Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  “Where is Sade?” asked Mateo, curiosity dancing in his eyes.

  Kilian shrugged and looked over at the dance floor. “She dropped me.”

  “Poor lad,” said Marcial, clicking his tongue and waving one of his enormous hands in the air. “Maybe next time.”

  Manuel studied Kilian’s face. He was not telling the truth. Maybe Kilian and he were more similar than first appearances would suggest. He fervently wanted to meet the woman of his dreams, a difficult task in this paradise of temptation.

  “I think I’ll go back to Sampaka,” Manuel said, getting to his feet. “You can come back with me if you want, Kilian.”

  Kilian agreed. The others decided to stay a while longer.

  The journey back was mostly silent. Once lying in his bed, Kilian found it difficult to get to sleep. Later, the moans coming from his brother’s room merged with his own images of Sade. He had had a good time with her, yes. A good time. That was it. That was all. He did not have to make anything more of it.

  The following morning, Jacobo, yawning, came into the dining room to have his breakfast. He saw Kilian, alone, focused on the coffee in front of him, and said, “Good morning, little brother. What? Nothing in comparison with the girls in Pasolobino or Barmón, right?”

  “No,” admitted Kilian quietly. “Nothing at all.”

  Jacobo bent down and whispered in his ear, “Last night was my treat. A welcome present. You don’t have to thank me. If you want to do it again, it’s up to you.” He poured himself a coffee, yawned loudly, and added, “Are you coming with me to eleven o’clock mass? Luckily it’s not in Latin here.”

  5

  Palabra Conclú

  Case Closed

  A few days later, the manager sent Kilian and Gregorio to collect some heavy pieces from Julia’s parents’ store. Lorenzo Garuz had learned from Antón that the relationship between the men was at best tense, and he hoped that a good long spell away from the plantation would do them some good. Garuz had known Gregorio for many years. He did not consider him dangerous, maybe a little violent, but he knew how to get people to obey him. Besides, he was the perfect filter to screen employees who had what it took. After a period in his hands, the young ones either left the colony or became magnificent workers, something Garuz expected would happen in Kilian’s case.

  Kilian did not open his mouth once on their way to the city. Not only because he had nothing to say, but also because Gregorio had made him drive. All of Kilian’s attention was focused on carrying out a perfect performance at the wheel of the big round-cabined truck with its wooden trailer. He had no intention of giving Gregorio any reason to pick on him again. The robust Studebaker 49 advanced first along the path and then down the road as smoothly as the young driver could manage.

  When they entered the store, they were greeted by a radiant Julia. Kilian did not know why, but the young woman had been happy for the last few days. The dinner had gone better than expected. It was not easy to get Jacobo to pay attention for more than five minutes in the shop. She made trips around the most popular places in Santa Isabel, went to twelve o’clock mass on Sundays in the cathedral, and had an aperitif in the Chiringuito in the Plaza de España, hoping, on the seafront, to casually bump into him, but it never happened. So the two straight hours that she had been able to enjoy Jacobo while his brother entertained her parents had felt like heaven. Seeing Kilian with another man in the entrance to the store made her heart skip a beat until she recognized Gregorio and pleasantly greeted both.

  Kilian was happy to see Julia again, although deep down he was a little ashamed of the manner in which they had said good-bye to her and her family on Saturday.

  “The order is out back,” said Julia. “It would make more sense to move the truck there. My father is checking to make sure everything is there.”

  “Well, Kilian,” said Gregorio, “you are the driver today.”

  Julia saw Kilian make a face at Gregorio’s tone. She hardly knew the man, and their dealings were just on a commercial basis: Gregorio would hand her samples of screws, and she would diligently search for them in the corresponding boxes.

  “Was the conflict on Saturday night sorted out in the end?” Julia asked casually.

  Gregorio furrowed his brow. “Saturday night?”

  “Yes. They told me there was a big fight in Sampaka, with many injured …”

  “And who told you this?”

  “A boy came looking for Jacobo and Kilian.”

  Gregorio shook his head and laughed. “Nothing happened on the plantation on Saturday night.”

  Julia blinked, perplexed.

  “But …”

  “I saw Jacobo and Kilian in Anita Guau around eleven …” When Julia blushed, he continued, “All the young lads from Sampaka were there. And very well accompanied.”

  Julia gritted her teeth, and her chin began to tremble in fury. Jacobo had tricked her. And her parents!

  She had gone over their conversation a thousand times, and she was convinced that she had passed his test. They shared a common childhood in Pasolobino and an adolescence in Africa. It was absolutely impossible that their compatibility was not as clear to him as it was to her; otherwise, he would have looked for any excuse to have joined in the others’ conversation. And he had not done it! He had enjoyed himself and laughed with her. Even more, long and sweet moments had passed before he took his marvelous green eyes from hers. And their hands had brushed against each other’s at least three times!

  She felt completely deflated.

  Gregorio cunningly returned to the attack. He pretended to look with interest at the objects that were on the counter and spoke in a soft voice. “I don’t know about Kilian, but Jacobo has become a complete mininguero … I suppose he won’t take too long in coaching his brother on native girlfriends.” He clicked his tongue. “The young don’t listen. Too much alcohol and too many women takes its toll. Well”—he looked up and smiled; Julia was ready to burst into tears—“that’s what happens. They are not the first, nor will they be the last.”

  Julia used Kilian’s entrance, followed by Emilio, to turn around and bite her bottom lip.

  “Gregorio!” greeted Emilio, holding out his hand. “It’s been a good while since I last saw you! How are things? Don’t you ever leave the jungle?”

  “Not often, Emilio, not often.” He shook the man’s hand warmly. “There is always something to do. I only leave the plantation on Saturdays, you know …”

  Julia brusquely turned around. She did not want her father to find out about the brothers’ bad manners.

  “Dad,” she intervened in a calm voice, “I can’t find bolts this size.” She handed him one. “Could you look in the store, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Kilian noticed the change in Julia. She would not even look at him, and her hands were trembling. He looked at Gregorio, puzzled.

  “I hope I haven’t upset you,” Gregorio whispered, frowning.

  “Me?” she interrupted. “How could you upset me? You think white women don’t know how you waste your time?” She shot Kilian a hard stare. “We’re not fools!”

  “Hey! What’s going on here?” Kilian asked. “Julia?”

  “I seem to have put my foot in it,” confessed Gregorio, twisting his lips in false consternation. “I told her where we were last Saturday night … all of us. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

  Kilian clenched his fists. If it had not been for Emilio coming back at that moment, he would gladly have hit Gregorio. He looked at Julia, feeling like a worm under her hurt gaze. She turned her head and went back into the shelves.

  The men chatted for a few minutes and said their good-byes, Gregorio with a triumphant little smile on his face. Emilio went looking for Julia and asked her, “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  Julia tried to smile, even though she was raging inside. She did not know how, but Jacobo would pay for his lie. The moment h
ad arrived to change tack with him. She sighed resolutely and promised herself to be patient.

  Outside, Kilian let his anger loose.

  “Did you enjoy that, Gregorio?” he whispered sharply. “What do you gain from this?”

  “Don’t you lecture me!” He irritably clicked his tongue repeatedly. “Don’t you know you will catch a liar quicker than a cripple?”

  “You deserve a good thrashing!”

  Gregorio squared up in front of him with his hands on his hips. Kilian was half a head taller than he, but Gregorio had more physical strength.

  “Go ahead, come on.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Let’s see if you have the guts.”

  Kilian exhaled.

  “Shall I make it easier? Do you want me to start?” Gregorio pushed the younger man with both arms. Kilian took a step backward. “Come on!” He pushed him again. “Show me how brave the men from the mountain are!”

  Kilian grabbed Gregorio’s wrists with all his strength, with his muscles tensed, until he perceived in the other’s dark eyes a weak flash of surprise and let go in disgust. He walked to the truck, climbed into the cabin, and started the engine.

  He waited until Gregorio got in and then drove at top speed, as if he had not done anything else in his whole life.

  A couple of weeks later, March arrived. It was the hottest month of the year, the precursor to the rainy season. On the plantations, the cocoa trees, with their smooth trunks and large egg-shaped leaves, began to sprout small yellow, rosy, and reddish flowers. Kilian marveled that the blooms grew directly from the trunk and the older branches. The heat and the humidity of the following months would allow the cocoa berries or pods to emerge from these flowers. On the fruit trees of Pasolobino, if there was not an unexpected or late frost, the hundreds of buds would become dozens of fruit. Jacobo had told him that the thousands of flowers springing from each cocoa tree would produce only around twenty pods.

  The days passed without much happening. Work was routine and monotonous. Everyone knew what they had to do: repair houses, prepare the crops, and get the dryers and stores ready for the next harvest in August.

  Kilian also seemed more relaxed in his routine. Gregorio had been more cautious since the argument in the store, which Kilian had not shared with anyone, least of all his brother. Gregorio still was not doing much instructing, but he was not picking on him either. Even so, Kilian kept alert.

  Although he had gone back to Anita Guau a couple of times more, he had not required Sade’s attentions, something that did not seem to faze her as she satisfied her many other admirers. Manuel and Kilian had discovered that both preferred the films in the Marfil Cinema or a good chat in any of the seafront terraces as the huge bats flapped away from the palm trees at dusk.

  One morning, while Antón and José were showing Kilian the workings of the different parts of the dryers in the main yard, Manuel came over and showed them a card.

  “Look, Kilian. My old friends from the hospital in Santa Isabel have sent me some invitations to a formal dance in the casino this Saturday. I hope you’ll come with me. I’ll tell the others as well.”

  “A party in the casino!” said Antón. “You can’t miss it. The elite of the island will be there, Son. Plantation employees normally don’t get the chance.”

  “I’d be delighted.” Kilian’s eyes lit up. “But what do you wear to a place like that? I don’t know if I have the right clothes.”

  “A jacket and tie will be enough,” Manuel explained. “The invitation says that formal wear is not required, so we don’t need to rent a dinner suit.”

  “I’ll lend you a tie if you haven’t brought one,” offered Antón.

  Manuel said he would see them at lunchtime, and the others continued their tour around the dryers, raised roofs over enormous slate sheets where the cocoa beans would be roasted. José approached some workers as Kilian turned to Antón.

  “Dad, I’d like to talk to you about something … ,” he started in a serious voice.

  Antón had a fair idea what Kilian wanted to talk to him about. “Yes?”

  “Jacobo and I think you should go back to Spain. Even though you deny it, we know that you are exhausted. It’s not like you. Why don’t you go and visit the doctor in Zaragoza?” Antón did not protest, so he continued. “If it’s the money, you know that what Jacobo and I earn is more than enough to cover all the expenses and more … And how long has it been since you last saw Mom?”

  Antón gave him a faint smile. He turned his head and called José. “Do you hear what Kilian is saying? The same as you and Jacobo! Maybe you’re all in this together?”

  José widened his eyes with a feigned look of innocence. “Antón”—his friend had not allowed José to use the term massa for some time when talking in private—“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You know perfectly well, you rogue. It seems that you all want to be rid of me.”

  “It’s for your own good,” Kilian insisted.

  “Your sons are right,” José interjected. “I don’t know how you will manage another harvest. I’m sure that the doctors in Spain will prescribe you something to make you better.”

  “Doctors, José—the farther away, the better. They cure one thing and mess up another.” Kilian opened his mouth to protest, but Antón raised his hand. “Wait, Son. I spoke to Garuz yesterday. After the harvest, I will spend Christmas at home. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure. Afterward, I’ll come back here, and depending on my condition, I’ll work in the office.”

  Kilian would have preferred it if his father would say farewell to the colony for good, but he did not push it. Maybe once he got to Spain he would change his mind. As a man accustomed to physical work, he might find it strange to take a post as massa clak, which was what the workers called office clerks, though they often gave all the literate whites on the plantation that title. Anyway, his father was a stubborn and private man. He would do whatever he wanted no matter what anyone else said.

  “I’m relieved,” Kilian admitted. “But it is still a long time until autumn.”

  “Once the dryers are going at full blast, time will pass so quickly that before we know it, we will be singing Christmas carols, right, José?”

  “Agreed!”

  “The tons we have shipped over the years, you and me!”

  His friend’s eyes brightened. Kilian loved to listen to Antón and José reminisce over old times that went back to the beginning of the century. It was difficult to imagine a small Santa Isabel with bamboo and calabo wood houses similar to village huts or the streets of firm red earth instead of tarmacadam or the native aristocrats having afternoon tea and remembering their English education or going to Catholic mass in the morning and Protestant service in the afternoon to practice tolerance. José laughed as he recalled his childhood, when men his father’s age sweated inside their frock coats and raised their top hats slightly to greet the elegantly dressed women in their Parisian hats.

  “Did you know, Massa Kilian, when I was born, there was not even one white woman in Santa Isabel?”

  “How is that possible?”

  “There were some in Basilé with their colonist husbands. They had a very hard life. But in the city, not one.”

  “And the days when the Trasmediterránea ship docked in Fernando Po—every three months, Son—they even closed all the stores!” Antón added. “Everybody came to the harbor to get news from Spain …”

  “And did you know, Massa Kilian, when I was a boy, the whites had to go back to Spain every two years to survive tropical life. Otherwise, they died in a short time. It was rare for a man to endure many years. Now things are different.”

  “Yes, José,” said Antón in a whisper. “We’ve seen a lot, you and I. Times have really changed since I first came here with Mariana!”

  “And they will keep changing, Antón!” added José, shaking his head in resignation. “How they will change!”

  On Saturday, Kilian put on a l
ight-colored suit—which Simón had pressed—and a tie; he combed his hair back with brilliantine and looked in the mirror. He hardly recognized himself. The perfect gentleman! In Pasolobino, he had never had the chance to dress up like this. He had only the one dark suit for the main village festival and the weddings of some cousin or other.

  At seven on the dot, Mateo, Jacobo, Marcial, Kilian, and Manuel left for the party.

  On the way, Kilian joked with his brother. “I thought Saturdays were sacred. You are going without your shot of Anita Guau?”

  “You have to be open to everything,” responded Jacobo. “It isn’t every day you get the chance to go to the casino. Besides, if it’s no fun, we’ll leave. The ñanga-ñanga way we’re dressed means we will be successful tonight no matter where we go.”

  The others chanted the phrase, laughing. Kilian joined in when he understood that the funny word, ñanga-ñanga, meant elegant.

  The casino was located in Punta Cristina, thirty meters above sea level. They went through the small entrance gate and into a courtyard with a tennis court and a swimming pool with two diving boards surrounded by black-and-white square tiles. From the terrace’s long arched balustrade, over which leaned a solitary palm tree against the horizon, the men could make out the whole of Santa Isabel’s bay, full of anchored boats and canoes.

  Of the group, only Manuel had been in the casino before, so he led them directly to the music. They entered a building with laminated wood windows, then crossed a large room where people talked cheerfully and went out to a terrace circled by a softly lit white wall. In the middle of the terrace there was a dance floor surrounded by white marble tables. At that moment, the floor was empty. Men and women, whites and blacks, all looking very elegant as they greeted one another. On the stage sat an orchestra with THE NEW BLUE STAR written on the players’ music stands; Kilian thought the orchestra was fairly full in comparison to what he had seen before, and they played pleasant background music.

  “After dinner, they will play dance music,” explained Manuel, raising his hand to greet some acquaintances. “I’m afraid tonight is going to be rather hectic. There are friends here I haven’t seen in a long time.”