In the Beginning Was the Sea

32

“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.

He was looking for work, he said, and had heard J. was looking for an estate manager. His broad accent was that of an Antioquía farmhand. When J. asked where he had come from, he offered a rambling explanation, mentioning a coffee plantation “not far from here, up in the mountains”, and something about a lawsuit which, apparently, had cost him his land. When pressed, the old man simply repeated the same vague story and J. realized he did not want to talk about it. J. asked whether he knew anything about timber production and the old man said he had managed teams of loggers in Antioquía and Córdoba. He had no references and was probably in no position to get any. He was a man of few words; he would half-answer a question, stopping in mid-sentence when he felt he had been sufficiently understood, or when he feared he had said too much. He claimed to be married with five children and gave his name as Octavio Sossa.

“Let me think about it, Octavio,” said J. “Come by and see me tomorrow and I’ll give you an answer.”

“OK, Don J.”

That afternoon he did some investigation, but no one seemed to know anything about the old man. It was as though he had popped up out of the ground like a crab, with a wife and five children. J. asked Elena’s opinion and she said that she had not liked him at all. But since this was her opinion about everyone, J. paid it little heed. And so, the following morning, when Octavio called, he still had not made up his mind. In fact, J. had not taken to the man either; there was something underhand and insolent about the man’s eyes that gave him the creeps. But since he really did need an estate manager, he found himself telling Octavio that he could work a week’s trial to see how they got along.

And the man accepted.

He was an excellent worker. Surefooted and intelligent, he seemed to know everything there was to know about the finca. He immediately took charge of the loggers, knowledgeably appraising their work and offering valuable suggestions. The men, seeing that he knew how to deal with them and that he understood the business, respected him. Later, they would come to fear him.

Octavio talked little and worked hard. When the week was up, J. said he was satisfied and told the man he could go and fetch his family. Elena said again that she did not like the old man, but J. did not listen. The man went off and returned three days later with his wife and five children. The eldest could not have been older than ten.

The difference in the house was immediately apparent — and did nothing to allay Elena’s fears. The wife was listless and lazy — much more so than Mercedes had been — and the children were noisy and boisterous. Since the woman had never lived by the sea, she did not know how to cook the local food and so every day they ate frijoles. And unless Elena took over the cooking — as she sometimes did — even the beans were inedible, undercooked, oversalted and sometimes full of grit. The woman managed to burn the arepas and carbonize the fried plantains.

“She’s the stupidest woman I’ve met in all my life,” said Elena.

But worse than the food were the children. The older ones crept into the shop and stole sweets and tins of condensed milk, the little ones wailed constantly and shat on the veranda. All of them stank to high heaven, and their mother did not seem to give a damn. Octavio treated them with the same indifference he might a pack of dogs; when they got in his way, he brutally beat them and they would wail for hours on end. Between the slovenliness of Octavio’s wife and the continual rains, the atmosphere in the house became stifling. But since the rest of the finca was now functioning properly, J. turned a blind eye and was careful not to complain about the food or the children, especially in front of Elena.

He simply made sure he spent as little time as possible in the house.