In the Beginning Was the Sea (11 page)

S
O BEGAN
an endless succession of wretched, interminable days. There was little conversation in the house and the rain pounded constantly on the roof. Elena took over the cooking and the cleaning, chores she had never found distasteful and which she carried out efficiently. J., for his part, arranged things such that he was out of the house as much as possible. He did not reproach Elena about the shotgun incident, but neither did he make any attempt to bring her out of the depression into which she sank after the incident.

As a gesture of friendship to J., Gilberto continued to make sure there was a stack of logs on the veranda every morning. He knew J. would get blisters on his hands if he had to chop the firewood himself. The attitudes of the villagers towards J. did not change after the event. On the contrary, crockpots filled with crabs arrived even more frequently and, whenever he visited, the locals were as welcoming as ever.

Without an overseer, things on the
finca
began to go downhill. The horses were infested with ticks, and the heavy
rains rotted the saplings in several of the seedbeds because J. had failed to deal with the drainage problems, while the loggers were increasingly unmanageable. For some time, Gilberto had been responsible for dealing with the labourers when J. was on one of his frequent trips to Turbo, on days when he was with Juan’s wife, and on those days he spent holed up in the house drinking. Though he was not a particularly brilliant foreman, Gilberto proved able to keep the men under control and ensure that the quality of the timber was adequate. After Gilberto’s departure, things deteriorated so much that a whole consignment was rejected because the quality of the lumber was so poor, and J. was forced to ship it back from Turbo. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that, when sober, J. would try to stop the rot by summarily firing people, docking their wages or ranting at the loggers. Such measures did not go down well with the men who, in a puerile attempt at revenge, began to deliberately sabotage their own work.

The truth was that, despite his best intentions and the pains he took to treat them as equals, J. had never liked the lumbermen. He was exasperated by their infantile insolence and their clumsy chicanery. He was infuriated by the fact that they stole anything they could and were constantly trying to swindle him—and each other. Worse still, they considered this systematic insubordination not as a matter of defiance but one of principle. Obviously, among the labourers there were what Don Eduardo called “just men”,
but J. could only see them as a group, an enemy battalion and—his head addled from too much booze—he proved incapable of singling out individuals and making them, if not allies, then simply friends. A month after Gilberto’s departure, realizing that relations with the labourers were becoming untenable, J. managed to curtail his drinking and once again took control of the
finca
. At first, his newfound authority was precarious, not because of the men’s work—the timber was passably well cut and sold for a reasonable price—but because the men, believing they knew J. better than he knew them, played a waiting game assuming that he would weaken and they could strike home. But J. did not weaken. With almost superhuman effort, he managed to keep a cool head and to assert his authority. Eventually, the loggers—to use a cliché that has existed since mankind first accepted that certain individuals were born to lead—ended up, if not liking him, at least respecting him.

However, the work was arduous and J. was not prepared to spend his days cleaning shit from the rabbit hutches, chopping sugar cane into fodder for the horses and mending wire fences. He needed an estate manager. He spoke to a number of people in the village and the town, but it quickly became clear that everyone for miles around knew about Elena’s volatile temper and no one was prepared to take the job. This simply served to fuel J.’s sense that Elena was a liability—though he cared for her and occasionally they were still good in bed.

The stormy relationship before the incident with the ring had given way to a truce that was at once chilly and cordial. Since they were both busy, they ceased to mention the downpours that rolled in every day. It almost seemed as though J. enjoyed getting soaked to the skin on his treks into the forest to supervise the workmen. Only occasionally, on lazy Sunday afternoons as they stared out the driving rain, did they find themselves engaged in moribund conversations where Elena tried to raise the subject of the ring in the hope that J. might forgive her. She never succeeded. Though J. seemed affectionate and understanding, Elena keenly sensed he was actually distant and aloof. It was as though he were saying, “If you want to leave, leave; if you want to stay, that’s fine, stay. I don’t care one way or the other…” His attitude naturally infuriated her but, given the situation, she had no choice but to bite her tongue. At least for as long as she could.

It was then that Octavio arrived.

“
T
HERE’S SOMEONE
for you,” said Elena.

“Who?”

“Some old man. He’s out on the veranda.”

It was early and J. was still in bed. A light drizzle was falling.

“Ask him what he wants.”

“I asked, he said he wants to talk to you in person.”

Out on the veranda, J. encountered a man of about sixty with cropped grey hair and a grey beard. He wore a tight-fitting shirt that showed off a muscular body with not a gram of fat. Every time he scratched behind his ear—a nervous tic—his well-defined biceps were visible through the fabric. His face was broad and harsh, while his ears and his eyes were small.

He was looking for work, he said, and had heard J. was looking for an estate manager. His broad accent was that of an Antioquía farmhand. When J. asked where he had come from, he offered a rambling explanation, mentioning a coffee plantation “not far from here, up in the mountains”, and something about a lawsuit which, apparently, had cost
him his land. When pressed, the old man simply repeated the same vague story and J. realized he did not want to talk about it. J. asked whether he knew anything about timber production and the old man said he had managed teams of loggers in Antioquía and Córdoba. He had no references and was probably in no position to get any. He was a man of few words; he would half-answer a question, stopping in mid-sentence when he felt he had been sufficiently understood, or when he feared he had said too much. He claimed to be married with five children and gave his name as Octavio Sossa.

“Let me think about it, Octavio,” said J. “Come by and see me tomorrow and I’ll give you an answer.”

“OK, Don J.”

That afternoon he did some investigation, but no one seemed to know anything about the old man. It was as though he had popped up out of the ground like a crab, with a wife and five children. J. asked Elena’s opinion and she said that she had not liked him at all. But since this was her opinion about everyone, J. paid it little heed. And so, the following morning, when Octavio called, he still had not made up his mind. In fact, J. had not taken to the man either; there was something underhand and insolent about the man’s eyes that gave him the creeps. But since he really did need an estate manager, he found himself telling Octavio that he could work a week’s trial to see how they got along.

And the man accepted.

He was an excellent worker. Surefooted and intelligent, he seemed to know everything there was to know about the
finca
. He immediately took charge of the loggers, knowledgeably appraising their work and offering valuable suggestions. The men, seeing that he knew how to deal with them and that he understood the business, respected him. Later, they would come to fear him.

Octavio talked little and worked hard. When the week was up, J. said he was satisfied and told the man he could go and fetch his family. Elena said again that she did not like the old man, but J. did not listen. The man went off and returned three days later with his wife and five children. The eldest could not have been older than ten.

The difference in the house was immediately apparent—and did nothing to allay Elena’s fears. The wife was listless and lazy—much more so than Mercedes had been—and the children were noisy and boisterous. Since the woman had never lived by the sea, she did not know how to cook the local food and so every day they ate
frijoles
. And unless Elena took over the cooking—as she sometimes did—even the beans were inedible, undercooked, oversalted and sometimes full of grit. The woman managed to burn the
arepas
and carbonize the fried plantains.

“She’s the stupidest woman I’ve met in all my life,” said Elena.

But worse than the food were the children. The older ones crept into the shop and stole sweets and tins of
condensed milk, the little ones wailed constantly and shat on the veranda. All of them stank to high heaven, and their mother did not seem to give a damn. Octavio treated them with the same indifference he might a pack of dogs; when they got in his way, he brutally beat them and they would wail for hours on end. Between the slovenliness of Octavio’s wife and the continual rains, the atmosphere in the house became stifling. But since the rest of the
finca
was now functioning properly, J. turned a blind eye and was careful not to complain about the food or the children, especially in front of Elena.

He simply made sure he spent as little time as possible in the house.

A
MONTH AFTER
starting work, and without consulting anyone, Octavio took down the fence that surrounded the little cove. One day, J. came home to find the rusted rolls of barbed wire stowed under the veranda. He anticipated a terrible row with Elena, but she did not say a word. J. was astonished. He did not know that she had not been swimming for several days and therefore did not know what had happened with the fence.

When J. informed the old man that he did not appreciate the fence being taken down without permission, Octavio made no attempt to apologize but simply said that there were better uses for the barbed wire. J. reminded him that he was to do nothing on the
finca
without authorization: Octavio was free to manage the loggers as he saw fit, as long as he could guarantee quality timber and did not fell trees unnecessarily, but in all other matters, “including that shitty fucking fence”, he was to consult J.

“All right,” the man said through gritted teeth. “You’re the boss.”

From the moment Octavio first arrived until the day
that she finally left the
finca
, Elena’s attitude to the old man was aloof and curiously respectful. She did her best not to criticize Octavio’s wife and not to have any dealings with him. But more than once she suggested that J. try to find out where Octavio had come from; she had tried to wheedle information from his wife, who had clearly been well trained and offered only vague and unimportant details.

Though by now the rains should have been easing off, still the sky was overcast and the thunderstorms were heavy and prolonged. Elena wanted to leave, but it saddened her to think of abandoning J. here in the dark winter. Besides, now that he was drinking less, he had become more affectionate and the cold civility that had existed between them since the shotgun incident had begun to thaw. J. had even asked her to accompany him on his treks into the forest, invitations she rarely accepted since she disliked tramping through the overgrown jungle and hated the way the workmen stared at her. Also, and for no apparent reason, J. had stopped seeing his lovers—or at least he no longer visited Juan’s wife, the only mistress Elena knew about for certain. What Elena did not realize was that J. was aware of her desire to leave, of her intention to leave, and he did not want her last days at the
finca
to be corroded by jealousy.

In his heart, J. was unsure whether he truly wanted Elena to leave. He was afraid of being alone, afraid of discovering he loved her more than he realized, more than he was prepared to admit even to himself. But by now they
had hurt each other too much, they had flayed each other body and soul and might do so again at any moment. And regardless of what they might say when they parted, both of them knew that they would never live together again.

The morning of Elena’s departure was bathed in a dazzling glow that made everything seem radiant, as though the light was emanating from within. Although this was merely a respite between downpours, J. was grateful for the fact that it did not rain that day. A few cottony clouds drifted over the sea, hugging the coastline. To the north, where they were beginning to mass on the horizon, bolts of lightning flickered—inaudibly, at such a distance—in the louring grey sky. Sitting on the beach, Elena and J. stared to the south waiting for Julito’s launch to appear at any moment. They had already said all there was to say and now tried hard not to think, simply gazing at the sea. They followed a flight of gannets far out at sea, so small that at times they were invisible. In the cove, the little islands glittered like precious stones: lush, luminous, flawless.

“I think the boat is coming.”

On the horizon, the tiny spark of the boat’s hull glittered. Anxiously, they watched as it grew brighter, trying to work out whether or not it was Julito. When J. saw the hazy reflection of the yellow hull in the water, he knew that it was.

“It’s him,” he said.

Affable and sober for once, Julito arrived with his assistant. Elena was taking only a single suitcase, having decided
to leave behind the sewing machine, partly because she wanted to believe that this separation was temporary and partly because she did not want to travel with something so cumbersome.

She could not know that she would never see J. again.

The boat put out to sea and moved away, gradually getting smaller until it finally disappeared into the green. J. took off his sandals and walked along the beach. He went to the little cove where Elena used to swim and sat on a tree trunk staring at the water. There was no sign now that there had ever been a fence, nor the slightest indication that here Elena had been enfolded and suffused by the tropical sun. J. was reminded of the painting hanging in the bedroom of a woman offering herself to the waves, to the sunlight. He thought about the hard kernel of truth hidden in such artless paintings, just like the love that lived on, beyond all doubt, beyond death itself, in the hackneyed lyrics of a
bolero
. For some vague reason, he thought back to the time when he considered a pretentious critic at some literary magazine more truthful, more important than a taxi driver and his family washing their car and bathing in a cold, rocky stream.

“You’re on your own now,
hermano
,” he thought, feeling a faint twinge in his belly.

“Sorrow,” he said softly.

It had come. He had known it would.