In the Beginning Was the Sea (4 page)

O
NE SATURDAY NIGHT
, J. told Gilberto that he had decided to go with him to town. The following morning, just after sun-up, he was woken by the sound of hooves, the snorting of horses and Gilberto’s voice calling him.

“Don’t bother saddling a horse for me, Gilberto,” he called back from the bed. “I’ll walk.” He took a shower, washed down the fried plantains Mercedes brought with black coffee, then set off on foot behind the horses.

The two men walked some distance along the beach. The sea was calm and blue, the air was cool. J.’s shoes sank into the sand and his calves began to cramp. Gilberto rode slowly so that J. could keep up.

They came to a spot where the mountain tumbled to the sea in a sheer cliff. This was the northernmost boundary of the
finca
. They turned off the beach and headed up a steep, overgrown slope.

“Whenever you like,
jefe
, you just say the word and you can have the horse,” said Gilberto, seeing J. clutching at the surrounding plants to keep his balance. The dense
forest was filled with bird calls. Feeling tired, J. agreed to ride for a while. Gilberto helped him into the saddle and then walked behind.

They came to the top of the hill. To their left, the mountain and the forest rose away; to their right, a step path wound down towards the sea. They could hear the muffled roar far below. Gilberto managed the descent as effortlessly as he had the climb. The trail, though longer, was broader now and not as steep, which made the going easier.

Suddenly, the mountain levelled off and the path ahead became less overgrown. The dense forest gave way to a banana plantation. Weaving between the banana plants, the path came to a house where three scrawny dogs were barking in the front yard.

“
Hola
, Don Eduardo,” Gilberto called and, when no one replied, added, “He’s probably healing someone, or trying to convert someone…”

Don Eduardo, like J., was from Antioquía, and suffered from a mild mystical form of madness. Gilberto’s voice was gently mocking as he told the man’s story, sprinkling the tale with interminable anecdotes that J. found tedious. To his mind, any man capable of applying plasters and giving injections was a boon to the area, even if he was best friends with God Almighty.

The plantation was bordered by a line of coconut palms and, beyond them, they came once more to the sea. Here, the coastline curved into a pair of claws to create a sweeping
natural harbour some ten or fifteen kilometres wide. At the far end of the bay, J. could see the roofs of the town. Aside from the roofs, he could just make out a number of canoes and various piles of wood on the shore and, some two hundred metres out to sea, two ships floating on the glassy waters. Just then, like a waterbug, a canoe dropped away from one of the ships and moved slowly towards the strand.

J. climbed down from the horse, called Gilberto and handed him the reins. The man slung them over his shoulders and they walked on together. The ships arrived three times a week to collect timber, coconuts and passengers, Gilberto explained, though the timetable depended on the weather.

“I remember once it took us ten hours just to get to Turbo,” he said.

Ten minutes later, they passed the cemetery. Some fifty graves were scattered over an area that looked more like a part of the beach than a separate plot of land. Most of the graves were marked with wooden crosses, some boasted concrete tombstones, two or three had vaulted mausoleums, but the shifting soil had given way under the weight, the concrete had fractured, and the tombs, like shipwrecks, lay half-buried in the sand.

Even so, the cemetery did not seem sinister. Being so close to the sea, it was frequently flooded during high tides, which left trails of foam. The joyous way in which vegetation crept over the crosses and the tombstones and
pushed through cracks in the concrete, the sight of crabs appearing suddenly from sandy tunnels dug into the graves, and iridescent lizards basking in the sun seemed to J. to represent the enduring triumph of life over death. Oblivious to the fate foreshadowing his own bones, it occurred to J. that of all the cemeteries he had ever seen, this particular one terrified him least.

They left the cemetery behind and arrived in the town fifteen minutes later.

There were four streets, some fifty houses, and a population of no more than five hundred. A broad stretch of beach served as the town square; here were the piles of wood and the beached canoes J. had seen from the distance. There was also an old truck which had obviously just arrived since he had not noticed it earlier. This, and a similar old rattletrap, were the only motor vehicles in the area. The truck looked as though it had been used during an evacuation, an invasion or some massacre. The bodywork was pitilessly eaten away by rust—the doors had gaping holes, the bumpers were corroded—and had recently been hand-painted a vivid red. The brutish, warlike shape of the truck contrasted with the bright, jolly paint job, giving it a fantastical appearance. “This is how we in the tropics repurpose the grey cast-offs sent to us by shitty First World countries,” thought J.

Passengers were gathered around the truck waiting for the loading to be completed so they could climb aboard. Other people stood in shop doorways drinking beer. J.
could feel eyes boring into the back of his neck, something he accepted calmly and with a certain vanity. Some of the children blatantly stared at him.

“What are you looking at?” he asked one of them.

The little black boy answered with a smile and J. flashed back a fleeting grin that seemed to please the child.

They bought the groceries in a lean-to shop which adjoined a house, with a wooden counter and, behind it, wooden shelves laden with foodstuffs which ran the length of the walls. The shop smelt of plastic and leather. Behind the counter sat the owner, a narrow-shouldered young man with a sallow complexion and a large pot belly, who wore his shirt rucked up over his chest in an effort to combat the sultry heat that gusted in from outside. The owner’s name was Juan, a man famous for buying stolen goods. J. found him simultaneously cynical and obsequious. He was helped out in the shop by his wife, a languid, overweight, proud woman of about thirty with pale olive skin and a beautiful face. She exhaled a breath of sensuality like the miasma of a flowering swamp.

Gilberto was an old hand at shopping and J. scarcely had time to drink four beers before the groceries were loaded onto the packhorse. J. found everything outrageously expensive. This may have been the moment when he first considered opening his own shop on the
finca
.

L
ESS THAN
two months after their arrival, J. found himself obliged to go back to Medellín.

“I’ll head off on Tuesday,
hermana
,” he told Elena, “I’ll be leaving you in charge of everything.”

“No problem,” she said without a flicker of hesitation.

J. gave her some advice, talked to Gilberto about the work that needed to be done in his absence, and set off.

In Medellín, disaster awaited him. Before he and Elena moved to the sea, J. had entrusted his money to a relative to invest, planning to live off the interest until he could find a way of making the
finca
profitable. A number of people had advised him to be wary. The man had a chequered history—something J. knew, but managed to overlook—and more than once he had been sued for breach of trust. There were rumours that he was a professional swindler. But J. ignored such stories. Persuaded, perhaps, by the fact that the man was a relative and tempted by the exorbitant interest rates he was offering, J. had lodged a meagre three hundred thousand pesos with a bank and handed over the rest to be invested. It proved to be a terrible mistake. When
he reached Medellín, he discovered that the relative had declared himself bankrupt in suspicious circumstances. In blunter terms, he had robbed J. blind. There were bitter arguments, lawyers, legal battles, but in the end J. lost everything. After wrangling for a month and a half, J. realized that the
finca
and the three hundred thousand pesos in the bank were now his sole means of survival. He sent a letter to Elena with Don Carlos, who happened to be heading to Urabá, explaining that he would have to stay in town another fortnight; he told her not to worry, that everything would be fine.

The terrible blow he suffered as a result of this sordid affair was immediately followed by an irrational need to fight back, an overwhelming desire not to fail—at least in the long term. J. spent sleepless nights calculating how much money he would need to set up a shop on the
finca
and how much profit he might make from cattle farming. Though deeply reluctant to contemplate cutting down the majestic trees on the
finca
, he also initiated conversations with timber merchants who advised him there was money to be made in lumber. “At worst it would pay for the food and the
aguardiente
,” J. thought, having done some rough calculations. “The sunshine and the sea don’t cost us anything.”

He negotiated a loan for two hundred thousand pesos with the bank and boarded the bus back to Turbo with a cheque for five hundred thousand pesos in his pocket—a sum he hoped would be enough to set up the shop and subsist until the business took off—and a bottle of
aguardiente
in his backpack.
He spent the eighteen-hour journey juggling figures, drinking
aguardiente
and glorying in the upheaval in his life.

Elena was waiting for him on the beach when he arrived back at the
finca
. Seeing her there, the wind whipping her skirt against her shapely legs, J. felt touched. Solemn, bronzed by the sun, she watched the boat arrive with a calm, assured expression.

They kissed passionately.

“The stock should arrive tomorrow or the day after,” said J.

“What stock?”

“For the shop,
hermana
. We have to open a shop. Things in Medellín have gone to shit and we’re pretty much broke.”

“OK,” she said, “Let’s do it.”

The following day, Gilberto arrived early with timber to build the shelves and the counter.

“I’ll have it ready in a week, Don J.,” he said, immediately setting to work.

The stock did not arrive the following day, nor the day after, but a week later in two large boats, by which time the shelves had been built. Much of the order was missing. J. had paid for fifty bottles of
aguardiente
but only twenty arrived; there were only ten of the forty cartons of cigarettes he had ordered, and the quantities of rice and beans were short. He argued with the boatmen who insisted that this was all the warehouse manager had supplied. Elena accused them of being thieves but they ignored her. Whenever she spoke,
they behaved as though she did not exist, allowing her to say her piece, then carrying on talking to J.

“I’ll go back to Turbo with you,” said J., somewhat calmer. He turned to Elena. “You start stocking the shelves, but don’t sell anything before I get back.”

The discrepancy turned out to be a misunderstanding. The warehouse manager told J. that he had written a note—which he had forgotten to give to the boatmen at the last minute—explaining that the outstanding items would be despatched with the next order since they had been having problems with their suppliers and were running low on several products.

The explanation sounded unconvincing and J., unsurprisingly, flew into a rage and threatened to have the man fired. Then, as always, he calmed down.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” J. said. “You pay for my trip, you give me the missing stock now, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

After a brief, feigned attempt to object to this idea, the man was forced to concede. Before he left, J. insisted that all future orders be shipped through Julito.

This was the first night J. slept at Julito’s house. They met by accident on the town square and when the boatman heard that J. was looking for a hotel for the night, he immediately invited him to stay.

Julito lived in one of the stilt houses J. had seen when he first arrived in Turbo looking for the harbour. It comprised
three rather dark rooms with a lean-to kitchen at the back. The central living room was furnished with a small table in an alcove and there was a hammock strung from one corner to the other. As they stepped inside, Julito unhooked the hammock, pushed the table into the centre of the room and drew up two crude unpainted chairs.

“Sit down,
jefe
,” he said.

Julito’s wife was fat—unsurprisingly—and surly. But this was not the same “wife” J. had met at the market. She addressed her husband in a mocking, sarcastic tone that made it clear she was no longer his dupe, that she knew how he ticked, this poor excuse for a man, that she no longer had any illusions. With J., however, she was friendly if not particularly talkative; it was clear that she was proud to have him as a guest in her home.

Julito left him sitting in a chair and went out to get some
aguardiente
. Meanwhile, his wife brought coffee in one of the little cups he had seen at Doña Rosa’s house. This spartan room had a certain elegance and the delicate porcelain cup shimmered in its centre like a spray of flowers. The sun began to set and deep blue shadows began to gather in the corners. J. watched through the door as the sky gradually grew darker. The sunset was peaceful and he felt happy.

Julito came back with a bottle, brought out two glasses decorated with bullfighting scenes and sat in the other chair. The two men drank late into the night. When the bottle was empty, the boatman suggested going to buy another
but J. declined: he urgently wanted to get back home and needed to get up early. Julito hung up the hammock and J. stretched out and immediately fell asleep.

The following morning, after a four-and-a-half hour boat ride, he arrived back at the
finca
.

Elena had arranged everything on the shelves, and all that remained to be done was putting prices on them. Gilberto, who knew about local prices, helped her. They opened one ledger in which sales were to be carefully recorded and another for those who bought on credit, and the shop was ready for business.

That night Gilberto and Elena had their first serious argument. J. knew it had something to do with the counter, but never quite understood how it had started. Coming back from a walk on the beach, he found Elena in a fury while Gilberto seemed more stunned than anything else. J. knew that when Elena was in a rage, nothing and no one could calm her down; the only thing to do was wait it out until her anger, like a volcano, subsided. Taking Gilberto to one side, J. told him not to pay her any mind, that her fury would quickly pass. Gilberto shrugged and said he understood.

“All women are hot-blooded, Don J.,” he said.

After Gilberto left, J. went back to the shop.

Meanwhile, Elena pretended to study the price list.

“I will not stand for you undermining me in front of those
hijos de puta
,” she said after a moment without looking up from the ledger.