“How are you?”
He flips open his robe, reveals a steady erection. “First one in weeks.”
Nothing surprises her anymore when it comes to Columbus. “Side effect from the drugs?”
“One can only hope,” he says.
“You must be pleased.”
“It scares me. These drugs scare me. I spent months that felt like years out of my mind and… now, two weeks stuck in a hellish nightmare in which I am at sea, and tempted by Satan. And I don’t do well.” He stops, looks up into the sky, moves his hand along the stubble at his jawline. Swallows hard. “I don’t know if I was dreaming or hallucinating.”
She can’t see his eyes. Consuela was not expecting this vulnerability. She drags a chair over, makes a shushing sound in the morning, makes two long lines in the gravel, sits down, and looks at his unshaven face.
“ Columbus is at sea. I am at sea. I am on the deck of a ship, which I command. And we are adrift in a thick mist. The mist hangs, it persists, clings to us and we are becalmed. We do not see anything but the paleness, the heat is oppressive, and every time the young man walks by I am bothered. It is not a feeling I expected.”
The crewman is named Bertrand, a skinny young man. This is impossible, yet there it is again. Just thinking about him causes a reaction. There must be something wrong with me, Columbus thinks.
It has been two full days of this becalmed, thick fog, and each night Bertrand and Columbus meet at the starboard bow and talk about what to do. Tonight, Columbus cannot believe his ears.
“If you take me to your cabin,” Bertrand whispers, “I will tell you how to get out of here.”
“What?”
“Bed me,” he says, “and I will save you and your ships.”
“I do not lie down with men, and anyway, from what will you save us?”
“This fog, this becalmed death, this sitting dead in the water while food and water run down, this calm that numbs all hope, this-”
“-Enough. I admit we are in a little trouble. But we are only twenty-six days out. How do I know you have the power to save us from this?”
“You will have to act on your faith, your intuition, trust.”
Columbus turns away from the young man. With both hands firmly grasping the railing, he looks into the thick, black night. “No,” he says, “I will not.”
At noon of the next day there is only a white, even light all around them. Sunlight is brightly diffused. They cannot tell where the sun is, exactly. Crewmen begin to grumble out loud. Columbus stays in his cabin all day. He studies the charts and drinks. At sunset he walks the deck speaking to his crew. He tells them not to worry. “I have seen worse off the coast of Britain. There will be wind tomorrow,” he says. “This won’t last.” The men are silent in the face of his buoyancy.
That night, Bertrand continues his pursuit. “You are famous for your faith in the unbelievable, Columbus. Is my offer too much of a push for that faith?”
They are near Columbus ’s cabin, sometime after midnight. The watch has just changed. It is another dead, black night.
“I have faith in things that have small slivers caught up in reality.”
“If you bed me,” Bertrand says, “not only will I get you out of this fog but I will find the land you seek.”
“What?”
“I know exactly where the land is.”
“How could you? Nobody has ever been there before.”
“Has nobody ever been there before?”
Columbus peers into the shadow where Bertrand’s face is hidden. This boy could not possibly know how to find land, he thinks. He is bluffing. It is a bluff I would dearly love to call. How I would like to bed him if only he were a woman. Even with his scarred face and whispered voice, there is something irresistible. If only he were female. I have never had such feelings of lust, passion.
“Are we going to your cabin, Columbus?” Bertrand says.
God don’t let me say yes. I want to say yes, but I can’t. I yearn to say yes and take this young man to bed and see what happens with the weather and landfall.
“No, not for all the riches that Marco Polo spoke of,” Columbus says.
The next morning there is blue sky above the ship. Fresh air descends and there is muffled cheering from the decks of the other ships. Columbus is woken up by the cheers and celebratory shouting on his own ship. But as he rushes out on deck the cheers turn to cries of anguish and outrage as the blue sky is eradicated by a fog even thicker than before.
“It must be breaking up,” Columbus says. “You there. Climb up the rigging and see if the ceiling has lifted. Keep a watch up top and let me know if there’s any change.” A sailor drops a coil of rope and begins to climb up through the fog. When those on deck lose sight of him, they know the fog is not breaking up. Columbus turns and silently retreats to his cabin.
Consuela leans forward and tries not to smile. “This story, in which you found a man to be beautiful, horrifies you?”
“I am never attracted to one of my crew in a sexual way. How can this be, when I have had such affairs with Beatriz and Selena, and so many others? And then this young man comes along and I am suddenly attracted? How can this be?”
“You’ve had a rough few weeks. Relax.”
“Oh, it doesn’t end there.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes, there’s more.”
The four captains meet at noon on Columbus ’s ship. Talavera, Varela, and Pinzon all take the wine Columbus offers them, make their perfunctory offering to Jesus and God and the king and queen, and then drink in silence. Varela and Pinzon both choose to sit at the head of the table, Talavera doesn’t care, and Columbus invites them to gather at one end.
“Things go well on my ship,” Talavera says. “The men are happy in their work and do not concern themselves with the weather.” After a few minutes, he adds: “Admittedly, the weather is odd, but nothing to fear. Everything is fine.”
He’s grown a full mustache and beard since they left port. Varela and Pinzon have three or four days of beard growth. Columbus himself has not shaved for six days. All have dark shadows under their eyes and their clothing is unkempt. Varela and Pinzon nod their heads. In reality, they are just barely able to keep their crews from turning on them. The only thing that saves them all is the utter hopelessness of the situation regardless of who is in command.
“There is no fear on my ship,” Varela says. “We will wait it out. I’ve been in much worse situations off the coast of Africa.”
“Everything is fine on my ship as well. We are eager to move on to the new discoveries,” Pinzon says, holding his glass out for more wine. He’s a small weasel-like man with a long nose and throaty voice.
“I have never witnessed the calm seas such as these,” Talavera says. “It is very interesting.”
“This fog is thick as shit,” Varela says.
