Waiting For Columbus (19 page)

In the morning Columbus is sitting in his favorite wooden chair, dressed in the housecoat the boys gave him last Christmas. As the sun rises, he pulls out another cigar. He slices the end along the blade of his sword. He lights it with three small puffs, two more small puffs. Then a slight roll so the end is evenly lit. He leans back into his chair and looks out to sea. He observes the wisps of pink cloud stranded at the horizon. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning, he thinks. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky at morning, sailor’s warning. He knows the nursery rhyme but has no idea how or when he learned it. He takes another puff of his cigar.

Before coming down to the veranda, he’d picked up his razor in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The color of his hair still sometimes surprises him because he does not feel old enough to have white
hair. Despite his seemingly endless struggles to get his ships, he does not feel as old as he looks. True, there are days when he is so tired he teeters at the edge of giving up.

Sometimes he does not understand what Beatriz sees in him—what any woman sees in him.

“What is that awful stench?” Beatriz has come up from behind him but now backs away. She’s wearing a corset, nothing else. “Has something died? Have you an illness?”

“It’s a cigar. A Montecristo number 4.” He smiles, but there is fatigue in his eyes—something resigned. “There’s a box of them in the big room, on the table. I honestly do not know how they got there. I must have had them in my bag. But I’ve brought some down here with me. Do you want one?”

Beatriz leans forward suspiciously. Watches him suck on the brown thing that burns and smells like death.

“Why? Why do you do this?”

“Well, after I smoke, I feel I am not quite walking on the Earth. I am, but I am not. I feel strangely at peace. Calm yet focused. When I awoke this morning I found I had this knowledge. I knew how to smoke them. I’ve had two already.”

“What do you mean you had the knowledge? Is this some sort of sorcery? Have you been taken by demons?”

“Beatriz. It is merely the knowing of something that cannot be explained. Perhaps I dreamed of this knowledge long ago and now I recall a dream.”

“But where did they come from? Shall I pray for you, Cristóbal?”

“I’m afraid praying wouldn’t do any good.”

“You mean there are demons in you?”

“Demons! I mean it is merely something that cannot be explained.”

“But—”

“Look, you have given birth.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“I … I just knew,” she says.

“And when the baby arrives, what is the first thing it does?”

“It cries.”

“Yes, and then?”

“Then it seeks its mother’s breast.”

“And how does the baby know to do this? How does it know there is nourishment there? How could it possibly know?”

“I—”

“It is unexplainable, is it not?”

“I suppose,” she says quietly. “But this is different. You’re forty years old! You are not a baby!”

“True, but this does not make me immune to mystery.”

“Only idiots and the very superstitious believe the world is flat. The curve of the Earth is easily proved. I could explain such things to a child, a cat, or a dog. It’s determining the actual size that is a problem. And it will always be speculation until someone sails out there and actually has a look-see.”

Dr. Fuentes leans forward, places his elbows on his knees, and cups his chin in his hands. “So what happened? How come you’re here and not at sea? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“I am not here of my own accord, Doctor. And anyway, why would you want to jump to the end of a story?”

“You have a story?”

“Everybody has a story, Fuentes.”

“You’re telling a story right now?”

“You’re not reading Nurse Consuela’s reports, are you?”

Dr. Fuentes pauses. Makes a few notes in his notebook. “What if I told you I believed the world was flat?” he says without looking up.

“You would confirm my theory about your lack of intelligence. I believe hundreds would concur.”

“I think we’re done for today.”

“Why don’t you read me what you’ve been writing in that little notebook of yours. It must be very insightful and important.”

Dr. Fuentes slaps his notebook shut. Slips his pen into his shirt pocket. Smiles a cool, professional smile in Columbus’s general direction.

“You don’t want to share your shopping list? Maybe you’re writing a novel. Were you composing a poem? A ghazal perhaps?”

“A ghazal?”

“Yes, an ancient Persian style of poetry. Five, or more, two-line stanzas. Each stanza is a complete thought and unrelated to its neighboring stanzas except by a thin emotional thread. Surely you’ve heard the term before?”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“Except that you are the type of person who demands neatness and logic and a chronological order. You could never write a ghazal except by accident. It was wrong of me to accuse you of writing a ghazal. You’re much too stupid for that. Limericks are more your style.”

“We’re done here.” Dr. Fuentes stands up. “Have a good day, Bolivar.”

“Yes, that’s perfect. Dismiss me with a phony wish, a platitude, and an incorrect moniker. Well done, Fuentes. You must have a lot of friends.”

“We’ll try again next week.”

Columbus ignores him. Focuses on his cuticles. Observes his fingernails. Lets the doctor stand for a long minute. Then he stands up. “I can let myself out,” he says. “Thanks for a lovely chat.”

The dayroom is crowded. It’s been raining for days. The whole institute has a gloomy and claustrophobic feel. Tempers are short. There have been five fights in the last two days, which is unusual. These fights were serious enough for the nurses to call the orderlies to break them up. Pope Cecelia is in isolation for smashing a plate on an orderly’s head. Yesterday Dr. Fuentes slipped and fell, broke his tailbone, is going to be off work for a month, maybe more. He’s managed to reconcile with his wife. A miracle of sorts.

Columbus stays away from these confrontations. He lurks at the edge of things. Consuela finds him in the game room, watching a chess match between Mercedes and Arturo. Mercedes washes her hands after every move on the chessboard. As a result, they are red, chapped, and sore looking. Mercifully, Arturo needs a lot of time to contemplate his moves. Arturo thinks and thinks and ponders, and eventually Mercedes complains. He moves, she moves, and then she gets up and goes off to wash her hands. Arturo damaged his head in a fall. Before he fell, he was a brilliant lawyer—a Crown prosecutor with a reputation for being a pit bull. There are still glimpses of brilliance but these are veiled behind a plodding, lethargic man.

Consuela moves quietly, comes up behind Columbus. “It’s a slow form of insanity,” he says, without looking up.

She’s impressed. But she wonders. Did he see her reflection in a window?

“I can smell you,” he says.

Arturo looks up from the game. Smiles. Consuela blushes. She clears her throat. “Are they any good?”

“Arturo is better than you. But he has much practicing to do before he will give me a game. He would do well to study the Greco Counter Gambit.”

Consuela thinks hard about this. Greco Counter Gambit? She has never lost a game with Columbus. What the hell is he talking about? This
doesn’t make any sense. Is this a clue to another life? Did she just get a glimpse?

“Though I doubt Mercedes is smart enough to know it, she has been playing the Italian Quiet Game: E4, E5, then Nf3, Nc6, and finally Bc4, Bc5. You see how white prevents black from advancing in the center?”

“Gambit?”

“Yes, a risky attacking style of opening. It avoids the calculated buildup of classic games.”

Columbus looks up at Consuela’s confused face.

“A gambit is an opening in which something is sacrificed, usually a single pawn, in order to achieve some sort of advantage. Gambits are not normally successful in the highest-ranked games. By the way, thank you for taking such good care of me,” he says, “and good-bye.”

“You’re welcome. I—” She stops. “What do you mean good-bye?”

“You never know. I could die in my sleep. A tree could fall on me. I could choke on my dinner.” He half smiles.

“You’re not planning anything stupid, are you?”

“Define stupid.”

“Suicide is stupid.”

“Suicide is a sin.” Columbus seems appalled at the suggestion.

Consuela takes a deep breath. She looks him over through squinted eyes. “Then you’re going to try and escape again, which for you is only mildly stupid.”

Arturo stands up. “I have to … please excuse me.”

“I’ll watch the board. Not to worry.”

“What are you planning?” Consuela is hissing.

Mercedes arrives back at the table, looks over the board, and makes her move. She gets up and disappears again down the hallway toward the washrooms. She passes Arturo in the entranceway.

Columbus smiles as Arturo sits down. “Six moves, Arturo. It’s over
in six moves. Your knight, yes. You’ve got her. If she makes the right moves, it’s checkmate in six. If she’s careless, it may take fewer, but the result will be the same.”

“I see I’m going to have to do some practicing,” Consuela says.

“Aren’t all our games practice games?”

Later that day, she walks along the edge of the pool. He’s swimming, a seemingly effortless sidestroke through the water almost silently. The evolution of his initially rather noisy swimming to this almost-silent-in-the-water stroke has been a slow but steady journey. It’s not something he was trying to achieve but something he noticed happening as he tried to make his movements more efficient. She is reading out loud from a small book of ghazals. Reading a stanza, then walking a few steps, reading another—keeping up with him as he swims and listens. She reads, walks, reads, walks. After a while it is difficult to determine if she is matching his pace, or he, hers.

“Into the mirror of my cup the reflection of your glorious face fell. And from the gentle laughter of love, into a drunken state of longing I fell
.”

She walks a few steps, and then:
“Struck with wonder by the beauty of the picture that within my cup I beheld. The picture of this world of illusion from the reflection of my mind fell
.”

He pulls himself out of the pool after just under an hour, sits on the rough stone edge, and looks up at her. “Why did you choose this particular style of poetry?”

“You don’t like these? These are in translation. They were written by a poet named—”

“Hafiz. I know who wrote the poems. That’s not what I asked.”

The edge to his voice, the clipped tone, takes her off guard. She cannot, will not say that this book of poems is one of her favorites—that it is a book her father gave to her mother. This book is one of her few
treasures. These poems move through her as an old lover would; they know where to touch, and when, and sometimes they surprise. “I found the book in a used-book shop,” she says. “Ghazals are Persian. They—”

“I know what a ghazal is. Why did you choose Hafiz?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might enjoy it. They’re odd poems. At first glance, they don’t make sense.”