The Nautical Chart

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "She says she isn't looking for mat."

  Tanger listened in silence. For an instant, Coy caught her serene gaze; she seemed indifferent to their conversation.

  "What happens to them?" he persisted.

  "The advantage of gold and silver," Gamboa explained, "is that the sea affects them scarcely at all. Silver gets dark, and gold... Well. Gold is much appreciated in wrecks. It doesn't oxidize, or turn green, or lose its brilliance or color. You bring it up just as it was when it went to the bottom." He winked, interrupting himself, and then turned to Tanger. "But we're talking about treasures, and that's a big word, don't you think?"

  "No one has said anything about treasure," she said.

  "Of course not. No one. Not even Palermo. But a buzzard like him isn't motivated by love of art."

  "That's Palermo's business, not mine."

  "Sure." Now Gamboa addressed Coy, jovial. "Sure."

  Callejon de los Piratas, Coy suddenly saw on the front of a building. That narrow street with flaking white walls was called Pirates' Alley. Again he read the name in the ornamental tiles, incredulous, confirming mere was no mistake. He'd been in Cadiz before; he knew the area around the port, especially the now-vanished bars on calle Plocia, often frequented in the days of Crew Sanders, but he didn't know this part of the city. And certainly not this alleyway, whose picturesque name neatly made him burst out laughing. Maybe not so picturesque after all Nothing more appropriate, he reasoned, for a place like this and a pair like them—a sailor without a ship and a woman looking for sunken ships, the two of them roaming about the Phoenicians' Gades, the millenary city from which so many ships and so many men had sailed year after year, century after century, never to return. When you thought about it, it made sense. If the footsteps of pirates and corsairs still sounded off these dark round stones, the ancient ballast of the ships that brought gold from America, then the ghost of the Dei Gloria and her crew lost at the bottom of the sea, and Tanger and he, might waken appropriate echoes. Maybe what seemed relegated to certain pages and images, the territory of childhood, the exclusive ambit of dreams, might somehow be possible. Or maybe it was because a certain kind of dream lay waiting among whispers of stone and paper, on tombstones and walls eaten by time, in books that were like doors opened to adventure, in yellowed files that could signify the beginnings of passionate, dangerous days at sea that could multiply one life into a thousand lives, with its Stevenson and Melville phases, and its inevitable Conrad phase. "I have swum through libraries and sailed through oceans," he had read once, a long time ago, somewhere. It could also simply be that all those things were accessible in one form and not another, because there was a woman who gave them meaning. And because beginning from a certain moment, when you cleared a point of land and a part of a man's life lay ahead with wide-open seas, a woman, the woman, might be the one reason to look back The one possible temptation.

  He watched Tanger walking on the other side of Gamboa, her purse secured beneath her elbow, eyes lowered, contemplating the ground before her leather sandals, oblivious to street names because she didn't need them—she trod her own streets—her hair still tousled by the sea breeze. The problem, Coy told himself, is that nautical science is completely useless the moment you need to navigate on dry land, or anywhere near a woman. No land or nautical charts give their soundings. Then he asked himself whether Tanger was looking for the magical gold of dreams or the more concrete yellow metal that survived time and shipwrecks unaltered.

  'At any rate," Gamboa was saying, focused on Coy, "all recovery of objects from the sea is illegal without an administrative permit."

  Legislation in regard to sunken ships, he explained, involved a variety of factors: ownership of the boat and its cargo, historical rights, territorial and international waters, cultural patrimony, and other details. Great Britain and the United States tended to be receptive to private initiative, leaning more toward the business than the cultural end. The Anglo-Saxon principle, he summarized, was search, find, and collect. But in Spain, as in France, Greece, and Portugal, the State was very stria, with constraints that went back to Roman law and the Code of the Siete Partidas.

  "Technically," he concluded, "to take even a piece of an amphora is a crime. Simply looking for it is."

  They had now come out onto the plaza in front of the cathedral, with its two white towers and neoclassic facade dominating the esplanade. Older couples and mothers with baby carriages strolled beneath the palm trees, and children raced among the tables on the nearby terraces. As the last light was fading, doves flocked to the eaves, where they would spend the night nested among Ionic pilasters. One of them swept very close to Coy's face.

  "There's no problem as far as this phase is concerned," said Tanger. "Research doesn't jeopardize anything."

  Gamboa s stained teeth showed in another of his placid smiles. It was obvious he was having a good time. You, his expression said, are really laying it on thick At my age, and with my experience as a ship's captain.

  "Of course not," he said. "Absolutely not!" "That's what I said."

  Tanger walked on a few steps, unperturbed, her eyes still on the ground before her. Coy gazed at the line of her bent head, the nape of her neck. It was deceptively fragile. When he turned toward Gamboa, he realized that the observatory director had been studying him with interest.

  "Maybe a little farther along," Tanger said without looking up, "if we find anything, we can propose a plan for a serious search—"

  Coy heard Gamboa's low laugh. He was still looking at him. "That is, if Palermo doesn't get there first." "He won't."

  They walked past a large old house with a faded exterior and a rusted iron balcony above the main door. Coy read the marble plate screwed onto the wall. "In this house died D. Federico Gravina y Napoli, Admiral of the Fleet, as a result of a wound received on board the Principe de Asturias in the memorable Battle of Trafalgar."

  "I just love self-confident girls," Gamboa was saying.

  Coy glanced at him. He was speaking to Coy, not to Tanger, and Coy didn't like the friendly sarcasm gleaming in those Norman eyes. You must know what you're getting into, they said. In any case, know or not know, if I were in your shoes I'd keep my eyes open, friend. That is, proceed slowly, and keep dropping your lead line. There aren't many fathoms beneath the keel, and rocks everywhere. It is obvious that this woman knows what she's looking for, but I doubt you're as clear about it as she is. You only have to compare her words to your silences. You only have to look at your face, and then look at hers.

  THEY had said good-bye to Gamboa and were walking through the old quarter of the city, looking for a place to eat. The sun had gone down some time ago, leaving a strip of light in the west beyond the roof tiles mat stepped down toward the Atlantic. "This was the place," said Tanger.

  Since they'd been alone again, her attitude had changed. More relaxed and natural, as if she'd let down an imaginary guard. Now she paused from time to time as she talked, full blue skirt swinging from the cadence of her steps, as they wound through narrow streets. When he turned to look at her, he saw the pale light of the street lamps reflected in her dark irises.

  "Here is where the Guardiamarinas castle stood," she told him.

  They had stopped in a street ascending to the Roman theater and the old city wall, beside ruins topped with stone columns and two pointed arches that once had supported a roof. There was a third, semicircular arch a little farther ahead that marked the entrance to an alleyway. The air bore the salt tang of the ocean, which could be heard pounding against the walls beyond, and the smell of ancient stone, urine, and filth. It had the stench, Coy thought, of dark corners in decaying ports that had never seen batteries of halogen lights atop cement towers, places technology and plastic seemed to have passed over, trapping them in dead time like the foul water at the base of the pier, and strewing them with cats and garbage pails, red lights, glowing tips of cigarettes in the shadow, broken bottles on the ground, cheap cocaine, women for so much
a quarter-hour, bed not included. Not even the port of Cadiz—on the other side of the city—had any connection with this area now, where former brothels and boarding-houses had been replaced by bars and respectable inns. There were no stalks of bananas piled beside sheds and cranes, no drunken crewmen looking for their ships at dawn, no patrols of shore police or wounded Yankee sailors. Such scenes existed elsewhere in the world, but even there things were different. There were still a few places like

  Buenaventura, with its narrow streets and fruit stands, its Bamboo bar, its whorehouses and copper-skinned girls in clothes so tight and thin they seemed painted on their bodies. Or Guayaquil, with its lobster cocktails and iguanas running up the trees in the city center to the peal of the bells in the four cathedral clocks, and the bored night watchman with torch and flare pistol at the waist to warn of pirate raids. But those were exceptions. Now, for the most part, ports were at some distance from the heart of cities and had been converted into large lots for parking trucks. Ships docked at precise hours to offload their containers, and Filipino and Ukrainian sailors stayed on board watching TV in order to save money.

  "The Cadiz prime meridian ran right through where we're standing now," Tanger explained. "It was official for only the twenty years after 1776, before it was moved to San Fernando, but from the middle of the century, on Spanish navigation charts it officially replaced the traditional meridian of Hierro island, which the French had already changed to Paris and the English to Greenwich. That means that if the longitude they established that morning aboard the Dei Gloria referred to this line, the brigantine must have sunk at four degrees and fifty-one minutes from where we are now. If we use the corrections in the Perona tables, that is exactly five degrees and twelve minutes east longitude."

  "Two hundred and fifty miles," said Coy.

  "Exactly."

  They took a few steps, passing beneath the arch. One street lamp with a broken glass pane threw yellow light on a window with an iron grille. On the other side, under the open sky, Coy could distinguish broken columns and more ruins. Everything gave the sensation of desolation and abandonment.

  "It was Jorge Juan who built the first astronomical observatory here," she said. "In a tower that was on that corner, where the school is now."

  She had spoken in a low voice, as if she felt intimidated by the place. Or maybe it was the darkness, only slightly diminished by the damaged street lamp.

  "This arch," she continued, "is all that remains of the old castle.

  It was constructed on the site of an ancient Roman amphitheater, and it housed the Company of Guardiamarinas. The professors and men in charge of the observatory were famous sailors and men of science. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa had published their work on the measurement of a degree of the meridian at the Equator,

  Mazarredo was an excellent naval tactician, Malaspina was about to undertake his famous voyage, Torino was preparing the definitive hydrographic atlas of the Spanish coastline___ " She turned in a circle, taking in her surroundings, and her voice was sad "It all ended at Trafalgar."

  They walked a little farther into the alley. White bedding hung overhead between balconies, like motionless winding sheets in the night.

  "But in 1767," Tanger continued, "this place meant something. About then they closed the navigation school run by the Jesuits, and the nautical library of the observatory was enriched by those books and by others bought in Paris and London."

  "The books we saw this morning," said Coy.

  "Yes, those. You saw them in their glass cases. Treatises on navigation, astronomy, voyages. Magnificent books that hold secrets even today."

  Their shadows touched the wall, naked brick and old stone. A drop of water from a sheet fell on Coy's face. He looked up and saw a solitary star blazing in the blue-black rectangle of the sky. By the hour and position, he calculated it might be Regulus, the foremost claws of the constellation Leo, which at that time of the year should already have crossed the north-south axis.

  "The castle," Tanger continued to recount, "was occupied by the Guardiamarinas until they were transferred to a different site, and then to the island of Leon, which today is San Fernando. But the observatory was maintained a few years more, until 1798. Then they moved the Cadiz meridian twelve and a half miles to the east."

  Coy touched a wall The plaster crumbled in his fingers.

  "What happened to the castle?"

  "It was turned into a barracks, then into a prison. Finally they demolished it, and all that's left is a couple of old walls and an arch. This arch."

  She turned back and again contemplated the dark, low vault. "What is it you're looking for?" he asked. He heard her soft laugh, very quiet, in the shadows that veiled her face.

  "You already know that. The Dei Gloria."

  "I don't mean that. Or treasures or any of that... I'm asking what you're looking for."

  He waited for an answer but none was forthcoming. She was silent, immobile. On the other side of the arch the headlamps of an automobile lit a stretch of the street before driving on. For a moment, the brightness outlined her face against the dark wall.

  "You know what I'm looking for," she said finally.

  "I don't know anything." He sighed.

  "You know. I've seen you look at my building. I've seen you look at me."

  "You don't play fair." "Who does?"

  She moved as if she was going to walk away, but instead she stopped still. She was one step away from him, and he could almost feel the warmth of her skin.

  "There's an old riddle," she added after a silence. 'Are you good at solving riddles, Coy?"

  "Not very."

  "Well, I am. And this is one of my favorites. There's an island. A place inhabited by only two kinds of people—knights and knaves. The knaves always lie and deceive, the knights never do

  You get the situation?"

  "Of course. Knights and knaves. I understand."

  'All right. Well, one inhabitant of that island says to another: 'I will lie to you and I will deceive you.' Understand? I will lie to you and I will deceive you. And the question is, who is speaking? Knight or knave? Which do you think?''

  Coy was puzzled.

  "I don't know. I'd have to think about it." "Fine." She stared at him hard. "Think about it." She was still very dose. Coy felt a tingling in his fingertips. His voice sounded hoarse.

  "What do you want of me?"

  "I want you to answer the riddle."

  "That isn't what I'm talking about."

  Tanger tilted her head to one side.

  "I need help." She looked away. "I can't do it alone."

  "There are other men in the world."

  "Maybe." There was a long pause. "But you have certain virtues."

  "Virtues?" The word confused him. He tried to answer, but found that his mind was blank. "I think..."

  He stood there, mouth half open, frowning in the darkness.

  Then Tanger spoke again. "You're no worse than most men I know."

  After a brief pause, she added, 'And you're better than some."

  This isn't the conversation, he thought, irritated. This wasn't what he wanted to hear at the moment, nor was it what he wanted to talk about. In fact, he decided, he didn't want to have a conversation at all. Better just to be standing beside her, sensing the warmth of her freckled flesh. Better to stand in the shelter of their silence, though silence was a language Tanger controlled much better than he did. A language she had spoken for thousands of years.

  He turned, making sure she was watching him. He glimpsed navy-blue glints beneath the pale splash of hair. 'And what is it that you want, Coy?" "Maybe I want you."

  A long silence this time, as he discovered it was much easier to say this in the penumbra that covered their faces and muted their voices. It was so easy that he'd heard his words before he'd thought of speaking them, and all he felt afterward was faint surprise.

  "You are too transparent," she whispered.

  She said it wi
thout moving back, standing firm even when she saw him inch forward and slowly lift a hand toward her face. She spoke his name as you would a warning; like a small cross or blue dot on the white of a nautical chart. Coy, she said. And then she repeated: Coy. He moved his head, to one side then the other, very slowly and very sadly.

  "I'll go with you to the end," he said.

  "I know."

  Just as he was about to touch her hair, he looked over her shoulder and froze. He saw a small, vaguely familiar silhouette beneath the arch at the end of the alley. It stood there waiting, tranquil. Then the headlights of another automobile flashed down the street, the shadow slid from wall to wall beneath the arch, and Coy easily recognized the melancholy dwarf.

  VII

  Ahab’s Doubloon

  And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish

  up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it

  HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick

  When the waiter at the Terraza set his beer on the table, Horacio Kiskoros raised it to his lips and took a prudent sip, watching Coy out of the corner of his eye. Foam whitened his mustache. "I was thirsty," he said.

  Then he surveyed the plaza with satisfaction. The cathedral was lighted now, and the white towers and the large cupola over the transept stood out against the dark sky. People were strolling under the palm trees and sitting on tables on nearby terraces. Some young people were drinking beer on the steps beneath the statue of Fray Domingo de Silos. One was playing a guitar, and the music seemed to attract Kiskoros, who from time to time observed the group and moved his head in time, his air nostalgic.

  "A magnificent night," he added.

  Coy had learned his name only fifteen minutes before, and it was difficult to believe that the three of them were sitting there drinking like old friends. In that brief span of time the melancholy dwarf had acquired a name, an origin, and a character of his own. Argentine by nationality, he was called Horacio Kiskoros, and he had, as he said as soon as it was possible to do so, an urgent matter to present to the lady and gentleman. All the details did not surface immediately, for his unexpected appearance under the Guardia-marinas arch had preceded a reaction by Coy even the most favorable witness would have qualified as violent. To be exact, when the sliding shadow in the headlights had allowed Coy to recognize who it was, he had marched straight toward him without missing a beat, not even when he heard Tanger, at his back, call his name. "Coy, please. Wait."