Waiting for Columbus Read online

  Bartholomew pours the wine and raises his glass. “Well, to the new route and the man who found it.”

  “To those who unwaveringly believed and followed,” Columbus says. “And to God who blesses us at every turn. And to the king and queen of Spain.”

  They down their wine. Bartholomew pours again.

  “To the man who first spotted landfall after our long journey.”

  “To me, again,” Columbus says. “It was I who pointed to land. I did the pointing. You have to point or it doesn’t count.”

  “Wouldn’t actually seeing land be as important?”

  “And how do you signify to those around you that you have seen? You point! I pointed.”

  Columbus spends the rest of the evening alone in his quarters reading over his journal entries, which turn out to be a long, run-together diatribe on everything from the weather to women and the colors of clouds. It’s undated, unnumbered, and holds no clues as to how long it took them to arrive.

  In the morning the mist burns off quickly, and they can see they are very close to a spectacular city nestled between two mountains. What fortune to have anchored so close to a city! The dock is lined with thousands of people. Red and silver and gold banners fly from the domes and spirals.

  Columbus stands on the deck and looks across the harbor. There is a small boat in the water waiting for him. Bartholomew is on board. They are flying the Spanish flag. They also have red banners. The sun is shining. The sun is very bright. It hits the water and splashes in his eyes. He raises a hand as a shield.

  On the dock, Columbus prepares to walk on a carpet of red flower petals toward his destiny. This is the moment he has been moving toward his entire life. There at the end of the square is the emperor, or the king, of this place. Red flower petals seem to fall from the sky. Columbus is presented with gold and silver, frankincense and myrrh. Then he is bowing a greeting to the emperor. “Your Majesty,” he says. “It’s very bright here. The sun is very bright. In fact, it’s almost too bright.” Yet I’m cold, he thinks. The breeze is chill. You would think with all this blasted sun that it would be warmer. It’s so bright. But it’s cold. I’m cold…

  “ Columbus!”

  He hears a frantic voice. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “ Columbus! Christopher, wake up!”

  “Wake up?”

  “Yes, wake up!”

  Columbus sits up in the bed and looks around the room. The sun is streaming through open windows. He is naked on top of the blankets and he has goose bumps on his arms. The sun has not yet warmed the night chill out of the morning. Through the window is a view of the ocean, but Columbus can’t see anything except that it is very bright. Beatriz is frowning at him from across the room. It takes a few minutes for him to see colors. Her robe is wrapped tightly around her body-a pink, protective armor. Her arms are folded across her chest.

  “You were dreaming-speaking in your sleep,” she says.

  “Mmmmm,” he grunts.

  “You were dreaming about her again, weren’t you?” Her words are pinpricks.

  There is no right answer to a question like this from Beatriz. Columbus has been down this road many times. He could explain it was just a dream and the things that happen in dreams cannot be controlled, but he’s not sure that’s true. Even though he was not dreaming of any women, he’s inclined to try and rationalize dreams in general. By saying our dreams cannot be controlled, however, he is also saying that he is guilty of dreaming about the woman in question. He could just deny it-speak the truth. But then she will likely not believe him.

  Beatriz stands up, lets her armor fall aside. She turns her back to him and fills her glass with water. “You were crying out her name.”

  “I was? Why would I be calling out the name of someone I was not dreaming of? What name did I call out?”

  “You said, ‘Your Majesty.’”

  Relief. “Yes, yes, of course, because I was dreaming the end of the journey across the Western Sea. And there was a majesty there to greet me-a man, a king of some kind.”

  “A man?” she says with a mocking edge to her voice. “You want me to believe you were dreaming of a man?”

  “Yes. He was smiling and there were thousands cheering. I led twelve ships, in my dream, across the ocean, and it seems I did it with very little hardship. Bartholomew was there and-” Columbus stops. She doesn’t need to know everything. She doesn’t need to know he could not remember, or did not know, how long it took to sail across the ocean. She’s liable to ask if he continues his report.

  Beatriz is not yet smiling but her face has softened. She has not wrapped herself back up. It’s okay for Columbus to see her body now. It’s okay to open herself to him, a little. She moves a candelabra from a shelf to the table across the room. The candles are not lit. There’s no need for candles as the room is awash with sunlight. Her robe feathers as she moves. She shows him her body in this movement. Columbus relaxes a bit. After all, this was just a dream. How can he be held accountable for his dreams? One cannot control one’s dreams.

  “And in this dream, you made it back in one piece?”

  Columbus tenses. Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe. There are times when it is all right to lie, he thinks. In this dream he remembers having no hope of being able to return. No idea of how far. No idea of how many days. Nobody on the bloody ship knew how long it had taken them to get across the Western Sea. He thinks there are times when God, being a man and also a god, will understand that a lie is sometimes required. God will draw upon all He knows of men and women and instantly forgive certain small untruths, even infidelities.

  Beatriz turns toward him, finds his face. “ Columbus? You made it back, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” he says. “Piece of cake.”

  ***

  Consuela stands up. Looks at him. Flatlines her voice. “You dreamed about Columbus having a dream?”

  “Yes, I dreamed I was having a dream.”

  She sighs. “And Beatriz is…?”

  “Ah, yes. A delicate flower. The most amazing green eyes! She was my woman. She bore me a son.”

  “Your woman, not your wife?”

  “What is it with women and marriage? You think all your problems will be solved and your life complete if only you can marry. Isn’t that a bit delusional?”

  “So you did not marry Beatriz.”

  “We exchanged vows. We exchanged rings.”

  “But you did not marry her.”

  “No. It’s complicated.”

  This perks Consuela’s ears. A woman and a child. This is a first. A woman, according to Dr. Fuentes, could be at the heart of his illness.

  “But you loved her.”

  “Of course I loved her. Don’t be so stupid. She was my woman.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Beatriz? Nothing happened to her. She’s in Barcelona. She works as a barista. She doesn’t have to. She has a stipend. It was arranged.”

  “I notice she doesn’t visit very often. She doesn’t visit at all.”

  “Ah, yes, well, that can be explained by reminding you of the unique vagaries of all women. While I love Beatriz to this day, she was not my only love. No offense to you, Nurse Consuela, but this ability to love more than one woman is one of the traits of men that is not appreciated by most women.”

  “You fooled around on her.”

  He’s not sure how to answer her. He does not have the language to speak his heart about Beatriz.

  “I’m not judging,” Consuela says. “I’m just interested.”

  Columbus leans forward. Hands on his chin, elbows on his knees. He seems on the verge of saying something but then pulls back-just closes his eyes and sighs. “Look, there were days when I was daunted. I was depressed about this journey. I would wake up in the morning in a new town and yes, there were, sometimes, distractions.” He sighs. “Look, this is a brutal, ugly time. The Inquisition is running around accusing and burning people and saving us from ourselves. Pe
ople are scared… I was scared most of the time.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  An Interpol yellow notice flashes on his screen and Emile Germain can’t recall what the hell the yellow alert means-not exactly.

  It’s been a while. He has to look it up. Emile pulls a white binder from the shelf beside his desk and flips to the section that deals with alerts. Yellow, he recalls with the help of the binder, is to assist in locating missing persons, often minors, or to identify people who are unable to identify themselves. His computer beeps. A blue notice pops up attached to the same file. He scans down the open page to blue: to collect additional information about a person’s identity, location, or illegal activities in relation to a criminal matter.

  Merde! Two alerts on one man. They have no idea if he’s a threat. There was no color code for a person of interest, but Emile could read between the lines: Interpol wanted this guy found.

  The man, his assignment, was declared officially suspicious and off the grid in April. Under the circumstances, it’s understandable that one missing person was shunted down the priority list. The likelihood that he is dead is high. The trail went cold. His file was basically forgotten. The report says he had been seen by several unreliable witnesses, and then he was gone. A magic trick. A disappearing act. Spain is a vast country-forty million people. This was just one vanished man inside a chaos of people and landscapes.

  Cold trails were Emile’s specialty. Hopeless cases were his forte. His ex-wife used to say it was because he could tap into the artistic side of his brain and make oblique connections.

  Emile pushes his shoulders into the back of the chair and breathes deeply. The wooden chair was a gift from her. She’d found it in an antique shop with a cement Buddha head sitting on it. She was assured by the owner of the shop that the chair was well over a hundred years old and in excellent condition. She probably paid too much but she was in love, and the Buddha head had been there a long time. It had to be good karma to act as a platform for a Buddha, she said-to serve the Buddha in this way. This booga-booga side of his ex-wife was annoying as hell when they were together, but now Emile found he missed her booga-booga: the incense, the strings of tiny brass bells above the bed, soy milk in his Cheerios, the incessantly changing colors on the walls in their bedroom. She had taken most of this away when she left. Though she did leave a small, silver Buddha in the bathroom. And, of course, she’d left the chair.

  Emile has the luxury of working out of his home, a penthouse in the heart of the Right Bank of Paris, the market district of rue Mont -orgueil. It’s a small flat but it’s rare to find an apartment with a private terrace and a view. From the roof, he can see Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur, and the Museum of Modern Art.

  He was up for a glass of water, and on his way back to bed decided to check his e-mail. He was expecting the cases to begin arriving again and this mysterious person of interest was the first.

  Somebody at headquarters in Lyon has attached a brief newspaper story about a baffled stranger in Valdepeñas, south of Madrid -a man asking for directions. Police were called but the man was not found. He’d disappeared. The thing is, he kept asking for directions to different places: Sevilla, Granada, Tarifa, Marbella, and half a dozen other towns, cities, and villages. First he’d ask for food and then directions, always to someplace new. He was very courteous, always grateful. The good people of Valdepeñas were worried about him.

  Emile makes a little whistling sound. Well, that’s a long shot, he thinks. But at least it’s a place to start. Two years of being away, two years of therapy, and now he’s thrown right back into the mix.

  Emile scrolls to the top of the file. Who the hell is this guy?

  ***

  Sometimes the map will not do. The map will never be the territory. One must get out in the field in order to understand. While Emile can make telephone calls and send e-mails and look at maps from the comfort of his flat, it’s not the same as going out into the world and having a look-see. He’s never found anyone by just looking at a map. He’ll rent a car in Madrid, interview the people who may have seen this man, and follow any leads.

  Soon he’ll be working the same hours he was logging before the incident. Admittedly, he was one of the busier agents. He was always trying to find someone. Even when he wasn’t on the job, he drifted easily to the missing people to whom he was assigned. He’d been away from work for a long time, and now the cases had already started arriving and his bosses in Lyon would be relying on his unique talents. Yes, he was going to get busy again.

  ***

  “If I leave you clues, could you find me?” his wife had asked him before it went to pieces. “I want to be one of the people you find.”

  Emile smiles. She does not.

  Emile was baffled. What the hell did she want from me? he thinks.

  She’d complained that he obsessed over his work. “These people you’re assigned to find-you make it so personal.”

  “Focus. I focus,” Emile says to himself, trying to shake away the cobwebs of his past.

  ***

  He takes his laptop to the roof terrace with a thermos of coffee. He places the computer on the small wooden table and pours coffee into his mug. He turns the knob on the little propane heater. It clicks to life with a small flicker, then slowly, as Emile turns it on high, the flame glows a bright hissing orange. He finds comfort in this sound. He does not open the computer. He drifts to the suspicious man in Madrid. Emile does not think he is dead. If he is as hot as the two alerts suggest, this man is likely holed up somewhere licking his wounds like a big cat or a bear. He’s found a cave. Maybe he’s damaged in some way and he needs to stay off the grid-he’s going to wait it out. Emile can relate to this-he understands this. He’s had experience with holing up. He worries, though, that this guy is just an innocent who needs help. Emile has read and reread the interviews with the witnesses, looking for that snippet of information that will point in the right direction. One of these witnesses says the man he saw was Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean. Another witness swears she saw him crying, sobbing uncontrollably. Another says he was Arabic-looking, he was holding some sort of bag under his arm, and he was most certainly not weeping. He’s gone over the file a dozen times. He knows everything there is to know. If there’s an oblique connection to be made, he’s not seeing it. There is one thing he knows about this man that was not written in the file: not one of the witnesses reacted out of fear. They all seemed to be concerned about his well-being. This man may be suspicious but he is not frightening.

  Emile will begin in Madrid. Then he’ll go to Valdepeñas and talk to the people who fed and gave directions to the apparently lost man. The likelihood this is the same guy is remote but it’s all he’s got.

  Emile closes his eyes to the gray city. The hazy sky. The diffused lights. He can feel warmth from the heater on his cheeks. In two hours he’ll be on the train to Madrid.

  ***

  “Oh, there’s land out there all right. I know there’s landfall out there in the Western Sea.” He’s pacing Dr. Fuentes’s office. Back and forth, frenetic energy barely contained.

  Dr. Fuentes motions for him to come and sit. An open-handed gesture toward the offered seat, which is a low, flat-armed, dark-brown leather chair directly across from the chair-and-a-half monster in which the doctor sits. Columbus sits, interlaces his fingers, and looks up at the doctor.

  “What happened to you?” the doctor says. “Do you know why you’re here? Do you have any idea, Bolivar?” He scribbles in his notebook. His therapy consists of long conversations and interactions in which he uses the patient’s first name, his real name. No assumed names, ever. He has never called Columbus by his assumed name.

  “Bolivar?” Columbus is smiling, playing with the doctor.

  “Yes. You are Bolivar.”

  “How can I be this Bolivar when my name is Columbus?”

  Fuentes’s voice becomes a silken rope. “I’ve told you this before, but repetition is fine. We think som
ething happened to you and the defensive part of you has conceived this alternate persona.”

  “You think this Bolivar is inside me?”

  “Yes, that’s our theory.”

  “A theory?”

  “Yes, we don’t know for sure.”

  “How long have I been here? And all you have is a theory? Should I look for a new doctor? Someone more competent?”

  “Three other doctors have consulted on your case, Bolivar. All we have are theories right now.”

  Columbus has his hands clasped tightly. Everything in him wants to punch Dr. Fuentes in the face. “And?”

  “And they concur-”

  “They agree. They don’t teach you how to talk like a human being at doctor school, do they?”

  “They all agree that you have this disorder. Yes.”

  “Nonsense. I am only me. Have been only me since I got here, and before this I was also me. For instance, I was Christopher Columbus in the spring of seventy-eight when we came across Vikings. You see, I, Cristóbal Colón, had the most extraordinary meeting with a Norseman. He was a big man and we had an amazing conversation… I found out a few things about the world that are not taught in the universities… Things that would astound even you, Fuentes, Mr. Smarty-pants.”

  “The fact you seem annoyed-your anger-is an indication that there’s some truth in what I’m saying.”

  “You’ll have to try your first-year psychology tricks on somebody else, Fuentes. I’m not buying it.”

  “And the fact you are just now changing the subject is also indicative. I want to talk about your disorder and you change the subject to Vikings. You want to tell stories about Vikings. You’re avoiding the subject by telling made-up stories.”