“Have you moved from the spot where you slept?” It’s Juan’s voice again. Columbus looks down toward his feet and can barely see them.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I can barely see the ground.”
“Well, don’t move. The cliff is not far. And-”
“Juan? Juan?”
“I’m here. I think you’re in front of me. Say something.”
“This is stupid. I’m going to move up this ridge,” Columbus says.
“Which direction is up? Where is the cliff?”
Columbus looks around at the white haze. “These are good questions,” he says. “So we wait then.”
“Yes. I think that would be wise.”
Columbus begins to feel tightness in his chest. He wants to run for the light and open air. A hopeless desire for blue sky grows in him. His eyes squint into the blankness for a direction. Then the scream pushes up from his gut to his brain. It explodes into his feet. Run! it says. Run! Get the hell out of this whiteness! Columbus begins to run in the direction he’s facing.
“Don’t move!” Juan screams. But Columbus runs smack into him and knocks him over the edge of the cliff.
Before he sits up, Columbus sees blue sky, feels a cool mountain breeze on his face, and hears a faint “Help, help, Columbus.”
He pokes his head over the edge of the cliff and sees Juan dangling by his sword belt from the root of a tree. “Juan?”
“Cristobal, lower some of that rope, quickly. What have you been doing up there all morning?”
“What happened?”
“Just lower the rope and pull me up. Please.”
When they are seated on the cliff’s edge, passing a bota of wine between them, Columbus looks at Juan and smiles.
“How did you fall off the cliff?”
Juan takes a good gulp of wine. Winces. Touches his head delicately. Looks at his friend.
“I guess I panicked and took a wrong step.” One more little incident like this and I could be dead, Juan thinks. This is the man who wants to drag all of humanity to their destiny across uncharted water? Who wants to create a new passage to India, and the lands of Marco Polo? This is the man who still has to convince men to follow him on his journey, a queen and a king to trust him? I should begin praying now and not quit until the day I die and still there would not be enough prayer.
A true friend, Columbus is thinking. Juan has lied kindly twice already to spare my feelings. This is a man worthy of much love. Here is the greater man of the two of us.
“I think perhaps it was I who panicked and knocked you over,” he says.
“No, Cristobal, it was-”
“Juan, you did no such thing. Let’s eat.”
Behind them, the distance of ten men, the sound of a rock falling. The skittering sound of it down a steep slope.
“Did you hear that, Juan?”
Juan pulls slowly on the hilt of his sword. Draws it out and stands up. “Yes.”
“There’s my problem,” Columbus says, not noticing Juan has drawn his sword. “That rock back there is my greatest problem.”
“A rock, Cristobal?”
“My biggest worry.”
“A rock-”
“That rock is the one true challenge of this entire adventure.”
Juan keeps his eyes and ears focused on the direction of the rock sound. “Perhaps we should eat something. I have some dried meat.” He twists and rustles in his pack behind him.
“You think I am crazy sometimes.”
Juan wants to scream,
“You have great pressures and hardships,” Juan says.
“All my pressures and any hardships are made small by my friends, by Beatriz and you, and Isabella and…” He encloses the end of his thought inside himself.
Columbus drinks from the skin. Passes it to Juan, who also drinks.
“Oh, getting the ships and men and supplies and finally embarking is challenge enough. Convincing ninety men that it’s perfectly safe to sail out past the point of no return, and then to sail beyond the point of going back safely. This is also a challenge.
“We will discover what there is to discover. This I am sure of. But to simply discover is not a discovery. Like the rock back there. It falls whether there is anybody to notice it or not.” He looks hard at Juan’s face. “We must make it back and shout the discovery to anyone who can hear. We must bring back news of the falling rock. We must prove the falling rock exists. Then, and only then, is our discovery complete.”
“Our discovery?”
“You are coming along, are you not?”
“I have no ocean skills. No experience. I don’t know.”
“Bring your paints and record what you see. Better, record what you feel.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dr. Balderas has decided that a day-trip to the ocean might be just the thing for about a dozen of his patients- the safe ones. It’s about sixty miles to Punta Umbria and its nearest beach, Playa La Mata Negra. Dr. Balderas remembers these beaches from his youth. His parents used to go to this particular beach every summer for two weeks, at least in the years when they weren’t fighting. He remembers the golden sand, crystal-clear water, and a particular silky quality to the air. How could this not be therapeutic?
On Friday afternoon, he sits down at his favorite cafe with a double espresso and makes a list. He’s been through the files. Pope Cecelia and Arturo make the list. Cecelia has been experiencing spells of lucidity in which she remembers her life, her name, her family. Arturo, well, he’s just slow. Not a bad thing on a sandy ocean beach. Columbus makes the list despite his escape attempts. Dr. Balderas is impressed with the effort he’s been seeing from Columbus. In his opinion, Columbus wants to get better, wants to get to the bottom of his delusion. That perceived honest effort goes a long way with Dr. Balderas. Mercedes is not on the list. The beach is a dirty place. And there’s nowhere for her to wash her hands. He chuckles to himself when he thinks about Mercedes. The audacity of a kleptomaniac with a hand-washing compulsion is too much. On Monday morning he gets his nurses to gather a group of thirteen peaceful patients, five orderlies, and three nurses, including Consuela, and by midmorning they’re headed to the beach.
The temperature is a very comfortable twenty-two degrees Celsius when they arrive. Not a cloud in the sky. The orderlies set up four large umbrellas, and the nurses spread blankets. Pope Cecelia demands a chair so she is higher than everyone else. An orderly finds a beach chair and places it in the shade. She’s wearing her usual three robes. Columbus is wearing an institute-assigned maroon robe, and he immediately goes down to the edge of the water and walks into the skittering surf. The water is warm but also refreshing. It jumps and spits at the bottom of his robe, tickles his calves. He goes into the water up to his knees, looks out to sea, breathes. Observes the waves. Breathes some more. He loves the smell of the ocean. The sounds. The shushing waves meeting land. The awkward gull calls. For a few minutes, he is happy standing up to his knees in the ocean, the gulls hovering carefully above the offshore waves. At the same time, he realizes there are two orderlies, one up the beach and
