Tomás Gonzáles - In the Beginning Was the Sea

The men had already left for the other finca and the veranda was spattered with oil stains where the chainsaws had leaked during the night. Elena and Mercedes tried to get rid of them with hot water and a scrubbing brush, but the porous wood had already absorbed too much oil, leaving permanent marks on the floorboards. Elena flew into a rage out of all proportion to the incident — after all, in such an ugly, ramshackle old house, a few stains more or less made little difference — and vented her anger on Mercedes. As usual, the woman started crying and locked herself in her room. When Elena finally calmed down, she went to apologize. Perhaps she felt guilty, perhaps she was worried that J. or Gilberto would come home. Whatever the reason, Mercedes accepted her apology and promised not to mention the incident to her husband.

That day, J. witnessed the felling of the first tree. The chainsaw gnawed and gnawed at the trunk with a cowardly whine, and suddenly the tree, a towering kapok, started to make a deep rending sound that seemed to come from deep within the earth itself. The lumberman shouted and the tree fell with a shriek, and its fall — like the Apocalypse — brought down a whole world of parasites, birds’ nests, shrubs, vines and saplings. When all was still, the loggers hacked the fallen tree to pieces, dismembering it like a pack of ravening dogs.

When J. got home, he looked gloomy. Without a word, he sat on the veranda and stared at the sea; without a word, he drank the coffee Mercedes brought him. After a while, he went into the shop where Elena was reading, took a bottle of aguardiente from the shelf, opened it and took a long swig as he strolled back out to the veranda. He sat down, took another drink and set the bottle on the floor next to him. He refused lunch. At 2 p.m., in the harsh glare of the sun reflected on the waves, he fell asleep in the chair, dead drunk. A flock of gannets glided slowly over the water. Elena and Mercedes carried J. to bed, took off his sandals and covered him with a sheet. He slept all afternoon. When he woke, it was dark and he could hear the purring of the sewing machine. He put his head out the window and saw a large moon rising over the sea. Still half-drunk, he went into the shop, crept up behind Elena, kissed her ear and stroked her breasts.

UNLIKE J., who went to the village at least twice a week — he invariably stayed for lunch and they usually served him crabs and rice — Elena had not returned since her first visit. Apart from her own mother, whose religious fervour she found irritating, Elena knew very few elderly people and tended to mistrust them. She had particularly disliked Doña Rosa: she had been appalled by the way the old woman treated her as though they were equals. Several times J. suggested she come with him to visit her, but Elena always found some excuse. “I don’t want to go there and have all those black men staring at me like I’m some sort of exotic animal,” she said finally, and after that he did not insist.

The villagers, in turn, did not much like Elena. At the beginning, their low opinion derived from the tales Mercedes told about how Elena treated her and Gilberto; later, many of them had direct experience of her brusque manner.

Elena began to take her daily swim in a small, sheltered cove not far from the house where the sand was bone white and the sea deep azure. She usually swam alone — J. preferred to stare at the sea rather than to swim — and afterwards she would lie on the sand and sunbathe. The cove was on the narrow road between the village and the town so that villagers passed the spot where Elena — wearing a white bikini that contrasted with her coppery skin, now darkened by the sun — went swimming every day. When men passed, whistling or smoking, Elena could feel their eyes on her and even as they walked away, still whistling, she could feel they were still watching. And often she was right. Nor was it just the men. She exerted a fascination as instantaneous and innocent as it seemed inexhaustible on everyone, from children carrying strings of fish to passing women balancing pots on their heads. Rarely did the villagers greet her as they passed. Sometimes, the children would stop and stare, their wide eyes neither mocking nor friendly but simply curious. When she chased them, they would walk away slowly, still watching her. “Bye-bye, seño !” they would sometimes shout as they left.

Once, she had an altercation with a black woman — full-figured, dignified, majestic — who passed by every day carrying a basin of laundry on her head. When the woman, never stopping, slowed so that she could look, the basin would whirl slowly. And when her neck could no longer maintain the whirling, she would gracefully raise her head and, never for a moment wavering from this slowness, this poise, this dignity, woman and basin would set off down the narrow path and disappear.

On the morning in question, Elena had had an argument with J. about the loggers coming to the house to eat every day. She was lying on the beach thinking about this, her mind teeming with murderous thoughts. Just then, the woman passed. Whether because she was tired or perhaps because one of her sandals had come loose, she sat down, took the basin from her head and set it on the ground.

Elena could not contain herself.

“Get out of here, you nosy bitch!” she yelled. “This is private property!”

The woman did not move. She did not raise her voice, but merely said that she had been taking the same route for twenty years and did not need some newcomer telling her where she could and could not walk. The argument went on for some time — Elena became bitter and angry while the black woman remained calm and sardonic. In the end, the woman stayed as long as she pleased and, since she refused to leave, Elena finally snatched up her towel and stalked off.

“They’re so nosy, these people,” she complained sullenly that night.

She and J. were sitting on the beach in front of the house. Waves pounded onto shore, raining pebbles like hailstones and ebbing in a clatter that sounded like maracas. On a tray next to J. were a little salt cellar, slivers of lemon and slices of green mango. He had got into the habit of drinking a few glasses of aguardiente —sometimes too many — every night. Now, wearing shorts and sitting staring at the sea, he gripped the bottle with his bare feet. There was no moon, but the night was clear and filled with stars. For the umpteenth time, he tried to explain what Elena already knew: that people stared out of genuine curiosity and not some sinister reason.

“The more you get angry, the more they’ll stare.”

Elena said nothing, drank some aguardiente and handed back the bottle.

“I’m tired,” she said, “I think maybe I should go to bed. Try not to get too drunk.”

Before she left, she grabbed the bottle and took another mouthful, shook salt on a slice of mango and, slipping it between her teeth, walked away. Shortly afterwards, J. watched her shadowy figure in the bedroom as she undressed. “Everything is so fucking difficult and so fucking beautiful,” he thought as he watched Elena’s shadow move through the shaft of yellow light, a tiny pocket of affection in the immensity of darkness. He shook a little salt onto a slice of lemon and held it ready while he drank another shot. Sometimes, particularly when drinking, J. felt as though he might explode with joy. Lights, sensations, visions and insights coursed through him like fen-fire. His belly warmed by this feeling, he went on sitting there for a long time, drinking and pushing deeper into the night.

The following day, Elena decided not to go to the cove. When the time came for her swim, she sat fuming in the shop, reading a book. When the face of a little black girl appeared at the window (“Mamá sent me to ask if she can have a pound of rice on credit”) Elena glared at her contemptuously and told her she couldn’t have any fucking credit because they already owed her too much money. The girl went on staring at her as she pretended to read.