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Authors: Tomás Gonzáles

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O
N HIS FIRST TRIP
to Medellín, J. had bought a nylon fishing net measuring fifteen metres by three. It was a wide mesh net, ideal for catching tarpon and bluestripe jacks. It took five people to handle it.

The finest fisherman in the area was Salomón, one of Doña Rosa’s sons. Though taciturn and physically unremarkable, he seemed to have an extraordinary talent. During lean times, when other men came back with empty nets, Salomón would still land ten-pound sea bream.

He was always immaculately turned out. No one had ever seen him break a sweat. He wore impeccably ironed white shirts with the Red Indian logo of his Pielroja cigarettes faintly visible through the breast pocket. The pack never got wet, and even empty it was still the perfect rectangle it had been when full.

J. knew from experience that Salomón was an exceptional fisherman, having often accompanied him when he was line fishing on the beach. Every movement of his hands had a rigorous logic; some casts were tentative, allowing him to play to random chance; others were precise, perfect
casts which, if executed a second earlier or later, would have failed.

J. asked Salomón to try out the new net. Since this was not high season for fishing, the early catches were modest. The men would go out at night, drop anchor three hundred metres from shore and fish for three or four hours. J. never went with them, but he liked to watch the lights bobbing on the waves; he could just make out the shadows of the boats against the dark water and hear the distant voices of the fishermen.

In Salomón’s care, the fishing net remained as good as new—perhaps better than new, since it seemed to improve with experience. Staked out on the beach, the nylon mesh gleamed in the first rays of sunlight with a delicate, spectral beauty; the sun coursed along threads still glossy with dew while the breeze created ripples of silvery light that looked like tendrils of wind itself.

At noon, Salomón and his eldest son would come to pick up the net. They never came into the house. J. would watch from the veranda as the son unpegged it from the stakes, folding the net into sections which he handed to Salomón, who gathered it into his outstretched arms before slinging it over his shoulder with an effortless gesture, and the two men would walk up to the house.

Having stowed the net in the room where the tools were kept, Salomón would come out onto the veranda, crouch down and chat with J. for a while, almost always
about fish. He would smoke a couple of cigarettes and then head on his way. Rarely did he accept a drink. “Come winter, the real fishing season will start,” he always said before he left.

T
HE RAINS CAME
and so began the first of the two winters J. would spend on the
finca
; the first of his last two winters on earth.

Thick grey clouds massed over the sea, lending it a mournful, boundless beauty. Before the first drops fell, the sun would slip through a chink in the clouds spilling showers of light over the dark waters. Lightning shattered the skies with a thunderous boom as gulls shrieked high in the heavens. Then the clouds merged and fat raindrops chimed like pebbles on the corrugated iron roof, heralding torrential downpours that seemed to last forever. The muggy heat that preceded the cloudbursts would give way to a bleak, dusky coolness as the leaden outlines of the clouds melted until it seemed as though the land and the waters had merged again and the darkness was one with the light. Sometimes it was possible to hear above the raging elements the muffled purr of a boat, its blurred outline barely visible out at sea.

At the beginning of winter, Elena and J. would shut themselves away in their bedroom to wait out the rain-storms, overcome by damp, dark desire. As heavy raindrops
hammered monotonously on the roof, they made love until they were exhausted. But whenever Elena had to get out of bed to serve a customer in the shop, she could not help but look outside. The desolate, dark seascape made her heartsick and the muddy streams gushing down the mountain and turning fields around the house into swampland made her want to cry. The tall mango tree in the garden, so majestic in summer, now seemed crumpled and shrunken in the rain. Everything she could see, the dogs, the placid cattle, the battered palm trees, even the sea itself looked dreary. Overcome by a wave of crushing loneliness, Elena would go back to the bedroom, to the warmth of J.’s body.

After two or three days of incessant rain, the waters would retreat. After a long night listening to the clattering on the roof, J. would wake to find himself suddenly faced with light and silence. “The rain has stopped,
hermana
,” he would say, shaking Elena awake, and the two of them would run out onto the veranda where a universe that seemed new-made appeared before their eyes. The sun beat down on the wet leaves of the trees, beat down on the sands, beat down on the spume thrown up by the waves. Leaping from the water, the sardines seemed to tinkle in the air. Flocks of seagulls, dazzling white in the dawn light, wheeled above the ocean, diving for fish in exultant confusion.

And yet, these periods of remission were short-lived. Before long the clouds would gather again, covering the earth with their flinty shadow. When the waters once again
began to teem, Elena and J. would lapse back into their desperate lust and shut themselves away in the bedroom.

Until Gilberto said:

“Now would be a good time to plant the seedbeds,
jefe
.”

J. was sitting on the veranda at dusk, watching the darkness move from grey to black. Elena was in the bedroom, asleep. He needed to shake off this lethargy, to rid himself of the despair that burned like an ulcerous panic in his belly. For almost six weeks, he had done no work of any importance on the
finca
.

“OK, Gilberto,” he said, “let’s start tomorrow.”

The following day, wearing heavy oilskin capes, they began preparing the ground. At first, Elena worked with them, but later, when she could no longer stand the insidious raindrops that dribbled down her neck and trickled down her back, when the muggy heat that smelt of rubber became unbearable, she abandoned the work and shut herself in the house.

“If the bloody sewing machine hadn’t been damaged, at least I’d have something to do,” she said to J.

She ate in an attempt to cancel out the terrible weight of her boredom. Hardly had she finished breakfast than she was already salivating, with neurotic delight, anticipating the fried sea bream she would have for lunch. Between meals, she gorged on ripe mangoes.

As Salomón had said, with the rains came huge catches. Fish were so abundant that the net did not need to go out
every night. Every time it was hauled in, the net teemed with enough fish to feed the house and the surrounding area for days.

On the night of the first big catch, Salomón brought J. thirty large bluestripe jacks, fifteen sunfish and four sea bream a metre and a half long. This was half of the catch.

“Just give us half of this, Salomón,” said J. “Take the rest and give it to the people in the village.”

But even this proved to be too much. Mercedes hung some of the fish over the wood stove to smoke and salted the rest. Four days later the salt fish began to stink and they had to throw it out.

T
HE DUE DATE
on the loan with the bank coincided with the depths of Elena’s boredom during that interminable winter.

“One of us should go to Medellín to try and renew the loan,” J. said, knowing she would be the one to go.

“Fine,” Elena said immediately. “You sign a power of attorney and I’ll make the trip.”

Two days later she walked next to J., trailing behind Gilberto as they headed for the town. Since money was short, it had been decided that she would take the weekly ferry rather than hiring an express boat. Though it had stopped raining, the dirt track was a quagmire. Elena and J. were wearing rubber boots while Gilberto had on the same battered leather sandals he wore in summer. In the deep mud, his feet made a sucking sound Elena found nauseating.

They reached town with two hours to spare before the ferry sailed. At noon, Gilberto took them to a café owned by one of his relatives where they had a huge sunfish casserole, then, drowsy from the heavy lunch, they sat on the beach on an upturned canoe waiting for the ferry.

Just as Elena clambered into the canoe that would take her out to the ferry, the first fat raindrops began to fall. By the time she was aboard, the downpour was in full spate.

The ferry was a wooden hulk twelve metres by four painted in blue, yellow and red. Ten long benches ran from stem to stern and the deck was covered by a broad canopy to shelter passengers from the rain. Elena stowed her suitcase and then settled herself next to one of the guardrails in the bow. She could see J. staring at the ferry from the shore. She waved and he waved back but made no move to leave. He went on standing there, staring out at the ship. “He’s getting soaked,” thought Elena.

The last passenger to arrive was a cantankerous old man with Parkinson’s disease clutching a lit cigar between trembling fingers. When he was finally hoisted aboard, the ferry’s engines began to roar and the engine room belched thick clouds of blue smoke. “Let’s just hope this heap of shit doesn’t sink before we get there,” thought Elena.

Elena had no desire to spend the night in Turbo. A porter with a handcart wheeled her suitcase to the station where she sat on a metal chair to wait for a bus. When she discovered that the next bus would not leave until 9.30 p.m., she went to a restaurant and ordered roast beef, cassava and a mountain of rice atop which a fried egg glittered like a star.

At ten o’clock the next morning, the bus rolled in to Medellín. Elena felt her heart race as they arrived. Emerging from the dazed stupor of the long journey, the passengers
suddenly became cheerful and talkative. The sky was blue and cloudless, a hot, dry wind came through the open window. Pleasurably breathless, her eyes half closed, Elena let her hair billow in the breeze while one or two of her fellow passengers stared.

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.


T
ELL 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.

BOOK: In the Beginning Was the Sea
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