The Wanderess (9 page)

I’ll tell you that no feeling resembles that wonderful sensation of
when I would leave a city behind me with all the luggage I owned,
all the things I care about inside, nothing left behind except the
old acquaintances I was happy to leave behind along with the
experiences I’d learned, and time. Thus, I left Madrid exalted!
Suddenly rich, with letters of introduction to the best houses in
Europe. I had letters of introduction to Juhani’s friends in Paris,
to his noble friends in Bavaria, in Bohemia, and Finland.

Finland was not my final destination, though I looked
forward to seeing Juhani’s home country based on the collection
of oil paintings he had painted, and which he hung on the walls of
his magnificent house in Madrid. My real goal was to get to Saint
Petersburg before the summer solstice in June so I could witness
the famous
white nights.
After Saint Petersburg, I didn’t really
care where the wind carried me. I wanted to see Poland and
Petersburg; after that, I could let the earth swallow me up. I
didn’t know then what was going to keep me from ever reaching
my goal. I would have killed anyone then who tried to prevent me
from seeing those white nights (which I’ve still yet to see!). If you
had told me what would happen to me in Barcelona, there is no
way I would have believed you…

In Valencia, I almost lost my life. Yet that is a story is for
another time. I arrived in Barcelona on May—
^nd
, the anniversary
of my birth. That year it fell on a night of the full moon and there
was a festival in the city; there were parties in the street when I
arrived on my birthday. If only that night had gone well!—where
would I be now?...

The one intelligent thing I did when I arrived in Barcelona
was to get a hotel room before anything else. When I arrived in
the Barrio Gòtico I bought a case of wine. I walked then through
the night with poetry in my heart, singing odes to the full moon
above. I stumbled then on a place called the Plaça Sant Felip Neri:
a stone oasis in a discreet sanctuary, unreal in that otherwise
filthy and foul city. The square was both clean and fresh to the
nose. I noticed two balconies of beautiful iron work on what
appeared to be the second floor of a hotel overlooking pleasant
trees and a fountain in the square. I looked at this charming
fortress; if it was a hotel, I wanted to have a suite overlooking the
square, no matter what the cost.

“You’re in luck that a suite is available,” said the concierge,
“It never is, but tonight there is a vacancy. How many nights
would you like?”

“No,” I told him, “I’ll be in Barcelona tomorrow night as
well, but I want to see how this night goes… I want to see if this
charming little square isn’t too noisy at night. If it is quiet, I’ll
stay longer, perhaps two weeks, perhaps a month. I wouldn’t
mind spending a month in Barcelona. But I need a room that is
quiet, so I can read, engage in scholarship, et cetera...”

“Fine, Sir, but I must warn you that the town is filling up
fast. You’ll have a hard time booking a room for tomorrow.” The
concierge showed me to my suite. I locked up all my money in
the safe except for a few gold escudos to buy whatever I might
fancy that night of my birthday. I also saved Dragomir’s silver
snuffbox with the four grams of opium and his portrait for
Senorita Baena, as well as my own supply of opium. I was looking
forward to meeting Miss Baena.

I hired a driver to take me to the
herborista
that Dragomir
told me about. It was nighttime and the full moon glowed like a
shield in the sky. The herborista shop was closed but a light
burned in the apartment above. I introduced myself at the door
to a woman who seemed very concerned about me being there.

“Señorita Baena?”
“Yes, that’s me… Who are you?”

The woman stuttered but invited me in. She was not yet
middle-aged, and still had freshness in her features, though she
wore no makeup and her hair was in disorder. Her apartment was
as shabby as Dragomir’s home was rich. I heard noises in her
kitchen but didn’t pay it any notice. Before she offered coffee, I
gave her the silver snuffbox containing opium and Dragomir’s
portrait. The sight of both made her tremble and her eyes flashed
at me. This alarmed me, I wondered about the real reason why
Dragomir sent to the home of this poor woman. Before one could
speak to the other, two men came from the kitchen: bald and
burly fellows, unkempt and rude. One shuffled behind me and
the other grabbed Miss Baena. “Penelope,” one shouted at her,
“What did this man give you?!”

“It’s a present from Dragomir,” she said.
“From Dragomir?! What is it?!”
“It’s opium,” I told the rascal.

The two men seized me and held me down on the sofa. It
was a dirty sofa, and I remember it smelled like mice. “So you
came to poison Penelope on behalf of Dragomir?” the one grinned
his dirty teeth at me.

“It should be good opium. I have some for myself. I would
hate to find out it’s poison,” The two thugs then began rifling
through my pockets, one thieved my gold escudos and then
rejoiced after he stole my diamond pinned wallet. The other
found my personal stash of opium and blamed me for trying to
poison Señorita Baena as part of Dragomir’s revenge. The two
thugs took Miss Baena’s opium, as well as my own, and forced me
to eat it all. At the moment, I didn’t care how much those bald
Spaniards were going to force me to eat; I didn’t think there was
enough to harm me, although the opium tasted ‘off.’ There was
that green shimmer and a strange metallic taste; I wasn’t happy
that I was forced to eat this on my birthday. I would have happily
smoked it alone with Penelope Baena.

Once the thugs had stuffed the opium down my throat,
they threatened to poison me. I dissuaded them. They the
dragged me to the door, saying a lot of things, such as: “You tried
to assassinate our friend.” And “You are lucky we didn’t beat you
to death!”

Didn’t they realize it was my birthday?
I asked them this.
And I asked if they realized that the moon was full. They took no
interest in my questions, thus I soon found myself out in the
street with a torn jacket and some scratches here and there. Good
luck that I’d left my fortune in the safe in my hotel! I would get a
new
tabatière
and another wallet soon after. I wished I’d been
allowed to keep my opium, though; yet it occurred to me that the
amount of opium they forced me to ingest was plenty to make me
high—
if only that’s all it had done!

Back at my hotel, I cleaned my wounds, redressed myself in a new,
handsome suit and silk foulard, with ointment in my hair and
polished teeth to parade around on my birthday night. During
this exercise, I drank a bottle of Spanish wine that I’d put on ice
before I left my hotel the first time to go get robbed. At least I
performed my duty as an honorable gentleman as far as Dragomir
was concerned. I did my commission. His portrait was delivered.
Still, the fact of things was that I’d only been in Barcelona for a
couple of hours and already I had been robbed of my purse and
forced to ingest a quantity of opium laced with a green toxin, both
of which were going to make themselves felt at any moment. I
thought to go find a doctor; though the thought of passing my
birthday night in examination!, being bled and all of the patient’s
duties… and on a full moon!… No, I decided, let me die first—this
is the night for me to die—the universe couldn’t have chosen a
more aesthetic night. Sweet glassy moonlight soaks the sand on
the Mediterranean shore, dripping moonlight on the Spanish
palms, wet moonlight on the silvery arms of the ladies, of the
Catalan night…

With those visions fresh in my mind, I went to the safe in
my hotel to take a roll of gold doubloons. Then I suffered a
delirium… I started thinking that the men who robbed me had
followed back to my hotel, and that should I leave, they would
enter and steal all that I had. This delirium convinced me to take
all the money I had in the world
out with me out on my birthday
night!—Ô, unfortunate me!

My worldly fortune amounted to several rolls of doubloons
and some
lettres de change
¹
of an equal value drawn on a bank in
Barcelona. I put this money in my pocket, along with my jewels;
and so impeccably dressed, poisoned with a large dose of opium
laced with some mysterious green substance, I hit the streets on
my first night in Barcelona, for my private celebration.

Festivities were abundant in the streets—I believed it had
all been organized for me, in honor of my birthday. Nothing tame
interfered with the wild creatures all around me. I tried to keep
my cheer although all I could think of was that substance that was
meant to kill Penelope. Dragomir surely didn’t mean for
me
to eat
it—why would he?! You know what they say: “
When the poison is
in the snuffbox and the snuffbox is for Penelope, it’s Penelope who
dies, not Saul.”
Damn you fate!
My
opium wasn’t green. It was
black as the cemetery, untainted and wrapped in vellum. I was
just going to smoke a little black opium to ease the pain in my
limbs—moreover,
to take me away from the shock of experiencing
the present moment.
Instead I ate four grams of toxic green
opium, but at least it was opium underneath! And so, I decided to
just enjoy the four grams of green opium I had already eaten while
I still had the consciousness to do so… How did Socrates know
after he drank the hemlock that he’d been poisoned to death? He
was a skeptic, after all. Should a follower of Marcus Aurelius
commit suicide if he cannot abstain from dangerous passions?

As the opiate took effect and I had yet to feel the
poisonous aspect, I started to enjoy my birthday celebration.
Everywhere in the streets, people drank and cheered, danced and
kissed—and all to celebrate my night! I saw this moment as
attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other
braided moments of my past and my future. The human brain is
so puzzling. If I can explain the change that happened in my
brain when I turned off Las Ramblas to walk through a deserted
part of town, you will have the portrait of the rational man
instantly metamorphosing into the disassociated schizophrenic.

I was still half-sober when a man—a very tall man, he was
dressed to his eyelids in black crêpe—stopped me on the street to
tell me I looked deathly pale. Having seen me for the first time at
this moment, I took offense. How the hell could he have known
what my complexion
normally
looks like? And what if I were
always
deathly pale?! I asked the monster these questions. He
replied that he couldn’t know, but that if I needed a hospital, one
could be found at the end of this side-street near where we were
standing. I don’t know if I thanked him, or cursed him to Hades.
But I
did
take his advice. I went vagabonding down that side
street where the hospital was said to be… just in case.

My vagabonding took me into a seedy part of town that I
found out later was called El Raval. The street where the saidhospital was located branched-out into sinister alleys, apartment
squalors, everything the color of soot. The quarter smelled of
poverty and dirt. In this dirty quarter, I thought, in the fine
clothes I’m wearing, all it would take is one crazy thief with a
pistol to rob me of my entire fortune and make me a pauper. But
no, I would take a bullet before surrendering to any thief.

“Why on earth am I following this street that leads to a
hospital?” I screamed this question over and over in a very loud
voice, so the passersby thought I was mad. “Why am I following a
street that goes to a hospital? Do
I need
a hospital?
Well, do I?
Damn-it, I
am
a hospital!”

By now, the opiates were in full effect with all the sweet
pleasures opiates bring, my head tingled, my body too. I enjoyed
the high until I felt something else, something new, something
very
unlike
opium. It was that green death… that unknown
chemical, it frightened me at first! ‘Why frighten you, Saul? Of all
people,
you
are not afraid to die. Take it as it comes…’

Next effect to shake my brain, what made me truly certain
I had been killed with a chemical poison, and not some
douce
tueuse
¹
like our Lady Opium who is natural and holy to medicine.
First I suffered twinges in my head where, for the space of a
several moments, I didn’t know where I was in relationship to the
world: An intense self-depersonalization schism, I believed I was
standing by myself, watching myself walk down the sidewalk;
then my chest tightened and breathing became strained. The
leather of my head started tightening in the strangest way, I was
sure that at any moment I would die of a brain aneurysm, or else
my heart would give up…

Then comes a moment when the panic disappears and I
feel numb again. I am at peace. Now, no longer at peace, my
depersonalization fever strikes again and rises to a level where,
not only
was I autoscopic
¹
, but I was also
teleautoscopic!
My
Watcher-Self was not near to my body like the first time; rather, I
was
far away from my body
this time, about ten meters up in the
air, and away, looking down at the pathetic figure of my carcass
walking along without a soul, trying to fight off death, and trying
to make sense of what remains of his life. Wherever could he be
going on this sidewalk he was sent to stroll?