The Nautical Chart Read online

  "It's a fine copy," she said. 'Among rare book dealers and antiquarians there are plenty of unscrupulous people, and when they find one of these they take it apart and sell the individual plates. But this one is intact."

  She turned the large pages carefully, and the thick white paper, well preserved despite the two and a half centuries since it was printed, whispered between her fingers. Atlas Maritimo de las Costas de Espana, Coy read on the tide page, beautifully engraved with a seascape, a lion between columns bearing the legend Pitts Ultra, and various nautical instruments. Divided into sixteen spherical charts and twelve plans, from Bayonne in France to Cape Creus. The navigation charts and plans of ports were printed in large format and bound to facilitate their preservation and handling. The volume was open to the chart that embraced the sector between Gibraltar and Cape St Vincent. It was drawn in extensive detail, and included soundings measured in fathoms and a meticulous key to indications, references, and dangers. Coy followed the coastline between Ceuta and Cape Spartel with his finger, stopping at the place marked with the name of the woman beside him, Tangier. Then he followed it north, to Punta de Tarifa, and continued to the northwest, pausing again on the shoals of La Aceitera, which were much better defined, with little crosses marking danger spots, than the passage between Terson and Mowett Grave islands in the modern surveys of the British Admiralty. He knew the charts for the Strait of Gibraltar well, and everything was remarkably exact. He had to admire the rigor of the plotting; it was more than he would have expected from the hydrographies of the period, so long before the satellite image, or even the technical advances of the end of the eighteenth century. He observed that each chart had scales for latitude and longitude detailed in degrees and minutes— the former on the left and right sides of the engraving and the latter graduated four times in accord with the four different meridians: Paris and Tenerife in the upper portion, Cadiz and Cartagena in the lower. At that time, Coy recalled, the Greenwich meridian hadn't yet been adopted as the universal reference.

  "It's very well preserved," he said.

  "It's perfect. This arias was never used for navigation."

  Coy turned a few pages: Nautical chart of the coast of Spain from Agullas and Monte Cope to the Herradora or Horadada tower, with all shoals, points, and coves.... He also remembered that section, the coast of his childhood. It was steep and hostile, with narrow, rocky inlets and reefs between the low cliffs. He traced the distances on the heavy paper: Cabo Tifioso, Escombreras, Cabo de Agua... It was almost as perfectly plotted as the chart of the Strait.

  "Here's an error," he said suddenly.

  She looked at him, more curious than surprised. "You're sure?" "Yes, I am."

  "You know that coast?"

  "I was born there. I've even dived there, brought up amphoras and artifacts from the bottom." "You're a diver too?"

  Coy made a dismissive sound, shaking his head. "Not professionally," he said, apologetically. 'A summer job, vacation time."

  "But you have experience..."

  "Well," he said, "maybe as a kid. But it's been a long time since I've been in the water."

  She looked at him thoughtfully. Then she looked back to the place his finger was pointing to on the chart.

  'And what's the error?"

  He told her. Urrutia's survey situated Cabo de Palos two or three minutes farther south on the meridian than it actually was. Coy had rounded that point so many times that he clearly remembered its location on the charts. 37°38' true latitude—he couldn't at this point be exact about the seconds—was converted on the chart to 37°36', more or less. It had undoubtedly been corrected on subsequent, more detailed charts, using better instruments. At any rate, he added, a couple of nautical miles' difference was not major on a 1751 chart.

  She said nothing, her eyes on the engraving. Coy shrugged. "I suppose those flaws make it appealing. Did you have a limit in Barcelona, or could you have gone on bidding?"

  She was beside him, leaning with both hands on the table, seemingly absorbed, and was slow to answer.

  "There was a limit, of course," she said finally. "The Museo Naval isn't the Bank of Spain. Fortunately, the price was within it."

  Coy laughed a little, quietly, and she looked up.

  'At the auction," he said, "I thought it was something personal. You were so dogged in your bidding."

  "Of course it was personal." Now she seemed irritated. She turned back to the chart as if something there was demanding her attention. 'It's my job." She shook her head, as if to clear it of some thought she hadn't expressed. Tm the one who recommended the acquisition of the Urrutia."

  'And what will you and museum do with it?"

  "Once it's been completely reviewed and catalogued, I'll get reproductions for internal use. Then it will go to the museum's historical library, like everything else."

  They were interrupted by a discreet rap at the door; standing there was the commander Coy had passed in the exhibition hall. Tanger Soto excused herself and followed him into the hallway, where the two talked a few minutes in low voices. The new arrival was middle-aged and good-looking, and the gold buttons and stripes lent him distinction. Occasionally he would look at Coy with a curiosity not entirely free of suspicion. Coy did not appreciate the looks, or the broad smile with which the officer blessed the conversation. Like many members of the Merchant Marine, Coy was not fond of career Navy men. They seemed too arrogant, and they were forever inbreeding, marrying the daughters of other officers; they crammed into church on Sundays, and tended to spawn too many children. Besides, there were no battles now, no enemy ships to board, and they stayed home in bad weather.

  "I have to leave you for a few minutes," she said. "Wait for me."

  She went down the hall with the commander, who shot Coy a last glance before he left. Coy sat in her office, looking around; there was Urrutia's chart again, and then the other objects on the table, the print on the wall—"4th View of the Battle of Toulon"— and the contents of the glass case. He was about to sit down when, next to the table, his eyes caught the large easel with the thumbtacked documents, plans, and photographs. He walked over, with nothing in mind but to kill some time, and discovered that protruding from beneath the prints pinned to the upper half of the panel were plans of sailing ships—all were brigantines, he saw after glancing at the rigging. Below them were aerial photographs of coastal waters, and reproductions of antique nautical charts, as well as one modem chart. It was number 463A from the Naval Hydrographic Institute—Cabo de Gata to Cabo de Palos, which corresponded in part to the one in the atlas open on the table. What a coincidence, Coy thought.

  A MINUTE later she was back. My boss, she said. High-level consultations about vacation schedules. All very top secret.

  "So you work for the Navy?"

  'As you see."

  He was amused. "That makes you some kind of service-woman, then."

  "Not at all." The golden hair swished from side to side as she shook her head. "I'm classified as a civil servant. I took an examination after I got my degree in history. I've been here four years."

  She turned pensive and looked out the window. Then, as if she had something on her mind she couldn't dismiss, she went to the table very slowly, closed the atlas, and put it back in the case.

  "My father, though, was in the service," she added.

  There was a note of defiance, or perhaps of pride, in her words. That confirmed a number of things Coy had noticed: a certain way she had of moving, a gesture here and there, and the serene, slightly haughty self-discipline that seemed to take over at times.

  "Career Navy?"

  'Army. He retired as a colonel, after spending most of his life in Africa."

  "Is he still alive?" "No."

  She spoke without a trace of emotion. It was impossible to know if it upset her to talk about it. Coy studied the navy-blue irises, and she bore his scrutiny with no expression.

  "Which is why your name is Tanger. For Tangier."

  "Whic
h is why my name is Tanger."

  THEY walked past the Museo del Prado and the railings of the Botanical Garden in no hurry, then turned left and started up Claudio Moyano hill, leaving the noisy traffic and pollution of the Atocha traffic circle behind them. The sun shone on the gray booths and stalls stair-stepped up the street. "Why did you come to Madrid?"

  He stared at the ground He had answered that question at the museum, before she had even asked. All the commonplaces and easy pretexts had been exhausted, so he took a few more steps before responding.

  "I came to see you."

  She did not seem surprised or curious for that matter. She was wearing the light wool jacket, and before they left her office she had knotted a silk scarf of autumnal colors around her neck. Half turning, Coy observed her impassive face.

  "Why?" was all she asked.

  "I don't know."

  They walked on a bit in silence. Finally they stopped before a stall piled with detective novels strewn about like flotsam washed up on a beach. Coy's eyes slid over the worn volumes without paying much attention: Agatha Christie, George Harmon Coxe, Ellery Queen, Leslie Charteris. Tanger picked up a copy of She Was a Lady, looked at it absently, and put it back.

  "You're mad" she said.

  They walked on. People were strolling among the stands, picking up books, leafing through them. The booksellers kept a sharp eye on them from behind their counters or standing in the doorways of the booms. Most were wearing overcoats, jerseys, or pea coats, their skin tanned by years in the sun and wind, like sailors in some impossible port, stranded among reefs of paper and ink. Some were reading, unaware of passers-by, sitting among mountains of used books. Two young sellers greeted Tanger, who answered them by name. Hello, Alberto. See you, Boris. A boy with a hussar's locks and a checked shirt was playing the flute, and she placed a coin in the cap at his feet, just as Coy had seen her do on the Ramblas, when she'd stopped before the mime whose white-face was streaked by the rain.

  "I come by here every day on my way home. Isn't it strange what happens with old books? They choose you. They reach out to their, buyer—Hello, here I am, take me with you. It's as if they were alive."

  A few steps farther on she paused to look at The Alexandria Quartet, four volumes with tattered covers, marked down. "Have you read Durrell?" she asked.

  Coy shook his head. He'd never seen any of these books. North American, he supposed. Or English.

  "Is there anything about the sea in them?" he asked, more to be courteous than out of interest.

  "No, not that I know. Although Alexandria is still a port."

  Coy had been mere, and he didn't recall anything special. Heat, days of dead air, derricks, stevedores lying prostrate in the shade of the containers, filthy water lapping between the hull and the dock, and cockroaches you stepped on as you came ashore at night. A port like any other, except when wind from the south carried clouds of reddish dust that sifted into everything. Nothing to justify four volumes. Tanger touched the first with her finger, and he read the tide: Justine.

  "Every intelligent woman I know," she said, "has at some time wanted to be Justine."

  Coy looked at the book with a perplexed expression, wondering if he ought to buy it, and if the bookseller would make him buy all four. The books mat had caught his attention were others nearby; The Death Ship, by one B. Traven, and the Bounty trilogy, Mutiny on the Bounty, Men against the Sea, and Pitcairn's bland, all in a single volume. But she was moving on. He saw her smile again, take a few more steps, and distractedly leaf through another mistreated paperback. The Good Soldier, he read. Ford Madox Ford did sound familiar, because he had collaborated with Joseph Conrad on The Inheritors. Finally Tanger whirled around and looked at him, hard.

  "You're mad," she repeated.

  He touched his nose and said nothing.

  "You don't know me," she added a moment later, a hint of harshness in her voice. "You know nothing at all about me."

  Curiously, Coy didn't feel intimidated or out of place. He had come to see her, doing what he thought he had to do. He would have given anything to be an elegant man, easy with words and with something to offer, even if just enough money to buy the four volumes of the Quartet and take her to dinner that night in an expensive restaurant, calling her Justine or whatever she wanted him to call her. But that wasn't the case. So he kept quiet, and stood there with all the openness he could muster, at once sincere and neutral, almost shy. It wasn't much, but it was everything.

  "You don't have any right to show up like this. To stand there

  with that good-little-boy face___ I already thanked you for what

  you did in Barcelona. What do you want me to do now? Take you home like one of these books?"

  "Sirens," he said suddenly.

  She looked at him with surprise.

  "What about sirens?"

  Coy lifted his hands and let them drop.

  "I don't know. They sang, Homer said. They called to the sailors, isn't that right? And the sailors couldn't help themselves."

  "Because they were idiots. They ran right onto the reefs, destroying their ships."

  "I've been there." Coy's expression had darkened. "I've been on the reefs, and I don't have a ship. It will be some time before I have one again, and now I don't have anything better to do."

  She turned toward him brusquely, opening her mouth as if to say something disagreeable. Her eyes sparked aggressively. That lasted a moment, and in that space of time Coy mentally said so long to her freckled skin and to the whole crazy daydream mat had led him to her. Maybe he should have bought that book about Justine, he thought sadly. But at least you gave it a shot, sailor. Too bad about the sextant. Then he gathered himself. I'll smile. I'll smile in any case, say what she will, until she tells me to go to hell. At least that will be the last thing she'll remember about me. I'd like to smile like her boss, that commander with his shiny buttons. I hope my smile doesn't come off too edgy.

  "For the love of God," she said. "You're not even handsome."

  Ill

  The Lost Ship

  You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it'll still kill you, but if you're a good navigator, at least you'll know where you were when you died. JUSTIN SCOTT,

  The Shipkilkr

  He detested coffee. He had drunk thousands of hot and cold cups in endless pre-dawn watches, during difficult or decisive maneuvers, in dead hours between loading and unloading in ports, in times of boredom, tension, or danger, but he disliked that bitter taste so much that he could bear it only when cut with milk and sugar. In truth, he used it as a stimulant, the way others take a drink or light a cigarette. He hadn't smoked for a long time. As for drinking, only rarely had he tasted alcohol on board a ship, and on land he never went past the Plimsoll mark, his cargo line of a couple of Sapphire gins. He drank deliberately and conscientiously only when the circumstances, the company, or the place called for massive doses. In those cases, like most of the sailors he knew, he was capable of ingesting extraordinary quantities of anything within reach, with consequences that entailed husbands guarding their wives' virtue, police maintaining public order, and nightclub bouncers making sure that clients toed the line and didn't leave before paying.

  That was not the case tonight. The ports, the sea, and the rest of his previous life seemed far from the table near the door of an inn on the Plaza de Santa Ana, where he was sitting watching people strolling on the sidewalk or chatting on the bar terraces. He had asked for a gin and tonic to erase the taste of the syrupy cup of coffee before him—he always spilled it clumsily when he stirred— and was leaning back in his chair, hands jammed into his jacket pockets, legs stretched out beneath the table. He was tired, but he was putting off going to bed. I'll call you, she'd said. I'll call you tonight or tomorrow. Let me think a little. Tanger had an appointment she couldn't break that afternoon, and a dinner date in the evening, so he would have to wait to see her again. That was what she told him at noon
, after he had walked with her to the intersection of Alfonso XII and Paseo Infanta Isabel; and she said good-bye right there, not letting him see her to her door. She offered the strong hand he remembered so well, in a vigorous handshake. Coy had asked how the devil she thought she could call him, since he had no home, no telephone, no nothing in Madrid, and his seabag was checked at the station. Then he saw Tanger laugh for the first time since he'd known her. It was a generous laugh that encircled her eyes with tiny wrinkles, making her, paradoxically, look much younger, more beautiful. Then she asked him to forgive her stupidity, and for a couple of seconds looked at him, his hand in hers, the last trace of laughter fading from her lips. She gave him the name of an inn on the Plaza de Santa Ana, across from the Teatro Espanol, where she had lived for two years when she was a student. A clean, cheap place. I'll call you, she said. I'll call you today or tomorrow. You have my word.

  And there he was, staring at his coffee and wetting his lips with the gin and tonic—they didn't have Sapphire in the bar—the waitress had just set before him. Waiting for her to call. He hadn't moved all afternoon, and had eaten dinner there, a bit of overcooked beef and a bottle of mineral water. It was possible she might come in person, he thought, and that possibility made him keep an eye on the plaza, not to miss her approaching along calle de las Huertas, or any of the streets leading up from the Paseo del Prado.

  Between the benches on the plaza, some beggars were talking loudly and passing around a bottle of wine. They had begged for money at the tables on the terraces and now were counting up the nights take. Three men, a woman, and a little dog. From the door of the Hotel Victoria, a guard costumed as RoboCop watched them like a hawk, hands crossed behind his back, legs spread apart, standing exactiy where he had ejected the female beggar shortly before. Chased off by RoboCop, she had zigzagged among the tables to where Coy was sitting. Give me something, friend, she'd said in a listless voice, staring straight ahead. Give me something. She was still young, he thought as he watched her counting the take with her buddies and the mongrel. Despite the blemished skin, the dirty blond hair and vacant eyes, there were traces of a former beauty in her well-defined lips, the curve of her jaw, her figure, and the red, chapped hands with long dirty fingernails. Terra firma rots people, he thought once again. It overpowers and devours them. He searched his own hands, resting on his thighs, for the first symptoms of aging that accompany the inevitable leprosy of city pollution, the deceptively solid ground beneath your feet, contact with people, air with the salt sucked out of it. I hope I find another ship soon, he told himself. I hope I find something that floats so I can climb aboard and be carried far away while there's still time. Before I contract the virus that corrodes hearts, disrupts their compass, and drives them rudderless onto a lee shore.