Juan is woken by the racket all around him. He looks around. It’s past daybreak. Still overcast. And while he’s able to discern each of the caravels flanking his ship, they’re not as easy to make out anymore. The mist is still there and Juan’s whole world is painted in scales of grey. It appears that all of the men are up and about and, as a matter of fact, what’s taking place is one whale of an argument.
“What’s all this commotion about?” he asks one of the men.
“It was never no god-damned rat at all, Captain!” answers Yzquierdo. He’s extremely distressed. “Someone has killed the bird! Jaco found it behind the chest where we moved the crossbows to last week! Underneath the pillow! Whoever finished it, he was keeping it there, the lowly bastard, like some kind of unholy amulet!!”
Juan looks around the deck. The men had just about had it. He knew that the conservation of such a mascot aboard would end up spelling trouble. And smelling it, too, it turns out. The large bird – probably a double-crested cormorant, but Juan wouldn’t know -- had flown and glided alongside the vessel for a span of approximately four days – sometimes even above the vessel, not too high up – and during those few days the men had basked in sunny good weather, had been in good spirits; a robust, persistent wind had kept the sails swelled and aboard the ship, general good fortune dwelled. The food even seemed to taste better – or shall we say – less horrible – for that short span of time. Jokes had seemed funnier, the men’s seafaring tall tales less believable – whether that’s a good or a bad thing – and even the wine seemed to be easier on the men: much more benevolent, allowing them better buzzes for less of the coveted liquid – and their longings for their women left so far behind took a more positive quality, as instead of depression and longing, the general feeling was exhilaration and anticipation.
But then, upon daybreak one morning, the black bird was found on the deck, starboard side, huddled against the base of the ladder to the upper deck. Its magnificent bright green eyes did then take to mute, and the men assumed God’s creature had taken ill. De Gallego took to the bird, but even Doctor Sanchez could not make it feel better, apparently, as he did always stress, he was ‘no vet.’ But the good weather, sail and fortune remained intact. And after a few days of pampering from the men and petting it and telling it tall tales and even including it in ‘future’ tall tales, as a protagonist, plus feeding it the best of the strips of salty dried meat and the cleanest of the water – whichever the admiral left over unconsumed; sure, slightly mixed with his saliva and thus probably too with some of his germs, but still – the bird appeared to fully recover. It, the bird, opted to, however, now bask in its revered pet status and chose to fly very little again, almost not at all, instead keeping to the company of the crew, and was often seen perched tranquilly atop the shoulder of many a sailor; and even, at least Alonso “Ch.” assures so, making the greatest of efforts to learn to speak, so as to become an even better companion and bird of good omen to the men.
But then, one night, the bird had disappeared. Most of the men suspected Marin, who was last seen with the bird – by the way, they named the bird “Ave” – the night before while drunkenly coming down the ladder with it on his shoulder and stumbling and landing face-first on the main deck and the bird – “Ave” – took off from the shoulder and batted its wings a couple of times, landing composedly on the rusting cannon, thus avoiding equal fate as Marin. But the thing is someone – the goldsmith, if it must be known – argued in all fairness to Marin, that Marin had been so wasted the rest of that night and most of next day that it surely couldn’t have been him who had harmed the bird. “Ave”. But what was for sure, is that at some time between that moment and noon the next day, the sails had begun to sag, the sun had begun to dim, clouds had started to appear as far as the eye could see and the color of the water had turned grey… and the grey water was still -- as still as the water of some sweetwater lake. But, of a sweetwater lake that had been shrouded, by some malevolent curse, from end to end, in fog. And the ship had stalled in this windless, sunless fog. The admiral had even ordered the men to lower the sails -- recoged las velas – in a decision that practically all of the men had favored, as, they reckoned, altogether, deliberately, in the face of this windless rut, to remove the sails, as opposed to allowing them to sag, haplessly, pitifully, flacidly in the weak, haphazard breeze, at least slapped the curse back in the face by removing, if not all, then at least one of the mockful symbols of its sadistic triumph. “El tener las velas sueltas, caídas de esta manera, por tanto tiempo, constituye no más que la peor de las peores de las malas de las suertes,” had even reflected to some of the men and later that night written in his journal Rodrigo de Jerez. Then had come this nauseating smell that the less superstitious of the men – Juan among them -- had assumed was one of the many rats aboard, one that had died (perhaps while gnawing on the life-size wooden cross they’d brought, which was tossed behind some boards and drenched in stale water down at the bodega). For the more superstitious ones, of course, the extremely offensive smell was just part of the curse. But regardless, all of the men’s spirits were running low. The mourning for Ave and the conviction that its disappearance had cursed them had them going about their duties woefully, and turning in early to sleep, in the hope of a better next day. And in fact de Gutierrez, the royal steward, always assured them: “Tomorrow will be a fine day.” But that “fine” day had not yet come, for any of them.
And so this explosive concoction has finally exploded, reckons Juan.
He rubs his eyes then finger-combs his scantily-populated beard as he makes his way to the nucleus of the quarreling crowd. And loudly clears his throat, then equally loudly demands: “Men! Camaradas! Basta ya, basta ya! Qué ha sucedido?”
“They’ve killed Ave!” a different Juan cries out.
“They? I’m saying I’m pretty damn sure I know who the bastard was… who killed Ave,” sentences another of the men through gnashed teeth. It’s Alonso Clavijo. “Not ‘they’,” he spits. “He!”
“Hold on, hold on,” says Juan. “Let’s not start pointing fingers without proof here. Or do you have it, Alonso? Do you have proof.”
Silence.
Gonzalo Franco says, “What more proof do you need, Captain? With all due respect, of course.” He hardly eases his tone.
The men lock gazes. A creak from the not-that-close-by invisible caravel down south could distinctly be heard.
“Well,” finally says Juan, “what’s that proof you posit I don’t need any more of, Gonzalo?” He keeps looking squarely into Franco’s eyes.
“You’re staring right into the eyes of the proof you seek, Captain,” says Pedro de Lepe, taking a step forward.
“How so?” asks Juan, as Gonzalo Franco yells to de Lepe: “What are you talking about? I did NOTHING!”
De Lepe goes on, to Juan, “They’re pinning this on the boy, Captain. And, considering the chap’s, a) incapable of killing a fly; b) gilipollas, all the time thinking about pregnant little birds; and c) the admiral’s protégé, it’s clear that this accusation’s business is solely that of undermining the authority of the admiral.”
Juan considers this. Then he turns to de Lepe: “The only problem with your reasons is that they do not add up to an alibi.” Then, to both Franco and de Lepe, “But more importantly… the authority of the admiral is warranted by the Queen, seamen.”
There’s another creak from the invisible, south-flanking caravel.
Then, Gonzalo Franco: “But presume for an instant that it was not Queen Isabella who warranted that, but Pedro’s sister, for instance. Could I then say that I wipe my ass, all the way down from my stenchy, hairy balls, all the way up to my stinking Galician asshole, with her warrant?”
Juan: “Watch your words, seaman!”
Someone yells out, “MUTINY!!”
Then Pedro de Lepe to Gonzalo Franco: “Don’t you talk about my sister again or I’ll…”
“I’ll talk about your sister all I want,” interrupts Franco. “In fact, when you see her, recite her this ode I wrote for her:
A whale in the sea, could easy believe
The love I have for thee
Fine, fine! That’s a lie! But heere’s a fact,
Thee weighs as much as he!”
Pedro: “Yeah? And how do you know that?”
Franco: “What, that she weights as much as a whale? Cause I did her you numbnuts!”
Pedro: “Not that, you woman! How do you know how much the whale weights!” Then, his face in Franco’s, hurling a finger at his brow, words exploding with spittle, “‘Cause it did you, you diminutive piece of shit-smeared Galician rat brain!!”
Franco: “Well, it may have done me, but at least it didn’t do my mother… like it did yours!!”
“How do you know the whale did his mother?!” someone yells out.
Franco: “It never came back to sea! You know what it says about this fucker’s mother? It says,
From Palos to China
No tighter vagina
Than Pedro’s mom’s
Own pride
No he-whale snugs tighter
Inside ‘er, just ride ‘er
Take Pedro’s mom
Tonite!”
Pedro says, “Fine! You win…” and smiles, turning his back to Franco. And as Franco is smugly chuckling, and pointing at Pedro and saying to his pals around him, “Can you believe this gilipollas,” Pedro spins around and lands his right fist squarely on Franco’s jaw, putting the older sailor squarely on the deck. Then Alonso Clavijo charges at Pedro, pushing him halfway across the deck and finally falling on top of him, and they start trading punches. Juan de Medina tries to separate them, but probably since Pedro’s getting the worst of it, de Cuéllar comes over and lands an illegal elbow on the back of de Medina’s neck, instantly dropping him, too, to the deck beside Pedro. Upon seeing this, Lope comes along, and literally kicks de Cuellar’s ass -- no one understands why – literally just lifts his foot furiously towards de Cuellar’s ass, hitting it -- then de Cuellar turns around and viciously in turn kicks Lope’s balls, which proved far more effective, and when Lope reflexively leans forward with his hands on his balls, brutally headbutts him and Lope, stumbling as a result against the railing on the starboard side, still holding on to his balls, almost goes overboard. Meanwhile, with Pedro almost going on unconscious, Alonso grabs a wood plank and bashes it against Pedro’s forehead, sending further imaginary little birds circling and chirping above his head as his tocallo Pedro Yzquierdo then avoids a second plank on his friend’s forehead by landing a large, heavy sack of grain on Alonso’s head as Alonso was about to bring the plank down the second time, and Alonso drops the plank behind him, momentarily stunned. But then Pedro Yzquierdo himself is perhaps left a tad more than stunned after Juan de Moguer -- a hefty man -- picks him up and holds him high above his head and then throws him down, full force, down on hapless, sparkless Pedro no less, on whose forehead is already rapidly growing a mother of a bump from that first plank hit. All in all, about fifteen more men join in the fight, and it ends up being a savage, noisy proceeding, in fact the most vicious fight that Juan has ever witnessed. To try to physically engage and separate them all, he had thought, would have been futile, so he resorted to repeatedly crying out, “Parad de pelear, parad de pelear, hombre!” which of course everyone ignored. Then someone cries out, “El admiral, el admiral!” and everybody immediately stops fighting. And everybody looks up to the upper deck.
And there is silence again as the air itself about the still nao has all of a sudden changed.
The old man has emerged from his quarters.
Juan again experiences that unpinpointable blend of jealousy and admiration he often felt about the old man. Who did not, really, look like an old man much at all. As the entire crew turns to regard him, Juan recognizes that the sheer height, straight posture, commanding gaze, denote the presence of a man not feeble at all – the only “old man” stereotype you could pin on the admiral was experience and olfactory acuity – olfato – one only at home in the most sagacious of the most seasoned of sea-wolves. With his shoulder length, straight, grey-yet-vibrant hair that reposes aloofly over the cloak’s collar – fur, a wolf’s, one he claimed to have killed himself in ‘self-defense’ while trekking across the Andalusian mountains northeast of Seville – and his bright amber eyes and tanned and lined -- yet tight -- skin, the ‘old man’ also projected strength and immeasurable energy… which translated to authority. Juan could understand this. The only sustainable kind of authority was that which stemmed from strong leadership, and the old man had that. For now at least. Juan not only had to admit, deep down, that he himself did not look half as handsome as the old bastard. But he also had to hands down concede that regardless of his own technical prowess, it was probably inarguably true that his nao and the crew were in better hands under the command of the admiral. Hombre! It’s one thing to sail about a well-defined coastline on a carrack with a forty-man crew – quite another to venture into the unknown in a carrack with a forty-man crew!
Crew which was doing at the moment not much other than watching the admiral make his way, pacedly, dominantly, to the railing abutting the main mast, the palo mayor.
The admiral plants his hands on the railing and looks down at the crew. He finds Juan and locks eyes with him, and nods lightly. Juan knows that this means that the old man would like to have a word with him. Under his breath, Juan gives out a short little sigh before making his way among the frozen-in-mid-fight and spectating crew along portside to the ladder to the upper deck and to the waiting, towering old man. Once there he tilts his head up to talk into the admiral’s ear, and the admiral in turn tilts his head slightly down to his side to listen. Juan says:
“The men are nervous because of the mist, and the fact that the water is still and the sails were sagged, and after the good omen with the bird we kept, no more good news have come; on top of that, what we thought was a dead rat – remember about that?” The admiral slowly, slightly, nods three times. “Well, it turns out to be someone actually killed the bird, and it was rotting underneath a sack of sawdust they were using as a pillow, and…” Juan clears his throat. “And, they’re blaming, well, some are blaming – and that was really what set off the quarrel… it… some are blaming, the… ah…” The shipmaster licks his chapped lips. “Some are… some are blaming the boy, Admiral. Some are blaming the boy.” The old man slowly turns to meet Juan’s gaze, and shakes his head lightly. Juan says, “I know, Admiral. It’s preposterous.”
“Ridicolo,” scoffs the admiral, staring into Juan’s eyes.
“Yes. Completely. Completely ridiculous, Admiral.” Juan complies.
The admiral then looks down at the men. And after a moment he asks the captain: “What do you think I should do?”
Juan considers the question. Then, decidedly: “I think you should talk to the men.”
The admiral looks back down at Juan. “And what do you think I should say to the men?” he asks his second-in-command.
Juan turns his gaze to the expectant, sun and ill-health and hunger and worry and now fight-ravaged, bruised, bloodied, yet attentive crew below. There, among others, were Maestre Juan, his tocallo, along with seven other of their tocallos; and also Jaco, Diego Bermudez, Doctor Sanchez, the goldsmith, Luis, the interpreter; pilot Pedro Alonso Niño, Bartolomé and Chachu, Rodrigo (last name Triana, he thinks), Rodrigo Sánchez -- who no one likes -- Pedro Yzquierdo, Jacomel Rico, Alonso Clavijo, Lope, Diego “The Painter,” Escobedo, “The Secretary,” and, at the bow looking straight ahead, his back turned to the ship, watching the grey, still ocean ahead as all this ensues… the boy. Juan then notices that the fog has begun to get even heavier, seemingly now also making unhearable the two already invisible caravels that flank them, also now making further unhearable, invisible the empty, interminable sea ahead.
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“I think,” starts Juan, “you should tell them something along the following lines, Admiral.”
The admiral slowly cocks his head slightly further toward Juan, while looking straight into the impenetrable mist, towards there the portside horizon would plausibly be, serious, heedful.
Juan whispers into the old man’s ear: “Dear crew of the Santa María. I know that the journey we are on has been long and difficult, and that the challenges we have faced have at times been overwhelming. But I must remind you all that we are on a mission of great importance. We set out to find a new route to the Indies, and that is a goal that requires all of us to work together and support one another.” Juan pauses to see if there’s any reaction from the old man. There is none. The captain clears his throat, continues: “I understand that tempers may sometimes flare and that disagreements are bound to occur. But I implore you all to remember that we are a team, and that our success depends on our ability to work together and stay focused on our goal.” He again looks for a reaction from the old man, and he gets it: the admiral is slowly making a winding motion with his right hand, index finger extended, gesturing, Juan guesses, for him to go on. He again clears his throat, does so, says, “Quarreling and bickering will only serve to undermine our efforts and make our journey more difficult.” He regards the admiral. He’s still slowly doing the winding gesture with his finger. Juan clears his throat again, continues, “So I ask you, please, to set aside your differences and stay calm and attentive. Let us all do our part to ensure that we reach our destination safely and successfully. Together, we can accomplish great things.” He checks; the admiral’s still slowly winding air with his finger. Juan coughs once, concludes: “And, also. Lay off the boy. It was not him, I’m sure, who killed that bird. Thank you.”
The admiral then turns his head slowly and stares into Juan’s eyes without saying anything for a moment that’s long enough to become uncomfortable for Juan. Then, never breaking eye contact with him, he finally gives him a single, slow nod. And turns away to address the crew.
And the admiral thus speaks:
“My brave men.” He glances about the crew, yawing his left foot along his heel axis in an apparent attempt at cementing comfort footing, which he apparently attains. He goes on: “I commend your unwavering attention. And I commend you again for constituting an unbreakable, fundamental part of this most sacred and important of missions, one that we’re on the verge of procuring, for our Lord Savior, for our Queen and for our King, and for our country, our families, our honor. If we are, as we must, to act together as a unit, and not quarrel amongst ourselves as we were ordinary, unworthy, lazy street beggars! Who have no idea about the importance of what we’re doing here! Are you lazy street beggars!? Do you not know… about the crucial moment in history that you are, as you stand there, being a part of!? We will find a new route to the Indies. Together. We will attain to the Crown and to ourselves and to our children and grandchildren and to their own – our own – after them… the honor, pride, glory… of having succeeded and our women and our children and their own, our own thereafter will respect us! Together! Our countrymen will respect us. But for that we must stand together as one. And that is not all, men. The treasures that await us – if honor’s not enough for you, maybe? Huh??” For the first time he smiles now, widely, and looks around, catching the men’s gazes, and a few of the men chuckle, and some start to let go of their fellow combatant and others get up from the deck floor and brush the dust off their guises, even poor Pedro tries to do so, his own smile pathetically or is it hilariously now buck-toothed and lopsided, and some start laughing loudly, some saying, “No, it’s not enough!” -- the admiral goes on, “the treasures that await us, then, will be, will be enough. The treasures that await you. If honor’s not enough for you. No one’s judging!!” He’s grinning furiously, glancing nefariously among the men’s faces. “It will be more than worth your time, worth your hardships, worth not laying by the side of a warm woman on a roach and mite-free cot, and instead being laying by the side of a warm rat… or a cold one, at that, huh? Haha! And… anyway, I promise you that. For country! For honor! For soon laying by the side of -- not a rat -- but a woman! For treasures!!!!”
Juan looks down and around to witness that the men have gone berserk, cheering, jumping up and down, hugging each other, raising their arms up in the air madly this way and that; all eyes are on the admiral, now again even Juan’s; all eyes except the boy’s, as he’s absently standing, still, on the bow -- where he, Juan, himself stood earlier this day with his bottle, during the dark, quiet, mysterious but peaceful small hours. And the boy’s still got his back to the ship, staring dead ahead. “Yes,” continues the admiral, wild-eyed. “I promise you! I promise you this, I promise you that!!” He laughs. The crowd laughs. “Look around! Our Lord Savior is with us! Look!! The fog has started to clear ahead!! See?!?!?” The men look ahead to the west. It was true, at least the fog had started to clear ahead. How had Juan just now not noticed? About the men continued to give rise a powerful sense of hope and relief. “Now,” the admiral finally says, “enough of this old sea-wolf talking! Everybody, go back to wo…”
Juan can see that the admiral’s eyes have suddenly shifted to a place in the sky ahead of them, seemingly, and he can see the admiral’s jaw drop slightly open. Juan turns his own gaze to the west, since he had never seen that look on the admiral’s face, and thus gets a glimpse of what the admiral’s seeing, beholding that way the most extraordinary thing he had ever beholden before in his life. Out of the sky was slowly coming down a gigantic blue hand, down toward the vast ocean ahead of them – maybe a league away. There was an odd quality about it, as it was smooth and even, like a strange humanoid creature’s, yet shiny, simple – no bones, hair, veins, nails, wrinkles of any kind. Except for the serpents. The palm of the hand was populated by what looked like thousands of radially-disposed, furious sea serpents, tightly packed next to the other like a phalanx, jutting out defiantly, menacingly from the palm. This giant blue hand is descending from the sky and it splashes gargantuanly into the still ocean ahead, and makes an incredible splash – maybe a splash equivalent to that of a thousand breaching humpback whales crashing back down as one into the ocean. Dumbfounded, Juan is only now starting to process the wildly extraordinary scene before him. He suddenly notices, too, the combination of excitement, hyperawareness and raw fear that’s a part, though he’s not familiar with this phrase, of the so-called fight-or-flight response. As he slowly becomes aware of the screams of dozens of seasoned, sea-toughened sailors all around him he notices also an unsettling quiet – that kind of quiet that you’re treated to before all hell breaks loose -- and Juan takes notice too of an odd pressure in his chest – not a heart attack today, Juan’s lucky, but nonetheless the lament of a heart subjected to an autonomic response the kind that no human heart is supposed to endure. At half-speed, he turns his gaze back to the old man, who’s expression is frozen in the same exact visage Juan saw seconds ago; while regarding him, out of the corner of his eye, he can see some of the men, inexplicably perhaps, jumping overboard into the still, grey water – but what can possibly be inexplicable now? Many of the men are yelling prayers at the now half-underwater, unworldly-sized monstrosity to the west. Several, Juan can see, have even collapsed – malnourishment, insolation, ill health now coupled with a level of stress they knew not existed, reckons Juan, the formula for even a seasoned seaman to faint like a woman. He looks ahead again at the bow. The boy is in the exact same position Juan last saw him, staring straight ahead at, assumingly, the towering, sky-blue, ill-defined form of what’s purportedly the arm of the hand that dove into the ocean ahead moments ago, and probably, too, at the tsunami-caliber waves that Juan now also notices are frighteningly making their way toward the nao and – no, he has not forgotten about them, noteworthily – toward the two smaller, distant caravels at port and starboard, respectively. More of the men jump overboard now, and Juan still cannot understand why. But it doesn’t matter. He now yells at the old man: “Admiral!! Admiral!!” But the admiral is frozen; in fact the only detectable movement in or on the old man are the dead grey wolf’s hairs on his cloak’s collar and the old man’s equally dead, yet vibrant, grey sea-wolf hair -- which are, Juan notices, increasingly agitated by a breeze that started seconds ago and is now, along with the waves, growing mightier, progressively, unstoppably. For a split second Juan wonders if he himself is frozen, too. Why has he not moved? But then in a split second, also: move and do what? He feels delirious all of a sudden; all of a sudden, he hears a voice, a female voice whose source he can’t quite place – is he going mad? In his head? It couldn’t be one of the men -- who’s terror would plausibly have done in the masculinity of his vocal chords: the voice is all-encompassing, saying, Marco… Marco… Is it some friendly East Indian female deity, thinking it is not the Genoese but the ancient Venetian mariner, the honorary son of the East who’s closing in on her coast, but more importantly now closing in on trouble, and she’s in some outlandish form attempting to get his attention, trying futilely to pledge for him to go on no further, vying futilely for him and his crew not to encounter the abomination of a foreign hostile monster deity whose powers surpass even hers, as said monster deity’s hell-bent on him not approaching from the east? But does she not know that the golden boy of Kublai Khan has been dead for almost two hundred years? In another split-second the image of a certain young woman with the warmest of hearts (and the warmest of loins, may he also point out), whom he left back in Cádiz -- the only woman who’d ever looked into his eyes with true devotion and admiration, although he could not give her her place -- comes to him in a flash as now, all at once, from the west, starts falling a kind of rain he had never witnessed before -- it’s as if these drops were bigger, faster, heavier – all of a sudden, the smooth, deformed giant “hand” emerges horribly from the sea, violently unchaining as it does a new series of massive waves their way, and with what look like hundreds of millions of gallons of water flowing rabidly down along its surface and along the hundreds of thousands of protruding sea serpents that stem off its palm, down to the now wickedly turbulent sea all around the nao. Those of the crew who’re not overboard or fainted or frozen as the admiral is, are now running for cover from this treacherous, vicious rain and, of course, the boy is still unfazed, wet hair, cloak, thrashing violently in the incoming wind, but he remains unfazed, still looking dead ahead – or, frozen as is the admiral, maybe, thought Juan as he himself started to run for cover, then stopped, slipped and fell on his back – the viciously heaving and rolling and pitching and yawing don’t help -- and gets up then, and gets back to the unmoving old man, and grabs him, yelling, “Admiral, come, come, we need to get cover!” but the old man is still unresponsive; Juan tries to pull him back toward his quarters astern but the rigid admiral literally topples, just like a statue, falling on the wooden deck in the exact same body position he had been in when he trailed off -- with, probably due to the bizarre chaos of the present conditions, a dry, soundless thud -- and Juan’s forced to leave him and finally makes his way to the admiral’s quarters – his quarters, actually, Juan thinks offhandedly – and as he closes the door behind him and crouches behind a window, the nao is pitching violently now – Juan reckons due to a huge incoming wave – and the bow keeps rising as the incline is at present, estimates Juan, at least an eight of a turn of a vertical circle. And hanging on with both hands on to the windowsill, his body’s length diagonal with respect to the horizontal now, he can see through the window that the boy at the bow is, now majorly inexplicably, still standing upright just as before, back when they were level, over the once-still water. The laws of physics are not strictly applying to the boy, Juan thinks – other that maybe those few laws involved in making the wind violently thrash about his black hair… Marco… Pandemonium keeps drawing out on deck, and he can no longer see either of the two smaller, escorting vessels surely not now due to fog but to wind, the rain, the sea spray all around assaulting the nao which is now leveling back, and but soon after it starts to again pitch, this time pitch ahead, heavily, having passed, reckons Juan, the crest of the wave… and but the bow, it’s now pitching further even, and as he now, through the window, can make out past the boy at the bowsprit an incredible precipice of seawater that the ship is now skimming along on, falling forward fast, Juan feels a terrible pain as the admiral’s, or rather, his, heavy wooden bureau, clashes against his right leg, pinning it to the wall flanking the upper deck, but hopefully not breaking it; some maps the admiral had been working on fly out the window, some of his own, too as the nao now crashes bow-down onto the water, miraculously still staying in one piece, and but Juan now realizes that – Marco… -- the waves are giving way to a much more horrific phenomenon… the nao is rapidly approaching the edge of a truly gargantuan maelstrom – it looks to be, from where Juan’s standing, at least a half a league in diameter, and Juan loses consciousness; then regains it, to behold that the nao is falling inside this monster of a maelstrom and he can eventually see, across its vast diameter, one of the caravels also caught in it, which looks tiny across this megalomous, apocalyptic void, and, wait, there’s the other one, too; and, look, the boy; the boy, too; still at the bow, still by the sprit mast, black hair thrashing wildly in the wet, salty sea wind; looking ever forward, into the void now, into the uncharted, into the vortex that’s spiraling along with it these three helpless ships, ever so rapidly, toward the aquatic cypher, toward the residential, family-of-three, one-and-a-half-inch in diameter, chrome-plated bathtub drain.
The lights are dim in the bathroom, but count on their incandescent glow to surge nonetheless throughout that steamy ambiance and valiantly grace its shiny moist surfaces with the rarest of existential candors.
And the whole place smells like salt.
“Marco! I’m talking to you!”
And the mother is yet again yelling at the boy. The boy, who’s in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers on his knees on the floor with his arm over the side of the bathtub, takes his eyes off the three corks still spinning in the whirlpool in the tub toward the drain to look up at her through thick dank bangs of black hair. She’s taking her blue rubber dishwashing gloves off – the kind with the ‘scrubber bristles’ on the palms – and now throws them down and they splat wetly on the residential, family-of-three, inch-and-a-half square, yellow-and-brown mosaic bathroom floor. For an average-height woman – they say he gets his height from his father (whom he will never meet) – the mother’s nonetheless a towering presence inside the steamy bathroom. She turns off the shower as the rest of the steaming-hot water flushes out and away.
“How many times have I told you!?” Now with her hands on her slender waist. “Do! Not! Use! My! SALTFORTHISSTUPIDNONSENSE!!!”
The practically-empty bag of kitchen salt in question is lazily resting against the side of the tub, just as the boy is. Actually, the bathroom smells like salt and his mom’s deodorant. She thinks it’s her perfume that’s the aroma. It’s her deodorant.
“Sorry.” He goes back to the three corks twirling around, now almost at the drain.
“You know what?” she says. “I’m done. I’ve had it.” She’s taking her apron off. “You clean this mess up.” She’s kicking off her slippers as she walks over to the walk-in-closet bordering the bathroom’s far end. “I’m taking some fucking time for myself.” She sits on the ottoman she’s got in the closet. She mutters, “Some fucking me time.” She’s putting on her pair of tall strappy high heels. The blue ones. Her legs are so, like… curvy. Why?? And kind of like thick at the ankles but why the heck do those huge balls form at the back of them, especially when wearing her heels, especially when she walks? He’d asked her once what those were. And she’d told him what they were called. He can’t remember what it was, only that it was the name of an animal. Or animals. Farm ones, he thinks. Baby farm ones. His question: why do they bulge out like that? His question: how come her entire legs are always so shiny like that? It pisses him off. It’s, like, embarrassing. Meaning, she’s probably going to the shopping mall, and he sure as heck is not going with her. Not unless she puts on like jeans or something. Like, it’s not fun having to put up with the embarrassment of having all of those misters – and some misses sometimes -- all the time staring so strangely at her, in general, and, like, if she’s on a skirt, let alone a miniskirt, let alone freaking shorts, and god forbid those heels thrown into the mix… then their attention for some reason’s all directed at her legs. Meaning, is there like… something wrong with them? But the misters’ look is always like one of either utter nervousy seriousness or a kind of utter pissed-in-your-pants admiration. And the misses’ is like sometimes a kind of utter nervousy pissed-in-your-pants admiration and sometimes like they just want to bash her head in. Fuck’n weird.”
“And you’re not coming!” she hollers back at him, but her tone’s softened down to a kind of playful. “You go out and play, too. Jesus Christ, Marco! Get some fresh air, run about, laugh your guts off, yell your lungs out, have fun.” She’s saying this as she’s at the mirror applying mascara to her already mascara’d eyelashes. “Go roller skating, the arcade, whatever, just step outside! Take my Walkman! I’ve told you a zillion times, you can’t stay here all day, playing with your food, staring at the wall.” Now applying lipstick to already lipsticked lips. “It’s not good for your mental health. Be with people your age; hey, why don’t you go down to Quique and Meiryen’s? Oscar. Will you, honey?” Now spraying breath-freshener into already breath-freshener-sprayed mouth. Now kissing his head -- hair, to be precise. “Bye now, hon.” Now grabbing her purse. Now out the door. Now shutting the door.
Now gone.
“Okay,” says the boy. He looks down at the half-inch-thick field of wet, light-grey table salt that’s collected at the bottom of the once-alabaster, porcelain, family-of-three tub and that’s whiter, actually, than said tub; at present, at least, at least in most places. Then he glances back at his three corks, which are disorderly collected at the drain. He grabs them.
And still sitting on the residential, family-of-three, inch-and-a-half square, yellow-and-brown mosaic bathroom floor by the tub in the damp, still-dimly-lit family of three bathroom that smells of salt (and his mom’s deodorant), he wonders about Juan. What will be his fate? Will he draw, after all, his famous map? That picture he saw before, in that big book in the den… that sure was one heck of a nifty map, there. It even had his name on it, and all. ‘Marco’. Sure, it also said ‘Juan’ somewhere. But Marco was bigger. But some men -- not all -- back in the Late Middle Ages, could be very unpresuming. But maybe not Juan. But that’s O.K. Imagine, and still… I mean, did you know about Juan before you read this? But back to the map. Yes, nifty, but an old kind of nifty. But still nifty. But… what will be of Juan, now with that whirlpool thrown in? Will he be blessed? Will he be damned? Will he just… be?
Anyway.
He gets up and puts his three corks back in his jeans pocket.
Play for some other day.
--The end--