I dug my hand inside the box—I couldn’t help myself. The beans were warm and slimy.
“Try one,” he said.
I pulled out one, my fingers wet and sticky, and tasted the bean.
“Well?” he said.
“It tastes nothing like chocolate,” I said, shocked. Bitter and syrupy at the same time, the only thing I could compare it to was a very sweet lemon.
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” he said.
I hadn’t noticed before how his eyelashes curled all the way to his eyebrows.
“Por la Virgen de los Reyes, Don Martin. It’s a shame that having access to all these beans, you’ve never eaten chocolate. You must try it one day.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to prepare it,” he said.
Right then and there I made a promise to myself: if this man had nothing to do with Cristóbal’s death, I would prepare him the best chocolate he would ever taste.
The second row of boxes held more beans. At this point, they were turning darker, a deep violet hue. Martin shuffled and scooped some beans to show me.
“What happens if they don’t get fermented?” I asked.
“They turn bitter. Fermentation removes the acidity from the beans, gives cacao its aroma and concentrates the flavor, or so I’ve been told.”
I grabbed a handful of beans and smelled them.
“After two days inside these boxes, we move them there.” He pointed at the bottom row. “For one day.”
“So, they ferment for five days.”
“Correct. Then we move them to the drying shed.”
“Can we go see?” I tried not to sound too eager—after all, I’d reassured the family I had no interest in the plantation—but I wasn’t sure I could hide my excitement. Martin gave me an odd look but led the way to a solid structure a few meters away.
“So, Do?a Carmela, huh?” he said. “I would’ve never imagined you liked such exuberant women.”
I sighed. Just when I was starting to forget the embarrassing incident from the previous night, he had to bring it up again. Oh, no, Cristóbal’s boots were filling up with mud （or was it horse’s dung?）。 I tried to step on drier patches to avoid dirtying them further, but something stopped me. Martin was watching me as though there were spiders crawling down my face.
Of course. Men didn’t care if their shoes got a little soiled or wet. I needed to step with confidence, no matter how disgusting it felt to bury my feet on this uneven ground.
I did just that. The earth made a slurping sound, as though it wanted to swallow me.
“Don Martin, how long did you work for my f . . . father-in-law?”
“Seven years.”
Plenty of time to learn his signature.
“But I knew him most of my life.” He picked up a stick and split it.
“You’re from here then?” I asked.
“You could say that.”
“And your family? Do you have any?”
Martin entered the drying shed. It was made out of ca?a and so bright inside—it had a skylight ceiling—and the floor was covered with cacao beans, which had now acquired that rich brown color I was so familiar with.
“The beans dry here for three or four days if it’s sunny, a little longer if it’s cool.”
He strode up and down the shed with a rake to shuffle the beans from corner to corner. I may have to give this man a drink for him to start talking. As I stepped inside, I inhaled the beans and their scent made me falter. They brought back a memory—aboard the ship. It was the smell of the man who’d killed Cristóbal.
I held on to a wooden pole.
“Are you all right?” Martin asked me.
“Yes, yes. I was just thinking about the house we saw yesterday. The one that had been set on fire. You said that the son had survived. Did he work here?”
“Yes, why? Why are you so interested in him?”
I hesitated. “Well, I saw a man with a scar like the one you mentioned on the ship we took in Cuba.”
I examined his reaction. Martin’s jaw tightened. Had he sent him there to kill me?
“It must be a coincidence,” he said.
“Why? Is the man still here?”
“No, he left a while ago, but he wouldn’t have the means to go on a trip to Cuba. Or a purpose.”
No purpose? Ha! A crooked, evil one, thank you very much.
“Why did he leave the plantation?” I asked.
“I don’t know. After the accident, well, he and his mother moved to Vinces. We haven’t seen much of them since.”