Trafalgar

by Angélica Gorodischer

  The Albino said can’t you see she was crazy and Cirito said who knows and Trafalgar drank more coffee.

  “She wasn’t crazy,” he said. “She had returned to her home, to the circle. Look, if I think about it a lot, I have no alternative than to say yes, she went crazy. But if I remember her dancing, telling us by dancing that we should leave her in peace because she had stopped searching, resisting, studying, thinking, writing, reasoning, accumulating, and doing, I recognize with some satisfaction—a sad satisfaction, because I don’t carry that marvel in my blood—that she had crossed the kingdom from end to end and she was swimming fresh and lovely in the torrent. Simónides explained it another way and Marina Solim supported him with very concrete data. The people who danced were in fact the descendants of those who had left the ruins. Anandaha-A knew, perhaps, a yellow, hot star and a clean sky and fertile soil and they manufactured things and wrote poems long before we treated ourselves to the stegosaurus and the scaphites. Perhaps they had jewels, concerts, tractors, wars, universities, candies, sports, and plastic material. They must have traveled to other worlds. And they reached so high and so deep that when the star died, it no longer mattered to them at all. After visiting dead worlds, worlds living or to be born, after leaving their seed on a few of them, after exploring everything and knowing everything, they not only stopped caring about the death of the star, but about the rest of the universe and they had enough with the sense of the circle. They preserved nothing but the music that they danced and that was all Simónides had supposed and much more. We don’t know what more but if someone told us, we wouldn’t understand. And Veri Halabi recognized her own but the light of the perceptible game prevented her from seeing them and entering the kingdom where there is the possibility of putting out the oil lamp, and torn between the light and the nostalgic urgency of a few of her cells which bore the seal of the Argonauts of Anandaha-A, she hated them. When the light went out by force of the music and she spoke all the words of her race, those she had learned in dreams, she no longer hated them or loved them or anything. It was enough to return.”

  The Albino says they were all quiet. Even Flynn, who is argumentative and likes to take the opposing side, found nothing to say. When Cirito remarked that Fina had called on the phone to let him know she was staying in Salta another week and they talked about other things and drank more whiskey and Trafalgar more coffee, Flynn admitted that Trafalgar could be right, that the matter, if you thought about it carefully, seemed preposterous, yet he had the impression that it wasn’t all that strange. Cirito said:

  “I’d like to go to Anandaha-A.”

  “It’s all yours,” said the Albino.

  “Was Veri Halabi that pretty?” asked Flynn.

  “Now she is prettier,” said Trafalgar.

  Of Navigators

  At a quarter to ten, the bell rang. It was a Thursday of one of those treacherous springs that befall us in Rosario: Monday had been winter, Tuesday summer, Wednesday it had gotten dark in the south and hot in the north and now it was cold and everything was gray. I went to answer, and it was Trafalgar Medrano.

  “We’re sunk,” I told him. “I have no coffee.”

  “Oh, no,” he answered. “You won’t scare me off so easily. I’m going to buy some.”

  A short while later he returned with a one kilo packet. He came in and sat at the kitchen table while I heated the water. He said it was going to rain and I said it was lucky we’d had the ligustrinas pruned the week before. The cat came and rubbed herself against his legs.

  “What are you doing?” Trafalgar asked her; to me he said, “I don’t know how there are people who can live without cats. In the court of the Catholic Monarchs, for example, there were no cats.”

  I served him the coffee. “What would you know about the court of the Catholic Monarchs?”

  “I’m just coming from there,” he answered, and he drank half the cup.

  “Stop kidding me. How’s the coffee?”

  “Disgusting,” he answered.

  I wasn’t surprised. Partly because Trafalgar finds all coffee disgusting, unless it’s the coffee he makes himself or that made by Marcos in the Burgundy or by two or three other chosen ones in the world; and partly because I do a few things moderately well, but coffee is not included on the list. The cat climbed up on his lap and half-closed her eyes, considering whether or not it was worthwhile to stay.

  “Patience, drink it anyway,” and I served him another cup while I let my own get cold. “How did you manage to travel to the 15th century?”

  “I don’t see why I should travel to the 15th century. Besides, time travel is impossible.”

  “If you came to shake up my bookshelves, you can be going and leave me the coffee as tribute. I love time travel, and so long as I think it is possible, it is possible.”

  The cat had decided to stay.

  “The coffee is a gift,” said Trafalgar. “I am going to explain to you why one cannot travel through time.”

  “No. I don’t want to know. But don’t tell me that if you come from the court of the Catholic Monarchs you didn’t travel through time.”

  “What little imagination you have.”

  That didn’t surprise me either. “Very well,” I said, “tell me.”

  And I put the coffee pot on the table.

  “Perhaps the universe is infinite,” he said.

  “I hope so. But there are those who go around saying it isn’t.”

  “I say that because this time I traveled through some very strange places.”

  That did surprise me. If there is something Trafalgar, accustomed to traveling among the stars, finds strange, it is truly strange.

  “If I tell you,” he continued, and he served himself more coffee. “Don’t you have a larger cup? Thank you. If I tell you that not even the merchant princes go there.”

  “And who are they?”

  “I call them the merchant princes, you can imagine why. They call themselves the Caadis of Caá. They’re like the Phoenicians but more sophisticated. I know they don’t go there because the last time I was with one of them, I think it was on Blutedorn, I discovered, exchanging itineraries, that they had nothing marked in that sector.”

  “What is it? Is it dangerous, sinister, all who enter are lost or go crazy or are never seen again?”

  He disillusioned me.

  “It’s too far away. The merchant princes aren’t idiots. A lot of expense for questionable profits. I’m not an idiot either, but I am inquisitive and I had plenty of extra money. I had been selling tractors on Eiquen. Did I ever tell you about Eiquen? A little world, all green, that moves very slowly around two twin suns?”

  “Spare me Eiquen. How did you end up in the court of Isabel and Fernando?”

  “Eiquen is probably a crossroads, or a hinge. Tell me, and if the universe were symmetrical?”

  I liked the idea. So did the cat.

  “Now you’ll see why,” said Trafalgar. “I left the tractors on Eiquen, I charged more than you can imagine, and instead of coming back, I kept going. Don’t forget I’m inquisitive. I wanted to know what there was farther on, so to speak, and on the way see if I could buy something, because I no longer had anything to sell. And I had cash, and I was tired. It was a long trip. I slept, I ate, I got bored, and I didn’t find anything interesting. I was about to turn around when I saw a world that could be inhabited and I decided to land.” He looked sadly at what remained of the coffee. “Of one thing I am sure: if my heart didn’t fail me that time, it never will.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Make more coffee. But put in less water. And don’t let it boil. And moisten the coffee first with a few drops of warm water.”

  “I would like to write my memoirs,” I told him, “but I can’t bring myself to get started. Someday I’m going to write yours and I’ll have my revenge.” I began to make more coffee.

  The cat must have given him one of her looks because he continued the story: “The world
was blue, gray, green. I got closer and as I descended I began to see Europe, Africa, the Atlantic, and for less than a second it occurred to me that I had returned. I don’t know if you realize how disconcerting the situation was, to put it mildly. A mountain of awful things went through my mind and I even thought I had died at some point between Eiquen and Earth. I calmed myself as best I could and went to check and I found it was the third planet in a system of nine. I said, I’m crazy, and I asked for more data and luckily I wasn’t crazy nor had I died: the spectrum was not entirely the same. Then I got to looking more calmly and there were little things, a few details that did not coincide. It was a world very similar to this one, almost identical, but it wasn’t this one. Don’t tell me the situation wasn’t looking tempting. I, at least, passed from fear to temptation. I turned around and came this way, I mean, I set off toward the part of that world that resembled this one, if there was one. Because if on that world there existed another Europe, another Mediterranean, another Africa, there had to exist another South America, another Argentina, another Rosario. I was half right. The continent existed, but it was empty as a poor man’s pocket, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. I even touched down beside the Paraná, the other Paraná, understand. Nothing was missing for it to be a nightmare: I knew where I was but nothing was as it should have been. There was no one, there was nothing. A viper frightened me, I heard a few roars, it was cold, so I lifted off again. It made me sad: a world like ours and wasted. But again I was mistaken. I flew over Europe and it was populated. I landed in Spain. In Castile. It was summer. This coffee is a little better than the other. I’m not saying it’s good,” he checked me, “it’s a little less undrinkable.”

  “Cretin,” I said. “You could be more agreeable with the future author of your memoirs.”

  He did no more than just barely smile and keep drinking that coffee that according to him wasn’t good for much.

  “Well, and . . . ?”

  “And what?”

  “Was that where Isabel and Fernando came out to receive you?”

  “No. There was a tremendous uproar, true. Imagine, in Castile in 1492, a machine that comes down from the sky.”

  “Wait a minute. You really mean to tell me that.”

  “Don’t you see you have no imagination? A world almost identical to this one, understand? Almost identical. The contour of Africa, for example, was different. There were some peninsulas and some rather large archipelagos that don’t exist here. And in history, their clock was five centuries behind. Details. There were others, you’ll see. If you don’t keep interrupting me, of course. There was a big uproar, as I said. I had to wait almost the whole morning for someone in authority to get there, while those who had gathered decided whether to lynch me or canonize me. An unruly troop of soldiers finally came, which did nothing to settle things down. I remained locked in, waiting to see what happened. When I saw the embroidered, empurpled, bedamasked, and bemedalled appear, I opened up and climbed down. I offered explanations. The situation amused me, so I invented a story according to which I was a traveler from some vague region in the east, I had been in Cathay, and there the emperor had given me the flying machine. At first I didn’t have much success, but I got all mystical and we finally ended up all on our knees—you can’t imagine what that did to my clothes, between the dirt and the heat—giving thanks to the Almighty and to all the heavenly host. I closed up the clunker and activated the security mechanisms: if anyone got too close, they’d receive a kick strong enough to knock over a camel. The next stop was the court, they told me. I won’t even tell you what the trip was like, with the heat, the thirst, the horse they gave me, from which a big man-at-arms who didn’t take it too well had to dismount (and you already know that very athletic, I am not), but we finally arrived. That very afternoon, I appeared at court.”

  “Dressed like that, with one of your formal gray suits, shirt and tie?”

  “But no. What I wore on the trip could pass for ceremonial attire in Cathay, but in the palace I was saddled with an embroidered blue costume, with lace, that wasn’t fastened with buttons but with little ties and that was tight everywhere. All of this without being able to take a bath, which didn’t surprise me too much after having smelled the empurpled and bedamasked ones,” he sighed, “and without being able to smoke and without being able to drink coffee. When I remember, I wonder how I didn’t go crazy for real.”

  The cat slept, or pretended to sleep, and the coffee got dangerously low.

  “It was handy being a foreigner, you know? I was very much a foreigner, they didn’t how much, but they believed me foreign enough to excuse my blunders. They gave me an accelerated course in protocol. I didn’t understand any of it, but I kept afloat.”

  “What would you like this chapter to be called? ‘My indiscretions at court’?”

  “My indiscretions, you’ll forgive me, I am going to skip over; we’ll go in stages. The city was worthless: it was a maze of narrow, dirty little streets, a few of them cobbled, the majority no. When we passed the suburbs, I began to see important houses with grilles and balconies and statues of saints, but all of them shut up like tombs and the streets were still filthy and narrow until they opened into a few that were wider. Not a tree, not a plant, not a weed. Burros, horses, dogs, cows, chickens, but not a single cat. An infernal noise, that’s true. It seemed as if everyone was yelling, they were all arguing and fighting. I suppose I should have felt myself important, but I felt ridiculous and it wasn’t fun anymore, not fun at all. The soldiers went ahead, scattering the onlookers who moved aside but came back like flies and more than one received a blow to the face with the flat of the blade. With all that we advanced so slowly I thought we would never arrive. And then we arrived. The palace was almost as dirty as the streets, but more luxurious. I saw a few things that reconciled me to the trouble I was taking on account of my curiosity: tapestries, carved tables, pictures, grilles, and a black-eyed beauty who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, wearing an enormous dress, somewhere between orange and brown, with a rigid lace collar.”

  The cat stretched, yawned, she stood up on Trafalgar’s bony knees, and she lay back down with her head facing the other way. Trafalgar waited until the process was completed and petted her behind the ears.

  “Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte.”

  “Panchita to her closest friends,” I remarked. “Among whom you eventually counted yourself, I’ll bet anything.”

  “Get out. She was married to a big man of the court. One of those smelly old men who look fat but they’re really thin with a belly, bowlegged, stuttering, with no more than two or three rotten teeth in his mouth, full of wrinkles, of snot, and of hair in the most inappropriate places. And she, unfortunately, was no more than fifteen.”

  “Why unfortunately? What more did you want?”

  “For her, I’m saying. Do you know I almost brought her with me? I must be crazy.”

  “I have always maintained something like that.”

  “I caught just a glimpse of her that afternoon and only because she leaned out to look. Keep in mind that I was the star of the day. And of the month and the year, no exaggeration. But she looked at me as much as she pleased and I knew she was looking and she knew that I knew. The others put me in a salon, more tapestries, more black carved furniture, more pictures, crosses, kneelers and grime, and they offered me an uncomfortable armchair, a work of art but uncomfortable, and a bowl with water and a napkin. I moistened my fingertips, trying to imagine I was taking a shower, but I regret to inform you that I am not very good at autosuggestion. I remained seated and then they all moved away a little and then the dance began.”

  “They received you with a dance?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I’m speaking metaphorically. And you should know that in the court of the Catholic Monarchs there was no place for such frivolities. Keep in mind, they were extremely busy expelling the Moors, expelling the Jews, discovering A
merica and all that.”

  “Stop, stop, America how?”

  Trafalgar has infinite patience. When he wants to.

  “What year did I tell you.”

  “You said five centuries behind.”

  “To be exact, I told you 1492.”

  “Jeez!”

  “Exactly.”

  And without his asking, I put more water on to heat. The cat purred under her breath, not like Doña Francisca María Juana I-don’t-know-what, but silently, the way she does.

  “The dance, metaphorically, began. Which is to say that a few sourpusses dressed in black examined me. There was also a lousy little friar to whom I didn’t attach any importance, and I’ll tell you right now that was a mistake. I don’t know how it didn’t catch my attention that alongside so many big shots they let in a common, garden-variety little priest in an old habit who was always looking somewhere else, as if he understood nothing. But keep in mind that I was disoriented. No, the thing no longer seemed fun to me, but it was exciting. That’s when I thought that the universe is infinite and symmetrical and don’t tell me it can’t be because it can. And I also thought I had come across a good substitute for time travel. Too bad I ruined it.”

  “I know. You told them the truth and they didn’t believe you and they delivered you to the Inquisition and Doña María Francisca saved you and the husband found out and.”

  “But you’re crazy, how am I going to tell them the truth? And her name was Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, so you know. No, I didn’t tell them the truth. They knew a lot of protocol and a lot of catechism, but I have read something of history and geography and I had a five hundred year advantage. It may not be much, but it was enough. When I saw them, I was on the point of standing up to greet them and I even thought about making a bow, look, not very deep, but sufficiently courtly. And right then I thought about it and said to myself, they can drop dead, what they want to do is screw me, for sure, and the best thing will be to bully them from the outset. I put on my best Voltairian face.”