Waiting for Columbus

by Thomas Trofimuk

  Perhaps she has no right to ask more than a memory of moments.

  ***

  In the morning, Consuela looks in the mirror and notices, for the first time, a series of subtle changes in her posture and in the way she looks. Her skin seems smoother than she remembers and her eyes sharper. She has to adjust the small makeup mirror in her bedroom. It’s too low. Either it’s been moved or she’s sitting taller on the stool. But the mirror can’t have been moved because she leans into it every morning without touching it. Something has changed in her.

  In the car Consuela realizes she needs to know about Isabella. She has to know what, if anything, happens between Columbus and the queen. But she does not know how to move him in that direction. There are days when she wishes she could be blunt, or even violent. She’d like to shake him-get the remaining stories to fall onto the ground. Then they could stand around and look at the bones of his stories, all haphazard and abstruse on the pebbles. In the clear light of day, they could perhaps make sense of these bones, put them in order, find the end, and more important, find the beginning before the beginning.

  At breakfast, Columbus is focused on the contents of his coffee mug and nodding to himself. He seems on the edge of something. Consuela knows better than to make small talk when he’s like this. She’s got a pile of paperwork. It’s the end of the month. So she grabs a mug of coffee and retreats to her office. There is a small gaggle of puzzlers across the room, patiently placing puzzle pieces, rotating, trying again and again to make the picture complete. One patient is standing at the window staring out. Columbus approaches the two-way mirror, drags a chair over, and sits down. This movement in front of her desk catches her attention. He looks directly into the mirror and Consuela feels a prickle at the base of her neck. She inhales. Holds her breath. This was how it began.

  Columbus leans forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped.

  ***

  It’s dangerous to walk on the docks after sundown, but that is what Isabella feels she must do. She closes her bedroom door-moves quickly and silently through the connected room, out the door, into the hallway, and down the back stairs. Her security team is diluted. Some are with Ferdinand and her most trusted security team is watching Columbus. Only a small detail is sitting outside her door, two men and a woman, having a late dinner. On the street, she wraps her cape tightly around her body, pulls the hood up, and heads for the dock.

  Perhaps Columbus would never come back from this venture, and this worry motivated Isabella to travel to Palos. He should know that I care about him and wish him success and a safe return, she thinks. I have to try to let him know how I feel. Perhaps he could take this small love of mine with him. This love is nearly weightless, would fit in a pocket, could be carried in a breath. This love could rest, inaudible, on the surface of the skin until it was needed. How does she give him this small thing without saying it out loud? What can she say that he will understand as: I love you!

  In the harbor are the three ships. She paces. She walks the dock until she begins to know the intimacies of it-the way it creaks, where it groans. At the far end of her route, she hears somebody coming and ducks out of sight behind a pallet of crates. A woman draws a man down the street away from a bar, toward the harbor. They stop perhaps ten meters from Isabella’s hiding spot. The man leans back against the wall, and the woman kneels, moves forward toward his groin. Begins to move in a steady cadence. Isabella watches, fascinated. The man is moaning. This coupling goes on for ten minutes, and then fifteen, then twenty.

  “It’s no good,” the man says finally, pulling away and starting to fasten up his pants. “I’ve had too much wine.”

  “This way, then,” the woman says. She pulls up her skirts and backs into him-bends forward, hands flat on the wall. They begin to move again. This time the woman’s moans are louder than the man’s. Isabella wishes they’d just hurry up and finish. She is not disgusted but, rather, irritated. This takes her away from her watch. She’s worried she might be at the wrong end of the dock. The woman grunts rhythmically, breathy sounds.

  Christ, Isabella thinks. If this goes on much longer I’m going to go down there and help out. They need to be done. For God’s sake!

  After another ten minutes, the man again pulls away.

  “It’s no good. It’s terrific-you… you are terrific. But I’ve had too much wine… mush too mush wine. I have to sleep. I’m on the Santa Marina, I mean the Santa Maria, at dawn. I must sleep, woman.”

  She moves in close and whispers in his ear. The woman smiles. She hikes up her skirts, leans back with her shoulders touching the wall, hips and pubis thrust out. He kneels in front of her and begins to give her pleasure. The woman does not moan right away. She hums. She bites her lips and hums.

  Isabella is stuck. She’s embarrassed and doesn’t want to see or hear any more. She does not want this public reminder of what she could have had with Columbus, of what she used to have with Ferdinand. She’s claustrophobic in her tiny space beside the stacked crates. Regardless of the black, star-riddled sky above her, and the expanse of the harbor beyond, and the verisimilitude of wide-open ocean beyond the harbor, Isabella feels encased. She has no idea what time it is. The queen has no need of a watch. It’s got to be getting close to ten o’clock.

  I should just walk out into the street, excuse myself, and offer an apology, she thinks. Wish her luck with her orgasm, wish him luck with his voyage, and be on my way. But she’s been here too long, watching. They’ll think she’s twisted. It’s too late. She’s committed for the whole show.

  Then the woman begins to really moan and move. Like she’s riding a wave.

  “Oh, yes. Yes, yes… Ohhh, estoy por acabar!” And then there is the sound of water dripping. The man coughs. The woman slides down the wall to the ground and the man moves beside her, slips his arm around her.

  Thank God. Isabella almost applauds. The woman helps the man to his feet and they briefly discuss her apartment, which is only a couple of blocks away. Then they trundle up the street. The queen is relieved. She can go back to the Plaza Hotel. If she’s late, Columbus will wait. He’ll be in the bar just off the lobby having one of his bloody Scottish beverages.

  ***

  The phone is ringing. Consuela is in the bathtub. She doesn’t care. This is the third call she’s smiled at and then ignored. Of course, it’s a cordless phone. She could have brought it with her to the bathroom. Her coffee mug is on the tub’s edge and the press is sitting on the toilet seat. The water is steaming. It’s midafternoon and raining. Sevillians always seemed shocked at the rain-like it’s a freak of nature, not part of nature. She sinks into the water so her knees and breasts and nose become islands. She imagines she is Columbus floating naked in the Strait of Gibraltar, with sharks, whales, and jellyfish all around. It would be substantially cooler than this bath. Consuela has no inclination to reenact Columbus ’s journey to that degree. She’s happy in her hot water. She closes her eyes. Drifts, tries to float. Thinks about being naked and adrift in so much water. She imagines the night sky, the stars, the waves, and the ocean current pushing her toward the Mediterranean. The vulnerability of being naked in so much water is frightening. A shiver strikes up her spine-a shiver in a hot bath. Consuela sits up in the tub. The hollow water sound echoes around the tiled bathroom. “He’s out of his fucking mind,” she says.

  She shakes away the Strait of Gibraltar and takes a sip of her coffee. Outside, a car honks. She can hear the shhh sound of tires on wet pavement. She wonders about the sex show Isabella witnessed and has a sudden craving for a cigarette. She is always surprised by these cravings. In order to quell this craving she tiptoes out of the tub and makes footprints on the hardwood floor to the kitchen. She opens a bottle of wine, a German Goldtröpfchen, starts to look for a wineglass but quickly decides against it-the bottle is fine. Consuela slips back into the silky water. Her skin has cooled enough that there is pleasure in this reentry. Consuela takes a mouthful of the wine, gulps it down. Its cold
sweetness is a nice change. She places the bottle on the toilet seat beside the coffee press, then leans back.

  It’s not a bad thing to drink alone. Oh, Faith would disapprove. Rob would smile, pull her aside later, and ask if it’s a regular thing or an exception. Her mother would pretend not to hear. Her father would raise his left eyebrow, a gesture Consuela has never been able to comprehend. And Columbus? He would approve wholeheartedly. He might say something stupid like: In water one sees one’s own face, but in wine one beholds the heart of another or With wine and hope, anything is possible. Or he’ll start to tell another story, another puzzle piece to the whole picture. Consuela fears the end. She fears that last piece. What if he stays Columbus? What if he goes deeper into himself? What if they lose him completely to this story? At the same time, Consuela does not want him to stop when he is so close to the end. But there is a date stamp on this man now.

  She has been trying to be with Columbus as much as possible, and trying to make it appear as if she could care less. She has been lurking, hanging around at the periphery, waiting for the end.

  Consuela wishes someone would slip in behind her and attempt to describe her beauty by reading Hafiz ghazals aloud. She drifts in this small fantasy for a while. The phone rings again, and for some reason, Consuela gets out of the tub, drips her way to the kitchen, and picks it up.

  “Meet me for a glass of wine,” Emile says. “I’d like to listen to you for a while.”

  “Okay,” Consuela says. Christ, she thinks. I’ve had a snootful of wine already.

  ***

  Two days later, Columbus again pulls a chair in front of the mirror, and trusting that Consuela is there, begins to spin out another piece of the puzzle.

  ***

  After Columbus leaves for his appointments, Juan begins to doubt. He begins to ruminate and fret. The reality of what they’re going to do begins to sink in. It’s well after three in the morning when he boards the Niña and meets with the second-in-command, Niccolò de Strabo, for a drink. Juan produces a bottle of the Uisge Beatha Scottish drink. They sit together on deck in the dim light and share what they know of what they’re about to do.

  “ Columbus, he’s a bright man,” Strabo says. “He knows things he has not shared with anyone.”

  “Like what?” Juan lights another beedi.

  Strabo smiles like this is an incredibly stupid question. “Well, he has not shared it with anyone.”

  “So how do you know it exists?”

  “Because it must. There must be evidence from beyond the limits of our travels across the Western Sea. He’s not suicidal.”

  “Yes, but is he sane?”

  “You think he’s crazy?”

  “I just asked the question.”

  “It is, I think, too late for such questions, my friend. You’ve signed up. We sail west in a few hours.”

  “To Columbus, then,” Juan says, raising his cup.

  “To us, my friend.” And Strabo touches his cup to Juan’s.

  They continue to drink. They drink the Scottish beverage neat, and as the light offers long strands of orange and pink in the eastern sky, the bottle is nearly empty. Juan has smoked nearly a whole pack of his beedies. It is not a solid line of smoking but, rather, a dotted line through the night.

  Juan is not sure why he joined the crew. Friendship? He doesn’t wholly believe. He does not believe in what they’re about to try to do, but for some reason, he feels obliged to take Columbus up on his offer. Perhaps it’s as simple as having enough faith to do something he doesn’t understand.

  Juan hesitated over Columbus’s offer, and then said yes to himself and got on board. What if this dreamer is right? He’s not right, but what if he is? What if? What if they sail right into history by finding the Indies, China, Japan? The implications of being the first to discover such a route are beyond what he can imagine.

  ***

  The garden is a fragrant treat-an olfactory gift. They walk along the stone pathway and cannot help but step on a variety of thyme, and the smell is delightful. It fills Consuela with hope. It feels to her as if she is breathing green sunlight.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Help me understand this. You put Juan on a ship? The guy knows nothing about sailing. Doesn’t that seem a bit absurd?”

  “Yes. It was a matter of friendship. And Juan is somebody who is not afraid to tell the truth, even if the truth is not what I want to hear.”

  “You invited a one-handed ex-soldier who likes to paint on a voyage that’s going to require sailing expertise.” She sits on a stone bench and Columbus sits next to her. He looks smaller today. His hair is pulled back as usual, but his face is narrower, his eyes sunken, his skin sallow. Has this been an evolution she didn’t notice because she’s too close, or is this sudden? Regardless, Columbus has become diminutive.

  “He’ll be fine. I trust he’ll find a way to contribute.” He sighs heavily. “ Columbus needed someone who would see things with new eyes and speak the truth.”

  “By Columbus, you mean you.”

  “I mean Columbus. Something happens, Consuela. Something happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “It goes bad. First, a woman is found floating in the harbor. The morning before the voyage. She’s floating naked and dead. Only her face, torso, and legs are visible above water. People gathered in Palos for the launch looked down and saw this armless woman. The water is black and thick around her. It is as if her arms have been cut off. It was in the papers. They thought she was a prostitute.”

  “That’s what happened?”

  “No. It’s one thing that happened. Not a good omen, this dead woman floating faceup in the harbor. I should know who she is. I can see her face and I know it, but I cannot give her a name. Not a good sign for Columbus.”

  Consuela takes his hand in hers. She looks at him. He’s unshaven, frail, lost. “Do you know who you are?” she says.

  “Today, right now?”

  “Yes, right now.”

  “I have no clue.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  He clams up. He asks for and then demands sleeping pills. Consuela prompts him a couple of times. He deflects, feigns a cold, or a sore throat, or fatigue. He is amused at small things. He finds the sky-cloud formations-fascinating. Sparrows mesmerize. Flowers delight. All these things have become more important than stories.

  “I want to give him a bottle of wine,” she says. “I want to loosen him up and persuade him to finish.”

  “We have medications for that, Consuela.” Dr. Balderas stands. Looks out the window.

  “Check,” Consuela says, sliding her bishop into position. “I’d rather not drug him up when he’s so close.”

  Dr. Balderas smiles, sits down, looks at the board. He hadn’t seen this coming. It’s aggressive and risky, which is a style of play he’s not witnessed in his favorite nurse.

  “Okay. But it’s got to be private. That’s an interesting move.”

  “ Columbus taught me. It’s a derivation of something called a gambit.”

  ***

  On a day when the sky is ripped with gray and cool breezes arrive in blusters from the Atlantic, Consuela tells Columbus she’s procured a bota of wine and asks if he’d like a drink.

  “Ah, you are seducing me,” he says. “This behavior is not unappealing. It’s about time you tried to take advantage of me.”

  “I am not seducing you,” she whispers. “I just want to share a bottle of wine with my… friend.” She almost said favorite patient but that would be too outlandish for her to handle. Feeding patients booze is forbidden. It’s against the rules. Even though she has permission, this goes against everything she knows about being a nurse. “Not here, though. Meet me at the pool.”

  ***

  “It’s been a while since I had a drink of wine with a beautiful woman,” Columbus says. He’s sitting on the edge of the pool, presiding over the pool, with his back to the doorway. She has grown to love the way he always knows wh
en she is in the room. No matter how quiet she is or how careful she is about her scent, he knows.

  “I saw this coming days ago,” he says.

  “What did you see?” Jesus, this isn’t going to work, she thinks. She starts to panic.

  “The weather. Cooler weather. I adjusted the temperature of the water.”

  Consuela dips her toes into the pool and she finds the water is hot. They decide to move their deck chairs so they can put their feet in the water. Consuela passes the bota to him and he sprays a long stream of wine into his mouth. They pass the bota back and forth. If this first bota doesn’t do the trick, there’s another just inside the pool-room archway, which she dropped off as she came in.

  “So what’s going on in that head of yours, Columbus? Do you know who you are today?”

  “The ugly dreams are back. I can’t seem to dream about anything pleasant.” He stops. Takes a couple of barely controlled breaths. “Butterflies would be nice. Puppies. Kittens. Anything but what I find in my sleep…”