Thomas Trofimuk - Waiting for Columbus

“It’s like this,” he says.

He massages her breast, focusing his attention on the nipple. When she arches her back in their lovemaking, her breasts disappear. They flatten out and only her nipples protrude.

“When we are at sea, we are this nipple on your body.” His lips brush her nipple and she shivers.

“And this?” Beatriz says, taking his hand, and sliding it downward, across her belly and into the hair of her pubic mound.

“That is what we dream of.”

“Then why do you leave?”

“So that we have something beautiful to dream.”

“And if you stayed? What would you dream?”

“The ocean and what is beyond.”

“There is nothing beyond,” she says.

Columbus smiles in his eyes. “Only the edge of the world,” he says, “and perdition.”

“Why is it that you wish to rush toward death?”

“Death is the ultimate journey, is it not?”

“But you already know what will happen after death,” she says.

“Yes, of course. I know what I have been told. I know what the priests say.”

“And you know that you will sail off the edge if you go too far west.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Nobody, including you, believes the Earth is flat.”

“Shhhh, there are ears everywhere. And besides there are some who still believe the Earth is flat.”

“I can’t speak the truth in my own home?”

“Better to speak the myth. The ears of the bloody Inquisition are everywhere.”

“You are right, of course. The Earth is flatter than a pita bread and there is always the danger of falling off the edge into a great nothingness.”

She smiles. “Then you will stay here with me?”

“Yes, of course… for tonight.”

Her skin holds fading blue-sky tones that enter through the window next to the bed. Each second there is more shadow in the room. He thinks about the sun and where it sinks now into the unknown. The sun disappears into the blank paper beyond the Canary Islands. On all the maps of the world there is only the blank paper for certain. There are theories and dreams and speculations but only emptiness for sure. Well, there was the one chart, which showed some tiny specks far across the sea, but only one chart among so many.

We do not know what is there. But if I sail far enough, I will be there. And if I sail far enough I will get to where I am. That is the way it is with spheres. And whatever is in between will be discovered. All I have to do is survive the obstacles of starvation, thirst, and storms-and hopelessness. It would be easier to sail across the ocean if I had ships. The ships will come, though. The king and queen cannot afford to pass up an opportunity like this.

He looks at her darkening body. I am sailing off this body, which I know well. I am moving beyond that blank paper, at the edge of the world, beyond the rain. That is where I exist.

“Where are you going?”

He turns at the door, looks back at Beatriz on the bed, sitting up, the sheets pooled around her. He’d like to memorize this picture. This image of Beatriz in bed, asking him with her silky voice where he’s going. Where are you going? she says. And the big answer is: I have no idea, except west . But he’d love to memorize this image of Beatriz in bed, doing a great favor to the light of the room. “To get another bottle of wine,” he says.

In the morning Columbus is sitting in his favorite wooden chair, dressed in the housecoat the boys gave him last Christmas. As the sun rises, he pulls out another cigar. He slices the end along the blade of his sword. He lights it with three small puffs, two more small puffs. Then a slight roll so the end is evenly lit. He leans back into his chair and looks out to sea. He observes the wisps of pink cloud stranded at the horizon. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning, he thinks. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky at morning, sailor’s warning. He knows the nursery rhyme but has no idea how or when he learned it. He takes another puff of his cigar.

Before coming down to the veranda, he’d picked up his razor in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The color of his hair still sometimes surprises him because he does not feel old enough to have white hair. Despite his seemingly endless struggles to get his ships, he does not feel as old as he looks. True, there are days when he is so tired he teeters at the edge of giving up.

Sometimes he does not understand what Beatriz sees in him-what any woman sees in him.

“What is that awful stench?” Beatriz has come up from behind him but now backs away. She’s wearing a corset, nothing else. “Has something died? Have you an illness?”

“It’s a cigar. A Montecristo number 4.” He smiles, but there is fatigue in his eyes-something resigned. “There’s a box of them in the big room, on the table. I honestly do not know how they got there. I must have had them in my bag. But I’ve brought some down here with me. Do you want one?”

Beatriz leans forward suspiciously. Watches him suck on the brown thing that burns and smells like death.

“Why? Why do you do this?”

“Well, after I smoke, I feel I am not quite walking on the Earth. I am, but I am not. I feel strangely at peace. Calm yet focused. When I awoke this morning I found I had this knowledge. I knew how to smoke them. I’ve had two already.”

“What do you mean you had the knowledge? Is this some sort of sorcery? Have you been taken by demons?”

“Beatriz. It is merely the knowing of something that cannot be explained. Perhaps I dreamed of this knowledge long ago and now I recall a dream.”

“But where did they come from? Shall I pray for you, Cristóbal?”

“I’m afraid praying wouldn’t do any good.”

“You mean there are demons in you?”

“Demons! I mean it is merely something that cannot be explained.”

“But-”

“Look, you have given birth.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“I… I just knew,” she says.

“And when the baby arrives, what is the first thing it does?”

“It cries.”

“Yes, and then?”

“Then it seeks its mother’s breast.”

“And how does the baby know to do this? How does it know there is nourishment there? How could it possibly know?”

“I-”

“It is unexplainable, is it not?”

“I suppose,” she says quietly. “But this is different. You’re forty years old! You are not a baby!”

“True, but this does not make me immune to mystery.”

“Only idiots and the very superstitious believe the world is flat. The curve of the Earth is easily proved. I could explain such things to a child, a cat, or a dog. It’s determining the actual size that is a problem. And it will always be speculation until someone sails out there and actually has a look-see.”

Dr. Fuentes leans forward, places his elbows on his knees, and cups his chin in his hands. “So what happened? How come you’re here and not at sea? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“I am not here of my own accord, Doctor. And anyway, why would you want to jump to the end of a story?”

“You have a story?”

“Everybody has a story, Fuentes.”

“You’re telling a story right now?”

“You’re not reading Nurse Consuela’s reports, are you?”

Dr. Fuentes pauses. Makes a few notes in his notebook. “What if I told you I believed the world was flat?” he says without looking up.

“You would confirm my theory about your lack of intelligence. I believe hundreds would concur.”

“I think we’re done for today.”

“Why don’t you read me what you’ve been writing in that little notebook of yours. It must be very insightful and important.”