The new botuku walked on a few meters accompanied by the enthusiastic shouts of his neighbors and sat down on a rudimentary stone throne where he was crowned with a headpiece of goat horns and pheasant and parrot feathers. In his right hand was a scepter, a cane with a goat’s skull on top and with corded shells hanging. Everyone, Kilian included, made a high-pitched noise to express their excitement.
When Kilian shouted in unison with the crowd, he felt Bisila’s soft fingers cradle his own, and he caressed her palm with his thumb, memorizing her creases and savoring the gaps in her fingers.
An old man approached the chief and placed his hands on his head, murmuring a prayer in which he urged him to honor previous chiefs. He finished his sermon with a phrase that Kilian repeated in a low voice after Bisila translated it for him.
“Do not drink any water that is not from the mountains or the rain.”
Kilian nodded. For someone who came from a valley surrounded by high peaks, the words had a special meaning. For him there was no purer water than that from melted snow.
Bisila squeezed his hand a little more tightly before letting it go. As best he could, he again focused his attention on the ceremony with his heart beating wildly. A group of men escorted the new king, all dressed as warriors and armed with long wide-bladed serrated spears and enormous cowhide shields. All were well built and muscular, and the vast majority bore scarification on different parts of their bodies. They had dyed their hair—which, for some, fell in tiny braids like Bisila’s—with reddish mud.
She pointed to two of them.
“Look who’s there!”
It took a bit for Kilian to make out Simón, one of the ancient warriors! It was the first time that Kilian had seen African warriors with his own eyes, as the wars had ended years ago, and they dressed up only on special occasions.
“Despite his youth,” Bisila commented, “Simón is a good keeper of the customs of our people.”
“And who is that beside him?”
“Don’t you remember my brother Sóbeúpo?”
“But surely he was just a child the other day! And look at him now. All grown up.”
“Yes, Kilian. Time passes quickly . . .”
Especially when we are together, they both thought.
The ceremony ended, and the festivities began that, according to Bisila, would last a week. They would do nothing but eat, drink, and dance one balele after another.
“It’s a shame we can’t stay that long,” he complained.
“We should make the best of what we have,” she replied.
During the banquet, Kilian and Bisila kept a prudent distance from each other, although every now and then, they pretended to scan the scene to steal a look at each other. Beside José, his sons, and other men, Kilian ate goat meat with yams and bangásúpu, or banga sauce, and drank topé, the palm wine, and brandy.
José cajoled Kilian into taking his shoes off and trying to imitate the men’s dance, which was not easy, as he did not have an African or any other beat in his body. However, he was pleased that the Bubi dances had a slower tempo than the hectic dances of the Nigerian laborers.
With his eyes closed, he managed to relax his body and feel the syncopated rhythm of the bells guiding his feet. A sudden shiver made him open his eyes, and he turned to meet Bisila’s clear gaze, shining in the reflection of the bonfire’s flames. Without taking his eyes from her, he danced as well as he could manage, without stiffness. His efforts were rewarded by the approving smile she held on her lips until the dance ended. Though a bit dizzy, he accepted a final bowl of palm wine from José and began to wander around, saluting everyone, just like Bisila, with the aim of getting a few seconds together with her.
He remembered festivals in Pasolobino: the men clambering up a tree trunk placed in the square, the dances to the beat of the castanets decorated with colored ribbons, the band music, the saint’s procession . . .
Kilian realized that he had thought about Pasolobino and its inhabitants very little lately. He hardly missed them at all! When did that start? He was sure it began with Bisila.
Even his own mother had reproached him by letter that his notes were getting shorter and shorter, centered only on managing the House of Rabaltué.
Jacobo had commented on it as well, maybe because Mariana had written that she was worried about Kilian, but had not gone into detail because he himself was too busy with work, his friends, and parties. It had been years since they had shared the same pastimes and companions. They had a good deal: each one led his own life and did not meddle in the other’s.
Jacobo would never have imagined Kilian falling in love with a black woman. For him, native women were for enjoyment, not love. Even if he found out that his brother was smitten, he would strongly insist that the affair did not have any future. It was just a question of time before they left. Jacobo did not know of any white man who had taken his black mistress to Spain.
Kilian closed his eyes and let the African songs, the smell of the food, and the taste of the palm wine take control of his senses.
There would be other hard days of work and decision making, but at that moment, he was in Africa sharing some days of festivity with good friends.
At that moment, he had Bisila beside him. He needed nothing else.
It was very dark when Kilian retired to the cabin that they had prepared for the only white man at the party, one that continued on with intensity. He had decided to disappear before the drink left him out for the count, and after Bisila, tired, had said good night to all. When she was gone, a terrible feeling of loneliness came over him. He had been tempted to drown his sorrow in topé. Fortunately, common sense had come to his rescue. He wanted all his senses, if even the possibility existed that something more than flirting might happen with Bisila.
On crossing the threshold, he felt a sharp pain in his right foot. He looked down and saw that he had cut himself on something. Blood began to flow from the wound. He went in to look for a piece of cloth to cover his foot. The sight of his own blood made him feel dizzy and somewhat light-headed.
The door opened, and to his relief, he saw it was Bisila.
A gasp of admiration escaped his throat.
She had taken off her European clothes and dressed up in shells and glass beads like the other Bubi women. Her body shone from the reddish and ochre oils she had painted herself with. They had to be special, thought Kilian, because they did not smell like the typical ntola ointments. She was wearing a colored garment around her body, which stuck to her like a second skin.
Bisila felt the pleasant heat of Kilian’s intense gaze, but she saw the wound and knelt down to get a closer look.
“What happened to you?” she asked as she gently took his foot in her hands. “I always end up kneeling before you,” she joked.
Kilian smiled. “I stepped on something.”
Bisila dampened a piece of cloth in a bowl of water and washed the wound carefully.
“You’ve got a palm shoot stuck in you.”
Kilian opened his eyes, surprised. “You mean to say there is a palm tree growing right in the middle of the door?”
“At our doors, we place Achatina shells with holes in them, through which we put palm shoots.”