Simón heard a scream but did not pay any attention to it. On Saturday nights in the servants’ quarters, located just beside the white employees’ bedrooms, it was common to hear screams and laughing until the early hours.
He turned around to get back to sleep. Nothing. He was unable to sleep. A few deep breaths and one or another snore told him his companions slept soundly. He decided to open the door to let some fresh air in and lay down again. Some men were going up the stairs amid trips and laughs. He made out Jacobo’s voice and those of his friends. They were really plastered. He was not surprised. Jacobo got that drunk only when he went out with the Englishman and the Portuguese.
The men went by the open door. Simón began to feel worried. He got up, put on a pair of trousers, took a lantern, and went down the stairs. Nothing could be seen or heard. He lit the lantern and retraced his steps. He saw the pickup badly parked under the porch and the sack room door ajar. He peeked in and heard a groan. “Is there someone there?”
He got another groan in reply.
“Who’s that?”
“I need help,” whispered Bisila.
As if shot from a gun, Simón got down on his knees beside her. The light from the lantern revealed that his friend was injured. She had blood on her face and body and lay motionless. In one hand she held a damp handkerchief.
“What happened to you?” he asked, alarmed, in Bubi. “What have they done to you?”
“I need to go to the hospital,” she answered in a wooden voice.
Simón helped her get to her feet. Bisila fixed her clothes with difficulty with her injured arm. He started to become enraged.
“I know the men responsible!” he murmured between his teeth. “They’ll pay for what they’ve done!”
Bisila leaned on Simón’s arm and nudged him to start walking. She needed to get out of that damned place.
“No, Simón.” She gently clasped her friend’s arm. “What has happened stays here.” She closed the door, and they went out into the yard. “Promise me you’ll say nothing.”
Simón pointed to her bloodied eye.
“How are you going to hide that?” he protested. “How are you going to explain your arm to Mosi?”
“I’m not worried about my body, Simón,” answered a crestfallen Bisila.
He could only feel rage. “And what’ll happen when Kilian finds out?”
Bisila stopped dead. “Kilian must never find out about this. Do you hear me, Simón? Never!”
Simón nodded slightly to show he had agreed, and they continued walking.
Kilian won’t find out, he thought, but they will pay for what they have done.
When they got to the hospital, Bisila gave him instructions on how to reset her dislocated shoulder. She put a gag between her teeth and closed her eyes, waiting for Simón’s blow. She let out a shriek and fainted. When she recovered, she dressed the wounds from the blows and bandaged up her arm in a sling.
Afterward, Simón took her home. Bisila waited until she was sure that everything was completely quiet. Fortunately, Mosi and Iniko were asleep. They were used to her hours. They would not see the cuts and bruises until the following day.
Simón went back to his room in the main building, still trembling with rage.
What had happened that night was nothing that had not happened before. It was one of the ways the whites imposed their power. No black woman, even if insulted and threatened, would dare report a white man. It would be her word against his, and any court would rule that she had asked for it.
In bed, Simón clenched his fists. According to the law, they were now as Spanish as those in Madrid. It was all a lie! Whites were whites and blacks were blacks, even if they were now allowed to go into the cinemas and bars. The impending independence would not change anything: others would come, and they would continue to exploit the island before the helpless eyes of those who once cared for it. That was the Bubis’ destiny.
He decided to tell Mosi everything.
Bisila had made him promise not to say anything to Kilian and he would not—at least, not for the moment.
But Mosi would know what to do.
On Monday morning, Simón looked for Mosi in the southern area of the plantation. His men advanced in rows of ten, slashing with their machetes to clear ground for planting from the jungle. He soon made out the foreman, as his head stuck out above the others. He waved for him to come over. They moved away so no one could eavesdrop.
“Bisila was attacked. Three white men. I found her.”
Mosi cursed and leaned against a tree. The expression on his face became harder. “Do you know who they were?” he asked.
Simón nodded. “There were three of them. I know who they are.”
“Tell me their names and where I can find them. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Two of them don’t live here. They’ll leave today. Massa Dick and Massa Pao. I heard them say that they’d be back in two or three weeks.”
“And the third?”
Simón swallowed. “The third is a massa on the plantation.”
Mosi gritted his teeth and waited for the name. “The third is Massa Jacobo.”
Mosi stood up straight, picked up his machete, and ran his thick finger along its blade.
“Tenki, mi fren,” he said slowly. “I’ll look for you if I need you.”
He continued his work as if Simón had not told him anything important.
Simón returned to the plantation yard and was surprised to hear a laugh he knew well coming from the parked trucks.
Kilian had returned!
He raised his eyes to the heavens and noticed a slight change in the air.
The tornadoes would soon be upon them.
Kilian got up early, put on a loose pair of linen trousers and a white cotton shirt, and went out to the balcony. The weather was fresh. The rains of the last few days had left the air so humid that stoves were needed to heat the rooms. He decided to go in and put on a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket. He came back out onto the passageway, took a deep breath, lit a cigarette, leaned on the railing of the balcony, and cast his eyes toward the royal palm tree entrance.
At any other time, Kilian would have found the morning silence comforting. Lately, however, silence seemed set on taking over his life. Simón was distant and evasive. José was hiding something from him. And Bisila . . .
Bisila was avoiding him.
Just after arriving, he had gone to the hospital to see her. After months of wanting her in his arms, he had been sure that they would end up in the small storeroom. Instead, he had met a thinner, sadder Bisila with her arm bandaged and part of her face swollen. Even so, she walked between the men in their sickbeds in her normal pleasant fashion, a pleasantness that became cold when she turned to him to explain that a truck had knocked her down.
Kilian had not believed a word of it. He even thought that Mosi might have mistreated her, but she denied it. Then . . . why the change in attitude?
If she only knew how much he missed her!
He had hoped Bisila would appear some night in his room, but she had not.