In the Beginning Was the Sea

24

J. PERSONALLY accompanied the second consignment of wood to Turbo, planning to stay there for a week. The day after his arrival, the sea was stormy and remained that way for several days. He stayed at Julito’s place, and spent his days drinking in a second-floor bar that overlooked the plaza, passing the long hours gazing down at the town square, half-hypnotized by the heat, the beer and the comings and goings of the jeeps below. He spent a couple of evenings watching karate movies — the only kind of films that were showing — in an open-air cinema with wooden pews exactly like a church. And one night he went with Julito to a brothel.

The cathouse smelt of perfume, sweat and cigarette smoke. There were ceiling fans and tango music. At four in the morning Julito, looking smart in a blue guayabera shirt, was slumped in an armchair staring at J. He was drunk but trying not to let it show. J., half dozing, rested his chin in the cleavage of the pale, well-rounded woman sitting on his lap. There was a bottle of rum on the table next to tall glasses with gilt rims, a puddle of water and a bucket in which the ice had melted. The light was a pinkish-blue. The whores, dressed in flaming red or hot pink, appeared and disappeared through dusty brocade curtains. A thin, shadowy black queen fluttered like a moth amid the soft lights and the drapes.

When J. got to his feet, dizzy and reeling from the drink, the woman slipped under his arm. Together, they disappeared behind a low curtain while Julito watched, his face flushed. An hour later, the madam — an ageing malicious old shrew decked out with tinkling bracelets and thick makeup — came and told Julito to take his friend home as he was drunk and had fallen asleep in the bedroom. Julito woke J. up as best he could, helped him outside and took him back to his house.

Four days later, when he arrived back at the finca, J. saw that there was a new barbed-wire fence encircling almost a thousand square metres of land and a small strip of sea. Running from a stake planted in the sea, five strands of razor wire were strung across the beach, the barbed wire snaking through two hundred metres of forest and then back across the beach where it was nailed to another stake embedded in the water, completely sealing off the little cove where Elena went swimming.

On the boat trip back, J. had been happy and talkative, chatting to Julito and listening for the hundredth time to the same hoary old stories. Now, before the boat had even begun to slow, he spotted the barbed wire from the distance.

“What’s with the fence, jefe?” asked Julito.

The stakes looked tall and sturdy, the strands of wire were close together. A neat section of sand and sea had been carefully carved out of empty tropical space.

“No idea,” said J.

When J. got to the house, he noticed that the barbed wire under the veranda — ten new rolls he had bought a month earlier to fence the paddocks — were missing. Elena was in the shop, standing on a chair, arranging things on a high shelf.

“What’s up?” she said, without getting down. “I didn’t even hear the boat. Did Julito come back with you?”

“What’s up?” J. repeated with cold fury. He was in shock.

He tossed his backpack into a corner, stalked out and went to inspect the fence. The wires were taut and firmly nailed in place. It was a fine piece of workmanship. Rolling up his trousers, he waded into the sea. The posts were thick and sturdy.

He went to find Gilberto.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Gilberto?” he said, dispensing with a greeting.

Gilberto launched into a rambling explanation so confused and contradictory that it left J. speechless with anger. Gilberto babbled that he assumed Señora Elena was in charge in J.’s absence; that he had tried to persuade her to wait until Señor J. came back before doing anything about a fence, but she had threatened to fire him; that he would take down the barbed wire if that was what J. wanted.

“You know what Señorita Elena is like when she’s angry,” he said finally.

“Who put up the fence?”

“Me and Roberto.”

“I’m not going to pay you a peso for the work, Gilberto,” said J. “And you’ll have to pay Roberto out of your own pocket, that’s all there is to it.”

“Whatever you say, Don J.”

“And this is the last time you do anything without my permission, you got that? When I’m not here, you do whatever jobs we agree on before I leave, no more, no less.”

“OK, Don J.”

J. turned on his heel and left. His mind was still shrouded in a seething black fog and he decided it was best not to go back to the house straightaway. He walked on the beach for a while, careful to head north, then he sat down and waited for his anger to subside. Eventually, he decided to have the fence taken down.

When he told Elena, she hit the roof. She was not going to be treated like some nobody, she told him, this was her finca as much as his and she had rights, besides why was he making such a big deal about a few rolls of barbed wire, swimming was her only pleasure in this godforsaken shithole and she was not about to let him take that from her.

“You take that fence down and I’m leaving,” she said.

It was no idle threat, and so J. did not remove the fence. Nor did he go swimming with her any more. The next time Don Carlos came by, he innocently asked about the wire fence.

“It’s Elena’s Country Club, Don Carlos,” said J.

Elena called him every name under the sun and locked herself in the bedroom. Don Carlos left soon after.

Since the wire cut across the dirt road, the villagers were forced to make a detour through the forest and rejoin the path farther on. In general, however, they only did so when Elena was on the beach; if she was not there, they simply lifted the wire and squeezed through the gap. Elena would often find the barbed wire held apart by lengths of rope or fabric, sometimes it was ripped from the posts. Every week, with J.’s authorization, Gilberto repaired the gaps, a never-ending task made all the more absurd since Gilberto and his family were the ones who most often damaged the fence on their way to and from the village.