“Once the Indians are civilized, they will see what we have done for them.”
“Such generosity,” says Vespucci. “When I was at the court of Louis XI the Hugenots were rioting in the streets. The rebellion was put down. And after, the bodies of the Huguenots were butchered and sold as meat.” Vespucci thinks for a moment and then smiles. “Maybe you should go civilize the Parisians.”
“Maybe I should,” Colón laughs. “But there is nothing noble in that.”
“Noble?” questions Vespucci.
“We are helping the Indians,” says Colón. “We are their saviors. They have no faith. We give them our God. We give them medicine.”
“We give them disease. It is our duty to cure it.”
As usual, Colón noted, Vespucci bordered on sacrilege.
“We give them guns,” says Vespucci, “but only the barrel.”
“Amerigo,” Colón says in an almost fatherly way, “we give them civilization.”
“There is no civilization,” says Vespucci. “There is no New World.”
“Then you agree that Hispaniola is in Asia?”
“No, Cristóbal.” And Vespucci smiles and pats his friend’s arm. “I say Hispaniola is in Europe.”
Or maybe Vespucci said nothing of the sort. Maybe Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci argued and came to no agreement, or agreed that the Indians were all cannibals and worthy of condemnation, and, worse, conversion. Or maybe they ate in silence, shoveling the undistinguished food into their mouths without conversation, the hours spent waiting for an audience with the king having left them with a profound hunger.
What is the value of them arguing anyway? Vespucci and Columbus come to us as bedfellows, parts of a whole. History. Europe. Exploration. Colonization. America. The two discoverers are inseparable and we can no more divorce reasonable Vespucci from aggressive Columbus than we can live in thrall to intellect apart from appetite.
A train pulled in and the two protesting students got on with their signs. As they boarded, an old lady with gray curls was struck on the head, which I thought was a rather violent act. I might have even called the protesters’ attention to it, but they were gone, barreling back into the twenty-first century, and it was time for me too to get going. I saw Boris on the platform then. I didn’t recognize him at first, but thought perhaps I might have met him once, so I watched him quietly, unseen, from behind a pillar.
3
The city was shrouded in cloud and Boris was in a dark state. He stood armed with nothing but his green umbrella, battling a deep depression, which today he attributed to the rain. Boris looked up at life from the bottom of this mood as if he were trapped in a well—the view was limited and anything worthwhile seemed a remote possibility. People were belting him about the ribs with book bags; they were looking at the space on the wall behind him. He was invisible, nonexistent. Here in this tunnel there was no oxygen, only dirty light and the deep rumbling of the train. It was as though he were in a vast intestine and, beyond the tunnel’s bend, was a stomach about to purge itself. He took a pack of Rolaids from his pocket and consumed five. Boris glanced around nervously. He thought he must have been waiting a quarter of an hour at least, when it had only been five minutes.
I watched him from behind the pillar. The train arrived.
Boris seated himself and I sat next to him, in the only available seat. I could have stood, but I was tired from a combination of jet lag and the six demi-bottles of Chianti, courtesy of Alitalia.
We sat shoulder to shoulder with our eyes directed forward. There was a smell on Boris like pipe tobacco, but I detected no smoke. He breathed through his nose, which was so clotted with springy hair, little tendrils escaping his nostrils, that his breath whistled. He had his legs crossed at the ankles and when the train lurched, his knee bumped mine. Every now and then he would push his glasses up his nose with his thumb.
I recognized him then.
On the airplane I had lifted a woman’s Vanity Fair when she got up to use the restroom. On her return, she had watched me read it with an ineffectual outrage, but it could have been my magazine, so there really wasn’t anything she could do about it. Boris had been in the “Night Table Reading” section. He was listed as the author of Soulless Man. He was reading A Man without Qualities in the original German, which I suppose is something like Eine Man Ohne Qualities.
Boris caught me eyeing him and began rummaging around in his leather bag. He took out a magazine, plain pages, and began reading it intently.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
Boris looked over, annoyed.
“It is an Author’s Guild magazine. Not of interest to most people.”
“You’re Boris Naryshkin, aren’t you?” I said.
“Yes, I am.” He was surprised.
“I’m Katherine. I saw you once in a magazine.”
“Which magazine was that?”
“I can’t remember,” I lied. “It was some time ago.”
“What do you know about me?” he said.
“You write depressing books.”
“Have you read any of my books?”
“No. But I can tell that they’re depressing.”
“How can you tell?”
“By the way you sit.”
Boris smiled. “My editor says much the same thing and he has read everything.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Who do you identify with, Vespucci or Columbus?” I asked.
“Today?” said Boris. “Columbus.”
“Why?”
“Because I am not well-liked.”
“I like you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“It’s much easier to like people you don’t know.”
Boris, off-guard, smiled.
“You make your money depressing people?”
Boris nodded slowly.
“What a relief,” I said. “I just got back from Italy today. I spent the last year with men on vacation. Light-hearted men. Actually, they were shallow, which I suppose doesn’t exclude being heavy of heart. I can’t picture any of them depressed, or in a deep depression. Maybe a shallow depression.”
“A dimple,” said Boris.
“What?” I said.
“Dimple could be a word that means shallow depression.”
“So instead of getting depressed, these people get dimples?”
“Yes,” said Boris.
There was a moment of silence.
“Would you be interested in joining me for dinner?” he asked.
“I’d be delighted,” I replied.
Boris took me out to his favorite restaurant for some northern Italian food. I ordered a hare ragout. It came with salted gnocchi and a salad of wilted arugula and radicchio. Boris ordered something else, I’m not sure what, but he made a great deal of noise while he ate it. The wine was a predictable Chianti. Boris made a big show of sending back a bottle. I’m sure now that the wine that followed tasted exactly the same as the wine he refused. There was no conversation for a couple of minutes. I really didn’t know what to say. I was lost in my thoughts. Bored on the plane, I’d tried to picture what man my father would like to see me with least. I thought of the usual suspects: addict, musician, performance artist, his business partner. But Boris had to be the worst of them all—the European intellectual who would find my father inferior. I drank the wine down and poured myself another glass.
“You like the wine?” he asked.
“Oh yes. It’s wonderful,” I said. “What do you think they did with the bottle you sent back?”
“I think they drink it,” said Boris.
“I’m pleased to hear that.”