The Queen acknowledged him with an almost imperceptible nod, then established court by enthroning the grand duchy of her regal tuches in the ornate chair. Once the seat of power was comfortable, she nodded to Torquemada who sat in a smaller chair beside her.
The pages stood against the wall beside Moishe. An invisible identification line-up. In these times, servants were deferential and soft-focus backgrounds to the prominent foreground of the powerful. It was unlikely the pages would break rank and render themselves visible by singling out Moishe, especially in the presence of the Queen. To be wrong might result in the singling out of their livers or tongues. At the very least, they would be expelled.
From a high window.
“Se?or Fernández, you may begin,” the Queen said, and struck a noble, world-conquering, Jew-tossing, Moor-expunging, yet humble pose.
The painter lifted his brush and palette. Soon the oval lake before him began to glow with an expression of inherited power. From amidst a shroud of mist, the face of Isabella appeared, a pious Ozymandias looking faithfully into the future.
Isabella kibitzed quietly with her ladies-in-waiting.
Torquemada, the wizened Millenarian vulture, perched on his chair silently, wondering where the Messiah was, waiting for the beginning of the end of the world, reclaiming Zion and positioning Ferdinand as “Last World Emperor.” I could almost see him drying out, his alter kaker apple-doll brain collapsing in on itself like a dead star, his fearsome eyes sucking all available light from the room.
The doppelganger Isabella continued to form.
The priests and hidalgos stood waiting.
Then Columbus strode into the doorway.
A sailor with seven-league bootstraps looking for Su Majestad’s permission to begin his long sail over the short sea.
He bowed but as if only to offer the Queen an exclusive vision of the pure snows that creamed the polar cap of his head.
“Se?or Columbus,” the Queen began. “Admiral of the distant horizon and Viceroy of what isn’t there. It is a surprise.”
“Su Majestad,” he said.
“Doubtless, you have come to speak again of savages and kings. So, enter and prophesy.” He walked into the room, a grand procession of one. There was a flicker of recognition as his eyes scanned the far wall—sailors look always to the edges of where they are—Moishe a familiar piss-pool in a lake of pages, though Columbus said nothing.
“Su Majestad, I will sail to Cathay and Cipangu,” he said. “To the lands of the Great Khan. ‘Most Serene Prince,’ I shall say to him, ‘I have travelled from where the morning begins, west from the east, and yet have arrived at the Farther East. I bring you greetings from your dearest friends, Los Reyes Católicos, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon.’ ”
He turned toward beef-jerky Torquemada. “And, Your Eminence,” he said, “I will discover how these people are disposed and the manner whereby their conversion to our holy faith might be effected. This I do for Our Lord, enthroned above the circle of our world and who wishes it so.”
He spoke again to the Queen. “Also,” he said, “I will return with an Ararat of gold, spices, rare treasures, and—before the African-groping Portuguese may grasp them—new conquests of islands and mainlands in the Ocean Sea. These will provide such monies as will allow our stalwart Christian soldiers to retake Jerusalem, even as you’ve returned the good lamb of Granada to your Majesties’ Catholic flock. It is but a small risk for great glory, both here and in the Eternal beyond.”
I’m a feygeleh parrot who has sailed many seas and travelled in many languages. How would Columbus’s greeting sound to the Great Khan?
I translate:
“Great Khan, or Lesser Khan, or Hardly-Khan-at-All, I am Brother Christopher and I was in the neighbourhood. Are you happy with your civilization? I bring Good News. Also, I am here to trade some magic beans for precious things, or else, ransack your house.”
Torquemada and Isabella heard only Jesus, gold, glory, Jerusalem. And, “Portugal, you conquer the world in your way; we conquer it in His.”
And: “first.”
And: “more.”
Columbus did not wait for a response but launched into a disquisition on distances, ancient Greeks and ocean currents.
“You could run a sword through their bodies,” Torquemada said, suddenly emerging from his chiliastic stupor. “Though it might puncture or slice, it would not injure their hinkypink souls,” he said, grinning like a chimp. “They have no souls.”
“Who?” Isabella asked.
“Heathens.”
“But, Padre, should we not wish to baptize them?”
“I hope thereby to win new lands for the Holy Church,” Columbus said.
“And I believe all people to be human,” Isabella said.
These words were fighting words then. A colourless green idea sleeping all over Europe, full of sound and fury, but, ultimately, signifying nothing.
Or, signifying plenty if you were a slave.
Isabella continued. “And some of these humans, our Lord God has chosen to allow to serve us.”
Exactly.
Who wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would sell some of its members? A barbecue joint that calls its ingredients “patrons”?