Tomás Gonzáles - In the Beginning Was the Sea

“I’ll find it, I’ll find it,” Elena said, storming out, leaving the room looking as though it had been looted and Mercedes in a state of cataleptic shock.

Doña Rosita was sitting in her rocking chair listening to the radio when Elena, flushed and dishevelled, burst into the house clutching the shotgun.

“Give me back my ring!” she screamed.

After a brief flicker of surprise, the seemingly imperturbable old woman told Elena that there was no need to threaten her with the shotgun, that if she wanted to search for a ring, or for anything else, she was welcome to do so — being a frail old woman, there was little she could do to stop her. Doña Rosa continued to rock in her chair while Elena turned the shack upside down, knocking things over, smashing and trampling all before her.

Doña Rosita did not move; she did not even glance at Elena as she left the house and prowled around, shotgun in hand, insulting the villagers, conducting a house-to-house search, pointing the rifle at anyone who tried to stop her. Still she did not find the ring. By the time she left the village, the rain was lashing harder, a heavy gale was whipping the trees alarmingly and the whole sky was streaked with lightning. As she tramped home, weeping with rage, calling down curses on J., on the villagers, on the whole area, Elena would not have cared had she been struck by a thunderbolt. Back at the house she sat drinking in the shop, the shotgun by her side, until she finally fell asleep on the counter.

She woke the next morning as J. was carrying her to bed and immediately she started to cry. By now, he had heard about the incident, but he did not want to ask about it, did not want to discuss it. He wiped her tears away with his shirttail, stroked her hair and told her to go back to sleep.

Later that day, Gilberto came and calmly explained that Mercedes could not go on working in the house; that they had no issue with J., but perhaps it was their presence that was unsettling Señora Elena’s nerves. J. said he was sorry to see them go, thanked them for all they had done for him, but he made no attempt to dissuade Gilberto since he knew it was impossible.

SO 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.

“THERE’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.