“Ah.”
Julia could not stop looking at Laha. His thick hair, his wide forehead, his firm jaw, his rounded chin, his eyes . . . It was him. As clear as the snow that covered the fields. Clarence had found him, but was she sure? She looked at Daniela. The girl’s cheeks were reddened, and she had a special gleam in her big brown eyes. Would she know?
A brief silence ensued.
“And are you here sightseeing?” Daniela asked, just to say something.
“We have a reservation in the restaurant.” Julia pointed to the building behind her and looked at Laha. “I hope you enjoy your stay in our valley.”
Laha gave her a roguish smile and looked at Daniela out of the corner of his eye. “I can assure you that I will.”
Daniela bit her bottom lip to stop from laughing.
They watched the women enter the restaurant. Daniela took the car keys from her bag.
“But weren’t we going to have dinner there as well?” Laha asked.
“It’s just that I’ve thought of a better place,” she replied.
With Julia and Ascensión there, she would not be able to even brush the tips of her fingers against Laha without them noticing. Her dream restaurant suddenly seemed small and stuffy.
Julia found the perfect excuse to visit the House of Rabaltué the following day.
“They are organizing a reunion of old friends of Fernando Po in Madrid at Easter,” she announced. “From our group, Manuel and Mateo will be missing, but it could be very nice. You should come.” She turned to Carmen. “You too, of course.”
“Too many memories . . . ,” said Jacobo before addressing his brother. “Would you like to go?”
Kilian shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Are their children also invited?” Clarence asked.
“Of course, but you’d get bored, Clarence,” said Ascensión. “What would you do with a load of old codgers reminiscing over their youth?”
“Oh, I love finding out things about my father’s past.”
Daniela had tuned out from the conversation a while ago. Almost all that afternoon’s questions had begun with a Do you remember . . . and ended in a deep sigh. Both Ascensión and Julia reached for their hankies on several occasions, while Jacobo and Kilian pursed their lips and slowly bobbed their heads. Daniela wondered how Carmen could put up with anecdote after anecdote of a past she did not share, but there she was, with a pleasant smile fixed on her face. The same as Clarence, who did not miss the smallest detail. Daniela was convinced that if she had a pen in hand, her cousin would be taking notes. Daniela yawned and fixed her eyes on the flames. There was nothing left of the pile of logs that Kilian had prepared, and nobody seemed to be in any rush.
She looked up, and her eyes met Laha’s. A pleasurable shiver ran through her, and she decided to take the chance to escape. Would Laha get the message?
“I’m going to go and fetch some wood before the fire goes out,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Do you need help?”
She smiled and nodded.
As soon as they entered the small woodshed, Laha’s kisses made her forget the boredom of the last couple of hours. For the moment, they would have to make do with those fleeting encounters.
Inside the house, Clarence took mental note of everything. She was just as interested in what they said as in what they did not say. Julia had not stopped glancing from Jacobo to Laha and back again. Perhaps she was comparing them? And now that Laha had gone out, the woman’s attention continued to focus on Jacobo, as if there were nobody else in the room. She even thought she had seen her mother frowning on a couple of occasions.
“Ascensión . . .” Clarence decided to steer the conversation. “What was the thing that you most hated leaving behind?”
“Oh dear. Everything. The color, the heat, the freedom . . . I noticed a big change when we came back to Spain.” Ascensión smiled for the first time that day. “I remember sometimes, I was just talking normally about how . . . well, how the coloreds lived, and many in our circle of friends looked at me in shock. Afterward, Mateo told me off for being so open.”
“They must have thought we had grown up in the jungle.” Julia laughed.
“I suppose it was hard”—Clarence coughed—“to say good-bye to so many friends.”
Julia peered at Clarence. She was still searching . . . Julia saw Kilian and Jacobo shoot a quick glance at each other. They had yet to reveal Laha’s identity. She hoped that Ascensión was careful with her answers. The previous night it had taken Julia a lot of effort to make little of the fact that one of Bisila’s sons was staying in Kilian and Jacobo’s house. She put it down to coincidence, but she was not sure she had convinced her.
“In fact, our friends were foreigners like ourselves,” Ascensión was saying. “Although I have asked myself once or twice what ever became of our cook and her family.”
Clarence decided to divert the question to the men in her most innocent voice. “And you? Did either of you miss anyone when you left? Anyone special?”
Kilian took a thin metal poker and stoked the embers. Jacobo looked at Carmen, smiled weakly, and answered, “As Ascensión has said, our real friends were all whites. Well, of course I’ve sometimes wondered about the wachimán Yeremías, or about Simón, who you met, or about one or another of the laborers . . . I suppose you’re the same, right, Kilian?”
Kilian made a small movement with his head.
And Bisila, Dad? thought Clarence. You never thought about her?
The door opened, and Laha and Daniela entered, each of them carrying several logs. Clarence noticed that her cousin’s cheeks were red and her lips slightly swollen.
“It’s freezing cold!” exclaimed Daniela in answer to Clarence’s scrutinizing gaze. “And the north wind is getting up.”
Julia looked at her watch.
“We’d better go. It’s quite late.”
Carmen politely insisted that they stay a little longer. It was clear that she had not enjoyed the conversation at all.
Kilian, Jacobo, and Clarence accompanied them to the car. Clarence took Julia’s arm, and they walked behind the others.
“Tell me one thing, Julia.” Julia grew tense. “How do you think my father is looking?”
“How . . . what?” asked Julia in surprise. “Well, I don’t know, Clarence . . . How would you be, in such a complicated situation?”
Clarence looked for an answer to Julia’s question. How would she feel if she had abandoned a child thousands of kilometers away and, more than thirty years later, she saw herself forced to spend a few days with him under the same roof? Nervous, bad tempered, irritated, restless, and tetchy.
Exactly what Jacobo had been like since Laha had arrived in Pasolobino.