Thomas Trofimuk - Waiting for Columbus

Beatriz stands up, lets her armor fall aside. She turns her back to him and fills her glass with water. “You were crying out her name.”

“I was? Why would I be calling out the name of someone I was not dreaming of? What name did I call out?”

“You said, ‘Your Majesty.’”

Relief. “Yes, yes, of course, because I was dreaming the end of the journey across the Western Sea. And there was a majesty there to greet me-a man, a king of some kind.”

“A man?” she says with a mocking edge to her voice. “You want me to believe you were dreaming of a man?”

“Yes. He was smiling and there were thousands cheering. I led twelve ships, in my dream, across the ocean, and it seems I did it with very little hardship. Bartholomew was there and-” Columbus stops. She doesn’t need to know everything. She doesn’t need to know he could not remember, or did not know, how long it took to sail across the ocean. She’s liable to ask if he continues his report.

Beatriz is not yet smiling but her face has softened. She has not wrapped herself back up. It’s okay for Columbus to see her body now. It’s okay to open herself to him, a little. She moves a candelabra from a shelf to the table across the room. The candles are not lit. There’s no need for candles as the room is awash with sunlight. Her robe feathers as she moves. She shows him her body in this movement. Columbus relaxes a bit. After all, this was just a dream. How can he be held accountable for his dreams? One cannot control one’s dreams.

“And in this dream, you made it back in one piece?”

Columbus tenses. Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe. There are times when it is all right to lie, he thinks. In this dream he remembers having no hope of being able to return. No idea of how far. No idea of how many days. Nobody on the bloody ship knew how long it had taken them to get across the Western Sea. He thinks there are times when God, being a man and also a god, will understand that a lie is sometimes required. God will draw upon all He knows of men and women and instantly forgive certain small untruths, even infidelities.

Beatriz turns toward him, finds his face. “ Columbus? You made it back, right?”

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Piece of cake.”

Consuela stands up. Looks at him. Flatlines her voice. “You dreamed about Columbus having a dream?”

“Yes, I dreamed I was having a dream.”

She sighs. “And Beatriz is…?”

“Ah, yes. A delicate flower. The most amazing green eyes! She was my woman. She bore me a son.”

“Your woman, not your wife?”

“What is it with women and marriage? You think all your problems will be solved and your life complete if only you can marry. Isn’t that a bit delusional?”

“So you did not marry Beatriz.”

“We exchanged vows. We exchanged rings.”

“But you did not marry her.”

“No. It’s complicated.”

This perks Consuela’s ears. A woman and a child. This is a first. A woman, according to Dr. Fuentes, could be at the heart of his illness.

“But you loved her.”

“Of course I loved her. Don’t be so stupid. She was my woman.”

“What happened to her?”

“Beatriz? Nothing happened to her. She’s in Barcelona. She works as a barista. She doesn’t have to. She has a stipend. It was arranged.”

“I notice she doesn’t visit very often. She doesn’t visit at all.”

“Ah, yes, well, that can be explained by reminding you of the unique vagaries of all women. While I love Beatriz to this day, she was not my only love. No offense to you, Nurse Consuela, but this ability to love more than one woman is one of the traits of men that is not appreciated by most women.”

“You fooled around on her.”

He’s not sure how to answer her. He does not have the language to speak his heart about Beatriz.

“I’m not judging,” Consuela says. “I’m just interested.”

Columbus leans forward. Hands on his chin, elbows on his knees. He seems on the verge of saying something but then pulls back-just closes his eyes and sighs. “Look, there were days when I was daunted. I was depressed about this journey. I would wake up in the morning in a new town and yes, there were, sometimes, distractions.” He sighs. “Look, this is a brutal, ugly time. The Inquisition is running around accusing and burning people and saving us from ourselves. People are scared… I was scared most of the time.”

An Interpol yellow notice flashes on his screen and Emile Germain can’t recall what the hell the yellow alert means-not exactly.

It’s been a while. He has to look it up. Emile pulls a white binder from the shelf beside his desk and flips to the section that deals with alerts. Yellow, he recalls with the help of the binder, is to assist in locating missing persons, often minors, or to identify people who are unable to identify themselves. His computer beeps. A blue notice pops up attached to the same file. He scans down the open page to blue: to collect additional information about a person’s identity, location, or illegal activities in relation to a criminal matter.

Merde! Two alerts on one man. They have no idea if he’s a threat. There was no color code for a person of interest, but Emile could read between the lines: Interpol wanted this guy found.

The man, his assignment, was declared officially suspicious and off the grid in April. Under the circumstances, it’s understandable that one missing person was shunted down the priority list. The likelihood that he is dead is high. The trail went cold. His file was basically forgotten. The report says he had been seen by several unreliable witnesses, and then he was gone. A magic trick. A disappearing act. Spain is a vast country-forty million people. This was just one vanished man inside a chaos of people and landscapes.

Cold trails were Emile’s specialty. Hopeless cases were his forte. His ex-wife used to say it was because he could tap into the artistic side of his brain and make oblique connections.

Emile pushes his shoulders into the back of the chair and breathes deeply. The wooden chair was a gift from her. She’d found it in an antique shop with a cement Buddha head sitting on it. She was assured by the owner of the shop that the chair was well over a hundred years old and in excellent condition. She probably paid too much but she was in love, and the Buddha head had been there a long time. It had to be good karma to act as a platform for a Buddha, she said-to serve the Buddha in this way. This booga-booga side of his ex-wife was annoying as hell when they were together, but now Emile found he missed her booga-booga: the incense, the strings of tiny brass bells above the bed, soy milk in his Cheerios, the incessantly changing colors on the walls in their bedroom. She had taken most of this away when she left. Though she did leave a small, silver Buddha in the bathroom. And, of course, she’d left the chair.

Emile has the luxury of working out of his home, a penthouse in the heart of the Right Bank of Paris, the market district of rue Mont -orgueil. It’s a small flat but it’s rare to find an apartment with a private terrace and a view. From the roof, he can see Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur, and the Museum of Modern Art.

He was up for a glass of water, and on his way back to bed decided to check his e-mail. He was expecting the cases to begin arriving again and this mysterious person of interest was the first.

Somebody at headquarters in Lyon has attached a brief newspaper story about a baffled stranger in Valdepeñas, south of Madrid -a man asking for directions. Police were called but the man was not found. He’d disappeared. The thing is, he kept asking for directions to different places: Sevilla, Granada, Tarifa, Marbella, and half a dozen other towns, cities, and villages. First he’d ask for food and then directions, always to someplace new. He was very courteous, always grateful. The good people of Valdepeñas were worried about him.