I painted several watercolors of the storm. It was still far away but everybody was saying it might come down on us at any moment: the turquoise blotted out by the gray, by the many grays, which in my watercolors were often dark blues. When I wasn’t reading, I painted; when I wasn’t painting, I read some very funny novels by someone by the last name of Ibargüengoitia, the writer with the longest and most complicated last name I’ve ever read in my life. No matter what I was doing, I was on high alert to whether my wife had taken off or put on her bathing suit, or maybe put on one of those shirts she had, embroidered white cotton, that you could see her breasts through, since she didn’t need a bra yet, even after having a child.
“It’s like you’re made of brown coral,” I told her, and she laughed.
“You’d starve if you tried to make it as a romantic poet. Brown coral!” she said, taken aback by the ugly image.
Where did he get such a bizarre image! I was and am his wife, the brown-coral woman, and the mother of our child, who’s currently finishing high school here in New York, where we’ve been living for the past few years. My husband has a hard time – he’s convinced I don’t really let him get close to me, and he has no idea how much I love him and how close he actually gets. But he can be a little annoying with that high sex drive he’s got sometimes. Anyway. I liked the sons and even the father: the father because he was handsome and attentive and helpful and gallant with pretty women like me, and the sons because they were boys, boys, just boys, and they were so touchingly powerless.
While we were at Playamar, I’d gone to the mother’s bungalow and we’d talked for a while. She must have been very pretty once, that was obvious, but her teeth were damaged and her face bloated. And she was always saying such funny things. “Oh, no, sweetheart!” she’d say. “This here is wonderful and all, but Carlota’s girls just bobble it up.” I asked her who Carlota was and she gestured for me to lean closer so she could tell me in my ear, warily eyeing the planks on the ceiling, which was suffocatingly low, as if Carlota were up there and could hear her. “See that pack of brazen nanny goats? She’s their leader,” she whispered harshly in my ear, and pointed to the bungalow windows, as if all the nanny goats in Carlota’s group were peeping in through the shutters.
They call everything “bungalows” there. A grimy little room was a bungalow and a mafioso’s mansion was too, even if it had sterling silver faucets, as long as it was by the beach and had a few things built out of wood. We saw some real dumps where they crammed entire families that came down from the poorer neighborhoods of Medellín. At night those people would roast in the heat because the fans didn’t always work. They didn’t have much money, poor things, so they just accepted whatever beach lodging they got. David and I went into one of those bungalows out of curiosity, and it turned out to be two rows of rooms, each with a tiny kitchenette and a bathroom so small that the water from the shower fell practically in the toilet. Ten “bungalows” in total, all in a row, under a single roof, across from another row of ten, under another roof, and a patio with a laundry sink in the middle where the tourists washed their underwear and hung it up to dry. The bungalows were all full, so depressing, like a slum, and the clamor was incredible.
Of course they all seemed happy. There were at least two radios blasting. Some kids were running around naked from the waist down, others from the waist up. And in the patio there was also a gorgeous green parrot with a large yellow head. It would whistle the melody to “Los Guaduales,” and David said it was the only version of “Los Guaduales” he’d ever enjoyed. Sometimes that dope can be pretty funny. Or at least he seems funny to me.
One afternoon the boys’ mother invited me to take a walk along the beach. Her name was Norma, and she was fat and paunchy because her psychiatric medications had boosted her appetite. Not Norma, Nora, Nora. The robe she wore to go out walking came up a little in front, as if she were pregnant. Before we left I felt sorry for her and tidied her hair with a brush I was carrying in my bag so she wouldn’t look so disheveled. I put a little of my makeup on her. She smiled at me and I saw she had several teeth missing. And it was strange, really, since her looks were so faded, but you could still tell how beautiful she’d been. Or maybe I just liked her, poor thing, loony as she was.
She talked a lot about how much she loved her boys, both of them, saying they traveled to Egypt and India every week to bring her gifts. “Last week Mario brought me a beautiful sari, just beautiful, from Bombay,” she said, and her eyes shone with love for her son. I imagined her all toothless and bloated, swathed in an orange sari.
After that she told me she was a Persian queen. As we walked, I hardly had time to look at the seashells on the beach or the herons flying overhead what with listening to the details of her Persian kingdom, and she didn’t stop telling me all about it since she’d come to trust me. We reached a mangrove swamp known as La Caimanera and then turned back. We got to see a gorgeous sunset, with the orange sun sinking into the sea. We stopped to watch. Nora stood in silence and I could tell she felt happy. I hugged her, and we started to cry.
1:00 p.m.
The sun was helping to cloud the father’s judgment. He never wore hats because they got in the way, and he was convinced that since he had coarse, curly hair, and a lot of it for his age, growing tight against his skull, the sun couldn’t get to him. He was hungover from the aguardiente the night before, and he asked for a beer from Mario, who said all they’d brought was water and Coca-Cola. When the father called him a loser, Mario fired back with an insult, and if the father hadn’t been drained by hangover and sun exposure, he would have slapped the twin and a scuffle would have broken out.
The father decreed that they would go buy some beer on one of the islands. He knew the twins weren’t happy about making the trip or having their fishing interrupted, and he could even feel it in the air, how much they loathed him. Where a captain rules, a sailor has no sway. I can’t let the boys get the best of me. That’s how they’ll learn. They can go ahead and hate me if they want, he thought. And let’s see them try something, if they’re so tough.
They started up the Evinrude and headed for the island. I can’t always be the one taking care of everything, the father thought. In this sun, Coca-Cola tastes like cough syrup. Bringing beer instead is just common sense. They’ve got to learn from their mistakes.
As the father’s bad mood dissipates, he not only starts thinking with fewer curse words but also uses expressions such as “learning from one’s mistakes” or “just common sense” – the same ones, in fact, that he always uses when talking to the hotel guests. At one time he’d been in the habit of using them in a conciliatory tone with his sons as well – “It’s just fucking common sense to bring some beer along on this kind of trip, Mario, or am I wrong?” he’d have said in this case – but their anger at him had grown and they rejected him by scowling or muttering, convinced he was buttering them up just so they’d forgive him, and his rage would come roaring back all the more powerful and he had to restrain himself from getting violent again.
Back when I was going from village to village on that little Suzuki selling cookpots, I was younger than you two studs, and if I didn’t manage to sell all my merchandise or I forgot something, I was the only one who suffered for it. Nobody had to remind me what I needed to do. There goes a school of halfbeak! the father thought in amazement as he watched the long green fish swim past the sky-blue hull in the deep blue-green of the water.
He let his mind wander through the coastal villages, sometimes pretty and sometimes not so much, all of them with beautiful names – San Onofre, Santiago de Tolú, San Bernardo del Viento – that he’d visited with his cookpots back when he was just twenty. There, he’d broken the hearts of more than one young woman and of others who weren’t so young anymore. The father was proud of his history with women. “My rap sheet,” he called it, using a term coined not by him but a friend of his from Barranquilla, a
lawyer, who had a sense of humor that the father could never really match.
And these two don’t even have girlfriends. They’re still clinging to the skirts of that crazy mother of theirs like little kids. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, especially Mario, who’s so…Anyway. I’m going to make something of these two morons. They must have inherited at least a little bit of my fire. What they definitely did get, especially Javier – though Mario isn’t so bad himself – is a knack for making money. They make things out of nothing, like I did, and they know how to hustle, I’ve got to admit. Mario does a good job running the restaurant and doesn’t let himself get jerked around by the cook or other employees, or the tourists either, even though they can be a real pain in the ass and you have to be firm with them, firm but still letting them feel like they’re in charge. Good service is key, but if you’re not careful you end up being slave to the first son of a bitch who comes along who’s managed to earn himself a couple of pesos and let it go to his head. Like those two French couples who came and were complaining about everything and finally I had to tell them, no, this isn’t a five-star establishment, but it’s clean and it’s got the best beach in Latin America. If you like that, great, I told them, and if not, you know, sirs and madams, nobody’s forcing you to be here. And the best part is they stayed, because at the end of the day it’s a good hotel, and it’s safe, pretty, and cheap.
And the boys’ shop has really taken off. They’ve probably even got money saved up at this point, the clever devils. If they weren’t so into their dope, they’d have a car and everything by now, but it’s no use beating them or berating them – if they want to go around in a stupor from marijuana or whatever else they’re into, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just waiting for them to pull themselves together and realize I only push them so hard and get after them for their own good.
Anyway, the fish have stopped biting so much, so we aren’t missing out by going to get beer now. Tonight we’ll make up for it with grouper and some big snapper. Look at how pissed they are, especially Mario. His mother has called him “Marito” since he was a little boy, and she spoiled him so much it’s a miracle he didn’t turn out queer. He’s not queer – he likes women, but they don’t last. Well, when I was his age they didn’t last me all that long either, since I was traveling all over to make a living. Later, when I set up the hardware store in Montería, I didn’t move around as much and my girlfriends lasted longer. The problem with Mario is that he kind of gets drunk and mistreats them. And not just verbally. That beautiful girl he was seeing in Tolú, the dark-haired one with the light-colored eyes, the fisherman’s daughter – he actually punched her a couple of times in a drunken rage. Her brothers came to me demanding money or else they’d beat the crap out of him, and I told them touch a hair on his head and you’ll see what happens, assholes, and didn’t give them shit. They didn’t do anything. People here on the coast are big talkers but it rarely comes to anything. They told me they were going to dynamite the hotel – that’s what they use for fishing sometimes – and I told them go on then, blow it up, you bastards, and I’ll come after all of you one after the other. I won’t even spare your dogs. After that I went to talk to the girl myself, her with her eyes still all swelled up, and I gave her a little money. The brothers would have taken the money and pissed it away on booze.
Myself, I don’t like hitting women. The less, the better, same as with kids. There’s almost always a way to straighten things out with an insult or a little shake, and in the long run everybody comes out ahead. It’s just common sense. Now this idiot’s smoking pot again. It smells like scorched feathers or burning tires, right? I don’t know what he sees in that crap.
They’re cute when they’re little, but eventually they’re nothing but trouble. Take Manny, for instance. It’s going to be a real shame when he enters that rebellious phase, the way all of them do, and I’ll be forced to get tough with him to make sure he grows up straight and doesn’t take after these two. I’m going to start him out on the right foot. He’s ahead of the game anyway since his mother’s not a fruitcake. Iris doesn’t work hard, but she looks good, which is what matters, and her tits aren’t saggy like Nora’s. Her ass did fall, sure – but from heaven, the father thought, laughing quietly to himself at the joke he’d heard not long ago from his lawyer friend and thought was hilarious.
That’s what the hotel maids are for: sweeping and making beds while Iris sits back in her rocking chair, painting her nails red. She eats a lot and doesn’t exercise, and if she keeps that up she’s not going to be curvy anymore – she’ll just be fat. We had to call the doctor to prescribe Nora some sedatives when Iris showed up with the boy, but I’m flesh-and-blood and in fine health. I can’t just go and let myself be buried alive with a crazy woman the way these two nitwits probably wanted. It’s no good for a man to be alone, much less for him to spend his life with a nutjob. I take care of her and all, but I can’t just stop living, and once you’re my age, you don’t have the patience to go around visiting hookers; you need someone by your side, in your own bed, at all times, so things can happen on their own schedule. You have to be firm with crazy people, says I, or they’ll never let you live your own life, which is something these two have never understood.
A large flock of small birds crossed in front of the boat, compact and skimming just above the water, like a single dark living creature. Look at that, look at that, thought the father, who had been sitting on the fore bench with the wind in his face. Then the blue shadow of the little island appeared, shimmering above the turquoise water, a shadow that gradually grew denser, took shape, became solid, and finally became unmistakably visible, with its details of seabirds and palm trees. Behind them, the turquoise contrasted with the gray-almost-black of the storm and created a sharply defined dark green line of separation along the horizon.
I’m not religious and I don’t go to mass or any of that crap, but I do believe in God. How else do you explain this? The only thing greater than a man is God Himself, not some archbishop or arch-archbishop who pisses and shits like anybody else. You don’t need priests or churches to see what I’m seeing. The twins were great at Manny’s age – I baptized them myself, in the ocean. I got up early and walked into the water at six a.m. with one under each arm, both of them buck naked, barely three months old. I bathed them, dipped them under, and they bawled at the top of their lungs, I offered them to God, and, ta-da, they were baptized.
2:00 p.m.
Mario kept his eyes on Javier, who was jogging off, shirtless and in shorts, down the path into the mangrove swamp. They’d come ashore on a small coral-sand beach that hollowed out a gap in the mangroves. The father sat down on a trunk to stare at the sea and wait. Mario, scowling, remained standing beside the boat.
High above them, dozens of swallow-tailed kites soared in solemn circles the way carrion birds do on land. On the beach, at the edge of the mangroves, was a towering heap of conch shells as big as melons, the orange hue of their interiors muted by time. In the shade of the mangroves glowed the blue of discarded plastic bags. Near the beach, the water was light green and crystal-clear, and the sun shone blindingly on its ripples and flecks of foam and on the crushed-coral sand. But bitterness made Mario indifferent to the beauty around him. My life’s pathetic, man. I get to sit around watching my asshole father, he thought. I should have gone to buy the beer. Look at him, sitting there oblivious – I could conk him on the back of the head with an oar and that would be the end of it. Unsettled by the thought and hoping to elude the pang of his guilty conscience, the twin went to the boat to fetch some bait and one of his fishing lines. He walked about twenty meters almost knee-deep in the surf, parallel to the beach, which at that point was overgrown with mangroves. And there, his father now out of sight, he baited the hook, whirled the line in the air, and cast it fifteen meters out, skillfully, since he’d been performing that movement since he was a kid, and started to reel it back in. Mario preferred u
sing the wooden rod on the beach; on the boat he used cane. The island was a good place to catch small snapper, parrotfish, and black margate. Mario was a decent beach fisherman, but when he still hadn’t caught anything after a long while, he rolled up his line and walked toward the boat. The father was sitting in the same spot, furious at how long Javier was taking. Mario placed the rod in the boat and stood staring at the sand.
“What were you doing, jerking off or something? Mario was about to go looking for you. Christ, I don’t know which of you is the bigger pain in the ass!” said the father when Javier emerged from the mangroves carrying a basket of beer bottles that clinked with every step. He’d run into his friends from Bogotá, Javier explained to Mario, not his father, whom he didn’t even glance at.
Mario started up the boat again and took it out into open water. He accelerated hard so the boat reared up and the father, having stood up to retrieve a beer, almost lost his footing. Mario saw him miraculously regain his balance and heard him curse there amid the full glory of the sea. Damn, so close, he thought, and laughed silently to think he’d almost managed to make his father topple backward, like in a Condorito comic strip, and maybe even hit his head or fall into the water. The boat smacked the surface of the water three more times, and each time his father cursed. Let’s see what the old fart does now, thought Mario, ready to gun the motor if his father tried to get up and come over to slap him.
Javier asked him what the hell he was doing, and Mario apologized. He’d gotten distracted, he said. Javier told him that was how people got killed at sea, and Mario said, “I said I was sorry. What more do you want? Want me to stop steering and get down on my knees?”
“There’s a mark for every shark,” the father said from the prow.
The Storm Page 5
