The Wanderess (6 page)

“…We turned down many streets, narrow streets smelling
of urine and rotting food. Finally she came to the street where we
are now (this, Master Dragomir’s street). She stopped as though
stunned, frozen before the wooden plaque that’s posted outside
the gate with Master Dragomir’s name stenciled in the wood. The
sweet girl stopped and brushed her little hands on her ruffled
skirt as she studied the sign for a moment, all the while, anxiously
looking around her, desperately almost. I hid in the shadows like
a wolf, watching…

“Then, in a swipe of her hands, the little girl let the hood
fall from her head and a magnificent bouquet of hair toppled
down over her shoulders. She was dark-haired, but golden at the
same time, both pale and dark! I rubbed my hand over my groin
to settle the stiffness that was growing bigger and more
uncomfortable. I had to settle my desire! The girl’s desire
meanwhile stayed on that wooden sign over the gate. What did
the sign say?, I wondered. I saw her kiss her hands then. Why? I
don’t know, but she kissed her own hands. All the while, she
looked around with a way I can only describe as
baffled.
Dropping her dirty hands, she pressed the latch on the gate. The
gate opened and she hurried into the courtyard and was gone!

“…I fled from the shadows and crossed the street and
planted myself where she had stood moments before when she
kissed her own hands. ‘Clairvoyant,’ I read on the sign, ‘A
clairvoyant? Very curious!’ . . . I pressed the latch as she had
done and entered into the courtyard. There were many doors
leading to stairs, I couldn’t tell at first
which stairs
she had taken
to enter into the building (the entrance to this building wasn’t
exactly then as it is now). Alone, the courtyard was silent and
empty. I heard tiny footsteps far off, but they belonged to an alley
cat that was pouncing down a drain pipe. I knew she had gone up
to visit the clairvoyant, why else would she have been looking at
the sign? The problem was that there were many stairs and I
worried if I went up one, she would come down another at the
same time and be gone forever. I decided to wait for her in the
courtyard. Was it fear or patience? I didn’t want to confront her
in the lighted room of a clairvoyant. I wanted her alone, in the
dark,
like the predator I was….
”

Pulpawrecho stopped his story to smack his lips and take a
breath. I was poured some water and began to drink. The
wretched servant went on talking…

“While I waited for the little girl to come back down, I
backed into the shadows in the courtyard and masturbated. I was
so flushed with excitement, I ejaculated immediately all over the
brick wall and stuffed my throbbing sex back into my trousers.
Still panting, having not yet recovered, I then spied that the girl
leaving out the gate from which we’d entered. I looked at one of
my watches and realized she’d been upstairs an entire half-hour!
Now she was leaving, hurriedly; she looked even more baffled
then she had when she had come. Do you realize what I’m
saying?! . . . The girl had looked so baffled a half-hour before when
she’d arrived. Now, leaving the clairvoyant, she seemed
even more
baffled
then before!

“…So, this sweet girl went scampering down a side-street.
I left in pursuit of her, but I was too far behind and she was too
quick. I’m a speedy little man. But something was driving her in
haste. She had a purpose, I could tell. I lost my love to the
narrow winding streets of the town. I knew that the only way I
stood a chance of finding my beautiful pubescent goddess again
would be if I went back to the building to find the clairvoyant
myself and ask him. He would know where she was headed. He
of all people would know what was on her mind—or
in
her mind,
rather. A clairvoyant knew the future, right? He could help me
catch my prey….”

“Ah yes!” Dragomir interrupted with a chuckle, “I
remember it as if it were yesterday. You tell a story well, little
Pulpawrechito, as if you were reading from a book. You talk just
like a book! You see, Saul,” he turned to me, “This little man
climbed the stairs
that night, a stranger then to me as you were
tonight, and he buzzed on my door…”

“No, I
thundered up the stairs!”
Pulpawrecho broke in, “and
buzzed on Master Dragomir’s door. Master answered right away
and admitted that there had been a girl to see him—a young
adolescent girl with a hood—only moments before. I pleaded to
come in and said that I would pay for a consultation. I would pay
for his help. How much would it cost? I had money and gold
watches in my pocket. I didn’t care how much it would cost. I
was ushered inside…

“Master Dragomir permitted me a visit and let me sit in
this very chair where you are sitting now. ‘This beautiful girl who
visited you,’ I asked while trembling, ‘she looked baffled. Where
did she go? Did you send her off somewhere? You read her
fortune to her and then she left? You should have detained her!’
(I was almost in a fever of desire as I spoke to him that night. I
couldn’t control myself, it was as if I were drunk.) ‘She was so
beautiful!’ I cried to the yet-unknown clairvoyant,” Pulpawrecho
inclined his head towards his master as he said this, “‘Yes, she was
a cute girl,’ Dragomir replied, ‘if you like…
children
. So what’s the
big deal?’ . . . ‘The big deal?! You let her go!” I gripped the table in
fever, ‘without trying to keep her here!’ . . . ‘Why should I have
tried to keep her here?’ Dragomir asked me, ‘I don’t abduct
children!’ . . .
I remember he put particular emphasis on the word
‘children,’ as if my girl didn’t arouse him sexually because of her
tender age. Meanwhile, in my groin a heated fire was scorching
what remained of my store of semen. My sex was growing hard
again with the thought of that adolescent girl with her pale dark
and golden hair that tumbled out of her hood, her tiny breasts
pressed against her little shirt, and her baffled face turning left
and right as she skipped through the shadows in the Spanish
street. I was growing enflamed and excited. Master Dragomir,
however, was calm. He reclined in his burnished leather chair
and took up a newspaper and put a pair of glasses on and began to
read to himself it as if I were a nobody, and wasn’t here
altogether.”

“‘I don’t normally
offer
information to people I don’t know
and don’t care about.’ . . . ‘Will you let me
pay
for it? I’ll pay! I’ll
pay!’. . . ‘The important part of my phrase,’ he replied, ‘was the
people I don’t know or care about
part. You can pay me, if you’d
like. I’ll take your money and tell you this or that, but what I tell
you may lead you nowhere. She is a young child. You are a
middle-aged man. You are old and she is in her first throes of
puberty. Why do you want her so badly? You can bribe me. You
can give me gold. Still, your little girl may never be found.’

“‘Yet
if you knew and cared about me
,’ I asked him, ‘you’d
tell me more? Who this mysterious girl is? Where she went?
Where she is likely to be found? How I can have her?!’ I wrung
my hands as sweat dripped from my face. I looked left and right.
My memory flashed back to when I’d been spying on her outside
and her little bottom, those butt cheeks like two little fists,
clenched with indecision, and she removed her hood and those
beautiful locks of hair poured down over her sweet face. Now my
consciousness returned to where I was. I looked with my beady
Pulpawrecho eyes around this room of Master Dragomir while I
gripped his table with my fingers that started to bleed from the
pressure… ‘Let me be your servant then!’ I cried suddenly. ‘Let me
be your servant!’

“Suddenly the pressure was released. I looked around the
room in confusion. Why was there nobody around? Did he not
have a servant? No one had opened the door for me to let me in.
Dragomir was all alone in this musty room. ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘is
there no one to open the door for you?’ …My words seemed to
barely register with Dragomir as he sat in his leather seat with his
reading glasses on, scanning the newspaper. I, meanwhile, was
frenetic. I would have committed any act, no matter how
irrational, to know where my thirteen year-old girl could be
found. I would have eaten my own stool if Master Dragomir had
asked. Anything to find that child! ‘…Let me be your servant
then!’

“A seeming eternity followed. Finally, Dragomir broke the
silence… ‘This is most interesting! A ver-ry in-ter-est-ing story,’
he issued to me in a calm voice, his eyes focused on his
newspaper; he spoke in his strange accent (at that time, he still
had a strong accent. He was new to Andalusia then, three years
ago).”

Pulpawrecho continued narrating his story to me as I
listened quietly in the chair, wondering why a shrewd, seemingly
intelligent runt like Pulpawrecho would entrust such a scandalous
story to me—a complete stranger. It was the opium, I knew—that
terrible truth serum. Dark secrets guarded for a lifetime can be
divulged with carefree folly after a sip of the
black smoke.
I took
another inhalation from the pipe when Dragomir insisted, and felt
the opiate stupor renew itself. Pulpawrecho finished his
interesting story…

“‘This is a story you should hear, Señor… I’m sorry, what is
your name?’ … ‘Pulpawrecho,’ I told him. … ‘Señor Pulpawrecho,
there is this interesting story in the paper here, about the famous
Juan Gomérez trial that’s been going on. Have you been following
it? No? Surprising! A man like you who enjoys following
strangers, one would think you would know all of the gossip. Oh
well. It’s a fascinating case. I’d like your opinion on it. I’ll
paraphrase…

“‘There’s a famous court case that is happening right now
in Spain. The story is on everyone’s lips, surprising you are
ignorant of it. A man, a Spaniard by birth, of very fair
complexion, is to be hanged for killing a baby. Infanticide, you
see. Many citizens say he should hang or be burned alive, while
others say he should be set free. The people who say he should be
set free, interestingly enough, are the upright citizens, many of
whom are women, people of high birth and moral integrity. It’s a
scandal and I’d like your opinion of the matter…

“‘The story goes as follows: A certain pale-faced Juan
Gomérez, who is skinny and very short in stature, was living in a
poor barrio of Sevilla with his newlywed wife. She was a beautiful
negress—enormously tall, with chocolaty skin and a round and
mighty rump. They say she had, or
has
rather, penetrating eyes
that will cause fear in a man, and sharp white teeth that shine
between her dark lips. She had come from the Ivory Coast and
has been living in Spain for ten years…

“‘Juan Gomérez is a good Spaniard, dutiful and patriotic.
As for his tastes, he found the most beautiful race to be the black
race. ‘Black women alone,’ he decided, ‘have the exotic allure
mixed with the feminine power a man loves.’ When Juan was first
love-struck by this great negress, he asked her to move in with
him, share his bed, etc. Eventually, through his earnest vows to
be her slave in all matters, he talked her into marrying him. And
so they were married. He did all the work around the house. He
trolled around with his little mop and broom, cleaned and cooked
and pleaded for sex; and she took advantage of him most of the
time, but she felt some affection for him, so she shared his bed
and ate the meals he cooked. Once her mother came to visit from
the Ivory Coast. The two women drank on Juan’s money and went
carousing. They would come home late at night with all sorts of
odors on their skin, their big black breasts hanging out of their
blouses. The mother only stayed a week or so as she couldn’t
stand our dear Europe, she said the European customs were filthy;
she missed her home in Africa, missed the food there, etc., etc., so
off she went…

“‘…Later, the first cousin of the great negress came to stay.
He was a mighty tall negro with arms of steel and a voice as low as
the thunder of hell. He ate all that Juan could cook and he spread
his heavy body out on the floor and took up so much room, that
the poor Juan Gomérez with his apron and frying pan hid
quivering in the kitchen most of the time, asking his wife in a
trembling voice if she or her cousin wanted more to eat or more
wine to drink. Fortunately for him, that nightmare didn’t last
long as the great negro cousin had some altercation with a
conscript soldier in the street, and not having had all his papers in
order, he was deported back to the Ivory Coast. Juan was relieved,
and more in love with his wife than ever….

“‘Soon this great beautiful negress found herself pregnant.
Now while woman gives her body as an incubator to her child and
risks her life in childbirth so that this child may grow and her
genes may live on after she is dead, continuing her legacy and
creating a sort of immortality of her personal species; so does a
man give his labor and time and resources to the child born of his
genes, so that his own genes may continue on into the future and
result in his own immortal legacy. A man is biologically wired to
consider his life successful if he has nurtured the woman pregnant
with his own child and has raised his own child. He has wasted a
portion of his life, however, if the child is not his own…