During the voyage back to Portugal, Felipa was not so terribly seasick, but she nevertheless stayed in her bed, bleakly staring at the walls of her tiny cabin. And from this sickness of heart she would never recover. Even in Lisbon, where Dona Moniz hoped that her old friends would cheer her up, Felipa only rarely consented to go out. Instead she devoted herself to little Diego and spent the rest of her time haunting her own house. When Columbus was away on a voyage or on business in the city, she wandered about as if searching for him; when he was there, she would spend days working up the courage to try to engage him in conversation. Whether he politely listened or curtly asked her to let him alone so he could concentrate on his work, the end was the same. She went to her bed and wept, for she was not part of his life at all, and she knew no way to enter it, and so she loved him all the more desperately, and knew all the more surely that it was some failing in her that made her unlovable to her husband.
The worst agony was when he brought her along to some musical performance or to mass or to dine at court, for she knew that the only reason he was accepted among the aristocrats of Lisbon was because he was married to her, and so he needed her on these occasions and they both had to act as though they were husband and wife, and all the while she could barely keep herself from bursting into tears and screaming to everyone that her husband did not love her, that he slept with her perhaps once in a week, twice in a month, and that even that was without genuine affection. If she had ever allowed herself such an outburst, she might have been surprised at how surprised the other women would have been -- not that she had such a relationship with her husband, but that she found anything wrong with it. It was very nearly the relationship that most of them had with their husbands. Women and men lived in separate worlds; they met only on the bed to produce heirs and on public occasions to enhance each other's status in the world. Why was she so upset about this? Why didn't she simply live as they did, a pleasant life of ease among other women, occasionally indulging their children and always relying upon servants to make things go easily?
The answer was, of course, that none of their husbands was Cristovao. None of them burned with his inner fire. None of them had such a deep gravity of passion in his heart, drawing a woman ever closer, even though that deep well in him would drown her and never yield anything, never give off anything that might nourish her or slake her thirst for his love.
And Columbus, for his part, looked at Felipa as the years of marriage aged her, as her lips turned downward into a permanent frown, as she spent more and more of her time in bed with nameless illnesses, and he knew that he was somehow causing this, that he was harming her, and that there was nothing he could do about it, not if he was going to fulfil his mission in life.
Almost as soon as Columbus returned to Lisbon, he found the book that he was looking for. The geographic work of an Arab named Alfragano had been translated into Latin, and Columbus found in it the perfect tool to shrink those last 60 degrees to a reasonable voyaging distance. If Alfragano's calculations were assumed to be in Roman miles, then the 60 degrees of distance between the Canaries and Cipangu would amount to as little as 2,000 nautical miles at the latitudes he would be sailing. With reasonably favorable winds, which God would surely provide for him, the voyage could be made in as few as eight days; two weeks at the most.
He had his proofs now in terms the scholars would understand. He wouldn't come before them with nothing but his own faith in a vision he couldn't tell them about. Now he had the ancients on his side, and never mind that one of them was a Muslim, he could still build a case for his expedition.
At last his marriage to Felipa paid off. He used every contact he had made, and won the chance to present his ideas at court. He stood boldly before King Joao, knowing that God would touch his heart and make him understand that it was God's will that he mount this expedition with Columbus at its head. He laid out his maps, with all his calculations, showing Cipangu within easy reach, and Cathay but a short voyage beyond that. The scholars listened; the King listened. They asked questions. They mentioned the ancient authorities that contradicted Columbus's view of the size of the earth and the ratio of land to water, and Columbus answered them patiently and with confidence. This is the truth, he said. Until one of them said, "How do you know that Marinus is right and Ptolemy is wrong?"
Columbus answered, "Because if Ptolemy is right then this voyage would be impossible. But it is not impossible, it will succeed, and so I know that Ptolemy is wrong."
Even as he said it, he knew that it was not an answer that would persuade them. He knew, seeing their polite nods, their not-so-covert glances at the King, that their recommendation would be squarely against him. Well, he thought, I have done all I could. Now it is up to God. He thanked the King for his kindness, reaffirmed his certainty that this expedition would cover Portugal in glory and make it the greatest kingdom of Europe and bring Christianity to countless souls, and took his leave.
He took it as an encouraging sign that, as he waited for the King's answer, he was given permission to join a trading expedition to the African coast. It wasn't a voyage of exploration, so no great secrets of the Portuguese crown were being laid before him. Still, it was a sign of trust and favor that he was allowed to sail as far as the fortress of Sao Jorge at La Mina. The King is preparing me to lead an expedition by letting me become acquainted with the great achievements of Portuguese navigation.
Upon his return he eagerly awaited the King's answer, expecting to be told any day that he would be given the ships, the crew, the supplies that he needed.
The King said no.
Columbus was devastated. For days he hardly ate or slept. He did not know what to think. Wasn't this God's plan? Didn't God tell kings and princes what to do? How, then, could King Joao have refused him?
It was something I did wrong. I shouldn't have spent so much time trying to prove that the voyage was possible; I should have spent more time trying to help the King catch the vision of why the voyage was desirable, necessary. Why God wanted this to be achieved. I acted foolishly. I prepared insufficiently. I was unworthy. All the explanations he could think of left him spiraling downward into despair.
Felipa saw her husband suffering and she knew that in the one thing that she had ever provided him that he desired, she had failed. He had needed a connection at court, and the influence of her family name was not enough. Why, then, was he married to her? She was now an intolerable burden to him. She had nothing that he could possibly desire or need or love. When she brought five-year-old Diego to him, to try to cheer him up, he sent the boy away so gruffly that the child cried for an hour and refused to go to his father again. It was the last straw. Felipa knew that Columbus hated her now, and that she deserved his hatred, having given him nothing that he wanted.
She went to bed, turned her face to the wall, and soon became exactly as ill as she declared herself to be.
In her last days, Columbus became as solicitous of her as she had ever desired. But she knew in her heart that this did not mean that he loved her. Rather he was doing his duty, and when he talked to her of how sorry he was for his long neglect, she knew that this was said not because he wished her to live so he could do better in the future, but rather because he wanted her forgiveness so that his conscience could be free when at last her death freed him in every other way.
"You will have your greatness, Cristovao, one way or another," she said.
"And you'll be there beside me to see it, my Felipa," he said.
She wanted to believe it, or rather wanted to believe that he actually desired it, but she knew better. "I ask only this promise: Diego will inherit everything from you."
"Everything," said Columbus.
"No other sons," she said. "No other heirs."
"I promise," he said.
Soon afterward she died. Columbus held Diego's hand as they followed her coffin to the family tomb, and as they walked, side by side, he suddenly lifted up his son and held him in his arms and
said, "You are all I have left of her. I treated your mother unfairly, Diego, and you as well, and I can't promise to do any better in the future. But I made her this promise, and I make it to you. All that I ever have, all that I ever achieve, every title, every bit of property, every honor, every scrap of fame, it will be yours."
Diego heard this and remembered it. His father loved him after all. And his father had loved his mother, too. And someday, if his father became great, Diego would be great after him. He wondered if that meant that someday he would own an island, the way Grandmother did. He wondered if it meant that someday he would sail a ship. He wondered if it meant that someday he would stand before kings. He wondered if it meant that his father would leave him now and he would never see him again.
The following spring, Columbus left Portugal and crossed the border into Spain. He took Diego to the Franciscan monastery of La Rdbida, near Palos. "I was taught by Franciscan fathers in Genova," he told his son. "Learn well, become a scholar and a Christian and a gentleman. And I will be about the business of serving God and making our fortune in the process."
Columbus left him there, but he visited from time to time, and in his letters to the prior, Father Juan Perez, he never failed to mention Diego and ask after him. Many sons had less of their fathers than that, Diego knew. And a small part of his dear father was far greater than all the love and attention of many lesser men. Or so he told himself to stave off the humiliation of tears during the loneliness of those first months.
Columbus himself went on to the court of Spain, where he would present a much more carefully refined version of the same unprovable calculations that had failed in Portugal. This time, though, he would persist. Whatever Felipa had suffered, whatever Diego was suffering now, deprived of family and left among strangers in a strange place, it would all be justified. For in the end Columbus would succeed, and the triumph would be worth the price.
He would not fail, he was sure of it. Because even though he had no proof, he knew that he was right.
* * *
"I have no proof," said Hunahpu, "but I know that I'm right."
The woman on the other end of the line sounded young. Too young to be influential, surely, and yet she was the only one who had answered his message, and so he would have to speak to her as if she mattered because what other choice did he have?
"How do you know you're right without evidence?" she asked mildly.
"I didn't say I have no evidence. Just that there can never be proof of what would have happened."
"Fair enough," she answered.
"All I ask is a chance to present my evidence to Kemal."
"I can't guarantee you that," she said. "But you can come to Juba and present your evidence to me."
Come to Juba! As if he had an unlimited budget for travel, he who was on the verge of being dismissed from Pastwatch altogether. "I'm afraid that such a journey would be beyond my means," he said.
"Of course we'll pay for your travel," she said, "and you can stay here as our guest."
That startled him. How could someone so young have authority to promise him that? "Who did you say you were?"
"Diko," she said.
Now he remembered the name; why hadn't he made the connection in the first place? Though it was Kemal's project to which he was determined to contribute, it was not Kemal who had found the Intervention. "Are you the Diko who--"
"Yes," she said.
"Have you read my papers? The ones I've been posting and--"
"And which no one has paid the slightest attention to? Yes."
"And do you believe me?"
"I have questions for you," she said.
"And if you're satisfied with my answers?"
"Then I'll be very surprised," she said. "Everyone knows that the Aztec Empire was on the verge of collapse when Cortes arrived in the 1520s. Everyone also knows that there was no possibility of Mesoamerican technology rivaling European technology in any way. Your speculations about a Mesoamerican conquest of Europe are irresponsible and absurd."
"And yet you called me."
"I believe in leaving no stone unturned. You're a stone that nobody's turned yet, and so ..."
"You're turning me."
"Will you come?"
"Yes," he said. A faint hope was better than no response at all.
"Send copies of all pertinent files beforehand, so I can look them over on my own computer."
"Most of them are already in the Pastwatch system," he said.
"Then send me your bibliography. When can you come? I need to request a leave of absence on your behalf so you can consult with us."
"You can do that?"
"I can request it," she said.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"I can't read everything by tomorrow. Next week. Tuesday. But send me all the files and lists I need immediately."
"And you'll request my leave of absence ... when I send the files?"
"No, I'll request it in the next fifteen minutes. Nice talking to you. I hope you aren't a crackpot."
"I'm not," he said. "Nice talking to you, too."
She broke the connection.
An hour later, his supervisor came to see him. "What have you been doing?" she demanded.
"What I've always been doing," he answered.
"I was in the middle of writing a recommendation that you be steered to another line of work," she said. "Then this comes in. A request from the Columbus project for your presence next week. Will I grant you a paid leave of absence."
"It would be cheaper for you to fire me, " he said, "but it'll be harder for me to help them in Juba if I lose my access to the Pastwatch computer system."
She looked at him with thinly veiled consternation. "Are you telling me that you aren't a crazy, self-willed, time-wasting, donkey-headed fool after all?"
"No guarantees," he said. "That may end up being the list that everybody agrees to."
"No doubt," she said. "But you've got your leave, and you can stay with us until it's over."
"I hope it turns out to be worth the cost," he said.
"It will," she said. "Your salary during this leave is coming out of their budget." She grinned at him. "I actually do like you, you know," she pointed out. "I just don't think you've caught the vision of what Pastwatch is all about."
"I haven't," said Hanahpu. "I want to change the vision."
"Good luck. If you turn out to be a genius after all, remember that I never once for a moment believed in you."
"Don't worry," he said, smiling. "I'll never forget that."
Chapter 7 -- What Would Have Been
Diko met Hunahpu at the station in Juba. He was easy to recognize, since he was small with light brown skin and Mayan features. He seemed placid, standing calmly on the platform, looking slowly across the crowd from side to side. Diko was surprised at how young he looked, though she was aware that the smooth-skinned Indies often seemed young to eyes accustomed to the look of other races. And, especially for one so young-looking, it was also surprising that there was no hint of tension in the man. He might have come here a thousand times before. He might be surveying an old familiar sight, to see how it had changed, or not changed, in the years since he had been away. Who could guess, looking at him, that his career was on the line, that he had never traveled farther than Mexico City in his life, that he was about to make a presentation that might change the course of history? Diko envied him the inner peace that allowed him to deal with life so ... so steadily.
She went to him. He looked at her, his face betraying not even a flicker of expectation or relief, though he must have recognized her, must have looked up her picture in the Pastwatch roster before he came.
"I'm Diko," she said, extending both hands. He clasped them briefly.
"I'm Hunahpu," he said. "It was kind of you to greet me."
"We have no street signs," she said, "and I'm a better driver than the taxis. Well, maybe not, but I charge less."
He didn't smile. A cold
fish, she thought. "Have you any bags?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Just this." He shrugged to indicate the small shoulder bag. Could it possibly carry so much as a change of clothes? But then, he was traveling from one tropical climate to another, and he wouldn't need a shaving kit -- beardlessness was part of what made Indie men seem younger than their years -- and as for papers, those would all have been transmitted electronically. Most people, though, brought much more than this when they traveled. Perhaps because they were insecure, and needed to surround themselves with familiar things, or to feel that they had many choices to make each day when they dressed, so they didn't have to be so frightened or feel so powerless. Obviously that was not Hunahpu's problem. He apparently never felt fear at all, or perhaps never regarded himself as a stranger. How remarkable it would be, thought Diko, to feel at home in any place. I wish I had that gift. Quite to her surprise, she found herself admiring him even as she felt put off by his coldness.
The ride to the hotel was wordless. He offered no comment on the accommodation. "Well," she said, "I assume you'll want to rest in order to overcome jet lag. The best advice is to sleep for three hours or so, and then get up and eat immediately."
"I won't have jet lag, " he said. "I slept on the plane. And on the train."
He slept? On the way to the most important interview of his life?
"Well, then, you'll want to eat."
"I ate on the train," he said.
"Well, then," she said. "How long will you need before we start?"
"I can start now," he said. He took off his shoulder bag and laid it on the bed. There was an economy of movement in the way he did it. He neither tossed it carelessly nor placed it carefully.
Instead he moved so naturally that the shoulder bag seemed to have gone to the bed of its own free will.
Diko shuddered. She couldn't think why. Then she realized that it was because of Hunahpu, the way he was standing there with nothing in his hands, nothing on his shoulder, no thing that he could hold or fiddle with or clutch to himself. He had set aside the one accessory he carried, and yet seemed as calm and relaxed as ever. It made her feel the way she felt when someone else stood too close to the edge of a precipice, a sort of empathetic horror. She could never have done that. In a strange place, alone, she would have had to cling to something familiar. A notebook. A bag. Even a bracelet or ring or watch that she could fiddle with. But this man -- he seemed perfectly at ease without anything. No doubt he could fling away his clothes and walk naked through life and never show a sign of feeling vulnerable. It was unnerving, his perfect self-possession.
Pastwatch: The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Page 14
