Waiting For Columbus (24 page)

“The commission at the university has come to a decision,” she says.

“They have no imaginations, no desire to explore. They are dead men with pencils,” Columbus says. “I already know what they—”

“Now hear me well, Columbus. I will personally look at your plan once we take back Granada from these shit-assed godless Moors.”

“My queen, you are wise. You are intelligent. You are powerful and—”

“Oh cut the crap, Columbus. I have sycophants galore. Just open that door and walk down the hallway and I’ll show you a hundred completely useless sycophants. Be patient, Columbus. We will take Granada, and soon. And then, we will see about your ships.”

“But—”

“Patience. Patience, Columbus.”

“You’ll need money after the Granada victory. I can bring the royal treasury riches from the Indies and Marco Polo’s Japan.”

“That’s a promise we will remember, Cristóbal.”

“Could you not spare just three ships, most revered servant of God? Even two ships would—”

“Look, Cristóbal, I like you. Your enthusiasm is undeniable. You have great charm and you are unequivocally brilliant. But I have to tell you—and I hope you can hear this through the haze of your single-minded passion—get the fuck off my back about these ships.”

“But my queen, I—”

“I’ve had a snootful of you and the new route to the Indies and Japan. I have an entire city filled with Moors that I’ve promised to extricate. I’ve got a holy Inquisition that’s running amok—I have no idea what they’re going to attack next. I started the damned thing, and frankly, they scare the crap out of me. I’ve got Jews spread across my lands who don’t seem too pleased about leaving and aren’t very enthused about converting. I’ve got God’s emissaries from Rome saying converting isn’t going far enough anyway. And I have a treasury that does not runneth over. I have—”

“If I am successful, when I am successful, I will fill the treasury with riches.”

“And to top it off, my tits hurt. They ache. For some reason, I have to cram them into these tight dresses. Gowns, gowns, and more gowns, and they’re all tight little torture suits.”

“My queen, I hear you. I only wish to please God, and to bring honor to Your Majesties.”

“How the hell could you know what it’s like to wear these damned clothes?”

“I … I cannot imagine it, my queen.”

She rises from the throne and shushes by Columbus so she is behind him. Columbus smells her odor and its edgy sexuality stops him. It’s a hot, muggy day to begin with and now this! His head feels light. The smell of this woman, this queen, shakes him.

She walks through an archway at the back of the room. Columbus
can hear a door opening and closing. The queen comes back into the room and walks over to him.

“A couple of my girls are coming in here to get you dressed. Then we can talk some more.”

“But I am dressed—”

“Trust me, Columbus.”

In a couple of minutes, two of the queen’s servants enter the room with a blue gown and a corset. The girls shrug, stifle giggles, and go to work on Columbus.

“But this is a dress,” he says. The girls ignore him.

“And you’re going to cram your body into it. So you really understand what I go through to look like this.”

“But—”

“Just do it for your ships.”

Isabella walks across the room and disappears through the doorway.

When the queen comes back, Columbus is on his knees in the blue dress, the corset tight across his chest and midsection.

“That’s better,” she says.

“I can barely … breathe.”

“Fantastic, isn’t it? Welcome to my world, Columbus. Those two girls are my most trusted—they’ll not say anything about this—but there are rumors about you and I. The tabloids say there must be something going on because your scheme is being entertained by the queen. Just rumors, but pile rumor on top of rumor on top of innuendo and I could be in trouble. My husband chases whatever bitch in heat he damned well pleases, but I? I must remain faithful.”

“But it’s not true what they say.” Columbus feels dizzy, can’t get a full breath.

“The truth has little to do with what the tabloids write. They print whatever they want.”

“But you’re the queen! Can’t you just, you know, cause them to disappear?”

“And make myself look guilty?”

“But—”

“You do understand that I have to remain true to the king? That there are spies everywhere? And that there are serious consequences to any infidelity on my part?”

“May I rise, Your Majesty?”

“No, you may most certainly not rise. Stay where you are.”

Columbus can’t feel his lower legs but he remains facing the empty throne.

“My queen, God Almighty would never allow—”

“God Almighty probably started a few of these rumors. Do you catch my drift, Cristóbal? God Almighty can see into my heart. He can read my thoughts and most secret desires. Do you hear me, Cristóbal?”

Three days later, an envelope arrives by courier, catches up to Columbus in Córdoba. He opens it and finds a pair of black panties. There is no accompanying note. No letter. Nothing to indicate whose panties these might be. Columbus is bemused. He looks around the room—even though he knows he’s alone, he wants to make sure before he lifts the panties to his face and inhales deeply.

Consuela pulls back from Columbus and looks him over. She feels a twinge in her groin. Her head is spinning.

“That was mildly erotic,” she says.

“Not meant to be. It was a lesson in understanding. You’ve been hanging around with doctors too much. Sometimes a thing is just what it is. A lesson is a lesson.”

“Still, it was erotic.”

“You want erotic? The pungent, spicy smell of a woman—that’s erotic,” he says. “All the scents. Feet, underarms, groins. Everything.”

“Yes, I know. I know you enjoy the olfactory.” Consuela is no longer shocked by his sporadic, frank admissions.

Across the room, workmen have finally arrived to fix the broken window, which has been boarded up for two weeks. They hover outside the window, ladders on either side. Place the glass carefully into the frame. Consuela and Columbus sit in the dim light and watch the workmen.

He sits up in bed. It’s not a spasmodic or jerky movement. He is simply, suddenly wide awake. He leans over and throws up into the wastebasket. He slides off the bed onto his knees and continues to vomit. When he is spent, Columbus presses the side of his face into the coolness of the floor and weeps. He pulls his sheet from the bed, curls into a fetal ball, and hopes for sleep without dreams, without nightmares, without armless dolls.

This is the third time in a week he has had this dream. Each time his reaction is more violent. It shakes his body. Impacts physically.

In the morning, he seeks out Pope Cecelia, finds her in the day-room watching the birds in the oak tree outside the south window. She’s wearing just one robe today, looks almost normal. Beside her on the table are a blue tin cup and a wooden spatula. Columbus looks at the cup and the spatula, decides not to ask, sits down, kisses her ring, and begins to unfold the details of his dream.

“Why would a doll speak?” Cecelia says. “Why would you have that expectation? Dolls don’t speak. They don’t talk.”

“I don’t know. I just know these dolls can talk—they can speak but they don’t.”

“And they’re armless?”

“All of them.”

“How many dolls are there in this dream—”

“Nightmare. Hundreds. There are hundreds of silent dolls.”

“And what do you do in this dream—nightmare?”

“I try to wake them up. I have the knowledge that they can speak, but they won’t speak.”

She draws her body away from the direction of the tree and the sparrows and the window, toward him. “What do you think it means?” She rotates the tin cup on the table, so the handle is facing her, then, takes a sip of tea.

“Old woman, I don’t have a clue. All I know is I am horrified. Last night I was sick. I woke up and I was physically sick. I don’t know what to do. I can’t stay awake for the rest of my life.”

He observes her face. It’s kind. Wrinkled and weathered, but lacking the stray hairs that accompany so many older women’s faces. Her skin is pale and apart from the wrinkles, smooth. Her eyes are faded pale blue, as if they became tired of their own color, or simply faded with age.

“Oh my dear boy,” she says. She reaches out and touches his hand, hopes to bring him back from wherever it is he’s going. “It’s all right to not know. Perhaps you’re not ready to know. Dreams are never obvious. They are never what they seem. You’re just not ready.”

Emile’s assistant in Lyon calls with two peculiar newspaper stories. A
man in Cádiz tried to pay for his meal with some stones wrapped in a piece of leather. The police were called but the man disappeared before they arrived. Emile dismisses this story. The story that catches his ear is buried inside a longer feature on panhandling—the embedded tale is about a man in a café in Jaén who insisted on calling a woman Isabella, even though her name was Lucia. He would not stop talking about the color of the ocean. The funny thing is, she bought him a train ticket to Marbella. That’s what he said he needed. She said he was the most enchanting man she’d ever met.

Emile drives right by Castro del Rio, the land of wine and olive oil. “Can you get me her phone number? Get me this woman’s phone number.” He flips the phone shut.

Emile finds Lucia Vargas’s house in Jaén. He’d called from the road and convinced her to meet with him. He turns onto Calle de Santiago and looks for a place to park. There are cars lining both sides of the street and he can’t see an opening. A brown BMW signals to pull out
half a block up and Emile signals his intention to move into this spot. He’s not sure why he bothers signaling—there are no other cars driving on this street. As he’s waiting for the careful BMW, he glances across the road. On the boulevard, there are two men playing a game of boules, and four men sitting at a small table smoking cigars. The men are sitting in wooden chairs and each has a glass of something in front of him. One of the men is leaning forward, elbows on his knees, head down and tilted—as if he is listening intently. Emile is pulled toward this scene. He’d like to go over there and sit down, smoke a cigar and share a drink, and listen to their conversation. In his snapshot of this scene he gets the feeling these men are grounded, completely comfortable with who they are and what they’re doing. He thinks he remembers having this comfort in his own skin a long time ago. Perhaps these men smoke cigars and have a drink each day at this time. It is a pleasurable constant. Emile would love to be part of this picture. He backs into the parking space, then watches as a waiter from the café across the street brings over another round of pastis or wine—something in a bottle.