In one of nature’s whims, at the foot of Pasolobino’s highest peaks, an exceptional karstic phenomenon occurred.
The river was gobbled up and flowed along a subterranean path robbed from the rock. The acidic meltwater was capable of dissolving rock. The subterranean water made new galleries and bends along which the river flowed away from any sunlight. After several kilometers, the river reappeared in other lands, in another valley. It resurfaced in the form of a huge fountain that contributed to the flow of water in another river, which, once joined, fed into the French coast, far from its source.
In her dream, Kilian and Daniela leaned over the huge chasm.
Daniela was happy for the mysterious journey the waters would take before a happy ending.
And oddly enough, in Daniela’s dream, Kilian was not sad. On the contrary, he gave her a triumphant smile.
He knew that the same water that entered the dark caves and remained hidden from the outside world, after eroding and dissolving the rock, would find a way to the surface.
In the end, it found a way out.
14
Temps de Espináulos
Time of Thorns
April 2004
As soon as the family left for Madrid to attend the gathering of old friends of Fernando Po, Daniela gave in to her excitement.
She went through every room in the house to make sure everything was perfect. This time, Laha would sleep with her in her beautiful blue room, decorated in antique furniture, all belonging to her great-grandparents, her grandfather Antón’s parents. An enormous bed, its size a rarity from that time, took over the room. Daniela could hardly wait to have Laha with her under the feather-filled eiderdown.
She crossed to her father’s bedroom, smaller than hers and simply decorated with honey-stained pine furniture. The only decorations in the room were two etchings, one of St. Kilian and the other a sad-faced black image of Our Lady, hanging on the wall opposite the head of the bed. These were the first two things her father saw when he woke up and the last things before he went to sleep.
Her eyes wandered over the room.
On top of the bedside table was Kilian’s old wallet.
For his trip to Madrid, Daniela had managed to get her father to try out the wallet that she had given him on Christmas Eve. She herself had hurriedly changed over the documents and the numerous pieces of paper filled with telephone numbers and notes after a lot of insisting, just before he got into the car with Jacobo. Her father was reluctant to hand it over, and she had had to promise that she would take only the money, credit cards, and his ID and that she would keep it in the drawer of his bedside table with the others.
She went over to the table to put it away. As she bent down to open the drawer, which always got stuck, her eyes noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under the bed, half hidden by the rug.
She picked it up and saw that it was a black-and-white photo of a beautiful smiling black woman with a small boy in her arms.
Daniela did not know who they were. She had not seen the photo before. What she did know was that the author of Guinea in Pasolobinese had asked the people of the valley who had traveled to Guinea decades ago for material. Maybe this was one of the few photos Kilian found when rooting around in the sitting room cabinet. In fact, several images of the Rabaltué brothers appeared in the book.
Yes, that would be it.
She put it in the drawer and went down to the kitchen to get dinner ready. It would not be long before Laha got there.
In a hotel in the center of Madrid, Jacobo and Kilian did not stop chatting. As well as meeting Marcial and Mercedes, Clarence had also met a wizened old man in a wheelchair named Gregorio, whom her uncle had given a cold greeting to.
The celebration was marred by the recent terrorist attack on four suburban trains in Madrid, which had seen almost two hundred people lose their lives. Even so, most conversations revolved around Guinea. Many commented on the brief headline that had appeared in the press about the setting up in Madrid of a government of Equatorial Guinea in exile, aimed at giving a democratic option to the country by returning to Malabo and preparing open and democratic general elections. Clarence had quite quickly divided the guests into two groups: the outdated colonists, like her father, who defended the theory that Guineans lived better under the colony, and the paternalistic conservatives, like her uncle, who claimed that Spain had a historic debt to the old colony and that something should be done to compensate for the abuses of the past.
She wondered if anyone was there like herself or Fernando Garuz, who thought that the mother country and the ex-colony did not owe each other anything. The best thing would be simply to respect the decisions of the small country. Why not treat it as an equal, as a partner, as an independent and sovereign republic to do business with?
Clarence took a glass and sat down in an armchair until the meal began. She missed Daniela, even if their last conversation had been unsettling. There were very few of their generation there. Daniela had accused her of being jealous that she was spending more time with Laha than Clarence. She remembered choking on her whiskey. If anything, Clarence was simply bitter that distance had not undermined Daniela’s and Laha’s feelings toward each other. No matter how frustrating it was to admit that she missed Iniko a lot, she was aware that in her case, once the initial passion had passed, her relationship would not have worked.
To convince Daniela she was wrong, Clarence had opened her heart and confessed her own romance with Iniko. Daniela had bombarded her with questions, wanting to compare the two relationships. She was especially interested to know if the cultural differences with Laha could become too much . . . Maybe Daniela had thought about changing Pasolobino for Malabo? Just in case, Clarence recounted all the difficulties she would have to face, one by one, in great detail. She wanted Daniela to think about what she was leaving behind and the problems she would face in adapting to a country like Guinea, assuming that she and Laha decided to settle there, even if only temporarily. How could she be happy under those conditions?
It was very clear to Daniela, even if it seemed to Clarence she was only repeating Laha’s words, there was much to do in an emerging state, a country with new infrastructure and big plans for the future. To end, she had roundly stated, “I can’t be happy anywhere without Laha.”
If things were moving that quickly, thought Clarence, Daniela could not really delay talking to Laha.
She took a large swig from her glass.
Both of them were in Pasolobino, and it was Saturday.
Could she have told him yet?