Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  This trip was the most daring thing she had ever done in a life completely given over to study. She had had enough courage to answer a faint call that echoed in her heart.

  Someone older than she born in Sampaka …

  From the very moment that Julia had talked to her about Fernando Po, a suspicion had grown inside her that her blood could still be on the island. And if she had a brother? What other thing could Julia have been referring to? Clarence could barely think it! Much less say it out loud! She had often felt tempted to confide her anxieties to her cousin Daniela, but in the end, she decided to wait until she had definitive proof, if there was any.

  But if it was true?

  How could her father have lived with it? And her uncle … He should know! It would be impossible for him not to … unless she was wrong and had to look for a cousin instead. She shook her head. The letter was with her father’s mail. Besides, she could not believe that Kilian could have done something like that. He was the most upright and responsible person she knew. Her uncle was a man of his word, capable of ignoring all else when the truth was at stake, be they troublesome subjects on land borders or on the relationships between neighbors or family.

  For a moment Clarence was shocked at the ease in which she had excused her uncle and blamed her father, but she was not a child anymore. She did not find it at all unlikely to imagine her father escaping from an unwelcome situation, to put it mildly, and more so if it had to do with a black child. In more than one conversation, her father had made racist comments. When she grew indignant, he closed the subject with “I’ve lived with them, and I know what I’m talking about,” to which Kilian responded “So did I, and I don’t agree.” Daniela celebrated her father’s reason with a smile. As if he would ever recognize a black child! And more so in the Spain of forty years ago!

  Clarence slowed her thoughts; she had only a piece of paper, Julia’s words, and four separate bits of information that she went over again and again.

  Of the first letters written by her uncle Kilian, she had not been able to extract any information that would shed light on Julia’s hints. One of the letters described how well looked after her grandfather Antón had been, especially by the native nurse, and all the people who had attended the funeral and later burial. Apart from Manuel and Julia, she had heard some of the names before. After Antón’s death, her uncle wrote less frequently, and the letters were more repetitive, focusing above all on the finances of the House of Rabaltué.

  Only one of the letters was a little more personal. In a short paragraph, Kilian tried to console Aunt Catalina over the death of her baby and, straight after, announced his trip to Spain, about which he would add details—on what ship he would travel, what city he would arrive in, how long it would take—in later letters. He stayed in Spain until 1960 and returned to the island, intending to work for two more campaigns, each two years in length. His plans were to return to Pasolobino for good in 1964 at the age of thirty-five. It was probable that her uncle was planning, the same as Jacobo and many others, to retire from the cocoa campaigns to start his own family at home.

  However, something did not fit.

  There were very few letters written after 1964, but their existence showed that his stay in Guinea had been extended longer than expected.

  Something had happened in 1965, after Aunt Catalina’s death.

  And it coincided with a short reference to a confrontation between Kilian and Jacobo that she had found in another letter. Could that be the reason her father left his job on the plantation? An argument with his brother?

  Clarence clicked her tongue. It did not make sense. Their relationship had endured the passage of time, so it could not have been that serious. What had happened?

  She looked at her watch. There were still two hours to go before dinner. She decided to stroll down Avenida Libertad. It had been difficult for her to choose hotels because of the very limited selection available in the city. She had ruled out the well-known districts of Los Angeles and Ela Nguema so as not to have to depend on buses. The historic four-star Hotel Bahía, in the middle of the new port, was the one she liked most, but she had finally picked the Hotel Bantú, as it was near all the must-see places in the city and because the reviews were fairly positive.

  She walked toward the city’s old quarter, which, although not well looked after in comparison to the European places she was used to, she found in better condition than the dirty outskirts that she had seen in the taxi from the airport to the hotel. Apart from the children who flocked to her, two things caught her eye and brought a faint smile to her face. The first was the electricity cables that, tangled and loose like artificial lianas, had the run of the place, forming a complex aerial maze that connected one street to another. And the other was the strange combination of vehicles that drove on the irregularly paved streets. Her father had passed his love of cars down to her, so she was able to identify run-down Lada Samaras, Volkswagen Passats, Ford Sierras, Opel Mantas, Renault 21s, BMW C30s, and several Jeep Laredos, beside new Mercedes and Toyota pickups.

  Malabo looked like an Antillean or Andalusian city. It was full of colonial buildings from the English and Spanish periods. It was evident that the successive presence of Portuguese, British, Spanish, and businesspeople who traded with the Antilles had left a very particular mark on the architecture. Among the low-rise dilapidated buildings would suddenly appear an old house with a balcony that reminded her of a Spanish hacienda with wrought-iron balconies.

  And palm trees, loads of palm trees.

  After some time, she stopped, worn out and thirsty. She heard music coming from a small blue building with a corrugated roof. She peeked in and saw it was a bar, a simple bar like those in the villages of her valley. There were three or four tables covered with oilcloths, Formica chairs, and a small counter behind which hung various calendars whose pages were intermittently fluttered by a small fan. The music did not succeed in drowning the noise of a generator situated beside the bar.

  When she stepped inside, the four or five patrons fell silent and looked at her in surprise. Clarence blushed and hesitated before asking for a small bottle of water. She was served by a burly middle-aged woman with a high-pitched voice who immediately tried to wheedle information from the foreigner. Clarence preferred not to go into too many details about the reasons for her trip. Beside the door, two young men with sweaty shirts did not take their eyes off her. She decided to drink the water slowly and steadily and leave the bar casually, acting as if she knew exactly where she was.

  She looked outside, and her heart missed a beat. But how …

  She gave a friendly if quick good-bye and went out onto the street where, to her surprise, night had fallen.

  She shook her head, sure she had been in the bar for only a few minutes!

  She began to walk the lonely street, trying to make out the route home. Where had everyone disappeared to? Why did only some of the streetlights work?

  A few drops of sweat began to bead on her forehead and neck.

  Was it her imagination, or did she hear steps behind her? She quickened her pace. Maybe she was being a little paranoid, but she could swear that someone was following her. The men from the bar? She quickly turned her head without reducing her pace and made out two police uniforms. She cursed out loud. She had left all her papers in the hotel!

  A voice called to her, but she ignored it and continued walking quickly, trying to hold back the urge to run, until the next corner, where she bumped into a group of teenagers who surrounded her, amused. Clarence used these few seconds of confusion to turn right, where she began to run and take different streets to lose the police. When it felt as if her heart were going to burst in her chest, she stopped, panting and completely soaked in sweat. She leaned against a wall with her eyes closed.

  A babbling sound indicated that the river was nearby. She opened her eyes and realized that she had walked northeast instead of south. A huge green wall stretched out before her eyes. But wha
t had happened? The city had looked easy to her from the plane! As if the straight and parallel streets were drawn with a steady hand from the very shore of the sea toward the interior.

  She blamed the books she had read on the plane. She felt a shiver. If she was afraid at that moment, how would she have been able to withstand a five-month journey on a ship subject to storms, knowing that the destination was an island where if you did not die at the hands of the ferocious and hostile natives who poisoned the waters and slit throats and beheaded the seafarers, you would succumb to fever? To calm herself, Clarence tried to put herself in the place of the hundreds of people who, over the centuries, had made the expeditions to take possession of these lands, long before Antón, Jacobo, and Kilian enjoyed the golden colonial period, and she felt another shiver.

  She had read that they used to sleep fully clothed and with guns in their hands, gripped with fear; that sometimes the crew was not told the destination to prevent mutiny; that many were political prisoners who were promised freedom if they managed to survive two years on Fernando Po … She imagined the pioneers who were given grants of land, the prisoners dreaming of freedom, the missionaries—first Jesuits and then Claretians—convinced of their divine mandate, the various intrepid explorers accompanied by their foolish wives … How many died and how many begged to return home even if it meant losing their liberty! They may have had reason to be afraid, but she did not! But had she not also read a novel about the kidnapping of a young white woman and the terrible police conduct in Guinea?

  She did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  Clarence reviewed her surroundings and felt a prick of uneasiness when moving away from the river. She tried to picture the map of the city that she had studied umpteen times on the plane as she set off to go west, to the busy Avenida de la Independencia …

  She had barely gone a couple of meters when a car’s horn made her jump.

  “Would you like me to take you somewhere?”

  She located a young man with glasses in a blue 1980s Volga.

  Just what she needed!

  Without answering, she quickened her step.

  The man sped up and added, “Miss, I’m a taxi driver.” Clarence, wary, gave him a sideways look. “In Malabo, the taxis don’t have a specific color or special plate.”

  Clarence gave him a weak smile. This was something that she had learned in the airport that same day. The singing and slightly melodious tone inspired confidence in her. She stopped, guessing him to be about thirty. His hair was very short, and he had a big forehead and a large nose and jaw. He seemed to have an honest smile.

  She felt so tired and disoriented that she finally nodded.

  A few minutes after getting into the taxi, Clarence was relaxed and feeling very lucky. The driver, whose name was Tomás, turned out to be a schoolteacher who drove the taxi in his free time. The fact that she herself was in education led to an interesting conversation.

  Automatically, she began to mentally list the characteristics, hardly noticeable because he spoke Spanish very well, of the stuttering way Tomás spoke. Not an article was left out, nor did he confuse his tenses, pronouns, or prepositions, as she had read in some articles. At most, he pronounced rr the same as r, the d like a weak r, softened the ll a little, mixed the s and the z, and showed a tendency to put the emphasis on the final syllable.

  Her nerves had certainly let her down, but the linguistic analysis soothed her.

  She took another deep breath.

  “And what do you think of Malabo?” Tomás asked.

  “I haven’t been able to see much, as I only arrived today,” she admitted as she thought, Dirty, full of cables, and I got lost.

  Tomás looked at her through the mirror.

  “I’m sure you find it very different from your home. Visitors are surprised that a country as rich in oil as Guinea can look so poor. The new upper-class district of Pequeña España is near the shanty district of Yaundé.” He shrugged. “We are used to these contrasts. If you like, I could give you a quick tour.”

  As if reading her mind, Tomás showed her some of the beautiful sites that she had seen in photos: the Town Hall Plaza, with its pretty gardens; the horseshoe-shaped bay; the Plaza de la Independencia, with its red-colored Palacio del Pueblo with its numerous arch windows; the Palacio de la Presidencia high above the old port … Neither the few black-and-white images from the colonial period that Clarence had seen nor the current color photos on her computer did justice to what she was seeing by night.

  With her mouth open and her heart beating rapidly, Clarence transported herself to another time and imagined her father and her uncle, in white suits, walking along these same places, decades ago, waving to the people they knew, blacks and whites. She remembered she had read somewhere that life expectancy in Guinea was around fifty, and the image blurred. The people who could have lived with Kilian and Jacobo had to be all dead. The historic buildings now belonged to other eyes.

  Her taxi driver finally got to the Avenida de la Independencia, full of civic buildings and restaurants, turned down Avenida de la Libertad, and then stopped the car; he got out and quickly opened the door for her. She paid him and added a generous tip in dollars.

  “This is a good place,” said Tomás. “On the same street there are three restaurants and a small shopping center.” He hesitated. “Will you allow me to give you some advice? It’s better not to go out at night. A white woman, alone? It’s unusual.”

  Clarence shivered, remembering her disastrous walk.

  “Don’t worry, Tomás.” She found it strange that they were being formal with each other, but he had started it, and she did not want to appear bad mannered. “And thank you. Tomorrow I have to go to the Sampaka plantation. Could you take me?”

  “Tomorrow …” Tomás thought for a few seconds. “Yes. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I don’t have school. I would be delighted to take you.”

  He paused, then let his curiosity get the better of him. “Do you know anyone in Sampaka?”

  “The manager. My father knows him. I’ve a meeting with him,” she answered with a half-truth.

  In fact, Clarence had sent an e-mail to a certain F. Garuz, asking if he could show her round the plantation for her studies, to which he had readily agreed. The surname coincided with the manager of the plantation in her father’s time and, as regards the “F.,” she had concluded that it would be too much coincidence that it could correspond to a …

  “With Mr. Garuz?” asked Tomás.

  “Don’t tell me you know him …”

  “This is a small island, miss. Here we all know one another!”

  She looked at him in amazement. “Ah, of course. Then would ten o’clock be all right?”

  “I’ll be here. Oh … who should I ask for?”

  Clarence realized that she had not told him her name. “My name is Clarence.”

  “Clarence! Like the city!”

  “Like the city.”

  After what she had read about Guinea, she supposed that in the following days, she would hear that comment more than once. She stretched out her hand.

  “Thanks again and until tomorrow, Tomás.”

  Back in her room, Clarence collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted. She could never have imagined such an intense first day. Luckily, she had plenty of time to rest before her trip to Sampaka, she thought with relief.

  At ten on the dot, Tomás stopped the car at the door of the hotel. As on the previous day, he was wearing khaki shorts, a white shirt, and sandals. Clarence, who at the last minute had decided to change from a long summer skirt into trousers and a jacket, waited for him with a frustrated look.

  It was pouring rain.

  “It looks like you won’t be able to tour the plantation today,” said Tomás. “We’re in wet season. Water and more water. Luckily, today, I don’t think there’ll be any tornadoes.”

  Clarence could not see anything, as the windows were spattered with heavy raindrops. She let herself b
e driven blind down the paved road. After about ten minutes, the car stopped at a tollbooth, where two bored guards, armed to the teeth, asked for the woman’s papers. Fortunately, the check went smoothly, as the guards knew Tomás.

  Immediately after the young man announced that he had just taken the turnoff that led to what had been the iconic plantation, Clarence’s heart jumped, and she pressed her nose against the window.

  “If it continues to rain like this,” Tomás predicted, “we won’t escape the poto-poto.”

  “And what’s that?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the blurred landscape.

  “The mud. I hope you don’t have to stay in Sampaka for too long, or we won’t be able to get back.”

  Just then, Clarence made out the white paint on the trunks of some enormous royal palm trees rising up into the sky like sacred guardians, immutable against the heavenly shower.

  “Stop the car, Tomás, please,” she asked in a shaky voice. “It will only be for a second.”

  She opened the window and let the same rain wet her face. Being in the place where Antón, Jacobo, and Kilian had been for years brought on a tormenting mix of joy and sadness. Clarence thought of the men in her family. To see with her own eyes what they had built decades ago filled her with a curious sense of nostalgia.

  How could she feel this way for a place she had never been? How was it possible that she could be filled with such a deep yearning for the memory of a loss she had yet to suffer?

  This is what Kilian and Jacobo must have felt when their eyes filled with tears on remembering their young years in Guinea. A slight tightness of the chest and throat. A dull pain in the pit of her stomach.

  “Are you feeling all right, Clarence?” Tomás asked. “Do you want me to continue?”

  “Yes, Tomás.” She already knew that she would come back here. She had to see it in the light of a resplendent day. “Let’s go into Sampaka.”

  From then on, the rain did not worry her. Even blindfolded, Clarence would have been able to draw out the car’s journey to the yard of red earth where the main house was built, big and square, partially supported by white columns, with a sloped roof and whitewashed walls highlighted by the green-painted wooden shutters, the same as the outside balcony that circled the upper part of the building, and a thick white-columned railing on both sides of the spectacular big steps.