In the Beginning Was the Sea

14

THE 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.