Trafalgar (8 page)

“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?”

“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 lightning 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.”

I thought about an America discovered by a hundred bearded and illiterate slobs, a lunatic, and a man from another world aboard an interstellar ship: insanity is a great sanity, as Bernard Goorden says.

“We took forty-five minutes because I went slowly,” said Trafalgar. “At ten to nine in the morning, we landed in San Salvador because I had illusions of respecting history, as if with that little piece of verisimilitude I could repair what I had done. The Admiral and Yáñez could hardly believe we were already on the other side of the world and between the three of us we had a huge job making the others understand and that’s even though they’d seen the coasts and the ocean. We disembarked, we took possession, there were speeches and prayers and while the Admiral wept and wrote reports, Yáñez and I traversed the place and we went into the sea. We hunted, we fished, we ate, and in the evening I took them around the sea of the Antilles which they also call Caribe. We spent two days in Cuba and three in Haiti. As there were no remains of ships, we did not build forts. On the fifth day, Yáñez and I between us herded everyone together, because the Admiral, obsessed with his demonstrations of Cipango from the west, wasn’t good for much, and I took them on a trip around the world.”

“Poor Magellan.”

“Don’t even talk about it. That is among the least of my worries. Although I suppose that when I came back home, the puzzle I left will have tended to put itself back together all on its own. A tricky puzzle. I not only went around the world as close to the ground or the water as I could, but I went up and up until I showed them all that yes, their world was round and, by the way, that it was a jewel no one deserved and, also by the way, that where we’d been was not Cipango but America, although I did not say America. They had already stopped being afraid and the disorders now were of another kind. Sanitary, to tell the truth. But we returned to Castile from the east and they received us in the palace and there were celebrations that, added to the horns Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte and I between us put on her husband, left me exhausted.”

“And the little priest?”

“He was around, as always. But I began to watch him and I learned (without asking, because instinct told me it was not advisable to make inquiries and I have a great respect for instinct, which has gotten me out of more than one), I learned who the little priest was.”

“You’ll forgive me, but I’m not very strong in history.”

“I’ll loan you a biography of Doña Isabel and you’ll see. But anyway, it’s getting late and we have to decide about lunch.”

It must have been true that it was late, because the cat was wide awake.

“To continue screwing up history, we made five more trips: we took settlers; not conquistadors, notice, settlers. We took animals, plows, furniture, ships, teachers, physicians, chroniclers, bricklayers, blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, everything. Granted, as few soldiers as possible. Priests I had to take a lot of, more than would have been necessary and advisable.”

“So, there, that’s what the conquest became?”

“I don’t know what it became because I had to leave in a rush. The only thing I know is that I slid glory and honors toward the Admiral’s side, although some fell to me despite my efforts, and I suggested the placement of cities to be founded and I even drew the street plans with what I remembered of each one. Perhaps there, if they have already begun to exist and if they will continue existing, Buenos Aires, Lima, La Habana, Santiago, New York, Quito, are my work—indirectly, but mine. Brazil and all of North America, of this I’m sure, are already half colonized by Castile and Aragon. Do you see what I did?”

“Are you sorry?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Well, no, I’m telling you, no. A little uneasy, but not sorry. Uneasy because I don’t know who is going to invent the telephone and who will win the Second World War, and because I don’t know to what side other factors will trend that, if you think about it, are by no means insignificant: Mayas, Aztecs, Incas on one side, to recall only the most important. Portugal, England, France on the other. England above all. What do you think my queen’s namesake will do in her turn?”