In the Beginning Was the Sea Read Free Page B

in the house, tools and so forth.”
    He got to his feet and went back into the house.
    The whole place smelt of dust. Just below the ceiling a colony of bats fluttered. J. tried and failed to pry one of the planks from the boarded window. “I need a hammer or a crowbar,” he thought. He made a tour of the house and found a pile of wooden cot beds propped against a wall in one of the rooms. He unfolded one of them and noticed that the canvas was soiled with mouse droppings—or bat droppings. Only three of the cot beds still had their canvas attached, the others were skeletal frames.
    The floor was strewn with yellowing magazines, copies of
Vanidades
and
Reader’s Digest
that had been gnawed by mice. There were oil burners on the window sills and the floors. In a windowless back room, he found a set of rusty spanners, three battered copper insecticide cans and various shards of plastic and lengths of wire.
    Taking one of the spanners, he headed back to the room with the cot beds.
    When he managed to pry the boards from one of the windows, the noonday sun burst into the room like an explosion. A small, iridescent lizard scuttled across the sill. The view of the sea from inside the window hit him like a punch in the gut and he felt happiness welling up inside him.
    “This will be the bedroom,” he decided and started kicking magazines and newspapers towards the door. “Though we’ll have to fumigate the whole place.”
    Meanwhile, the men arrived back with the luggage.
    “Bring the cases in here,” J. shouted from the room.
    The trunk, the sewing machine and the two suitcases were unloaded.
    “Share it between you,” J. said holding out a banknote to Gilberto.
    Without even looking at the bill, Gilberto folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He was wearing red trousers, leather sandals and a faded blue shirt with the sleeves ripped off.
    “You said you had a letter from Don Carlos for me?”he enquired. J. opened one of the suitcases, took out the envelope and handed it to him. Without opening it, Gilberto folded the envelope and slipped it into the same pocket.
    Elena had not come into the house; she was sitting on the wooden steps of the veranda, staring at the sea, still fuming about the presumptuous behaviour of the two boatmen. She felt hot. Her skin was sticky and her feet swollen. She peeled off the shoes and socks she had put on in order to walk across the beach to the house. “I need to get a pair of sandals out of my suitcase,” she thought. “I’ll have a bath, put on a clean dress… This whole place needs a good scrubbing.”
    “Don Carlos said that you might be prepared to work for us,” said J.
    “Of course,” said Gilberto, “Known Don Carlos years, I have; a fine man.”
    They agreed on a salary and also agreed that J. would pay for all the necessary provisions so that Gilberto’s wife would cook for them and for her own family. This had been their arrangement with Don Carlos.
    After dark, the woman brought them dinner of black coffee, fried plantains and sea bass. J. and Elena had to sleep in separate cot beds.
    “We need to build a decent bed,” murmured J. before he fell asleep.
    He was woken at 3 a.m. by the clattering of loose tiles rattled by the wind. Half an hour later, he was sound asleep once more.

5
    E LENA 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