Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2012 Luz Gabás

  Translation copyright © 2017 Noel Hughes

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Palmeras en la nieve by Planeta in Spain in 2012.

  Translated from Spanish by Noel Hughes. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503941694

  ISBN-10: 1503941698

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For my father, Paco,

  for the infectious passion with which he lived his life;

  and for José Español,

  for being the passion in mine.

  Thanks to both, this novel exists.

  For my mother, María Luz, and my sisters, Gemma and Mar,

  for their unconditional support, always.

  And for José and Rebeca,

  who have grown up with these pages.

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  1 The Cruelest Month

  2 Pantap Salt Water

  3 Green Land

  4 Fine City

  5 Palabra Conclú Case Closed

  6 Inside the Bush

  7 Tornado Weather

  8 The Royal Palm Tree Avenue

  9 Hard Times

  10 The Guardian of the Island

  11 The Return of Clarence

  12 Báixo la Néu In the Snow

  13 Boms de Llum Wells of Light

  14 Temps de Espináulos Time of Thorns

  15 Bihurúru Bihè The Winds of Change

  16 Ribalá Ré Ríhólè Marriage for Love

  17 Ë Ripúríi Ré Ëbbé The Seed of Evil

  18 Bëköttò Days of Sorrow

  19 Official Secrets

  20 The End or the Beginning

  I told you …

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Tonight you both will love with desperation because you know it is going to be the last night you spend together. Never again will you see each other.

  Never.

  It will not be possible.

  You will caress and kiss with the intensity of two anguished souls filling themselves with each other’s taste and touch.

  The tropical rain falls furiously on the green railing of the outdoor passageway that leads to the bedroom, drowning out your rabid moans. Lightning flashes, momentarily gaining victory over darkness.

  “Let me see you, touch you, feel you for just a few more minutes.”

  In a corner of the room, two worn leather suitcases. Resting on the back of a chair, a raincoat. An empty wardrobe with the doors ajar. A hat and a photograph on the table. Beige clothes on the floor. A bed converted into a love nest by the mosquito curtain surrounding it. Two bodies tossing together in the dark.

  That will be it after eighteen years.

  You could have defied the danger and decided to stay.

  Or you could never have gone. You would have avoided the rain, the damned rain. It insists on punctuating the saddest moments of your life.

  You would not have suffered such a dark night.

  The drops rebound on the windowpanes.

  And she …

  She could not have set her eyes on you when she knew it was better not to.

  She would not have suffered this cruel clarity.

  The rain lashes, infusing the scene with melancholy. It belongs to no one.

  You have enjoyed many nights of calm, tender, mystical love. You have enjoyed the forbidden pleasure. You have been free to love each other in plain sight.

  But you have not had enough.

  Pull off your skin with your nails! Bite! Lick! Steep yourselves in each other’s scent!

  Take her soul and give her your seed, though you know it will not germinate.

  “I’m going.”

  “You’re going.”

  “You will remain in my heart.”

  Forever.

  Two sharp, quick knocks on the door, a pause, and then two more. It is the agreed-on signal. José is on time. You have to hurry or you will miss the plane.

  You cannot hurry. You cannot separate yourselves from each other. You only want to cry. Close your eyes and remain in this state of unreality.

  The time destined for you has elapsed. It will not return. You have already talked. There will not be tears; things are the way they are. Perhaps in another time, in another place … But you did not decide where to be born, to whom or to what to belong. You only decided to love each other, knowing that sooner or later this day would come.

  You get out of bed and begin to dress. She remains sitting with her back against the wall, hugging her legs, her chin resting on her knees. She studies your movements and closes her eyes to imprint in her memory each detail of your body, your hair. When you finish dressing, she gets up and walks toward you, wearing only a necklace made from a fine leather cord and two shells. She has always worn that necklace. One of the shells is a cowrie, a shiny kiss-curl the size of an almond. The other is a fossilized Achatina shell. She takes off the collar and puts it round your neck.

  “They will bring you good luck and prosperity on your journey.”

  You circle her waist with your strong arms and draw her toward you, inhaling the smell of her hair and skin.

  “My luck ends here and now.”

  “Don’t despair. Wherever you are, you will be part of me.” Her big eyes, though filled with sadness, convey great certainty. She wants to believe that not even death will separate you, that there is a place where you will be together again, with no time, no pressure, no restraints.

  You place your fingers on the necklace’s shells. The cowrie is as smooth as her skin and sparkles like her teeth. The opening evokes a perfect vulva, life’s entrance and exit.

  “Will this Achatina also deliver me from the cloven-hooved demons?”

  She smiles, remembering your first time together.

  “You’re as strong as a ceiba and as flexible as a royal palm. You will withstand gusts of wind without cracking, roots firmly planted in the soil and leaves reaching to the sky.”

  Again two sharp, quick knocks on the door, a short pause, and another two knocks. A voice rises above the storm.

  “I beg you. It’s very late. We must be going.”

  “I’m coming, Ösé. One minute.”

  One minute and good-bye. One minute that asks for another, and then another.

  She goes to dress. You tighten your hold.

  “Stay like that, naked. Let me see you, please.”

  Now she does not even have the necklace to protect her. And you have nothing to give her?

  On the table, the hat that you will never need again and the only photo you have of the two of you together.

  You take one of the bags, place it on the table, and take out a pair of scissors. You fold the photograph, separating your image from hers, and you cut it.

  You hand her the fragment with you leaning against a yard truck.

  “Here. Remember me just as I am now, in the same way that I’ll remember you.”

  You look at the other half, where she is smiling, before
putting it in the pocket of your shirt.

  “It kills me not to be able to … !” A sob prevents you from continuing.

  “Everything will be fine,” she lies.

  She lies because she knows that she will suffer each time she crosses the yard, or enters the dining room, or places her hand on the white banister of the elegant stairs. She will suffer each time she hears the sound of an airplane overhead.

  She will ache each time it rains like tonight.

  “Everything will be fine …”

  You hold her tightly in your arms, thinking nothing will be fine from now on.

  In a few seconds, you will take your bags and your raincoat. You will passionately kiss her. You will walk toward the door. You will hear her voice, and you will stop.

  “Wait! You forgot your hat.”

  “I won’t be needing it.”

  “But you will remember who you were for many years.”

  “You take care of it. Remember what I have been to you.”

  You will return to her and kiss her with the warm, impenetrable, and languid tenderness of a final kiss. You will look in her eyes and grit your teeth to avoid crying. You will softly stroke each other’s cheek. You will open the door, and it will close behind you with a slight sound that to you will seem like a gun going off. She will rest her head on the door and cry bitterly.

  You will go out into the night and melt into the storm, which refuses to abate for even a second.

  “Thanks, Ösé. Thank you for your company all these years.”

  They are the first words you speak after leaving the bedroom on the way to the airport. They seem strange, as if it were not you pronouncing them. Everything seems strange: the road, the buildings, the metal terminal, the men who pass by.

  Nothing is real.

  “There is no need,” José replies, desolate, putting a hand on your shoulder.

  Tears shine in his wrinkled eyes. He has been like a father to you in this initially strange land. The passing of time is evident in his teeth. When your father wrote about José in his letters or told stories in front of the fire on winter evenings, he always said that he had never seen teeth so perfect and white. That was an eternity ago.

  Hardly anything is left.

  You will not see José again.

  The intoxicating smell of nature’s greenery, the solemn sounds of the deep songs, the racket of the celebrations, the nobility of friends like José, and the constant heat on the skin will eventually feel distant. You will no longer be part of all this. The moment you get on the plane, you will go back to being an öpottò, a foreigner.

  “My dear friend José … I want to ask you one last favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “When it suits you, sometime, if you could, I would like you to take some flowers to my father’s grave. He is all alone in this land.”

  How sad it is to think that your remains may rest in a forgotten place, where there will be nobody to spend a few minutes in front of your grave.

  “Antón will have fresh flowers on his grave as long as I live.”

  “Tenki, mi fren.”

  Thank you, my friend. For getting me out of trouble. For helping me to understand a world so different from mine. For teaching me to love it. For being able to see further than the money that first brought me here. For not judging me.

  “Mi hat no gud, Ösé.”

  “Yu hat e stron, mi fren.”

  My heart is not good. Your heart is strong, my friend. Your heart is not well, but your heart is strong.

  It will survive all that comes.

  You will survive, yes. But you will never forget that for many years, you spoke in four languages that are all unable to describe how you now feel: Tu hat no gud.

  The plane is waiting on the runway.

  Good-bye, vitémá, bighearted man. Look after yourself. Tek kea, mi fren. Shek mi jan.

  Take care. Shake my hand.

  You will let the clouds drag you for thousands of kilometers until you land in Madrid, where you take the train to Zaragoza. Later, you will get on a coach and, in a short time, be with your own again. All the hours of the journey will seem too few to distance yourself from these years, the best years of your life.

  And this, recognizing that the best years of your existence were spent in distant lands, will be a secret that you will keep in the deepest recesses of your heart.

  You cannot know that your secret will see the light of day over thirty years from now. You cannot know that one day, the two halves of the photo so cruelly separated will be joined together again.

  Clarence does not exist yet.

  Nor your other Daniela.

  As the plane gains height, you will watch the island grow smaller and smaller. The place that once invaded your very being will turn into a slight speck on the horizon and then disappear completely. Other people will travel on the plane with you. Each of you will remain silent. Each of you will carry your stories with you.

  You can only whisper a few words, surrendering to the tightness in your chest: “Ö má we è, etúlá.”

  Good-bye, your beloved island in the sea.

  1

  The Cruelest Month

  Pasolobino, 2003

  Clarence held a small piece of paper in her hands. It had been stuck to one of the many almost-transparent blue-and-red-bordered envelopes particular to a past era. The writing paper was wafer thin, so that it would weigh less and be cheaper to send. As a result, portraits of lives were squeezed within impossible margins.

  Clarence read the bit of paper for the umpteenth time. At first, she had been curious. But now, she felt an increasing sense of disquiet. It was written in a different hand than the one used on the letters strewn on the sitting room table:

  … I will not be returning to Fernando Po, so, if you don’t mind, I will rely on Ureca friends so that you can continue sending your money. She is fine, she is very strong. She’s had to be, now that she is missing her good father, who, I’m sorry to tell you as I know how it will affect you, died a few months ago. Don’t worry, her children are also fine—the eldest, working, and the other making use of his studies. If you could see how different everything is compared to when you worked on the cocoa …

  That was it. No dates. Not even a name.

  Whom was this letter addressed to?

  The addressee could not be from her grandfather’s generation. The texture of the paper, the ink, the style, and the handwriting were all more modern. Furthermore, as was made clear from the last phrase, the letter was addressed to a man. This limited the circle to her father, Jacobo, and her uncle Kilian. Last, the paper had appeared beside one of the few letters written by her father. It was strange. Why had not all the letters been kept? She imagined Jacobo saving the note, then deciding to take it out again without noticing that a piece of it had been torn off in the process. Why had her father done this? Was the information contained in the letter that compromising?

  Clarence tore her gaze from the letter with a stunned look, placing it on the big walnut table behind the black leather chesterfield sofa as she rubbed her sore eyes. She had been reading for over five hours without a break. She sighed and got up to throw another log on the fire. The ash logs began to spit as the fire took hold. The spring had been wetter than normal, and she was cold after sitting for so long. She stretched her palms toward the fire, then rubbed her forearms and leaned against the mantelpiece, over which hung a rectangular wooden trumeau topped with a carved wreath. In the mirror, she saw a tired young woman with circles under her green eyes and rebellious strands of chestnut-colored hair escaping from her thick plait. She brushed them away from her round face and examined the fine lines on her forehead. Why was she so alarmed after reading those lines? She shook her head as if a shiver had run through her body, went back to the table, and sat down.

  She had classified the letters by author and date, starting with those from 1953, when Kilian had written every fortnight. The contents matched her uncle�
�s personality to perfection; the letters were extremely detailed in their descriptions of his day-to-day life. He told his mother and sister about everything. There were fewer letters from her father, often just three or four lines added to his brother’s missives. Lastly, her grandfather Antón’s notes were short and sparse and full of the formal phrases typical of the 1930s and 1940s. He mostly reported that thanks be to God, he was well and wished that all there were well also. Sometimes he thanked those—relations or neighbors—who were helping maintain the House of Rabaltué for their generosity.

  Clarence was happy that nobody was at home. Her cousin Daniela and her uncle Kilian had gone down to the city for his checkup, and her parents would not be coming up for another fortnight. She could not help but feel a little guilty about reading the intimate confessions of those still living. It was very strange to see what her father and uncle had written decades ago. This was normally done while putting a deceased person’s papers in order. It felt much more appropriate to read her grandfather’s letters, someone she hadn’t even known. She already knew many of these anecdotes. But narrated in the first person, with the slanted and trembling hand of someone not used to writing and laced with bottled-up nostalgia, the letters brought out a mixture of strong feelings in her. Her eyes had filled with tears on more than one occasion.

  She remembered opening the dark wardrobe at the bottom of the sitting room when she was younger and brushing the letters with her hands as she formed an image of what the House of Rabaltué had been like a century ago: press cuttings yellowed with age; travel brochures and work contracts; old livestock bills of sale and land leases; lists of shorn sheep and live and dead lambs; christening and memorial cards; Christmas greetings in uncertain strokes and faded ink; wedding invitations and menus; photos of great-grandparents, grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, cousins and parents; land deeds from the seventeenth century; and the land exchanges between the ski resort and the heirs of the house.

  It had not occurred to her to give any attention to the personal letters. Back then, the stories of Kilian and Jacobo were more than enough. But after attending a conference of African speakers, some foreign and upsetting sensations had begun to nest in her heart. She was, after all, the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of colonists. From that moment on, a curiosity had risen inside her for everything to do with the lives of the men of her house. She remembered the sudden urgency she felt to go up to the village and open the wardrobe, the impatience that gripped her when her commitments at the university delayed her. Fortunately, she had been able to free herself of everything in record time to take advantage of the empty house—a rarity. She was able to read all the correspondence in complete and utter peace.