The Nautical Chart

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  IT was still night when Coy awakened. She was not beside him. He had dreamed of a black, hollow space, the belly of a wooden horse, and bronze-armored companions who, swords in hand, slipped stealthily into the heart of a sleeping city. He sat up, uneasy, and saw the silhouette of Tanger at the shadowed window, against the lights from the city wall and the port. She was smoking. Her back was to him and he couldn't see the cigarette, but he caught the scent of tobacco. He got out of bed, naked, and went to her. She had put on his shirt but left it unbuttoned despite the cool night air blowing through the open window. The silver chain with the soldier's I.D. shone at her neck.

  "I thought you were sleeping," she said, without turning. "I woke up and you weren't there."

  Tanger didn't add anything, and he stood quietly looking at her. She inhaled deeply, held the smoke in her lungs, then slowly expelled it. As she drew on the cigarette, the glowing tip lit her fingers with their ragged nails. Coy put one hand on her shoulder, and she touched it absently, distractedly, before taking another drag.

  "What do you think happened to the turtle?" she asked after a while.

  Coy shrugged. "By now she's dead."

  "I hope not. It's possible that she made it."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe?" She observed him out of the comer of her eye. "Sometimes there are happy endings, Coy." "Sure. Sometimes. Save one for me."

  Again that silence. She was gazing down below the wall at the empty space left at the dock by the departure of the Zeeland ship.

  "Do you have the answer yet to the puzzle of the knight and the knave?" she asked finally, speaking very quietly.

  "There is no answer."

  She laughed very low, or he thought she did. He couldn't be sure.

  "You're mistaken," she said. "There's always an answer for everything."

  "Well then, tell me what we're going to do now."

  It was some time before she replied. She seemed as far away as the wreck of the Dei Gloria. Her cigarette had burned down, and she leaned over to crush the butt on the ledge of the recessed window, very deliberately extinguishing the last ember. Then she dropped it out the window.

  "Do?’ She tilted her head, as if considering that word. "What we've been doing, naturally. Keep looking."

  "Where?’

  "Back on dry land again. You don't only fund sunken ships in the ocean."

  AND that was how I came to see them the next day in my office at Universidad de Murcia. It was one of those very bright days we tend to have, with huge parallelograms of sun gilding the stones of the halls of learning amid shimmering windowpanes and sparkling fountains. I had put on my sunglasses and gone down to the corner cafe for a cup of coffee, and on my way back, my jacket over my shoulder, I saw Tanger Soto waiting for me at the door—blond, pretty, full blue skirt, freckles. At first I took her for one of the students who at this time of year come to ask for help with their theses. Then I took note of the fellow with her, who was close but keeping a certain distance—I suppose you know what I mean if you know Coy a little by now. Then she—carrying a leather shoulder bag and with a cardboard document tube under one arm—introduced herself and pulled my Aplicaciones de Cartografia Historica from her bag, and it came to me that she was the young woman my dear friend and colleague Luisa Martin-Meras, head of cartography at the Museo Naval in Madrid, had spoken to me about, describing her as bright, introverted, and efficient. I even recalled that we had had several telephone conversations about Urrutia's Atlas and other historical documents in the archives of the university.

  I invited them to come in, ignoring the sullen students waiting in the corridor. It was exam period and work was piled on my desk in the lion's cage I have for an office. I took books off chairs so they could sit down, and listened to their story. To be more precise, I listened to her, because it was she who did nearly all the talking, and I listened to as much of the story as she was willing to tell at that time. They had come from Cartagena, only half an hour by car on the main highway, and the whole affair could be summed up as a sunken ship, the information that could make it possible to find it, a few previous unfruitful attempts, and exact coordinates of latitude and longitude that for some reason had turned out to be inexact. Same old story. I am, after all, accustomed to inquiries of this nature. Although for personal reasons I sign my articles and my books with the same name and modest title I use on my calling card— below the anagram, common in my profession, of a T inside an O: Nestor Perona, Master Cartographer—I have held the chair of cartography at the Universidad de Murcia for a long time. My publications mean something in the scientific world, and I must often respond to questions and problems posed by institutions and individuals. It is curious indeed that at a time when cartography has undergone the greatest revolution in its history—given aerial photography, satellite maps, and the application of electronics and informatics— and has progressed light-years beyond the rudimentary maps drawn by early explorers and navigators, scholars find it increasingly necessary to maintain the fragile umbilical cord that joins modern times to past eras of science, which are now little more than proven myth. Difficulties already existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when advanced Flemish cartographers were faced with the daunting task of attempting to reconcile the contradictory lore left by authors of old with the new discoveries of Portuguese and Spanish navigators. And the process continued through successive generations. So today, without people like myself—you will forgive that minor, if legitimate, vanity—the ancient world would vanish and many things would lose their meaning in the cold neon light of modern science. Which is why, every time someone needs to look to the past and understand what he sees, he comes to me. To the classics. I consult with historians, librarians, archaeologists, hydrographers... seekers of treasure in general. You may recall the discovery of the galleon Sao Rico off Cozumel, the search for Noah's ark on Mount Ararat, or that famous National Geographic television special on locating the Virgen de la Caridad near Santona in the Bay of Biscay, and the recovery of eighteen of her forty bronze guns. Those three episodes—although the quest for the ark ended in grotesque failure—were made possible by the correction tables developed by my team here at the university. And another familiar figure in this story, Nino Palermo, once paid me the dubious honor of consulting me—though the matter went no farther— when he was on the trail of 80,000 ducats that had gone down with a Spanish galley in 1562 near the tower of Velez Malaga. Now, then. For more details, I refer you to my articles in the journal Cartographica, and to several of my books—the aforementioned Aplicaciones, for example, or my study on loxodromics, derived from the Greek loxos and dromos, as you are aware, in Los enigmas de la proyeccion Mercator. You may also consult my work on the twenty-one maps in the unfinished atlas of Pedro de Esquivel and Diego de Guevara, or my biographies of Father Ricci (Li Mateu: The Ptolemy of China) and Torino (The King's Hydrographer), the Catalogo Hidrografico Antiguo, which I compiled in collaboration with Luisa Martin-Meras and Belen Rivera, and my monographs, Cartografos jesuitas en el mar, and Cartografos jesuitas en Orients. All these works were written in my study, naturally. But certain things, such as boyhood dreams, must be visited in person, and only when you are young. In our mature years, postcards and videos are imprinted upon our senses, and we find ourselves in Venice, not in splendor but in humidity.

  But back to the matter at hand. That morning in my office at the university, my two visitors laid out their problem. Rather, she laid it out while he listened discreetly, seated among the piles of books I had set aside so he could sit down. I must confess that I took an immediate liking to that quiet sailor. It may have been the way he listened in the background, or perhaps it was his rough good looks. In any case, he looked like a good man. I liked that frank way he had of meeting your eyes, the way he touched his nose when disconcerted or perplexed, the shy smile, the jeans and sneakers, the strong arms under the white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He was the kind of man whom you sense, rightly or
wrongly, you can trust, and his role in this adventure, his intervention in the puzzle and its unraveling, is the principal reason I am eager to tell this tale. In my youth I too read certain books. Besides, I tend to call on extreme courtesy—each of us has his own method—as a superior expression of scorn for my fellow man. The science to which I devote myself is a means as efficient as any other to hold at bay a world populated with people who on the whole irritate me, and among whom I prefer to choose with total impartiality, according to my sympathies or antipathies. As Coy himself would say, we deal the way we can. So for some strange reason—call it solidarity or affinity—I feel the need to justify this sailor exiled from the sea, and that is my motive for telling you his story. After all, narrating his adventure at the side of Tanger Soto is a little like a Mercator projection. In attempting to represent a sphere on a flat sheet of paper, you must slightly distort surfaces in the upper latitudes.

  That morning in my office, Tanger Soto gave me the general outline of the matter, and then set out the specifics of the problem: 37°32'N and 4°51'E on Urrutia's nautical chart. A ship had been sunk there during the last third of the eighteenth century and that location, after the proper corrections had been made with the help of my own cartographical tables, corresponded to the modern position of 37°32,N and 1°21'W. The question posed by the visiting pair was whether that transposition was correct. After brief consideration, I said that if the tables had been properly applied, then quite possibly it was.

  "Nonetheless," she said, "the ship isn't there."

  1 looked at her with reasonable reserve. In these kinds of situations I always distrust absolute affirmations, and women, pretty or ugly who are exceedingly clever. And many of them have passed through my lecture halls.

  'Are you sure? A sunken ship does not go about shouting its location."

  "I know that. But we have done exhaustive research, starting on land."

  So perhaps they got their feet wet, I deduced. I was trying to situate the couple among the species I have catalogued, but it was not easy. Amateur archaeologists, avid historians, treasure hunters. From behind my desk, beneath the framed reproduction of Peutinger's Tabula Itineraria—a gift from my students when I was given the chair—I devoted myself to studying them carefully. Physically, she fit the first two categories, he the third. Assuming that archaeologists, avid historians, and treasure hunters have a specific appearance.

  "Well, I don't know," I said. "All that occurs to me is the most elementary answer. Your original data are erroneous. The latitudes and longitudes are incorrect."

  "That's unlikely." She shook her head with certainty, an action that caused her blond hair, which I observed to be cut with curious asymmetry, to brush her chin. "I have solid documentary evidence. In that sense, only a relative margin of error would be acceptable, and that will lead us to a second, and broader, area of search. But first we want to discard any other possibility."

  I liked the lady's tone of voice. So competent and sure. Formal.

  "For example?"

  'An error on our part when we applied your tables. I would be grateful if you would review our calculations."

  Again I looked at her for an instant and then glanced at him; he was still listening quietly, sitting still, his large hands resting on his thighs. My curiosity had its limits. I had heard many such stories of searches. But the students waiting outside my door were stifling, the day was too splendid for correcting exams, she was most uncommonly attractive—without being a true beauty because of her nose when seen in profile, although perhaps beautiful precisely because of that—and I liked him a lot. So, pourquoi pas?’ I asked myself, in the manner of Commander Charcot. This was not something that would take much time. The cardboard tube contained several rolled-up charts, which Tanger Soto spread out on my desk. Among them I recognized a fine reproduction of one of Urrutia's nautical charts. I knew that one, naturally, and studied it with affection. Not as beautiful as Torino's, of course. But magnificent drypoint engraved on plates of beaten and polished copper. Very precise for its period.

  "We shall see," I said. "The date of the shipwreck?"

  "1767. Southeast coast of Spain. Position from land bearings almost simultaneous to the moment of sinking."

  "Tenerife meridian?"

  "No. Cadiz."

  "Cadiz." I smiled slightly, encouragingly, while looking for the corresponding scale of longitudes on the upper portion of the chart. "That meridian is enchanting. I refer to the old one, naturally. It has the traditional aroma of the vanished past, like Ptolemy the Elder's Hierro island. You know what I mean."

  I put on my glasses to look more closely, and began to work before they could say whether they knew or not. The latitude was the first thing I established, and without difficulty. It was quite exact. In truth, as long as three thousand years ago Phoenician navigators knew that the height of the sun at midday, or that of the stars near the north pole above the horizon of a place, measures the geographic latitude of one's location. Up to this point, child's play. A child with some notion of cosmography, of course. Well, and not just any child.

  "You are fortunate that your episode occurred in 1767," I commented. "Only a hundred years before, you could have obtained the latitude with the same facility but the longitude would have left much to be desired. In 1583, Matteo Ricci, who was one of the great cartographers of the period, made errors of up to five degrees in calculating longitudes with respect to the Tenerife meridian. It was fifteen hundred years before Ptolemy's globe shrank to size, and it happened very gradually.... I suppose you are familiar with Louis XIV's famous saying when Picard and La Hire moved the map of France a degree and a half 'My cartographers have taken more land from me than my enemies.'"

  I alone laughed at the tired anecdote, though Tanger had the courtesy to join me with a smile. This is a truly interesting woman, I told myself, observing her closely. I spent a while trying to place her more precisely, but soon gave up. A woman is the only creature that cannot be defined in two consecutive sentences.

  'At any rate," I continued. "Urrutia refined things considerably, although we would have to wait for Torino, at the end of the century, for a Spanish hydrographic cartographer to address reality. ... Let's see. All right. I believe that your estimated latitude is absolutely correct, my dear. You see? Thirty-two minutes north. It appears that the cartographer and the gentleman who took the latitude on his map are in agreement."

  I said gentleman, and not lady, because I like to present myself to my female students as a reprehensible misogynist, although truly I am not one. I also wanted to test whether Tanger Soto was one of those women who have time to be offended by that kind of provocation. But she did not seem offended. She merely shifted slightly in her seat, toward her companion.

  "This sailor is your 'gentleman.'"

  Over my glasses, I peered at Coy with renewed interest.

  "Merchant seaman? A pleasure. Your figures and mine are identical, in principle."

  He did not respond. He smiled vaguely, slightly uncomfortable, and touched his nose a couple of times. Leaning over my desk, Tanger pointed to the scale on the upper edge of the nautical chart.

  "Establishing the longitude," she said, "was more problematic."

  "Of course." I leaned back in my professorial chair. "Until Harrison's and Berthoud's marine chronometers were perfected, and that was well past the middle of the eighteenth century, longitude was the navigator's major problem. Latitude was obtained from the sun or the stars, but longitude, which any cheap wrist-watch can provide us with now, could be calculated only by the imprecise measurement of lunar distances. When Urrutia compiled his charts, locating one's position on the ocean in reference to a meridian was still not totally resolved. They had pendulum clocks and sextants, but lacked a truly trustworthy instrument, a reliable chronometer that would calculate those fifteen degrees in each hour of difference between local time and that of the prime meridian. That is why errors in longitude were more substantial than those
in latitude. After all, the true longitude of the Mediterranean was not established until 1700, and it was twenty degrees less than the sixty-two attributed by Ptolemy."

  I granted myself a breath to observe Tanger Soto. She did not seem one whit impressed. Nor did Coy. It was likely that they already knew everything I was telling them, but I was a master cartographer, and they had come to my office to see me of their own free will. Each of us has his own character, and he plays the part as best he can. If those two wanted my help, they would have to pay the price. To my ego.