The Nautical Chart (47 page)

THAT
night, enclosed by white tiles and thick steam, it rained on the shores of Troy as ship after ship set sail. It was, in fact, a warm fog, gray or shades of gray, in which all colors were washed out by that gentle rain falling on a deserted beach where signs of a denouement could be seen—a forgotten bronze helmet, a fragment of broken sword half-buried in the sand, ashes carried on the wind from some burned city out of sight but sensed, still smoking, as the last ships hoisted damp sails and sailed away. It was the
nostos
of Homeric heroes, the return and the loneliness of the last warriors coming home after the battle to be murdered by their wives' lovers or to be lost at sea, victims of cholera and the caprices of the gods. In that warm mist, Tanger's naked body sought Coy's, foam of soapy water on her thighs, smooth, freckled skin shining wetly. She sought him with silent determination, with intense purpose in her gaze, literally trapping him at the head of the bathtub. And lying back there, warm water to his waist and warm rain falling on his head and running down his face and shoulders, Coy watched her rise slowly, lift above him and slowly descend, decisive, slow, inch by inch, leaving him no escape but forward between her thighs, deep into that intense, desperate embrace, at the very edge of a lucidity draining away with his surrender and defeat. Never, until that night, had Coy felt raped by a woman. Never so meticulously and deliberately relegated to marginal status. Because I'm not me, he reasoned with the last bit of flotsam floating from the shipwreck of his thoughts. It isn't me she's embracing, it isn't anyone who can be assigned a face, a voice, a mouth. It wasn't for me those other times, when she moaned that long, sorrowful moan, and it isn't me she is imagining now. It's the tough, male, silent hero she was calling for before. Summoning him to the dream that she, all shes, have carried in their cells since the world began. The man who left his semen in her womb and then sailed for Troy on a black ship. The man whose shadow not even cynical priests, pale poets, or reasonable men of peace and the word who wait beside the unfinished tapestry have ever been able to erase completely.

IT
was still night when Coy awakened. She was not beside him. He had dreamed of a black, hollow space, the belly of a wooden horse, and bronze-armored companions who, swords in hand, slipped stealthily into the heart of a sleeping city. He sat up, uneasy, and saw the silhouette of Tanger at the shadowed window, against the lights from the city wall and the port. She was smoking. Her back was to him and he couldn't see the cigarette, but he caught the scent of tobacco. He got out of bed, naked, and went to her. She had put on his shirt but left it unbuttoned despite the cool night air blowing through the open window. The silver chain with the soldier's I.D. shone at her neck.

"I thought you were sleeping," she said, without turning.
"I
woke up and you weren't there."

Tanger didn't add anything, and he stood quietly looking at her. She inhaled deeply, held the smoke in her lungs, then slowly expelled it. As she drew on the cigarette, the glowing tip lit her fingers with their ragged nails. Coy put one hand on her shoulder, and she touched it absently, distractedly, before taking another drag.

"What do you think happened to the turtle?" she asked after a while.

Coy shrugged. "By now she's dead."

"I hope not. It's possible that she made it."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" She observed him out of the comer of her eye. "Sometimes there are happy endings, Coy." "Sure. Sometimes. Save one for me."

Again that silence. She was gazing down below the wall at the empty space left at the dock by the departure of the Zeeland ship.

"Do you have the answer yet to the puzzle of the knight and the knave?" she asked finally, speaking very quietly.

"There is no answer."

She laughed very low, or he thought she did. He couldn't be sure.

"You're mistaken," she said. "There's always an answer for everything."

"Well then, tell me what we're going to do now."

It was some time before she replied. She seemed as far away as the wreck of the
Dei Gloria.
Her cigarette had burned down, and she leaned over to crush the butt on the ledge of the recessed window, very deliberately extinguishing the last ember. Then she dropped it out the window.

"Do?’ She tilted her head, as if considering that word. "What we've been doing, naturally. Keep looking."

"Where?’

"Back on dry land again. You don't only fund sunken ships in the ocean."

AND
that was how I came to see them the next day in my office at Universidad de Murcia. It was one of those very bright days we tend to have, with huge parallelograms of sun gilding the stones of the halls of learning amid shimmering windowpanes and sparkling fountains. I had put on my sunglasses and gone down to the corner cafe for a cup of coffee, and on my way back, my jacket over my shoulder, I saw Tanger Soto waiting for me at the door—blond, pretty, full blue skirt, freckles. At first I took her for one of the students who at this time of year come to ask for help with their theses. Then I took note of the fellow with her, who was close but keeping a certain distance—I suppose you know what I mean if you know Coy a little by now. Then she—carrying a leather shoulder bag and with a cardboard document tube under one arm—introduced herself and pulled my
Aplicaciones de Cartografia Historica
from her bag, and it came to me that she was the young woman my dear friend and colleague Luisa Martin-Meras, head of cartography at the Museo Naval in Madrid, had spoken to me about, describing her as bright, introverted, and efficient. I even recalled that we had had several telephone conversations about Urrutia's
Atlas
and other historical documents in the archives of the university.

I invited them to come in, ignoring the sullen students waiting in the corridor. It was exam period and work was piled on my desk in the lion's cage I have for an office. I took books off chairs so they could sit down, and listened to their story. To be more precise, I listened to her, because it was she who did nearly all the talking, and I listened to as much of the story as she was willing to tell at that time. They had come from Cartagena, only half an hour by car on the main highway, and the whole affair could be summed up as a sunken ship, the information that could make it possible to find it, a few previous unfruitful attempts, and exact coordinates of latitude and longitude that for some reason had turned out to be inexact. Same old story. I am, after all, accustomed to inquiries of this nature. Although for personal reasons I sign my articles and my books with the same name and modest title I use on my calling card— below the anagram, common in my profession, of a T inside an O: Nestor Perona, Master Cartographer—I have held the chair of cartography at the Universidad de Murcia for a long time. My publications mean something in the scientific world, and I must often respond to questions and problems posed by institutions and individuals. It is curious indeed that at a time when cartography has undergone the greatest revolution in its history—given aerial photography, satellite maps, and the application of electronics and informatics— and has progressed light-years beyond the rudimentary maps drawn by early explorers and navigators, scholars find it increasingly necessary to maintain the fragile umbilical cord that joins modern times to past eras of science, which are now little more than proven myth. Difficulties already existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when advanced Flemish cartographers were faced with the daunting task of attempting to reconcile the contradictory lore left by authors of old with the new discoveries of Portuguese and Spanish navigators. And the process continued through successive generations. So today, without people like myself—you will forgive that minor, if legitimate, vanity—the ancient world would vanish and many things would lose their meaning in the cold neon light of modern science. Which is why, every time someone needs to look to the past and understand what he sees, he comes to me. To the classics. I consult with historians, librarians, archaeologists, hydrographers... seekers of treasure in general. You may recall the discovery of the galleon Sao Rico off Cozumel, the search for Noah's ark on Mount Ararat, or that famous National Geographic television special on locating the Virgen de la Caridad near Santona in the Bay of Biscay, and the recovery of eighteen of her forty bronze guns. Those three episodes—although the quest for the ark ended in grotesque failure—were made possible by the correction tables developed by my team here at the university. And another familiar figure in this story, Nino Palermo, once paid me the dubious honor of consulting me—though the matter went no farther— when he was on the trail of 80,000 ducats that had gone down with a Spanish galley in 1562 near the tower of Velez Malaga. Now, then. For more details, I refer you to my articles in the journal Cartographica, and to several of my books—the aforementioned Aplicaciones, for example, or my study on loxodromics, derived from the Greek loxos and dromos, as you are aware, in Los enigmas de la proyeccion Mercator. You may also consult my work on the twenty-one maps in the unfinished atlas of Pedro de Esquivel and Diego de Guevara, or my biographies of Father Ricci (
Li
Mateu: The Ptolemy of China)
and Torino
(The King's Hydrographer),
the
Catalogo Hidrografico Antiguo,
which I compiled in collaboration with Luisa Martin-Meras and Belen Rivera, and my monographs,
Cartografos jesuitas en el mar,
and
Cartografos jesuitas en Orients.
All these works were written in my study, naturally. But certain things, such as boyhood dreams, must be visited in person, and only when you are young. In our mature years, postcards and videos are imprinted upon our senses, and we find ourselves in Venice, not in splendor but in humidity.

But back to the matter at hand. That morning in my office at the university, my two visitors laid out their problem. Rather, she laid it out while he listened discreetly, seated among the piles of books I had set aside so he could sit down. I must confess that I took an immediate liking to that quiet sailor. It may have been the way he listened in the background, or perhaps it was his rough good looks. In any case, he looked like a good man. I liked that frank way he had of meeting your eyes, the way he touched his nose when disconcerted or perplexed, the shy smile, the jeans and sneakers, the strong arms under the white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He was the kind of man whom you sense, rightly or wrongly, you can trust, and his role in this adventure, his intervention in the puzzle and its unraveling, is the principal reason I am eager to tell this tale. In my youth I too read certain books. Besides, I tend to call on extreme courtesy—each of us has his own method—as a superior expression of scorn for my fellow man. The science to which I devote myself is a means as efficient as any other to hold at bay a world populated with people who on the whole irritate me, and among whom I prefer to choose with total impartiality, according to my sympathies or antipathies. As Coy himself would say, we deal the way we can. So for some strange reason—call it solidarity or affinity—I feel the need to justify this sailor exiled from the sea, and that is my motive for telling you his story. After all, narrating his adventure at the side of Tanger Soto is a little like a Mercator projection. In attempting to represent a sphere on a flat sheet of paper, you must slightly distort surfaces in the upper latitudes.

That morning in my office, Tanger Soto gave me the general outline of the matter, and then set out the specifics of the problem: 37°32'N and 4°51'E on Urrutia's nautical chart. A ship had been sunk there during the last third of the eighteenth century and that location, after the proper corrections had been made with the help of my own cartographical tables, corresponded to the modern position of 37°32,N and 1°21'W. The question posed by the visiting pair was whether that transposition was correct. After brief consideration, I said that if the tables had been properly applied, then quite possibly it was.

"Nonetheless," she said, "the ship isn't there."

1 looked at her with reasonable reserve. In these kinds of situations I always distrust absolute affirmations, and women, pretty or ugly who are exceedingly clever. And many of them have passed through my lecture halls.

'Are you sure? A sunken ship does not go about shouting its location."

"I know that. But we have done exhaustive research, starting on land."

So perhaps they got their feet wet, I deduced. I was trying to situate the couple among the species I have catalogued, but it was not easy. Amateur archaeologists, avid historians, treasure hunters. From behind my desk, beneath the framed reproduction of Peutinger's
Tabula Itineraria
—a gift from my students when I was given the chair—I devoted myself to studying them carefully. Physically, she fit the first two categories, he the third. Assuming that archaeologists, avid historians, and treasure hunters
have
a specific appearance.

"Well, I don't know," I said. "All that occurs to me is the most elementary answer. Your original data are erroneous. The latitudes and longitudes are incorrect."

"That's unlikely." She shook her head with certainty, an action that caused her blond hair, which I observed to be cut with curious asymmetry, to brush her chin. "I have solid documentary evidence. In that sense, only a relative margin of error would be acceptable, and that will lead us to a second, and broader, area of search. But first we want to discard any other possibility."

I liked the lady's tone of voice. So competent and sure. Formal.

"For example?"

'An error on our part when we applied your tables. I would be grateful if you would review our calculations."

Again I looked at her for an instant and then glanced at him; he was still listening quietly, sitting still, his large hands resting on his thighs. My curiosity had its limits. I had heard many such stories of searches. But the students waiting outside my door were stifling, the day was too splendid for correcting exams, she was most uncommonly attractive—without being a true beauty because of her nose when seen in profile, although perhaps beautiful precisely because of that—and I liked him a lot. So,
pourquoi pas?’
I asked myself, in the manner of Commander Charcot. This was not something that would take much time. The cardboard tube contained several rolled-up charts, which Tanger Soto spread out on my desk. Among them I recognized a fine reproduction of one of Urrutia's nautical charts. I knew that one, naturally, and studied it with affection. Not as beautiful as Torino's, of course. But magnificent drypoint engraved on plates of beaten and polished copper. Very precise for its period.