Free Waiting For Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk

He closes his eyes. “I remember the curves of a woman in Paris, her skin, her green eyes. And she had the most peculiar but pleasant scent. Oranges and cinnamon. The smell of rain and dirt. Moist earth. Don’t get me wrong, my friend. Just a hint of this scent andyou would need more. Desire would blossom in you as it did in me. Ah, she would have been the one who kept me from God had she not already been married. Her name was Maria, and she was not only beautiful but she was intelligent.” Father Paulo opens his eyes. “I wonder if you are intelligent.”
    He thinks I can’t hear or understand him, the sailor is thinking.
    Father Paulo nurses this man back to health. It’s a slow process as he passes through fever after fever. It takes two weeks for him to speak his first words. The monk has been sitting quietly waiting for him to wake up. When the sailor opens his eyes he sees the balding pillar of a man sitting against a white stone wall, his eyes closed in a meditation. The father has a warm, open face.
    He’s asleep, the sailor thinks. It is the first peace I’ve had since I got here. This man never shuts up. He is the most opinionated, pigheaded, domineering, and often-very-wrong man I’ve ever encountered. He never stops talking. Thank God and all the heavens he’s asleep.
    “I am not asleep, my friend,” says the monk. “I was meditating—something I learned from a friend, a Chinese monk who came through here a few years back. It’s a completely conscious, focused prayer.”
    He reads my mind, the man thinks. He smiles cautiously. “Thank you,” he says, finally.
    “I was worried about you, my friend,” Father Paulo says. “You are very welcome. You’re going to be all right.”
    “No, thank you for stopping your talking.”
    The monk tightens the rope that secures his robe—clears his throat. “What are you called by?”
    “Cristóbal. I am Cristóbal, a navigator. I was a navigator.”
    “Where were you sailing to?”
    “To Portugal, and then Spain with the
Barto
out of Venice. From Britain and the North Sea.” He pauses. “You said I was the only survivor? Nobody else came ashore? Nothing else? No other wreckage?”
    “A few planks, and you attached to one of them. That’s it, I’m afraid.”
    “I am grateful.”
    “Listen, do you know the sextant, my friend?”
    “Yes, I understand the sextant. I understand how it works.”
    “And you understand the stars?”
    He’s testing me, Columbus thinks. He wants to test the limits of my knowledge. The sextant is new. Dead reckoning and a compass is the standard for navigation. “I have guided ships by the stars. But I do not understand the stars.”
    This stops Father Paulo.
    “You guide your ship by the stars yet you do not understand the stars? Is this a riddle? Are you any good as a navigator?”
    Columbus laughs. “I do not understand the
beauty
of the stars. It is simply that. I do not understand their beauty.”
    The monk smiles. This is something he can sink his teeth into. There is a built-in dichotomy in this man who plays with language and apparently loves the stars. He arrives on the beach tied neatly to a plank and barely survives this ordeal. Nothing else comes ashore. He knows the sextant and knows about navigating by the stars. In his delirium he called out at least three different names—all women. So perhaps he is also a lover.
    “I should let you know, I was not the navigator of the ship that went down—I was a passenger only.”
    “It was a hell of a storm. Yours was not the only ship lost.”
    “How long have I been—?”
    “Two weeks. You were brought here two weeks ago. I will bring you more soup.”

    “You’re trying to tell me that you washed up on shore the sole survivor of a shipwreck?”
    “Not the most auspicious of beginnings, I admit. But it could have happened.”
    Consuela is thinking she should have fed the ducks in the pond—sent him back to his room and enjoyed the peace of this