An arquebus fired into the night sky from the poop deck.
What happens on a ship at 2 a.m. when, without warning, there is a shot?
The rational grog-soused mariner, drowsy and hypnogogic on his pallet, can only assume a murderous infestation of ocean-borne invaders sharp with the flesh-kebabing talons of raptors and blistering with the halitosis of harpies.
Or else the sighting of land.
Under a full moon, Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor from Seville, had seen una cabeza blanca de tierra, a white stretch of land.
“Tierra!” he called. “Tierra!” And for good measure, he again shot the arquebus at the stars.
Perhaps I should consider it auspicious that on this day, when the prodigal halves of the earth were joined once again, no bird or other flying creature was shot from the sky, keneynehoreh.
On deck, the men exulted.
The next day, October 12, 1492, we would make landfall.
If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a shtekn, a stick.
We had found a stick. Now what kind of dog would we beat?
“A golden retriever,” Moishe said and lay back on his pallet, feverish and green.
It was early morning when Rodrigo de Triana had seen land. And now we’d sailed out of night and into the next day until we were but a cannon’s blast away from what we took to be an island. The crew gathered on deck.
After months sailing the featureless ocean, heading toward nowhere but the horizon and the edges of maps, how did we feel about touching tierra firma?
Nisht geferlach. Could have been worse.
We felt only the way a man lost in the desert would feel about a bucket of water. About a fountain of water. About a thimbleful of water. About a droplet of sweat on a camel’s tuches.
Love at first sighting.
For a season I had perched on barren masts and now there was the prospect of a living tree, heavy with leaves. Of rivers, waterfalls, and clear pools.
And perhaps there would be parrots. The pretty feathers of zaftik island parrots warmed by both sun and desire.
The firm land.
I couldn’t remember the last time.
Chapter One
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The Ni?a, the Pinta, and the Santa María shlepped around the great arc of the Ocean Sea and landed in what he took to be the other side of the world. A great moment.
But Moishe and I weren’t there when those of the old world first met those of the new.
Our luck. A mensch tracht un Got lacht. A person plans and God laughs.
Moishe was green, puking with fever and shaking with palsy. Bent heaving over the gunwales, he saw the New World, saw the sailors rowing, saw them land. He saw Columbus kneel down and kiss the reassuring shore. He saw Columbus take his sword and draw in the sand. What was it: a cross, a prayer? Was he writing, “Ferdinand and Isabella,” as if labelling luggage? Was he signing his name? “Ah, yes, my pretty picture. Think I’ll call it ‘America.’ ”
Columbus, the mapmaker, the navigator. He inscribed a compass rose on the shore, the New World a map of itself.
San Salvador, he called the island. Holy Saviour.
For it had saved him: if he had sailed to the island and it was not there, he would soon enough have discovered mutiny and the empty sea floor where the island was supposed to be.
But Moishe did not land on San Salvador. Like Moses, his namesake, he had to watch as others entered the Promised Land. And I, like Aaron, also did not enter, though it was Columbus and his kind who worshipped golden things, who practically birthed a golden sea cow in their excitement, joined hands and danced in a ring at the thought of their true God and its value in power, prestige and purchase.
We heard the cheering of the men, heard the singing of the native people as they gathered on the beach. We heard, though we could not make out the words, the speeches given, the long prayers made by Columbus as he trod on what he thought was an older world than the one he came from. Cathay. Cipangu. India. The Indies.
There was an exchange. Food for glass beads. Shells for tchotchkes and chazerai such as little metal toys.
As night fell, there were fires. More singing. Speeches. Cheering.
Moishe slept. I stayed with him on the empty ship, my green shoulder, my blue-eyed boy. I didn’t venture onto the island. Besides, who knew if these natives, or, for that matter, the farklemteh sailors, would make of me a fricassee, spiced with who knew what delicate and unfamiliar spices?
Our men rowed back from shore. Columbus opened the casks to the crew. Laughing, singing, puking, the happy buffeting of each other’s ears like drunken puppies, late into the night until they all collapsed in a historic heap.