“You don’t look like Voltaire, you look like Edmundo Rivero, only handsome.”
“Much appreciated. So I looked at them arrogantly, like a know-it-all, and they greeted me and I did not even answer: I half-closed my eyes, I barely nodded my head and I waited. They didn’t beat around the bush. They wanted to know, and if I did not tell them or if I lied they would ascertain the truth by such means as they deemed necessary, first, whether I was an envoy of the Evil One; second, whether it was true that I came from Cathay; third, whether they could, following exorcism, blessing, Masses and other nonsense, visit the flying carriage; fourth, what the hell I wanted; fifth, if I planned to stay and live in Castile; and sixth and lastly, what my name was.”
“A very thorough survey. What did you tell them?”
“I gave them a speech that lasted about a half an hour and which impressed everyone save for the lousy little friar. To begin I recalled Suli Sul O Suldi, the daughter of a farmer on Eiquen, blessed be her soul for various reasons and blessed be her body for various other reasons, who had given me an ornament that I wore around my neck. It was made of a metal similar to gold but heavier and harder, very elaborately worked and of a size we’ll call respectable—some day I’m going to show it to you, I am sure you will like it. The important thing is that it is in the form of a cross. I took it out, exchanged my know-it-all expression for one of infinite sadness with a touch of the school principal’s authority and I asked them if they could believe that an envoy of the Evil One would wear that over his heart. First point in my favor. Regarding Cathay, I mixed a sophomore’s notions of geography with Marco Polo’s voyages and I chalked up the second score. And they could visit my flying carriage and the exorcisms didn’t need my authorization; rather, I said, it was a request, a demand on my part, because since it was the gift of infidels, I was a little worried. Three for me. And so on in that fashion: I wanted nothing, I did not aspire to the goods of this world, but I would like to render homage to their majesties. It was possible I would settle in Castile, the land from which my ancestors had come, but as I was an unrepentant traveler, sometimes I would go to travel the world, never forgetting to bring back part of the marvels I encountered to donate to the most illustrious religious orders of the country. By that time, those guys were about to pee themselves and the little friar kept looking into the distance with a wooden rosary between his fingers and I thought, what an asshole and it turns out the asshole was me.”
“And what did you tell them you were called?”
“I told them my name, what did you want me to say? Anyway, Trafalgar wasn’t going to mean anything to them until three hundred years later, if there was going to be a battle of Trafalgar and an Admiral Nelson. I decorated it a little, granted: I put a de before the Medrano, I added two names and my old lady’s maternal surname, Hispanized. Turned out better than made to order. The proof is that the sour faces sweetened, and as I knew I had them in my pocket, I stood up and condescended to chat familiarly with all of them. After a while they informed me that they would house me in the palace, which was an honor, and I regretted it because I was sure there were no baths, as indeed there were not; I consoled myself thinking that at that moment there weren’t any, I won’t even say baths, not even a toilet or a miserable septic tank in all of Castile, so I put on an enthusiastic expression.”
“In the end it turns out you’re not brazen faced, as I believed, but rubber faced.”
“It depends. When they left me alone, which means they left me with three servants who were running all over the place and as far as I could tell didn’t do anything, I stretched out on a bed that had a bunch of curtains but was very comfortable and I went to sleep.”
“How you can sleep in the midst of the things that happen to you is something that I do not understand.”
“If I couldn’t fall asleep as necessary, things would have stopped happening to me a while ago.”
“Should I make more coffee?”
“I was about to ask what you were waiting for. About two hours later, they came to wake me with a good bit of to-do and they brought me those clothes I told you about, all on top of a cushion. There was even a hat, my God. And a sword. The shoes were both for the same foot and I almost let out a yell but I realized in time that it would be many more years before they made them different. I put everything on and thus I went into the throne room or whatever it was.”
“Go on, go on, what was it like?”
“A bore, full of announcements, marches, countermarches, blows of the staff and I don’t know what. And they all had a stench of goat that would knock you over. And it was hot. And I was already up to here with the Spanish monarchy.”
“Castile and Aragon.”
“Whatever. The protocol, I don’t even remember the protocol, but do you want me to tell you something? Isabel was quite pretty, not as pretty as Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, and older, but pretty. In the face, at least; as to the rest, I have no idea, with all those infected rags. Fernando had a tic and opened and closed his eyes every five seconds. If he’d been one of the boys at the café, they’d have called him Neon Sign, bet on it. And guess who was at the side of the throne?”
“The lousy little friar.”
“Exactly.”
We heard a hissing in the garden and there was a crack of thunder but the cat was unperturbed.
“It’s raining,” Trafalgar said. “Didn’t I tell you? The combination of rain and coffee reminds me of the feast of the lightning bolts on Trudu. Do you know what Trudu is?”
“No, but I imagine it’s somewhere where it always rains and where coffee comes out of the faucets instead of water.”
“Trudu? No. To begin, there are no faucets and to continue, it rains once every ten years.”
“Great for growing rice.”
“Although you might not believe it, they grow rice, though of course not the rice you know. And in addition, the rain.”
“I don’t care!” I yelled so loud that the cat opened her eyes and even made a comment under her breath. “Keep Trudu, it’s my gift to you, but go on with your presentation at court and with the little friar and with Isabel and with Fernando.”
“Fernando you can file away without a pang of conscience. Now, Isabel,” he smiled again and two smiles from Trafalgar in a single morning is a record, “was very pretty, yes, but she was a real man with a pair of brass balls. You could see it in her eyes and in the fact that although she had a more than acceptable mouth, she could narrow it until it resembled a stab wound. And her shoulders well back, her neck straight and her hands strong. I said, this girl is going to cause me trouble.”
“And the little priest?”
“There you have it, the little priest was the one who gave me the trouble although for the moment he was lying low. That time it did catch my attention that he always appeared at the important meetings, that he was so close to the throne and that nobody seemed to pay him any attention. I went so far as to think he surely wasn’t what he seemed, but with as much care as I had to take with what I said and did, I left it for later. Don’t forget what I was in the middle of. I had to recount my adventures again, silently invoking Marco Polo, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Italo Calvino, and the annals of geography. It turned out very well: they were all hanging on what I said, they were scared when they were supposed to be scared and they laughed when they were supposed to laugh. I saw Doña Francisca María Juana again.”
“De Abramonte Soler y Torrelles.”
“De Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, you would cut a sorrier figure than I at court, and I saw the old fart who alternately drooled and snorted. Fernando closed and opened his eyes more continuously all the time and wiggled his nose and possibly his ears. Isabel, in contrast, went so far as to soften her mouth and smile at me and it seems that was the height of privilege. And speaking of privileges, I even ate with their majesties that night, which is saying a lot.”
“How was the food?”
&
nbsp; “Rather meager. Frugal, which sounds more elegant. And better we not speak of their majesties’ table manners. Nor of mine, because without forks there’s not much one can do in the way of delicate gestures. The little priest wasn’t there, thank goodness. But it was there that they told me about Columbus. By then I had already begun to get used to it all and I felt like a little picture in a history text, but that was too much. And more so when I asked if I could meet him and they told me they expected him the next day at court, when he was going to inform them of how the preparations for the expedition were going. I don’t know if it was the food which, in addition to being scarce was a sticky, lumpy mess, or the prospect of meeting him personally even if he wasn’t the real one, which in fact he was, but I had a sort of weight in my stomach. Luckily the supper didn’t last long because it seemed one had to go to bed early. Which I did. Early and in company.”
Another thunder clap, more hisses, more coffee.
“As I had already suspected that would be the case, or more probably just because that was what I wanted, I got rid of the servants, I took off that ridiculous outfit, I chewed on my nails thinking about coffee, cigarettes, a book by Chandler, Jackaroe, television, anything, and I waited. She came around midnight, when I had already put out the candles but I still didn’t want to admit defeat and go to sleep. I learned the old man had a post that obliged him to go out to inspect the barracks or the markets or I don’t remember what before dawn, and so he went to bed at six in the evening, got up at eleven-thirty, locked her in, and left.”
“And how did she get out?”
“Do you think the key has been invented that will keep a woman locked up? Give me a break. And she had accomplices, of course. She left as lookout an old woman who, next to the husband, looked like Miss World, and she came straight to my bed.”
He was quiet.
“Trafalgar, don’t get discreet on me.”
“This time, I’m sorry, but yes, I am going to be discreet.”
“And how am I going to write your memoirs?”
“I’ll probably tell you one day. The one thing I’ll tell you is that I was not the first one to put horns on the old man. Rather than annoy me—you know I am a confessed libertine and for that reason I like them chaste and modest—it made me happy, because it was only right the girl have her revenge for the pawing of such a husband. She knew how to get even, I assure you. At dawn, the old woman knocked on the door and she went off in a rush. I ask, do you think you’re in Castile in the 15th century that you don’t make more coffee?”
“So much coffee is going to ruin your appetite.”
“Bet you it won’t. I’ll treat you to lunch.”
“No, my treat.”
“We’ll see.”
“What do you mean, we’ll see? You’ll stay to lunch and that’s that. Anyway, go on.”
“I spent a cushy morning, more desperate by the minute for a smoke and a cup of coffee, but cushy. Surrounded by Lady Bigshot and Mr. Bigwig, relating my adventures, strolling through the palace and through the gardens, which were worthless. After lunch, I had another audience with Isabel, who sent for me. Once again, there was the little priest. As always alone and with an unhappy face but well placed. I had forgotten about him, go figure, what with the night I had passed, but he was beginning to worry me and maybe it was because of that he didn’t take me by surprise—or at least if I lost, I lost without making a fool of myself. We had a long conversation, Isabel and I, about philosophy, religion, politics, and—hold on—mathematics. I defended myself like a lion. Do you remember what I told you about her? All the same, I had underestimated her. Intelligent, but very intelligent. And in addition, informed about everything there was to know at that moment in time. And hard as a usurer’s heart. I don’t know if I racked up so many points in my favor, but as for a tie, we were tied.”
“Because you are very cultured, don Medrano.”
“It didn’t do me any harm to know a few things, because the little priest was there for a reason.”
“I already know. He was from the Inquisition.”
“Worse. With that five-century lead, I was able to perform well and I was in agreement with her on everything, making out as if I were offering my own reasons although my guts were twisting at the outrageous things I was saying. When we were heatedly justifying the Reconquista, Columbus was announced.”
“Oh!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m moved.”
“I was too.”
“What was he like, what did he say to you, what did he do?”
“He was crazy.”
That took my breath away, but then I thought better. “Of course,” I said. “All of them were crazy.”
“All of who?”
“People like Columbus. Like Hector, like Gagarin, like Magellan, Bosch, Galileo, Dürer, Leonardo, Einstein, Villon, Poe, Cortés, Cyrano, Moses, Beethoven, Freud, Shakespeare.”
“Stop, stop, you’re going to drive the whole human race crazy.”
“I wish. You already know what I think of sanity.”
“At times I agree with you. But I tell you he was crazy: he was going to do anything, anything, deceive, kill, grovel, bribe, swindle, whatever it took, to get himself to sea with his three little boats. Which were four, there: the Santa María, the Pinta, the Niña, and the Alondra.”
“Go on, seriously?”
“Seriously. There were details, I already told you. And there, thinking about the little boats and about what those poor wretches were going to have to go through, the big idea occurred to me. Jeez, I’m a sap.”
“What idea? Oh, Trafalgar, what did you do?”
“I changed the course of history, nothing more than that. I didn’t realize it at the moment: I just felt sorry for him. I admired him, I was a little afraid of him, not from distrust like with the little priest but because of the heroic, the agonized aspect of the man, but above all I felt pity. Dangerous thing, pity. I thought, poor guys, why should they suffer months at sea, dying of hunger, superstition, and scurvy, if I can carry them to America in half an hour?”
“Fantastic. Of course, how could you not think that?”
“Yes. Of course, I couldn’t say it directly; or rather, I suspected that since the little priest was right there, the smartest way was not to say it directly. So I asked for permission to see the ships and it was graciously granted by her majesty. I abbreviate: I spent two more days as a wealthy idler and two more nights as the lover of Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, and on the third day, we went to Palos de Moguer. As the little priest lived more or less tied to Isabel’s apron strings, he did not come with us, to my relief.”
“The ships, what were the ships like?”
“If the ones that discovered America here were like those, I don’t know how they made it. The Admiral took me to see all of them inside and out. He was already Admiral. And Viceroy and Governor General of the lands he was going to discover and he was entitled to a tenth of the riches he was going to find. As I told you, I felt sorry for him and for that reason I was more convinced than ever that I had to take them. I proposed it to him over a big bottle of wine, you can’t imagine what good wine, but I missed coffee, and even though he already knew everything about me and about my flying carriage from Cathay, he didn’t want to enter the chute. He didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm for the idea, and he went on about Ptolemy and Pliny and about the Imago Mundi, about astronomy, about cosmography, and about how to reach Cipango from the west. Prester John was mixed up with the quadrants, Eneas Silvio with Kordesius’ navigation tables. He spoke well of Garci Fernández and ill of Fray Juan Pérez and both well and ill of the king of Portugal and well of Isabel. I kept insisting on taking him to America, I mean to say to Cipango in my flying carriage, and he wasn’t saying yes. Then we returned to court and there I laid out my intentions and the little priest didn’t look at me even once. It took Isabel three seconds to recognize the advantages of a lightn
ing expedition. Fernando didn’t speak, I don’t know why. And the little priest, not a peep. The Admiral still wasn’t convinced: he put up a thousand objections and I refuted them one by one. I thought he didn’t want me to steal the glory of the voyage but it wasn’t that, since he didn’t know if there was going to be glory or not. I knew, but he didn’t. And I don’t know that what he wanted above all would be the glory; what he wanted was to prove he was right. I finally put myself under his command and self-designated myself pilot of the carriage. But my feints had little importance once Isabel had decided in favor.”
“Then America was not discovered on the 12th of October, 1492.”
“Of course not, not there. We discovered it the 29th of July, 1492. But first we had to pass through the inquisitorial ordeals, with inspections, canticles, incense, and Masses. And you can’t imagine the farewell of Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, who believed the monsters of finis terras were going to devour me, poor thing. She had a very alert little mind but she was very ignorant, what do you expect?”
He daydreamed for a bit about Doña Francisca María and the rest and I went to empty the ashtray, waiting for him to snap out of it.
“We put the crews of the four little boats in the clunker.”
“Did they fit?”
“Didn’t I tell you I had sold five hundred tractors on Eiquen? Five hundred nineteen. There was room to spare. The fellows were scared to death and they prayed, or else they made out to be tough guys, but they had all gotten pale. And all around, enduring the midday heat because I wanted to reach America in the morning: the monarchs, the court, the clergy, the army, and the commoners. I had explained to them that it wouldn’t do to get too close, but it was a struggle to get them to move away until, when I saw their curiosity was stronger than the soldiers, I turned on the engines and they backed up like sheep. Inside, a deathly silence. Of course when we lifted off, the yelling started. Thank goodness there was a fantastic guy, Vicente Yáñez, captain of one of the little boats, and two or three thugs too stupid or too dangerous to be afraid, the kind it’s better not to meet late at night around Ayolas and Convención, who threatened to tear all of them to pieces if they didn’t stop making such a fuss. I flew low, over the sea, with all the peepholes on transparent so they would miss nothing. But I don’t remember anything about the voyage. On the pretext of driving, I closed myself in to drink coffee and smoke, at last. The only thing I lacked was the newspaper. If the sourpusses saw me there, they’d definitely turn me over to the Inquisition.”
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