Thomas Trofimuk - Waiting for Columbus

“Yes, what’s that saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?”

Eventually they move to the bar section at the back of the restaurant, where they order another bottle of wine. They start to go over everything they know about Columbus and Julian Nusret. They share information back and forth over good thick wine. They talk about the fact he was found swimming in the Strait of Gibraltar. Consuela does a distilled retelling of the adventures of Columbus. She talks about his escape and his swim across the strait. Emile tells her everything he can remember about Julian Nusret.

“He was a professor who specialized in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century European history. Last spring, while on vacation in Spain with his family-he had a wife and two daughters-they wound up at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Madrid train station on the morning of the bombings. For some reason, he was separated from his family on a train platform the morning of March 11. His wife and two daughters were killed. There were reports of people seeing this Julian Nusret after the explosions but he disappeared… vanished.”

He tells her about the eyewitnesses, about the chaos, the screaming and blood everywhere. Witnesses say they remember the strangest things. A bird singing. An airplane. The temperature of the pavement. The curve of a twisted bit of train track. A hovering silence. Then the sirens started. “One of my witnesses said the missing man was crying. One woman only noticed somebody holding a leather bag, looking through the rubble. Apparently he stopped to help several people get out of the wreckage.”

Emile reaches across the table, gently slides his fingers inside hers. “My guys say just a few more days for the DNA results, but I’m convinced.”

Consuela feels like she’s going to cry and she doesn’t want to do that. She’s so tired.

Consuela joins Columbus on the upper dining-room patio where he is taking his coffee. She does not know how Columbus has managed to get Frederica to make him espresso every day. She’s almost afraid to ask. It’s midmorning. He’s got one of the sturdy wooden chairs from the dining room leaned back against the stucco wall. Thick clouds obscure the sun and extend to the horizon. The air is humid and sweet.

“I want to tell you a story,” she says. “Now that you have delivered the ships to Columbus and he’s out of the picture, I thought it might be a good time for me to tell you a story.”

“How fortuitous,” he says, smiling. “It seems I’ve temporarily run out, and here you are. Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet. You might not like this one.”

“I love all stories. Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay,” she says slowly. “This story is about this professor. He worked in Canada, at McGill University, in Montreal. His wife and two daughters were killed-”

“I don’t want to hear this story.”

“Not all stories are happy,” she says. “Not all stories can be happy.”

Columbus stands up. His chair folds onto the ground with a bang. The espresso demitasse shatters. “Stories can be whatever you want them to be,” he says.

Consuela fights the impulse to reach out and touch his hand. “Life is not a story, Columbus.”

“Of course life is a story. Life is only a story.”

“Sometimes bad things happen in our lives, and eventually we have to face them. We can’t hide… not forever.”

“This is not a good story,” he says. “I don’t like this. I can’t…”

Columbus is rocking back and forth, stalled between sitting again and leaving. His back is to her-his gaze is across the courtyard, toward a gathering of orange trees. Consuela pulls the folding chair off the ground, sets it back up, sits back down in her chair, and waits. He keeps rocking.

“I want to go,” he says, finally. He doesn’t move.

“Go then,” she says. “But can I say something before you go?”

Another long pause and then in a whisper: “Okay, but not that story.”

“It’s just… you were someone before you came here… I think you know this.”

“I’m not that guy. That’s not me.”

“Look, if you ever want to tell me your story, I can listen with an open heart. Telling someone what happened is important. It’s the same as you letting me know the story of how Columbus got his ships.”

He starts to mutter. She can barely hear him. “There’s no rule. There is no rule. There is no rule. There is no rule.”

“No rule?”

“Grieving. No rules about grieving. No rules about how to be sad.”

“I’m here when… if you’re ready. You know I can listen, and-”

“I’m not that guy. I have to go.” He starts off across the courtyard-small, quick steps. “That’s not me.”

Five days later, Consuela gets a call from Emile, excited and babbling like an idiot. It’s three in the morning. Consuela had just drifted off, after a night with the girls at a flamenco bar. She definitely had too much sangria, talked too much, had a puff of someone’s cigarette, drank some more, and got up and danced. She doesn’t dance. She most certainly does not dance flamenco. She did tonight.

She almost does not recognize his voice. He’s shouting above loud music, calling from the bathroom of a bar-telling her to Wake up. Wake up for Christ’s sake.

“Have you been drinking? Do you realize what time it is?”

“Those are excellent questions, Consuela. The answers are yes , and it doesn’t matter. I talked to his brother. He called from Quebec City two days ago.”

“Who? Whose brother?”

“Julian’s-your Columbus -his brother. We talked for an hour. He told me Julian and his wife honeymooned in Tangier.” The music gets louder for a few seconds, like someone just opened a door and then let it shut.

“Tangier, so?” Consuela is not following. Why is Emile so excited?

“Julian went on his honeymoon in Tangier. In Morocco. Across the Strait of Gibraltar. It’s the piece of the puzzle I didn’t have an answer for. I didn’t understand how the Strait of Gibraltar fit until now.”

“Okay, I’m wide awake.”

“Look, I’ll be back in Sevilla tomorrow night. I’ll call you when I get in.” He hangs up. Consuela sits and looks at the receiver in her hand until it beeps. She hangs it up and then sits in her bed until she has to pee. Sleep does not come easy. It is finally purchased with two glasses of warm milk and a shot of brandy. She does not work the next day, sleeps until 9 A.M., and goes to the gym. She calls Dr. Balderas, tells him what Emile told her. She meets Emile in the bar at Enrique Becerra. He kisses her gently on each cheek-then pulls back a bit, looks at her with pure joy. “I missed you, Consuela,” he says.

Dr. Balderas weaves his way through the restaurant toward their table.

“He was trying to connect with his wife,” Dr. Balderas says. Before he sits down, the owner, a man Consuela could easily imagine as Salvos from Columbus ’s story, comes over immediately and shakes the doctor’s hand.

“Wine?” he says. “I have an extraordinary pinot I know you’d love. The blackberry flavors practically jump out and slap you in the face.”

“That sounds fine, Ernesto.”

Dr. Balderas sits down across from Consuela and Emile, who look amused and surprised. “I’m a regular,” he says. “We play chess.”

“What do you mean he was trying to connect with his wife?” Consuela says.

“Swimming the Strait of Gibraltar was a subconscious desire to join his wife, the memory of his wife in Tangier. Something in Columbus was trying to connect with his wife.”

They sit silently as the waiter appears at their table, opens the wine with a certain efficiency, and pours with elegance. Dr. Balderas tastes the wine-lets a sliver roll around his mouth, waits, then looks up at the waiter and gives an almost imperceptible nod.