Palm Trees in the Snow

by Luz Gabás

  She blushed. For an instant, she imagined if it was Jacobo and not Kilian who had been widowed like herself. Would anything remain of the sparks that flew between them when they were young? She stared at his inflated stomach and raised her eyes to the lines furrowed on his face.

  “Thank you very much, Jacobo,” she said in a neutral tone. “And for you too.”

  Daniela broke the brief silence. “Hello, Dad,” she said as Kilian came over to the group. “Do you want us to go home now? You look tired.”

  “We’ll go now.” He looked at Julia. “How are you?”

  “Not as well as you.” Julia waved to a person leaning on a car at the bottom of the slope. “One minute, I’m coming!” she shouted. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

  “I’ll walk with you to the car,” Kilian offered.

  He held out his arm so she would not slip on the slope, and they began to move away.

  “I’d like to ask you something.” Kilian requested as he paused and looked into her eyes. Despite the wrinkles, Julia was still an attractive woman. “Has Clarence told you about her trip to Guinea?”

  “Yes. In great detail.”

  She waited. His prominent facial features had softened over the years, and he had one or two dark marks on his cheeks and forehead, but his bearing, his voice, and his green eyes were the same as when he was on Fernando Po. She remembered the long conversations that they used to have when they were young and how lucky she felt to consider him a good friend. She thought she knew him well, but she had later been very disappointed. How could he have lived with that all his life? She would not have been so shocked if it were Jacobo, but him? Yes, it was a shock.

  “I burst into tears remembering.” Her tone got harder. “I suppose it was the same for both of you.”

  Kilian nodded. “Do you remember, Julia, how irritated Manuel used to get at the laborers and the Bubis with their beliefs in the spirits?”

  She nodded as a nostalgic smile appeared on her face.

  “After so many years on the island, I became a little affected by it. I don’t know how to explain it, but I have the feeling that one day everything will fall into place.”

  Julia pursed her lips. After a few seconds, she said, “I don’t really understand what you mean, but I hope it’s soon, Kilian. We’re closer to the grave than anywhere else.”

  “I can assure you I’ve no intention of dying …” He saw that she gave him a look of disbelief, and he changed to a forced joking tone. “Until the moment arrives. Until then, promise me that you’ll keep out of this.”

  “As if I hadn’t done that all these years?” she retorted. She looked at her friend who, beside the car, pointed at her watch. “Sorry, but I have to go.”

  “One more thing, Julia. You once told me that sometimes things are as we would wish them to be. You told me to worm out the reason why I didn’t want to go back to Pasolobino after my father’s death. We made a deal. I would explain my reasons to you and you would tell me a secret, which you then avoided telling me.”

  Julia’s eyes began to moisten. Was it possible that he remembered that conversation in such detail? How could she have told him, recently married as she was, that she still had feelings for Jacobo?

  “I still don’t agree with you, Julia. Most of the time, things are not the way we would like them to be.”

  Julia blinked hard to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks. She lowered her head and held on to the man’s arm.

  “When I said that, I was very young, Kilian. If only I could relive those years with the experience I have now …” She sighed deeply and walked away.

  When Kilian came back to the square, everyone except his niece had gone home.

  “Everything all right, Uncle?” Clarence asked. “I thought you were arguing.”

  “With Julia? That’s impossible. You must have misinterpreted.”

  Something I’ve become an expert at, she thought.

  Kilian held on to the young woman’s arm to begin the walk back to the house while the colored flags fluttered above their heads.

  Except for the burden of the memory of Iniko, which weighed on her heart, the hunch that Julia’s doubt had opened a new line in her investigation, Kilian’s downcast demeanor, and Jacobo’s continuous foul mood, to Clarence the summer festival of 2003 felt the same as always.

  She did not know then that the following year, one member of the family would be missing.

  The insistent autumn wind from the north stripped the trees of their leaves with unusual aggression.

  Carmen and Jacobo migrated down to Barmón and, unlike other years, spaced out their visits to the village more and more. Daniela had more work than normal in the health center and also enrolled in an online children’s medicine course that kept her busy every afternoon. And Clarence, who, like the leaves on the trees, did not exactly find herself at the calmest moment in her life, immersed herself in preparations for a couple of research articles, her classes, and her doctoral courses, which would all be happening after Christmas.

  On a gray November day, she received an e-mail from Laha letting her know he would be visiting his company’s facilities in Madrid in the middle of December. Clarence let out a shout of joy and quickly answered, inviting him to spend the Christmas holidays in Pasolobino with her family. To her pleasure, Laha accepted delightedly.

  Until the last minute, she dithered over revealing Laha’s identity, but finally opted to tell her family that she had invited a special friend—she put a lot of emphasis on the word—an engineer she had met in Guinea, to spend the holidays in Pasolobino. If this was the sign she had been waiting for, she did not want to miss Jacobo’s and Kilian’s reactions.

  Her mother was delighted with the idea—finally—of having a special friend of Clarence’s enjoying her stews. Her father complained from the other end of the phone that he would have to put up with a stranger during the family Christmas holidays and suggested spending the holiday period in the flat in Barmón for the first time. Daniela became very curious to know exact details about the man who was probably the cause of her cousin’s love problems. And Kilian came out of his daydreams to look at her with an indescribable expression in his eyes and said nothing, absolutely nothing. But after years of not smoking, he stretched out his hand to Clarence’s packet of cigarettes, took one, leaned over one of the four Advent candles that Carmen had placed in the center of the table with a green pine wreath, and lit it.

  And Clarence, she felt enormously happy—although nervous—with the possibility of having the brother of her unforgettable Iniko near her.

  Or should she start thinking of Laha as her brother?

  12

  Báixo la Néu

  In the Snow

  The journey by train and coach from Madrid to Pasolobino was not comfortable, but at least it allowed him to get a sweeping view of the country that had so influenced his own.

  Laha was really looking forward to seeing Clarence and her beautiful village, but he was especially anxious to spend a few days with a Spanish family. Without knowing it, his new friend had awoken surprising feelings of curiosity in him, which could even be described as slightly morbid. He would now have the chance to imagine how his life would have been if his white father had taken care of him. Why would it be so outlandish to assume that his father was Spanish and that somewhere, there lived people he shared blood with?

  The fact that Laha was one of the many did not mean that he had taken the absence of a father figure well. Iniko, at least, could name his. Laha could not. When he was a boy, any lie would have consoled him. How many times had he dreamed that his father was an explorer devoured by a lion after a terrible fight or a man who had to leave on a secret mission? As he grew up and began to understand the reality, his questions became direct and incisive. He had tried to get his grandfather to tell him where he came from, but he only told him to ask his mother, who was inflexible and repeated to him hundreds of times that he was just Bisila’s son.
/>
  He remembered having searched his mother’s house, looking for some memory or clue. His fragile reward had been the fragment of a blurred photo of a white man leaning on a truck, along with the sparse images of Bisila’s childhood. She never found out that he had removed this photo from the rest just long enough to make a copy that, since then, he always kept in his wallet. It was foolish, but for a long time, he had treated this faceless man as his father.

  With the passing of time, Laha had managed to accept that his mother’s story was no different from those of Mamá Sade and so many others and that his father had abandoned them without a guilty conscience. He was not the first nor the last, which was no consolation, but this made his interest in finding out who he was disappear. What was the point in looking for someone who did not care about his own child? Laha had forgotten about him and had happily gone on with his life.

  … until Clarence appeared.

  He looked at his watch. He had been on the bus for two hours, and it had just then taken a turn away from the lowlands toward the mountains. From fields covered in furrows, where the vines shrank in the cold, he passed almost without warning to a halfway zone of rolling hills, a reservoir, and towns and villages each time smaller in size. Little by little, the architecture changed. Instead of apartment blocks, he saw brick houses of no more than three or four stories, some old, some newer, and others with the crane ready to intervene. He got the impression that all those places had been transforming for years: they showed the cheerful aspect of all the small places that for centuries have been yearning for the arrival of civilization, with all its consequences.

  However, when the bus began to travel along the last part of the route, Laha’s heart shrank. The road became so narrow that he had the sensation that there was not enough space between the precipice over the river and the mountain to his right. For forty minutes, the bus fought against the sharp bends gouged from the rock of the narrow canyon before breaking into a new landscape.

  What the hell had sent men from here to a place as different as Equatorial Guinea? Had it just been out of necessity or also because of a faint sensation of claustrophobia?

  The valley in which Pasolobino was located was surrounded by enormous mountains whose foothills were covered in fields and forests with rocky crests. The small villages spread around the slopes and hillsides painted two pictures: the dark houses of stone, with steeply sloped roofs and robust chimneys, mixed with fresh new houses.

  When it seemed as if there were no more mountains, the bus stopped in a town called Cerbeán. Laha finally arrived at his destination on Christmas Eve, on an afternoon when it snowed as much as it ever could. While the previous day had been calm and peaceful, flakes as big as hazelnuts now fell.

  A woman wrapped up in an anorak, with a woolen hat, gloves, scarf, and a pair of high thick rubber-soled boots, waved her arm to get his attention. The only visible part of her body was her unmistakable smile. Laha felt a special joy on seeing his friend. He was certain he was going to have an unforgettable holiday.

  Clarence thought that Laha looked wonderful. He wore a dark woolen coat, a scarf, and a brown pair of leather ankle boots that gave him the appearance of a city gent. They gave each other a friendly hug, which Clarence held a little longer, imagining Laha’s arms were his brother’s.

  No, she said to herself. Iniko was bigger.

  “You don’t know how happy I am to see you.” Clarence stepped away and gave him another smile. “I hope you don’t mind the snow!”

  “On Bioko, it doesn’t stop raining for six months of the year.” Laha chuckled. “I think I can put up with a little snow!”

  Clarence drove along the path opened up by the snowplow on the steep, narrow, and winding road. During the drive to the House of Rabaltué, they brought each other up to date.

  “How is your brother?” she asked offhand. She felt incapable of saying his name.

  “Iniko goes on with his daily routine, his work, his children, his meetings … ,” Laha responded. “When you left, he started brooding again. You know he’s not very talkative.”

  He was very talkative with me, she thought. And he laughed a lot.

  “He sends you his best regards.”

  As they approached, Clarence began to get nervous. She had told her family about Laha, but they did not know that he was the special guest for the Christmas holidays. How would they react?

  “We’re almost there,” she announced in a high-pitched voice. “Get ready not to move from the dinner table until tomorrow afternoon! And I’ll give you some basic advice. Hesitating when my mother offers you more food is the same as saying yes.”

  Inside the House of Rabaltué, Carmen opened and shut the oven door, waiting for that small sign that would tell her that the roast was perfect. Clarence had finally invited a friend to spend Christmas with them; Carmen had the firm intention of, after giving him a thorough going-over, making a good impression, starting with her culinary skills.

  Kilian had been restless all day. He first blamed this restlessness on the unsettling calm that he felt, like just before a big snowstorm or a tornado. But this afternoon, he felt something different, something more intense and difficult to explain, as if a silent gust of wind were going right through him. He shivered.

  He looked at Jacobo, who was showing unusual interest in the king’s Christmas speech on the television. He still had not dared talk to him alone about the news and presents that Clarence had brought from Guinea, but Kilian knew that the memories had to be preoccupying his brother as much as him. They had spent so many years acting as if nothing had really happened. Neither of them wanted to risk breaking their pact of silence. But Jacobo must have realized that Clarence was suspicious. How much did she know? Could Bisila have told her something?

  Jacobo turned, and his eyes met Kilian’s. He frowned. Why was Kilian being so odd? Was it not his daughter who had chosen the holidays to introduce them to a special friend? Carmen was very excited, hoping the invitation meant that the relationship was serious. Jacobo had mixed feelings about the news. He did not feel like making a good impression on a stranger who might or might not end up being part of the family. It made him feel older than he already was, and he did not like that one bit. Ah well, it was the law of life. He was happy for his daughter, whom he loved more than anything else in the world. He promised himself to try and behave around the lad.

  “Family!” The door opened and Clarence entered. “We’re here!

  “I’d like you to meet Fernando Laha. Everyone knows him as Laha, pronounced in low pitch and with the h sounding as an x …” She stepped to one side, swallowed hard, nervous, and concentrated on everyone’s reaction, especially those of her father and uncle.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing to welcome this tall and attractive man. He greeted them with a beaming smile and, in spite of being in a strange house, oozed confidence.

  Carmen twisted her lips in a silent whistle of surprise. Jacobo jumped out of his seat, as if he had seen a ghost. Kilian remained still, looking at Laha very closely, and tears welled up in his eyes. Daniela dropped the box of golden stars that she had been decorating the tablecloth with. They scattered and turned the floor into a fleeting celestial mosaic as she hurried to gather them up, blushing at her clumsiness.

  Carmen was the first to greet him. Laha handed her a box of chocolates.

  “There is a shop in Madrid,” he said in a confidential tone, “called Cacao Sampaka. It’s got nothing to do with the plantation, but I’ve been told that they have the best chocolates in the world. I thought it would be a good opportunity to see if it’s true.”

  Carmen thanked him while out of the corner of her eye, she saw her husband’s face go paler and paler.

  Jacobo tried to control himself. Fernando Laha? One of Bisila’s children? This was the person his daughter had fallen in love with? It was not possible. In God’s name! If Carmen knew! He cursed the bad luck that had put his daughter in contact with the only people
on the whole island she shouldn’t have met. Could Laha know what had happened with his mother? Kilian and he had managed to bury it. Then how was it possible that he noticed an expectant glow in his brother’s eyes? Unless Kilian knew of the existence of this lad … and he had not said anything? Jacobo remembered the scrap of a letter that he had read many years ago, when he had been looking for a deed in the sitting room. He had not given it much thought then, but now it took on a whole new meaning. Clarence and Laha together? Jacobo shook his head. He did not yet know how, but he would make sure that his daughter did not get too involved with this man.

  Laha went over to say hello, and Jacobo coldly shook his hand. Carmen went over to her daughter.

  “He’s very handsome, Clarence,” she whispered, “but you should have warned us. Have you seen your father’s face?”

  Clarence did not answer, carefully watching Kilian and Laha. Her uncle took his hand affectionately between his enormous hands for several seconds, as if he wanted to make sure he was real, and did not stop looking into his eyes. So many years wondering what he looked like, and now he had the answer in front of him! Everything was starting to fit into place. He heard Jacobo mumbling under his breath.

  Kilian let Laha’s hand go and went over to his brother while Clarence introduced Daniela, who seemed to dither on the best way to greet the young man. She finally put out her hand, which Laha went to shake just when she got on tiptoes to give him two kisses. The scene ended in laughter.

  Carmen interrupted to announce that the dinner would be ready in a few minutes. Clarence showed Laha to the guest room so he could unpack his bags. Soon after, when he entered the dining room, Clarence had just placed the box of chocolates in the center of the table beautifully decorated by Daniela. For the first time in that house, the name of Sampaka would be with them throughout the evening.

  Everyone agreed that Carmen had prepared an unforgettable meal. The first course was Christmas soup, with tapioca and broth cooked for hours over a low heat, followed by eggs stuffed with foie gras on a bed of fine slivers of the best Spanish Jabugo ham accompanied by prawns and tender broad beans; for the third course, she surprised them with the finest roast lamb and sliced roasted potatoes they had had in years; and for dessert, she managed to get the island of beaten egg white to perfectly float on a lake of homemade custard.