On the night of the first big catch, Salomón brought J. thirty large bluestripe jacks, fifteen sunfish and four sea bream a metre and a half long. This was half of the catch.
“Just give us half of this, Salomón,” said J. “Take the rest and give it to the people in the village.”
But even this proved to be too much. Mercedes hung some of the fish over the wood stove to smoke and salted the rest. Four days later the salt fish began to stink and they had to throw it out.
14
THE DUE DATE on the loan with the bank coincided with the depths of Elena’s boredom during that interminable winter.
“One of us should go to Medellín to try and renew the loan,” J. said, knowing she would be the one to go.
“Fine,” Elena said immediately. “You sign a power of attorney and I’ll make the trip.”
Two days later she walked next to J., trailing behind Gilberto as they headed for the town. Since money was short, it had been decided that she would take the weekly ferry rather than hiring an express boat. Though it had stopped raining, the dirt track was a quagmire. Elena and J. were wearing rubber boots while Gilberto had on the same battered leather sandals he wore in summer. In the deep mud, his feet made a sucking sound Elena found nauseating.
They reached town with two hours to spare before the ferry sailed. At noon, Gilberto took them to a café owned by one of his relatives where they had a huge sunfish casserole, then, drowsy from the heavy lunch, they sat on the beach on an upturned canoe waiting for the ferry.
Just as Elena clambered into the canoe that would take her out to the ferry, the first fat raindrops began to fall. By the time she was aboard, the downpour was in full spate.
The ferry was a wooden hulk twelve metres by four painted in blue, yellow and red. Ten long benches ran from stem to stern and the deck was covered by a broad canopy to shelter passengers from the rain. Elena stowed her suitcase and then settled herself next to one of the guardrails in the bow. She could see J. staring at the ferry from the shore. She waved and he waved back but made no move to leave. He went on standing there, staring out at the ship. “He’s getting soaked,” thought Elena.
The last passenger to arrive was a cantankerous old man with Parkinson’s disease clutching a lit cigar between trembling fingers. When he was finally hoisted aboard, the ferry’s engines began to roar and the engine room belched thick clouds of blue smoke. “Let’s just hope this heap of shit doesn’t sink before we get there,” thought Elena.
Elena had no desire to spend the night in Turbo. A porter with a handcart wheeled her suitcase to the station where she sat on a metal chair to wait for a bus. When she discovered that the next bus would not leave until 9.30 p.m., she went to a restaurant and ordered roast beef, cassava and a mountain of rice atop which a fried egg glittered like a star.
At ten o’clock the next morning, the bus rolled in to Medellín. Elena felt her heart race as they arrived. Emerging from the dazed stupor of the long journey, the passengers suddenly became cheerful and talkative. The sky was blue and cloudless, a hot, dry wind came through the open window. Pleasurably breathless, her eyes half closed, Elena let her hair billow in the breeze while one or two of her fellow passengers stared.
When her mother opened the door, Elena was overcome by a heavy smell of scented candles.
“Still burning that rubbish?” said Elena. “One of these days you’ll poison yourself.”
Her mother carped and whined like a child.
The house was filled with smoke. Everywhere there were statues of saints lit by votive candles. Elena took the suitcase up to her room.
“You want something to eat, Elenita?” her mother called.
Elena said she would eat later, that right now she desperately needed to take a bath.
“What about William?” she called down from the bathroom. “Does he still call round?”
“Almost every day, hija,” said her mother. “He and Luz Marina and the children come round most afternoons. He’s a good son, my William, may God protect him.”
A powerful jet gushed from the tap, splashing the bathroom floor.
That night, after dinner, Elena went out to the park. Having had a long siesta after lunch, she felt wide awake. Friday night in Envigado, and the open air bars—heladerías—were heaving.
In the Puerta del Sol, Elena found Jaime Díaz and Roberto D’Alleman, drinking companions on J.’s regular binges before they moved to live on the finca. The three friends drank into the early hours and Elena did not complain about being driven mad by the monotonous rains but instead — borrowing some of J.’s pet phrases — extolled the virtues of a peaceful life by the sea compared to a toxic life “in the shadow of the chimneystacks of the Coltejer factory”.
To her mother’s horrified disgust, she staggered home drunkenly at seven in the morning, with dark circles around her eyes.
15
“TELL J. this is the last extension I can authorize on the loan,” the bank manager informed her.
His name was Fernando and he and J. had been school-friends. Despite his youth, he was almost completely bald and grimly serious. “He might be a first-rate banker,” J. often said, “but he’s a piss-poor excuse for a human being.”
Fernando had a low opinion of Elena. He had heard rumours that she and J. were living in sin, and meeting her only confirmed his preconceptions. He treated her with a mixture of desire and disdain that manifested itself in polite superciliousness, a ready smile and flushed cheeks. Elena felt a visceral loathing for the guy.
Having succeeded in renewing the loan, Elena stayed on in Envigado for a fortnight enjoying the same wild, chaotic life she and J. had shared in the months before they ran away to sea.
The return journey took thirty hours. The road outside Medellín was blocked by an unexpected landslide causing an endless tailback of cars along the mountain path. For several hours while bulldozers shifted the rubble, the passengers whiled away the time sleeping, chatting half-heartedly, eating boiled eggs and getting out to urinate by the roadside.
Elena slept through the night, a long dreamless sleep from which she was woken in the early hours by the roar of the bus starting up again. She woke in a foul mood. “Just my fucking luck to get caught in a landslide, my life is shit,” were her first words to the astonished woman sitting next to her.
As the bus drove through the oil palm plantations, a torrential rainstorm battered the earth. The windscreen wipers flicked frantically, trying in vain to sweep away the cataract coursing down the glass. Headlights on, the bus moved cautiously while the passengers, disoriented by the rain hammering on the bodywork, felt shut in by the condensation gathering on the windows.
The storm eased just before they came to Turbo. By the time the bus pulled into the town square, it had slowed to a steady drizzle that seemed as though it might go on forever. The central plaza was a mire. People carefully picked their way across the streets, hiking up their trousers to avoid the mud.
Elena cursed the vast swamp.
When Julito’s boat finally pulled into the cove, Elena was surprised not to see J. waiting, waving to her from the beach. She felt disappointed. Though it was not raining, the sky was overcast, the sea dark. She found J. lying in bed, reading. His feet were pitted with fungal infection.
“It’s the rubber boots,” he explained, jerking his chin at his feet. “It’s agony, even when I’m sitting down.”
They kissed and she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his feet.
“You’re in a terrible state,” she said.