“Thank you, Elena.”
“It’s what wounds you that you love,” she says.
“I don’t know my wounds,” he says.
“You will,” she says.
Two of the orderlies begin to set up folding tables for a midday meal. Columbus gets up and offers his assistance, which they accept. At least this way they know exactly where he is.
After lunch, he and Alberto go for a stroll along the beach. Columbus nods to Benito, who looks more weighed down than usual, seems more resigned to the fact that life is hard. Benito says nothing but follows, leaving them plenty of room.
“You really are crazy if you think you can do this,” Alberto says.
“Perhaps. But will you help me?”
“Of course. It is a small thing you ask. I hope you make it.”
They walk a bit more. Alberto stops to pick up a starfish and throws it back into the ocean. They both watch as it is swallowed by the incoming waves. “What exactly are you in here for, Alberto?” Columbus says.
“I like men.”
“That’s it?”
“That fact alone, which I do not deny, makes me crazy. I am insane because I am not physically attracted to women. There are a few other things, small problems with coping. I don’t handle stress well.”
“How long have you been in here?”
He closes his eyes. And then softly: “A year and a half.”
It’s a simple plan. Around two o’clock, Alberto kneels at Pope Cecelia’s side and whispers that Elena has been spreading a rumor about her. “She’s been saying that you’re the Antichrist,” he says. Cecelia glares at Elena and Elena nods-confirms the alleged rumor. Cecelia goes completely ballistic. She splinters. She stands and, with strength one would not normally attribute to a woman of her age, she tosses her beach chair at the nearest food table, which collapses-spills the small loaves of bread, meat, cheese, and bottles of water into the sand. Condiments splatter across most of the patients. The collapsed table bangs into the other table and it teeters. Pope Cecelia lunges at Elena, attempts to grab her neck, wants to choke the lie out of this sinner. Elena holds out one of her long arms and keeps Cecelia at bay until the orderlies can stop her. James, who has narrow, scary eyes, has mustard spilled across his shirt and pants. He caws like a crow-raspy squawks. These caws come sporadically, surprising not only those around him but also James. He has no control whatsoever. He caws now as he attempts to get at the pope. He accidentally steps on Howard, who’s mostly deaf and had been sleeping on his back throughout the ruckus. Howard comes to, sits up, in a foul mood-wants to know why James has stepped on his arm.
“Fuck you, you satanic bitch! You white devil!” Cecelia shrieks, trying to displace the anger, which seems to be aimed at her.
“Why did you step on me, you bastard?”
“Look at my shirt! Look at my shirt! Look at my trousers!”
“It’s her! She’s the Antichrist! She’s the Antichrist!”
“Calm down, everybody. Calm down.” Dr. Balderas is holding a jar of mustard.
“I was sleeping! I was dreaming a beautiful fucking dream! Does anybody care that my dream was disturbed? I’ll never get that dream back!”
“Oh piss off, you minor twit.”
Nurse Tammy looks around the demented circle and tries to comprehend how something like this could happen so quickly. She looks like she’s about to lose control-like this is too much for her. Dr. Balderas hands her the jar of mustard, which she holds as if it’s the Holy Grail.
“This will never, never, never, never come out! You owe me for a new shirt. You must replace this shirt. This is silk!”
“I think my arm is broken!”
“I was dreaming! I was stepped on!”
Consuela’s holding the edge of one of the tables with one knee and a hand, trying to keep the remainder of the food and bottles from spilling onto the beach. “Cecelia!” she shouts. “Cecelia, Your Holiness, it’s all right. Everything is all right. Calm down. Calm down. We’ve called in the Vatican Guard.” Balderas is fiddling with the crumpled table legs, trying to get them to behave.
“Clam down. Clam down,” James says. “Cawk, Cawk! Cawk!”
Elena watches Columbus edge away from the cacophony. He looks back over his shoulder at her. Elena smiles encouragement. He nods his thanks. Consuela watches him, too. Columbus moves very slowly, almost gracefully, toward the water, drops his robe, and then naked, slips into the ocean. He’s a hundred feet out before she’s free of the table. He’s only a dot by the time everything has calmed down. She’s torn. Doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t want to lose him. Wants him to be free. Wants him to live. Wonders if he knows how to find her. Did they ever talk about where she lives? What if he dies out there? Where in the hell does he think he’s going anyway? Something freezes inside her. Does Columbus believe he can swim to India? Is that what he’s doing?
“I can get that out.” Everybody looks at Sonia, a black-haired woman in her mid-twenties. Everybody knows her story. She was raped-can’t stand to be touched by anybody. She looks at Consuela. “What? I can. I can get that stain out. You look funny. What’s the matter with you?”
“What do you mean, I look funny?” Consuela feels her face start to burn. Is she that transparent?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Nonsense.”
Sonia turns to James. “Give me that shirt. I’ll get that stain out.” He caws a couple of times but doesn’t move. “Give me your fucking shirt, I said. Now! Don’t touch me but give me your shirt!” James backs up but takes his shirt off and hands it to her, carefully dangling it in front of her.
“Thank you.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Consuela can see one of the orderlies-is it Benito?-doing a head count. This is something they do every half hour on field trips. It’s the institute’s standing policy. Here it comes, she thinks.
“I count only twelve.”
“Do it again,” Dr. Balderas says. “Find out who’s missing.”
“Could that be,” Consuela says meekly to Dr. Balderas, pointing out to sea at a small black dot, “someone?”
“It’s Columbus,” Benito says.
“Well, there goes one of our innocents,” Consuela says.
“Fuck.” Dr. Balderas walks slowly toward the water. “How did no one see… Oh, forget it. He probably arranged that little fracas back there.” He sighs heavily. “We’re going to have to get him back. Ideas? Anyone?” The three of them stand at water’s edge, turn to one another with blank faces, and then they watch the small black dot get smaller and smaller.
***
There is nothing she can do. They’ve alerted the authorities. They’ve called the coast guard. They round up the remaining patients and head back to the institute. On the road, Consuela looks over at Benito, who is driving. He is alert and focused on the road. She leans her head against the window, feels the road’s vibration. She closes her eyes and drifts back to Columbus ’s last story. Was there a clue in that story? It’ll be dark soon and he’s out there in the strait. Was he trying to tell her about this with his last story?
***
Columbus and Beatriz and the boys, and Juan, have come to a small villa at Santa Isabel, near the Portuguese border. Columbus is sitting with Juan. “Look,” he says, “I’m sitting alone by the sea and crying. I do not know if I have been successful or not. I do not know if I have made my journey to the Indies or to Japan. In my dream, I do not know. I am alone on the beach, by the ocean, and I am crying.”
“Do you have this dream often?” Juan sips his coffee.
Columbus squints at the midmorning horizon. His eyes do not waver from this line.
Columbus does not look at Juan. He watches Diego and Fernando, who are playing on the beach. They’re safe. He and Juan have been sitting at the table since breakfast. Beatriz has just returned from a week in Huelva. She was with her sister, who gave birth to a baby girl, whom they have named Mary. The boys have l
et Beatriz sleep in. Travel is always an ordeal.
Juan thinks Columbus has the look of someone who has not slept. Heavy darkness under his eyes. He is a man who is driven. Eaten by something on the inside. Or better, the Western Sea draws him, pulls at him. It is as if there is something unseen across the sea pulling him constantly. Even his shoulders are not even-one is higher than the other.
Juan watches Diego down on the beach. The boy is playing a game with the waves as they touch Spain. He lets the waves chase him inland, and then runs hard after them as they wash back out to sea. Fernando is making a castle in the sand.
“Diego is a big boy,” Juan says.
“He just turned twelve.”
“He’s a good size for his age. They both look healthy, happy.” Juan watches Columbus ’s face. There is such a genuine pleasure in his face as he watches his boys. His eyes become soft with love.
“Fernando turns five next week. He’ll be five… he already reads better than his brother.” Columbus drifts. The sound of the ocean becomes obvious. He is adrift once again in the dream remnant that has traveled with him into consciousness.
“What is making you so sad in your dream?” Juan says.
Columbus ’s vision is fixed on the horizon, yet there appears to be no focus.
“Christopher?”
“Hmmm.”
“What is making you so sad in your dream?”
“My life. Life. I don’t know.” He opens his mouth to continue, decides against it, and then brings his eyes to wash over Juan. “It is as if life has a thickness, and in order just to live I must continually push my way through it. It is like water only thicker. Is it so for you, Juan?”
“No, life has no thickness for me.”
“For me, to stand still is to die. I must push forward in a direction or I will die. I do not know why.”
They are quiet. There is only the sound of the sea. Tears form and stream from Columbus ’s eyes. He seems not to notice. He continues his watch on the horizon.
“It is not the sadness of lost love, or of a single death, or of a dozen deaths,” Columbus says. “This is the sadness of something inevitably horrible. Something that has to happen but is too awful to think about.” He picks up his glass, looks at it, and carefully places it back down on the table. “I did this thing. In my dream, I did this horrible thing.”
“What did you do?”
“I ruined something,” he says. “It is the feeling I have.”
“What do you see in your dream?”
“That.” He points. “The sun. I see the sun rise on the Western Sea.”
“So you are on one of the Canary Islands, looking east?”
“No, it does not feel so. Not the Canaries.”
“Well then, you are in the Azores.”
“No, the land behind me is different.”
“You are not in Britain?”
“No, it is hot, Juan. It is hot and very green in the place of my dream. There are palm trees.”
“We have run out of places that we know of where you could sit on a beach and watch the sun rise over the Western Sea.”
“Have we?” Columbus says flatly.
“Are you certain of the direction you face?”
“I have told you. I face the east,” says Columbus, “to see the sun rise over the sea.”
“Not a lake?”
“It is an ocean.” His voice is deep and blunt.
Juan smiles. Picks up his glass. “There’s only one place you could be,” he says.
***
In the afternoon, Juan goes into town to pick up supplies. Beatriz and Columbus come back onto the patio and sit in the shade offered by half a dozen palm trees. The boys are coloring at the table. Columbus has downed three Heinekens in about half an hour. Beatriz is sipping her wine. The breeze off the ocean is kind and warm.
“There are days,” Columbus says, “when I am tired of the constant pushing, constant struggling. I know I am away too much, Beatriz. I know.”
“Why do you do it?” She is not judging.
“Navigating. Sailing. This is all I know. What else would I do?”
“Your boys need you. I need you. We believe in you. You can do anything.”
“Sailing is in my bones. My blood is home when I am at sea.”
“This is for you, Papa,” Fernando says. He hands his father a picture of a thin blue line between two clumps of green. In the middle of the blue line, there is a ship with enormous sails and a small stick man standing on the deck. Columbus does not need to ask what the picture represents. He knows. He picks the boy up and draws him to his chest. Hugs him. Kisses his cheek.
“Thank you, Fernando,” he whispers. “It’s beautiful.”
“Here, Papa,” Diego says, pushing his drawing across the table. “So you will find your way home after you are in China.”
“Thank you, Diego. I will use it.” He looks at the drawing, which is a simple representation of his hopes. He hopes it’s going to be as simple as this map makes it appear. China isn’t too far. The ocean isn’t so vast. “This is an excellent map,” he adds, and Diego beams.
“It’s not a map, Papa. Maps are for land. This is a chart. Charts are for oceans.”
Columbus is impressed. “I’m glad you know that.”
Columbus leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. He sneaks his fingers up to rub his eyes. “I’m doing this for all of you,” he says. The boys stop coloring. Beatriz nods slowly.
“I’m going to cut a deal with the king and queen that will make it so we never have to worry about money. It’s for all of us. I want you to understand that I love you. I would do anything for you. But I must do this.”
Beatriz blinks away tears, reaches her hand across the table and takes his. Fernando comes to his father and crawls into his lap, tries to get his little arms around Columbus ’s chest for a hug. Diego looks up from his coloring, nods his approval and his understanding toward his father.
The day seems to hold its breath for ten seconds.
Columbus stands. “Who’s up for a swim?”
The boys are ecstatic. They both jump up. Diego’s chair crashes to the patio floor.
“I’ll watch from here,” Beatriz says. “There are fresh towels just inside.”
“We don’t need towels, do we, boys? We’re men and men don’t need towels.”
“Ya,” Fernando says. “We’ll use sand.”
“Love ya, Mom,” Diego says, and he grabs a stack of towels from a storage compartment under the bench seat.
The boys are running past the palm trees and down the beach. Columbus is standing, watching them, his hand on Beatriz’s shoulder. She is looking up at him, her hand in his. It’s like he’s on a ship, looking out at the sea, she thinks. He moves her hand up to his mouth and kisses it gently. Then he is off, running full tilt after his boys, toward the ocean.
***
There is nothing but breathing, the ocean, and staying afloat. There is nothing but water, and breathing, and moving slowly away from Spain. There is nothing but the ocean, the lift and fall of the water, inhalation and exhalation, and the sky. Columbus begins to turn inside out. He feels suspended between the rising and falling water, and the vast sky. He is adrift between Spain and the north coast of Africa.
What the hell are you doing, exactly? Do you know? You can’t swim the entire ocean. Surely you know this. Of course you do; you’re not crazy. It’s just that this plan formed quickly and you only got to the escape part. The after-the-escape bits of your plan were for the most part unformed. But sometimes opportunities need to be acted upon-plan or no plan. It’s not a problem to stay afloat. You’re a strong swimmer. Sunset is an hour away. Perhaps you could swim a bit, drift a bit, alternate until dark, then get your bearings and find your way back to land by the stars. This is a good plan. The only sensible plan. But still, you keep pulling at the water. Pulling yourself farther and farther from land. You keep swimming. Perhaps some small pa
rt of you recognizes that the action of swimming is life. That small part of you wants to live. What if it clouds over and you can’t see the stars? Remember Tristan, adrift in a rudderless boat, adrift with only faith to guide his boat? But Tristan had a wound. Tristan was a hero, trying to save his people from being afflicted by his wound. He had a wound. You have no wound.
You continue to swim. Slow and steady strokes. You’re in no hurry. Darkness is coming. Starlight is coming. There are no clouds. Your ring feels like it could slip off. You try to remember to bend that finger. Beatriz would kill you if you lost the ring. You can lose your freedom, lose your mind, but not the ring. Not this ring. This ring binds you to Beatriz. You imagine the ring falling through water. So much water. So deep and dark. Does a ring fall in water? Or does it just sink? Oh for Christ’s sake, there is no falling once you are in water; everything that’s not buoyant, sinks.
Tristan had a wound. You’re not wounded. You’re no hero. You’re no Tristan.
You continue to pull at the water, to kick at the water. As darkness falls, you begin to remember names. A storm petrel appears in the water, seemingly out of nowhere. It startles you. You accidentally take a mouthful of ocean-the salt water causes you to gag and choke. The bird circles, stays close by. Hovers over the water a few feet away. You remember these dark birds are signs of bad things to come. Petrels are often found hiding in the lee of ships during storms. They’re warnings of approaching storms. Is there a storm coming?
The sky remains clear. Stars start to push through the membrane of night. Something big brushes your leg. Fear rises up from the depths of the ocean under you. A shark? A whale? Just a fish? You are suddenly and profoundly aware of your vulnerability. You can feel yourself starting to panic. You are a dangling morsel for anything big and hungry. Quick, shallow breaths. Your heartbeat racing. You try to slow your breathing-force yourself to calm down. You’ve no choice but to accept where you are, and to accept this vulnerability. You’re in desperate need of a distraction.
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