The Nautical Chart Read online

  Palermo kept staring. The green eye seemed colder and more attentive than the brown one, wider, as if half his body was expressing fear and the other half was on guard, calculating.

  "Think it over," said Palermo, and grasped Coy's arm at the cuff, as if attempting to convince him, or keep him from leaving. It was the hand with the gold coin ring, and to his displeasure Coy could feel it pressing on the tense muscles of his forearm.

  "Get your hand off me," he said, "or I'll rip your head off."

  5

  Zero Meridian

  With the first meridian established, situate all principal places by latitudes and longitudes. MENDOZA Y Rios, Tratado denavegacion

  H e slept all night and part of the morning. He slept as if his life were draining away in sleep, or as if he wanted to hold life at a distance, as long as possible, and once he waked he stubbornly burrowed back toward sleep. He twisted and turned in his bed, covering his eyes, trying not to see the rectangle of light on the wall. Barely awake, he had observed that rectangle with desolation; the pattern of light appeared to be stable and varied in position almost imperceptibly as the minutes dragged by. To the uncritical eye it seemed as fixed as things tend to be on terra firma, and even before he remembered that he was in the room of a boarding-house two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest coast, he knew, or felt, that he was not waking that day on board ship, there where light that comes through the portholes moves, gently oscillates up and down and side to side, while the gentle throb of the engines is transmitted through the metal hull, and the ship rocks in the circular sway of the swell.

  He took a quick, torturous shower—after ten in the morning the taps provided only cold water—and went out without shaving, wearing jeans and a clean shirt, his jacket thrown over his shoulders, to look for an agency where he could buy a return ticket to Barcelona. He drank a cup of coffee and bought a newspaper, which he threw into a trash bin nearly unread, and walked through the city center with no fixed goal until he ended up sitting in a small plaza of old Madrid, one of those places where the trees of age-old convents line the far side of an adobe wall, and the houses have balconies with flowerpots and large entries with a cat and a maid at the gate. The sun was mild and lent itself to a pleasant sloth. He stretched out his legs, and pulled from his pocket the dog-eared paperback edition of Traven's The Death Ship that he finally had bought on Moyano hill. For a while he tried to concentrate on reading, but when he got to the place where the ingenuous sailor Pip-Pip, sitting on the dock, imagines the Tuscaloosa on the open seas and making her way back to home port, Coy closed the book and put it back in his pocket. His mind was too far from those pages. It was filled with humiliation and shame.

  After a while he got up and, not in any hurry, started back toward the Plaza de Santa Ana, his gloomy expression accentuated by a chin darkened with a day and a half's growth of beard. Suddenly he was aware of discomfort in his stomach, and remembered that he hadn't eaten anything in twenty-four hours. He went to a bar and ordered a potato-and-egg omelette and a glass of rum. It was after two o'clock when he reached the inn. The Talgo was leaving an hour and a half later, and Atocha station was nearby. He could walk there and take the train to the Chamartin station, so he took his time packing his few effects—the Traven book, a clean shirt and a dirty one he slipped into a plastic bag, also some underwear and a blue wool jersey; his shaving gear was rolled up in a pair of khaki work pants. All of it went in his canvas seabag. He put on his sneakers and packed the old deck shoes. Each of these movements was carried out with the same methodical precision he would have used to chart a course, although damn his eyes if he had any course in mind. He was focusing all his concentration on not thinking. He paid the bill downstairs, and went out with his bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes squinted in the sun beating straight down on the plaza as he rubbed his queasy stomach. The omelet had settled like lead. After looking to the right and left he started walking. A quick trip, he thought. By an ironic association of ideas, the rhythms of "Noche de samba en Puerto Espana" came to mind. First a song, the words said. Then getting drunk, and in the end only the sob of a guitar. He had whisded half a chorus before he realized it, and stopped short. Remember, he told himself, never to whistle that again in all your fucking life. He stared at the ground, and the shadow that stretched out before him seemed to shake with laughter. Of all the fools in the world—and there had to be quite a few—she had chosen him. Although that was not exactly the case. After all, he was the one who had approached her, first in Barcelona and then in Madrid. No one forces the mouse, he'd read once somewhere. No one forces a dumb rodent to go nosing around, acting like hot shit and poking into mousetraps. Especially knowing full well that in this world there's more often a head wind than a following one.

  He hadn't reached the corner yet when the clerk from the inn came running down the street after him, shouting his name. "Senor Coy Senor Coy. You have a phone call."

  "SONS of bitches," said Tanger Soto.

  She was a reserved woman, and he could barely discern the slight tremor in her voice, a note of insecurity she tried to conceal as she spoke the appropriate words. She was dressed for going out, in a skirt and jacket, and was leaning against the wall of the small sitting room, arms crossed, her head tilted a little, staring at the corpse of Zas. On the stairs Coy had passed two uniformed policemen, and he found a third putting the equipment used to dust for fingerprints into a small case. His cap was on the table, and the radio transmitter clipped to his belt was emitting a quiet hum. The detective moved gingerly among scattered objects, though the disarray was not excessive—an open drawer here and there, books and papers scattered on the floor, and the computer with its screen detached and cords and connections exposed.

  "They took advantage of my being at the museum," Tanger murmured.

  Except for that slight tremble in her voice, she seemed more somber than fragile. Her skin had turned pale, her eyes were dry and her expression hard; her fingers were gripping her arms so tightly that her knuckles were white. She never took her eyes from the dog. The Labrador was lying on his side on the rug, his eyes glassy; a thread of whitish foam trickled from his half-open mouth. According to the police, the door had been forced, and before entering the intruders had tossed the dog a piece of meat laced with a rapidly acting poison, maybe ethyleneglycol. Whoever they were, they knew what they were looking for and what they were going to find. They hadn't done any serious damage, limiting themselves to stealing a few documents, and taking all the diskettes and the computer hard drive. They were undoubtedly people who knew the ropes. Professionals.

  "They didn't have to kill Zas," she said. "He wasn't a watch-dog__ He played with anyone who came in." Her voice cracked

  with a note of emotion she immediately repressed.

  The policeman with the case had finished his work, so he put on his cap, saluted, and as he was leaving mumbled something about city employees coming by to pick up the dog. Coy closed the door—the lock still worked—but after another quick glance at Zas, he opened it again and left it ajar, as if closing the door with a dead dog inside the house was somehow wrong. Tanger, still leaning against the wall, hadn't moved a hair. He went into the bathroom and came back with a large towel. Then he bent over the Labrador looking with affection into the dead animal's eyes, remembering the friendly licks the day before, the tail happily wagging in anticipation of being petted, the intelligent, loyal gaze. He felt a deep sadness, a compassion that made him shudder: the distressing, almost childish feelings that every man believes he has forgotten. It felt as though he had lost a silent new friend, the kind you don't seek out because they choose you. Perhaps such sadness was uncalled for, he thought; after all, he had seen the dog only a couple of times, and had done nothing to earn his loyalty or mourn his death. Yet he found himself feeling an unwarranted grief, as if the forsakenness, the desolation, the paralysis of the unfortunate animal were his own. Maybe Zas had greeted his murderers with a happy bark, asking for a f
riendly word or pat. "Poor dog," he murmured.

  For a moment he stroked the Labrador's golden head, then covered him with the towel. As he stood up he saw that Tanger was watching him, somber and motionless.

  "He died alone," said Coy.

  "We all die alone."

  HE stayed all that afternoon and part of the night. First, sitting on the sofa, after the city employees took away the dog, watching her restore order, stacking papers, putting books back on their shelves, closing drawers, standing in front of the gutted computer, hands on her hips as she evaluated the destruction, pensive. Nothing that can't be repaired, she'd said in answer to one of the few questions he had asked. She kept busy until everything was back in place. The last thing she did was kneel down where Zas had lain and, with a brush and water, clean up the remains of the foam that had dried on the carpet. She did it all with a disciplined, gloomy obstinacy, as if each task might help her control her emotions, hold at bay the darkness that was threatening to spill across her face. The tips of her golden hair swung at her chin, offering glimpses of her nose and cheeks. Finally she stood and looked around to see if everything was as it should be. Then she went to the table, picked up the Players and lit one.

  "I saw Nino Palermo last night," Coy said.

  She did not seem the least surprised. She stood by the table, cigarette between her fingers, hand slightly raised, elbow resting in the other hand.

  "He told me you deceived him," Coy continued. 'And that you will try to deceive me."

  He was hoping for apologies, insolence, scorn. All he got was silence. The smoke from the cigarette rose straight to the ceiling. Not even a spiral, he observed. Not a twitch, not a shiver.

  "You are not working for the museum," he added, leaving a deliberate pause between each word. "You're working for yourself."

  It occurred to him suddenly that she resembled those women who look out from certain paintings: impassive gazes that sow uneasiness in the heart of any man who looks at them. The certainty that they know things they're not telling, things that you can gather from their unwavering pupils if you stand before them long enough. Hard, wise arrogance. Ancient lucidity. Some young girls looked like that, without having had the years to justify it, he thought, without having lfved enough to learn it. Penelope must have had that look when Ulysses reappeared after twenty years, claiming his bow.

  "I didn't ask you to come to Madrid," she said. "Or to complicate my life and yours in Barcelona."

  Coy observed her a second or two, his half-open mouth giving him a somewhat stupid expression.

  "That's true," he admitted.

  "You're the one who wanted to play the game. All I did was establish a few rules. Whether they suit you or not is up to you."

  Finally she had moved the hand that held the cigarette, and the tip glowed as she brought it to her lips. Then again she was motionless, and the smoke rose in a fine and perfect vertical line.

  "Why did you lie to me?" Coy asked.

  Tanger sighed softly. Barely a breath of annoyance.

  "I haven't lied to you," she said. "I told you the version it suited me to tell. Remember that you butted in, and that this is my adventure. You can't demand anything of me."

  "Those men are dangerous."

  The perfect line of smoke broke into small spirals. Her laugh was quiet and restrained.

  "You don't have to be very intelligent to deduce that, do you?"

  She laughed again, but stopped abruptly, her eyes on the damp spot on the carpet. The deep blue of her eyes had become more somber.

  "What are you going to do now?"

  She did not answer immediately. She had walked over to put out the cigarette in the ashtray. She did it deliberately, not smashing it, but tamping it gradually until it was extinguished. Only then did she make a movement with her head and shoulders. She did not look at Coy.

  "I'm going to keep doing what I was doing: looking for the Dei Gloria"

  She walked around the room slowly, checking to see that everything had been returned to its original order. She lined up a Tintin with others on the shelf, and adjusted the position of the framed snapshot Coy had studied—the blond teenager beside the tan, smiling military man in his shirtsleeves. She was behaving, he thought, as if she had ice water in her veins. But as he watched, she stopped, drew a deep breath and exhaled, less a moan than a rumble of fury. Then she slapped the table with the palm of her hand, brusque, quick, with an unexpected violence that must have surprised her, or even hurt, because she froze and again filled her lungs, staring with puzzlement at her hand. "Damn them," she said.

  She had regained control, and Coy could see the effort it cost to achieve. The muscles at her jawline were tense, her lips pressed tightly together as she breathed deeply through her nose and looked for something else to set in order, as if what had occurred ten seconds earlier hadn't happened.

  "What did they take?"

  "Nothing that can't be replaced." She kept looking around. "I took the Urrutia back to the museum this morning, and I have two good reproductions of the nautical chart to work with. They left all the contemporary charts except for the one with notes penciled in the margins. There was also some information on the hard drive, but it wasn't important."

  Coy stirred, uncomfortable. He would have been more at ease were there a few tears, some indignant complaints. In those cases, he thought, a man knows what to do. Or at least he thinks he does. Everyone plays his role, the way they do in the movies.

  "You need to forget this happened."

  She turned, almost in slow motion, as if he had become one of the objects she needed to move to a different place.

  "Look, Coy. I didn't ask you to get involved in my affairs. And I haven't asked you to give me advice now. Is that clear?"

  She's dangerous, he thought. Maybe even more dangerous than whoever cased her house and killed the dog. More than the melancholy dwarf and the Dalmatian treasure hunter. All this is happening because she is dangerous, and they know it, and she knows that they know. Dangerous for me, too.

  "Yes, it's clear."

  He shook his head, half evasive, half resigned. That woman had an awesome talent for making him feel responsible, and at the same time reminding him that his presence there was superfluous. Even so, Tanger did not seem satisfied with Coy's unadorned answer. She kept observing him like a boxer who ignores the bell, and the referee's warning.

  "When I was a girl I loved cowboy movies," she said unexpectedly.

  Her tone was far from reminiscent, or tender. It almost seemed to contain a gentle mockery of herself. But she was dead serious. "Did you like those movies, Coy?"

  He looked at her, not knowing what to say. To answer that question would have required a brief period of transition, and she didn't give him time to come up with an answer. Nor did it seem to matter to her.

  "Watching them," she continued, "I decided that there are two kinds of women: the kind who start screaming as the Apaches attack, and the kind who pick up a rifle and start firing out the window."

  Her tone wasn't aggressive, just firm, and yet Coy felt that her firmness was aggressive as hell. She had finished, and it seemed she was not going to add anything.

  But after a moment, she stopped before the framed snapshot and narrowed her eyes. Now her voice was hoarse and low: "I wanted to be a soldier and carry a rifle."

  Coy touched his nose. Then he rubbed the nape of his neck and, one after the other, executed a routine of movements that in him tended to characterize confusion. I wonder, he asked himself, if this woman knows my thoughts or if in fact she's the one who puts them in my mind and then shuffles them and spreads them on the table as if this were a game of cards.

  "This Palermo," he said finally, "offered me a job."

  He held his breath. He had taken the calling card with the telephone number of the man from Gibraltar from his pocket. He held it between his second and third fingers, waggling it slightly. She didn't focus on the card, but on him. And she did it with e
nough concentration to have burned a hole in his brain.

  'And what did you tell him?"

  "That I'd think about it."

  He saw a hint of a smile. A second of calculation and two seconds of disbelief.

  "You're lying," she declared. "If that were true you wouldn't be sitting here now, looking at me." Her voice seemed to grow softer. "You're not that kind."

  Coy turned his eyes toward the window, glancing outside, into the distance. You're not that kind. In some dusty corner of his memory Brutus was asking Popeye if he was a man or a mouse, and Popeye replied, "I'm a sailor man." A train was slowly approaching the long roof that covered the platforms of Atocha station, its elongated, articulated form following a route mysteriously traced through the labyrinth of tracks and signals. He felt a rancor sharp as a knife blade. You, he thought, don't have any idea what kind of man I am. He looked at his wristwatch. The Talgo, for which he was carrying a second-class ticket in the inside pocket of his jacket, had for some time now been rolling toward Barcelona. And here he was again, as if nothing had changed. He stared at the carpet where Zas had lain. Or maybe, he reflected, maybe he was there again precisely because some things had changed. Or because... Damn if he had a clue about anything! Suddenly his stomach turned over and something crossed his mind like a powder flash. He knew, as clear as could be, that he was there because someday he was going to teach this woman something. The thought so agitated him that it showed on his face, and she looked at him questioningly, surprised by the change in his expression. Coy almost stammered it out in his own silence. He was going to teach her something she thought she knew but didn't, something she could not control as easily as she did her expressions, her words, the situations around her, and, apparently, Coy himself. But he would have to wait before that moment came. That was why he was there; all he had was the wait. That was why they both knew that this time he wouldn't leave. That was why he was trapped, nibbling at the cheese until he sprang the trap. Snap. Man or mouse. At least, he consoled himself, it didn't hurt. Maybe at the end, when it's my turn, it will hurt. But not yet He uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and leaned back a little in the sofa, his hands at his sides. He felt his pulse beating, slow and strong, in his groin. I suppose, he told himself, the precise word is fear. You know there are rocks ahead, and that's that. Navigate, eyes on the sea, feel the breeze in your face and salt on your lips, but don't be fooled. Know.