In the Beginning Was the Sea

5

ELENA SPENT her first days at the house in a frenetic whirl of activity. As the daughter of generations of women obsessed with cleanliness, and buoyed up by the pride associated with a spotless home, the filthy, cluttered state in which Elena found the house had been oddly comforting. The day after she arrived, having swept out the room where they planned to sleep and hung the clothes in a wardrobe she had scrubbed with a scouring pad and bleach, she set to work on the bathroom and the toilet. Leaning in the doorframe, cradling the baby — who seemed permanently attached to her breasts — Gilberto’s wife watched as Elena cleared out rotted window screens, the rusted cans and lengths of pipe. The bathroom looked as though it had been used as a junk room in which to store bits and pieces — useful or otherwise — found on the two hundred hectares of the finca.

The various objects Elena tossed out piled up at the feet of Gilberto’s wife who, still leaning in the doorway, shifted the objects with her foot so she could examine them. Then she looked at the other woman with vague curiosity.

“What is all this shit?!” Elena muttered furiously.

Eventually, the bathroom was clean. In the toilet stall a roll of toilet paper now hung from a length of wire, the ceilings were free of cobwebs, the floor had been swept, there was a bar of soap in the shower, two towels hung on the back of the door, and the washbasin in the corridor had been equipped with soap and a hand towel.

At first, any progress was more apparent than actual. It was a sign of ownership rather than a real improvement, because the huge concrete cistern mounted on bricks behind the outhouses was cracked and the pipe carrying water from the stream three hundred metres away had long since rotted away.

There was no running water. Every morning, wearing their swimsuits, Elena and J. would have to carry soap and towels down to the stream where they bathed using a gourd to scoop up water.

“The most important thing is to get the shower working,” Elena said that first morning as she dried her feet before putting on her sandals.

There was a constant clamour of birds down by the river and several times they spotted troops of monkeys swinging through the trees. The water was clear and soft. On the walk back, J. got into the habit of pausing for a while beneath the tall mango tree, picking a few ripe fruits and eating them as he stood in the shade watching Elena, her wet hair glistening in the sunlight, a towel in one hand and soap and shampoo in the other, walking back to the house. Even later, after they had replaced the water tank and the pipe and there was running water in the bathroom, J. went on bathing in the crystalline stream until the end.

When Elena set about organizing the kitchen, she discovered that it was the only clean room in the house. Despite the fact the cooking was done on an open fire, the ancient pots and saucepans were gleaming and immaculate. The meagre stock of groceries was carefully arranged on shelves that were spotless, though blackened by the smoke. There was no sign of ants or cockroaches.

“The woman certainly knows how to clean when she feels like it,” was her first impression of Gilberto’s wife.

From the other rooms, Elena cleared out piles of dust, rats’ nests, plugs of paper that had been stuffed between the floorboards, cigarette butts and the dried corpses of cockroaches and bats.

“When was the last time anyone swept these rooms?” she asked Gilberto’s wife.

“December last, it would have been. Señora Clara did just what you’re doing now…”

“And did you help her?”

“Well, thing is, back then I’d just had the baby, see.”

Elena quickly realized that the woman was concerned only with the kitchen, the laundry and her own house. For all she cared, everything else could crumble to dust. While Elena cleaned, the woman followed her around the house, the baby permanently clamped to her breast. More exasperated than curious, Elena tried to draw her out but the woman, though friendly enough, was not one for conversation.

“What’s your name?” she asked as she put scraps of rotten canvas and broken plastic into a cardboard box.

“Mercedes,” the woman answered. She smiled but did not say another word.

Armed with a spray can and covering her face with a handkerchief, Elena completed her spring clean by fumigating the rooms with liberal quantities of insecticide.

“Keep spraying the place with poison, and we’ll all wind up thrashing on our backs like roaches,” said J.

Cockroaches scuttled from every corner and fell dead, making a dull thudding sound on the floorboards. Elena swept the dead bugs into a pile and proudly summoned J. so he could see them.

“The Angel of Death is a novice compared to you,” he said.

By the time Elena had finished, there was a mountain of rubbish piled up on the beach. That night, they lit an enormous bonfire.

Since it would take some time for the insecticide to disperse, that night they slept out on the veranda, Elena in a cot bed and J. — hoping to avoid the repulsive twitching cockroaches — in a hammock. Elena quickly fell asleep while J. stayed awake for a while, drinking aguardiente straight from the bottle and watching the embers glow amid the darkness of the beach.