“I need you to really think about this before you answer. Okay?”
Columbus nods.
“Do you remember anything? I mean the smallest fragment of a fragment of half an imperfect memory-anything? Any minor detail.”
Columbus closes his eyes. He’d love to answer yes. He tries to stop thinking. Listens. Is there anybody in there screaming to get out? Hello? Hello? But no, he is who he is. Then the face comes. There is a man’s face. A bald man. His voice is soft-spoken. He’s looking down at Columbus -asking if he’s all right.
“Nothing,” he says. “I only have these Columbus memories.”
“What about places? Do you remember the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede in Sevilla? Can you close your eyes and see the orange trees in the courtyard, the stained glass? When were you there last?”
Columbus smiles. “You’ve been reading. That’s a step beyond your predecessor.” He takes a sip of his wine. “And if I lied and said yes, I do remember another life, would I-”
“That would only be a beginning step.”
“Well, what if you’re wrong? And what if I’m perfectly happy being who I am?”
“There is a danger that you are avoiding this event in your past with such fervor that, yes, you could never come out. That’s a real danger. It would mean that you’d never get out of here.”
Dr. Balderas looks evenly at Columbus. There is no panic, no hint of apprehension at the prospect of never getting out.
“In my notes,” Dr. Balderas says, “I saw that you believe, and Dr. Fuentes’s notes confirm this, that something horrible is going to happen-a disaster is looming, something you are powerless to stop.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you still feel this way?”
His voice gets very small. “Yes. Something too horrible to even think about.”
Dr. Balderas leans forward, elbows on his desk, one hand cupping his chin. “What if it already happened?” he says.
“What do you mean? I’m worried about the future.”
“What if the something awful already happened and you’re running away, not moving toward?”
“I was going to sea. Three ships in the harbor at Palos. Then I woke up here. I had my ships, supplies, a crew. Everything was ready.”
“You were brought here and the only name on file is Bolivar. You have no idea how you came to be here?”
“Yes. No. Ask Nurse Consuela. She was there when I arrived.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Thank you. And thank you for the wine, too. It has been quite a while…” Columbus ’s legs feel wobbly when he goes to stand up; he’s a little unsteady but also determined not to show it.
***
The next morning, he stops swimming, stands up, and slow-motion walks over to the edge of the pool-looks up at Consuela. She’s been reading Huckleberry Finn. She puts the book down.
“Balderas is the real deal,” he says. “I have a feeling he’s going to solve this, and that’s a bit frightening.”
“Why would that be frightening?”
“If he’s right, there’s something horrifying at the end of this. Anyway, I get the feeling Balderas is the tipping point.”
“Tipping point?”
“When you’ve been pushing on something and it starts to move, and you realize you couldn’t stop it if you wanted.” He smiles and nods to himself. “But there is a moment just before this realization when everything is completely calm.”
***
Columbus is sitting up in bed as Nurse Tammy slathers shaving cream onto his face, making small foamy circles with her fingertips. Consuela is perched on the windowsill, watching-her head tilted, bemused. Columbus ’s eyes are closed. He’s wearing a black cotton beret pulled to one side. Where he found this beret is a mystery. He seems to have a talent for getting people to do things for him or for convincing people to give him things. Nurse Tammy is meticulous and quick with her shaving. This efficiency pleases Columbus.
“Thank you,” he says. He brushes his hand along his jawline and smiles. “This reminds me of a time when I was staying with Juan at a villa near Montoro. It was midday and we were shaving. It was not nearly as pleasant as this shave, but we had only cold water.”
Nurse Tammy folds the razor into the towel, nods at Consuela, and leaves the room.
***
Behind the stable, Juan and Columbus stand at a table beneath a generous, spreading elm. Swallows chirp and make their clicking sounds in the upper branches. The sprinklers flicker to life in the lower vineyard and begin to make their rhythmic sputtering-water sound. The sunlight is filtered green through the canopy of leaves.
A pitcher of gin and tonic sits on the table between them. Behind and away from the stable, an arching passageway leads to the courtyard. One of the queen’s friends owns this villa, an eccentric woman who is a bit of a patron of the arts, and in Columbus ’s case, a patron of hopeless causes. Columbus and Juan, by association, are guests. Selena is in the kitchen glancing sporadically, worriedly, through a small, square window at the two men. She can hear only bits and pieces of their conversation. Somewhere inside the main house, somebody is playing one of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. It sounds to Columbus like the third suite, the one in C major. It’s happier to the ear than the others. They finish shaving and sit down.
“This came for you yesterday,” Juan says. He slides a brown envelope across the table and leans back to watch.
Columbus places his drink on the table, picks up the envelope, brings it to his nose, and sniffs. He sighs heavily, rips open one end, and peeks inside. Another birthday card with his actual birthday two months past. He does not have to look in order to know it’s signed, “Love, Cassandra,” or “Lovingly, Cassandra,” or some other adoring salutation. How does she find me? he thinks.
“A woman?”
“A mistake,” Columbus says.
“A persistent mistake, it seems.”
“Her birthday greetings come randomly, or so it seems. Never on my actual birthday.”
“Some say nothing is ever random. Everything is dependent on prior events.”
Columbus thinks about this. He wonders about the events that caused his obsession. He thinks about the possible events that might be put into motion from his crossing the Western Sea. “Could you please randomly fill my glass?”
“That would certainly be dependent on your asking me to make it so.”
“Just make it so now, and then be pleasantly unpredictable.”
Juan fills his glass and smiles. “Some women,” he says, “refuse to be gotten rid of.”
They sit in the shade and share two slow pitchers of gin and tonic. At some point in their conversation, the Inquisition is mentioned. This is something neither of them is comfortable speaking about. There are regions of Spain where one not only has to be Catholic but must be the right kind of Catholic. But this villa is a safe haven.
“Look,” Juan says, “this darkness is something human beings cannot escape. It is our nature. We wallow in it. And at the same time, it seems almost sanctioned by the church. Abel and Cain. Cain slew Abel. And ever since Adam’s son killed his brother, mankind has been killing and slaughtering and mutilating. Adam and Eve march out of the garden and their prodigy start the killing.”
Columbus leans back in his chair. He’s grappling with his faith today. He looked into the mirror as he was performing his morning ablutions and saw a godless man. It wasn’t a frightening image, but he recognized the godlessness in himself. On days like this, he fumbles his faith. Drops it, picks it up, and drops it again. His faith is a slippery trout and he is squeezing too tightly. If God is the river, he thinks, in which my faith swims, this morning, I prefer to turn my back on that water. I’ll take the trees and the mountains and all the gray clouds, instead.
He looks down at a small, black, lightning strike of a cat. It appears and disappears so suddenly.
“And let me tell you,” Juan continues, “I
have seen much of this world and hope to see a lot more. I do not mind that people are different-that they believe different things. I don’t care. Jews, Muslims, Vikings, Marco Polo’s Buddhists, witches, or pagans-I don’t care. Muslims love their children the same as Christians and Jews.”
Columbus pets the cat, which has hopped into his lap, kneaded, and curled up. “Once we start believing in things,” he says, “we’re at war against those who don’t believe in the same things.”
“But this religion seems to hate people, even the people it’s supposed to serve. Next they’ll be making us grow beards because Moses had a beard, and Jesus and God had beards, and then sending groups of Inquisition cowards to make sure our beards are the right length. Punishable by death, of course.”
Columbus smiles. This is exactly the kind of conversation that could get them in trouble. But Juan is not done yet.
“Should we not be free to choose our path to God, or to choose no path at all? When you have to use violence, intimidation, and fear to impose your religion, you will never succeed. It should be called the imposition, not the Inquisition.”
“What would you suggest? To hold no beliefs?”
“Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know but I would like to try.”
Juan unconsciously nods his head.
“Well, to not believing, then,” Columbus says, raising and tilting his glass slightly toward Juan.
“To uncluttered minds and hearts,” Juan says, taking a drink.
Columbus knows this way of viewing the world is not popular with the Inquisition. His fear is that one night he’ll drink too much, speak his mind, and the wrong people will be at the table. He thinks about his sons and Beatriz. He worries about their safety.
What if the Inquisition turns on him? What if he’s suddenly found to be a Jew, or his desire to sail the Western Sea is considered heretical? He is not a Jew, and he simply wants to see what’s out there, but what if? Or what if his ideas about the physical world, its size and scope, conflict with the prevailing wind out of Rome? What if he’s tortured into confessing something idiotic?
Columbus has a well-stocked cupboard of fear.
This morning, he opened his door and the news on the street was that thirty Jews had been killed in a small town in Italy -burned to death by a mob. And four women drowned, allegedly witches, after being tortured into a confession. Sign of the times. Brutal, senseless, filled with fear and ultimately stupid.
“It would be my wish to sail toward whatever is out there with an open mind and heart,” Columbus says.
“Ah yes, your voyage.” Juan fills their glasses and looks hard at Columbus. “Look, I’ve read the reports. May I be truthful?”
“As a baby’s behind.”
How is a baby’s bottom truthful? Juan wonders. Doesn’t matter. “You don’t stand a chance of pulling this off. Unless you know a lot more than you’re saying, you’d have to be an idiot to go to sea and expect to reach the Indies, or China, except in a foundering ship filled with dead men. Not to mention the fact you’ll be adrift in a rowboat-set there by your mutinous, starving crew.”
Columbus looks across the table at Juan and smiles, then nods his head. Here is a worthy challenge. If he can convince this man, he can convince anybody.
“You can’t carry enough water, or food, for this voyage,” Juan adds. “Maybe on a ship five times bigger, but first, you would have to build such a ship, hmm?”
“Faith against doubt. Hope against hopelessness.”
“That’s not a very convincing argument. I mean, if that’s it, it’s no wonder you’ve not lined up any ships.”
“Juan, you could be right. Those at the commission are probably right. Most of my calculations are grossly underestimated when it comes to the size of the Earth. But if this is true, then could you tell me, please, how big the Earth is?”
“Well, I don’t know. The commission did not know. How the fuck would I know? But I’m not proposing to sail halfway around the damned thing.” Juan leans back and lights up a beedi. The heady scent spreads like incense in the dead air.
“The thing is, nobody knows for sure. This voyage to the Indies will not be executed with the use of intelligence, mathematics, or maps. It will be made by failing to understand what goes through the mind and heart of a man standing alone on a beach looking out to sea.”
“Look, have you actually read any of the reports? While nobody is sure, they are fairly certain it is an immense distance to India and Japan across the Western Sea. The guys that made these reports are not dull. These are the best minds of our time. This is not based in superstition. It has to do with the curve of the Earth. This is science. And please don’t tell me the planet could be shaped like a pear.”
“Here’s what I know, Juan. There’s something out there. I do not know if it is Japan or the Indies. But I do know there is something out there and it is entirely reachable by sea.”
“A new land?”
“That is possible. An island, or a group of islands, between here and Japan. A group of outer islands before Japan. I don’t know.”
“How is it that you know this?”
“I had a conversation with a Norseman.”
“A what?”
“A Norseman, off the coast of Britain. He spoke of writings that mention a land out west that his people have seen. And I overheard a couple of sailors talking about finding a small man in a death boat twenty-one days west of the Canary Islands.” Columbus does not mention that the Norseman said his people had been there. Nor does he bring up the fact the Norseman said there were demons there.
“A Viking? Don’t they do horrible things to their children?”
“Have you ever seen a Viking do something horrible to a child? Jesus, where do these rumors come from?”
“You talked to a Norseman and you overheard a conversation. Well, that changes everything. A couple of rumors about land being there really sways me to your side. I’m sold. You’re not an idiot after all.”
“Juan, I want to tell you something that will not sway you in the least.” Columbus takes a drink. “I am no longer trying to convince you. I simply wish to tell someone what I am feeling. You are not my family but I trust you by your actions.” Columbus clears his throat, pours more gin and tonic into a sweating glass, and takes a huge swig. “Do you believe in fate?”
“No. I believe we make our own lives.”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is I can feel a shift. The weight is shifting toward this journey of mine, and I don’t know if I could stop it if I tried. It’s almost as if I am irrelevant. It’s like this huge rock I’ve been pushing against has started to fall over. And now, it is not so easy to stop. It’s going to fall. And when it finally hits the ground, anything that happens to be in the way of the rock will be squashed.”
“You’re right about it not being much of an argument.”
“Regardless. I want you to watch. Because it’s going to happen. And when it does, I’m going to need someone, a clear thinker, to observe and record with cold eyes-eyes that question. For that reason, for your steady dubious nature, I’d like you on the voyage.”
“You what?”
“I want you to come.”
“You want me to die with you when we run out of water and food and hope? I’m honored, touched.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Columbus speaks slowly. His voice becomes throaty, seems to slip down an octave.
Juan looks at him hard-sees the steady belief Columbus has in his own words written in his narrow, stern face. He concedes this belief. Columbus, at the very least, believes he will succeed.
“Don’t answer right away.”
Juan was not expecting an invitation. “I won’t take your invitation lightly, my friend. Now let me tell you about Selena, who is crazy about you, by the way.”
“Is she really?” Columbus says.
Both men turn at the sound of pots clanging onto a stone floor somewh
ere inside the main house.
(iv)
She’s running toward the picture-taker. This girl, who is four years old but looks to be six. People are always mistaking her for a six-year-old. This early burst of height is something she gets from her mother. I have no names, no understanding of relationships-just this half knowing.
This tall, four-year-old girl is running toward the picture-taker. This picture captures her, one foot off the ground, in mid-stride. There is glee in her smile and in her eyes. She is loved. She knows she is loved. Her arms are outstretched-she is coming for a hug. I have no memory of this girl. This little girl does not register as a part of my life. She has no name. There is no relationship.
This picture is within mountains. There are mountains heaved up and gray in the background. Mountains tall enough to have snow in the upper reaches. In the foreground is a silky green lake. There are flowers on the ground, along the path where this girl is running, and deciduous trees and shrubs.
She has sun-bleached blond hair that hangs to her shoulders. In this picture her hair is flying behind and to the left. Her face is focused, eyes directly on the photographer, and she is happy. He can see this girl is happy. Perhaps she likes the color pink. Her shirt is pink and she is wearing pink leggings. A jean skirt with beads around the waist. Her boots are utilitarian, useful, brown leather. A yellow teddy bear is just visible, sitting upright in the tall grass behind her. Behind the yellow bear is a circle of stones enclosing four pinecones, a hawk’s feather, a clump of lichens, and pine bark. This girl has worked quietly all morning, gathering the elements of this circle. It has a name. She builds these organic circles everywhere. They’re called something. I can’t remember what they’re called.
I can imagine the low rumble of a train across the lake. The train moving large along the lip, at the edge of the water-going somewhere.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Faith invites Consuela to Córdoba for the weekend, and Consuela hesitantly says yes. Faith is her only sister. She’s blood. Even though Consuela tends to walk away from interactions with her sister hurt and slightly bruised, Faith means well. Faith is on her team and that’s enough. Their parents are in Switzerland, in Neuchâtel, which is a bit of a commute. Consuela talks to her dad every Saturday morning. She used to take her first coffee and a cigarette and the phone; now, though, it’s just coffee and conversation. Last Saturday, he’d once again proclaimed that his nose was still in fine form-that he and his nose were still in demand across France. He’d even had a call from a winery in the Okanagan region of Canada that was producing award-winning pinots.
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