by Luz Gabás
“We can be a real pain sometimes, we old ones, isn’t that so, children?” Emilio smiled at Jacobo, Kilian, Manuel, and Julia. “Ah well, I propose another toast to you, to the future …” He raised his glass in the air and the rest followed suit. “Happy new year. I wish you all many happy years.”
Kilian clinked his glass, preoccupied. He could not properly comprehend their concerns, but of course he was only an employee on one of the many plantations on the island, not the owner of a business. If he had to leave the island, he would look for another job in Spain, and that would be it. He would not leave much behind. He drank, then shuddered, wondering how the members of José’s extensive family would celebrate the new year in Bissappoo.
Months later, Julia and Manuel’s son was born. In the end, they decided to name him Ismael because according to what Julia told the brothers after the christening, Emilio won the bet and realized that there were too many Fernandos all over the place. Around the same time, Catalina gave birth to a boy named Antón. He died at the age of two months from capillary bronchitis, which they found out about in a sad letter from their mother.
Kilian took the news badly, deeply saddened for his sister. She would find it difficult to get over this hard test. Catalina had never enjoyed good health. The pregnancy had not been easy—she had been on bed rest for the final months—and during delivery, they were worried about losing her. He remembered how his father’s death had affected him and tried to imagine how Catalina felt after losing a child. Her pain had to be deep, cutting, and unbearable.
For the first time in a long time, Kilian decided to write a letter to Mariana and Catalina in which he promised that in a few months, at the beginning of the following year, he would come home. Perhaps, he thought as he chose the difficult words of condolence, the unexpected joy of his return would help to distract, if not lessen, her pain.
As if the land had begun to say its good-byes, that year the harvest suffered an unexpected virulent attack of Characoma, a caterpillar that bores into the cocoa pod husks. The plantation was a pitiful sight to behold. There was not a pod that could have been saved from the tiny pink crawlers. The scales and scabs of the necrotized skin covered almost the entire surface of all the pods. Due to the infestation, the ripening process could not be tracked. In some areas, the harvest suffered delays because the scabs had not only halted access to sunlight, but also prevented the fungicides from working properly. Though the harvest was already hard in itself, that year they had more work to do than ever. To prevent other invasive attacks from the plantations’ persistent colonizers, drastic measures had to be taken. Once the pods were split, the shells were collected to be buried, burned, or covered in lime. The sucker branches also had to be burned, all fruit had to be taken from the trees, and pesticides had to be sprayed earlier and more often.
“Garuz will not be happy,” said José as he picked up a handful of beans and returned them to the slate sheet in the dryer. “Between the rain and the bugs, the cocoa won’t be nearly as good as other harvests.”
Beside him, Kilian seemed nervous. Every once in a while, he kicked the ground with the top of his right foot.
“What’s the matter? Is it time to dance?”
“For the last few days, my foot has been itchy. And today it hurts as well.”
“Let me see.”
Kilian sat down and took off his boot and sock. “It’s just here.” He pointed to under the nail of his fourth toe. “It really itches.”
José knelt down and came close to confirm his suspicions. “You’ve caught a chigger.” He chuckled. “You’re the same as the cocoa trees. A bug wants to colonize you.” He saw the look of disgust on Kilian’s face and hurriedly explained. “Don’t be frightened, it’s very common. The chigger is so small you can pick it up anywhere. It gets into your fingers and toes and eats the flesh with its elongated snout while filling a pouch of young. See? The offspring are in this lump.”
Kilian stretched his arm to quickly pinch it out, but José stopped him.
“Ah, no. You have to take the sac out very carefully. If it rips, the offspring will spread to the other toes. You wouldn’t be the first to lose one.”
“I’ll go to the hospital this instant!” Nervous and disgusted, Kilian put on his sock and boot as carefully as he could.
“Ask for my daughter,” José advised him. “She’s an expert at removing chiggers!”
On the way to the hospital, walking on the heel of his right foot, Kilian felt suddenly excited. It had been weeks since he had seen José’s daughter. He had to admit that on the few occasions he had gone with his friend to Bissappoo, he had harbored the hope of meeting up with her there, but apparently she did not go to the village very often. Her life was split between the hospital and her husband. On one occasion, José had commented to him that he found it strange that they did not have any children, after four years of marriage. Four years! Kilian could not believe it had been so long since her wedding day. He remembered the girl stroking him when he had been sick. Since then, they had not had a chance to see each other alone. Sometimes he had seen her crossing the main yard, determined and resolute, looking for José. She would approach her father, give him a friendly greeting, agree with his comments about the job, and throw her head back to laugh in the suffocating heat of the recently roasted cocoa. Kilian always waited for the moment in which she discreetly turned and looked at him with those eyes.
He had to admit it, yes. Many days, enlivened by the songs of the plantation’s laborers, the fantasies of them together had entertained him for hours and hours. Of all the possible women, he had gotten his hopes up for a married woman. Fortunately, he reasoned, as he climbed the building’s steps, nobody could know his thoughts or his feelings. And thanks to the disgusting bug that was trying to take over his foot, the possibility existed of enjoying a precious while alone with her.
He entered directly into the large hall where the sick laborers were seen and glanced over the beds laid out in an orderly manner on both sides of the room. A male nurse came over to him and directed him to a small room where the treatments were carried out. Kilian knocked on the door a few times and without waiting for an answer opened it.
He let out a surprised gasp, and his hopes melted away.
His brother was in a chair with his shirt stained in blood and a wooden gag between his teeth while José’s daughter stitched a deep cut on his left hand. The woman paused as Kilian walked into the room.
“What happened to you?” asked a worried Kilian.
Jacobo took the gag out of his mouth. His face was covered in sweat.
“I cut myself with the machete.”
“What were you thinking?” He looked at the nurse. “Manuel isn’t here?”
“He’s gone to the city,” she answered. Seeing that he continued to look at her, she added, with a little arrogance, “But I know how to cure wounds like this.”
“I’m sure you do,” Kilian replied firmly. “Is it serious?”
“A couple more stitches and I’ll be finished. The cut is clean but deep. It will take some days to heal.”
“Just as well it’s my left hand!” said Jacobo. “At least I can button my trousers by myself.” He giggled nervously. “It’s a joke. Come here, Kilian, talk to me while this beauty finishes. It’s the first time I’ve had stitches, and it hurts a lot.”
Kilian dragged a chair over, and the nurse continued her work.
Jacobo winced. “You are so pretty, yet you cause so much pain!”
Kilian placed the wooden gag between his brother’s teeth, who pressed hard while breathing agitatedly. Kilian frowned on seeing the cut and admired the way José’s daughter showed no signs of distaste. She must be used to seeing worse things. She soon finished the last stitch, cut the thread, disinfected the wound once again, covered it with clean gauze, and carefully bandaged the hand.
“Thank God you’re finished.” Jacobo passed his tongue along his dry lips and sighed. “A little more and
I would have been in tears.”
“Don’t worry, Jacobo. Your dignity is safe.” Kilian gave him a few pats on the arm.
“I hope so …” He winked at the nurse. “Because everything comes out here.”
She did not even flicker as she collected her things and got up. “You’ll have to come back in a couple of days so that the doctor can look at the wound and tell you when the stitches can come out. Try not to move the hand too much.” She turned and went toward the door.
“Wait!” said Kilian. “I need you too.”
She turned around. “Excuse me. I thought you came to look for your brother.” She frowned. “What’s the problem?”
“A chigger.”
“I’ll be back in a second,” she said with a smile. “I need a bamboo stick.”
“Did you notice, Kilian?” said Jacobo when she had left. “She’s informal with you, but not with me.”
His brother shrugged. “It must be because you look more serious than me,” Kilian commented, and Jacobo let out a big guffaw. Kilian went on, “You know, you can go if you want. You probably want to have a coffee after having gone through that.”
“No way. I’ll wait until the nurse is finished with both of us.”
Kilian tried to make sure his voice did not sound frustrated. “Whatever you’d like.”
He could not speak to her alone, but he treasured the impression of her fingers on his ankle, on the instep of his foot, on his heel, on every centimeter that she had to touch while she was cutting the edges of the chigger egg sac with the bamboo until it came off completely. He memorized each and every one of her movements throughout the few short minutes it took, while Jacobo chatted on, as if there were nobody else in the room with them, about his brother’s upcoming trip to Spain. She seemed to be concentrated on what she was doing, but there was an instant when Kilian noticed her expression cloud over and a fine wrinkle appear between her eyebrows. It was when Jacobo joked, “And what will Sade do without you? Do you want me to look after her in your place?”
Kilian pursed his lips and did not answer.
In the weeks before his trip, Kilian could not help comparing himself to the Nigerian workers on the plantation. Like them, when he had arrived, he was a wiry lad full of curiosity; now he would return to his country years later a muscular, large, and well-built man. He had also collected things that he had bought to take home and earned a generous amount of money. The only difference was that the laborers went back to Nigeria because in their contracts, skillfully written so that the capital would not only not stay in Guinea, but would return to Nigerian territory, it was stipulated that they would receive fifty percent of their salary in the colony and the other fifty percent in their country. In Kilian’s case, the thousands of kilometers’ distance separated two extremes of the same country, so his trip would only involve a confrontation with his past, a past that six years on a cocoa plantation in tropical climes had not erased from his heart.
However, when he arrived in his valley after a night in Zaragoza—where many women now wore trousers; where the Fiat 1400 along with the occasional SEAT 600 had displaced the Peugeot 203, the Austin FX3, and the Citroën CV; and where the café Ambos Mundos had disappeared—and made out the outskirts of Pasolobino after climbing up the stony path in the same dark-gray coat that he had not worn since leaving, behind the mare who, led by one of his cousins, had carried his bulky baggage, he felt a strange mixture of sensations. He lifted his face toward the rigid outline of the village against the clear sky of a cold March day in 1959.
Pasolobino and the House of Rabaltué were exactly as he remembered them, except for the building that was going to be the new school and the extension to the hay shed of his house. The people had not changed much either, even if time had aged them.
At first, Kilian found it hard to have a fluent conversation with Mariana, her gray hair done up in a discreet and tight bun that highlighted the new lines on her face. He could barely hold her maternal look. He used small talk as a barrier to keep his emotions under control. Still, Mariana did her utmost to catch him up. Kilian was jealous of her outward strength, with which she encouraged a gaunt and downhearted Catalina not to neglect her daily chores and to look after her husband, Carlos, because—she said—life goes very quickly and she had lost three children and a husband and continued to battle for the next ones to come, and there would be next ones; sooner or later, more always came. As far as she could remember, no house had stayed empty for long.
Kilian delivered presents all over the village. The most delicate objects, bought in the Dumbo store in Santa Isabel, were for his mother and sister: beautiful cotton and silk fabrics, two Manila blankets and bags, a gorgeous embroidered tablecloth, and new covers for the beds. For the relations and neighbors, he had brought tins of Craven A cigarettes and bottles of the best Irish and Scotch whiskies—luxuries in that part of the world—and fruits completely unknown in Pasolobino, like pineapples and coconuts. To the astonishment of everyone, he sliced a coconut in half with one blow of his machete, and then he offered those around him the chance to drink the liquid inside before tasting the crunchy coconut itself.
The girls from the neighboring houses, now women, smiled flirtatiously at him. On visits, he patiently answered the same questions while smoking his favorite cigarettes, Rumbo, and trying to adapt to Pasolobinese. They whispered between laughs when hearing the linguistic peculiarities of the plantation that had infected the good-looking young man, especially in his short and simple sentences and his strange vocabulary.
After the novelty of his return quieted down, Kilian got thrown into work in the sheds, pruning the trees and getting firewood ready, cleaning the weeds from the walls of the buildings, fertilizing the fields for the livestock, and plowing the plots for summer. He spent many hours outside in the slumbering fields, waiting for the timid greeting of the cold spring.
Nothing had changed much. The stables retained the heat of the animals restless for their impending freedom. The same smoke licked the sides of the stone chimneys crowned with the unshakable stones to frighten away the witches. Kilian had to work hard not to compare the world of Pasolobino with the island of Fernando Po. He found the streets dirty and uneven; the bodies, soft and milky white; the clothes, monochrome and boring; the sunlight, pale and weak; the green landscape, subdued; the climate, too serene; and the House of Rabaltué, cold and solid, like a rocky mountain.
However, when he admitted to himself that so many years had left a deeper mark than he thought on his body and soul, the blood pulsed in his veins, he closed his eyes, and his thoughts became a tornado of images that mercilessly threw him again at the feet of the colossal volcanic peak of Santa Isabel, permanently adorned in mists, covered in forest to near its summit and marked by the scars of its streams.
There, in the silence of his imagination, Kilian allowed himself to be possessed by the sun and the rain of a paradise where, day after day, the luxuriant growth of the thousands of plant species confirmed the absolute tenacity of the cycle of life.
Recurrent, constant.
Unstoppable.
8
The Royal Palm Tree Avenue
2003
She was finally in Santa Isabel!
She corrected herself: She was finally in Malabo!
It was not easy to refer to the city by its current name. And much more difficult to talk about the island of Bioko instead of the Fernando Po from her father’s and uncle’s stories.
Clarence opened her eyes and followed the ceiling-fan blades with her eyes for a few seconds. The heat was suffocating and sticky. She had not stopped sweating while unpacking her luggage, and the refreshing effects of the shower had not lasted long.
And now what? she thought.
She got out of bed and went onto the balcony, breathing in the same viscous humidity that had met her after the flight. She still felt in a daze from the rapid change of scenery. She tried to imagine her father’s impressions when he first steppe
d ashore here, but the circumstances were completely different. He certainly did not have the feeling of arriving in a country run by a military. She huffed as she remembered the customs line at the modern airport; several times she had had to show her passport, her good-conduct certificate, her vaccine chart, and the invitation from the National University of Equatorial Guinea before going through various checkpoints where they opened her bags and nosed around everything she had with her. They had made her fill in an immigration form explaining the reasons for her trip, and they had asked her for the name of the hotel where she would be staying. And to top it all, she had to take that wad of papers with her at all hours to avoid problems in any of the many police checkpoints they had warned her would be found everywhere.
She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, contemplating the sun’s reflection on the palms between the flaking houses, listening to the chirps of the birds mixed with the children playing soccer in the alley opposite, and trying to decipher the voices of the men and women in colorful clothes, on the street with cars of all makes and in all conditions. What a special place! On this small island, the size of her valley, people of different countries had lived and spoken at least ten languages: Portuguese, English, Bubi, African English, Fang, Ndowé, Bissau, Annobonese, French, Spanish … She might have left some out, but one thing had been made crystal clear in just a few hours: the Spanish influence remained strong.
The Spanish colonizers, including her own family, had definitely left a deep imprint on the country.
She thought of her strange relationship with Fernando Po–Bioko. A small piece of paper and some words from Julia had given Clarence the definitive push to fulfill one of her life dreams: to travel to the island whose stories had been rattling around her head since childhood. She had finally gotten the chance to stroll along the paths that her forebearers had walked for so many years. Breathe the same air. Enjoy the same local color. Feel happy with their music. And touch the soil where her grandfather Antón lay.