“And you, Kilian?” asked Manuel. “How do you feel starting this adventure? Nervous?”
Kilian had taken an instant liking to the doctor. He was a young man, around thirty, medium height, fairly thin, fair haired, and fair skinned, with intelligent blue eyes behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. His deliberate way of talking proved that he was an educated and serious man, though—like Kilian—he became open and friendly with a little alcohol.
“A little,” Kilian replied. It was hard for him to admit that he was actually very frightened. He had gone from raising livestock to having drinks with a real doctor in the best nightspot in the region’s capital. “But I’m very lucky to be in good company.”
Jacobo gave him a loud slap on the back.
“Don’t be ashamed, Kilian. You’re scared out of your wits! But we have all gone through this—right, Manuel?”
Manuel agreed and took a sip of his drink. “On my first journey, I was ready to turn back when I reached Bata. But the next time, it was as if I had never done anything other than travel to Fernando Po.” He paused. “It gets into your blood. The same as the damn mosquitoes. You’ll see.”
After three hours, many drinks, and a red tin of thin Craven A cigarettes, which Kilian found pleasantly mild compared to the strong black tobacco of home, the brothers said good-bye to Manuel and returned, unsteadily and with glazed eyes, to the hostel. On reaching the Plaza de Espa?a, they crossed the tramline, and Jacobo rushed down the stairs to the public toilets. Kilian waited for him above, leaning on an iron railing. The neon-lit signs on the surrounding roof terraces helped the stout four-armed streetlights illuminate the square and its center, a fountain with a bronze statue on a stone battlement pedestal.
Under a cross, an angel stretched one arm toward the sky and held a wounded man without the strength to clutch the fallen weapon at his feet. Kilian went over and concentrated on the inscription that a lady, also cast in bronze, held in her hands. He learned that the angel on the pedestal represented Faith and that the monument was dedicated to the martyrs of religion and the fatherland. He raised his eyes to the heavens, his view blocked by neon words—“Avecrem,” “Gallina Blanca,” “Iberia Radio,” “Longines: The Best Watch,” “Dispak Tablets,” “Phillips.” It was an effort to think straight. He felt a little dizzy, and the alcohol was not the only culprit. He had left home just hours earlier, but it felt like centuries. And from what he had gathered from Manuel and Jacobo’s conversation, he still had a long and strange journey ahead. He returned his gaze to the statue of Faith and prayed for luck and strength.
“Well, Kilian?” Jacobo’s mellow voice startled him. “What do you think of your first night away from Mom?” He put his arm around his brother’s shoulder and began to walk. “A lot of new things today, weren’t there? What you saw in Ambos Mundos is nothing compared to what’s next . . . Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
“More or less.”
Jacobo put his hand on his forehead.
“I can’t wait to drink the whiskey in Santa Isabel! That one doesn’t give you a hangover. You’ll see. Have you packed painkillers?”
Kilian nodded, and Jacobo gave him a slap on the back.
“Well, tell me, what do you most want to see?”
Kilian paused. “I think it’s the sea, Jacobo,” he replied. “I have never seen the sea.”
Although it was his first time traveling by boat, Kilian did not get seasick. Many of the passengers wandered on deck, haggard and green faced. It seemed that seasickness was not cured by traveling more often, as his brother did not look so great, and this was his third time on the Ciudad de Sevilla. That something this size could float was beyond him. His relationship with free-running water had been limited to catching trout in the small streams of Pasolobino.
Kilian thought of his mother, his sister, and their life in Pasolobino. How far away it all was from the middle of this ocean. He remembered the cold that had followed them to Zaragoza and later by train to Madrid. The closer they got to Cádiz, the better the temperature became, and so did his state of mind as he received a frame-by-frame view of Spain on the durable tropical sleepers of the railway lines. When the ship left port and dozens of people waved white handkerchiefs in the air with tears in their eyes, the thought of his loved ones made him sentimental, but Jacobo, Manuel, and other companions planning to work in the colony had helped cheer him. Thus far, the voyage had been enjoyable, though he could not remember having so many days of rest in his whole life.
Always full of nervous energy, Kilian thought this much leisure was an unforgivable waste. He was already looking forward to some physical work. How different he was from Jacobo, who always looked for the chance to rest! He turned his head to look at his brother, reclining in a comfortable chair beside him, a hat covering his face. From the time they had left Cádiz, and even more so since Tenerife, Jacobo had done nothing except sleep during the day and spend the nights partying with his friends in the piano room or Veranda Bar. Between the alcohol and the seasickness, he was constantly tired.
Kilian, however, tried to get the most out of everything he did. Every afternoon, in addition to practicing his broken English with a dictionary, Naijalingo, he read the back issues of the magazine La Guinea Espa?ola to get an idea of the world he would occupy, at least for the next eighteen months of his first campaign. The full campaign added up to twenty-four months, but the last six, also paid, were a holiday. And the contract had begun the moment he left Cádiz. He had spent almost two weeks getting paid to read.
In all the issues of the magazine on board—all published the previous year, 1952—the same ads appeared in the same order. First was the advert for the Dumbo stores on Calle Sacramento de Santa Isabel, and just after it one for Transportes Reunidos on Avenida General Mola, offering repair and transport services in the one factoría, what they called shops and general services in the colonies. Last, the third ad showed a man who recommended the magnificent Rumbo tobaccos with a sentence in large type: “The cigarette that helps you think.” Jacobo had told Kilian that there were many different and very cheap tobacco brands in the colony and that almost everyone smoked because it drove away the mosquitoes. After the ads came religious articles, various news items from Europe, and opinion pieces.