Because he lived before telescopes, Columbus stared so hard at the sea his eyes bled. He was tall, pale, so his skin burned. By the end of a voyage, he’d look like something crawled from the sea. I learned this from Martin Dugard, a writer on a panel discussion: Writing about History. Another writer said, quoting a title, The Past Is a Foreign Country. Even if the same language is spoken, things are no longer the same. By now you’ve guessed I’m about to voyage into the past though without Columbus and his bleeding eyes. Still, I must say the idea of blood seeping from anyone’s eyes makes me realize how weak my own efforts at seeing have been. I thought I had scrutinized X—I’d use his name, but no doubt you know someone with the same name, and I don’t want confusion here—so well that nothing he did would surprise me. Au contraire, as Columbus probably never said except in the Italian version, the words coming in a cloud of garlic, which he ate to excess, perhaps hoping its medicinal properties would help his troubled eyes. As for X, I prefer to think of him now as a country, a foreign one whose language has been lost for want of recording. When we were apart, he never phoned or wrote because, he said, I s always mistook his words. My words, he said, proprietary: as if he’d invented them, as if they weren’t what everyone used, never mind the arrangement, the choice. Fool that I was, I looked for messages, in newspapers, the air. I mean I looked for signs. You might say my eyes bled, I looked so hard, so long, but that was another journey, to another country, and besides, the man is dead. Did you hear an echo there? It’s only water, lapping at the hull. If might go on until you’re driven to dire straits, but don’t leap overboard: you could end up being eaten: big fish, little fish keeping busy until they arrive at the prized dense morsels of your tongue, your heart, your eyes.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
