Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  Jacobo nodded and thought with a mother like that, it was not strange that Julia had such a determined character. He went toward the back of the store, flanked by overflowing shelves, and made out Julia’s figure climbing up a rickety ladder, trying on tiptoe to get at a box that was just out of her reach. Jacobo could see nearly the whole length of her tanned legs under a fiery red skirt and felt a glimmer of unexpected desire. A small voice in his head reproached him again for letting her escape. He had not forgotten her comfort at Antón’s funeral. A woman like her would always be at her husband’s side. You only had to look at Manuel’s face to realize how happy he was with her, with his wife.

  He choked on the words as he thought them.

  Julia was married to another.

  Another small voice appeared, reminding him that marrying her would have meant not only the loss of his coveted freedom, but also a tie to the island. Jacobo enjoyed his life on the island, for now. He would not do what his father had done. He would not sacrifice so many years for Fernando Po. Sooner or later he would return to Spain. Kilian would do the same. And Julia would stay near Santa Isabel. As sure as the sun rose each day.

  Then what was he doing standing there, staring at a friend recently married to another friend? Manuel was that, a good friend. Even for Jacobo, this overstepped his bounds!

  He stealthily crept closer.

  “Be careful, Julia!” he said, an evil glint in his eyes.

  The girl was startled. She grabbed on to some iron bars above her head to get a firm footing on the top rung of the ladder just as a pair of strong arms caught her by the waist to lower her slowly down to the ground. Jacobo saw her thighs, her waist, her chest, her neck, and her red face. When she got to the ground, her face was level with the man’s torso, and for a few seconds, she did not dare raise her head to look at him.

  She had never been this close to Jacobo.

  She breathed in his scent.

  She should get out of the embrace but did not want to. He had caught her; he should be the one to let her go. Her heart beat strongly. Jacobo moved her away a few centimeters, searching for her eyes. She lifted her chin to him and discovered something strange, different, in the man’s green eyes. They were darkened by a doubt, hesitation, desire.

  Julia half opened her lips as he bent down to taste them with tender abandonment, both delaying with ardent listlessness the inevitable guilt. She pressed herself to him to feel his hands covering her back, in a brief moment of possession and surrender, and caressed his black hair with the tips of her fingers.

  Julia and Jacobo kissed, slowly and greedily, until they stopped for air. Then she took his hands and undid the embrace.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she said, her voice faltering.

  “I’m sorry.” Jacobo shook his head. “Actually, no, I’m not sorry.”

  “I meant giving someone on a ladder a fright. I almost killed myself. Well, and the other thing as well.”

  “It seemed to me that you were enjoying it …” Jacobo tried to circle her waist.

  “Too late, Jacobo.” Julia put the palms of her hands on his chest and pushed him gently. “Too late.”

  “But …”

  “No, Jacobo. I promised before God and my family to be faithful to my husband.”

  “Then why did you let me …”

  Julia would have liked to tell him that it was the prize for the many hours she spent dreaming about kissing him, about having him this close. She would have liked to have said how happy he made her by showing in his eyes that they could have had a future together. If he had wanted to … But it was too late now. She shrugged and answered, “It just happened. We will never mention this again. Right?”

  Jacobo grudgingly agreed, though he was used to succumbing to passionate encounters without much thought. They could never deny that something special had happened. How could she regain her composure so quickly after having shared such a breathtaking moment? From his experience with white women, he would have understood tears of guilt, immediate regret, or even the complete opposite, an offer of occasional secret meetings … but this conscious denial of a desired pleasure left him dumbstruck.

  “What do you need to get today?” Julia asked, straightening her dress.

  “Eh, I’d better come back another day.” Few times in his life had Jacobo felt so incapable of small talk.

  “As you wish.”

  At that moment, a slight girl with short dark hair pulled up in a wide pink ribbon entered the store.

  “How are you, Oba?” Julia inquired. Jacobo recognized Sade’s friend from Anita Guau. “Jacobo, we have hired Oba to help us in the store. My parents are getting busier and busier, and I can’t be here all hours of the day. I’ve got other commitments now …” She paused.

  “It’s a good idea,” he said flatly. “Well, I’d better be going. See you soon, Julia.”

  “Good-bye, Jacobo.”

  Jacobo left the building and stood in the rain for a few minutes before slipping into the pickup. Inside the store, Oba followed Julia through the shelves as she explained where everything was kept. When she got to the stairs, Julia stopped for a few seconds and put her hands to her lips. Oba, a talkative girl, said, “That good-looking massa … I know him, you know? Are you friends? Well, he and I have friends in common. Sometimes we meet up …”

  “Oba!” Julia shouted. When she saw the girl’s expression, she changed her tone. “Don’t get distracted, I still have a lot of things to show you.”

  The last thing Julia wanted at that moment, with the taste of Jacobo still on her lips, was for someone to drag her back to reality.

  Toward the end of December, all the plantation employees received a written invitation to celebrate the new year at the doctor’s house.

  “For weeks we have been trying to celebrate our wedding with you, but we put it off for one reason or another,” a radiant Julia explained to her guests. “We finally made it coincide with, you know, New Year’s, new life …”

  Kilian saw the newly married couple quite often, but that day he found Julia especially happy. She was wearing a pale-yellow silk dress that flared at the waist, and her hair was done up in a high chignon that highlighted her porcelain skin. Julia was not a beauty, but she was gorgeous when she smiled. Manuel’s and Julia’s parents were also in attendance and very happy.

  Julia had decorated in a style similar to that of her parents’ house in Santa Isabel, simple and welcoming. The dining room was not very large, but she had managed to get a table that could comfortably seat fourteen: her family, the six employees, the manager, the priest, and two close friends, Ascensión and Mercedes, who, from what they all could gather, had gotten engaged to Mateo and Marcial, respectively.

  Kilian spent a few seconds looking at two peculiar pictures hanging on the wall. On a black background, with ingenious and narrow brushstrokes, the artist had represented forms that were clearly identifiable. In one, several men were steering a canoe down a river, through leafy vegetation. In the other, various feathered warriors with spears were hunting a beast. Julia passed by him on her way to the head of the table.

  “They’re nice, aren’t they?” Julia said. Kilian nodded. “I bought them recently from a street stall. They’re by someone called Nolet. I fell in love with them the minute I saw them. They are … How can I put it? Simple and complex, serene and violent, enigmatic and transparent …”

  “Like this island,” murmured Kilian.

  “Yes. And like any one of us …”

  Many of the guests were suffering from hangovers after the previous night in the casino, but the atmosphere there was relaxed thanks to the special menu, typical of Pasolobino, which Generosa had prepared for the occasion. They ate a smooth chickpea puree followed by hen fricassee. The tender pieces of meat dipped in flour and fried in oil before being stewed over a slow heat with wine, milk, walnuts, garlic, onion, and salt and pepper brought on memories of absent mothers. For dessert, they tasted an exquisite rum s
oufflé with egg-yolk pastries.

  Kilian noticed that Jacobo was unusually quiet and barely looked at Julia. Their greeting too had been cold and distant. He did not make much of it. More than likely his brother had celebrated New Year’s Eve too hard and was not up for small pleasantries.

  At one point in the conversation, the other young men exchanged so many jokes with Manuel over his new status as a married man that in the end, he blurted out a proverb.

  “When your neighbor’s house”—he pointed at Mateo and Marcial—“is on fire, carry …”

  “Water to your own!” finished Ascensión, fondly pulling Mateo’s mustache.

  Everyone burst out laughing.

  After dessert, two boys served Johnnie Walker and Veuve Clicquot. Emilio, red faced and eyes shining, got to his feet, raised his glass, and proposed a toast to the married couple and the family that, as Manuel had confirmed that very week, would soon be increasing. The guests cheered, applauded, and made risqué comments that turned Julia red. Father Rafael shook his head. Ascensión and Mercedes ran to congratulate their friend and the future grandmother, and all the men clapped Manuel and the future grandfather on the back.

  Kilian used the racket to get up and go out to smoke a cigarette. Julia, still with reddened cheeks, followed and rested against the railing that surrounded the small garden.

  “Congratulations, Julia,” Kilian said, offering her a cigarette, which she refused.

  “Thanks. We are very happy.” She clasped her hands over her stomach. “It’s a strange feeling …” She looked at Kilian. “When are you going to go home, Kilian? How long has it been since you last saw your mother?”

  “Almost five years.”

  “That’s a long time …”

  “I know.” Kilian pursed his lips tightly.

  Julia studied him. Kilian and Jacobo both gave off an overwhelming sense of strength, but they could not be more different. She knew that there was a special sensitivity in Kilian. He suffered inside. He had suffered on his arrival, in adapting to the island, in gaining the respect of his companions, when accompanying his father in his final moments, by refusing to go back to his family … It could not be easy to control that compassion, humanity, and even tenderness around men toughened by hard work and an extreme climate. Each brother produced different feelings in her. The attraction she felt for Jacobo was directly proportional to the fraternal love she felt for Kilian.

  “I couldn’t last that long without seeing my child,” she insisted. “I’m sure I couldn’t.”

  Kilian shrugged. “Things happen like that,” he said.

  “Sometimes, things are as we want them to be.” She remembered the kiss with Jacobo and shivered. She could have avoided it but had not wanted to. “This is one example. What would it cost you to take a ship or a plane home?”

  “A lot, Julia.”

  “I’m not referring to money.”

  “Neither am I.” Kilian stubbed out the cigarette, leaned down, and put his forearms on the sun-heated railings. “I can’t, Julia. Not yet.”

  He changed the subject. “I see that your new life agrees with you.”

  “Oh, yes, but don’t think … At first, living together takes a lot of effort.”

  “Manuel is a good person.”

  “Yes, very good.” Julia looked down at the ground. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me why you don’t want to go home.”

  Kilian smiled. She was truly tenacious.

  “It’s too soon.”

  “Too soon?” Julia frowned. “For what?

  “For everything. To see the suffering on Mom’s face, to bump into memories of Dad at every turn … For everything, Julia. Nothing will be the same as when I left. Distance keeps feelings at bay.” He sighed. “Now it’s your turn. What secret could you possibly have?”

  Julia was quiet for a few seconds. In her case, she thought, distance cooled temptation. She decided to sidestep the question. “I’ve learned that your sister is also pregnant. Children are always a reason to be happy. Do you know that my father is already thinking of names for our baby? He says that if it’s a girl, it can have whatever name I want, but if it’s a boy, he will be named Fernando, no matter what. He has bet a thousand pesetas with his friends in the casino that there is a Fernando in every house of Spaniards who have been to Guinea. We have gone through the families, and in the end, he might be right!”

  Kilian could not help smiling. “The name is nice. Very appropriate.”

  “I could suggest it to Catalina. Although she might prefer to call him Antón, like his grandfather, if it’s a boy, of course.”

  “I don’t know. Repeating names only invites comparisons. In the end, you don’t know which is the original and which is the copy.”

  “Oh, come on, Kilian! What is José teaching you?”

  Kilian raised an eyebrow.

  “Life is a circle. It repeats itself. Like nature. Nowhere else is it easier to see the circle of life and death.” Julia shrugged. “Once you learn that,” she continued, “everything is much easier. Do you know what my grandmother told me time and time again, in our valley when I was young? To know how to live, you have to know how to die. And she had seen many people die. I won’t even mention the civil war …”

  Julia felt a shiver and rubbed her upper arms.

  “We’d better go in,” said Kilian, straightening up.

  “Yes. I’ll bet you anything that I know what they are talking about at the moment.”

  “Politics?” he wagered.

  Julia smiled. Kilian looked into her eyes and gave her an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

  “You deserve everything good that happens to you, Julia,” he said before winking and adding, “although you don’t keep your deals …”

  She reddened. “And you too, Kilian. You’ll see … The best of life has yet to come.”

  Immediately after the pair entered the dining room, Mateo, Marcial, Asunción, and Mercedes said their good-byes to go meet friends in the city. The others continued talking at the table about politics, as Julia and Kilian had guessed.

  “I heard it the other day in the casino,” said Emilio in a strong voice. “It seems that there has already been a warning from the UN on decolonization. Carrero Blanco has proposed forming provinces.”

  “And what does that mean?” Santiago asked.

  “It’s obvious,” intervened Lorenzo Garuz. “This will all become a Spanish province.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” said Santiago, smoothing down his sparse hair with his bony hand. “That I understand. I’m referring to how things will change as a province.”

  “Well, it seems reasonable to me. After so many years, what is this but an extension of Spain?” Emilio raised his glass toward the boy so he could refill it. “But of course, the coloreds don’t see it that way. I can barely talk to Gustavo anymore because we always end up shouting at each other. Can you believe he had the nerve to tell me that it was just a strategy to continue our exploitation?”

  “I can imagine his simple logic,” commented Father Rafael. “If they are provinces, decolonizing cannot be put on the table.”

  “He said the same. Well, in slightly stronger terms, but that’s what he meant.”

  “Bah, I don’t think any of this will go forward,” Generosa intervened. “Without Spain, there is no Guinea, and without us, they will return to the jungle where we found them.” Julia winced. “In fact, the colony costs more than it makes. But they don’t seem to appreciate that.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that,” said Jacobo, thinking of the tons of cocoa from the last harvest. “We know better than anyone what it makes, don’t we, Mr. Garuz?”

  “Yes, but …” Garuz shook his head. “Who pays for the schools, the hospitals, the city maintenance and services, if not Spain? I don’t know … we might just break even.”

  “That is even impossible,” Generosa commented. “Have you seen the orphanage? Who pays for
the sixty children who live there? And what about Moka? I was with Emilio a few weeks ago at the inauguration of the tap-water system for Moka, Malabo, and Bioko and the handing over of houses to cooperative members. The Board of Native Affairs has paid for half of each of the houses, which even have double-glazed wooden windows …”

  “And that’s not all,” added Emilio, raising his voice. “Where do you think Gustavo went not too long ago? To Cameroon, to meet up with that gang of independence fighters. They were even talking about a possible federation with Gabon!”

  “Of course,” Father Rafael interrupted, “since France is about to grant independence to Cameroon and Gabon, it will become infectious. After all our work teaching them the right way! Did you notice what happened this Christmas? The streets of Santa Isabel were filled with mamarrachos with their masks. Before they did not leave their own areas, and now they parade about in their offensive colors, making incoherent noise. Is this what the freedom crusades want? The bishops already warned about it in a recent pastoral letter. The greatest enemy will soon be the communist ideology.”

  “I hope that the conflicts in Ifni aren’t repeated here,” said a worried Garuz.

  Everyone agreed. Morocco, which had gained independence a year ago, was now reclaiming the small Spanish territory. News had reached them that the Ifni garrisons had been attacked by Moroccan nationalists supported by their king.

  “If France doesn’t stand firm, I don’t know what will happen.”

  “Dad!” Julia exclaimed, worried that Emilio would get too riled up.

  “Your friend is taking serious risks,” Gregorio commented. “One of these days, they will arrest him and send him to Black Beach. The governor doesn’t want any messing around.”

  “I think it’s good that he guards the frontiers with Cameroon and Gabon, and that he detains anyone who rebels against Spanish authority in these lands,” affirmed Generosa with conviction. “This is Spain and will remain so for a long time. There are many Spaniards fighting every day for our businesses. Spain won’t abandon us.”

  A sudden silence followed. Manuel waved at the boys to refill the glasses.