"Waiting for Columbus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Trofimuk Thomas)

CHAPTER SEVEN

They are walking in the lemon orchard on the day of the feast of Saint Cornelius and Saint Cyprian. Clouds are pillowed above the city, as if they were pushed up against an invisible wall. Walking among these yellow globes is a cheerful thing-an antidote to the gray oppression of the clouds.

Consuela plucks a lemon, buffs the dust from its skin, and bites into it. She is prepared, does not make a face in reaction to the sourness. The juice runs down her chin, and she wipes her face with her sleeve.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I’ve never done it before,” Consuela says.

“And?”

“It was a good lemon. It was a delicious lemon.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes. Then Columbus clears his throat.

“I’m not the only one who knew,” he says. “In fact, there were many who knew.”

Consuela laughs. “You’re going to have to brief me a bit better for these conversations where you start halfway through and I’m expected to know what you’re talking about.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that you could go into a bar, and if it was the right bar and you were a good listener, you found out things about the world. I was in Jaén. I just wanted a glass of wine. In the booth behind me, there was a man named Manuel, who sold Bibles. Apparently he was buying them from a guy who was producing them by the hundreds. He called them Gutenberg Bibles. A couple of sailors came in and sat with him. I listened. After much wine, they mentioned they had been driven far out into the Western Sea by a storm. This is something that happens all the time. The important thing is, nothing happened. As far as they could tell, there was just more and more ocean. But while they were out there in the unknown, they saw gulls. It took them twenty-one days to sail home.”

“So they saw birds.”

“Yes, they saw the kind of birds that indicate land is nearby. They were twenty-one days out. Then one of the sailors said the most extraordinary thing. I almost choked on my wine. This sailor started to talk about a small, dark-skinned corpse in a narrow boat made from a single tree, adrift in the ocean. The other sailor tells him to shut up about it.”

Consuela purses her lips.

Columbus looks at her with furrowed brows and such sincerity that she almost feels like giggling.

“What’s out there, Consuela? If that’s not a clear indication that these men were close to Marco Polo’s Japan, then I don’t know what is.”

Apparently somebody other than Dr. Fuentes’s wife has been scraping chairs across his office floor in the last few months. And because the current Mrs. Fuentes started off scraping chairs, she knew when and where to look. She discovers that what she’d suspected was true, and Dr. Fuentes has his back against the wall. Consuela doesn’t care. But one hears things. So Dr. Fuentes is distracted, off balance. Perhaps even a little unfocused. His wife is threatening divorce and promising to take the house, the Jaguar, and a holiday home on the coast that’s been in the Fuentes family for three hundred years. It appears he’s lost interest in, among other things, the Columbus case.

Consuela looks in on Columbus when she arrives for her shift. He’s sleeping. His room is more or less unchanged from the day he arrived. There are no pictures of family. No packages of letters. It’s austere. He lives like a monk, an ascetic. He has made requests for writing paper and wine-each week he asks for wine from a particular vineyard just outside of La Rábida. Of course, the wine is denied. The writing paper is fine, but not a pen. Pens are not allowed because they are potential thrusting weapons. If he wants to write, he has to go to the common room and sign out a pen.

At breakfast, Columbus is quieter than normal. Pope Cecelia is louder than usual. She stands at the doorway to the dining room. Holds out one skinny, shaky arm. “I want to remind you of God’s word,” she commands. “Remember the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before Him. You shall not make for yourself any image and nor shall you bow down to them or worship them. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord. Remember the Sabbath day-” She stops.

Mercedes, a short, forty-year-old blonde who is always hitting on the women in the institute and washes her hands every ten minutes, stops and listens. “Could happen,” she says, nodding enthusiastically. “Could happen.”

Cecelia is lost. She’s looking around the room like she recognizes nothing. Consuela’s compassion rises up and she moves to her side.

“I can’t remember when the Sabbath is. Which day? How can I be pope if I can’t remember the Sabbath? How can I keep it holy when I don’t know…” Tears squeak from her eyes, flow down her wrinkled cheeks.

“You remember the Sabbath is Sunday, Your Holiness. I know you do. Six days of work, and then the seventh, Sunday, you rest.”

“Keep the Sabbath holy-Sunday’s a holy day, that’s right. The Sabbath is Sunday. And you must honor your mother and your father,” she says. “Thou shalt not murder, nor commit adultery. Nor steal-”

“Nothing wrong with stealing,” Mercedes says. “I steal all the time.”

“Nor shall you bear false witness, or covet your neighbor’s wife, or ox, or donkey-” She stops, looks at Consuela with an expression that is almost an offer to add something. “And that’s it, then. You may eat!” She makes the sign of the cross in the air in front of her.

Almost everybody is eating already. They’re so used to these premeal holy rants, most don’t even hear them anymore. Consuela fills her coffee mug and sits beside Columbus. “Good morning,” she says quietly, evenly.

He ignores her, shovels more scrambled eggs into his mouth, slurps at his orange juice.

“Good morning, my ass,” he mumbles.

Elena, a tall blond woman with slender fingers, who does not speak, is sitting across from Columbus. She smiles. Columbus has never seen, or heard, Elena speak a single word. Nothing in all his time at the institute. He heard from one of the orderlies that there is no physical reason for her muteness. She just stopped speaking. There are days when he can relate.

“Did you just call me an ass?”

Elena smiles again. She places her mug of coffee carefully on the table.

“What in particular is good about this morning? Perhaps it’s good for you because you get to leave. This is your job. You come, you go. This”-he looks around the dining hall and gestures, points with open hands-“this, is my life. No leaving. You get to go out into the world and have a glass of wine, make love, sleep until noon if you want. I am not free. I am completely surrounded by crazy people.” He looks across the table at Elena. “I don’t think you’re crazy, by the way.”

Elena nods her understanding and appreciation.

“It is not a good morning, Nurse Consuela. It won’t be a good morning until I am waking up with a beautiful woman. A woman with curves like waves. A woman whom I love. A woman who will drink wine with me and drift inside a dream about the other side of the ocean. So fuck off with your cheery greetings.”

Consuela stands up. The thing is, she was trying not to be too cheery. She is aware that this is an institution.

“Sit,” he says. “I’m grumpy. I’m sorry.”

Consuela sits down but she’s bristling, hesitant.

“There was a morning-in my memory-when I was very happy.”

“Oh really. What was her name?” She takes a sip of coffee.

He looks at her with a pitying, downward glance. “I was with my son.”

Well, she thinks, at least my feet are getting clean from sticking them in my mouth so often this morning.

Morning does not come quickly when one is looking for it. It becomes a lugubrious, lumbering animal that moves only when it wishes. Yet mornings are inevitable. This one had sifted in through thick clouds on a blanket of fear. Columbus only hopes that they have successfully crossed the border from Portugal into Spain. He and his son, Diego, have been alternating between walking and running all night, and now they arrive inside a thick fog.

I think we’re safe now, Columbus is thinking. I think we’re across the border. We should stop at an inn and ask just to make sure. If I were at sea, I would know exactly where I was. If I could have seen the stars last night, I would have been able to tell when we crossed over.

“Why are we leaving, Papa? Did we do something wrong?” Diego is six years old. He has been quiet most of the night and now, as he begins to get hungry, he also begins to hunger for information.

“No, I said some things to the king and the king didn’t like what I said. That’s all. That’s why we’re leaving.”

A long pause. The boy is tired, has been traveling at a severe adult pace along the dusty roads all night. It’s finally morning. Traveling at night is dangerous-insanity, some would say. Wild animals and desperate, vicious people lurked at the edges of highways at night. These two had little choice and they were lucky. They met no one, heard a rustling in the bushes twice but that was all.

“What did you say to the king, Papa?”

“Some things about taking chances. Some things about taking risks if you ever want to achieve greatness. Some things about guts. And I guess the king took the things I said to heart.”

“Who were those men with swords?”

“They were some of the king’s friends.”

“Did they want to hurt us?”

“They were angry. They wanted a map created by a man named Toscanelli.”

“Did they find it?”

“Actually, they did not find the map they sought. They did find a map, but not the one they were seeking. They couldn’t tell the difference.”

“What was so great about the map?”

“Well, Toscanelli felt we could get to the Indies by sailing west to an island called Antilla, and then beyond to the Indies and Japan. He figured Antilla was a halfway point toward the Indies. Well, he put Antilla on a map, and a little bit more.”

“I’m tired, Papa.”

They come over a rise in the road and see the lights of a small village. Several shops, a stable, and farther down the street, an inn. As they approach the town, Columbus can see several young men leaning against the front wall of the first shop, talking.

“Look, Diego, someone here can tell us where we are. Someone there can tell us if we are yet in Spain.”

Father and son walk inside-side-glance the leaning boys.

“Hello,” a woman says. “How are you today?” She stands behind the counter smiling at them benignly. She has long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail that reaches down the middle of her back to just above her buttocks.

Columbus bows to her. “My lady,” he says, “we have just come from Portuguese territory and I was wondering if in fact we had crossed over into Spain.”

“Huh?”

He then tries the same question in Spanish with the same result. He attempts the question in English, then French, then Portuguese again. She seems to be permanently confused, addled beyond hope.

“Is this Spain?”

“ Spain?”

“Yes, I need to know if this is Spain?”

“ Spain is a good country, yes?” She smiles kindly.

How can this woman not be aware of where she is?

Columbus places his hand on the hilt of his sword. Grips it firmly. Visualizes this woman’s discombobulated head rolling on the clean floor, dumb smile fully intact. But then realizes she may be muddled in her head. This may not be her fault. But then why was she in this position of responsibility?

“Come, Diego, we’re going.”

Diego has picked up a chocolate bar.

“Put that down. It’s bad for you.”

“But, Papa-”

“I said no.”

The boys outside are gone, which makes Columbus twitchy. Where are they? He and Diego move swiftly through what Columbus hopes is the village of Palos. They try to stay in the light, avoid the back alleys. They do not encounter another soul. This, too, worries Columbus. Finally they walk slowly up a long hill to what Columbus hopes is the Franciscan monastery at La Rábida. There is no sign. There were no signs. Nothing that indicated a location. Columbus is beginning to think he’s in a bad dream. Apart from the fact that it looks like every monastery he’s ever seen-stone walls around an enclosed inner courtyard, the thick wooden door-he’s nowhere near certain this actually is a monastery. He is tired beyond tired, paranoid, and scared. He knocks on the door, then turns around to see if anybody has followed. He knocks again. He’s not thinking straight-and the boy cannot be expected to go any farther. Either they are in Spain and safe, or he will beg sanctuary at this monastery.

Father Antonio de Marchena opens the door. By necessity, this is a slow and hesitant movement. The father has a friendly, welcoming face. He is not an old man but is accustomed to being around older men, and so his body language is mismatched to his age: he moves a bit slower than he needs to and squints when he doesn’t really need to squint. His physical health is fine, and his eyes are perfect. One could not say the father is fat, but he is certainly well fed, and there is, of course, a vineyard attached to the monastery.

“You what?” Father Antonio says, smiling.

They have been sampling the wine, an amber-colored white with an earthy, nutty flavor, served slightly chilled with cheese and bread on the side. The monks have been producing the Condado Pálido wine for as long as the oldest of them remembers.

“In retrospect, it was not wise. But I was angry. And it was only the truth.”

“I hope if you ever get a chance to pitch your idea to Ferdinand, that you apply a little more tact.”

Diego is sleeping, and while Columbus was tempted to sleep as well, there was something in him that would not stop. He was too wound up. Columbus was relieved to learn that they were, in fact, in Spain.

“King John does not joke around. If he sent men after you, you’d do well to align yourself with a different king or queen. What did you say?”

“He’s an imbecile. I told him he was an imbecile. Sometimes these things just come out, especially when I am faced with an enormous stupidity.”

“Kings and queens are rarely wise-they’re certainly not born with any special degree of intelligence. Decisions are thrust upon them, and if they have good advisers, they sometimes make good choices. But it is even more difficult to rule if your main concern is hanging on to an empire to rule. The people tend to get lost along the way.”

“Three months! They had enough information to make a decision in a week, a few days. But they took three months! What in hell were they doing all that time? I offered them a direct route to the kingdom of the khan. A direct route to Marco Polo’s Asia.”

“They were waiting for news of the African route to the East Indies.”

“Yes, I know. Many have attempted-”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Dias is back. He found a way around the southern point of Africa.”

“Dias made it?” Columbus ’s face goes white. He hears the fire in the corner. He knows a fire like this ought to take the chill from the room, but he is cold to the bone. The light from the fire flickers in the wine. Dias found a new route to the Indies and made it back. Dias made it.

Father Antonio waits until the stone of this news has had time to sink to the bottom of whatever water exists inside Columbus. He does not mind the silence-respects the enormity of such news to a navigator, especially to one who wishes to cross an uncharted ocean.

Columbus begins to embrace all the doubts that have been lurking in the shadows of his hope.

“There is no question about this?”

“None.”

“I was plan B, then. Never seriously considered.” Columbus drifts into the realization he’d only been humored for the past months.

“It seems that way.”

“Have you more of this wine?”

Father Antonio pours-fills his glass.

“Getting stupid with wine will not make Dias go away. Nor will it buttress your belief in the western route. Nor will it get you an audience with the Catholic kings. And it will only temporarily make you feel better.”

“I am told it is very difficult to meet with the king and queen. It may be years before I can plead my case. So I’ll take feeling better temporarily. Tonight, temporary is plenty.”

“And tomorrow morning?”

“I am only here, right now. Tomorrow morning is not important. I am alive and my son is safe. This wine is excellent.”

“Then let me offer a small lecture, just in case you decide to press ahead with your scheme. Ferdinand and Isabella need money. They’re spread thin with the war against the Moors in Granada, and problems with infrastructure, and pressure to get rid of the Jews. Even Portugal is saber rattling, poking around for a fight. So money is the key. If you can promise money, with only a small amount to fund your venture up front, you’ll get your ships.”

“I definitely need more wine.”

“I know that nothing I say will cure what ails you. But proving the Portuguese wrong, making the western route a reality-bringing home gold and riches-this will gall King John more than anything else you could do. But you are right. This sort of talk is for tomorrow. Sailing off the edge of the world is a morning conversation.” He smiles and the missing teeth on the upper left side of his mouth become obvious.

Columbus sighs. “Tonight, my fine little monk, I do not wish to be cheered, or hopeful, or happy. I am disheartened and this is not a crime. I am without hope-also not a crime. And thanks to you, I am safe. I only wish to be lost in this wine, warmed by this fire… and then sleep. Tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself.”

“Okay, okay, wallow in self-pity tonight, but take this little bit of information to bed with you, Mr. Columbus.” The monk stands up, tosses another hunk of wood onto the fire. “I can get you an audience with the queen. Next week.” Father Antonio gently pulls the door shut behind him. Just before the door clicks, he adds: “Close your mouth, Mr. Columbus, or the flies will get in. Sleep well.”

In the morning, Diego has already eaten breakfast and is playing in the courtyard with an orange cat when Columbus lifts his sorry head from the pillow.

“Coffee,” he says in the dining hall. He feels sick to his stomach-does not know for sure if the coffee will stay down but he’s willing to try. It’s more for the comfort, the normalcy of drinking coffee in the morning. He hopes the routine will dispel the pain in his head. He takes his mug, sits in the shade of an enormous oak, and watches Diego.

Father Antonio sits down behind him. “This came for you this morning,” he says, handing Columbus an envelope. “It’s scented.”

Columbus sniffs at the envelope. Sickeningly sweet and pungent. He places it beside him on the ground and closes his eyes. “Just kill me,” Columbus says.

Father Antonio hands him a mug. “Drink this. All of it.”

“What?”

“Just do it. It’s a sort of whiskey mixed with cream and sugar. You won’t exactly be out of pain, but you won’t care.”

Columbus drinks the thick liquid and almost immediately no longer feels nauseous. Eventually he rips open the envelope. It’s a rhyming birthday card but it’s not his birthday. It won’t be his birthday for months. It’s signed, “Love, Cassandra.”

“Good news I hope,” the father says.

“Birthday greetings but it’s not my birthday.”

“So good wishes but at the wrong time.”

“How long have I been here?”

“You and Diego arrived last night. You were well-met.” The father smiles, pours more of the creamy liquid into Columbus ’s mug.

“How is it that I got mail when just last night I could not have told you where I was?”

Consuela wakes up with a start and in a sweat. She was dreaming about fishing. She and Columbus were fishing somewhere in the mountains. There were several bottles of wine cooling in the stream. The air was fresh and exquisite. She remembers breathing deeply and drawing great pleasure from the scents of pine, the forest bottom, the water, and the alpine flowers, which seemed to be everywhere she looked.

He said he loved fishing-how many days ago was that? But the subject of fishing has never come up again. At the time, she’d thought, well, sure, you go to sea and there are fish in the ocean. Good that you like fishing. Better that you like eating fish. But this fishing in her dream, in a stream with a long pole and a snaky line, is something quite different than she imagined.

“It’s like throwing,” Columbus had said in her dream. He was wearing hip waders, a khaki shirt, and a duckbill hat, and smiling. His hair looked healthy-was pulled back into that ridiculous ponytail he likes. His eyes were penetrating, alive. He was beaming.

She was naked. Completely naked, standing in the cold water up to her crotch, her feet grounded in the sand beneath the stones. But her nakedness seemed ordinary. He barely looked at her. It was as if she was always naked. She did not feel the cold. The water sporadically splashed her hips and belly. Eventually she got the hang of it, managed to cast the line along the surface of the water to where she wanted it to go, and caught several fish. In the dream, Consuela enjoyed standing in the water with the mountain peaks in the distance, fingers of white down the slopes, the pines enclosing the stream, the sun on her skin, the sunlight splicing, glancing off the water and sparkling in her eyes.

Then they were eating the fish out of a frying pan, over a fire. The fish were fried in butter-he throws crushed pepper and salt on top. He moves the fish around the pan with a stick. She and Columbus eat the fish and drink the wine. It’s white wine in the stream. Three bottles of a sturdy pinot grigio. They drink from the bottle. The wine bursts with flavor-pear and hints of apple. It is so cold it hurts her teeth. She does not dress herself. It was not an option. Nor does Columbus notice she is without clothing. It does not seem to matter.

When Consuela wakes up, it’s her nakedness in his eyes that is distressing. At the bottom of her discomfort is the realization that in this dream of fishing in the mountains with Columbus, she was happy. This happiness, despite her vulnerability. She can’t remember the last time she felt so happy.

Columbus is lying facedown on the massage table. His snoring thunders like an ugly rasping storm as Tammy massages his back and upper shoulders. She’s been working on him for half an hour. He’s been asleep for ten minutes. He moaned with pleasure for the first twenty.

Somewhere down the hall of D wing a telephone is ringing. There is no machine attached to this phone and it’s not forwarded to reception, so it rings for a good long time. Each ring has a cutting edge to it. This is no twitter. There are sharp-toned bells in this phone. Finally the caller gives up.

“It’s for you,” Beatriz says. “It’s a woman.” She swishes quickly from the room and Columbus calls after her.

“What’s for me?”

“That thing there,” she says, her voice a cold echo down the stone hallway. “There’s a voice in it asking for you. You should pick it up and speak to it.”

He picks it up and brings it close to his mouth.

Hesitantly. “Hello?”

“ Columbus, it’s me.”

He looks around the room. Stone walls, simple wooden furniture, a tapestry, and four candles on a simple table.

“Hello?” he says.

“It’s Isabella, Chris.”

He thinks he should stand, or bow, or something. Realizes he’s already standing and does not really know what he would bow to. Finally he takes off his hat.

“Your Majesty,” he says.

“Look, just listen. I have to meet you. The deal is going to fall through.”

“What?” He cannot hear the specific words she speaks. He only hears the loveliness of her voice. An excitement overwhelms him. Her voice is a hymn. I must be dreaming, he thinks. This cannot be real. The queen is in Barcelona. Either I am dreaming or I am mad.

“Chris,” she screams. “Do you hear me? The deal is going down in flames. Las Palos has the king’s ear and he says you can’t make it. The king is listening. You have to get your skinny little ass to court and fight for your ships.”

“I think I am having a dream,” he says. “But it’s the middle of the morning. I am awake, yet-”

“No, it’s me, Isabella. Do you hear me? Las Palos says the world is bigger than you say it is. He says you’re way off in your calculations. You have to tell the king what you told me. You have to show him the things you showed me. I’ve set up an appointment for you-”

“You are in my dream. I can hear you but I cannot see you. You sound far away but still wonderful. I can see your face only if I close my eyes.”

“You stupid ass, get your head out of the clouds.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, my queen. I will get my head out of the clouds.”

Then faintly: “Scribe! We’re going to have to write him. This isn’t going to work. Our Columbus is apparently incoherent. Get me a courier for this letter. Hurry up!”

“What? No. A courier, not a courtier.”

Columbus puts the thing down and wanders out into the garden. A most interesting experience, he thinks. I am hearing the queen’s voice in my head. Perhaps I have gone mad. Perhaps tonight I will bark at the moon, renounce my faith in God, and be burned painfully and efficiently by the bloody Inquisition.

Beatriz comes to get him in the map room. He is there with his bottle of wine every afternoon, studying the charts. Sometimes he is quiet and solemn. Other times he rages in the small room, paces frantically.

“They’re stuck in their minds! They still think Jerusalem is the center of the world. And regardless of the facts, they do not budge. They do not perform geography. They create statements of Christian dogma. Their orbis terrarum, their mappae mundi are more philosophical statements than maps. The church knows nothing about mapmaking!”

Beatriz approaches from behind and starts to massage his shoulders.

She begins to take the tension from him with strong, loving hands. Then quietly, he says, “If Jesus had lived in the Canary Islands I would have already been across the Western Sea to the Indies and back again. Stupid ignorant bastards.”

“You will go to petition the king and queen again?” she says. She can feel the tightness creep into the muscles in his upper back.

“Las Palos is going to be trouble. He knows as well as I do that the distance is much farther than my calculations show. But he does not know how far exactly, just that it is farther.”

“What will you do?”

“Well, if I let it be known the true distance is far greater than what I have said in public already, I won’t be able to man a rowboat, let alone three or four ships. I need at least three caravels.”

“You cannot lie, Cristóbal.”

“I don’t know how I can’t lie. Las Palos and his band of bastardos have the king’s ear. What can I do? The truth is not known exactly.”

“What can you do?”

“I might have to have Las Palos killed,” he says in a whisper, barely speaking the words. A subconscious undertow of fear nags at him. “There are men…”

She stops her massage. Columbus reaches across his chest to her hand on his shoulder.

“Just a morbid thought. It will not ever come to that.”

“What will you really do?”

“He is a small-minded bumbler. He has no art. There is no adventure and no conviction in him. He is dry, dead with his calculations. He may as well be dead.”

“But you say he is right?”

“Of course he is right! He may be dead inside but he is utterly brilliant!”

“So you truly do not know how far-”

“I have no idea.” Columbus drinks from the goblet. “While this is an unfortunate truth, it is also true that Las Palos does not know either, exactly.”

“And you will go to the university court and fight him?”

“I will have to be louder, bolder, and inspire with words of gold and spices and riches. I’ll have to promise things to this poor cash-starved monarchy. I will have to use my wit.” He sighs heavily. “Mostly, I will have to be louder and bolder.”

“And at the same time as you try to impress the royals, will you anger those of the Inquisition?”

“This nags at me every day. I will have to hope that the idea of profit rules even those of the Inquisition. And after all, I will be discovering whatever there is to discover in the name of God, and king, and queen. God first, of course.”

Beatriz stands in front of a large chart that hangs from a rod, near the wall. She’s wearing a loose-fitting, flowered gown. Her eyes are drawn to the blank area in the western zone. She thinks about the blankness of it. She remembers swimming beyond land’s sight, getting to the place where there was only water and how lonely it felt, and the small, gnawing fear in her stomach. I cannot imagine only seeing the water in the four directions, and for weeks at a time. I cannot imagine the faith it would take. I am going to lose him to the unknown. I’ve already lost him. He sees nothing but the blankness there. It pulls him.

She touches the unknown area on the chart with three fingers, and then presses the palm of her hand there. Closes her eyes, wishes to feel something, imprint safety, imprint her love there.

“What is it that you feel?”

“Fear,” she says quickly and without thinking. She turns to look at him. Green eyes flashing. “And I feel a small amount of excitement.”

“Excitement?” he says.

“The unknown.”

“But they say there is nothing there. They say there is only the uncrossable Western Sea. They insist that we know the entire world already, that there is nothing new to discover.”

“There are the stories you speak of,” she says.

“Stories that should never be repeated.”

“I know, my love, but what about the dark-skinned man in the tree-boat? And the Norseman?”

“Also not to be repeated,” he says.

“I know, my love.” She walks to the window, places her hands gently on the sill, and looks out. It is hot and bright, clean smelling. The sun is directly above. A tiny breeze moves from the sea to the land. There is a becalmed, midnight quiet in the courtyard. The sound of the sea is there but it does not remain in the conscious. It circles to the back and lurks with heartbeats, birdsong, and the wind in the leaves.

She pulls herself up into the open window frame and stands on the ledge.

Columbus leans back in his chair and watches. He smiles, takes a gulp of wine, nods to himself. He does not feel the urge to save her. She does not need saving. She certainly does not need warning. He finds this very interesting.

Beatriz begins to remove her clothing. Her dress, shoes, stockings, and undergarments all fall from the window. They drop the forty feet to the ground until she is naked. The warm flesh tones of her body contrast the harsh brightness of the day. The cool stone ledge is a luxury to her bare feet.

Columbus is bewitched. He begins to feel the strong warmth of love welling up inside him. What a woman to love. You have my complete attention, he thinks. I am watching you with all my heart.

Do you see me? she’s thinking. Do you see me standing on the edge of this world? I am your mistress, not your wife, and you should know it does not matter. But because I am your mistress, I am on the edge of your world. Do you see me standing on the edge of this life? Do you see me standing on the edge of what is accepted? I wish to be with you. Am I with you now? Am I?

She does not turn around.

“What if I was to jump?” she whispers.

“Perhaps, you would be dead.” He is standing directly behind her.

“And what you propose to do is so different?”

“Yes,” he says. “There is no edge of the world, there is only distance.”

“But there is the unknown.”

Columbus laughs.

She lifts her foot and there is a faint sweaty impression on the stone. She places her foot back inside the imprint.

“Each next moment is the unknown,” he says. “A moment ago I would not have dreamed you here on the ledge, without clothing, beautiful.”

Beatriz almost turns to face him but stops halfway. “Will you remember that for your defense against Las Palos?”

“Yes, I will remember it.”

“Good,” she says.

She turns around. Columbus lifts her off the ledge, moves her to the table, places her on top of the layers of charts. He begins to kiss her and she begins to whimper. It is the hot, dead space in the day. They bathe in the sweet scent of the sun. Their loving is slow and gentle and hazy. The only roughness is the near-empty bottle of wine that falls to the floor and breaks. And the charts. Beatriz perspires and there are areas of sweat where her body presses. The contour of her body is imprinted. The sweat lines from her buttocks carve a crease across the unknown area.

They are curled on the table, side by side, two cats in late-afternoon sun.

“When will you go to the university?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You will propose your journey to the scholars?”

“Yes, to the close-minded dead people,” Columbus says, smiling.

“But you will be careful? And treat them with the respect they require?”

“Yes. But it is hopeless. I know what they will find.”

“Don’t say that.”

“They have already decided but I must do this anyway. Perhaps I will sway a few in the process.”

“But if it is truly hopeless, why do you do it?”

“For the queen.”

“Oh,” Beatriz says, a coolness to her voice.

“The queen is the only hope I have. If she likes the idea and can see I have tried to obtain permission for the journey her way, perhaps she will overrule or just ignore the university. If I can convince her in the end, there is hope. Even then, it depends on the king and queen getting rid of the bloody Moors.”

“It seems such a long journey just to begin another long journey.”

“Yes, it does. But there is much profit to be made in this adventure.”

“Profit?” Beatriz says. “Surely profit is not the true reason you wish to sail across the sea.”

“Nothing is done for the simple love of doing. Nothing worthy anyway. There must be a profit of some kind or nothing would get done.”

“I do not wish to live in that world.” She moves like a sleek feline to the wall where a sword hangs and pulls it from its sheath. She thrusts it at him and kneels down. “Take this sword and plunge it into my heart. Take it!”

He takes the sword and places it on the floor.

“Can’t you see that profit and commerce make the world run? We have often spoken about the church and its love of money and power. I will not get my ships if I do not promise a profit. Gold, silver, and spices.”

“This is a world I despise.” She picks up the blade and pushes it into his hands. He throws it across the room and it clangs loudly against the stone wall.

“All right, Beatriz,” he says. “All right. Mostly I wonder what is there. I have a mad wonder in me. Is that what you wish to hear?”

“You’re not just saying this to please me?”

“No. I have to know what’s out there.” Columbus sighs, walks across the room to a window, looks down into the courtyard. A cat stretches, then sits in a shady spot, licks its paw. There are no clouds in sight. Just sunlight and perfect blue from the horizon all the way into the heavens. “Sometimes I get so caught up in the money, and ships, and crewmen, and supplies I will need that I begin to lose sight of the reason.” He turns around. “It’s simple, Beatriz. I have always wanted to find out what’s out there in the unknown.”

“Now I wish to live again,” she says, smiling.

“But still, I will have to beg the bankers and the scholars and the kings for the ships to satisfy this wonder.”

“Can’t you convince them that you are right?”

He smiles. “It is difficult when one does not know if one is right.”

“I am certain that you are right,” she says.

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Yes, I should.”

“In the end, it comes down to one woman,” Columbus says. “I have to convince one woman that I might be right.”

“One other woman.”

He sighs and sits down heavily on a chair against the wall. “I must convince a queen. All of this game playing and risk is to persuade one damned woman. It’s not going to be the steadfast scholars, or the bankers, or the shipbuilders, or really anybody in Spain, except for that one woman. Her and her aristocratic friends.”

“The queen,” Beatriz says.

“Yes, the queen,” he says. “Remember, Beatriz, nothing truly inspired or beneficial to mankind has ever been accomplished by asking for an agreement from the masses. It’s the elite. It’s the elitists who drive society forward.”

“To the queen then.” Beatriz raises her glass.

“Yes,” Columbus says. “To Isabella.”

Two days later, just before he leaves for the university, Columbus makes one of his most important discoveries. He finds a crease in the chart-the one upon which he and Beatriz made love. He makes an important decision. He takes a huge leap of faith. He looks at his top chart. It’s one of the charts made by his brother, Bartholomew, who is in France seeking funding from a different royalty. Columbus decides the crease is the route to the Indies. He decides he will follow the map of his love for Beatriz. From the crease in the far western unknown area where he hopes to find the Indies, he draws a line back toward the known world, across the Western Sea, to find his starting point: the Canary Islands.