Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  “Fine, fine, but you wouldn’t be the first one to be sent back for not meeting the entry requirements. Did they vaccinate you against yellow fever?”

  “Yes, Dad. I was vaccinated on the ship, and I have the paper that proves it. Anything else?”

  “Just one, and I hope you haven’t forgotten …” His voice tried to sound hard, but his eyes shone. “Have you brought the things I asked your mother for?”

  Kilian sighed, relieved.

  “Yes, Dad. Jacobo’s suitcase is full of clothes, ham, chorizo, hazelnuts, tins of peaches, and Mom’s marvelous pastries. We have also brought a long letter from her that she closed in front of me with seven wax seals so no one else would open it.”

  “Good.”

  Jacobo and Manuel remained silent as they neared their destination. They were looking forward to arriving, but they had lost the innocence, excitement, and nervousness that now fell over Kilian on his maiden voyage.

  Jacobo knew well that the novelty would soon wear off. Everything would be reduced to working on the plantation, the parties in the city, waiting to get paid, and the yearning to return home and rest. Then it would begin again. The same cycle every twenty-four months. Even knowing all this, he still felt butterflies in his stomach as the boat turned toward the port of the island’s capital.

  “Look, Kilian,” said Jacobo, “we are entering the bay of Santa Isabel. Don’t miss a second of this!” A gleam appeared in his eyes. “Whether you like your time here or not, whether you stay two or twenty years, whether you love or hate the island … listen well to what I’m going to say! You will never be able to erase this image from your mind. Never!”

  3

  Green Land

  Indeed, his arrival in Fernando Po would be ingrained in Kilian’s mind for the rest of his life. As the ship came closer to the island, he made out a coastline of small beaches, inlets, and bays, where the lush vegetation met the sand and turquoise-colored water. Kilian could barely take in the vibrant shades, from the pale green of the first shoots and summer apples to the deep green of the forest, passing through the intense and brilliant green of rainwatered spring pastures. A strange sensation overcame him, of softness, freshness, and peacefulness, mixed with the power, exuberance, fullness, and fertility emanating from so much growth.

  The ship veered to move abreast toward the wide bay of Santa Isabel, which looked like a huge horseshoe ribbed in green and dotted with white houses surrounded by palm trees. Two natural breakwaters—one to the east, called Punta Fernanda, and the other to the west, Punta Cristina—lay at the foot of an impressive mountain awash in mist. It reminded Kilian suddenly of the peak that rose over Pasolobino.

  “They’ll moor the boat to that old pier,” his father explained, pointing to a small concrete jetty that served as the dock. “I’ve heard that they are going to build a new port below Punta Cristina, where you will be able to dock parallel to it. Good thing, this one is a bit inconvenient.”

  Kilian realized that the ship had stopped perpendicular to the coastline and that various barges were preparing to load and unload passengers and cargo.

  They went toward the stern to disembark. A subtle aroma of cocoa, coffee, gardenia, and jasmine began to mix with the smell of saltpeter. Although it was evening, a stifling heat surrounded them.

  “It’s very hot,” muttered Kilian, patting the beaded sweat on his forehead. “And so green. It’s all green!”

  “Yes,” Jacobo agreed. “If you stuck a post here, it would sprout roots!”

  On the pier, some men carried sacks of coal, others moved drums, and others helped unload the barges. One could imagine how frantic it could be during the harvest months when hundreds of coffee-and cocoa-filled sacks left for different destinations around the globe.

  “José will be waiting for us up there,” Antón told them.

  He signaled with his head toward a sloping path that paralleled a wall over which they could spot the first buildings. He took Kilian’s suitcase and shouted at a pair of workers to come over. “Eh, you! Come here!”

  The men gave each other annoyed looks.

  “You hear what I said?” Antón raised his voice and began walking toward them. He gave the suitcase to one of them and pointed to Jacobo’s and Manuel’s luggage. “Take this! Quick! Up!”

  The men obeyed; they took the bags and, trailed by the white men, walked toward a steep, narrow path that connected the pier to Avenida Alfonso XIII, beside the Plaza de España.

  “Kilian, did you know that this path is known as the slope of the fevers?” asked Manuel.

  “No, why’s that?”

  “They say it’s because no one who manages to get up the path can escape the fever. You’ll see.”

  “Now it’s not that serious, thanks to the medicines,” Jacobo interjected, “but a century ago, all those who came died. Everyone. Right, Manuel?” Manuel nodded. “That’s why they sent one expedition after another. There wasn’t a chance of resistance.”

  Kilian felt a shiver. He was happy to have been born in a more modern age.

  “I never saw it,” said Manuel, “but I’ve been told that years ago, a train ran up this narrow path. Is that true, Antón?”

  “Oh yes. I saw it,” replied Antón, stopping to catch his breath. “It was useful for moving cargo to the dock. They began building it in 1913, hoping to link Santa Isabel with San Carlos, in the southeast. But the project was abandoned twenty-five years ago because of the frequent breakdowns and the high maintenance costs in virgin rain forest.”

  Kilian smiled, imagining a small toy train going round such a small island. The path they were on was certainly quite steep, but the distance to their destination was fairly short, at least for someone used to high mountains. And they didn’t even have to carry any luggage. Still, he noticed that his father, who he remembered as a strong and fit man, was gasping.

  They soon left behind the ivy-and egombegombe-covered wall—small, white, delicate flowers appearing among the large carmine, yellow, and green leaves—and reached the top. Before them, a grand esplanade opened out like a balcony onto the shoreline, separated by a balustrade adorned with streetlamps every few meters. In the middle of the esplanade, interspersed with carefully tended flower beds, rose colonial buildings with lateral balconies and gabled roofs. Kilian looked up at them in awe.

  “That is the Catholic mission,” Jacobo explained. “And this other one is the La Catalana building. It has a bar at ground level that you’ll soon get to know. And this one that has left your jaw hanging is the magnificent cathedral—” He interrupted himself. “No. Better to leave the tourist information for another day, I know you … Don’t worry, you’ll be coming to Santa Isabel plenty of times.”

  Kilian said nothing, admiring the delicious symbiosis of nature and harmonious, light buildings, so lively and different from the solid stone houses of Pasolobino. His gaze moved from one building to another and from one person to another, from the indistinct garb of the whites to the colorful fabrics of the natives.

  “There is José,” said Antón, taking Kilian by the elbow. “Oh boy! He brought the new car, very strange. Come on, let’s go. We have to get to the plantation before dinner so that you can meet the manager.”

  The smiling man waited for them beside a shiny black Mercedes 220 sedan. Kilian’s father introduced him to José, of whom he had heard so much during the holidays in the House of Rabaltué.

  “José, this is my son Kilian. At last you get to meet him in person. And I don’t know if you know Manuel. He is going to be our doctor from now on.”

  José greeted them with a wide smile that revealed his perfect white teeth surrounded by a short gray beard. He spoke in perfect Spanish—though with a peculiar accent when sometimes pronouncing the r as the French would do, or when stressing the intonation at the end of each word. It gave his way of speaking a clipped rhythm.

  “Welcome to Fernando Po, Massa,” he said three times, bowing his head slightly as he addressed Kilian,
then Manuel, and finally Jacobo. “I hope you have had a pleasant trip. The luggage is loaded, Massa Antón. We can leave when you are ready.”

  “Why didn’t you come in the Land Rover?” Antón asked.

  “A piece fell off at the last minute and Massa Garuz gave me permission to take this one.”

  “Well, you are starting off on the right foot.”

  Jacobo, imitating a dutiful chauffeur, opened the rear door to allow Kilian and Manuel to get in.

  “This jewel is only for important people,” he said. The men gave a happy smile and made themselves comfortable in the beige leather seats. “Dad, you too, please. José will go in front. I’ll drive today.”

  José and Antón exchanged looks.

  “I don’t know if Garuz would like that,” Antón said.

  “Oh, come on,” replied Jacobo. “He doesn’t have to find out. When am I going to get another chance to drive a car like this?”

  José shrugged and went to the front of the car.

  Sitting between his father and Manuel, Kilian observed José in detail. He noticed that there was a strong bond between him and Antón, even friendly, the result of having known each other for so long. He had to be a few years younger than his father. José was a Bubi, like the majority of the island’s population, and he worked as foreman in the cocoa-bean dryers, something rare, as it was normally a role filled by whites. The hardest work was carried out by Nigerian laborers, the majority Calabars, coming from the Nigerian city of Calabar.

  Antón told him that when he first came to the island, José was assigned as his boy, the name given to the young servants that whites housed to look after their clothes and residences. Each white had his own boy—Kilian would get one as well—and families could have more than one if needed to look after the children. As the years went by, thanks to his capacity for work and ability to get on with the plantation laborers, Antón had finally convinced the manager that José was perfectly capable of supervising the work of the dryers, the most delicate part of the cocoa production process. Over time, Lorenzo Garuz had to admit that there were exceptions to the commonly held Western belief that all Bubis or island natives were lazy.

  They drove through the straight streets of Santa Isabel, laid out symmetrically to incorporate functional white buildings; left behind the colorfully dressed pedestrians who helped create the impression of a lively, bright, summery, and pretty city; and continued onto a dusty dirt road through the first few rows of a leafy, dense cocoa plantation.

  “You will see, Massa,” said José, looking at Kilian through the side mirror. “On the flat land, everything is cocoa and palm trees. Land over five hundred meters, on the hillsides, coffee trees. And at the top, banana trees and Manila hemp.”

  Kilian nodded to thank him. José was delighted to again describe the route in the way he had probably done long before, first with Kilian’s father and later with Jacobo. At that moment, Antón and Manuel stared out in silence, the car windows open so that some air could get in.

  They had traveled around five or six kilometers when Manuel urged Kilian to look through the front windshield.

  Kilian gasped in surprise. For a few seconds, he thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him. In front of them, a large signpost told them they were coming into … Zaragoza! It did not take him long to figure out that it was the name of the village closest to the plantation.

  “This village was founded by the first owner of Sampaka,” announced Antón while they were passing close to a tree around twenty meters tall located in front of a building. “Mariano Mora was his name.”

  Kilian, who knew the story, nodded, thrilled to see with his own eyes what he had only heard in tales.

  “Yes, Kilian, the one who was born near Pasolobino. And he also built the church.”

  Manuel did the math in his head. That was over fifty years ago.

  “Did you get to meet him?” Manuel asked.

  “No. When I came here for the first time, he had just died from a tropical disease. Many remember him as a hardworking, sensible, and prudent man.”

  “Like all those from the mountains,” Jacobo bragged.

  Manuel raised his eyebrows before asking, “And who took over the plantation? His children?”

  “No. He didn’t have any children. His nephew continued the business. It still remains in the hands of the family. Those who got your and Kilian’s documents in order in Zaragoza, the real Zaragoza, are also descended from him. The only one who wanted to come here and look after the plantation was Lorenzo Garuz, who is both manager and a major shareholder.”

  The village, made up of little huts, was so small that they reached the territorial guard post in just a few seconds. Jacobo stopped the car beside two rifle-carrying guards who were calling good-bye to a third guard, Maximiano. He turned toward the car and frowned while the others politely greeted the new whites and thanked José for the latest delivery. Kilian did not like the look of this Maximiano, who was tall and strong with a face totally pockmarked from smallpox. The man said nothing; he just bent down to pick up a box and left.

  “And who was that?” Jacobo asked, putting the car in gear again.

  “I don’t know,” his father replied. “I suppose he’s from another post. Sometimes they swap.”

  “First lesson, Kilian, before we enter the plantation,” Jacobo explained. “You have to make sure that the guards get presents regularly, tobacco, drink, even eggs. The more you give, the faster they’ll come when you need them.”

  Antón nodded.

  “Normally, there are no problems,” he added, “but you never know … A while ago, on other plantations, the farm laborers rioted, complaining about their contract conditions. They were lucky that the territorial guard intervened.” Kilian began to get a little nervous. “But don’t you worry about it, that was many years ago. Now they live fairly well. And one of the jobs of the whites is to prevent conflicts among the coloreds. You’ll learn.”

  Jacobo slowed down as they approached the plantation.

  Santa Isabel had left a deep impression on Kilian, but the entrance to the Sampaka plantation made him catch his breath.

  The landscape had completely changed; what had been city buildings and kilometers of cocoa trees became a red earthen track flanked by enormous palm trees that rose into the sky and blocked out the sunlight. For each meter the car advanced through the tunnel of palms, alternately producing intermittent light and shade, his curiosity gave way to a certain anxiety. What would he find at the end of this dark, seemingly endless passage? He had the feeling of descending into a cave through a regal corridor, as if a troubling force drew him in while a voice in his head whispered that once on the other side, he would never again be the same.

  He did not know it then, but years later, he would have to order new palms for that drive, which would become an emblem not only of the most majestic plantation on the island, but of his own relationship with the country. For now, it was simply the gateway to a plantation whose size totaled nine hundred hectares.

  At the end of the drive, they stopped to say hello to a short, well-built man with white curly hair, sweeping the steps of the first building.

  “How are you, Yeremías?” asked Jacobo from the car window. “You get plenty hen?”

  “Plenty hen, Massa! A lot of hens!” answered the man with a smile. “We’re never short of eggs here! Welcome back!”

  “Yeremías is the handyman,” explained Jacobo to Kilian and Manuel. “He is the gatekeeper, the night watchman, the one who wakes us up in the morning and brings us bread! And he is in charge of the henhouse and telling the gardinboy what to do!” He turned back. “Eh, wachimán! Remember these faces, because we will be going out a lot at night!”

  Yeremías nodded and waved as the car slowly made its way through the hens and goats. Before them appeared the central yard, called Sampaka, like the plantation, where there were two swimming pools, one for the black workers and another for the white owners and staf
f. Kilian realized he would need to learn to swim. On the plantation, a river running through it—also called Sampaka—there were two more yards, Yakató, named after the African eggplant that looked like a tomato, and Upside, or the upper part, which was pronounced obsay in African English.

  Altogether, the three yards contained a large number of buildings apart from the storehouses, garages, and new cocoa dryers. There were homes for over five hundred laborers’ families, a carpenter’s workshop, a chapel, a small school for the youngest children, a hydroelectric station that produced light and power for both the manufacturing facilities and the yards and homes, and a hospital with a surgery, two rooms with fourteen beds, and a house for the doctor. In the biggest yard, one in front of the other and beside the main stores, were the manager’s house and the house for European employees, mostly Spaniards.

  Kilian was stunned. No matter how much he had been told, he could not have imagined that a single property could encompass a small town with hundreds of inhabitants, surrounded by the exuberant landscape of a cocoa plantation. Wherever he looked, there was movement and action: men carrying boxes and tools, and trucks that came with supplies or workers. It was a continuous coming and going of black men, all dressed in khaki-colored shirts and ripped trousers, all barefoot or with leather-strapped sandals covered in dust.

  Suddenly, he felt a knot in his stomach.

  The excitement of the journey was turning into something like vertigo. He was afraid!

  He was with his father and his brother—and a doctor—and he was short of breath. How was he going to fit into that vortex of green and black? And the heat, the bloody heat, it was now threatening to suffocate him.

  He could not breathe. He could not think.

  He felt like a coward.

  He closed his eyes, and his mind filled with images of home, the fire burning in the hearth, the snow falling on the slate roofs, his mother preparing desserts, the cows stumbling on the stones in the streets.