Sabina Murray
A CARNIVORE’S INQUIRY
For John
The inhabitants seem to live in that Golden World of which old writers speak so much, wherein men lived simply and innocently without enforcement of laws, without quarelling, judges and libels, content only to satisfy nature.
Why trembles honesty; and, like a murderer why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his immortal station?
1
I am standing at the side of the highway, which is a good place because it is nowhere. The snow is crusted on the ground and more is falling. I drove out of the United States last night; I also drove out of spring and back into winter, which makes me feel as if I am driving into the past, although it’s much cleaner than the one I left behind. Canada is a country of lumberjacks and wolves, hospitable, cold, and foreign.
Beginning is always hard, especially when one’s story is not yet over. I am an only child. From my mother I inherited my dark eyes and my darker sense of humor, from my father an ability to bring things to a significant conclusion and the black Lexus S.U.V. It’s a gorgeous car with a fantastic stereo, but it makes me feel as if I’m in a fast-moving coffin. I can move at ninety miles an hour without realizing it, which is why I pulled over on the side of the road. We are all hurtling into the future like so many unwilling comets. Sometimes I feel the need to stop, to look back before moving on. The snow is hissing in the wind and almost seems to be whispering my name—Katherine, Katherine—as if there is something great in store for me, but down the highway I see nothing but a nation plunged in darkness. As I look back to the United States I see the same thing. And why not? Our nations’ histories are raveled together, all of this great American continent conquered by trappers popping their bullets into beavers and Spaniards unsheathing their swords. Our civilization is the heart that was pulled still beating out of the heaving bosom of the New World. Am I just a product, as my mother always suggested, of this violent, bloody past?
And what of the Old World?
Europe is to my right as I stand facing north. I can see a glimmer of light flattening the horizon, a pale fire of history, which, although very distant, seems enough to keep me warm.
2
I remember the day of my return to the United States for its foul weather and for my first encounter with Boris. Boris was at his editor’s office then, which took him near Penn Station. I had taken the bus from the airport and then had retreated into the subway, because I was feeling both tired and nervous and—like a rabbit—felt the need to go underground. I suppose if I had thought of somewhere better to go, for example the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I might never have met Boris.
It was Columbus Day and somewhere in New York people were protesting the rape of America. I was informed of this phenomenon by two sign-toting students. The young woman carried a sign that said, COLUMBUS WAS A MURDERER, the other protestor (her boyfriend?) COLUMBUS BLOODY SUNDAY, which might have been a reference to Irish independence, bloodshed in general, or the day of the week on which Columbus arrived in the New World. I doubted that either of them was American Indian—the girl was pale and blond, the boy Jewish, Italian, Greek, Armenian, or some combination—and had therefore benefited from the conquest of the New World. Outrage leaves little room for reason. They had to be students because they had time and youth, signs and shabby clothes, all of which attested in an outward way to their moral superiority. Like me, they were waiting for a train. Unlike me, they knew where they were going.
I suppose the protestors wanted to efface Columbus’s role as discoverer, leader, romantic figure and I was tempted to remind them that the Spaniards had done that many years ago and during the explorer’s lifetime. Perhaps they should consider that our country bore the name of Amerigo Vespucci and, if they were interested in a revisionist approach, Columbus Day was more of a time for recent Sicilian and Neapolitan immigrants—the large share of Italian Americans who historically had nothing to do with the Genoese—to share their sausage and meatballs with more than the usual pride.
Columbus Day was also an occasion for me to consider my return to America after time spent in Europe. Europe at the time of Columbus was a bloody, plague-ridden plot of land. Godless too, unless one counted the Inquisition, the wholesale slaughter of Hugenots, and other such phenomena. The bloodbath in the New World was not so much a definitive act of aggression, but rather an expansion of what was going on at home. Old news. Not news at all. So rather than pondering all the bloodshed that Columbus now stood for, I felt more inclined to think of his last years. His longing to return to America. His mind tormented by a grandeur that had deserted him. I thought of myself as a friend to Columbus, someone who understood the necessary violence of discovery, an enlightened peer, maybe along the lines of a fellow discoverer—Vespucci, for example—who, no doubt, felt the loss when Columbus finally crossed over into that other borderless land, a new New World, to which we are all fated. Vespucci understood Columbus’s (or rather, Colón’s) torments and successes, how with their caravels and galleons, Vespucci and Colón had towed the Old World out of the Dark Ages and into the brilliant light of paradise.
I had spent some time in Florence, Vespucci’s home town, which added to my feelings of kinship. In Europe I’d been swept up by a sense of anachronism. While peering in the long glass window of a shoe store where the latest fashions were displayed, one could find the shoes obscured by the reflection of the Duomo. At night, alone on the terrace of the Uffizi, it was as easy to picture assassins with jeweled daggers as the actual Moroccan hash dealers. It was as if, in Florence, time performed no function, as opposed to Manhattan, where here, in the subway system, the notion of Dutch traders and foolish Indians accepting glass beads seemed not only distant but improbable. There’s a saying, “time functions to prevent everything from happening at once,”and although I can’t remember who said it, I have a lingering suspicion that it was an American. I checked my watch to see the time, and noted, with some amusement, that it was still set to the time in Italy.
I wonder how Vespucci felt when he learned of his old friend’s death. Perhaps relief, because he would no longer have to petition the king on Colón’s behalf. Perhaps a certain sad pride at having known him in his prime.
I picture Vespucci going to his chair by the window with a mug of the new coffee, for which he has developed a suspicious dependence much like others for wine. No doubt Vespucci thinks the letter from his friend is full of complaints about King Ferdinand, how once again his petition to be reinstated as governor of Hispaniola has been denied. Amerigo, set the king straight. I am the rightful governor of the Indies. Since Colón still insists that Hispaniola is in Asia. If Hispaniola is indeed in Asia, which is a very old world, why does Colón feel the outrage of someone robbed of his discovery?
What might have been a source of antagonism between Colón and Vespucci could well have been the basis of their friendship. Wasn’t Colón’s childish willfulness in the face of reason endearing? Still, being Colón’s friend and Pilot Major of Spain put Vespucci in a difficult position. But he would fire off a letter to the king. Think of all Colón has done in the name of Spain. Although the king would never reinstate Colón as governor.