Faith invites Consuela to Córdoba for the weekend, and Consuela hesitantly says yes. Faith is her only sister. She’s blood. Even though Consuela tends to walk away from interactions with her sister hurt and slightly bruised, Faith means well. Faith is on her team and that’s enough. Their parents are in Switzerland, in Neuchâtel, which is a bit of a commute. Consuela talks to her dad every Saturday morning. She used to take her first coffee and a cigarette and the phone; now, though, it’s just coffee and conversation. Last Saturday, he’d once again proclaimed that his nose was still in fine form-that he and his nose were still in demand across France. He’d even had a call from a winery in the Okanagan region of Canada that was producing award-winning pinots.
Consuela books passage and arrives in Córdoba by nine o’clock. Rob picks her up and seems genuinely pleased to see her. Consuela is always taken aback by his looks. He seems more psychologist-like than Faith, with his round wire-rimmed glasses and neat gray beard. Combine his appearance with soft, welcoming eyes, and Rob is definitely someone with whom Consuela could see herself talking. But he’s a city planner, not a shrink. Maybe she could still talk with him. Don’t need a degree to have a conversation.
But Rob and Consuela only chitchat as they zigzag through the labyrinth of side streets and alleyways. When Consuela walks through the doorway, Faith hands her a drink.
“We’re having a few people over for a late dinner. Do you want to change?”
“Hi to you, too. Sure, I’d love to get out of these clothes.” Consuela is always impressed by Faith’s composed appearance. It was warm and humid today, but she seems cool and unaffected. Consuela is dripping, feels oppressed by the humidity.
“Rob, can you take Connie’s things to the guest room?”
The house is a sprawling, one-level six-bedroom home with servant’s quarters out back. A central courtyard can be seen, and entered, from every room. A full-time gardener works solely on this inner-garden sanctuary.
In her room, Consuela unfastens her bra. She thinks about corsets. Can you even buy a corset these days? She changes into a fresh dress and picks flat but stylish shoes. She splashes water on her face, washes her armpits, dabs on an adequate amount of perfume, and heads down to the living room. Rob hands her another drink. Two other couples and one man, an architect named Marc, have already arrived and are chatting, with drinks in hand, in the living room.
Consuela downs her drink. It’s a goddamned setup. That’s just perfect. Faith is playing matchmaker. And Consuela, the pathetic, spinster nurse. The unwanted, unloved sister. She immediately wants another drink, begins to peer around the room for a source.
Rob notices her thirsty look, hands her a glass of champagne. Faith scowls at him, then half smiles. The other two couples both have links to psychiatry. The wives stay at home with the kids; the men play with the minds of their patients.
“Oh, Connie could have been a doctor,” Faith says, as part of her introduction. “She had better marks than me. Better study habits, too.”
“Well, it’s never too late to pick up a degree,” Rob says, possibly trying to diffuse any perceived criticism.
“That’s right. You have to want it, though,” Marc adds. It doesn’t come off as advice. It’s a flat statement of fact, like he’s been there, done that.
“Did you know that Marc is the one who designed our house?” Faith picks up the champagne bottle and goes around the circle, fills glasses, skips Consuela’s.
“I didn’t design the outer deck,” Marc says. “Which is perfect, by the way.”
Faith smiles her thanks. “It’s a nice night. Shall we take in the view?” Faith poses the question but they all understand it’s a gentle request. On the way out, Rob hands Consuela another glass of champagne.
“Thanks,” she says.
“I had no idea she was going to do this.”
“It’s all right.”
Marc meets them in the hallway. Rob brushes by toward the deck, which overlooks Córdoba, the Great Mosque in the distance, glowing soft orange.
“I hope you’ll forgive me pushing my way into this dinner party. I wanted to meet you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I’ve seen pictures. Heard lots about you.”
“One syllable,” Consuela says, shaking her head. “I don’t date men with names that have only one syllable. My first marriage, one syllable. Not good.” She’s feeling the champagne. It seems the hallway is tilted slightly. Now it’s straight, oh, now it’s tilted.
“My name is Marcello,” he says. “I just wanted to meet you. I just came out of… I’m not sure I want to date anybody. Not sure about dating. This is just a dinner party, yes? If I have three syllables do I qualify for a simple conversation?”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry. Yes. This is just dinner. My sister… I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“It was my idea. You’re beautiful, by the way. Even more so when you’re apologetic.”
Just when you think you have it figured out, just when you’re sure of yourself, that’s when the rug gets pulled. She feels humbled and little. Consuela has to admit, he’s pretty good at this. Her walls are down and he’s standing in the front hallway. But now there are a lot of doors, and most are locked. Yes, yes, he’s a deep-voiced, lovely man. Shoulder-length dark hair and a kind face. He obviously likes her, but Consuela skims across the surface of him and thinks about Columbus. The magician, the spinner of tall tales, the enchanter.
Somewhere below is a horse-drawn carriage moving under the canopy of trees. Consuela can hear the steady rhythm of horse hooves hitting the street-a hollow sound that carries.
They sit down to dinner at a long table, staggered with cande-labras, fine china, gleaming silverware. An obscenely massive bouquet of white lilies and gerberas is at mid-table. They all sit west of the flowers, Faith at the head of the table, Rob beside her. Marcello is seated across from Consuela; Donna and Alf Rubinski across from Mary and Gordon Money.
I’m in hell, Consuela is thinking. This is a decent man. He’s bright and not an ass-wipe like my ex, but this is all irrelevant. She compares every man to Columbus -and they do not fare well. She’s head over heels in love with a man who’s locked in a mental asylum and who thinks he’s Christopher Columbus. She can’t shake him. She can’t stop thinking about him. His stories reverberate long after he’s done. His eyes and his voice haunt her on the days she is off work.
I’m screwed, she thinks. I can’t speak or act like I’m in love. Not here. Faith will go berserk. I have to pretend availability. Is this love? Is it love I feel for Columbus? My God, what’s the test for love? A long line of clichés come to mind, things like inability to sleep, to eat, and to focus. Anxiety attacks. Obsession. Fixations. Lust. Desire. Oh, she’s got desire all right.
“I don’t understand a thing about love,” Consuela says.
Everyone at the table stops mid-fork or mid-lifting of wineglasses and looks at her.
Fuck, did I just say that out loud? she thinks. Consuela looks around the table at the stopped people.
“This is the reason we have poetry, and art, and dance,” Marcello says. “The artists help us to understand this mystery, yes?”
“Could you be any more fucking romantic?”
“You don’t like the romance?”
“No, I like the romance just fine.” Faith is staring at her-no glaring-waiting for her to dismiss Marcello because she’s already in love. Faith is waiting to pounce on her because she’s in love with a patient, because she lied about dumping the patient.
Consuela turns to Marcello. She can’t see through all his earnestness, his attempt to save her, his effrontery of charm.
She lowers her voice, leans toward him. “I’m just not as grounded as I… I’m just not open to romance right now.”
“It’s not a test,” Marcello says. “It’s a conversation at dinner.”
“I know. I know it’s not a test. It’s just, I feel I owe you an explanation.”
“You owe me nothing. I expect nothing. More wine?” He holds the bottle above her glass, smiles encouragement, and she nods.
Freedom, she thinks. Freedom is so seductive. Take everything off the table. Take agendas, perceived or true, off the table. Take away desire, lust, attraction, even friendship. Strip all that away. Disallow it. Make it just a conversation between two human beings. What’s left is a potent and dangerous form of seduction. Some part of Consuela wants to know why. Why is there no desire? Why is there no offer of something more?
The people around the table continue talking, eating, drinking. Faith continues to watch with hawk eyes.
“You said something about just coming out of a relationship?” Consuela asks.
“Yes, it was beautiful but only for a very short period of time.” He smiles-more a grimace and a smile together, actually. “Sometimes it is like that, yes? We have been broken apart for a year and three months now.”
But regardless of his charm, and this spacious seduction, Marcello begins to rub her the wrong way. He’s too charming. Too agreeable. Too willing to forgive and understand. There is something unbelievable about him. Consuela would love it if he’d look at her with those puppy-dog eyes of his and tell her that she’s an idiot or that she drinks too much or that she has a potty mouth.
“What happened?”
“She left me,” he says with clear emphasis on the “me” that says: it’s unthinkable that anybody would choose to leave somebody as wonderful as him, and also, he does not want to talk about this.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Ah, it’s a painful thing.” Marcello’s eyes fill with tears. He looks away.
Oh for fuck’s sake, Consuela thinks. It’s been over a year.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It must have been a very difficult breakup.”
Before dessert is served, Consuela is in the bathroom. She’s just pulled up her dress, pulled down her panties, and is sitting on the toilet when someone knocks on the door. Maybe they’ll go away if I ignore them, she thinks. The knock comes again, a little louder this time.
“Just a minute,” Consuela says. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Connie, it’s me. Let me in.”
It’s too far to reach the door, so Consuela half walks, her dress around her waist, panties at her knees, to the door and lets Faith in. She sits back down on the toilet. “I’m not done yet, Sis.”
Faith is leaning forward toward the mirror, looking at her hair, her makeup, looking for the darkness under her eyes that seems to get harder and harder to hide. She lights four more candles on another candelabra-squints at the side of her face. “Isn’t he a dream?” She does not look at Consuela.
“Who?” Of course she knows who but wants to irritate her sister.
“Marc,” she says. “Marcello. And I happen to know he’s available.”
“Yes, we had that conversation.”
“And?” She pulls her shoulders up, and one at a time, sniffs her underarms. Reaches for the powder and puffs both her armpits.
“And he’s charming and very agreeable.”
“I knew it. I knew you two would hit it off.”
“I never said-”
“Oh, you don’t have to. I can tell.”
Consuela wipes. Her smell-a sweet, strong, sexual scent-takes her to Columbus.
“Would you risk your deepest dream on a game? You have dreams, don’t you, Consuela?”
“Yes, of course I have dreams. I want to be a mother someday, though I’m in no panic about this. I’d like to get married again, more carefully this time. And I want to see Tibet.”
They are sitting on a bench, in a long hallway of arches. Columbus has his back against the stone wall. The day is stranded inside a pewter sky, but it’s warm, and not yet raining. They face a small courtyard with a tiled fountain in its center. An eight-point-star-shaped fountain with only a trickle of water. The tiles are in disrepair but it is easy to imagine that they were beautiful once. There must be ten shades of blue in that bottom row, Consuela thinks.
“So if I said to you that I will guarantee a healthy baby and a loving husband but only if you can roll a seven or an eleven on these dice, would you?”
“Maybe.”
“What if I said this was your only chance? Make the roll and it happens-but anything other than a seven or an eleven and it’s over. You won’t have a baby. You won’t marry. You won’t visit Tibet. Ever.”
“Those are not good odds,” she says. “I’d have to be pretty desperate.”
They clomp into the fortress courtyard. The coolness of the enclosure hits like a wave as they ride from the pounding, exposed heat, into the stone fortress. The temperature difference under the entranceway arches is palpable and welcome. They dismount the horses, toss their reins, and storm up through the stone corridors to the poolroom. Royal hangers-on, courtiers, petitioners, lobbyists appear and bow and lurk in the shadows. They seem to spring up like colorful weeds who wish they were flowers. An infestation of seedy color wherever the king and queen travel. Ferdinand opens the door and motions for them to use it. Nine men bow and mumble “As you wish” and other agreements as they leave. When they are alone, Ferdinand turns to the door and screams, “Sycophant pigs! Flattering parasites! ¡Manájate!”
Columbus stifles a laugh. Places his hand across his mouth to hide his grin. Tries to pull his face down into an even expression.
“Oh, laugh, Mr. Columbus. It’s funny, is it not?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It is funny.”
The king walks toward one of the windows and looks into the courtyard. Two chambermaids stand in the enclave talking. He stands watching them for some time. Silence lulls the room. Columbus wonders what it is the king is looking at. He seems fixated.
“What is it that they require?” Ferdinand says, turning around and picking up a stick. He cracks the small formation of colored balls by poking a white ball at his end with the stick. The balls scatter across the smooth surface and he stands back amazed. He’s thrilled every time by this small explosion of color.
“Well, I am merely your humble servant, but I think they want to be close to power, close to greatness, close to God.” Columbus sinks the six ball into the far corner and draws the white ball back so it lines up with the seven. “They hope your greatness will rub off on them.” He drops the seven and leaves himself set up for the three ball, a table-length, along-the-cushion shot. “It is well understood, if you have the ear of the king, even for a short time, you have power,” he says. He puts too much English on the three and it ricochets to mid-table.
“Are you speaking of our courtiers? The army of bastard sycophants who surround and annoy me?”
“Was that not the question, Your Majesty?”
“No, but regardless, your answer was an insightful one. I was referring to those enigmatic creatures who haunt me-women. What is it they require from us? That was my question, and I suspect you will have no easy answer to this. What is it that women want from us, Mr. Columbus?”
The king lines up the eleven ball and cracks the white ball with just enough bottom to send it flying off the table and through a window. They hear it clacking across the courtyard. The king picks a new white ball from a golden bowl on the window ledge and hands it to Columbus.
Columbus wonders if he should try to lose. He is playing the king, after all. It wouldn’t do to severely beat the king at a game he loves. He places the ball on the table and then proceeds to clear the table, knocking the eight ball into the side on a double bank to win.
“Thank you for the game, Your Majesty. I was lucky to win.”
“No. You played well. You deserved to win. Another game?”
The king smiles as he places the colored balls into a tight formation. Columbus is disarmed. He feels closer than ever to winning the king’s favor for his proposition. Here he is, a lowly navigator, not even Spanish, playing pool with the king. Riding beautiful horses with the king through the streets of Córdoba. He is inside the highest inner circle. He is dizzy with how close he stands to the power. He must certainly let the king win the next game. All the games that follow, in fact, he should lose as skillfully and subtly as possible.
“Women,” the king says as he hands the stick to Columbus, “confuse and confound me. Yet they are ridiculous, necessary mysteries.” He picks a white ball from the bowl and heaves it through the open window. They hear three clicks and a splash.
Columbus breaks the formation on the table. “There is a problem with the queen?” Three solid-colored balls disappear. His next shot should be the two ball, a solid, in the far right corner. But he picks a striped ball and lines it up.
“You wouldn’t purposely try to lose because I am the king, would you, Mr. Columbus?”
“In all honesty, Your Majesty, I should like very much to ask a question.”
“In all honesty, proceed.”
“Should I try to lose, Your Majesty? Would that be a good idea?”
“Well, you’re a wise and intelligent man, Mr. Columbus.” He leans back against a pillar. Smiles. “We had a very enjoyable day together, didn’t we?”
“It was a glorious day.” Columbus stands up straight and looks at the king. A gangly, slouching young man with deep-blue eyes. If he were not the king, Columbus would not trust him. Come to think of it, just because he is a king was no reason to trust him. Deceitful, cruel, and vicious were words frequently attributed to this king, and even the queen. Too much leisure time, Columbus thinks. But this king has been nothing but honest, forthright, and kind to him.
Do I lose, or do I play the game the best I can? Do my ships teeter in the balance on this decision? How important is it to me that I win?
Columbus walks around the table. Observes the obvious two-ball shot, then sees a three-ball combination that would drop the four ball. A difficult combination shot. The formation of the three balls appeals to Columbus. He thinks about the similar star formation; three stars slashed across the sky like a belt. He chooses this shot. He chooses to try and win, regardless of any consequences. Decides he must be Christopher Columbus whether it hurts his dream or not. He bets on this king’s honor and drops the four ball gently and exactly.
“An excellent shot,” Ferdinand says and claps Columbus on the shoulder.
Columbus wins seven more games. The king doesn’t even come close to winning a game. He misses shots completely, shoots the wrong color, and sinks the eight ball twice. They stop and Ferdinand calls for wine.
They do not feel the direct heat of the day inside the stone building, but the air is blistering and still. Long streams of sunlight from high, narrow fenestrations slash through hanging dust in the room. The king walks the entire long room away from the pool table to an elevated throne, pulls his robes aside, and sits. Three servants bring wine to the king and then deliver a goblet to Columbus. The wine is red and slightly chilled.
“Leave,” the king says to the servants, who bow out the door and shut it behind them.
“Have you had sufficient time to ponder my riddle, Mr. Columbus?” The king must speak loudly in order to assure that Columbus hears him at the far end of the room.
“The problem with women in general or the queen specifically, Your Majesty?”
“Come down here, Mr. Columbus. So we can talk.”
Columbus walks toward the throne. Stands before the elevated king and is reminded of his place. He bows his head.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty. I have no answers to the riddle of women.” He thinks of the simple connection he has with Selena, the more complex but enjoyable time he spends with Beatriz. And then he thinks about the queen. His relationship with the queen has become impossibly complex and dangerous. It would be prudent to ignore any feelings or thoughts he held for Isabella. Isabella was the queen. She was the queen. This man’s wife.
Ferdinand’s face transforms into something awful. As if painful memories have suddenly risen to the surface of churning water. Hopeless despair. He covers his face with his hands. “Women, Mr. Columbus, women. There are times, in the middle of the night, in complete darkness, when they weep. I cannot understand why they weep and yet I am held at fault for their weeping. They cannot, or will not, say exactly what my fault is, yet at these times they wish to be held by me and told that everything is well and good. But I do not believe this to be true. So they wish me to form lies in order to comfort them and when I say to them, in order to be truthful and clear, ‘You wish for me to lie to you?’ they weep with more water from their eyes than I have ever seen. And these tears, also, are my doing. Does this make sense to you?”
“Are you speaking of the queen, Your Majesty?”
“The queen? No. The queen does not weep. She has never wept. She is the strongest woman I know. The queen and I have no connubial battle. We have no troubles. She chases the Jews from our lands. She chases the Moors from our lands. She and her bloody Inquisition chase heretics from our lands. She chases people we simply don’t like from our lands. And I? I chase women. A simple and elegant arrangement, don’t you think, Mr. Columbus?”
Columbus does not answer.
“What troubles you, sir? Are you pondering your ships or do you, too, contemplate the quandary of women? Or are you ill?”
“Acquiring the ships is often on my mind, Your Majesty.”
“And what does the queen say?”
“She says wait until the fall of Granada.”
“Well, that’s what you should do then. When we walk the courtyards of the Alhambra, you’ll have your ships. And while we wait for the queen to reclaim Granada, we shall play much pool and do much riding. For you are also a mystery, Mr. Columbus. You wish to sail off into the unknown. Possibly to your death. To introduce Christianity to Japan and the Indies. To bring honor and wealth to Spain. This wealth part is the portion of your proposal that most interests the queen and me. We believe you are either very brave or very stupid-or absolutely crazy. But regardless of all these things, you are inspired. Yes. Mostly, I think, you are inspired. Come, let’s play more pool.” He grabs the wine bottle and his glass in one hand, and Columbus ’s sleeve in the other. Pulls the baffled navigator the length of the room.
“I tell you what, Mr. Columbus. Since you are a good friend of Spain, I will make you a proposition.” He gathers the balls from the pockets around the table. “I’ll play you one game for your ships.”
Columbus turns toward the King, shocked by the realization that this may be it. He’s shocked by the whimsical, careless nature of this offer. “What?”
“I’ll play you for your ships. Win the next game and three caravels are yours. Provisions included. You’ll have to find men dumb enough to follow you.”
Columbus is stunned. For ten years he had been incubating the dream, cajoling the doubters, fighting his own doubts. For ten years he had been envisioning a world that was smaller than commonly held beliefs. A world that could be traversed with a journey by sea to the west. The university commission did not believe it could be done. But they did not know all he knew. The Lord Himself could speak before the commission and they would not believe. “Look, fellows,” the Lord would say, “I think perhaps there is a chance some of your calculations are off. I ought to know. From where I sit I can pretty well see, well, everything.” But if He did not have the proper upbringing or education, the commission would deny, deny, deny. They make decisions based on the applicant’s social standing or nobility, and not on truth. Bureaucratic bastards. And now, here, before Columbus the king offers to fulfill his dream, not based in a belief of that vision but, rather, on a game of angles. It was too much.
“I am sorry, sire, but I cannot.”
“Why, Mr. Columbus, have you lost your faith for this adventure?”
“No, Your Majesty. I… I need someone to believe in me enough to take a chance. It would not be moral to leave it to a game of angles and colorful balls.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?”
“I’m a navigator, not a pool player.”
“Do you not believe in this dream of yours enough to take a chance?”
“You ask too much, sire.”
“Perhaps you do, too.”
Columbus sits beside a small statue of the Virgin Mary. He feels sick to his stomach. Crosses his arms. Closes his eyes. Drinks slowly from his goblet. Am I willing to risk all on a game? Is it a risk? The king plays badly. The king is not good with these angles. Perhaps if I am asking others to take a risk on me, I should be willing to take a risk also.
The king walks to a window, his hands clasped behind his back, and observes the courtyard.
“Fine,” Columbus says. “One game for the ships.”
“Well spoken, Mr. Columbus.”
Columbus breaks but no balls go down. It’s the only chance he gets. Ferdinand clears the table in a stellar display of deceitfulness. With each ball the king sinks, Columbus ’s spirits sag a little bit more. At the end of it, he cannot face the king.
“Well done, Your Majesty,” Columbus says. “I’m ruined.”
Ferdinand smiles kindly. Turns a compassionate face to the navigator. “No,” he says, “you are not ruined. Neither is your idea of sailing west. If you had won, I would have personally seen to your ships, somehow. But the queen always has the final say in matters of the sea. In fact, she has the final say in matters of war, roads, religion. Almost everything.”
“There’s still a chance then?”
“Oh, Mr. Columbus, you’ve only proven your desire, your commitment, and your determination. These things, I will communicate to the queen.”
Columbus bows his head, then very quietly says, “Thank you. Thank you.” And then he looks up at the king, who is eyeing the pool table. “But you do not want me to explain to you why I know this journey is possible?”
“Yes, yes, yes… I’m sure you have your reasons.”
“This new route could be very lucrative for Spain -”
“Yes, yes… money is good.”
“And of course I will carry God and Christianity to Japan and India -”
“Well, that’s fine. That’s a fine thing to do. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear that their own system of beliefs, whatever it may be, is… well… wrong.”
“And I will claim whatever land I might discover for Spain.”
“Hmmm… expansion is good, I suppose… Yes. Very good. Quite convincing. Yes.”
“And I will-”
“ Columbus! Enough! I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy a few thousand shares of Columbus Sails West Incorporated… see where it takes me.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Ferdinand touches Columbus ’s shoulder and the navigator looks up into the king’s dark eyes. “Another game, my friend?” the king says.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I have lost the stomach for pool today. I think I have to lie down.”
“Tomorrow then, Columbus. I’ll send up one of my special chambermaids. She’ll make sure you have a good sleep.” He turns, draws open double doors, finds a small crowd of courtiers in the hallway. “Tomorrow, Mr. Columbus!” he shouts. “Out of the way, you bloodsucking sycophants!” And they mutter after him down the hallway.
Emile, to his surprise, has managed to keep a few friends in the company. He calls one of his Spanish contacts when he arrives in Marbella -finds out that there is a concierge who will work for Interpol-for a price. “He’s very reliable,” the agent says. “I helped him with a family matter a few years ago.” Emile finds the hotel and checks in. It’s too much money, but it’s the hotel where his contact works. His room faces the Mediterranean. The balcony looks out over the tops of palm trees. From the hotel lounge a walkway leads onto the beach. It’s clear and windy-a good steady breeze coming from the east. Emile finds the concierge and convinces him to ask around about a confused man. Emile emphasizes the fact this man will likely appear baffled-he might not know who he is or where he’s going.
“I think he thinks he’s Christopher Columbus,” Emile says. “A theory. This is only a theory,” he adds. He’d not spoken these words out loud before, but all the pieces added up to this simple statement. The three ships down south. Isabella. Your Majesty. The concierge gives him an eyebrow-raised, skeptical stare. Emile makes his face go hard, stone-cold, and flat. The concierge sighs and nods. Of course, there was much that did not add up. Morocco didn’t make sense for a man who might think he’s Christopher Columbus. And this man’s sense of direction seems to be absent. One would think that Columbus would always know where he was. Ah, it’s just a theory, Emile reminds himself.
For three days, Emile bides his time. He walks around his room naked-wearing a towel occasionally-and semi-drunk, quite drunk occasionally. He watches television and orders room service. He curses the stupidity of television, turns it off, and drifts into the minefield of memories involving his ex-wife. Conversations about his work that turned into three-day blowouts about how obsessed he was, how he was never home, how he was distracted by his work when he was home. But she would have loved this room, this view, being in a fine hotel on the ocean. He’s finding it more difficult to recall why they actually fell apart. There had to be more to it than his obsessions. But there wasn’t really a defining moment. He’d been tracking someone in Berlin, and when he came home hardly anything remained in the apartment. It was an equitable splitting up of belongings. She’d been fair. Emile didn’t bring a lot of material possessions into their life. She’d taken what had been hers, and not much was left at the end of that process. He sits up in bed, pours another whiskey, and turns the television back on.
At 3:30 A.M. on the third night, Emile can’t sleep, can’t watch the television anymore, and doesn’t want to drink anything. He heads for the roof of the hotel to get some air, to breathe, to move his legs. There’s a jazz club on the top floor. He gets off the elevator and walks down the hallway, barefoot and wearing the hotel housecoat over his trousers, looking for a stairwell to the roof. He can hear the sound of someone tuning a piano coming from inside the club. Emile walks past the door, which is slightly ajar, and is halfway down the hall before he stops-acknowledges the pull of the piano. He hasn’t played since before the Paris incident. He hasn’t felt the desire to play.
Inside the doorway it takes a while for his eyes to adjust. Through the windows the sparkling lights of Marbella arc along the shore of the Mediterranean. One thin spotlight shines directly onto a piano sitting on a small stage against the far wall. The man at the piano has a full gray beard and a no-nonsense face. His focus is on tuning the piano. He looks up at Emile quickly, then back to his job. He says nothing. Emile stands in the entranceway, awkward but also drawn to the pure sound of the piano. The single notes ring out-they hang in the room. Emile thinks of a raven, or a hawk, suspended in an air current, wings motionless except for a small flutter. A minute later, the gray-bearded man is packing up his gear. He looks toward Emile.
“Still there?”
“I-”
“Come and play then. It’s what you need, yes? I will have a nightcap-a little Courvoisier. It is my custom. And I will listen.” The man has a thick Slavic accent. Emile’s not sure that he wants an audience tonight. It seems his feet are nailed to the wooden floor.
“It’s what you need,” the man says. “I’ll pour some drinks in the back.” He does not move like an old person. There is a lithe vitality in his walk.
Emile sits at the piano. It’s a Steinway, a good choice for a jazz piano. He read a story in an online news service that Keith Jarrett plays a Steinway. Emile plays a single note, a middle D, and lets it ring out in the dark room. Then he begins to unravel all he was taught as a child. He purposely forgets how chords work. He un-remembers scales, theories, and circles of fifths. He plays notes and combinations of notes that make no sense-he embraces dissonance, and yet there is an ephemeral order. Emile draws on feelings and colors. If he stumbles upon a musical cliché, he will repeat it, warp it, ruin it to the point where it becomes original and new. He remembers scents. Rain. Patchouli. Sandalwood. Cedar. Leather. He plays weather. He plays the stars in the village of his youth in France. The color of ocean at dusk-the indigo sky meeting the water evenly. The way dried grasses touch the wind. He plays the memory of his wife’s long legs and slender toes. He plays a scant memory of her voice speaking his name-whispering his name over and over inside an absence of periwinkle. And then he comes to what happened in Paris and he plays this, too. He plays its pain, its sadness, its loss and remorse. He begins to play the damaged parts of himself. Half an hour later, he is improvising inside a sixteen-bar blues riff he didn’t know he knew. The gray-bearded man is sitting at a table in the middle of the club sipping his cognac and reading a newspaper by candlelight. Emile notices there is a snifter of cognac sitting on the bench beside him. He stops playing, turns around on the bench, and looks out into the club. “Thank you,” he whispers.
The man pulls the newspaper down, away from his face. “It’s nothing to pour two drinks when I am already pouring one,” he says.
“No, not the cognac-”
“I know what you meant.”
Emile reaches for the snifter and sips. It’s lukewarm. How long have I been playing? he thinks.
“I’m here every night. Come when you like and play. Or not. Just come for Courvoisier if you prefer.”
“I’m… I don’t play well enough to do this piano justice.”
“It is not always about technique-but it’s always about heart. What more can we do? Your playing is suggestive of Monk’s style. I saw him once. It was amazing the way he would get up in the middle of a song and do that little dance of his, around in a circle beside the piano. Completely absorbed in the music.”
Emile finishes his cognac and begins to put his hand into his pocket. He wants to pay for the drink, at least.
“Stop. I own this place,” the man says, his voice flattened out and matter-of-fact. “I can buy drink for whomever I please. Besides, you gave me this beautifully broken music of yours.”
The next day, he goes down to the beach at two in the afternoon, when most sane people are out of the sun. He swims two hundred strokes exactly, straight out into the gulf, then turns around and swims back to shore. He does not remember making a conscious decision to choose the number two hundred. It just seemed like the right number.
On the morning of the fifth day, he opens the door. “Oh, hello,” he says. “I desperately need coffee.”
The concierge is a short, efficient man with a very smooth complexion and he smells like cigarettes. He flips open his cell phone, says something very quickly, ending with Emile’s room number.
“I have some news,” the concierge says, and then pauses.
He takes Emile’s money without blinking. “I believe your missing man was in a bar near here, a few months back,” he says. “A place called the Pom-Pom. It’s a gay bar, you know? Several of the patrons of this bar showed interest in your man-if you know what I mean. But it seems he only wanted to talk.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“We are quite certain. I don’t think he belonged there, though, if you catch my meaning. He kept looking around-said he was worried about the Inquisition. The patrons of this bar thought he meant the police.”
“Do you know where he went? Did he say anything about where he was going?”
“Apart from his nervousness, he did not appear to be confused. He did say he was a sailor and that he would be going to sea. Eventually, he went home with someone.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Nobody in this bar has a name.”
The concierge opens the door and Emile hands him a couple more folded bills.
Emile’s mind is racing. What was this guy doing in a gay bar? Did he actually get picked up?
Emile is back in Paris for a few days to catch up on paperwork, to put a few of his simpler cases to bed, to recharge. He puts his book down on the bed. The apartment misses his wife. He misses her. It’s been two years, and he still carries the hole created by her absense. In the kitchen, he pours boiling water over a tea bag in a mug. I’m alone, Emile thinks. Get used to it. So is my strange man of great interest. He’s somewhere in Spain.
Emile crawls into bed-places his tea next to his laptop on the bedside table. He knows exactly what he would say to this man. He would tell him that no matter how far he runs, or how much he drinks, or how badly he wants a new beginning, his life is always with him. There is no separation from your own shadow. Emile sniffs, smiles. This is the culmination of his wisdom after two years of therapy.
He imagines this man living alone somewhere in the mountains, perhaps in the Basque region, on the French side, in a small village where he works as a laborer. He disappears into the mountains on weekends-comes back with fish. He is known in the town only as the arrantzale-the fisherman. He will be exhausted from his day, barely able to eat his soup. He will stagger home to his apartment above a wine store, walk through the doorway, and flick on the light. Maybe he will look down at his own shadow, which is sprawled into the hallway, sigh heavily, and reach for the ardo before he closes the door. He will down half the bottle in his first attack. Some of the wine will drip down his chin and he will not care. He wants sleep. He wants dreamless ironclad sleep and then backbreaking labor in the morning. And then more wine, and more dead sleep.
Emile sits up in bed. He has a sudden shadow-memory, an image of his ex-wife beside him in the bed. Like when a cat dies and you think you see the cat moving from room to room, or sitting at the door waiting to be let out in the morning. The ghost cat exists only as a hazy afterburn in your retina. But, of course, she is not there. She’s in Guadeloupe with her sister. She’s out of his life. Has taken her leave. Moved on. This half memory is enough to shock him fully awake. It’s eerily quiet, a muffled lull-the street sounds pulled back. Even Paris can be becalmed. Emile listens. The clock in the kitchen has the loudest tick he’s ever heard. Water is running somewhere in the building.
He wishes the man well. He hopes he is able to successfully escape any horrors that chase him in the night. If he is alive. If. He’s been off the grid for a long time.
Consuela searches the words Hafiz, Columbus, fifteenth century, Persian, chess, professor, and teacher. Hafiz because of his knowledge of the poet, his poems, and his comment about reading them in Persian. Columbus and fifteenth century for the obvious reasons. Chess because she suspects he’s very, very good-much better than he pretends. And, finally, teacher and professor because he lectures-he seems like a teacher. It’s a guess, but a guess is all she has. On the thirty-fourth page of her search she finds an oblique reference to Mehmet Nusret, the birth name of Turkish humorist and author Aziz Nesin, who died in 1995. He had apparently championed free speech, especially when it came to the right to openly criticize Islam.
On a whim, she adds this name to a new search, with the words April and March. Columbus came to the institute in April, but nobody knows where he was before that. These are more calculated suppositions. Consuela is sitting at her computer with a glass of chardonnay on the desk beside the screen. After almost two hours, her search is still fruitless. She forgoes the glass and drinks out of the bottle.
Columbus times his journal entries so Consuela is not working when he writes. This morning he finds a corner of the upper deck, far from the small fountain that does not function-spouts no water, only fills with leaves and rainwater. He can imagine what it would have been like, where the water would have flowed-the mist, the spray-what it would have felt like to have the luxury of that mist on a hot day.
Row after row of desks. These desks are tiered. They rise up and away from the center of this picture. The lights are slightly dimmed. There are people-they are probably students. They’re all looking at a focal point at the front of this room. Many of the students are typing into their laptop computers. Most of them have laptops. Many of these students are smiling. A few are laughing. As if the person teaching the class has just said something funny. There is no way to determine what kind of class this is. Most of the students are female.
He pans the front row for clues. All women in the front row. On the far right a young woman is looking down. She’s holding a cell phone in her lap-slightly under her laptop, which sits on the little desk-probably texting someone. Or reading a text message.
Analog to digital. That’s what’s happening in this classroom. A human being-the analog bit-will offer up information and the students will smash it to bits and bytes, ones and zeros. They will do this 350 unique ways. And they will do it almost instantly.
There is a woman in this frozen moment who is not translating the lecturer’s words into digital. She sits mid-row, about four tiers up. She is looking into the center of the picture. If the lecturer is the one holding an imagined camera, she’s looking directly into his, or her, eyes. She has shoulder-length red hair. She’s wearing a navy-blue blouse. Her head is tilted into her hand, her thumb rides her jawline, and two fingers rest on her cheek. Her other hand rests in her lap. Her eyes penetrate. Even in this stopped-time image where nothing moves, her eyes cut through any pretense.
A brunette-haired woman in the front row is taking notes the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper. Is it that she can’t afford a swanky Macintosh computer? When he surveys the room, the vast majority of little lights in the center of the backs of the screens are apples. Or is it something more romantic with this woman? Perhaps she’s found this method of note taking is the most efficient way for her to learn. Something in him is drawn to this woman who either purposely, or by economic circumstances, rejects the prevalent technology.
In the second tier, a man with dark-rimmed eyeglasses is focused on his computer screen. He could be playing a game or writing a book. He seems far away. Even in this snapshot, there is distance, a disconnection between him and the lecturer.
In the aisle desk, three rows up, a blond-haired woman is crying. Why didn’t he see her before now? He probably went past her ten times in his mind. Her mascara is running down her cheeks. Nobody around her seems to know she is crying. She is not afraid to let the lecturer see her tears. She does not wipe them away because those around her would begin to catch on. Now that he has found her, he can sense her sorrow. The physicality of her pain is so apparent in her eyes, and mouth, and shoulders. Her eyes fluctuate from a fierce don’t you dare pity me to a resigned grief. Her mouth is frozen in a sad, even line. Her shoulders are wilted, careless. Her posture is not beneficial to breathing. Her breathing stays high in her chest, never goes deep. These are silent tears. Is she experienced in crying silently? Why?
How does this picture fit into his life? He can’t recognize anybody. No names come when he goes over this image. He thinks maybe he’s at the middle of it. He’s the teacher, or the lecturer, but what does he know that he could teach?