by Luz Gabás
How was Clarence going to put the question to Jacobo? Would she look into his eyes and say, “Dad, I know that Laha is Kilian and Bisila’s son. Dad, have you noticed that Laha and Daniela have fallen in love? Dad, have you any idea how terrible this is?”
Daniela shook her head with her eyes closed. She had stopped crying, but she felt exhausted.
“Unforgivable!” she murmured between gritted teeth. “They have no excuse, either of them!”
“It was a different time, Daniela,” answered Clarence, remembering Mamá Sade’s son. “White men with black women. Many children were born from these relationships …”
Daniela was not listening to her. “You might think I’m crazy or sick, but you know what, Clarence? I even thought I could continue seeing Laha! No one, apart from ourselves, would have to know the truth. My feelings for him can’t change overnight.”
Clarence got up and went over to the window. She saw the drops from an intermittent drizzle trembling on the leaves of the nearby ash trees.
If she had not opened the cabinet where the letters were kept, if she had not found the note and asked Julia, if she had not gone to Bioko, none of this would be happening. Life in the mountains of Pasolobino would continue just the same as always. The embers of an old fire would have gone out with the death of the parents, and nobody would have known that somewhere else in the world flowed the same blood that flowed through their own veins.
And no harm would have come of it.
But it was not to be. With her search, without realizing it, she had blown over the dying ashes to reawaken them. Now it would take them a long time to go out again.
The search had come to an end, but the grail contained poisoned wine.
Clarence ran down the stairs, looking for her father, and found him in the garage. She took a deep breath. “Will you come for a walk with me? It’s a lovely afternoon.”
Jacobo arched his eyebrows, not surprised by the invitation but by the fact that his daughter thought that the afternoon was beautiful, but immediately nodded and agreed. “Fine,” he answered. “It’ll do me good to stretch my legs after such a long drive.”
The furious north wind of the previous night had abated enough to allow them to walk without fear of a tree branch falling, although it did kick up from time to time to bring down some of the squall from the peaks and whip up a fine powder of the remains of the snow that clung to the barren fields.
Clarence held on to her father’s arm and began up the path from the rear of the house toward a terrace with a beautiful panoramic view of the valley and the ski slopes.
Clarence mustered all her courage and told him everything.
She was going backward and forward in time as she recounted her tale, in such a way that the names of Antón, Kilian, Jacobo, José, Simón, Bisila, Mosi, Iniko, Laha, Daniela, Sampaka, Pasolobino, and Bissappoo disappeared and reappeared like the underground karst waters of a mysterious river.
At the end of her story, Clarence, nerves on edge, dared to ask the question. “It’s true, isn’t it, Dad?”
Jacobo breathed with difficulty.
“Please, Dad, I’m begging you. Did it happen like that?”
Jacobo’s face was beet red, his jowls trembling. He had listened to Clarence’s story without opening his mouth, without breathing, without interrupting her.
Jacobo kept his eyes fixed on his daughter for several seconds and then turned his back on her. His whole body shook. He started going down the slope, and an unexpected gust of wind carried his final words to his daughter.
“Damn it, Clarence! Damn it!”
Two days later, the obstinate silence of Jacobo had spread through the rest of the house.
Carmen went around the rooms with a notebook, writing down the things that needed to be done when the good weather came, from washing the curtains to painting a room, without forgetting the stock in the larder. She did not understand what had happened to her husband. He had been so happy in Madrid.
“It must be this village.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is, but his mood changes here.”
Daniela kept herself occupied in her room, desperately hoping that her e-mail or telephone would alert her of a new message that never arrived.
And Clarence’s patience was wearing thin. Had Jacobo told Kilian yet?
She decided to look for her uncle in the garden. At that time of year, he began the annual task of clearing the stubble, branches, and leaves to get the soil ready for the summer.
Yes. She would talk to him. Kilian would react differently.
The garden was surrounded by a stone wall as high as a person. Clarence walked along a narrow path flanked by a hedge that ended at the entrance, crowned with an even taller hedge, which Kilian had cut into an arch. Why had she not noticed it before? At that moment, Clarence was certain that the path to the entrance to the garden was a miniature of the royal palm tree path in Sampaka. The arch also reminded her of the ones she had read about that had to be crossed through to enter the villages on the island. She had never thought about it. There was surely an arch similar to that at the entrance to Bissappoo.
Just after walking through the arch, she heard Kilian and Jacobo. It seemed they were having a row. She got a few steps closer and hugged her body against an apple tree.
Kilian was leaning on a rock with his Guinean machete in his right hand. In his left, he was holding a thick branch of ash whose bottom end he was turning into a point with violent slashes of the machete. Jacobo paced near him.
They were arguing in their native language.
Her heart began beating strongly, and she retraced her steps to hide behind some bushes. If she peeked out a little, she could see their profiles.
There were words she did not understand. When both brothers spoke quickly in their mother tongue, it was not easy to follow the conversation. Daniela and Clarence had learned a lot of Pasolobinese from listening to neighbors and family, but in their house, Spanish was spoken because neither of their mothers were from the valley. Clarence regretted more than ever not having a deep knowledge of the oral language of her forefathers, like Laha and Iniko did. She had no problems reading it; in fact, her doctoral thesis had been on the dialect’s grammar, but her pronunciation was not quite as good.
Nevertheless, names were easily understood. They were talking about Laha and Daniela. After a while, she was able to understand the two brothers’ conversation more clearly.
“You have to do something, Kilian!”
“And what do you want me to do? If I talk to her, I will have to tell her everything, and I don’t think you’d want me to do that.”
A blow of the machete.
“You don’t need to tell her everything! Only about you and that woman!”
“That’s my business.”
“Not anymore, Kilian, not now. This isn’t right. Daniela and that man … You don’t even seem to be worried?”
A blow of the machete.
“It was inevitable. I have finally understood that.”
“Kilian, you’re worrying me. For God’s sake! They’re brother and sister! How could you lose your head with that black woman?”
A blow of the machete.
A pause.
“Her name was Bisila, Jacobo. Her name is Bisila. Do me the favor of referring to her with respect. But what am I saying! You? Respect Bisila?”
A blow of the machete.
“Shut up!”
“A moment ago you wanted me to talk.”
“To confirm that you are Laha’s father and that’s an end to it! Relationship over and we forget about the matter.”
“Yes, as we’ve done for almost forty years … I separated from him once, Jacobo, and I have no intention of doing it again. If I know my daughter like I think I do, she won’t forget about Laha that easily. And if Laha is anything like his mother, even the slightest bit, he won’t let Daniela go free either.”
“And you’re so relaxed!”
A blow of the machete.
“Yes, I’m glad I’ve lived to see it. You don’t know how happy it makes me!”
Clarence peeked out to see them better.
Kilian put the machete on the ground. He raised his right hand to his left armpit to touch his small scarification, the one Daniela had said was hidden just there.
Was he smiling?
Kilian smiling?
“You’re going to make me go mad! Damn you, Kilian! I know you! Your head and your heart can’t bless this aberration. Fine, very well. If you don’t want to talk to her, I’ll do it!”
He turned around and began to walk toward the spot where Clarence was hiding. He would bump into her.
Kilian called out.
“Jacobo. Will you also tell her about Mosi?”
Jacobo stopped dead and turned, furiously, toward his brother.
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“You’re asking me to remember my past, and you won’t even mention yours!”
“Then I’ll also have to talk to them about Sade? Maybe she also was right! For all that is holy, Kilian! Why are you set on complicating things? Why can’t you understand it’s just about making sure that Daniela doesn’t suffer?”
“I know what suffering is. What’s happening to Daniela is nothing compared to what I went through. You have never suffered in your life, so don’t play the victim now.”
Despite the distance, Clarence could make out the deep resigned tone in his voice.
“So that’s it? You want her to suffer like you? It’s your daughter!”
“No, Jacobo. Daniela won’t suffer like me.”
What was Kilian saying?
Was there something else they did not know?
Suddenly, Clarence felt something running over her feet and let out a scream.
Kilian and Jacobo grew silent and looked up. Clarence had no choice but to come out.
When she approached the men, her face burned in shame for having spied, so she looked at them, first one and then the other, and said in a low voice, “Dad … Uncle Kilian … I … I heard everything. I know everything.”
Kilian picked up the machete from the ground, gently cleaned the blade with a cloth, and got up.
He looked his niece straight in the eye. The intensity of his stare had not been vanquished by the wrinkles. He raised his hand and lovingly stroked her cheek.
“My dear Clarence,” he said in a firm voice, “I can assure you that you know nothing.”
Clarence went cold. “Well, tell me once and for all! I want to know!”
Kilian put his arm around Clarence’s shoulders and began to walk toward the entrance to the garden. “I think it’s time to have a family meeting,” he said seriously. “I have something to tell you all.” He stopped to wait for his brother. “The two of us have something to tell you.”
Jacobo dropped his head and murmured some unintelligible protest.
“What does it matter now, Jacobo?” said Kilian, shaking his head. “We’re old. What does anything matter?”
Clarence felt the pressure of Kilian’s arm on her shoulder, as if he needed help to stop him from falling.
“I’m afraid, Jacobo, that you don’t know everything either.”
He put his right hand into his pocket, took out a thin strip of leather with two shells hanging from it, and tied it round his neck.
“I’ve always had it on me,” he murmured. “But it’s been twenty-five years since I’ve worn it. I won’t be taking it off again.”
Thousands of kilometers away, Laha looked for his mother at home and could not find her.
The previous week had been the worst in his life. He had gone from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds. He could not erase the image of Daniela trembling in his arms.
Even worse.
He could not erase the terrible image of his beloved Daniela brokenhearted, alone and abandoned in the bed they had shared.
Not even in his worst nightmares could he have imagined that his white father would be the father of the woman he most loved in the world. He always suspected that in some part of Spain, his same blood flowed, the blood of the man who had fathered him, a man with a blurred face leaning on a truck.
He had even fantasized about the remote possibility that Kilian or Jacobo could have been his biological father. A fantasy that had been relegated to oblivion when his mind, body, and soul became devoted to Daniela.
But now everything had changed.
The hidden desire to meet his father had become a reality at the cost of his happiness.
And what was worse, the certainty that Daniela and he were brother and sister had not made the burning passion he felt for her fade in any way.
He had had to force himself not to stop the car, turn around, embrace Daniela, and tell her that he did not care, that they were not like brother and sister since they had not grown up together. In some African tribes, relations between siblings with the same father were allowed. Relations between siblings with the same mother were not. He and Daniela had not shared the same breast, and no one had to know they shared a father.
But they would know.
He had spent several days in Madrid, locked up like a caged lion, pacing round and thinking about what to do, hardly eating or drinking at all.
In the end, he had decided to take a flight to Malabo, look for his mother, and take his fury out on her.
His mother was not at home.
He went to the Malabo cemetery.
An old man with a friendly look came out to meet him. “Who are you looking for?”
“I don’t know if you can help me.” Laha was tired, very tired. “I’m looking for the grave of a man called Antón, Antón of Pasolobino.”
The man’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“That grave has gotten a lot of visits lately,” he said. “Come with me.”
In the old part of the cemetery, the dead rested at the feet of the beautiful ceibas.
Laha recognized his mother’s figure leaning over a stone cross. She was putting a small bunch of fresh flowers on the grave.
On hearing steps, Bisila turned around and met her son’s recriminating gaze.
“Mom,” said Laha. “We have to talk.”
“Have you met Kilian?”
“Yes, Mom. I’ve met my father.”
Bisila came over to him and stroked his hands, his arms, and his face. She knew exactly what terrible marks love could imprint on the soul.
“Let’s take a walk, Laha,” she said. “I think there is something you should know.”
They began to wander through the trees and the graves.
Laha had met Kilian.
What would he look like now? How much would he have aged? Would the sun still cause copper to glint in his hair? Would he have retained his vigor?
Laha had met Kilian.
He had been able to look at those green-and-gray eyes.
Laha’s eyes in front of Kilian’s eyes.
Bisila stopped and scrutinized her son’s eyes. They transformed into Kilian’s, erasing distance and time, to tell her that it was time to admit the truth.
That their souls remained together.
Bisila smiled and told her son, “Laha … Kilian is not your father.”
15
Bihurúru Bihè
The Winds of Change
1960
Before the tremendous storm broke, when there was less than two hours to get to the capital of Niger, Kilian was pleased with his decision to fly from Madrid to Santa Isabel. Now the journey from Pasolobino to Sampaka took little more than a day. Admittedly, the trip was more expensive, and the four-engine plane had to make frequent landings to refuel, but the time saved was worth it.
However, when the Douglas DC-4 began to be violently buffeted by turbulence, the fifty passengers started screaming. His father’s story about the shipwreck that had nearly killed him came to his panic-stricken mind. While waiting for the plane to take off again from N
iamey to Nigeria, Kilian, his face still pallid, finally decided that he would gladly accept a Cinzano vermouth or a glass of champagne from the flight attendant. Once in Bata, before getting aboard the substitute to the Dragon Rapide, a small low-winged, two-engine, angular-shaped corrugated sheet-metal junker, which would finally get him to the island, he had no doubt that, in the future, he would return to the tranquility of a ship like the Ciudad de Sevilla.
In the improvised airport of Santa Isabel, Simón, instead of José, was waiting for him. He was not at all like the teenager with the round sparkling eyes who had burst into his room on his first day of work on the plantation. After more than a year’s absence, Kilian could hardly recognize the well-built, handsome man decorated with fine incisions, crossing the long horizontal wrinkles and adding gravity to his expression.
“Simón!” exclaimed Kilian, taking off his jacket. “I’m pleased to see you again.” He pointed toward the scars. “I see you’ve changed.”
“In the end, I decided to get scarified with the marks of my tribe, Massa,” responded Simón, effortlessly lifting the heavy luggage. Kilian thought it was time for the young man to get a better job for himself. “Father Rafael doesn’t like it one bit …”
They got into a light-colored Renault Dauphine, Garuz’s latest purchase.
“Why didn’t Ösé come?” Kilian asked.
“You arrived at the same time his grandson was being baptized. He asked me to bring you, if you want, straight up to the Obsay yard.”
Kilian smiled. The August festivals in Pasolobino had finished two days before. The sounds of the orchestra were still resonating in his brain, and there was already another party on the go. Which grandson would that be? He had lost count, but it was odd that the celebration was on the plantation.
Then he remembered.
José’s daughter, the nurse, lived there.
“Is it the baptism of Mosi’s child?” he asked.
Simón nodded.
“His first! Mosi is over the moon. They’ve been married for years, and he was upset that they hadn’t had any children yet.” Confirmation of his suspicions made Kilian feel strange, similar to how he felt when he imagined the girl in the arms of her huge husband the first time he saw her, the day of her wedding. He imagined that that would be the first of many changes that had occurred during his long holidays, but this one especially vexed him. The child would unite his parents even more. He was overcome by a stab of jealousy.