We need to do another trip to Turbo, there’s no rice, no oil and we’re almost out of cigarettes. Let her go, maybe that will clear her head.
Two weeks now since it last rained, we’ve had to carry drums of water from the creek to irrigate the seedbeds, the cistern has packed up again. The hardest part—especially for Elena—is not having running water in the house. Don Eduardo was supposed to take a look at the pump, but he hasn’t come round yet. I hope the old man can do something to fix it because otherwise we’ll have to call out a plumber. The workings look simple enough, the pipes and the plumbing are a pain in the arse to fix. Maybe the Almighty through the intercession of Don Eduardo can manage it.
Yesterday, I went into the forest. The more I look at the trees, the more I hate the idea of having them cut down but, with things as they are, we might have no choice. I’ll be forced to practise the Ancient Arts of Axmanship, as the local poets call it. Make way for civilization, you puny fucking kapoks!
Elena set off for Turbo with a list of stock needed in the shop. It was still impossible to know what she was thinking. During the trip, she did not make a single mistake; she came back with everything they needed—including several items not on the list that she realized were running short—and was careful not to be gypped by the traders. But she returned as icily silent as she had left.
18
SHORTLY AFTERWARDS, they received a visit from Don Gabriel E., a millionaire from Medellín, who arrived with his son. Don Gabriel owned one of the neighbouring fincas—a vast estate farm spanning almost five hundred hectares—and the locals claimed he was a little stupid and a little crazy. He had bought the finca in the dead of winter while the whole area was waterlogged, only to watch in summer as it dried out to become parched as a piece of old leather. It had been a colossal mistake. In summer, his cattle had to be moved to the few fincas in the area that had water and pay to lease their grazing land. His majestic finca proved not only unprofitable, it was ruinously expensive.
Don Gabriel had become senile with old age. In order to avoid him making further costly mistakes, his son Ramiro now trailed him like a shadow. A young man with a domed forehead and a brusque, businesslike manner, he and J. had met while studying engineering at university.
“What’s new, hermano?” Ramiro called down from his horse.
It was midday and J. was sitting out on the veranda digesting his lunch. He had seen the horses emerge from the woods but it took a moment before he recognized the riders. The horses plodded slowly along the beach. As the young man called out to him, he recognized them. “It’s that idiot Ramiro,” he thought, “and his idiot father…”
“Qué tal, Ramiro?” he called back genially. “Come join me.”
When they stepped up onto the veranda, J. held out his hand. “Pleasure to see you, Don Gabriel,” he said to the old man.
“And you, young man,” said Don Gabriel, sitting in the wicker chair without waiting to be asked.
He was a man of about sixty-five, very pale and almost completely bald. Being raw-boned, when he sat down his ample paunch was pushed up to his sternum. Before losing his wits, Don Gabriel had been an overbearing man accustomed to being in control; now, his manner was vaguely paternal, an attempt to adopt the manner of the ageing patriarch of a respectable Antioquía family. He wore white shorts of the kind worn by tennis players and his badly sunburnt thighs were thickly smeared with milk of magnesia. He looked as though he had recently been ill; there were ulcerous red cold sores at the corners of his mouth. He wore sturdy black shoes that had clearly been bought to last.
“Sit here next to me, sonny,” he said, and J. inched his chair closer while trying to stay as far as possible from the old man. He did not like rich people, still less rich senile men who stank of milk of magnesia.
For some time, Don Gabriel questioned J. in a half-dictatorial, half-paternal tone. He asked how much his stud bull had cost, where J. had bought it and from whom; he enquired about the paddocks on the finca, the plans for the forest, the profitability of the shop and the proposed new house; he quizzed J. about his financial situation and his business ventures, past, present and future… And then, having quizzed him about everything under the sun—except how much water his finca had in summer—and seemingly satisfied with the vague answers he received, he took it upon himself to offer advice. Though no one had asked, he first gave a rambling disquisition on the best method of treating foot and mouth disease; he suggested—almost demanded—that J. plant a strain of multi-coloured corn developed in the United States; he expounded on the latest methods of artificial insemination; finally, he announced that Ramiro would only sell the finca over his dead body.
“Come on, J.,” Ramiro interrupted, “show me this bull of yours.”
Taking their leave of Don Gabriel (“Probably best if you don’t come, Papá, the less time you spend in the sun the better”), Ramiro and J. headed towards the paddocks.
“Don’t listen to Papá,” said Ramiro. “He’s not been himself recently, you know?”
It was no secret that the old man was not himself, but J. did not understand why Ramiro was apologizing for him; he had often heard Don Gabriel wittering on inanely but never until now had he heard one of his family apologize on his behalf.
Before they reached the field where the bull was kept, it occurred to J. that there was one possible explanation: Ramiro really did want to sell the finca. They had not gone far when Ramiro made him an offer he found difficult to refuse: J. could take over the farm without having to pay out a single peso in the short term—the finca would be paid off in instalments, the first due after three years and the second after five, and the interest Ramiro offered was less than the bank lending rate.
It was obvious Ramiro did not want his father throwing good money after bad on a finca that would never be profitable. Besides, J. knew Ramiro well enough to realize he could barely bring himself to spend two days away from the city; what he needed was a little farm half an hour from Medellín. Five hundred hectares of woodland that were almost in Panama had probably cost him many a sleepless night.
Ramiro studied the bull with polite indifference as the animal went on grazing placidly, surrounded by cattle egrets. He was astonished to learn how much the bull had cost and even more to discover that J. had paid in cash; J. clearly had money and did not invest it wisely.
On the walk back, they talked a little more about the deal. J. said that he was interested and asked for a few days to think it over.
“Think about it as much as you like,” said Ramiro. “Papá and I will be here for a while yet, so there’s plenty of time.”
Since everything of importance had now been said, Ramiro attempted to make small talk, asking J. about his plans for timber production. Reluctantly, knowing Ramiro was not really interested in the subject, J. gave him some superficial details.
“It means hacking down the forest,” he said finally. “It’s a pretty simple process…”
When they arrived back at the house, Elena was out on the veranda talking to Don Gabriel. J. could see the old man’s hand, as gnarled and twisted as a tree root, was resting on Elena’s tanned knee. Seeing him arrive, Don Gabriel did not remove his hand, clearly hoping that it seemed like a paternal gesture. Elena, in a display of filial affection, nestled into the old man’s shoulder and asked to be excused, then went and kissed J. on the cheek. It was the first affectionate gesture she had made in days; indeed it was the first gesture of any kind she had made in a long time. Her desperate need to be free of the mummified hand on her knee, it seemed, had hastened their reconciliation.
“Don Gabriel was just telling me how to treat foot and mouth disease,” she said to J.
“Ramiro’s father is one of the greatest experts on foot and mouth this side of Mexico, hermana. You should listen to him.”
The old man looked flattered; Ramiro felt an uncomfortable tingling in his brain.
Before they left, Don Gabriel offered a laboured theory on the bes
t system for sheep farming in the area. After he had mounted his horse to leave, he called J. over and, whispering in his ear, said again that the finca would be sold over his dead body. J. told him not to worry.
“We’ll talk soon,” said Ramiro. “I’ll drop by later this week so we can sort things out.”
Elena and J. stood on the veranda watching as the horses trotted away.
“I’m going to go for a little swim, I won’t be long,” said J. when the horses had disappeared. “If foot and mouth shows up, tell it to wait until I get back.”
Elena bowed her head to hide her smile.
19
…and so he ended up with all this land. I’m not criticizing him, I love the guy as much as anyone, but frankly I think he had delusions of grandeur. When he died, he owned over a thousand hectares—can you imagine? He had a lumber business—at least that’s what I’ve heard—and the lumbermen were allowed to cut down what they wanted whenever they felt like it. There was no system to what he was doing out there on the finca. Actually, the last time I saw him in Bogotá, he was blind drunk, ranting and raving about everyone and everything like a moron. He insulted my mother, me, you, Elena—the whole human race in general. “The human being is a piece of shit, the human being is a piece of shit, the human being is a piece of shit…” He must have said that a thousand times before he finally fell asleep. The next morning, he didn’t remember a thing. Can you imagine a guy like that running a sawmill with fifteen lumbermen in Turbo? I mean, the balls of the guy! I think Jorge was right—what with the whole highbrow-anarcho-lefty businessman bullshit, that mixture of colonial, bohemian and hippie could never have survived. It’s astonishing he reached the age of thirty-four.
I’m worried this letter will leave you even more confused than you were, but the thing is I’m not exactly the best person to try and explain this whole mess. The reason I’m writing is not because I think I understand what happened, but because I know you must be feeling shocked and terribly alone after his death. I was more surprised than anyone when I found out what he was doing at the finca. As I understood it, the original plan was just to move out to the sea and enjoy life, buy a little boat for fishing, a few cows, a few chickens. When he asked my advice on the first farm, I told him I thought it sounded too big, but then again he didn’t need to use all the land or walk the fields every day. Obviously he didn’t listen to me. Maybe he had some bourgeois dream of being a landowner… I don’t know, I still don’t get it. But buying the second finca was sheer madness—not that he asked my opinion. Though, as you know, by then our friendship was a bit strained. But, since I’ve raised the subject, there’s something I’d like to say—as much for my own peace of mind as for yours. Even with everything that happened, we were still fond of each other. Right to the end we still loved each other. But he started to attack me—especially when he was shitfaced—for what he called my intellectual snobbery. Basically, he accused me of becoming pretentious after I moved to Bogotá, of being pretentious. What hurt me most was that he would come out with all this shit with a kind of primitive—and in his case completely phoney—machismo of a guy who feared neither God nor man, it was like some pathetic attempt to portray himself as some kind of outlaw, a mixture of Jimi Hendrix and a character out of Rivera’s The Vortex. I visited him in Envigado once and I didn’t like what I saw. By that time, he’d been living on the finca for a while, and this was the first time he and Elena had come back to town together. They’d been there for a week, boozing every night, and when I got to their apartment they were in the middle of a serious session—booze, dope, pounding music—and the place was crawling with freeloaders and hangers-on. He and Elena were playing up the role of beatnik rebels, people who don’t believe in anyone or anything, hardened by the sea and the salt air—you get the idea.
As usual, J. was the one paying for the booze, the weed, the music, even the food.
The two of them were unbearable. They were horribly aggressive, all glib contemptuous humour and equally glib anarchism. Obviously the next morning, when they were hungover, they were back to being their friendly, normal selves. Elena was kind and gentle, nothing like the proud courtesan she’d been posing as the night before. I said to J.—and maybe this was a little tactless—I said he should be a little more wary of these provincial parasites from Envigado who were only out for what they could scrounge. J. reminded me—and I suppose he had a point—that I was from Envigado just like them, even if I had studied literature and philosophy in Bogotá, and he accused me of wasting my life in mental masturbation because I was afraid of facing up to real life, of being too quick to judge and too smug about it… I said exactly what I’ve said in this letter, that he was turning into [words crossed out] and Elena was turning into some punk version of María Félix. Obviously we made up again, in fact J. even spent the whole afternoon referring to Elena as “María”. But after that we were always a little wary of each other, we treated each other with kid gloves, we never talked about anything in detail and both of us just assumed that we were right…
20
THE SOMMELIER uncorked the bottle and poured a little into the glass. Fernando, the bank manager, sniffed the bouquet—he had already sniffed the cork—and said it was lovely. After the waiter left, Fernando muttered that he had had better, but that it was acceptable. J. had called to say he wanted to talk and asked if they could meet somewhere other than the bank. Fernando invited him to lunch at Club Medellín, where he was a member. “He’s going to want to talk about Europe,” thought J. “Jesus, the guy’s a pain in the arse…” He asked Elena to go with him. “I’ve no desire to see that little prick again,” she said.
Fernando had lived in France for four years, J. had spent two years in England. And since J. desperately needed an extension on his loan, he had no choice but to go, alone, and talk about Europe. The four years Fernando had spent in France had been the most important in his life; back then he had been wild and crazy, he stole tins of food from supermarkets, novels from bookshops, he even found a way of calling Colombia from a callbox without paying. They had been the most creative years of his life; he had visited cathedrals, met artists, he had even managed to become a personal friend of Paco de Lucía. This is what they talked about while Fernando delicately sipped his wine, savouring the bouquet like a connoisseur.
When the food arrived, J. made the most of the interruption to solemnly solicit some professional advice. He told Fernando about his idea for the lumber business and asked his opinion. Flattered, the banker lucidly laid out the pros and cons. Broadly, he was in favour of the venture but was careful to warn that he would have to see a detailed business plan before he could offer a decisive opinion. “I’ll come down for a few days’ holiday soon,” he said when J. invited him to visit the finca. The plates were cleared away and Fernando ordered a liqueur. “A pousse-café after a meal is a great aid to digestion, I learnt that living in France,” he said as J. shot him a sardonic look devoid of even a flicker of warmth.
J. drank his liqueur, thinking it “sickeningly fucking sweet”, then casually mentioned the fact that he needed to renew his loan. Fernando first sang the praises of his pousse-café and then began to speak slowly, very slowly about the loan. It was clearly a prepared speech, since he had been rambling for some time before J. managed to work out where it was headed. He talked about the statement of income J. had provided—which was clearly not good—he mentioned their long-standing friendship, talked about his position at the bank and how important it was that he be seen to be scrupulous, especially when it came to lending. Finally he said that, yes, he would extend the loan, but that this was the last time. He flushed slightly and lit a cigarette. J. thanked him and also lit a cigarette. Exhaling smoke from his mouth and nose, he asked about some trivial detail of Fernando’s time in France.
21
THE NEW FINCA had two small palm-thatched houses, each with two bedrooms, so buying the estate offered a solution to housing the lumbermen. One of the houses ne
eded repairs, but the other was habitable. Before heading back from Medellín where, in addition to extending his loan, he had signed the agreement to purchase the new finca, J. and Elena talked to a timber merchant Julito knew in Turbo. They arrived back at the finca with seven loggers, each with his own two-stroke chainsaw. They also brought a large barrel of petrol that J. had purchased to sell back to the workmen. It weighed a ton and proved difficult to carry across the beach. For lack of a better place, it was stored in the shed he had had built twenty metres from the house where they kept rabbits and guinea pigs, a gift from Don Eduardo, who had a rather biblical mindset. J. was unhappy at the idea of storing this huge oil drum, which gave off choking fumes in the heat, next to his animals. “We need to find somewhere better to store it,” he thought, “though it needs to be nearby so I can sell the fuel and so no one steals the petrol…”
J. had been warned about the loggers. According to Julito, they were the worst of the worst, they needed to be ruthlessly managed, they had no redeeming features, they would steal anything that was not nailed down, they were aggressive when drunk and sloppy in their work. J. assumed he was exaggerating; the men he had hired seemed entirely ordinary. True, they seemed a little cocksure of their abilities—though the same might be said of Julito—and were quick to boast. “Like everyone else around here,” J. thought. The men talked a lot and they clearly shared a sense of humour—they laughed a lot—though it was one J. found all but incomprehensible. All seven were tall and muscular; all of them were black. The timber merchant had assured him they were excellent workers and experienced loggers. “I’ve got some first-class lumbermen, exactly what you’ll be needing,” he had said. “And every man jack of them has his own tools.” J. decided he would start out with seven men, partly because the second house had not yet been refurbished and he did not want to house workers in his own house, and partly because he felt he needed to get the hang of this new business.
In the Beginning Was the Sea Page 6
