21
THE NEW FINCA had two small palm-thatched houses, each with two bedrooms, so buying the estate offered a solution to housing the lumbermen. One of the houses needed repairs, but the other was habitable. Before heading back from Medellín where, in addition to extending his loan, he had signed the agreement to purchase the new finca, J. and Elena talked to a timber merchant Julito knew in Turbo. They arrived back at the finca with seven loggers, each with his own two-stroke chainsaw. They also brought a large barrel of petrol that J. had purchased to sell back to the workmen. It weighed a ton and proved difficult to carry across the beach. For lack of a better place, it was stored in the shed he had had built twenty metres from the house where they kept rabbits and guinea pigs, a gift from Don Eduardo, who had a rather biblical mindset. J. was unhappy at the idea of storing this huge oil drum, which gave off choking fumes in the heat, next to his animals. “We need to find somewhere better to store it,” he thought, “though it needs to be nearby so I can sell the fuel and so no one steals the petrol…”
J. had been warned about the loggers. According to Julito, they were the worst of the worst, they needed to be ruthlessly managed, they had no redeeming features, they would steal anything that was not nailed down, they were aggressive when drunk and sloppy in their work. J. assumed he was exaggerating; the men he had hired seemed entirely ordinary. True, they seemed a little cocksure of their abilities — though the same might be said of Julito — and were quick to boast. “Like everyone else around here,” J. thought. The men talked a lot and they clearly shared a sense of humour — they laughed a lot — though it was one J. found all but incomprehensible. All seven were tall and muscular; all of them were black. The timber merchant had assured him they were excellent workers and experienced loggers. “I’ve got some first-class lumbermen, exactly what you’ll be needing,” he had said. “And every man jack of them has his own tools.” J. decided he would start out with seven men, partly because the second house had not yet been refurbished and he did not want to house workers in his own house, and partly because he felt he needed to get the hang of this new business.
Despite his misgivings, the workers spent their first night at his house. Between one thing and another, it was too late to head to the other finca on foot carrying their chainsaws and their other belongings. They strung hammocks up on the veranda and settled down for the night. J. stayed up late with them, drinking aguardiente and talking about business, about how many board feet a lumberman could cut per week, what sort of rigs would need to be installed on the steeper slopes, and so forth. They came to an agreement about food: initially they would come to the house where Mercedes would cook for them, but J. was already talking to Salomón and his wife to see whether they might be prepared to take on the work. Seemingly keen to show willingness, the loggers agreed with everything.
All night, Elena and J. were plagued by the sound of the men snoring and the reek of petrol. Elena, already in a foul mood because the loggers were staying at the house, woke J. again and again to tell him she could not get to sleep for the smell of sweat and gasoline and complaining about the snoring from the veranda. Finally, J. snapped: the loggers smelt no better or worse than any other men, he said angrily; besides, they hadn’t come for a society ball, they’d come to cut timber. And she might as well get used to the smell of petrol since it would be around for some time. “We have to make a living somehow,” he growled, “so shut up and stop bitching.” Elena fumed in silence until eventually she fell asleep while J., now wide awake, sat up drinking and smoking until drink finally got the better of him at some point.
The next morning, they were woken by laughing voices from the veranda. They were still in bed when they heard the deafening roar of a chainsaw. Elena leapt out of bed and went to remonstrate with the man who had started it up. He told her he had simply been testing it. “Well go test it somewhere else, hermano,” she said. “We don’t need fucking chainsaws making a racket here.” The man shut off the engine, staring at Elena with a mixture of curiosity and contempt, but he said nothing. Back in the bedroom, she found J. with the sheet pulled up to his chin, staring at the ceiling, nursing a vicious hangover from too much aguardiente. He did not like the way she had spoken to the lumberman, but the throbbing pain behind the eyes deterred him from starting what could easily become a protracted argument. He took two aspirin and slept for a little longer. When he woke up again, he felt better and went out to talk to the loggers.
The men had already left for the other finca and the veranda was spattered with oil stains where the chainsaws had leaked during the night. Elena and Mercedes tried to get rid of them with hot water and a scrubbing brush, but the porous wood had already absorbed too much oil, leaving permanent marks on the floorboards. Elena flew into a rage out of all proportion to the incident — after all, in such an ugly, ramshackle old house, a few stains more or less made little difference — and vented her anger on Mercedes. As usual, the woman started crying and locked herself in her room. When Elena finally calmed down, she went to apologize. Perhaps she felt guilty, perhaps she was worried that J. or Gilberto would come home. Whatever the reason, Mercedes accepted her apology and promised not to mention the incident to her husband.
That day, J. witnessed the felling of the first tree. The chainsaw gnawed and gnawed at the trunk with a cowardly whine, and suddenly the tree, a towering kapok, started to make a deep rending sound that seemed to come from deep within the earth itself. The lumberman shouted and the tree fell with a shriek, and its fall — like the Apocalypse — brought down a whole world of parasites, birds’ nests, shrubs, vines and saplings. When all was still, the loggers hacked the fallen tree to pieces, dismembering it like a pack of ravening dogs.
When J. got home, he looked gloomy. Without a word, he sat on the veranda and stared at the sea; without a word, he drank the coffee Mercedes brought him. After a while, he went into the shop where Elena was reading, took a bottle of aguardiente from the shelf, opened it and took a long swig as he strolled back out to the veranda. He sat down, took another drink and set the bottle on the floor next to him. He refused lunch. At 2 p.m., in the harsh glare of the sun reflected on the waves, he fell asleep in the chair, dead drunk. A flock of gannets glided slowly over the water. Elena and Mercedes carried J. to bed, took off his sandals and covered him with a sheet. He slept all afternoon. When he woke, it was dark and he could hear the purring of the sewing machine. He put his head out the window and saw a large moon rising over the sea. Still half-drunk, he went into the shop, crept up behind Elena, kissed her ear and stroked her breasts.
22
UNLIKE J., who went to the village at least twice a week — he invariably stayed for lunch and they usually served him crabs and rice — Elena had not returned since her first visit. Apart from her own mother, whose religious fervour she found irritating, Elena knew very few elderly people and tended to mistrust them. She had particularly disliked Doña Rosa: she had been appalled by the way the old woman treated her as though they were equals. Several times J. suggested she come with him to visit her, but Elena always found some excuse. “I don’t want to go there and have all those black men staring at me like I’m some sort of exotic animal,” she said finally, and after that he did not insist.