The fungal infection presented as white pustules with tiny tentacles that buried into the skin causing terrible itching. When they burrowed beneath the toenails, the pain was unbearable. The pustules had to be carefully removed and the livid, pockmarked skin smeared with a thick layer of fungicidal cream. The treatment was lengthy, painstaking and painful. The pustules removed at night would reappear by morning.
Elena immediately took over caring for him with great success. Being a coward when it came to pain, J. needed someone to force him, almost bully him, into persisting with the treatment. A week after Elena came home J. was still unable to walk, and only after a fortnight did he take his first painful steps along the hallways.
16
GRADUALLY, the waters began to recede. As time passed, the clouds were slower to mass into rain-storms and the sunny interludes grew longer.
Elena had brought spare parts for the sewing machine from Medellín. Once it had been repaired, the Singer was set up on the counter in the shop so that Elena could sew while she worked. She had also brought back large bolts of cloth patterned with large red flowers. As soon as she got home, she began taking measurements, and by the time winter was over every window in the house was curtained.
J. liked the new drapes. Every time he came back from the fields he was struck by the curious sight of this crumbling wooden mansion festooned with chintz flowers. And in the afternoons, when squalls blew in off the sea, J. liked to sit out on the veranda and listen to the whipcrack of the wind lashing the strange flowers in the windows.
The rains had almost stopped by the time the coconut saplings began to bud. “Come, I want to show you something,” Gilberto said one morning after breakfast. Together they walked out to the seedbeds. Glistening buds that looked almost foetal had appeared on some of the saplings, while the fan-shaped leaves of others had already begun to unfurl.
J. had a crystal-clear picture of what the finca would look like a few years hence. These tiny, emerald-green fans would have grown to become a vast coconut plantation running the length of the beach as far as the house, and over the land on which the house now stood. Their new home — which would have no corrugated iron roofs, no stilts — would be built on the brow of the hill behind the current house. J. had never liked the noise and the stifling heat of corrugated iron roofs, and had always been disgusted by the unsightly crawlspace under the veranda which inevitably ended up full of useless rolls of wire, broken bricks and off-cuts of timber. The new house would look out onto the sea from a lofty vantage point far above the muddy paddocks which morning and night filled the current house with flies and the stench of manure. Elena and J. often went up to the site where they planned to build the new house and talked about the layout of the rooms, the bathrooms and the windows.
As winter drew to a close, J. became obsessed with planting. He planted mangoes on what would be the terrace of the new house, pineapples on the slopes of the hill — leaving a single strip of bare earth into which he planned to cut a flight of stone steps leading to the summit — and orange trees around the paddocks.
And as winter drew to a close, he began to write in a huge journal that, for want of a better name, he called “the book”. The two-thousand-page volume bound in black leather had been made by a friend, a craftsman at the Coltejer factory with a love for bookbinding. His friend had initially intended to make and then write a great book. “A big fuck-off book,” he explained, “using every single word in the dictionary.” To J. — who had always been fascinated by futile intellectual pursuits, which were a part of his inchoate and confused revolt against culture — the book was a fascinating project. Whenever they met up, he would excitedly ask his friend how the book was progressing. “I’m up to page fifteen,” his friend might say with the weary shrug of a marathon runner. “When it’s finished, I’ll show it to you.”
But his friend never did finish the book. Having reached page thirty, and having shown his work to no one — not even J., whom he respected — he ripped out the pages he had written and burned them. Perhaps his friends’ mocking contempt for his intention to remain within the constraints of the dictionary had been too much for him.
“I’m a craftsman, hermano, and a fucking good one,” he said to J., “so I’m giving you the book, maybe you can do something with it.”
Thinking it might prove useful at the finca, but mostly because he loved the object and the story behind it, J. had packed it—1,970 blank pages — along with the other belongings he brought with him to the sea.
June 4, 1976: Today Don Eduardo brought four hundred pineapple shoots. He charged two pesos each. He brought them on an old pack mule he calls God’s Creature.
Heavy grey clouds are building up to the south. If we plant them out this morning, the rains might wash away the newly planted shoots.
Don Eduardo says he knows a herbal poultice that can prevent and treat the fungal infection. Elena doesn’t believe a word the old man says — actually, he’s not that old, from what I hear — but I’m prepared to smear my feet with anything if it stops the infection coming back.
One of the cows calved last night, but the heifer was stillborn.
They had no luck with their livestock. In the first month after their arrival, lightning struck an ox and her calf. Shortly afterwards, two cattle disappeared, probably stolen. There was an investigation and a case was filed — the policeman had no idea how to use a typewriter, so J. had to type the statement himself — but the case was never resolved. Vague suspicions and scurrilous rumours all pointed to Doña Rosa’s youngest son, Roberto, the black sheep of the family, being the guilty party, and to Juan, the local shopkeeper, having bought the stolen cattle. Juan had a reputation for buying stolen goods and Roberto for being a wastrel and a drunk. But no one other than Elena had been prepared to swear the men were guilty, and Elena had no proof.
The fact remained that they now had twenty-nine head of cattle — precisely the same number as when they arrived. The calves that were born had made up for those lost, but they had to be raised and fattened and so, partly to increase the herd, and partly because he liked the look of the beast, J. bought a magnificent stud bull. He bought it despite the qualms of Elena and even Gilberto, who rightly felt that they did not need the animal since a neighbour was prepared to rent them a bull at little expense. The bull was meek, tall as a cathedral, patriarchal; a sturdy and baroque structure festooned with folds and cascading muscles. In the paddock, it looked spectacular.
“A miracle of nature,” commented J.
“…and a complete waste of money,” snapped Elena.
The easing of the rains brought about a change in Elena’s mood. Her bitter silences gave way to a biting sarcasm that became her habitual tone even in moments of affection. In addition to running the shop and using the sewing machine — to make curtains, blankets, sheets — and fastidiously supervising domestic arrangements, she now went for long dips in the sea. She would usually set off at 11 a.m. with a towel over her shoulder and a bottle of suntan lotion and return shortly before noon. She would regularly complain to J. that the local black men frequently ambled closer to where she was sunbathing so they could stare at her.
Mercedes was expected to keep a lookout for Elena so she could serve lunch promptly. If it was not on the table when Elena arrived home, she would rudely take Mercedes to task. This brusqueness in the way she treated people became routine, and over time it got worse. Gilberto had already complained to J. about Elena’s offensive way of speaking to his wife.