Sade squinted. Why did that woman look so familiar? Where had she seen her before? Those big, bright eyes . . . Then she remembered that day in the hospital. There she was, holding his hand . . . And later, the same day Kilian split up with her, she had seen her close to his quarters. So this was the one who had robbed her of Kilian’s favor? She licked her bottom lip.
She did not know how, but someday she would get her revenge on her as well.
The three men drained some brandy saltos after dinner. European food had become scarce, but the vegetable plots still grew in abundance, and the hens, left abandoned to their wiles after Yeremías’s mysterious disappearance, continued to lay eggs.
“He must have gone to his village,” said Garuz. “One less.”
“Where was he from?” Kilian asked.
“Ureca,” Father Rafael answered. “He’s gone with Dimas, who comes and goes from the village to Santa Isabel to help his friends escape. This time he didn’t even wait for the farce trial Macías has arranged for those in last year’s attempted coup. The majority have already been killed. And of the others, like his brother Gustavo, nothing is known.”
Suddenly, the light over the dining room table went out. Instinctively, they looked out the window and only saw darkness.
“Blasted generators . . .” Garuz looked for some matches in his pocket.
“I’ll go and see what’s wrong.” Kilian took a lantern from a side table.
He went out, skirted the building, and opened the door of the small generator room.
A blow to his back left him breathless. He could not even shout. Before he realized what was going on, more blows, punches, and kicks rained down on each centimeter of his body until he collapsed and lost consciousness.
In the dining room, Garuz and Father Rafael began to get worried. When they got to the small room, Kilian was lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
“Kilian, everything’s already been organized,” announced José. “Next week you’re taking a plane home to Spain. You’ll be traveling with Garuz and Father Rafael. The last of the last. If you don’t go, Simón and I will drag you there.”
He sighed.
“Say something, Kilian. Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing it for you. I’m doing it for Antón. I promised your father. I promised him I’d look after you!”
“Bisila . . .”
“Bisila, come! Come with me!”
“I can’t, Kilian, and you know that.”
“I can’t leave either.”
“If you don’t go, they’ll kill you.”
“And if I go, I’ll also die.”
“No, you won’t. See? The spirits have answered your dilemma. You must go and live your life, take your place in the House of Rabaltué.”
“How can you talk to me about spirits? Is this what they want? Is this what God wants? For us to separate? What will happen to Iniko and Fernando? What will happen to you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Nurses always have work, even more in times of conflict. Nothing will happen to me, you’ll see.”
“How will I know? How will I get news of you?”
“You’ll know, Kilian. You’ll feel it. We will be far away, but close. I will always be by your side.”
How was Kilian to remember what he could never forget yet remain continuously present, even when surrounded in haze, sometimes crystal clear, sometimes blurred?
Waldo’s handshake.
Simón’s tears and his whispered promise never again to speak his friend’s native language.
Lorenzo Garuz’s heavyhearted words leaving José in charge of the plantation.
The silent tears of Father Rafael.
The texture of Fernando Laha’s hair.
The desperation with which he made love to Bisila on the last night. Her essence. The taste of her skin. The sparkle of her clear eyes.
The tropical rain. The lightning. The shell collar on his chest.
His guardian, his waíríbo, his love, his m?témá, his sweet company in uncertainty, in fear, in moments of weakness, in joy and in sadness, until death do us . . .
The warm, thick, lazy, and cruel tenderness of the last kiss.
The sobs.
The royal palm trees, resolutely reaching the sky, undaunted by the pain left at their feet.
The weak handshake from ?sé. The last touch of his fingertips. The long, deep, and emotional hug. His promise to put flowers on his father’s grave.
The DC-8 over the green island that had invaded his very being and now became a faint mark on the horizon until it disappeared.
Garuz, Miguel, and Baltasar beside him.
His father’s words, spoken thousands of years before: “I don’t know how or when . . . but the day will come when this small island will take control of you, and you’ll never want to leave . . . I don’t know anyone who has left here without shedding tears of grief.”
The brief journey that made him yearn for the tranquil scything of a ship.
The landing in Madrid.
His good-bye to Garuz, after he gave his wife a hug: “Cheer up, at least we’re alive.”
Baltasar’s words: “One day we’ll return, no problem.”
Miguel’s words: “Do you know the first thing my television bosses told me when I got off the plane? Not a word about this to the press.”
The train to Zaragoza. The coach to Pasolobino.
The eleven years of darkness.
The silence.
The tenuous ray of light when his daughter was born, a few months after his fiftieth birthday.
Daniela.
Like her.
19
Official Secrets
1971–1980
“If you ever get out of here, Waldo,” said Gustavo, leaning against the cold wall of his cell, “promise me that you’ll look for my brother, Dimas, from Ureca and tell him about me.”
Waldo agreed with closed eyes and made himself another promise.
He would get out of that place.
Suddenly, they heard a commotion of shouts, insults, blows, and footsteps. Seconds later, the lock on the iron door squeaked, the door opened, and two hefty guards dragged a naked body onto the earthen floor, as if it were a sack of potatoes.
“Here’s a new cellmate for you!” shouted one of the guards as he threw an empty tin after him. “Teach him the rules!” He howled with laughter.
Gustavo and Waldo waited until the footsteps had receded and then knelt down by the badly wounded man. How many times had they been here before? More than a dozen since that day when first Gustavo and Waldo some time later had crossed through the iron gate. Both had gone through the same routine. They were taken to the warden’s office, whipped until they lost consciousness, and then locked up in a cement box, the height and width of a man, laid out in rows in one of the sheds. A small skylight, protected by bars, allowed for the disturbing sounds of the night and the communication with other prisoners, provided they had not gone through the interrogation room yet. If they had, the only sounds that would reverberate around the walls of Black Beach Prison were ones of inhuman shrieks, shouts of desperation and suffering, and the occasional guttural snore.
The man tried to move.