In the Beginning Was the Sea

25

NEITHER OF THEM felt like going to Medellín for Christmas. The weather here was cool, the nights were long and they were once more happy in each other’s company. Sometimes, J. would make a little jibe about the barbed-wire fence which would trigger a minor squabble; over time it became a sort of game.

On December 24, they were invited to the Christmas Eve ball in the village. Since Elena did not want to go, J. dropped by during the afternoon. When he got there, everyone was happy and excited. Salomón was the first to greet him. He was clutching a bottle of whisky and cradling his baby daughter in his arms, but when he saw J. he set his daughter down and ran over to hug him. One arm still around J.’s shoulder, he offered him a drink of whisky. At Doña Rosa’s house, J. was plied with food and more drink. Primped and powdered and wearing bright red lipstick, the old woman looked jovial. She was pleased that J. had come to visit, but disappointed that he could not stay for the party. She effusively thanked J. for his gifts — a bolt of fabric printed with yellow daisies and several bars of imported turrón.

He left, happy and grateful to the villagers, and arrived back at the house at six o’clock to find Elena waiting for him wearing a beautiful dress.

“Did you put the wine out in the sink to chill?” he asked.

She had, she said, it should be perfect now.

“Go fetch a bottle, hermana. Let’s drink a toast before dinner.”

Mercedes had prepared two large lobsters with lemon and onions and there was a platter of oysters on the half shell which they ate with lemon and salt. From the village, they had been sent two bowls of arroz con camarones.

“An aphrodisiac Christmas,” said J.

The wine was better than they had expected; only the last bottle was a little vinegary but they drank it nonetheless.

When they had finished off the wine, they started on the whisky.

J.’s Christmas presents to her were a blue bikini all the way from Italy and a copy of the Diccionario de la Real Academia. Whenever Elena read, she liked to jot down unfamiliar words on a piece of paper — in her case, there were a lot of unfamiliar words. Later, in a naïve attempt at self-improvement, she would look up the words in a battered old dictionary with missing pages they had picked up somewhere. Elena gave J. a History of Erotic Art with illustrations ranging from Pompeii to Picasso. Months later, one of the police officers involved in the investigation would slip the book surreptitiously into his backpack, and when his wife found it later it ended up being sold to a textile merchant in Turbo who would use it as cheap pornography.

“There’s nothing like sophisticated pornography,” said J.

They spent the evening listening to the strains of vallenato drifting from the village. Just before midnight, Elena and J. launched a huge paper lantern. Since there were only two of them, they had to use fine threads to hold the lantern open while it filled with hot air from the candle. They managed to succeed. The lantern soared and, carried on a gust of wind, drifted over the forest.

“I bet it floats all the way to Panama,” said J.

Until about 3 a.m., J. remained calm, but clearly the whisky did not agree with them and both he and Elena foundered. They had a terrible argument, though neither of them quite understood what triggered it. It had clearly been a vicious quarrel because the following morning Elena had a black eye and bruises on her thighs and J. had long, deep gouges across his face. The books had been pulled down from the shelves and the shotgun was under the bed; one barrel had been fired.

“If we carry on like this, we might really hurt each other,” said Elena.

The words sounded strange to J.’s ears, but he sensed that she was right. Both of them felt ashamed and afraid.

December 25 was a traumatic day. They racked their brains trying to remember, but to no avail. By the morning of the 26th, after a night spent tossing and turning, J. felt better.

“Let’s not screw up our lives over this,” he said. “If neither of us can remember, then clearly we weren’t ourselves.”