Waiting For Columbus (15 page)

Father Antonio sits down behind him. “This came for you this morning,” he says, handing Columbus an envelope. “It’s scented.”

Columbus sniffs at the envelope. Sickeningly sweet and pungent. He places it beside him on the ground and closes his eyes. “Just kill me,” Columbus says.

Father Antonio hands him a mug. “Drink this. All of it.”

“What?”

“Just do it. It’s a sort of whiskey mixed with cream and sugar. You won’t exactly be out of pain, but you won’t care.”

Columbus drinks the thick liquid and almost immediately no longer feels nauseous. Eventually he rips open the envelope. It’s a rhyming birthday card but it’s not his birthday. It won’t be his birthday for months. It’s signed, “Love, Cassandra.”

“Good news I hope,” the father says.

“Birthday greetings but it’s not my birthday.”

“So good wishes but at the wrong time.”

“How long have I been here?”

“You and Diego arrived last night. You were well-met.” The father smiles, pours more of the creamy liquid into Columbus’s mug.

“How is it that I got mail when just last night I could not have told you where I was?”

Consuela wakes up with a start and in a sweat. She was dreaming about fishing. She and Columbus were fishing somewhere in the mountains. There were several bottles of wine cooling in the stream. The air was fresh and exquisite. She remembers breathing deeply and drawing great pleasure from the scents of pine, the forest bottom, the water, and the alpine flowers, which seemed to be everywhere she looked.

He said he loved fishing—how many days ago was that? But the subject of fishing has never come up again. At the time, she’d thought, well, sure, you go to sea and there are fish in the ocean. Good that you like fishing. Better that you like eating fish. But this fishing in her dream, in a stream with a long pole and a snaky line, is something quite different than she imagined.

“It’s like throwing,” Columbus had said in her dream. He was wearing hip waders, a khaki shirt, and a duckbill hat, and smiling. His hair looked healthy—was pulled back into that ridiculous ponytail he likes. His eyes were penetrating, alive. He was beaming.

She was naked. Completely naked, standing in the cold water up to her crotch, her feet grounded in the sand beneath the stones. But her nakedness seemed ordinary. He barely looked at her. It was as if she was always naked. She did not feel the cold. The water sporadically splashed her hips and belly. Eventually she got the hang of it, managed to cast the line along the surface of the water to where she wanted it to go, and caught several fish. In the dream, Consuela enjoyed standing in the water with the mountain peaks in the distance, fingers of white down the slopes, the pines enclosing the stream, the sun on her skin, the sunlight splicing, glancing off the water and sparkling in her eyes.

Then they were eating the fish out of a frying pan, over a fire. The fish were fried in butter—he throws crushed pepper and salt on top. He moves the fish around the pan with a stick. She and Columbus eat the fish and drink the wine. It’s white wine in the stream. Three bottles of a sturdy pinot grigio. They drink from the bottle. The wine bursts with flavor—pear and hints of apple. It is so cold it hurts her teeth. She does not dress herself. It was not an option. Nor does Columbus notice she is without clothing. It does not seem to matter.

When Consuela wakes up, it’s her nakedness in his eyes that is distressing. At the bottom of her discomfort is the realization that in this dream of fishing in the mountains with Columbus, she was happy. This happiness, despite her vulnerability. She can’t remember the last time she felt so happy.

Columbus is lying facedown on the massage table. His snoring thunders like an ugly rasping storm as Tammy massages his back and upper shoulders. She’s been working on him for half an hour. He’s been asleep for ten minutes. He moaned with pleasure for the first twenty.

Somewhere down the hall of D wing a telephone is ringing. There is no machine attached to this phone and it’s not forwarded to reception, so it rings for a good long time. Each ring has a cutting edge to it.
This is no twitter. There are sharp-toned bells in this phone. Finally the caller gives up.

“It’s for you,” Beatriz says. “It’s a woman.” She swishes quickly from the room and Columbus calls after her.

“What’s for me?”

“That thing there,” she says, her voice a cold echo down the stone hallway. “There’s a voice in it asking for you. You should pick it up and speak to it.”

He picks it up and brings it close to his mouth.

Hesitantly. “Hello?”

“Columbus, it’s me.”

He looks around the room. Stone walls, simple wooden furniture, a tapestry, and four candles on a simple table.

“Hello?” he says.

“It’s Isabella, Chris.”

He thinks he should stand, or bow, or something. Realizes he’s already standing and does not really know what he would bow to. Finally he takes off his hat.

“Your Majesty,” he says.

“Look, just listen. I have to meet you. The deal is going to fall through.”

“What?” He cannot hear the specific words she speaks. He only hears the loveliness of her voice. An excitement overwhelms him. Her voice is a hymn. I must be dreaming, he thinks. This cannot be real. The queen is in Barcelona. Either I am dreaming or I am mad.

“Chris,” she screams. “Do you hear me? The deal is going down in flames. Las Palos has the king’s ear and he says you can’t make it. The king is listening. You have to get your skinny little ass to court and fight for your ships.”

“I think I am having a dream,” he says. “But it’s the middle of the morning. I am awake, yet—”

“No, it’s me, Isabella. Do you hear me? Las Palos says the world is bigger than you say it is. He says you’re way off in your calculations. You have to tell the king what you told me. You have to show him the things you showed me. I’ve set up an appointment for you—”

“You are in my dream. I can hear you but I cannot see you. You sound far away but still wonderful. I can see your face only if I close my eyes.”

“You stupid ass, get your head out of the clouds.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, my queen. I will get my head out of the clouds.”

Then faintly: “Scribe! We’re going to have to write him. This isn’t going to work. Our Columbus is apparently incoherent. Get me a courier for this letter. Hurry up!”

“What? No. A courier, not a courtier.”

Columbus puts the thing down and wanders out into the garden. A most interesting experience, he thinks. I am hearing the queen’s voice in my head. Perhaps I have gone mad. Perhaps tonight I will bark at the moon, renounce my faith in God, and be burned painfully and efficiently by the bloody Inquisition.

Beatriz comes to get him in the map room. He is there with his bottle of wine every afternoon, studying the charts. Sometimes he is quiet and solemn. Other times he rages in the small room, paces frantically.

“They’re stuck in their minds! They still think Jerusalem is the center of the world. And regardless of the facts, they do not budge. They do not perform geography. They create statements of Christian dogma. Their orbis terrarum, their mappae mundi are more philosophical statements than maps. The church knows nothing about mapmaking!”

Beatriz approaches from behind and starts to massage his shoulders.

She begins to take the tension from him with strong, loving hands. Then quietly, he says, “If Jesus had lived in the Canary Islands I would have already been across the Western Sea to the Indies and back again. Stupid ignorant bastards.”

“You will go to petition the king and queen again?” she says. She can feel the tightness creep into the muscles in his upper back.

“Las Palos is going to be trouble. He knows as well as I do that the distance is much farther than my calculations show. But he does not know how far exactly, just that it is farther.”

“What will you do?”

“Well, if I let it be known the true distance is far greater than what I have said in public already, I won’t be able to man a rowboat, let alone three or four ships. I need at least three caravels.”

“You cannot lie, Cristóbal.”

“I don’t know how I can’t lie. Las Palos and his band of
bastardos
have the king’s ear. What can I do? The truth is not known exactly.”

“What can you do?”

“I might have to have Las Palos killed,” he says in a whisper, barely speaking the words. A subconscious undertow of fear nags at him. “There are men …”

She stops her massage. Columbus reaches across his chest to her hand on his shoulder.

“Just a morbid thought. It will not ever come to that.”

“What will you really do?”

“He is a small-minded bumbler. He has no art. There is no adventure and no conviction in him. He is dry, dead with his calculations. He may as well be dead.”

“But you say he is right?”

“Of course he is right! He may be dead inside but he is utterly brilliant!”

“So you truly do not know how far—”

“I have no idea.” Columbus drinks from the goblet. “While this is an unfortunate truth, it is also true that Las Palos does not know either, exactly.”

“And you will go to the university court and fight him?”

“I will have to be louder, bolder, and inspire with words of gold and spices and riches. I’ll have to promise things to this poor cash-starved monarchy. I will have to use my wit.” He sighs heavily. “Mostly, I will have to be louder and bolder.”

“And at the same time as you try to impress the royals, will you anger those of the Inquisition?”

“This nags at me every day. I will have to hope that the idea of profit rules even those of the Inquisition. And after all, I will be discovering whatever there is to discover in the name of God, and king, and queen. God first, of course.”

Beatriz stands in front of a large chart that hangs from a rod, near the wall. She’s wearing a loose-fitting, flowered gown. Her eyes are drawn to the blank area in the western zone. She thinks about the blankness of it. She remembers swimming beyond land’s sight, getting to the place where there was only water and how lonely it felt, and the small, gnawing fear in her stomach. I cannot imagine only seeing the water in the four directions, and for weeks at a time. I cannot imagine the faith it would take. I am going to lose him to the unknown. I’ve already lost him. He sees nothing but the blankness there. It pulls him.