The Wanderess (11 page)

The girl rolled a little and opened her delicate eyes. “No,
no,” she purred, “you need the bed. You were sleeping on the
hard stones in the street. So I get the hard wood. Let’s sleep,
both of us. Goodnight….”

“Goodnight.” I rolled onto my back in the dark and
contemplated this magical child who had taken me unconscious
into her home and sacrificed her bed. Her parents were no doubt
asleep in a nearby room. I worried about them entering. Her
poor old father would bring his sword, and I had no such weapon
to meet him with. How was this my fault? I was recently sleeping
in the street. This bed came by surprise.

Daylight flooded the room and the warm Barcelona sun
cracked the mud on the windowpane where it had rained in the
night—it was the only window in the little apartment and it went
out to the little balcony. The window was behind my head. The
girl brought me coffee and was surprised that I took sugar. This
was the first day we spoke as two people. “Somehow I thought
you would take it black,” she said.

“I am a man. I like to taste sweet things: honey and roseoil, a woman’s skin scented with amber, vanilla and myrrh, and
other things that are feminine. You are a woman. You enjoy
musky men, and black coffee.”

“You are right,” she laughed. Her clothes were changed
now and she wore a pink dress that was so short that I noticed she
had on underneath white cotton panties with a pink trim. There
was no jewelry on her fingers, neither on her wrists, although
around her neck she wore a golden locket shaped like a heart. It
appeared to be fairly precious. After she brushed her hair by the
mirror, she sat beside me on the bed, showing perfect confidence.

I asked her, “Are your parents in the house?”
“Nope. They are… They’re not here.”
“Then how did you get me up into your room?”

“Undressed me?” I looked past her and noticed my suit of
evening clothes and silk foulard; they’d been ironed and were
hung on the wall behind her empty wooden chair. “Golya and I
carried you, then I sent her away. She won’t be coming back. I
sent her to her parents in the country. She usually sleeps here
though.”

“Here, where?” I looked around the room. There wasn’t
so much as a cubby hole for a maid to sleep in. Near the wall
where my clothes were hanging, a limp curtain was strung to
conceal, rather poorly, a makeshift kitchen. “So there are many
other rooms in this house?”

“No, no! Not many! Not even one more! This is it! It’s
just a room in a building with other tenants. But Golya sleeps in
the common stairwell. There is a little closet with a bed only so
big. See that door over there? In it is a little bathroom. And
behind you is the window that goes out to the balcony where I
play my guitar at night.”

“Hmm,” I said, “How long have you lived here? And, dear
girl, excuse me for asking, but you don’t seem to be of any great
age—
where are your parents?”

“I’ve lived here nine months!
Can you believe it by looking
around the room? So you know, every night these last nine
months—that is to say
every night since I’ve been in Barcelona
—
I’ve spent every evening, and most of every night, playing my
guitar on my balcony. And every night sleeping in this tiny bed
you’re in. But now I can stop and give this room back to the
landlord because I found you, just as I knew I would find you:
sleeping in the road in fine clothes.
”

“My parents, you ask? That’s a long story—a story for
another time. Just don’t think about them. Don’t trouble yourself
about anything. Except don’t forget one thing… don’t forget
where you were born! Where
were
you born, anyway? Your
Spanish is good but I can tell you’re not Spanish—just like I am
not Spanish. How do you feel, by the way? The jaundice is finally
leaving your skin….”

“Jaundice?!” I stood up so quickly that the poor girl rattled
on her bed. Grabbing at my skin, my hands trembled. I looked in
the mirror… So terrified I was! My entire skin was dark yellow!

“I believe you were poisoned with copper,” she told me,
“‘
Vert-de-gris’
, I think it’s called in French—in English I believe it’s
called ‘verdigris.’ I read about this poison in a novel once… that in
itself is a funny story… I was walking home to this room one
evening when a strange man came from the shadows, a very tall
man in a black suit, and he handed me a novel… a book, you see…
and he said, ‘I think you dropped this, Miss.’ Well I hadn’t
dropped it. It wasn’t even mine; but before I could say so, the
stranger disappeared. I looked closely at the novel. It looked
new, like it hadn’t even been on the ground. I think he lied about
the whole thing. Anyways, I took this novel home and read it
cover-to-cover in one night. It
was
a strange novel indeed! When
it began, the hero had been poisoned with copper vert-de-gris. I
was so shocked by the descriptions of the poisoning, and so afraid
that such a thing was possible, that I went out first thing the next
morning and bought all the proper antidotes for copper
poisoning—you know, chelating agents
¹
and such. I was horrified
that I might need them someday; and I did end-up needing
them… to help you! So, you
did
eat copper!, didn’t you?!”

“Oh!” She then blushed as much as a girl can blush, and
she hid her face in the blanket that was against my legs. I felt a
warm tingling vibration rise through the limbs of my body.

“No,” I said, “you are probably right about your diagnosis
of vert-de-gris. In any case, you’d better get back in your chair.
You’re too beautiful of a girl to be lounging next to a grown man
naked in a bed—even if he does have a blanket over him.”

“Oh, Monsieur! You
are
naïve!” The child patted me on
the forehead as though
I
were the child. Then returning to her
chair a few meters away, she said, “In any case, Mister, I’m the one
who brought you here—to Barcelona, I mean—
and
to this very
room.
It is now that you are found! Do you hear?”
…This
statement made me paranoid, then she added,
“Now I am found
too!
Oh, I’ll worry about you, Sir! …but don’t you worry about
me…” She then tossed her head back and laughed. “You
are
a
naïve man—yellow skin and all!”

The poison wasn’t finished with me. I had a high fever the next
morning before dawn. I thought I had recovered from whatever
I’d ingested, the dizziness was gone, my jaundice had
disappeared. Then the fever returned: sweat, delirium, and
ranting.

The previous day had been joyous and gay. After I decided
that the girl was crazy, we giggled a lot together, and seeing that I
was in good spirits, she played songs for me on her guitar. She
plucked a haunting Spanish piece in a minor key; then she sang a
song that she wrote in English, which she’d sung on her balcony
the night of my accident: “Ceylon,” it was called. She then played
a Romanian gypsy song. Her voice was enchanting, melodic, it
pranced from note to note with ease and fluidity.

Now it was night. The moon outside her window was halffull and waning.
‘That moon says I’ve been here a whole week,’
I
said to myself,
‘Do you remember the fullness of the moon on my
birthday? Now the moon is cut in half. In a week there will be no
moon at all. When it starts to grow again, I know I can begin
drinking again; and I can begin seducing women again! …I won’t be
here with this little girl at that time…

‘Although she is certainly lovely!—one can’t deny it. No,
one couldn’t find a more exquisite youth anywhere. Although, she
is just that, a youth—and nothing more…

‘Yet where does she come from, this sweet child?
She
strums her eastern songs as though she’s been singing them since
she was a babe… I’m sure she grew up with a tambourine at her feet
to collect tips from the passers-by. It seems she has no parents.
I’ve heard her speak several languages—and all with a mysterious
accent… I can’t place her anywhere. Doubtless, she is a nomad of
sorts, like the gypsy in that Romanian song she sings: the one about
that female drifter who is a pickpocket, and who amuses herself by
stealing the souls of men. A “vagari vulgaris
¹
,”
I told myself,
“that’s
what she is, and nothing more!”

‘No, I didn’t come to Barcelona to meet a transient. I came
to Barcelona to devote myself to pleasure. To carouse with blackeyed beauties, Latinate she-wolves, fire-eyed Spanish seductresses
with snakelike bodies and an equal devotion to pleasure, women
well-versed in matters of love… I dreamt of Spain while I was
unconscious tonight. Now that I’m awake I ask myself: What am I
doing here?! Why am I lying in the bed of this teenaged Calypso
¹
?,
this young, guitar-strumming girl who escaped from a gypsy
encampment!’

…Thus ran my thoughts as I drifted to sweet sleep in the
girl’s little bed that night. While she, dear self-sacrificing angel,
slept on a pile of her girlish clothes on the floor.

It was then about four in the morning that I awoke with a
terrible fever. She awoke too and spent the rest of the night
boiling herbal infusions to drink, to bring my fever down.

With the attention she paid me, I felt shame for having
dismissed her the night before as a mere runaway gypsy-child
getting in the way of my fun. Carousing with mature Spanish
women was the furthest thing from my thoughts as I lay with a
fever, an invalid, fortunate to have someone to take care of me.
The fever started with my hallucinating of strange things: animals
that looked like men, the presence of ghosts in the room, looming
monsters, and the like. The poor girl had become afraid by my
thrashing-about, screaming nonsense:
“Do you see them?! Do you
see them?!”

Sleepy-eyed, and docile as a lamb, she went and boiled
water. She gave me to drink a bicarbonate solution. She fed me
chelating agents. Then she put a cold compress on my forehead.
She declared I had a ‘dangerous temperature.’ And the next hours
were spent with her cooking me hot teas and infusions to sip,
preparing poultices for my back, my stiff arms, and my legs.

She pressed a wet washcloth to my forehead.
“Drink some water.”
“I am going to die,” I told her.

“You are not going to die. You were meant to fall sleep in
the street dressed in fine clothes. And
right now,
we are meant to
be here in this room, you and I. Soon you will take me to the
town where your father was born. We will travel together.”

“Don’t you think it is weird to speak to a man like this?”
“No, I need to help you.”

“You are in greater need than I am at the moment. And it
is important that you stay alive, since your life is an important
one—although right now, your life is a puzzle to me.”

“Why?!” Suddenly she was filled with exaltation, “Because
everything depends on it! Our destinies are entwined, yours and
mine!”

I waved my hands in annoyance. She had begun to sound
like one of those young girls in a convent who reads too many
novels. She went on…

“Do you really think I would have spent the nine months
of my life living in this tiny room in Barcelona if I weren’t waiting
for you to appear as you did? I like Barcelona well enough, but I
like Paris better. I could have spent these last two years in Paris
looking for Adélaïse. But instead I spent two years playing my
guitar to an empty street at night, waiting for you to stumble into
view.

You would think from these strange words of hers that my
hostess was a complete fanatic, a gullible nutcase who was madly
in love with me, (or
‘the idea of me’
at least); but I would soon
learn that this was not the case
. The truth of our situation
was
much more interesting than my intuition had picked-up on. She
knew what she was doing. She was a clever child, crafty and
wild—
but not at all crazy…

“Oh, Adélaïse! She is my best friend! We haven’t seen
each other since we were eleven. We were classmates at the
boarding school in London, we were inseparable. I loved her and
she loved me. To know about her, you have to know about my
life… I grew up in Holland, in a small city not far from
Amsterdam. My parents had one goal for me as a child: they
wanted me to learn English. So when I was very young, (only six
years old), they used all of their savings—making tremendous
sacrifices, and depriving themselves of all of life’s comforts so they
could afford it—and they sent me to a private boarding school in
London. During the five years I spent at that school, Adélaïse and
I had a perfect friendship. We discovered together what it meant
to be
girls
…to be
people
of all things—and of all things, what it
meant
to be alive! …
This sensation lasted until my final spring at
the boarding school: That sad spring.
Oh, it was the saddest
spring one could imagine!

“…At the end of winter, my parents travelled down to see
me from Holland. They had an accident on the road. Both were
killed. When I was told the news, I cried so hard that I had to be
watched day and night for a long time. People at the school
thought that I would choke to death on my tears …or else they
thought I might simply kill myself…

“I remember my obsession with the last two letters I
received from my two parents. They each wrote me these letters
separately—my mother
hers
and my father
his—
which they often
did. Neither of them had any close friends, and I was their only
child, so they were both very intimate with me and sent me letters
about their private lives that often resembled confessions. The
only letters I received written by both of them on the same
stationery were the inevitable cards sent for Christmas and Easter.
Those are times when one is supposed to act joyfully in spite of
everything. The rest of the year, they wrote to me secretly and in
private. They never hesitated to pour their hearts out, sharing
their lives and private thoughts with me. From those two final
letters written while they were alive, I learned from both my
father and mother that each had been suffering in private for
years. So, I knew when they died just a few days after their letters
arrived, that both my father and my mother died poor and alone.
All of a sudden, I found myself, ‘alive and alone,’ and ‘an orphan’
to boot, all in one single day. It’s true that I had spent the
previous five years living without my parents, but they were
always a ‘constant’ in my life. I knew their death would change
my life, but I wasn’t certain
how
it would change my life. Because
my parents died penniless, consequently leaving me penniless as
well, the only thing that I was certain of right away when they
died, was that I would have to leave my boarding school…

“‘To go where?!’
I asked myself over and again. The answer
came from outside. I had an uncle, the brother of my mother. He
was a bachelor of about fifty years, living in Italy, in Verona to be
exact. He was wealthy, but his health was starting to turn bad.
He learned of my mother’s death, and learned of my situation,
through some indifferent relatives of ours. So just two days after
my parents died, this uncle took legal custody of me. Being
wealthy, he could have easily paid for me to stay at my boarding
school in England, but he liked my company so much in the two
days we spent touring around London to visit the monuments,
that he wanted me to come live in his mansion. It was a beautiful
converted-monastery atop a hill, overlooking the city of Verona.
So at age eleven I moved to Italy. That was the last time I saw my
best friend, Adélaïse.”

“Yes, yes… after I stopped living in Italy, I would go to
London when it was more convenient than going to Italy. I had to
go to one of those places… You see, my uncle was a very generous
man. And he adored me to the heavens. I would certainly still be
with him in Verona if he hadn’t died ‘all of a sudden.’

“…Unlike my parents, who had no will, my uncle’s will was
complete and he updated it every six-months. He had arranged
things in it so that when he died, I would benefit from an annual
income of two-hundred pounds sterling, which I could draw from
every three months for the rest of my life. You know the value of
two-hundred pounds… it’s a respectable income even for
somebody with a family, so just think how a young person on her
own could benefit!

“…Before coming to Barcelona, I sought a new life by
travelling to new cities, destinations I chose according to the
caprices of my wanderlust at any given time. All my wanderings
were funded, thanks to my dear, loving uncle, without whom I
would only have an eleven-year-old kid’s education; and I would
be working as a waitress in some miserable café in London, or
back in Holland…

“…But just as my uncle was generous in his protection of
me, he was also generous in his jealousy
.
He had his lawyer add it
to his will that should it ever be discovered that I live with a man,
or were to marry a man, or do anything with a man, I would no
longer receive my two-hundred pound income. His will explained
it in nice enough terms: when a girl is a
demoiselle
, her parents or
guardian should take care of her, be they living or deceased; but
once she is a lady, a
dame
, it is her husband who must take
financial responsibility. That was the legal, rational, explanation,
although it only covered marriage. Elsewhere in the will it
explained—always in well-intentioned terms—that his estate was
free of obligations to pay me my income after his death if it were
discovered that I was ‘involved in any romantic way’ with a man.”

“Your uncle was in the unfortunate position of being in
love with you,” I told her, “But what if word gets around that you
are keeping me in your apartment?”

“I would lose my income.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”

I envied her that statement. I too have said phrases like,
“It’s just money, nothing more.” Although it was always
something more. I was an adventurer, living an adventurer’s life.
It was always of great concern to me, and of great uncertainty,
where the next money would come from, and where it would get
me. Sure, I was an adventurer, but she was not an
adventuress
.
She was a
wanderess
. Thus, she didn’t care about money, only
experiences. Whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it
was all the same to her.