Waiting For Columbus (27 page)

“Yes, I’m not going to sleep with a beautiful woman tonight. Nor am I going to drink three bottles of wine. Nor am I going to sleep in a bed with soft, 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. And I won’t have room service to call for coffee and croissants in the morning.”

Dr. Balderas smiles. He’s amused, not pitying. “What I’m seeing in you—and this is based on my reading of Consuela’s notes and my observations—is that you’re exhibiting a dissociative fugue, or a dissociative identity disorder. Sometimes, when a patient is faced with an overwhelming traumatic situation and there’s no physical escape, the patient will resort to
going away
in his or her head. You persist in your belief that you are, in fact,
the
Christopher Columbus. And we’ve got to start trying to find a way to unravel this story you’re telling. At the bottom of your story is the thing that happened—the thing you’re avoiding.” Dr. Balderas gets up and walks over to a cabinet behind Columbus, produces a key from his vest pocket, and opens the cabinet door. He
pours two hefty glasses of red wine, hands one to Columbus, who is reclined on a black leather Barcelona daybed. Columbus is stunned. He has to sit up to accept the wine. Dr. Balderas locks his office door.

“Is this legal?”

“I’m the boss. And anyway, I don’t believe you’re dangerous. We wine lovers have to stick together.” The doctor raises his glass. “To getting well,” he says.

“To getting out,” Columbus says.

They drink in silence. Dr. Balderas pours more wine.

“I’m wondering if you’ll answer a question for me.”

“Well, I’m the one on the couch. I rather like this new wine therapy you’ve devised. Fire away.”

“I need you to really think about this before you answer. Okay?”

Columbus nods.

“Do you remember anything? I mean the smallest fragment of a fragment of half an imperfect memory—anything? Any minor detail.”

Columbus closes his eyes. He’d love to answer yes. He tries to stop thinking. Listens. Is there anybody in there screaming to get out? Hello? Hello? But no, he is who he is. Then the face comes. There is a man’s face. A bald man. His voice is soft-spoken. He’s looking down at Columbus—asking if he’s all right.

“Nothing,” he says. “I only have these Columbus memories.”

“What about places? Do you remember the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede in Sevilla? Can you close your eyes and see the orange trees in the courtyard, the stained glass? When were you there last?”

Columbus smiles. “You’ve been reading. That’s a step beyond your predecessor.” He takes a sip of his wine. “And if I lied and said yes, I do remember another life, would I—”

“That would only be a beginning step.”

“Well, what if you’re wrong? And what if I’m perfectly happy being who I am?”

“There is a danger that you are avoiding this event in your past
with such fervor that, yes, you could never come out. That’s a real danger. It would mean that you’d never get out of here.”

Dr. Balderas looks evenly at Columbus. There is no panic, no hint of apprehension at the prospect of never getting out.

“In my notes,” Dr. Balderas says, “I saw that you believe, and Dr. Fuentes’s notes confirm this, that something horrible is going to happen—a disaster is looming, something you are powerless to stop.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you still feel this way?”

His voice gets very small. “Yes. Something too horrible to even think about.”

Dr. Balderas leans forward, elbows on his desk, one hand cupping his chin. “What if it already happened?” he says.

“What do you mean? I’m worried about the future.”

“What if the something awful already happened and you’re running away, not moving toward?”

“I was going to sea. Three ships in the harbor at Palos. Then I woke up here. I had my ships, supplies, a crew. Everything was ready.”

“You were brought here and the only name on file is Bolivar. You have no idea how you came to be here?”

“Yes. No. Ask Nurse Consuela. She was there when I arrived.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Thank you. And thank you for the wine, too. It has been quite a while …” Columbus’s legs feel wobbly when he goes to stand up; he’s a little unsteady but also determined not to show it.

The next morning, he stops swimming, stands up, and slow-motion walks over to the edge of the pool—looks up at Consuela. She’s been reading
Huckleberry Finn
. She puts the book down.

“Balderas is the real deal,” he says. “I have a feeling he’s going to solve this, and that’s a bit frightening.”

“Why would that be frightening?”

“If he’s right, there’s something horrifying at the end of this. Anyway, I get the feeling Balderas is the tipping point.”

“Tipping point?”

“When you’ve been pushing on something and it starts to move, and you realize you couldn’t stop it if you wanted.” He smiles and nods to himself. “But there is a moment just before this realization when everything is completely calm.”

Columbus is sitting up in bed as Nurse Tammy slathers shaving cream onto his face, making small foamy circles with her fingertips. Consuela is perched on the windowsill, watching—her head tilted, bemused. Columbus’s eyes are closed. He’s wearing a black cotton beret pulled to one side. Where he found this beret is a mystery. He seems to have a talent for getting people to do things for him or for convincing people to give him things. Nurse Tammy is meticulous and quick with her shaving. This efficiency pleases Columbus.

“Thank you,” he says. He brushes his hand along his jawline and smiles. “This reminds me of a time when I was staying with Juan at a villa near Montoro. It was midday and we were shaving. It was not nearly as pleasant as this shave, but we had only cold water.”

Nurse Tammy folds the razor into the towel, nods at Consuela, and leaves the room.

Behind the stable, Juan and Columbus stand at a table beneath a generous, spreading elm. Swallows chirp and make their clicking sounds in the upper branches. The sprinklers flicker to life in the lower vineyard and begin to make their rhythmic sputtering-water sound. The sunlight is filtered green through the canopy of leaves.

A pitcher of gin and tonic sits on the table between them. Behind
and away from the stable, an arching passageway leads to the courtyard. One of the queen’s friends owns this villa, an eccentric woman who is a bit of a patron of the arts, and in Columbus’s case, a patron of hopeless causes. Columbus and Juan, by association, are guests. Selena is in the kitchen glancing sporadically, worriedly, through a small, square window at the two men. She can hear only bits and pieces of their conversation. Somewhere inside the main house, somebody is playing one of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. It sounds to Columbus like the third suite, the one in C major. It’s happier to the ear than the others. They finish shaving and sit down.

“This came for you yesterday,” Juan says. He slides a brown envelope across the table and leans back to watch.

Columbus places his drink on the table, picks up the envelope, brings it to his nose, and sniffs. He sighs heavily, rips open one end, and peeks inside. Another birthday card with his actual birthday two months past. He does not have to look in order to know it’s signed, “Love, Cassandra,” or “Lovingly, Cassandra,” or some other adoring salutation. How does she find me? he thinks.

“A woman?”

“A mistake,” Columbus says.

“A persistent mistake, it seems.”

“Her birthday greetings come randomly, or so it seems. Never on my actual birthday.”

“Some say nothing is ever random. Everything is dependent on prior events.”

Columbus thinks about this. He wonders about the events that caused his obsession. He thinks about the possible events that might be put into motion from his crossing the Western Sea. “Could you please randomly fill my glass?”

“That would certainly be dependent on your asking me to make it so.”

“Just make it so now, and then be pleasantly unpredictable.”

Juan fills his glass and smiles. “Some women,” he says, “refuse to be gotten rid of.”

They sit in the shade and share two slow pitchers of gin and tonic. At some point in their conversation, the Inquisition is mentioned. This is something neither of them is comfortable speaking about. There are regions of Spain where one not only has to be Catholic but must be the right kind of Catholic. But this villa is a safe haven.

“Look,” Juan says, “this darkness is something human beings cannot escape. It is our nature. We wallow in it. And at the same time, it seems almost sanctioned by the church. Abel and Cain. Cain slew Abel. And ever since Adam’s son killed his brother, mankind has been killing and slaughtering and mutilating. Adam and Eve march out of the garden and their prodigy start the killing.”

Columbus leans back in his chair. He’s grappling with his faith today. He looked into the mirror as he was performing his morning ablutions and saw a godless man. It wasn’t a frightening image, but he recognized the godlessness in himself. On days like this, he fumbles his faith. Drops it, picks it up, and drops it again. His faith is a slippery trout and he is squeezing too tightly. If God is the river, he thinks, in which my faith swims, this morning, I prefer to turn my back on that water. I’ll take the trees and the mountains and all the gray clouds, instead.

He looks down at a small, black, lightning strike of a cat. It appears and disappears so suddenly.

“And let me tell you,” Juan continues, “I have seen much of this world and hope to see a lot more. I do not mind that people are different—that they believe different things. I don’t care. Jews, Muslims, Vikings, Marco Polo’s Buddhists, witches, or pagans—I don’t care. Muslims love their children the same as Christians and Jews.”

Columbus pets the cat, which has hopped into his lap, kneaded, and curled up. “Once we start believing in things,” he says, “we’re at war against those who don’t believe in the same things.”

“But this religion seems to hate people, even the people it’s supposed
to serve. Next they’ll be making us grow beards because Moses had a beard, and Jesus and God had beards, and then sending groups of Inquisition cowards to make sure our beards are the right length. Punishable by death, of course.”

Columbus smiles. This is exactly the kind of conversation that could get them in trouble. But Juan is not done yet.

“Should we not be free to choose our path to God, or to choose no path at all? When you have to use violence, intimidation, and fear to impose your religion, you will never succeed. It should be called the
imposition
, not the Inquisition.”

“What would you suggest? To hold no beliefs?”

“Is that even possible?”

“I don’t know but I would like to try.”

Juan unconsciously nods his head.

“Well, to not believing, then,” Columbus says, raising and tilting his glass slightly toward Juan.

“To uncluttered minds and hearts,” Juan says, taking a drink.

Columbus knows this way of viewing the world is not popular with the Inquisition. His fear is that one night he’ll drink too much, speak his mind, and the wrong people will be at the table. He thinks about his sons and Beatriz. He worries about their safety.