In the Beginning Was the Sea

37

TWO DAYS LATER, Guillermo was the first member of the family to arrive at the finca. He found J. laid out on a table, his body bloated and purple. Seeing him, Guillermo felt his testicles draw up. Doña Rosita, who had washed the body and kept vigil for two nights, told Gilberto to get him a shot of aguardiente. Guillermo drank it and slumped into a chair, his face in his hands, and began to cry.

“We need to bury him now,” he said when he had calmed down. “We can’t just leave him rotting.”

“Don Eduardo has already embalmed him,” said Gilberto. “He should hold out until tomorrow. Is the coffin on its way?”

Guillermo did not know. He had let the rest of the family know, but it had been decided that sending a coffin all the way from Medellín would take too long. As for Guillermo, he had not had enough money to bring one from Turbo.

The following day one of the brothers arrived. He did not view the body. His face ashen, his eyes dry, he asked the police to make an inventory of the few things that had not been stolen, then he personally stored them in one of the bedrooms, which he padlocked. He said that bringing a coffin from Turbo was a ridiculous idea; besides there was no time.

“The best thing is for us to knock up a wooden box here. Go fetch some wood… what’s your name again?”

“Gilberto.”

“Get some decent planks, Gilberto, and we’ll make the coffin ourselves.”

But there was no timber. They searched everywhere and could find nothing that would serve. The brother suggested that the best thing to do was to dismantle the bed and use the wood to make the casket. The mattress, they burned down on the beach. Gilberto broke up the bed, took the best of the timber and set about looking for nails, but found none. And so using the nails he had extracted from the bed, he began to hammer the coffin together. The result was a long, ugly wooden crate that did not look fit to transport a body.

Miguelito and Gilberto took the rowing boat; the others went on foot. The sea was calm. The oars moved swiftly, powerfully, through the dark waters. The two men did not speak. The crate containing the body sat between Miguelito in the bow and Gilberto in the stern. They passed within ten metres of one of the little islands in the bay. Rounding the headland, they saw the small, distant figures of people who had left the road and were following the coastline. The boat was moored next to the cemetery and, together, the people brought the coffin ashore. The ribbon of sand glittered in the midday sun.

And together, they buried him.

That same day as the sun set, a languid, tarnished sunset, Guillermo felt a stabbing in his belly. He was hungry. Slowly, he walked to the mango tree, picked up the bamboo pole J. had used to knock fruit from the high branches and picked three ripe mangoes. He sat on a pile of fallen leaves beneath the spreading branches and began to eat. “Honey, pure honey,” he thought as the juice trickled through his beard and ran down his neck.

“Fucking delicious.”