Clarence had a terrible feeling. She looked down at her knuckles, white from clenching her fists.
“Laha’s real father is Kilian. Your uncle sent money regularly to take care of him. At first, he did it through my husband and the doctors from the humanitarian organizations. When Manuel stopped traveling to the island, it was Lorenzo Garuz who passed on the money. He gave it to an intermediary so Bisila was not associated with any white man. I should have told you. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I was always referring to Dad! The day you were in our house with Ascensión, you told me that Dad had also suffered . . .”
“I was referring to what happened to Mosi! Oh my God!” Julia got up and quickly walked away.
Clarence remained sitting with her face in her hands, crestfallen. Minutes later, she retired to her room, saying that something she had had at dinner had not agreed with her. She called her cousin, both the home phone and the cell, but got no answer.
She lay on her bed and broke down crying with all her might.
Not even the journey from Malabo had felt so long and painful as the journey from Madrid to Pasolobino on Easter Sunday. Clarence had to make a real effort to make sure her parents and uncle did not suspect that she was suffering from more than just indigestion.
While the others unloaded the car, she ran to Daniela’s room.
Daniela was sitting in a corner, surrounded by dozens of tissues, with her knees in her chest and her hair tossed over her face. In her right hand, she held a piece of paper. She raised her head to look at Clarence with her beautiful eyes swollen.
She had not found anything to prove it was not true, that it was a mix-up, an inexplicable and damned twist of fate.
“He’s gone,” Daniela repeated over and over again between sobs.
Clarence sat down beside her and gently put her arm around her shoulders.
“How could he abandon him? What was he thinking?”
Daniela raised the piece of paper she was holding in her hand. She could barely contain her rage when she added, “Laha has the same scarified el?bó that Dad has on his left armpit. Do you want to know where Laha has his? My God! I’m embarrassed even to think about it!” She rubbed her temples as thick tears started to roll down her cheeks again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to face him . . . No. You’ll have to do it. You’ll talk to them, Clarence. Today. Right now.”
“I’ll try.”
How was Clarence going to put the question to Jacobo? Would she look into his eyes and say, “Dad, I know that Laha is Kilian and Bisila’s son. Dad, have you noticed that Laha and Daniela have fallen in love? Dad, have you any idea how terrible this is?”
Daniela shook her head with her eyes closed. She had stopped crying, but she felt exhausted.
“Unforgivable!” she murmured between gritted teeth. “They have no excuse, either of them!”
“It was a different time, Daniela,” answered Clarence, remembering Mamá Sade’s son. “White men with black women. Many children were born from these relationships . . .”
Daniela was not listening to her. “You might think I’m crazy or sick, but you know what, Clarence? I even thought I could continue seeing Laha! No one, apart from ourselves, would have to know the truth. My feelings for him can’t change overnight.”
Clarence got up and went over to the window. She saw the drops from an intermittent drizzle trembling on the leaves of the nearby ash trees.
If she had not opened the cabinet where the letters were kept, if she had not found the note and asked Julia, if she had not gone to Bioko, none of this would be happening. Life in the mountains of Pasolobino would continue just the same as always. The embers of an old fire would have gone out with the death of the parents, and nobody would have known that somewhere else in the world flowed the same blood that flowed through their own veins.
And no harm would have come of it.
But it was not to be. With her search, without realizing it, she had blown over the dying ashes to reawaken them. Now it would take them a long time to go out again.
The search had come to an end, but the grail contained poisoned wine.
Clarence ran down the stairs, looking for her father, and found him in the garage. She took a deep breath. “Will you come for a walk with me? It’s a lovely afternoon.”
Jacobo arched his eyebrows, not surprised by the invitation but by the fact that his daughter thought that the afternoon was beautiful, but immediately nodded and agreed. “Fine,” he answered. “It’ll do me good to stretch my legs after such a long drive.”
The furious north wind of the previous night had abated enough to allow them to walk without fear of a tree branch falling, although it did kick up from time to time to bring down some of the squall from the peaks and whip up a fine powder of the remains of the snow that clung to the barren fields.
Clarence held on to her father’s arm and began up the path from the rear of the house toward a terrace with a beautiful panoramic view of the valley and the ski slopes.
Clarence mustered all her courage and told him everything.
She was going backward and forward in time as she recounted her tale, in such a way that the names of Antón, Kilian, Jacobo, José, Simón, Bisila, Mosi, Iniko, Laha, Daniela, Sampaka, Pasolobino, and Bissappoo disappeared and reappeared like the underground karst waters of a mysterious river.
At the end of her story, Clarence, nerves on edge, dared to ask the question. “It’s true, isn’t it, Dad?”
Jacobo breathed with difficulty.
“Please, Dad, I’m begging you. Did it happen like that?”
Jacobo’s face was beet red, his jowls trembling. He had listened to Clarence’s story without opening his mouth, without breathing, without interrupting her.
Jacobo kept his eyes fixed on his daughter for several seconds and then turned his back on her. His whole body shook. He started going down the slope, and an unexpected gust of wind carried his final words to his daughter.
“Damn it, Clarence! Damn it!”
Two days later, the obstinate silence of Jacobo had spread through the rest of the house.
Carmen went around the rooms with a notebook, writing down the things that needed to be done when the good weather came, from washing the curtains to painting a room, without forgetting the stock in the larder. She did not understand what had happened to her husband. He had been so happy in Madrid.
“It must be this village.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is, but his mood changes here.”
Daniela kept herself occupied in her room, desperately hoping that her e-mail or telephone would alert her of a new message that never arrived.
And Clarence’s patience was wearing thin. Had Jacobo told Kilian yet?
She decided to look for her uncle in the garden. At that time of year, he began the annual task of clearing the stubble, branches, and leaves to get the soil ready for the summer.