The Wanderess (27 page)

With April, came the warm weather. It was sad to leave Paris
when we saw how beautiful the city became at the coming of
spring. We arrived in Florence on a Friday afternoon and came to
a hotel overlooking the square my mother told me about: the
Piazza della Signoria. It was right next to the bridge spanning the
Arno river: the Ponte Vecchio. I knew that if she were in
Florence, she would come to these places on Sunday. So, the day
following the next day, Sunday, I walked the whole of Piazza della
Signoria and the Ponte Vecchio from morning till night and I
didn’t see her.

Florence too is a beautiful city, but less amusing than
Paris. I also don’t speak Italian. I do speak French, Spanish,
English and two other languages, I think that’s enough. I wasn’t
going to try to learn Italian. Saskia knows just as many languages
as I do, if not more, from all her wandering around the world. She
knows Italian since she was a schoolgirl in Verona. So while we
were in Italy, she translated everything to me.

The only person we told we would be in Florence was
Juhani, and the first Monday following our arrival, a letter came
from him to the post office in Florence. He had the good news
that one of his friends owned a villa in Tuscany that he rarely used
and was vacant then. Juhani’s friend had plans for his villa the
next autumn, but now was spring. So if we wanted, we were
welcome to stay in his villa for the next six months. The villa was
in the famous city of Siena, about thirteen leagues south of
Florence. Saskia and I both agreed that only good things could
come from six months in Siena, as this would help us save money,
and we thought we might find those we were looking for. Had the
villa been in the rural Tuscan countryside we would not have
accepted the offer, but Siena was a possibility in our search.

We left Florence the next day. The road was terrible and
the journey took a long time. They were building a new road, we
were told, but it wouldn’t be ready for five years.

The villa was a charming stone house on the Strada
Malizia, just outside of the city-centre. It only had one-storey, but
it was spacious and sunny, with an herb and vegetable patch
outside. The house was built circular around an interior
courtyard planted with lemon trees. We had all the food we
needed for summer growing all around us. We were happy to
have come, and our nights in that courtyard under the lemon
trees were so bucolic—in the moonlight we would lounge on
white cushions and drink wine, while Saskia played her guitar. I
had no hobby while she played, except that of listening to her,
and composing in my head verses to praise the beauty of her
songs, her voice, the joy I felt beside her.

By day, we searched for Adélaïse. When at night we felt
like seeing the city and its people, we walked down to the Piazza
del Campo, or to another square where the moonlight was
generous, and we would eat and drink wine until half-drunk and
merry.

The most illuminating of these nights at the Piazza was a
night when there was no moon at all and blackness shone on the
earth. I could see nothing in that medieval square except for her
face and hands, the contour of her neck; and in the background,
the faint surfaces of the other diners on the terrace that glowed
from the light of the candles on each table. Yet as Saskia and I
talked, a bright star emerged from the darkness and gave shape to
events in our past. Here is what happened…

We ordered red wine. It was a good wine from a nearby
village called Brunello di Montalcino, and it made us easy with
words. After we finished two bottles of it and were more drunk
than usual, we were so light-hearted and happy in our
drunkenness that we decided to keep the wine coming. As we
were toasting the third bottle, a startling incident happened… A
handsome young man appeared in the piazza, at the edge of the
restaurant’s terrace, and he looked into the crowd of diners where
we sat and shouted loudly, “Clara! Clara!” while waving his hand.
Hearing that name flashed me back to that fatal night in Paris.
Saskia looked at the youth in alarm, I did too. A moment later a
girl from a table behind us jumped up and broke into laughter,
“Marco! Bello! Sei un idiota! Sei pazzo! Mi sei mancato
¹
!”
She ran
towards him and they embraced for a long time. The couple then
wandered off together and never returned.

I turned to Saskia and said a clumsy thing that I should
never have said: “I think every time I hear someone say the name
‘Clara,’ for the rest of my life, I’m going to think about that
unknown girl who made me kill Pulpawrecho.”

It was a tasteless remark: gloomy and sad. And, as a rule,
it’s bad form to confess loudly to murders one’s committed while
drunk in Italian piazzas; but beyond that, it was just a foul thing
to say. I blame it on the enormous quantity of wine that we’d
drunk… that, and the quality of the night. But, oh, what a night it
was!… I was happily across the sea from the home that used to be
the only place I knew on this earth before I grew up to taste the
perfumed flesh of travel and the beautiful body of the world. Now
I was in Italy, a country I thought I would never live to see. My
mother had sent me there in dreams, through many a bedtime
story when I was a small boy. But now, to think that I was in that
far-away place, together with my wild-eyed enchantress. Saskia
too looked enraptured to be with me. And with the wine flowing
freely, the night progressed sweetly. That is, until I had to go and
ruin the mood by saying, ‘forever will the name Clara make me
think of that unknown girl who made me kill Pulpawrecho.’

Saskia became flustered—angry one minute, then pleading
with me—asking me to explain what I meant by such a horrid
statement. I told Saskia that it was Clara’s fault that I had to kill
Pulpawrecho.

“Not her fault, but
because of
her... The Clara girl whom
Dragomir mistook Saskia for was the same girl that Pulpawrecho
fell in love with the night she came to consult the clairvoyant in
Málaga. The moment that little madman saw Clara, he fell in love
with her, pathologically, she became a perverse obsession. And
because Pulpawrecho
also
mistook you for Clara, just as Dragomir
had, he tried to rape you.”

Saskia didn’t say anything. She looked puzzled, confused,
and infinitely sad. Finally, she said, “So what you’re saying is that
it is because of
me
, and no one else!,
but because of me that you
had to kill?!”

“My dear, I didn’t mean that! Certainly if Pulpawrecho
hadn’t thought you were Clara, he would have eventually found
another girl of your age who reminded him of her, and he would
have tried to rape
her
instead; and Dragomir would have
sentenced Pulpawrecho to death for
that girl
instead of you.
What do we care about all this! Do you think it weighs heavy on
my conscience to have killed an insect such as Pulpawrecho?
Dragomir himself wanted him dead.”

I was so drunk while we were talking about this, that I
didn’t notice at first when Saskia slipped-up… She made an error
with words a little later in the conversation… “Tell me how this
Clara girl inspired Pulpawrecho to want to rape
me, Saskia
?” she
said, “I mean,
if Pulpawrecho never even met this Clara girl,
how
could Pulpawrecho have fallen in love with her? It’s impossible!
Dragomir is the one that met her…”

Her cheeks turned fiery red then and she became
flustered. I think it was at this moment that she realized where
she’d slipped-up. For how did she know that Pulpawrecho never
met this Clara?! …To cover herself, she added, “But you know
what, Saul, you are right. It doesn’t matter who killed
Pulpawrecho, or who inspired him to be a madman and a rapist…
the fact is that he was
by nature
a madman and a rapist…
so why
should he not have been killed?!”

“Hmm,” I said, considering everything, “Just how do you
know that Clara never met Pulpawrecho? I’m just curious.” I
waited and waited but Saskia didn’t answer me, she just sat there,
nervously tapping on her wine glass. I decided to let it go. I took
my own glass in hand and took so pleasurable a swallow that it
made my head tingle with intoxication. I looked up at the dark
sky, and over at the famous
Palazzo Pubblico
building that
crowned the Piazza, then back at Saskia. “Why don’t you drink
your wine?” I asked her.
“I think I’m already drunk.”

I chuckled at this, and Saskia began to cry. Instead of her
cries growing fainter as my chuckles grew faint, her tears only
increased. Then there came a moment when she broke
completely. Her head plummeted into her hands and she lost all
control. She cried and cried, tossing tears around, beginning
sentences that had no beginning, saying apologies that had no
end. Her last apology went like this… “I’m sorry, Saul, I am so
sorry! You will never trust me again… I’m scared about what I
have done… for six months I have lied to you—
six months!
I told
you before that I
cannot
lie to you. ‘It won’t work,’ I said, ‘it won’t
work!!’”

“It’s me, Saul!… I am Clara!… I am Clara! Dragomir wasn’t
confused… Dragomir
is never
confused! I was the one who was
lying when we spoke in front of you. He and I both knew that I
was Clara and that I was lying to him. I’m just glad he didn’t insist
I was a liar and an evil girl to make me confess in front of you
both… But trust me,
Dragomir is never confused…”

She grabbed my hands and held them tight… “No, Saul, I
am
Saskia!
… I was born with the name
Saskia
… Please promise
me that you will never call me Clara. I never wanted to lie to you,
Saul. I promise. The only thing was that I was forced to lie
because I needed you to believe that I had never met Dragomir in
my life. You, yourself, know the reasons why no one should know
that I met Dragomir… So, yes. I had to tell a lie these last six
months—ever since that hour before dawn at that hostel when I
denied I was Clara.”

“My parents gave me the same name as Rembrandt’s wife.
I was always happy with this name. Then when my parents died,
my uncle came to pull me out of a future of misery. He offered to
take me to Italy, and he made me what I am today: ‘Wanderess,’
as you call it, an orphan, a wild girl, but free!… No need of money,
no need of people, the only thing that ties me down and makes
me submit is the uncertainty of it all… where should I go? What
will become of me? It is my destiny that intrigues me, yet it is my
destiny that rules me, unfortunately…

“My uncle put forth that I assume a role during his
lifetime, and that I assume another role after his death. After his
death, his wish was for me to remain faithful to him and not to
attempt to erase his memory in the arms of another man. It’s
ridiculous, I know. They say it’s incestuous, a condition like that
put on you by your own family member. They say a condition like
that should
make me
erase my memory of him. In a healthy
situation, it would be in the arms of another man that my memory
of him as my loving uncle would be strengthened. To be honest,
Saul, I don’t understand the taboo of incest, I never saw his love
for me as a bad thing; but perhaps I don’t understand life. No, I’m
too young and unsettled to understand life. Yet my uncle, for all
his money and all his years, he lived and he died without
understanding life.

“…The role I was to assume during his life: be a good,
loving niece and a perfect example of a virtuous young lady of the
haute-bourgeoisie. He wanted me to lose all memory of my
parents, separate myself from the past, and forget my childhood
in Holland… what he called my ‘vulgar upbringing.’…

My uncle had been in love once in his life: to an upperclass Spanish woman named Clara. Years later when my mother
was pregnant with me, he asked his sister to name me ‘Clara.’ My
mother said he was furious when I was born and she and my
father named me Saskia instead. He thought that Saskia was a
good first name for a savage girl—that was the term he used:
a
savage girl.
The day I came to live with him in Italy, he
announced that he was going to call me ‘Clara’ from then on,
which is the only name I went by in Italy, and even afterwards. I
asked him why he didn’t name me ‘Chiara,’ rather—the Italian
form of ‘Clara.’ He didn’t tell me about the Spanish woman he
was in love with. He just said that ‘Chiara’ was a suitable name for
a cheap schoolgirl whore. Whereas the Spanish form, ‘Clara,’ he
said, is an elegant name for a lady; and therefore, that is the name
he chose. I was thirteen when I met Dragomir in Málaga; and at
that time, I only called myself Clara. Two years after my uncle’s
death, at age fifteen, I went back to being Saskia.”

“Clara means ‘clear, bright and celebrated,’ doesn’t it?
Dragomir guessed this. Is that why you believe in your fortune so
much?, because he guessed your name correctly?”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me the fact
that you used to be called Clara when Dragomir called you Clara
in front of me. It’s as if you didn’t want me to know that
Dragomir is your fortune teller.”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly why. I thought if you knew it
was Dragomir who told me my fortune, and you knew that the
crucial part of my fortune is
you
; and if I told you that
our
destinies are entwined
, you would laugh and blow me off as a
ridiculous, incredulous fool for listening to a madman like
Dragomir, whom you would call a ‘false clairvoyant…’”

“You are right,” I told Saskia, “ I would have written you off
as being a ridiculous fool. But why would you have imagined that
I would think of Dragomir as a madman and a false clairvoyant?
You told me about this made-up ‘garden woman’ long before you
knew that I knew Dragomir… long before the incident with
Pulpawrecho at the hostelry. You told me
she
told your fortune
before we met Dragomir together, before we learned what kind of
man he really is… a man without morals, rotten in the head, a
man who is mad …
or else simply evil!
Why then, if this was before
the Dragomir drama, would you think I wouldn’t take you
seriously if you told me of your fortune as predicted by him?”

“Because he is a man!” she said, “I knew you wouldn’t want
to follow me around while I’m following the instructions of
another man. That is why I made up the story about the garden
woman on the Île Saint-Louis.”

“That’s right!” I exclaimed, “I’d completely forgotten about
that particular lie you told me… there were so many lies! Tell me
Saskia, hearing all this from you now, how can I trust you in the
future? Why should I trust you?”

With that, I stood up from our table in the Piazza, fished
in my pocket for some money to pay the meal and the wine, left it
on the table, and left Saskia sitting there—she looking at me,
stupefatto
¹
, mouth agape. I walked then to our villa alone,
anxious to sleep and forget this night.