Waiting for Columbus Page 5

  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.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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.

  Columbus does not speak about the pool. Nor does Consuela. This silence is a facility of age. They are both old enough to know that in a bureaucracy, a beautiful, innocent thing like this pool can become desecrated. There would be rules and lifeguards, hours of operation, and probably forms to fill out. It’s better to just remain quiet. Benito assumes someone has approved the use of the pool. Consuela does not ask for permission. The pool was there but forgotten. Columbus is just using it. Once a week, Consuela gets up early and enjoys a thirty-minute swim, a luxurious, tepid immersion, before starting her day. This is a gift. She thinks of it as a gift from Columbus. She swims naked. She and Columbus, separated by a few hours, share the same warm water. Consuela does not swim laps. She flounders, drifts around in the water-perhaps she will pull the breaststroke from a childhood memory, swim to the end of the pool and then stop. Mostly, she delights in the feel of the silky, mineral-rich water.

  ***

  On the morning of the feast day of Saint Clare, after Columbus swims his laps-eighty-six laps this morning-and after she leaves him in his room, Consuela finds an envelope in her mail slot in the nurses’ lounge. There are identical envelopes in every mail slot. Someone has given all the nurses tickets to the bullfights next weekend. Consuela, who has never been to a bullfight in her life, tells Columbus about the tickets and his face disappears into a memory. “Beatriz loved the bullfights,” he says. “The bullfights are how we met.”

  ***

  It was at the El Prado Café, near the Plaza de Los Califas, in Córdoba. Columbus was a great lover of the bullfighting. Despite its inherent brutality, for him there was something beautiful about it. He was having an espresso when she walked in-stumbled in. She quite literally fell at his feet. He offered his hand, which she accepted, and then she was sitting at his table.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Embarrassed. I’m embarrassed. I don’t suppose there’s any way that we can pretend that didn’t happen?” Her hair has fallen-a black splash across her face. She attempts to pin it back into place but fails.

  “You and I can pretend, of course. But I’m afraid the café is full.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right.”

  “Are you okay?” he says, looking her over. “Oh, there’s a little blood there, on your lip.”

  “I think I bit my lip.” She touches her finger to her lip, pulls it away, and examines the blood.

  “Let me get you a cloth.”

  “Are you a physician?”

  Columbus smiles. “I’m a navigator. A stargazer. An explorer.”

  “Three occupations. My, I’m honored to be sitting with such a busy man.”

  He’s not quite sure about this, about her. She’s not smiling. Is she making fun of him? Or is this a verbal thrust that he must now parry? He nods in the direction of the doorway.<
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  “It was quite an entrance,” he says. “Is it something you practice?”

  Now she smiles. “It’s these damned shoes,” she says. “I can’t get used to them. All the women at court are wearing them-it’s the fashion of the day. How do they say? The rage? Yes, all the rage.” She raises her foot from under her skirts, exposing her narrow calf and a black shoe with a three-inch heel.

  “I see. I see. Well, anyone might have problems with such footwear.” Beads of sweat form on Columbus ’s forehead. It promises to be a sweltering hot day but this assurance is still hidden inside the cool morning. He sweats because he loves that curve of the leg-the way the calf curves up into the knee-the ankle, her slender foot.

  “Are you okay? You appear to be sweating. Have you a fever?”

  “Perfectly fine. My name is…” What the hell is my name? Oh for pity’s sake. What’s my name?

  “Your name is?” She tilts her head, offers her perfect, crooked smile.

  “Cristóbal. Cristóbal Colón.”

  He invites Beatriz Enríquez de Arana to the bullfight that afternoon. Beatriz, it turns out, follows the bullfights with a passion.

  She meets him outside the stadium. Columbus is carrying two botas full of wine and sandwiches. She is wearing a blue dress designed for easy movement. There is nothing frilly. But the dress rises to golden embroidery across her shoulders and around her neck. Even this is a simple elegance. They find their seats and watch the corridas as the mounted matadors fight and eventually kill their bulls.

  “It seems to me,” Beatriz says, “that it would be more interesting if these men got off their horses and then tried to kill the bulls. Those men, there”-she points by lifting her chin in the general direction-“the ones on the ground, with the capes, the ones coaxing the bulls into charging. What they do is interesting.” She hands him the bota and he lifts it and squeezes a healthy stream of red wine into his mouth.

  “This is something that has been discussed in the bullfighting papers,” he says. “There is talk of outlawing the horses except for the beginning. They’re suggesting an angry bull and a lone man on foot will be the new bullfighting.”

  “That would be wonderful, I think,” Beatriz says. She lifts the bota and drinks again.

  They build the desire between them for three days, rest one, and then continue. On the fifth day, a storm blows in from the coast. Storms are inevitable at this time of year. The bullfight is canceled. Inside his borrowed villa, they lock the doors, drink icy white wine, and eat olives with feta cheese. Bruised clouds bank up at sea, then hurl themselves onto the land in waves of rain and wind. Columbus and Beatriz are pushed together in the rain. His need for reassurance is perfectly matched by her need to give it. She listens to his dream of crossing the Western Sea and does not treat it as a dream. To her this is something beautiful that will occur. It frightens her but she believes he will do whatever he wants to do. There is an absolute belief, a built-in faith. This belief arrives quickly, lands softly in her.

  Columbus does not try to seduce her. This she finds very attractive. He shares his dreams. He is a man who has feelings and communicates those feelings. He becomes weak because he is unsure, and this pulls at something inside her. She talks about her life and her dreams, and he appears to listen, although she suspects he is just resting.

  The wind howls all evening. They can hear the rain pounding down outside, and then they are on the bed in his room. Lightning flashes burst through cracks in the shutters. The room is sliced into shards of black and white.

  They are drinking wine. They are light-headed and happy children, playing just out of the rain. Relishing the nature of the storm.

  The storm blows hardest as they begin their lovemaking. It stokes the moment and amplifies the humor. The small awkwardness of first-time loving tilts the room and the bed and the floors in the dramatic storm light. There is no room for the world, no matter how big or how small. There is only the body, and the desire, and there is her unbelievable scent.

  Another flash of storm jabs its way into the room.

  “Like the storm has eyes,” she says.

  “Crying eyes,” Columbus says.

  They listen to the slapping of the rain on the leaves outside the window and on the stones in the street.

  “Sobbing eyes,” she giggles.

  “Weeping eyes.”

  “Wailing eyes.”

  In this physical realm, too, they seem absolutely suited for each other. She knows his needs before he does. It feels right that she knows. When she follows her intuition there is new pleasure in her.

  Columbus allows himself to be lost, perhaps the ultimate vulnerability for a navigator. He does not know where he is-in the storm and with Beatriz and in the room and in the bed. It all gets washed together. He is completely lost but it does not feel dangerous.

  ***

  After, they turn on the television. Columbus has the remote and he’s flipping up and down the channels, looking for a movie. He’s looking for the right movie-something seriously romantic or a Western. He loves Westerns.

  “It’s amazing,” he says, “that we have this many choices yet there seems to be nothing at all on.”

  “What’s that, my dear?”

  “It’s like having an entire hold filled with fish but the fish are all rotten. The selection is nearly limitless yet it’s all gone bad.” He turns the picture off and places the remote on the bedside table. “They say this is progress.”

  “That’s nice, dear,” she says from the kitchen.

  She brings a plate of sausages, goat cheese, and fresh bread. Under her arm is a bottle of wine. Columbus watches as she moves into the room. The dark strands across her face. The long whip of a braid down her back. Her face, curious and narrow. The delicate enclaves of dark hair under her arms. The exceptional curve of her belly down to her pubic mound. Columbus feels blessed to have this woman in his life. She places the plate and bottle on the side table, and slips into bed beside him. She frowns and cocks her head suddenly, as if she’s trying to hear something. “May I ask a question?” she says.

  “A question?”

  “The crinkling sound. Is there something-”

  “You mean the storm?”

  She shakes her head.

  “The lightning?”

  “No,” she says. “Crinkling.”

  Columbus shifts to his side and there is indeed a crinkling sound.

  “Oh no,” he says, jumping out of the bed.

  He stands at the edge of the bed, apprehensive, wired. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. As if he does not own them, he holds them out like he wants to adjust something but doesn’t know how or what.

  “What is it, Cristóbal?” She hops out of bed and stands beside him. Beatriz is terrified of spiders and this is what’s going through her mind. The size of this spider must be substantial.

  “The chart! I placed a chart there. Under the blankets. I put it there to make it flat.”

  “Under the blankets?”

  ***

  It’s almost ruined. The blood in the bed and on the chart is menstrual. They use a cloth with water to try and lift some of the red stain off. Both of them get down on the floor and dab at it but it’s useless. They smudge the lines. The chart, according to Columbus, was created by an old mariner named Zuane Pizzigano in the 1420s. It shows a small cluster of four islands far off in the Western Sea. Regardless of the fact that no one had ever confirmed these islands existed, Columbus was thrilled to find them situated so far out into the darkness. These islands are now tinged a reddish brown. While the chart is stained, it still has value. They hang it on a rod near the window and scamper for the bed. It’s cool and humid in the room. Under the covers, they hug each other warm. There is only the sound of thunder, leagues away, and a dripping sound, and a dog barking, and the sound of the moon behind the clouds reflected in a puddle.

  ***

  They had televisions, she thinks, in the fifteenth century? Cons
uela leans forward, quizzical. She does not want to appear confrontational, so keeps her voice uplifted. “So, Columbus was… you were flipping channels?”

  “And there were many, many channels. But not much of it was interesting.”

  “You’re saying there was television in the fifteenth century. Does that make sense to you, Columbus?”

  “Everybody knows this, Consuela. Have you not read Zimmerman? Zimmerman references this repeatedly in his dissertation on fifteenth-century domestic commonalities. What’s your point?”

  He’s left her nowhere to go. She has no idea who Zimmerman is. And really, what does it matter that he imports televisions into a story that is set five hundred years in the past? But if she were trusting the tale and not the teller, like the saying suggests, she’d have some serious problems, because this tale is a crazy, mish-mashed, time-crossed slip down a rabbit hole. And the teller is, of course, institutionalized.

  “Was it color or black-and-white?” she says hesitantly.

  “Was what color or black-and-white?”

  “Nothing.”

  ***

  He has finished his morning swim and is taking coffee outside, in the shade of a massive holm oak. Consuela slept in. She was not there for his early-morning swim. She arrived at work in a panic of apology and moved quickly into high gear. This quick coffee and check on Columbus was her first pause. Columbus clears his throat, something he does whenever he’s going to tell another story. Consuela isn’t sure how to take these rambling tales. For her, the details of his stories are remarkable. The clarity with which he paints these word pictures is sometimes quite marvelous. She sometimes finds herself caught beyond redemption, so enthralled that she wants to believe him. Something denied inside her yearns to believe him.