myself.
Since I learned the way her selfish uncle altered her sexuality
forever, just so that he could extinguish a desire that was driving
him crazy… And then his trip to Athens afterwards, with the gifts
he sent to try to heal his cowardice and shame… The more I
thought about him and what he did, the more I thought how
unnatural he was—a monster, what he did was monstrous. And
so I was setting before me the hardest task of all: I would not
touch her as a man touches a woman until I knew she was fully
grown, heart and mind, and until I knew she fully loved me and
trusted me beyond measure.
So that night after we had kissed… after I wanted her, was
inflamed by her, I stopped and told her what I’d decided. She told
me that she would be my sister until the day we could become
lovers. We were already lovers, although lovers who do not touch
are comic lovers. The comedy in our lives was those first few
weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another,
our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the
happiness and anguish of first love. Those first few weeks in Paris,
we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force
of a collision of stars.
Our landlady interrupted our pantomime love affair that
first evening. She came to finalize things on the apartment and
offer us wine. While Saskia sat sharing stories with Mme
Gazonette, I sat somber in a chair thinking: ‘Why does Saskia
need to know where I am from? And all this about my father?
What possible business could this young girl have with the once
famous Solarus?' I was suspicious. My intuition told me
something bad was going to happen. A few more glasses of wine
and I became very light at heart. I stopped thinking somber
thoughts to listen to Mme Gazonette. She was good company
that day, giving us some interesting facts about her life:
While she was young, she told us she had the pleasure of
meeting Jeanne d’Arc at a ballet
1
. Jeanne had by then acquired a
nerve disorder. She was trembling when they shook hands.
Regardless, Madame said she was very pretty in spite of rumors
about her having been an ugly, mannish and beastly thing. On
the contrary, Madame told us that she was feminine to her
fingertips and even had the body of a ballerina. During their
conversation, two different men and one woman approached
Jeanne d’Arc to inform her that, although she chose an important
mission in life, she
could have
been a ballerina if she’d wanted to;
for, they said,
‘You have the body!’
After Madame Gazonette
described meeting Jeanne d’Arc, she announced that this night
was the twentieth anniversary of her discovery that she was in
menopause.
1
JEANNE D’ARC AT A BALLET: Such a meeting could never have occurred, since
Jeanne d’Arc (John of Arc) was born in 1412 and died in 1431. The first attested ballet
performance was given in 1581 at the French court. Although there may have been ballet
performances before 1581, it is doubtful that there were any many years before—certainly
not as early as the fourteen-hundreds.
Before the good woman left, giving us back our
pantomime love affair, she made sure to get another rent payment
from me. I gave her thirty-six gold louis for six month’s rent on
our apartment (this was in addition to the six louis already paid
her for three month’s rent on the cubbyhole where my ghost
would sleep), and I gave her three pistoles for the services to be
rendered daily unto ‘Ghost Saul.’ With the gold still clicking in
her hands, our happy landlady clasped them to her heart and
sighed, “it is good to have you here! Good to drink Italian wine
and reminisce of those beautiful memories of menopause! Such
joy,” she added, “is only achieved by Shakespearean youths who
fall asleep during love making! Ô, to youthful love on hot
summer nights! May you young birds make beautiful music
together on your first night in Paris…” This statement made
Saskia blush to the ends of her ears. Madame Gazonette turned
serious and told me directly…
“Now, if you hear pounding on your floor, like a broom
handle mutilating the wood, it’s because I am I’m rapping on your
floor, Monsieur. This means you must hurry up to your
garçonnière!” Waving my hands in annoyance, I rushed our
landlady into the hall and slammed the door.
“What is a garçonnière?”
With great flourish, I recounted the history of the French
‘garçonnière,’ assuring her it is an old national custom, very
acceptable to many people; that it is a room rented by a married
man where he can rendezvous with his mistresses. It can also be a
room where a brave wife can visit her
amants.
1
“Why do you need one of those?” she asked me, “If you
want to cheat on me so badly, you can just pick a time when I’m
on the island looking for Adélaïse.”
AMANTS:
(Fr)
‘Lovers,’ principally used by engaged or married females to describe their
extramarital sexual partners.
This response left me baffled. Was she jealous? Or did she
not care? Oh, womankind, you will never cease to confuse me!
To prove my faithfulness, I led Saskia by the hand up to the sixth
floor and opened the door to our garçonnière.
“This is where the world is to believe I sleep,” I told her, “I
am your tutor only—Saul the tutor!” She lit up a smile,
understanding what this was about, and threw her arms around
me. We stepped into the room and since all the bare floor was
covered by the mattress, we climbed up on the it, she bounced a
little on it as though it were a trampoline. I saw then an honest
tear roll down her cheek…
want me to be safe.”
“I want you to keep from losing your money.”
“You are protective,” she said, “You want my life to turn
out well. Oh, why don’t you tell me where you are from!”
Then she sighed, “Oh, never mind.” She put her arms
solemnly against my chest. I released her to light the candle by
the mattress. I lay down and urged her down beside me. She
asked me to close the door. “Does it lock?”
people with keys.”
“I want a key to this room,” she said.
“Why?”
word.”
Okay, little fox, I’ll have a key made for you tomorrow.
But don’t put it on your keychain. Hide it carefully, away from
spies.
“Saul?”
“Yes, Saskia.”
“Lock the door.”
I knelt and locked the door. I locked the door locking the
world and time outside. I stretched my body across the mattress
and Saskia drew in close to me and placed her open hand on my
chest, her mouth near my shoulder; her breath, my breath blew
out the candle, and I held my lost Wanderess with tenderness
until sweet sleep overcame us.
I had to carry Saskia like a rabbit downstairs from our garçonnière
to the apartment in the morning, she was so sleepy. She went out
onto the terrace with her coffee, came back, and commented on
how nice it was that we had this magnificent apartment, yet that
we chose instead to sleep in a broom closet on our first night in
Paris. She then suggested we drink champagne for breakfast,
complaining that time was slipping by. I thought this the most
ridiculous thing anyone could say. I learned after, while she tried
to get me drunk, that she was using champagne as a truth serum.
She urged me to drink again and again, but I laughed at her
childish tricks. She asked me again where I was born. I told her,
“In a country.” She thought that was very funny. I told her my
country was on the Mediterranean Sea.
“I’m from a little village. A fishing village on the
Mediterranean. A village with one school and one church.”
“Was your father born in this fishing village?”
“No, he was from the city, from the capital.”
“Athens?”
“No!”
you were a boy?”
“I liked to paint, and make weapons out of things found
around the house, and make weapons out of things found in
nature… you know, normal boy-things.”
kind of place is it. What are you famous for?”
“Making war.”
“War?! What kind of war? A
peculiar sort
of war?”
“All wars are a little peculiar, don’t you think?”
“This is hard, Saul.” Saskia frowned and looked
discouraged. I laughed at her, then I said, “We’re also famous for
fishing, in my fishing village. We’re famous around the world for
a certain species of fish that only we have.”
it a fish peculiar to a certain country?”
I laughed at this. “My girl, what peculiar questions you
ask! Don’t you know, fish are peculiar to oceans, not to
countries…”
“Darn it, Saul! Ach, I’m no good at this…”
“Yes you are, don’t stop. Keep going…”
man.”
“He had that reputation,” I said, “Although I never met
him. I’ve seen paintings, and portraits… he was a strange-looking
man. They say, to some women, he was considered as handsome
as a god. To others, he was too exotic-looking. He made them
uneasy. When I picture him, I don’t picture him like the
paintings, because I know paintings lie. Sometimes before
sleeping or while I dream, I picture my father’s face. What I see is
a giant shield, polished like a mirror, reflecting the sun. But the
sun is reflected so brightly that I don’t know if it is a shield, or if it
is the sun itself. I picture his wild hair streaming-out from all
sides around the shield and sun. You know, my father lived his
whole life in the capital of my country…”
“…It was fashionable at the court of my country,” I went
on, “for royalty to buy exotic slaves that come from around the
world. These slaves become ‘curiosities’ of the court. Some are
purchased because they are hideous, and they are treated badly.
Some are put in cages so that tickets can be sold for the public to
come gawk at them. Other court ‘curiosities’ are fortunate:
purchased because they have a special talent, or great beauty.
These ‘curiosities,’ if they are still children, are given an education
at the royal school, and raised together with the royal children.
They themselves are treated as nobility. Many gain their freedom
as well as rank and honor. One such ‘curiosity’ was acquired
when our navy captured a pleasure-boat on the Black Sea. Her
name was Polinichka: a beautiful aristocrat from Saint Petersburg.
She was blonde, white-skinned, with piercing blue eyes; and a
grace, they say she walked the way snow floats down… unlike
anything the Mediterranean had seen before. Just before she died,
she became my grandmother.
Another such ‘curiosity’ arrived from the Americas around
the same time. His skin was red, his hair was black. He was an
Indian of the Cherokee tribe. A strong man, no one could
outwrestle him. He was brave, learnèd in botany, he had wisdom
in healing.
Because this Russian and the Indian were both exceptional
in beauty, and each had talents and manners that were valuable
and admired, each was treated like the nobility, educated at court,
and eventually they were granted freedman status…
“The Cherokee never thought of marriage; as favors from
women arrived to him too easily, he never had to bother with the
thought, and his desires were kept on low-flame. But when
Polinichka fell in love with the Cherokee, he sensed this, and his
desire flamed-up to a lust he had never felt before. Yet this one
time, he felt his lust dominated by something much deeper:
he
admired her.
“…And so, wanting to marry her before he spent his desire
by seducing her, he left court and hid himself away and taught
himself Russian. When he returned to the court, he used her
native language to court her—it was their secret language, no else
spoke Russian. Now while the king’s brothers and cousins all
were fond of the Cherokee, the king himself—barely an
adolescent at this time—was jealous of the Indian and hated
him…
“The Cherokee courted Polinichka at night beneath the
Mediterranean stars, and described the stars of the Americas. He
told her which animals they represented. She in turn described to
him the white-nights of Petersburg: those nights when the sun
dips barely over the horizon at sunset, and gives rise to the same
sun only minutes later. I remember when as a boy my mother
made up stories about these white-nights to tell to me as I fell
asleep, I was at once mesmerized and hypnotized, pacified and
terrified. The stories of these ‘endless days called nights’ so left an
impression on me, that they are the goal, the destination, of this
European journey I am taking now. Once I see those whitenights, I can let the earth swallow me up, I can drift out to sea
alone, it won’t really matter…
“It is too late in the year to see the white nights this year,”
I told Saskia, “but, then again, why hurry to one’s own end? I will
go to Petersburg next year, after we find your friend… And after I
visit Florence… I need to see my mother once more. She must be
old now...
“Well, back to my story,” I resumed, “It wasn’t long before
Polinichka and the Cherokee were married. All of the royal
family, except for the king and the queen, attended. They were
married without the blessings of the Catholic church, but they
didn’t care. Polinichka was Russian Orthodox. And my
grandfather, the Indian, believed in Nature and Spirits. They were
happy and in love their entire life together. They had one child, a
vigorous boy whom they named Solarus. He was my father.”
some wine in the cupboard.
“Hey, go on with the story!”
“There is no wine here,” I said, “Let’s go to a café.”
“Nope, bad plan.
First,
we go to the Île Saint-Louis to look
for Adélaïse,
then
we go to a café. You can wait to have your
wine.”
“I can
not
wait for my wine,” I told her; thinking how to
avoid that island to drink some wine in a café, I tried persuasion…
“Saskia, listen… when you and Adélaïse find each other again, you
will want it to be an intimate moment. You should be alone
together. She is your best friend, your twin.”
Saskia chewed her nails, biting off flakes of polish. “Okay,
go drink your wine,” she said, “I’ll go alone.” I laughed to myself
about her fingernails: a collage of colors like layers of the Earth,
each color representing a different date of application of polish, a
different time in her life. Yes, it was true that Saskia had the lifeexperience of a grown woman, but her fingers were those of a
teenage girl.
to bathe and get dressed… Give me two hours.”
“Two hours!” If she needed
that
to bathe, I told her, then
she should let me go
first
to the island. I would go drink my wine
in a café there for an hour or so. Surely with my head full of wine,
I would be more effective walking around looking for her friend.
“Why do you suggest that?!” Her mouth dropped open,
“Why drink your wine
on that island?
You can’t look for her when
you’ve never seen her—are you crazy?! And if you were to pass
her?! And if she saw you?! Not knowing what the other one looks
like, you two will pass as strangers! Then she will be gone
forever!”
She threw her head in her hands then in complete despair.
I told her to calm down. “Go bathe and dress and give yourself
time, Saskia. How’s this for a plan to find her… You said that not
many people your age in Paris understand English. You said this
island is residential, and very peaceful. So, if I see a girl there that
could possibly be Adélaïse, I will walk up and greet her in French;
then I will say to her in bad English, with a terrible accent:
“‘Miss, excuse me but I’m curious… I just thought I
overheard you mumbling something to yourself in English before
I approached you. Am I wrong?’ … ‘No, Sir, I wasn’t mumbling to
myself in English,’ she may answer. ‘But you do speak English?’ I
will ask. ‘Yes, I do.’ … ‘And you can write in English?’ … ‘Yes, of
course, they teach us that in school.’ … ‘Then you are in a position
to do me the greatest favor! It will only take you five minutes and
I will pay you an écu for your trouble…’
“…The girl may be too proud to work for an écu, or too
rich; she may consider herself too busy to help me, but I will insist
with the pitiful nature of an unrequited lover… ‘You see I’m in a
desperate situation! I’m from Portugal, and neither my French
nor my English is good at all… My problem is, I’m in love with
this French girl that lives here on this island. I have a rendezvous
with her in an hour… on that bridge over there, you see. Since I
cannot explain my feelings for her in good French or in good
English. I would like to give her a letter expressing my love for
her. Just one page, two at the most, but not more. All you need
to write to her is this—it must be in English, because I won’t have
a chance at communicating with her if the two of us meet, if she
doesn’t know English…
months now I have admired you from afar, etc….’”
I stopped narrating my plan and took Saskia’s hands…
“You see what genius this idea is?” I, at least, admired my own
plan tremendously. “If the girl I ask the favor of
is
your friend
Adélaïse, I will know for certain the moment I say that Adélaïse is
the name of my sweetheart.”
“If it is
not
Adélaïse… well, it may be a friend of hers and
she may say… ‘Wait! I know an Adélaïse who lives near here…
could your sweetheart be the same Adélaïse?’”
“…And even if the young girl doesn’t know a soul named
Adélaïse, our écu may still have bought us a good connection with
someone who knows various families established on the island…”
some French girl!”
I smiled and laughed, “I can write my own love letters in
French, thank you.”
Saskia laughed and agreed, adding that I did write very
charming letters—when they weren’t letters of farewell. She
kissed both of my hands over and again. She was thoroughly
convinced that my strategy would work. “Saul, you are clever
beyond belief! I should have asked you to plan this with me from
the beginning. Okay, please go now to the island, I will bathe and
get dressed. Don’t drink too much wine!”
Saskia’s faith in my idea gave me enormous pleasure, so
much that I convinced myself I would find Adélaïse that very
morning. I was soon to be discouraged, however, when an hour
and a half went by of my wandering the Île Saint-Louis and I did
not see a single girl that could have possibly been her friend
Adélaïse. The island was empty, except for some uninteresting
characters. I would have left altogether unaffected by the island,
except when leaving I came upon two figures that confused me
and left me in a daze for the entire afternoon to follow…
I passed a gated garden on the occidental side of the island
where a plump, old woman, with the body and face of a peasant,
was sweeping debris from the stones with a thatched broom. She
acknowledged me, and then resumed her loud conversation with
a man at the open window of the house to which the garden
belonged. The man was mostly concealed from my view by the
dirty glass of the open windowpane, but I could see enough of his
features and stature to know I’d seen him before, and under
strange circumstances. But
where
before?,
when
?, I couldn’t place
it. His thin, sallow face, his dark cloak and hat. I then recalled it,
and became convinced that it was the same man that followed me
in Valencia, from the restaurant to my hotel… ‘What a strangelooking man,’ I thought. He eyed me briefly, without showing any
interest or recognition, said adieu to the woman in the garden,
and shut the window.
As far as Adélaïse was concerned, I would have been
completely forlorn after my fruitless search on the Île Saint Louis,
but one happy event happened after the encounter with the man
and woman in the house and garden: I made an acquaintance
while still on the island, walking down the rue des Deux Ponts to
go back home where I believed Saskia was still dressing. I finally
passed a girl of about Saskia’s age. She was alone and I greeted
her with my intended script: “Mademoiselle, pardon me… I
thought I overheard you mumbling to yourself in English, etc.,
etc…” It turned out that it would have been impossible that the
girl mumbled to herself in English since she didn’t understand a
word of what I was saying in English, and didn’t even understand
the word ‘Hello.’ She was friendly though, in French; her name
was Sarah Lingot, and she’d lived her whole life on the Île SaintLouis. Her father, she explained as we stood on the sidewalk,
talking as though we were already friends, had just retired from a
long military career where he had been of high rank, perhaps even
a general. We spoke, and I was glad Mademoiselle Lingot was not
Adélaïse, since Mademoiselle Lingot was neither pretty, nor very
captivating in her manner. I mentioned to her that I had
important business with a family on the island. I offered her an
écu, which she refused; but she said that I could come visit her at
her parents’ home whenever I wished; and as long as my affairs
were honest and out in the open, she would help me where she
could.