Waiting For Columbus (10 page)

“It is perhaps an odd notion but it is my experience, from the days before I was a monk of course, that women like to pursue as much as they like to be pursued. To have them chase you, you must show yourself to be charming and then retreat. This takes understanding and creativity. Make a study of women. Learn what makes a man attractive. It is not just the eye. There is more to attractiveness than being pleasant to the eye. There is great pleasure in the chase, my friend—no matter who is doing the chasing. Take it from me, the journey is everything. Once you arrive, one must devise new goals, new challenges.” He leans back in his chair, the wood creaks under his shifting weight. He closes his eyes. “I remember the curves of a woman in Paris, her skin, her green eyes. And she had the most peculiar but pleasant scent. Oranges and cinnamon. The smell of rain and dirt. Moist earth. Don’t get me wrong, my friend. Just a hint of this scent and
you would need more. Desire would blossom in you as it did in me. Ah, she would have been the one who kept me from God had she not already been married. Her name was Maria, and she was not only beautiful but she was intelligent.” Father Paulo opens his eyes. “I wonder if you are intelligent.”

He thinks I can’t hear or understand him, the sailor is thinking.

Father Paulo nurses this man back to health. It’s a slow process as he passes through fever after fever. It takes two weeks for him to speak his first words. The monk has been sitting quietly waiting for him to wake up. When the sailor opens his eyes he sees the balding pillar of a man sitting against a white stone wall, his eyes closed in a meditation. The father has a warm, open face.

He’s asleep, the sailor thinks. It is the first peace I’ve had since I got here. This man never shuts up. He is the most opinionated, pigheaded, domineering, and often-very-wrong man I’ve ever encountered. He never stops talking. Thank God and all the heavens he’s asleep.

“I am not asleep, my friend,” says the monk. “I was meditating—something I learned from a friend, a Chinese monk who came through here a few years back. It’s a completely conscious, focused prayer.”

He reads my mind, the man thinks. He smiles cautiously. “Thank you,” he says, finally.

“I was worried about you, my friend,” Father Paulo says. “You are very welcome. You’re going to be all right.”

“No, thank you for stopping your talking.”

The monk tightens the rope that secures his robe—clears his throat. “What are you called by?”

“Cristóbal. I am Cristóbal, a navigator. I was a navigator.”

“Where were you sailing to?”

“To Portugal, and then Spain with the
Barto
out of Venice. From Britain and the North Sea.” He pauses. “You said I was the only survivor? Nobody else came ashore? Nothing else? No other wreckage?”

“A few planks, and you attached to one of them. That’s it, I’m afraid.”

“I am grateful.”

“Listen, do you know the sextant, my friend?”

“Yes, I understand the sextant. I understand how it works.”

“And you understand the stars?”

He’s testing me, Columbus thinks. He wants to test the limits of my knowledge. The sextant is new. Dead reckoning and a compass is the standard for navigation. “I have guided ships by the stars. But I do not understand the stars.”

This stops Father Paulo.

“You guide your ship by the stars yet you do not understand the stars? Is this a riddle? Are you any good as a navigator?”

Columbus laughs. “I do not understand the
beauty
of the stars. It is simply that. I do not understand their beauty.”

The monk smiles. This is something he can sink his teeth into. There is a built-in dichotomy in this man who plays with language and apparently loves the stars. He arrives on the beach tied neatly to a plank and barely survives this ordeal. Nothing else comes ashore. He knows the sextant and knows about navigating by the stars. In his delirium he called out at least three different names—all women. So perhaps he is also a lover.

“I should let you know, I was not the navigator of the ship that went down—I was a passenger only.”

“It was a hell of a storm. Yours was not the only ship lost.”

“How long have I been—?”

“Two weeks. You were brought here two weeks ago. I will bring you more soup.”

“You’re trying to tell me that you washed up on shore the sole survivor of a shipwreck?”

“Not the most auspicious of beginnings, I admit. But it could have happened.”

Consuela is thinking she should have fed the ducks in the pond—sent him back to his room and enjoyed the peace of this courtyard.

“And where is Father Paulo now? I’ve noticed he does not visit.”

“I’m not sure he knows I’m here. And that was many years ago,” he says. “Father Paulo could have passed away by now.”

Consuela goes out with a group of nurses from work. They meet at the Cerveceria Giralda, which is a former Islamic bathhouse. With its vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and beautiful azulejos, the place screams
Arabian Nights …
romantic and whimsical. The restaurant has incredible tapas. They sit outside, under the orange trees, with a fine view of the cathedral. Much of the conversation centers on Dr. Fuentes. He’s not focused, forgetful. His head is not in his work. So they sit around and drink pitchers of
tinto con limón
—red wine with lemonade—and speculate on what could be the matter. His marriage is floundering, somebody suggests. He never talks about his wife. Once married, Gloria Fuentes stopped nursing. She stayed at home. She lunched with other women who did not work. She did not stay in touch with her former workmates. The nurses pool all they know of the doctor’s personal life, and it is a very shallow basin of information.

Consuela doesn’t want to talk about Columbus, but he is one of the most interesting patients in the hospital. Interesting in a good way. He’s not a self-abuser or an obsessive masturbator. Well, he is almost naked most of the time but this is a minor sin.

“And he’s hot,” one of the night-shift nurses, Sarah, says. “It’s a shame he’s delusional because—” She stops, blushes, and picks up her glass. “I should drink more wine and shut up.”

“He tells stories,” Consuela says. “He told a story about an orange.”

Tammy looks at her like she’s lost her mind.

“No, really,” Consuela says. “It was a story about how someone might have figured out the Earth was round. But you have to imagine it’s
five hundred years ago and we don’t know anything about North America. Columbus is standing on a beach. He holds up an orange, then sticks his finger behind it and slowly begins to lower his finger, following the curve of the orange. He’s trying to explain the curvature of the Earth—he’s trying to show it to Beatriz.”

Consuela studies Tammy’s face. She’s giving longing looks to her drink, which is nearly empty.

“Columbus’s mistress. Beatriz is his concubine. His lover. Columbus keeps saying, ‘Do you see? Do you see?’ But she doesn’t see. She needs time to think. She’s feeling stupid about not getting it. Later on, they’re walking on the beach. The gulls are lifting and descending in the air currents above the water. The clouds are a stretched-out afterthought. The waves are of little consequence. A small fishing boat is sailing out of the cove. It moves slowly and Columbus stops to watch. Can you see him? He puts his journal on the sand and stands there in the bright sun, hands in trouser pockets, squinting out into the ocean.

“Beatriz walks a few paces ahead, notices Columbus has stopped, and then turns around. She sees Columbus is absorbed in thought and so she sits on the beach and joins her own gaze to his. The boat moves out of the sheltered water toward the open sea. Its mast begins to sink.

“And then Beatriz is jumping up and down, shouting, ‘It’s the orange! It’s the orange!’ She runs over to Columbus, who is beaming with pride. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the orange—tosses it to her and says, ‘I knew you’d figure it out. You just needed a little time. You just proved the Earth is round.’ Columbus laughs, but then adds: ‘Do you have any idea how big it is?’”

“So he still believes he’s Christopher Columbus?” Sarah says. “Is he giving history lessons?”

“No, it seems to be personal. It’s his story—Columbus’s story. I looked it up. The real Columbus had no idea of how big the Earth was. If he had known, he’d never have tried to sail to Japan. A while back, my Columbus told a story about arriving—washing up on shore somewhere
near Palos. The thing is, nobody knows how Columbus got to Spain. We just don’t know how he arrived. He could have been in a shipwreck and washed ashore. He could have been on the run from Portugal. They don’t know for sure.”

She’s been trying not to sound too enthusiastic about these stories but fears her excitement is seeping out.

“What does Fuentes think the stories mean?”

“I don’t think he has time to care. I’m honestly not sure he reads my reports.”

“What do you think, Connie?” Tammy reaches over and fills Consuela’s glass.

“Well, for one thing, he knows a lot about Christopher Columbus. It’s not just incoherent muttering. Somewhere in there is a man who has knowledge about the fifteenth century.”

“But he believes he’s Columbus?”

“Yes. As far as he’s concerned, he’s being prevented from sailing across the Western Sea to China, or Japan.”

“It’s romantic in a sort of twisted way.”

“I think something may have happened to him,” Consuela says. “Something that is very likely not romantic at all.”

He wishes this ballpoint pen was a fountain pen. Even a pencil would be more elegant than this plastic throwaway thing. But he was lucky to have it. He’d signed it out and then turned it back in after two hours, without having written a word. He sat at the writing desk in good light and watched the bees work the lemon blossoms on the tree just outside the window. In the afternoon, Columbus tried again.

He has this image of a sleeping woman, her still form on a bed, lying on her side. The sheets are a mess of gray around her. A thick, regal-purple quilt is
scrambled at the end of the bed. Her hip is thrust up, exposed—the line of her body is a sculpted, curvaceous desert landscape, supple and long. There is nothing hard about this body—it holds no tension. Three candles on the dresser across the room, two of which are still lit, make a pale-yellow light. Dark wooden venetian blinds are pulled down but allow slivers of light to section the darkness. A bottle of champagne is upside down in a silver bucket on the bedside table. Books are piled on this table and also fill a narrow shelf that runs the length of the headboard. Piles of sideways books at either end hold the upright books in place. There’s a painting of a narrow, long-necked nude woman on the wall beside the bed. This picture is enclosed by a thick, dark frame. This is not a hotel room
.

The scent of vanilla hovers in the room. Her face is not visible, but it’s easy to imagine this woman is satiated, happy. He wishes this for her. He cannot say why. The picture-taker is standing in the hallway looking into the room. Did this person take this picture on their way back with another bottle of champagne? In the doorway, sees her body on the bed. Thinks: Jesus, she’s beautiful. Wonders: Where’s my camera? Places the bottle of champagne on the floor. Gets the camera, frames the picture, takes the picture. He wonders if she will hear the shutter, lean up in the bed and say, “Hey … what?” And perhaps the picture-taker captures her question as well. But there is no hint to suggest that she sat up in the room. Nor are there any hints to suggest pictures prior to or after this one. There will be a perfect circle of condensation on the hardwood when he lifts the sweating champagne bottle off the floor
.