In the Beginning Was the Sea

by Tomás Gonzáles

  When her mother opened the door, Elena was overcome by a heavy smell of scented candles.

  “Still burning that rubbish?” said Elena. “One of these days you’ll poison yourself.”

  Her mother carped and whined like a child.

  The house was filled with smoke. Everywhere there were statues of saints lit by votive candles. Elena took the suitcase up to her room.

  “You want something to eat, Elenita?” her mother called.

  Elena said she would eat later, that right now she desperately needed to take a bath.

  “What about William?” she called down from the bathroom. “Does he still call round?”

  “Almost every day, hija,” said her mother. “He and Luz Marina and the children come round most afternoons. He’s a good son, my William, may God protect him.”

  A powerful jet gushed from the tap, splashing the bathroom floor.

  That night, after dinner, Elena went out to the park. Having had a long siesta after lunch, she felt wide awake. Friday night in Envigado, and the open air bars—heladerías—were heaving.

  In the Puerta del Sol, Elena found Jaime Díaz and Roberto D’Alleman, drinking companions on J.’s regular binges before they moved to live on the finca. The three friends drank into the early hours and Elena did not complain about being driven mad by the monotonous rains but instead—borrowing some of J.’s pet phrases—extolled the virtues of a peaceful life by the sea compared to a toxic life “in the shadow of the chimneystacks of the Coltejer factory”.

  To her mother’s horrified disgust, she staggered home drunkenly at seven in the morning, with dark circles around her eyes.

  15

  “TELL J. this is the last extension I can authorize on the loan,” the bank manager informed her.

  His name was Fernando and he and J. had been school-friends. Despite his youth, he was almost completely bald and grimly serious. “He might be a first-rate banker,” J. often said, “but he’s a piss-poor excuse for a human being.”

  Fernando had a low opinion of Elena. He had heard rumours that she and J. were living in sin, and meeting her only confirmed his preconceptions. He treated her with a mixture of desire and disdain that manifested itself in polite superciliousness, a ready smile and flushed cheeks. Elena felt a visceral loathing for the guy.

  Having succeeded in renewing the loan, Elena stayed on in Envigado for a fortnight enjoying the same wild, chaotic life she and J. had shared in the months before they ran away to sea.

  The return journey took thirty hours. The road outside Medellín was blocked by an unexpected landslide causing an endless tailback of cars along the mountain path. For several hours while bulldozers shifted the rubble, the passengers whiled away the time sleeping, chatting half-heartedly, eating boiled eggs and getting out to urinate by the roadside.

  Elena slept through the night, a long dreamless sleep from which she was woken in the early hours by the roar of the bus starting up again. She woke in a foul mood. “Just my fucking luck to get caught in a landslide, my life is shit,” were her first words to the astonished woman sitting next to her.

  As the bus drove through the oil palm plantations, a torrential rainstorm battered the earth. The windscreen wipers flicked frantically, trying in vain to sweep away the cataract coursing down the glass. Headlights on, the bus moved cautiously while the passengers, disoriented by the rain hammering on the bodywork, felt shut in by the condensation gathering on the windows.

  The storm eased just before they came to Turbo. By the time the bus pulled into the town square, it had slowed to a steady drizzle that seemed as though it might go on forever. The central plaza was a mire. People carefully picked their way across the streets, hiking up their trousers to avoid the mud.

  Elena cursed the vast swamp.

  When Julito’s boat finally pulled into the cove, Elena was surprised not to see J. waiting, waving to her from the beach. She felt disappointed. Though it was not raining, the sky was overcast, the sea dark. She found J. lying in bed, reading. His feet were pitted with fungal infection.

  “It’s the rubber boots,” he explained, jerking his chin at his feet. “It’s agony, even when I’m sitting down.”

  They kissed and she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his feet.

  “You’re in a terrible state,” she said.

  The fungal infection presented as white pustules with tiny tentacles that buried into the skin causing terrible itching. When they burrowed beneath the toenails, the pain was unbearable. The pustules had to be carefully removed and the livid, pockmarked skin smeared with a thick layer of fungicidal cream. The treatment was lengthy, painstaking and painful. The pustules removed at night would reappear by morning.

  Elena immediately took over caring for him with great success. Being a coward when it came to pain, J. needed someone to force him, almost bully him, into persisting with the treatment. A week after Elena came home J. was still unable to walk, and only after a fortnight did he take his first painful steps along the hallways.

  16

  GRADUALLY, the waters began to recede. As time passed, the clouds were slower to mass into rain-storms and the sunny interludes grew longer.

  Elena had brought spare parts for the sewing machine from Medellín. Once it had been repaired, the Singer was set up on the counter in the shop so that Elena could sew while she worked. She had also brought back large bolts of cloth patterned with large red flowers. As soon as she got home, she began taking measurements, and by the time winter was over every window in the house was curtained.

  J. liked the new drapes. Every time he came back from the fields he was struck by the curious sight of this crumbling wooden mansion festooned with chintz flowers. And in the afternoons, when squalls blew in off the sea, J. liked to sit out on the veranda and listen to the whipcrack of the wind lashing the strange flowers in the windows.

  The rains had almost stopped by the time the coconut saplings began to bud. “Come, I want to show you something,” Gilberto said one morning after breakfast. Together they walked out to the seedbeds. Glistening buds that looked almost foetal had appeared on some of the saplings, while the fan-shaped leaves of others had already begun to unfurl.

  J. had a crystal-clear picture of what the finca would look like a few years hence. These tiny, emerald-green fans would have grown to become a vast coconut plantation running the length of the beach as far as the house, and over the land on which the house now stood. Their new home—which would have no corrugated iron roofs, no stilts—would be built on the brow of the hill behind the current house. J. had never liked the noise and the stifling heat of corrugated iron roofs, and had always been disgusted by the unsightly crawlspace under the veranda which inevitably ended up full of useless rolls of wire, broken bricks and off-cuts of timber. The new house would look out onto the sea from a lofty vantage point far above the muddy paddocks which morning and night filled the current house with flies and the stench of manure. Elena and J. often went up to the site where they planned to build the new house and talked about the layout of the rooms, the bathrooms and the windows.

  As winter drew to a close, J. became obsessed with planting. He planted mangoes on what would be the terrace of the new house, pineapples on the slopes of the hill—leaving a single strip of bare earth into which he planned to cut a flight of stone steps leading to the summit—and orange trees around the paddocks.

  And as winter drew to a close, he began to write in a huge journal that, for want of a better name, he called “the book”. The two-thousand-page volume bound in black leather had been made by a friend, a craftsman at the Coltejer factory with a love for bookbinding. His friend had initially intended to make and then write a great book. “A big fuck-off book,” he explained, “using every single word in the dictionary.” To J.—who had always been fascinated by futile intellectual pursuits, which were a part of his inchoate and confused revolt against culture—the book was a fascinating project. Whenever they met up, he would excitedly a
sk his friend how the book was progressing. “I’m up to page fifteen,” his friend might say with the weary shrug of a marathon runner. “When it’s finished, I’ll show it to you.”

  But his friend never did finish the book. Having reached page thirty, and having shown his work to no one—not even J., whom he respected—he ripped out the pages he had written and burned them. Perhaps his friends’ mocking contempt for his intention to remain within the constraints of the dictionary had been too much for him.

  “I’m a craftsman, hermano, and a fucking good one,” he said to J., “so I’m giving you the book, maybe you can do something with it.”

  Thinking it might prove useful at the finca, but mostly because he loved the object and the story behind it, J. had packed it—1,970 blank pages—along with the other belongings he brought with him to the sea.

  June 4, 1976: Today Don Eduardo brought four hundred pineapple shoots. He charged two pesos each. He brought them on an old pack mule he calls God’s Creature.

  Heavy grey clouds are building up to the south. If we plant them out this morning, the rains might wash away the newly planted shoots.

  Don Eduardo says he knows a herbal poultice that can prevent and treat the fungal infection. Elena doesn’t believe a word the old man says—actually, he’s not that old, from what I hear—but I’m prepared to smear my feet with anything if it stops the infection coming back.

  One of the cows calved last night, but the heifer was stillborn.

  They had no luck with their livestock. In the first month after their arrival, lightning struck an ox and her calf. Shortly afterwards, two cattle disappeared, probably stolen. There was an investigation and a case was filed—the policeman had no idea how to use a typewriter, so J. had to type the statement himself—but the case was never resolved. Vague suspicions and scurrilous rumours all pointed to Doña Rosa’s youngest son, Roberto, the black sheep of the family, being the guilty party, and to Juan, the local shopkeeper, having bought the stolen cattle. Juan had a reputation for buying stolen goods and Roberto for being a wastrel and a drunk. But no one other than Elena had been prepared to swear the men were guilty, and Elena had no proof.

  The fact remained that they now had twenty-nine head of cattle—precisely the same number as when they arrived. The calves that were born had made up for those lost, but they had to be raised and fattened and so, partly to increase the herd, and partly because he liked the look of the beast, J. bought a magnificent stud bull. He bought it despite the qualms of Elena and even Gilberto, who rightly felt that they did not need the animal since a neighbour was prepared to rent them a bull at little expense. The bull was meek, tall as a cathedral, patriarchal; a sturdy and baroque structure festooned with folds and cascading muscles. In the paddock, it looked spectacular.

  “A miracle of nature,” commented J.

  “…and a complete waste of money,” snapped Elena.

  The easing of the rains brought about a change in Elena’s mood. Her bitter silences gave way to a biting sarcasm that became her habitual tone even in moments of affection. In addition to running the shop and using the sewing machine—to make curtains, blankets, sheets—and fastidiously supervising domestic arrangements, she now went for long dips in the sea. She would usually set off at 11 a.m. with a towel over her shoulder and a bottle of suntan lotion and return shortly before noon. She would regularly complain to J. that the local black men frequently ambled closer to where she was sunbathing so they could stare at her.

  Mercedes was expected to keep a lookout for Elena so she could serve lunch promptly. If it was not on the table when Elena arrived home, she would rudely take Mercedes to task. This brusqueness in the way she treated people became routine, and over time it got worse. Gilberto had already complained to J. about Elena’s offensive way of speaking to his wife.

  “She can talk to me how she likes, jefe, I don’t care,” he said, “but my wife is a timid soul and all this criticism just upsets her.”

  J. had little time for Gilberto’s wife, and in fact often shared Elena’s view that she was lazy and useless. But he was afraid of losing Gilberto, a diligent and enthusiastic worker who took charge of every problem on the finca as though it were his own.

  One day, Elena came back from her swim to find lunch was not waiting on the table.

  “I’ve had a temperature, seño,” said Mercedes, who was holding a cold compress to her forehead and genuinely looked ill.

  “Temperature or no temperature, people in this house still need to eat,” snapped Elena. She felt so angry that the words got muddled in her head.

  “But seño…”

  “But nothing! I won’t have people in this house going hungry every time you decide to play the invalid. Now get cooking, hermana, that’s what we pay you for!”

  J. arrived home to find Elena stony-faced and Mercedes wailing in the kitchen, the damp cloth still pressed to her forehead.

  He flew into a rage. “Can you for God’s sake stop behaving like a lady of the manor?” he roared, without waiting for Elena to explain.

  Elena was taken aback. This was the first time since they had met that she had ever seen him truly angry. And when J. went on shouting, she got angry too; she hurled herself at him and slapped his face. He grabbed her wrists and with a powerful jerk sent her sprawling out into the corridor. Elena made no attempt to get up, and simply lay there weeping bitterly.

  J. stormed out of the house.

  17

  THE RECONCILIATION was no easy matter. When J. returned that night, Elena’s face was frozen in a mask of cold contempt. Silently, they undressed and went to bed, each careful to avoid any physical contact with the other. When J.’s elbow accidently grazed her, Elena flinched as though he had burned her with a cigarette; she retreated to the edge of the bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  J. stayed awake for a while and tried to read. “Don’t let them get your hopes up,” the poet says, “Today is all there is/Let pious people suffer/Life’s all earth has to offer/There’s no life after this”—but he could not concentrate. It was a long night. He closed the book, snuffed out the candle, and darkness, gentle and implacable, seeped into the room. The rising roar of the sea stole in, the sounds—and the silence—of the nearby forest; he could hear the barking of far-off dogs.

  J. went out onto the veranda in his shorts. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and cloudless. He settled himself comfortably in the wicker rocking chair Doña Rosa had sold him. He set his cigarettes and matches on the floor, lit a cigarette and stared out at the water. The spray from the waves gave off a faint glow. Far out to sea, he could dimly make out the horizon. For a moment, J. thought he could see the lights of a ship, but when he tried to focus, they disappeared.

  He felt a rough tongue lick at his knee and his heart leapt into his throat. He let out a hoarse scream, swore at the dog and kicked it in the belly. The animal howled, ran off and sat cowering at the far end of the veranda and stared at him. When the surge of fear subsided, J. felt a pang of remorse, and he called the dog over and stroked its head. It was a medium-sized animal with sandy fur called Kaiser.

  “Kaiser, you little fucker, you gave me a fright,” he whispered. “Bad Kaiser, you mangy fucking mutt.”

  The animal, being a stray and not used to being petted, started to whimper quietly. When it tried to lick his feet, J. pushed it away gently.

  “Down, boy!” he said, and the animal lay next to the chair.

  After too many cigarettes and too much brooding about his life, J. could feel sleep, like the dawn, was drawing near. When he went back to bed, he found Elena sprawled in the same position. “She can even be angry in her sleep,” he thought. Elena spent the following morning at the sewing machine, working in silence. At midday, she put on her swimsuit and went down to the sea; she returned at two o’clock and started on a stock inventory in the shop.

  So far, sales had been barely satisfactory. A month after opening, it was obvious that they could not count on
the shop as their principal source of income. The locals were poor and bought too much on credit. Besides, with other shops in the region competition was fierce and somehow they managed to keep J.’s neighbours as customers.

  The money J. and Elena had set aside to live on was draining away and they urgently needed to find a reliable source of income. J. had done some rough calculations to see how much the timber business might bring in, but he wanted to explore every possibility before deciding to cut down trees, an idea he found deeply repugnant.

  Only a hundred of the two hundred hectares that made up the finca were pastureland; the remainder was dense virgin rainforest full of kapoks, oaks and cashew trees. If they were to decide to go into the lumber business, it would be all or nothing, and they would have to quickly process as much timber as possible. J. had already given some thought to where he might build accommodation for the lumbermen, calculating that they would need ten labourers at most. Julito had promised to provide cheap, secure transport as far as Turbo and also offered to put him in touch with a timber merchant who could supply the men he needed, when he needed them. He explained to J. the sort of contract he should draw up: labourers were paid a fixed price per timber float and fixed expenses were deducted from their monthly salary.

  Four hundred thousand pesos in capital would be needed to begin work and J. realized that, barring some miracle, he would have to go back to Medellín in two months and persuade Fernando to extend his loan. Even if the banker did agree, every last peso would have to be ploughed into the business in order to be able to meet the repayments while he and Elena would have to live frugally.

  July 13, 1976: Four days Elena’s been sulking. Nothing I do makes any difference. I’ve no idea what the fuck she sews with that machine, but I hear it whirring all day long. I’ve tried apologizing but she doesn’t even answer. Probably best to leave her to herself, let her calm down in her own time.