The Wanderess (34 page)

“And the king had to agree,” said Dragomir, ‘And so much
was true! The portraits in the press did resemble Alfred as much
as they resemble you. The king was easily convinced—so much so,
that I wonder why no one over these past five years ever tried and
succeeded in bringing a corpse that vaguely resembled you to the
king to collect the twenty-five thousand gold louis. I certainly
lucked-out, because your king really is a fool!”

“That’s right, you are exiled, aren’t you. Right now, you
have no country. But the king of Libya is one of the biggest fools I
ever met. He was so happy once his advisors identified the corpse
properly as being you, he cried to me, “You lifted the curse,
Monsieur! You saved my life! No wild-man’s son will take my
power! I shall always be king!’ The fool then took me in his arms
as though I were his son… How do you like that!—and the best
part of it was your girl here… Boy, this Saskia is a brave and clever
little one! I had no idea! It is thanks to her that we got the money
as easily as we did. I was expecting to have to resort to some risky
tactics in order to leave that palace with even a portion of the
twenty-five thousand louis. Here’s what she did…

“The king’s men closed the lid on the coffin, and began to
talk about how ‘that affair was solved,’ and how now they could
move on to other business. It was then I asked for my payment. I
mentioned the reward offered not only in the press, but on
documents carrying the royal seal. The king responded in a
lukewarm tone, “Oh, yes, about that…” and he turned to his
advisors, apparently to discuss the matter of whether I should be
paid. Meanwhile they asked me to sit over in a chair a little ways
away. I knew that kings are notoriously bad at keeping promises,
especially when they involve giving money or property away, so I
expected the worst and plotted my next move to get revenge and
get my money…

“It was while I was plotting away, that I was surprised to
see Saskia enter. Your clever girl managed to get into the throne
room to see the king without an introduction! She walked right
over to him and knelt to kiss his hand. The two then began
talking. I don’t know what her trick was to befriend him, but
within minutes, she had him completely charmed! She then let
him know all the details of her love affair with the ‘deceased’ son
of Solarus: Your meeting in Barcelona, your life together in Paris,
your trip to London together—although I know you two never did
go to London together, did you?—as well as your romantic tour of
Tuscany. All of that charade your girl was playing happened just a
few paces from where I was sitting, waiting for the king. It was
true she had him charmed, but I didn’t believe it would lead to
anything. But then she really stole the show…

“You should have seen your faithful girl when they
brought the closed coffin before her and the king’s men came and
opened the lid. Saskia looked at the corpse of poor Alfred Pion
with his lips all puckered in the most ridiculous way, and she
broke down in hysterics… sobbing violently, beating her tiny little
fists on the floor…

“‘Oh, Saul!’ she wailed, ‘My poor, poor, Saul! My prince!
My beloved! Whatever has happened to you?! This is the worst,
etc.…’ Then she turned to the king, ‘Oh, King! Most worthy King!
Why did Saul of all men have to die?!’ …The effect this had on the
king was perfect. Saskia’s tears didn’t move the king to pity. That
nasty fool can’t feel sorry for anyone. But the effect Saskia’s
sobbing and pleading
did
have on the king—and on his advisors as
well—is that it left no question about the authenticity of the
corpse: Saskia’s tearful testimony was the proof they needed to
know that I’d killed the right one. The king was so pleased and
reassured by Saskia’s violent sorrow, that he ordered the gold to
be brought to me at once. Saskia all the while pretended she
didn’t know me, treated me as a complete stranger—worse, she
treated me as the monster who killed the love of her life, she even
spat in my face. That act alone convinced the king that, in
addition to being beautiful, she was a daring and spirited girl, and
so he begged her to come visit him at court anytime she wished.
And so she has an open invitation to his throne room! So you see,
Saul, all was conducted perfectly!…

“And the money came just like that… twenty-five thousand
gold louis… equal to six-hundred-thousand francs! You see them
here? Feel how much these sacks weigh! Look at the coins, they
are beautiful, aren’t they?! So that’s the good news Saul. And now
that you know the Frenchman died in your place, I don’t think I’m
risking anything by unchaining you now…”

…With the help of Adélaïse, Dragomir unlatched the iron
chains and unwrapped those that had snaked around my arms
every which way when I tried to free myself. I, all the while,
remained in shock. I couldn’t believe what a turn my story had
taken!

Dragomir continued to describe with enormous pleasure
the events of that day while Adélaïse and Saskia brought soap and
a pail of water to wash the blood and dirt from my body. “Oh—
the best is for last!” said Dragomir, laughing, “Your king told me
how he’ll be feasting tonight… to celebrate your death, you can
believe. He will be drinking a lot of wine, he told me himself. I
took precautions of my own in this regard. It’s not so much that I
hated the man, yet I had to prevent him from not paying me the
bounty when I gave him your dead body—and you see by the
events of our meeting that I had good reason not to trust him.
(Kings are notoriously an ungrateful lot, you know!) So I had a
trusted man of mine contaminate all the king’s wine with our best
poison—and don’t think it was that harmless verdigris that I put
in your opium, nor was it the scum I put in the wine that sickened
your alley cats in Paris… no, no, this was the ‘king-killer’—a real
death liqueur!
One drop of it will kill a god, let alone a king! I
guess that’s what the prophecy meant when it said:
‘The king will
lose his power when the son of a wild-thing enters Tripoli.’
He was
already filling his chalice when we left. I’m sure he’s not feeling so
powerful right about now!—that is, if he is feeling anything at
all…” Dragomir’s cheeks filled up with joyful color as he cheered
on all of us with his tale; he tossed his head back and roared with
delight. Then he bowed low to me with respect—it was a gesture
he had never done before, “Now how do
you
feel, Saul?”

“I don’t know what to make of it, Dragomir. You
could
have
sold me to the king today. If you’d stayed in Tripoli, in
addition to the gold, you would have received enormous fame, a
royal appointment, lands, titles…”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of lands and titles! A tempting
thought, Saul! Yet think of it… my job was to kill a man—
you—
who, according to some crazy mystic’s prophecy, was going to
‘destroy the king’ simply by entering a city. Do you think that
during these five years I could have taken myself seriously if my
only goal was to murder a man because he is believed by some
stupid king to carry a curse around with him that will destroy this
king? Saul, that is absurd! I may be a scoundrel, but I don’t
murder people to satisfy the whims of superstitious kings. And so
now that you’re unchained and free, take a walk with me around
the deck. You need to get your blood flowing again.”

Thus Dragomir and I began to take a walk on the boat
deck... After we got a few steps, Dragomir said to me, “Oh, Saul!
You’re not walking too straight!”

“I admit, I’m in shock. I’m not sure what is going on. I
think if I realize
that I am still alive…
I mean,
if
it occurs to me
that
I am
still alive, and that
I will
stay alive
…
I will consider this
the most beautiful moment of my life, this day the most beautiful
day!… I am feeling dizzy, however. I think I need to sit down.”

“Saskia!… Adélaïse!… Come help our dear Saul to sit down
on this cask over here. Adélaïse, bring him some water to drink.
Splash some on his head.” This, the girls did, and as they
attended to relieving my thirst, to cooling my skin, and easing my
bewildered heart, I pleaded to all present to know the reason for
the one thing that made my soul ache above all else…

“What I still don’t understand is this, Saskia… When I was
brought in chains before you in that little palace in Tripoli,
you
would not look at me! Why?!
I pleaded with you! It was all I
wanted!…

“And then on this boat… I was sure that at any moment I
would be executed, by any and all of you… but all three of you
knew that I would go free!—
right?!”

“Of course we knew!” Saskia cried, “Do you think I could
have kept my sanity if I thought for a moment you might be
killed?!”

“But I was in chains! Dragomir spoke about the money I
would earn him… You never let me think I might live, Saskia!
You wouldn’t even look at me on the boat either! And so I
thought of everything I might do to kill myself first, to end this
being near you but of having lost you. The only thing that saved
me from leaping into the sea with my chains on to drown myself
was a vague disbelief that you could hate me that much—and all
of a sudden! But how unbearable was the sight of you and
Adélaïse at play together, sitting together, lounging on the deck,
sunbathing, laughing!… and the worst of it all…
you wouldn’t look
at me!…
It was
that
that made my soul ache above all else! All the
while I stood here in chains, I received no look from you
whatsoever… No gesture to communicate to me that you felt
badly for me—
or that you were even aware of my existence!
Instead, all the while we were on this boat,
you just kept looking
out at the horizon!
… So I ask,
how come?!”

“‘How come?!’
—
you ask, ‘How come?!’”
While Saskia cried
these words through her mouth damp with tears, she held her
little fists so tightly together that her tiny knuckles turned all
white,
“‘How come,’ you ask?!”
While she cried this, her eyes
flashed back and forth so wildly, searching for meaning in my
eyes, that we were both driven to the kind of grief only great love
can inspire, and both fell together in tears.

“If you knew I would be saved,”
I said,
“Why didn’t you tell
me not to worry? Why did you keep looking at the horizon like
that?—silent—silent!”

When I said this, Saskia jumped into my arms and cried so
freely, rubbing her hot face against me until every place on my
body that had been dry was now wet. She gave me a hundred
caresses and planted kisses in all the tender places. And then my
little wanderess that I loved so much spoke to me in a way that
only a wanderess could speak…

“You ask me why I looked at the horizon like that… It was
because I knew that that horizon was the only thing that could
destroy us. As long as I could see dots of men on the shore, and
boats in the water, I knew we couldn’t be happy; since at any
moment you could be identified as a prisoner. Those three guards
that we left behind on the beach, for a small price they could have
been bought to identify you as
the real
son of Solarus. Only when
the horizon was gone, did I know the threat that you would be
taken from me was gone.”

Still crying, she added, “And the reason I didn’t look at you
in the palace in Tripoli, where you first appeared before me in
chains, is because Dragomir ordered me
not
to look at you. The
moment I saw him in Tripoli, he told me his plan to save your life.
He swore to me that he would save your life. But he told me that
if I were to look at you, recognize you, or show you any kind of
sympathetic or loving gaze, that that would ruin his plan to save
your life, and he may be forced to let you be executed after all. He
said to me, ‘If you love Saul, and you want to live a long and happy
life with him, then you will obey my orders: you are not to look at
him, not to show you care about him, until he is free with us and
our boat is safely out to sea. That is why I couldn’t wait for the
horizon to disappear. It was too painful not to show you I love
you…”

“Saskia…” I mused, changing the subject, “it just occurred
to me that you are eighteen now. You were only seventeen when
we met. It’s strange, because I never really think of you as having
any age. For me, you are timeless—like a marble statue…”

“Saul,” she suddenly pressed on me, almost whispering to
not be overheard, “Listen, I know something about Dragomir that
you don’t know. So be careful before you make up your mind…
What I mean is that you are stronger than you think you are …in
this situation especially. What I think you don’t know about him
is just how much respect he has for you. He would just about see
anyone in the world die before you…
Yet, remember his loyalty is
to himself above all else!…
if it had come down to somebody on
shore recognizing you as you are:
the true son of Solarus
, you
would have ended-up like the Frenchman.”

“Saskia,” I changed the subject again, “Just now it is true,
you are eighteen years old; yet often when you speak you have a
timeless air about you… you are as eternal as a poet.”

“Saul, listen to me! Today, when I met the king who
ordered your death, I met a man with only one thought in his
demented, old head… Saul, don’t underestimate the king’s
preoccupation with killing you… He wanted you dead at all costs.
In his mind, your staying alive meant his loss of the throne and
his loss of life. Yet also don’t underestimate the risks Dragomir
took to keep you alive. But remember, Saul… although Dragomir
wanted you alive, he told me plain and simple that nothing on
earth was going to come between him and those twenty-five
thousand louis d’or.”