Gerónimo de Ballester once again felt extremely happy to reach La Guanaja pier again.

He was the captain of the sailboat Ave Maria, and he came ashore in the middle of acool weatherand soft sun, just two days until the new year.

The satisfaction at arriving at the small port had two fundamental reasons: he was alive, despite the always danger of shipwrecks, especially due to the not a few hurricane-force winds of the Caribbean Sea; and to meet with his wife Ana Toscana, who emigrated from Genoa to San Cristóbal de La Habana, and later settled in La Guanaja.

She was beautiful, blonde and with honey-colored eyes, she was 25 years old and she was an excellent cook at the tavern of the one-armed Gutiérrez, who had lost an arm in a duel in his native Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in Andalusia.

Unlike the other gastronomic establishments on the pier, which had beef as their main dish, Manco Gutiérrez’s specialized in pork, roasted in a pick or barbecued with guava and mango cujes, sprinkled with chili guaguao. Casabe drizzled with pork fat, ajiaco, fried ripe plantains, roasted sweet potato, orangeade, pineapple juice, Spanish grape wine and mango candy.

Several stoves with aromatic plants on embers also gave the place another of its attractions.

Ana prepared a special menu for Jerónimo, and how he liked to eat in the tavern: the food served in a small green yagua cataur, with the ends closed by wooden spikes.

He brought a load from San Cristóbal de La Habana, covered by a contract signed before Martín Calvo de la Puerta.

The shipment consisted of white cloth from Holland, lined hats, stockings, shoes, crested shirts, rosaries, swords, harquebuses, cinnamon, pepper, cumin, cloves, wine, candles and hardware.

In five days he had to set sail for several Caribbean islands, to transport salted hides and jerky.

On the night of arrival, Jerónimo loved, as always, his beloved Ana, and he repeated the fieryness in the rest of the stage before departure.

One day, at dawn, they walked along the seashore, while eating guava.

Sitting on a log they saw a crestfallen man wearing a black hat with large brims.

They crossed beside him and the individual raised his head.

He had a hideous face, let out a devilish laugh and disappeared.

Jerónimo and Ana quickly retreated to the tavern, and told the one-armed Gutiérrez what had happened.

The innkeeper listened to them with great attention.

–Don’t come to me again with the ghosts. When Ana was not working here, the ship captain, Thiago Stefan da Silva, told me that he saw a man in a black coat in the tavern who drank a lot of brandy and disappeared before his eyes. I was there and saw absolutely nothing.

“Well, gentlemen, then I think the devil is haunting us,” added the one-armed Gutiérrez, and made the sign of the cross.

(Taken from the unpublished book Of what was and could be in Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, in which reality and fiction come together).

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García