In the Beginning Was the Sea Read Free Page A

back,” J. said, tossing the bottle of
aguardiente
which the man nimbly caught.
    The two men clambered aboard. The assistant yanked the pull start on one of the outboard motors, which began to hum gently, then he started the other. The engines rumbled as the launch roared out onto the open sea.
    “Useless bastards!” said Elena.
    “What do you want? You expect them to spend all afternoon fetching and carrying for us?”
    J. brushed the sand from his feet using his socks, then slipped on his shoes.
    “You wait here and I’ll go and find someone to give us a hand,” he said and started towards the house. Elena stood, smoking, staring out to sea and brooding furiously about the
aguardiente
J. had given the boatmen.
    As he walked to the house sand trickled into his shoes, so J. took them off again and padded barefoot along the beach. Waves lapped at his feet. He savoured the feeling of the water, which seemed to course through his whole body. Once he had sorted out their belongings, he thought, he might take a swim.
    “Hello!” he called, stepping into the hall.
    “Hellooo!” a woman’s voice answered from the rear of the house.
    Carrying his shoes, J. walked towards the source of the sound. At the rear of the house was a lean-to shack thatched with palm fronds. Something was boiling in a large cauldron on a wood-fired stove. J. lifted the lid and immediately dropped it, foam dripping onto the hot embers. Standing on a hotplate was a chocolate pot and a wooden pestle—a
molinillo
. Sitting on a stool, leaning against a pillar, her bare feet perched on the cross-piece, a black woman was breastfeeding a baby.
    “Excuse me,” said J.
    “Make yourself at home. Don’t mind me.”
    The child, a sturdy, naked little boy, nursed placidly, his buttocks cupped by one of his mamá’s broad hands, whichbore a gold ring. The woman’s knees were lustrous black, well-rounded globes, though her breasts looked shrivelled. She was young. The baby’s bald head was also a plump black glossy globe.
    When J. explained who he was, the woman muttered that she had not been expecting them so soon, that Don Carlos had told them he had sold the
finca
to a young couple who were thinking of living here, but would probably not arrive until July.
    “Mañe!” she called, “Mañeee…!”
    There was a quick patter of footsteps on the wooden boards and a shirtless, barefoot boy of about eight suddenly appeared.
    “Go and tell your papá that Don J. has arrived! Go on, quick now!”
    The boy vanished without a word. Ten minutes later, his father arrived, accompanied by three other black men. He was short and heavy-set, with greying hair that lent him a serious, dignified air.
    “We weren’t expecting you so soon,” he said, “Gilberto Rendón, at your service.”
    J. shook his hand. He said, “Hello,” to the others and they replied.
    “I’ve got a letter in my backpack for you, Gilberto,” said J. “Our luggage is on the beach.”
    The men headed down to collect the luggage while J. sat on the veranda. Some ten metres from the house was arocky beach where the breaking waves rattled like maracas against the rocks in a clatter of broken seashells and detritus from the coral reefs. “There must be sea urchins round here,” J. thought.
    In a small field to the left of the house facing were several mango trees, one of which was particularly tall and well proportioned. It was crowned with thick foliage and the lower branches had been pruned so cattle could graze in the shade. “It’s exactly how I pictured the tree in the Garden of Eden,” J. thought. A cow and her calf stood under the tree, sheltering from the sun. “Probably brought her in to milk her… maybe it would be better to plough up that field and plant orange trees or something. Obviously you couldn’t till the ground directly beneath the mango trees or people would trample the saplings when they came to pick mangoes. Anyway… I need to make an inventory of what’s