Waiting For Columbus (7 page)

There are three booths at the back wall. Columbus likes the booths because he can spread out his charts and notebooks. There’s breathing room, elbow room, and they’ve got the best light. The candelabras are not bright but they hang low over the wooden tables.

He’s just about to sit down when someone bumps into him, causing him to almost spill his wine. When he turns around he’s irritated. He is also instantly embroiled in a conflict of some kind. He appears to be in the middle of a standoff.

“She’s a stinkin’ Jew and I won’t drink with Jews.” The man is massive, has a tattoo of a black skull across the top of his left hand, and spits when he talks. His hair is black, thick, and greasy. His tunic is filthy. Columbus can smell him from across the room. But regardless of the
man’s odor and apparently foul disposition, Columbus reminds himself it’s just not a smart thing to confront large men with tattoos of black skulls on their hands, no matter how right you are about any given issue. This he has learned. Not much else, but this he knows for certain. The tattooed man looks down on a smaller man who stands in front of a woman. This big man has three friends behind him—hands on hilts. The tattooed man is the biggest of the lot, but the others are also undeniably large. The woman has her back to the wall and has been pushed there by a table—she can’t move. She’s bleeding from her lip and there’s a redness across her cheek, below her right eye. She does not wipe the blood. She is resolute and unflinching.

“Juan?” Columbus says. “How are you, my friend?”

Juan smiles. “Couldn’t be better. Just in the middle of something right now.”

“I see,” Columbus says. He glances over at the four big men. He steps forward to the point where the man will have to step back in order to draw his sword if that’s the way this is going to play out.

“What’s this about?” Columbus says.

“She’s a stinkin’ Jew bitch.” The man spits out the word “bitch.”

Columbus glances over his shoulder at Juan.
“Brevior saltare cum de-formibus viris est vita
, my friend,” he says.

“Huh?” the big man says.

“He said, life is too short to dance with ugly men.” Juan also steps forward, joins Columbus in crowding the giant. The tattooed man backs up a step, then another. Juan and Columbus take two steps forward. The big man’s three friends spread out.

“Now why would you say such a thing?”

“Well, you are ugly as sin,” Columbus says. “Surely you know this.”

He appears to have no idea how to respond to this. Looks confused. “Look, this is not your concern. It’s about her. I want this fuckin’ Jew out of my sight. She’s a filthy whore. I will not drink with stinkin’ Jews. She and her kind bring disease, they bring the Black Death.”

“You could leave,” Juan offers.

“You defend this Jew? Why? She is no better than disease-infested cow shit.”

“It’s not so much that I love Jews, but rather that I despise those who hate for no reason.”

Tattoo man’s hand twitches slightly—a tell. Columbus can see Mr. Tattoo is about to draw his sword. He’s going to make that cross-body movement and draw his blade. This is when Columbus draws his own blade, an Italian-made dagesse. It’s a short blade and he does it quickly. The blade is at the tattooed man’s thick neck before his own sword is half drawn. Columbus is fascinated by the intense throbbing under the skin where the tip of his sword presses into tattoo man’s neck.

“Stop,” Columbus says. “Enough. I just wanted a glass of wine, not a minor war.” All eyes are on Columbus.

“Who are you?” the tattooed man says through clenched teeth. He moves his eyes toward Columbus—but moves nothing else.

“I’m the guy holding a blade to your neck. I like Jews, and I’m rather fond of filthy whores. Tell your friends to get out.”

“But—”

“Now. Just do it.” He presses the point.

Columbus doesn’t know much about swords, but any idiot could see this man’s weapon was way too long to be effective in close spaces. The tattooed man nods, delicately, toward his companions and they start to pick up their coats and bags—one guy pounds his drink down first.

Salvos appears in the archway, slightly out of breath, a short thrusting sword in hand. The ring of a sword being drawn is a sound that cuts through any din. It’s not something he would ever miss. “Everything okay, my friend?”

“Has this guy paid yet? And those?” Columbus motions with his chin in their general direction.

“Yes,” Salvos says. He looks them over with a scowl.

“They’re leaving. Those three first.” The crowd parts as the men
make their way to the door. Columbus looks over at the woman who seems a bit shell-shocked. “What’s your name?”

“Selena,” she says. There is vulnerability in her eyes but they are also ferocious. Columbus thinks he can smell vanilla.

He turns his attention to the tattooed man. “Good-bye.” The big man backs away until Salvos grabs his shoulder and roughly guides him to the door.

Columbus looks at Juan and Selena. “Join me for a drink,” he says.

Up close, Columbus finds Selena to be stunningly beautiful. “Do you always draw such a crowd when you come into bars?” he says.

Selena blushes. “Not usually. Do you always show off like that, with your knowledge of Latin?” Her eyes are downcast. But then she looks up with an even, self-assured strength. “I did not wish to have sex with him. Then my face accidentally ran into his fist, twice, and then … well, you know the rest. Thank you, by the way, for what you did. I’m in your debt.”

“It’s nothing. You’re probably not even a Jew, are you?”

She touches the gash on her right cheekbone. It’s stopped bleeding. She winces. “It was never about being a Jew or not being a Jew. He was only rejected and stupid.” Selena wears a long, maroon-colored skirt gathered above her waist, a blouse with tight sleeves, and no corset binds her bosom. This woman, Columbus finds out later, is a chambermaid. She’s gorgeous—apart from her injury, her skin is smooth, flawless, and her hair is an exotic tawny mane—yet she seems to have no awareness of her beauty, which only makes her more beautiful in his eyes. This is a woman with whom he would dearly love to dance—because life is also too short to dance with ugly women.

Selena and Juan move toward Columbus’s table and Selena trips, lurches forward—falls hard. Both men can hear the dull thud of her body hitting the floor.

“Fuck,” she grunts. “These goddamned shoes.” She pulls herself up before Columbus can even start to think about moving to help her. Her
top is covered with sawdust. Sprays of undone, sandy hair cover half her face, which is bleeding again. Still, Columbus finds himself completely enchanted by her—he feels a little light-headed.

Salvos appears with a jug of wine and places it in the middle of the table.

“The good stuff,” he says, smiling. He turns to leave and adds: “You drink on the house tonight.”

They sit down and Juan pours wine all around. “The big one,” he says, “was a soldier. Not a particularly well-trained soldier but the marking on his hand is indicative of a regiment from near here.”

“You’re very good with your sword, sir,” Selena says.

“Please, call me Columbus. And I’m no swordsman. I’m a navigator, a sailor. I have no idea how to fight. I barely know how to hold a sword.”

“But—”

“Sometimes,” Columbus says, “one only needs to be quick.”

“Surely you don’t think all women need saving? That we’re basically helpless, frail little creatures, and—” She stops, shocked at the intensity of her reaction. Her questioning mind flits to her ex-husband. Was that who Rolf was? Did Rolf save her? Or try to save her?

Columbus smiles. It’s a warm gesture—even-tempered and innocent. Not condescending. “But Selena did need saving. It was not a nice bar. Sometimes it takes the threat of violence to stop a greater violence.”

Consuela is immediately embarrassed. This is her patient. It’s just a story. She’s overreacting.

“I do not think you need saving, Consuela,” he says. “But I would not hesitate if you were in trouble.”

“I … Listen, I’m sorry. I … Of course, Selena needed some help. It was a good story. I’m curious, though. Exactly how many women does Columbus … do you, get to bed in this tale?”

“Some other time,” he says. “We shall have to talk about passion and love, love and passion. With some women, I shared passion; others, I loved. One mustn’t confuse the two.”

Later, at home, Consuela picks up her phone book and looks under
S
for Salvos, or any such derivation. But it wouldn’t be in the phone book anyway. Not a bar like this. Besides, he never actually named the bar. He just named the owner, or the manager. And the bar was in Valdepeñas, she reminds herself. She pulls a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, slips the point of the corkscrew into the soft cork, and starts to twist it in. She hesitates. That was five hundred years ago anyway, she thinks, before she catches herself. Jesus, Consuela, it’s a story. It’s just a goddamned story.

It’s around this time that Columbus finds the swimming pool and
starts to swim. It’s mid-July. The temperature in Sevilla has been rising to forty-three degrees Celsius and higher every day for nearly a week, with no relief in sight. Columbus had been suffering from a cold for a week and was told to report to the steam room. He followed directions the best he could. But instead of the steam room in the south wing, along the bottom edge of the building, Columbus found the empty shell of a swimming pool. He almost falls into it after pushing between a stack of boxes and a pile of old bed frames. Abandoned, but more or less structurally intact, the pool at one time had been fed by an underground spring and a small stream. A fill pipe extended into the stream and was blocked by a rock. The stream, a combination of the spring and the original up-mountain trickle, was warm. A hot spring. Columbus was thrilled. He spent the day cleaning the pool, sweeping, and scrubbing, while Benito, one of the better orderlies, watched, read the newspaper, and watched some more. Before supper, Columbus removed the rock from the fill pipe and the water began to trickle into the empty receptacle.

Three days later, Columbus starts to swim. Each morning before
breakfast, he and Consuela—or on her days off, Benito—would head for the pool. He swims laps for an hour, sometimes more. It’s a good steady workout. It gives him joy to move through the water. It becomes a morning ritual.

“When I am in the water, I almost forget I am not free,” he says to Consuela one morning, walking back to the main building.

“What would you do if you were free?”

“Sail west across the Western Sea to India, China, Japan. Drink much wine. Go fishing.”

He does not mention his family, or women. Consuela wonders why.

She has been keeping meticulous notes on Columbus and filing them with Dr. Fuentes. Columbus’s sessions with Dr. Fuentes are infrequent. She wonders if the doctor is actually reading any of her reports.

Within three weeks, Columbus’s body becomes leaner—his muscles, more concentrated. He seems happier. One morning, Consuela thinks she hears him humming. She can’t be sure, but what else could it have been? This little snippet of an almost-heard melody coming from him is not serious, or focused, or driven. It has lightness to it, and normally he is anything but light.