The Necessary Beggar (20 page)
Read The Necessary Beggar Online
Authors: Susan Palwick
“I will pray tomorrow. Will you be here?”
“I think that if I am here, you will not pray.”
“I think that if you are not here, I will not pray: I will only dream of you.”
He shakes his head. “Gallicina, did you come to Market to find a prayer carpet, or a lover?”
“I came to find the first, and found them both,” she says. “Darroti, please be here tomorrow.”
How can he refuse? “I will. Of course I will.”
“Then why do you look so troubled?”
“Do I look troubled?” He is silent a moment. “I am sated, and overjoyed, and I love you, Gallicina. But I fear this burden of secrecy. I fear it will poison us.” He makes the slashing X for silence, and says, “It breaks things. It is a symbol of breaking.”
“Ah.” She reaches out to hold his hand in both of hers, as she did before. “Remake it, then. Reshape it.” She turns his hand palm up, and on that palm, with a slender fingertip, she traces an X, but without ever lifting her finger; the entire figure is one flowing line. “See, look: it is a joining now, not a breaking. Two souls touching at one point, and flowing each into the other.” She leans forward and kisses him gently on the mouth. “It is a kiss, Darroti. If your lips are sealed, they are sealed by my lips. Nothing is broken. We will let nothing break us.”
“Dear love,” he says, feeling his soul transformed. “Tomorrow, then.”
There are many tomorrows; they meet every day for weeks, making passionate and ever more inventive love. Always at parting Gallicina traces their private symbol, the one that means a kiss, on Darroti's palm; when they lie in one another's arms, she often traces it dreamily on his back or chest or stomach. Before a month is out, she has vowed that she will marry him, after she has served her year as a Mendicant and entered the Temple; and Darroti, feeling as if all the universe cannot contain his joy, has wept and returned the vow, awash in relief. For when they are married, they will no longer need to keep their love a secret.
But when will that be? Their fornication, delicious as it is, does nothing to further their marriage, since Gallicina insists upon being a Mendicant first. “You must forego me for several nights a week,” Darroti tells her firmly, stroking her hair. “You must pray upon your carpet, dearest, and learn its pattern. And you must find a way to convince your father to allow you to be a Mendicant. You must do all this for me, that I may become your husband.”
And so they agree that several nights a week, they will not meet: Gallicina will go alone to Stini's apartment. For a while, all is well, and
absence makes them more fiery, more ecstatic, on the nights they are together. But soon Darroti discovers that the burden of dissembling, which at first he hardly even noticed, has become a heavy weight. With his family and friends, he must continue to play the careless, thoughtless youngest son. He and Gallicina have agreed that once she has been a Mendicant, she will say she met him in the streets near the Market, that they met and talked every day, and so fell in love. Her family will still be enraged, but she and Darroti will handle that somehow; a way will present itself.
absence makes them more fiery, more ecstatic, on the nights they are together. But soon Darroti discovers that the burden of dissembling, which at first he hardly even noticed, has become a heavy weight. With his family and friends, he must continue to play the careless, thoughtless youngest son. He and Gallicina have agreed that once she has been a Mendicant, she will say she met him in the streets near the Market, that they met and talked every day, and so fell in love. Her family will still be enraged, but she and Darroti will handle that somehow; a way will present itself.
But he cannot admit he knows her now, not yet; he cannot speak of her, cannot share his joy or his pain. And this pulls him from his family and makes him impatient with his friends, and the strain begins to disturb his sleep and wreak havoc with his bowels. It distracts him from his work. It shortens his temper and lengthens his thirst.
For wine helps him: it keeps him calm, helps him play his role. A year after meeting Gallicina, he is drinking every day; where once he drank only in the evening, with friends, now he drinks at noon, from a flask he has smuggled into his lunch basket. His thirst for wine begins to outstrip his budget, especially since Stini, every three months, has raised the price she charges for her apartment. “Motivation to marry,” she tells him crisply. “It is still a bargain, Darroti, and I have been very good. I have never sought to learn your lover's name, and so you need not fear blackmail.”
It is blackmail enough, the price she charges, but he cannot refuse to pay it, or she will change the locks. And he cannot tell Gallicina of his plight, not without admitting that he lied to her at the beginning. So he pays, and worries, and dulls his worry with ever cheaper wine, and tries to play the unworried fool.
His family notices the wine, and worries for him. His friends berate him that he will not join them at their own wine, now too dear for him. And worst of all, Gallicina begins to guess how much he drinks.
“Your breath smells of herbs when you come to me, as if hiding something else,” she says, holding his head between her hands. “Your eyes are often bloodshot. Darroti, look at me! I love you. You know I love you. But dearest, if I marry a merchant, he cannot also be a drunk. My family will never permit that; it will take enough persuasion for them to consent to the other. You cannot persuade them with liquor-addled wits.”
“I will stop,” he tells her, stung. “I promise I will stop.”
And so he tries to do; and succeeds, for a week or two at a time. But always, and always on the nights he does not see Gallicina, his thirst overtakes him, a galloping fever, and on those nights he gorges himself with wine and wakes, sometimes, with no memory of the night before. And his
terror grows, for he wants to stop; he truly means to stop. Yet somehow he cannot.
terror grows, for he wants to stop; he truly means to stop. Yet somehow he cannot.
“You have succumbed again,” Gallicina says, her face tight, whenever they meet again after one of these nightmares. She can always tell. And Darroti, desperate, begins to blame her, to deflect blame from himself.
“It is the strain of secrecy, Gallicina. When are you going to convince your father to let you be a Mendicant? It has been almost two years now. Why do you delay? Whyâ”
“Do not scold me about things you do not know! You have never met my father! I will tell him on my twentieth birthday, for then I will be of legal age and he will not be able to prevent me, even if he disowns me. Darroti, if he disowns me, will you still marry me?”
“If you will be a carpet merchant's wife,” he says, and kisses her, all his anger dissolved in love. For their love is vivid as it ever was, made only deeper by their intervals of strife. He still delights in her silky hair and firm thighs, her small breasts and large labia, her clever mouth and graceful fingers, which still, always, trace the pattern of a kiss upon his skin. No other woman has tempted him since he met her; he does not even think about the whores, except to worry about his payments to Stini.
And then there comes a week when sales have been slow in the Market; and Darroti, fresh off a binge, cannot pay Stini's fee. He begs her for more time, tells her he will get the money somehow, but when he goes to meet Gallicina the next evening, she is standing outside Stini's apartment, fuming. “The key will not work. The locks have been changed. Darroti, what is this?”
He swallows, opens his mouth to speak, finds he cannot. “IâGallicina, I don'tâIâ”
“Darroti, my soul is in there!”
“I know, dearest.”
“Why are we locked out?” She comes to him, glowing with beauty even in the dimness of the landing; she puts her hand on his face and traces kisses on his cheeks and chin and forehead, but with her other hand she holds him at a distance, so that he cannot truly kiss her. “Darroti, tell me the truth.”
And so, sickened, he does. He expects her to yell at him, but she does not yell; instead she grows silent, distant, terrible, her eyes full of tears. “Are you still having sex with this whore? Do you love her?”
“No! I have had sex with no one but you since we met! I love no one but you! I have never loved anyone but you, Gallicina! Anything I did before that was merely moving bodies, scratching itches.”
She does not thaw. “Does the whore love you?”
“Of course not! Gallicina, be reasonable. She loves only my money. That is what this is about.”
“And you do not have the money for her because you spent it on wine. You love wine more than you love being with me.”
“No,” he says, heated, “I do not! I want to be with you forever! I want to marry you! You are the one who insists on waiting, who insists on secrecyâ”
“Who kept the secret about paying the whore, Darroti?” Her voice is taunting now.
“I did not want to wound your pride! And I never thought this deception would go on so long!”
She frowns, shifts her weight, grows thoughtful. “You are right. It should not have gone on so long. It must end.”
Terror seizes him. She is leaving him. She does not love him anymore. He finds himself kneeling on the landing outside Stini's apartment, weeping, his arms around Gallicina's knees. “No, no, you must not say that, it must not be over, you must notâI cannotâGallicina, I will never love anyone but you, do not leave me, Gallicina, dearestâyou must not leave meâ”
“Darroti!” Her hands are in his hair; she kneels now also, so that she is facing him. “That is not what I meant! Be calm. Love, dear generous foolish love, I am sorry. Compose yourself. Darrotiâ”
“You do not love me anymore. Youâ”
“I love you now, and I will love you always. Darroti, listen to me. I did not mean that I was leaving you. What I meant is that you are right: the deceptions must endâ-at least some of them. I must tell my father that I am determined to be a Mendicant.”
He swallows. “And then you will marry me?”
“And then I will marry you, joyfully. But first we must retrieve my prayer carpet.”
She goes home and asks Adda for the money; Darroti gives it to Stini, who lets him in one last time so he can collect the carpet. He carries it to the square where he and Gallicina had their first clandestine meeting, an age ago; he gives it to her. They cannot kiss here, in public, but they sit and talk. “Darroti, dearest, I go now to confront my father. I will tell him I have been sneaking away each evening to pray upon my carpet. I will not tell him where, or with whom. I will tell him that the risk of being a Mendicant is no greater than the risks he has already forced me to take. And I hope that he will listen to my pleas, and let me take to the streets. But he may not. He may lock me in the house instead: forever, or for a while. I do not know when I will see you again.”
Darroti takes a determined breath. “He cannot separate our souls.”
“No. He cannot. But you must have faith that if you do not see me, I still love you. Always remember that I love you, Darroti. It will always be true.”
“And I will always love you, Gallicina. You know that. Tell me this: if he allows you to become a Mendicant, where will you go to beg? I must know so that I can look for you there, every day.”
She smiles, and names a corner near the Market. And then she reaches out and presses into his hand something in a small bag. He thinks fleetingly of those fifty alaris, so long ago. “What is this, Gallicina?”
“A kiss, for you to keep.”
He opens the bag. Inside is a silver figure, the pattern of their kiss, on a black silken cord. He flushes, overcome with love. “I will wear it always. But I have nothing to give youâdearestâ”
“I could take nothing with me, as a Mendicant, save the clothing on my back and a begging bowl. But DarrotiâDarroti, who has given me my soulâhow can you say you have given me nothing?” And then she presses his hand, and is gone, and he puts on the necklace, which for all he knows may be their last kiss.
Time becomes an agony. Every day he looks for Gallicina on the corner she has named; he seeks her there even before the time when she could possibly be free to come, for Mendicants must purify themselves for two weeks before they begin to beg. He looks for her there every day, and every day he fails to find her. And because he cannot speak to anyone, he drinks instead. He sneaks wine at breakfast now. He shakes if he cannot get it, and sees monsters in the shadows. He is always at his father's booth in the Market; he bargains well enough, but with only a quarter of his mind. He thinks Timbor does not notice his misery. He cannot tell. He cannot sleep, cannot pray, some days cannot eat. He still plays with the children at home, still joins his friends for conversation. But he is in chaos.
And every day, when he does not see Gallicina on the corner by the Market, his despair grows. The monsters in the shadows, the ones quieted only by wine, whisper to him that she never loved him, that she was only using him, that she has gotten her prayer carpet and taken her pleasure with a merchant's son, and now he is discarded. He will never see her again. Only the silver kiss on its silken cord gives him strength at these times, for it is proof that he is not mad, that he and Gallicina truly loved. It is her promise. And so when he is most afraid, he clutches it, and praises her foresight in giving it to himâfor surely she knew that he would be tried this wayâand remembers what she told him.
Always remember that I love you
.
Always remember that I love you
.
And then one day, three months after their parting, he goes by the corner in the evening, on his way homeâas he always doesâand she is there. Gallicina is there, wearing the burlap robe of the Mendicant, holding a blue begging bowl.
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