When, finally, he emerged from one of his four- or five-day drinking bouts, a warning bell would tell him to get his life in order, something J. found easier than might be imagined. He would go back to managing the finca, to accurately adding and subtracting in his ledgers; he would make sure he was eating properly and would do everything possible to patch up his increasingly precarious relationship with Elena. The endless cycle of light and shadows felt akin to sailing rudderless across uncharted seas and — at least when drunk — J. felt that each time he washed ashore he found himself more alone, more vulnerable, more free.
30
AND SO by the time of the incident with the ring, not only did J. no longer care about Elena but — being in the middle of a drunken binge — he did not even care what she did with the shotgun. Besides, he slept through the incident and only found out what had happened when it was all over. He was also aware that although she might not go right now — Elena was a proud woman — it was inevitable that she would leave.
J. had spent the afternoon on the veranda drinking and staring silently out to sea. At about six o’clock he got up without a word and stumbled to the bedroom where he collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. It had been drizzling steadily all day. That night, lightning split the skies, the rain grew heavier, the house was caught in the eye of a storm. Elena, who had been dreaming she could hear screaming and sobbing, was brutally woken by a thunderbolt so close it seemed to strike the very room in which they slept. With a tight knot of sadness in her stomach, she padded into the bathroom and splashed water on her face, then went into the shop and sat at the Singer sewing machine staring out the window. She could see a solid curtain of water sweeping over the sea, violent gusts battering the palm trees, she could dimly make out the blurred, ghostly forms of the islets in the cove. In the darkness of the shop she began to weep, tears coursing down her face, falling from her chin, trickling down her neck. Then, furious at herself, she angrily wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “We’ll have no crying now, hermana,” she muttered, taking a long, deep breath and squeezing her eyes shut; when she opened them again she noticed the bottle.
She had downed almost half of it by the time she noticed her ring was missing. She had been sitting on the bedroom floor drinking and examining the contents of the wooden box in which she kept her personal possessions. She could still hear the hateful roar of the sea, although it was muffled by the rain hammering on the roof tiles. By the light of a candle, she reread the letters J. had sent, read the letters her brother had sent from prison, pored over her wedding photographs. It was then that she noticed that her ring was missing. She tipped the contents of the box onto the floor and began to hunt for it among the scattered earrings, the bracelets, the photographs. Suddenly panicked, she emptied all the clothes out of the trunk, took the books down from the shelves, dashed back into the shop and moved everything that could be moved. Still there was no sign of the ring. “Those fucking bastards have stolen it,” she thought. She went back to the bedroom and tried to rouse J.
“Wake up,” she said, shaking him roughly, “those bastards have stolen my ring.”
J. opened his eyes and stared sightlessly at her, muttered something unintelligible and fell back like a stone. Stomping to Mercedes’s room, Elena found the woman darning a shirt. Gilberto was out.
“My ring!” she shrieked. And since Mercedes did not seem to understand what was happening, Elena strode over and examined her hands. Mercedes was wearing a ring, but it was her own — a finely wrought gold wedding band, whereas Elena’s ring had a modest diamond in the sort of ornate setting favoured by her ex-husband. Without asking permission, Elena began searching through Mercedes’s belongings, tossing clothes on the floor, ransacking drawers and suitcases. Woken by the racket, the child sleeping in the hammock started crying for his mother, but Mercedes, rooted to the chair, her hands frozen in her lap, could not move.
“I’ll find it, I’ll find it,” Elena said, storming out, leaving the room looking as though it had been looted and Mercedes in a state of cataleptic shock.
Doña Rosita was sitting in her rocking chair listening to the radio when Elena, flushed and dishevelled, burst into the house clutching the shotgun.
“Give me back my ring!” she screamed.
After a brief flicker of surprise, the seemingly imperturbable old woman told Elena that there was no need to threaten her with the shotgun, that if she wanted to search for a ring, or for anything else, she was welcome to do so — being a frail old woman, there was little she could do to stop her. Doña Rosa continued to rock in her chair while Elena turned the shack upside down, knocking things over, smashing and trampling all before her.
Doña Rosita did not move; she did not even glance at Elena as she left the house and prowled around, shotgun in hand, insulting the villagers, conducting a house-to-house search, pointing the rifle at anyone who tried to stop her. Still she did not find the ring. By the time she left the village, the rain was lashing harder, a heavy gale was whipping the trees alarmingly and the whole sky was streaked with lightning. As she tramped home, weeping with rage, calling down curses on J., on the villagers, on the whole area, Elena would not have cared had she been struck by a thunderbolt. Back at the house she sat drinking in the shop, the shotgun by her side, until she finally fell asleep on the counter.
She woke the next morning as J. was carrying her to bed and immediately she started to cry. By now, he had heard about the incident, but he did not want to ask about it, did not want to discuss it. He wiped her tears away with his shirttail, stroked her hair and told her to go back to sleep.
Later that day, Gilberto came and calmly explained that Mercedes could not go on working in the house; that they had no issue with J., but perhaps it was their presence that was unsettling Señora Elena’s nerves. J. said he was sorry to see them go, thanked them for all they had done for him, but he made no attempt to dissuade Gilberto since he knew it was impossible.