Clarence thought of her nephew and niece, and her heart brightened.
Daniela could not have chosen two more appropriate names. Enoá meant “sea,” and Samuel referred to that Sam Parker whose name in Pichi had given Sampaka its name. The day would arrive when everything that had happened there would be forgotten, but the names of her nephew and niece would sum up the past and the future. The sea and the tunnel of royal palms. The symbols of the resurrection and victory over time itself.
Clarence’s heart became glad when she thought about the children, but she also felt a stab of jealousy. They would be lucky enough not to think it strange to be black and white, islanders and from the mountains. She would tell them their story of the Bubis and the genealogical ancestors of Pasolobino; she would relate the love story of their grandparents, and they would listen to it with no anguish. They already belonged to another generation, a generation that would see it as normal, even anecdotal, that a small part of the Pyrenees was forever joined to an African island.
Yet for her, it would always be the story of a few people whose great feat had been to change the immovable pages of the book of a centuries-old stone house that now faced the future with the same quivering determination as that of a fragile butterfly.
I told you, Kilian, I did, right at the beginning. You were afraid the snow on the palms would melt, evaporate, and disappear forever. You were afraid the palms would not root in the snow.
Rise up now! Use your wings and gaze upon your house from the heights of the mountain! Look how life clings on! The river of existence that runs across the garden in the House of Rabaltué is now finally fed by small streams of various origins.
I told you, Kilian, I did.
You knew you would never again see each other, but now . . .
Use the impetus of the north wind and fly toward the valley! Cross the plains and stop at the cliffs! Get on the back of the harmattan and glide toward the island!
You are no longer lost at sea. You are no longer a ship aground. No bell toll can make you lose your bearings.
You see?
Bisila smiles.
She will soon come to you. You will be together again in a place with no time, no haste, no limits, far from fury and close to peace, where you will only drink rainwater.
And now that you have been reborn in the arms of the baribò, you will finally be able to understand what Bisila always wanted you to know:
That the footprints of the people who walked together never, never fade away.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The romantic plot that brings together and divides the characters of this novel, both the inhabitants of Bioko and those of Pasolobino, is pure fiction. However, the story of those men and women from the Pyrenees who spent years of their lives on the island is inspired by real events. Some of them were my father, Francisco Gabás Pallás, and my grandfather Francisco Gabás Farré from Casa Mata in Cerler; my grandmother Rosario Pallás Ventura from Casa Llorgodo in Cerler; and my father’s first cousin Ismael Lamora Pallás from Casa Caseta in Ramastué. Thanks to their memories, both spoken and written, I knew from a very young age of the existence of the island of Fernando Po and so many other things about that part of Africa that is the same size as the county of my roots.
The story of dozens of people from the Benasque Valley, in the county of Ribagorza, part of the province of Huesca, who, from the end of the nineteenth century, decided to go and work in Equatorial Guinea was compiled by José Manuel Brunet, José Luis Cosculluela, and José María Mur in an essential and interesting book entitled Guinea en patués: De los bueyes del valle de Benasque al cacao de la isla de Fernando Poo, published in 2007, soon after my father passed away. I would especially like to thank José María Mur, who rescued from oblivion experiences only known to a few of us, for allowing me to be present when recording those people whose memories and anecdotes permeate my novel, and who—without realizing it—gave me the final push to finish giving shape to an idea I had had in mind for years, an idea where other things became predominant: the curiosity to know the things they had not told us and to discover the other version, that is to say, the version of the natives from there who, in my opinion, were not or have not always been represented either in stories or in travel novels with the respect and dignity they deserve.
The place where my father was born, Cerler, is a small, beautiful, cold, and sunny village located 1,540 meters above sea level. It is part of the Benasque municipality, which can boast of being surrounded by high and beautiful mountains. Our valley has a long history, even if it is now known for being a ski resort. I decided to baptize the birthplace of some of the Spanish characters in the novel with the name Pasolobino for two reasons: to be objective, I needed to distance myself from the place where I have lived much of my life; and Pasolobino could well be a setting like so many others from which hundreds of Spaniards left to spend decades in Guinea. (In the 1940s, there were around a thousand Spaniards on Fernando Po. When the country gained its independence, it was estimated that there were around eight thousand in the whole colony.) In the same way, the village of Bissappoo is fictional, although its description would match many others of the place at the time the novel is set in. It is true that in 1975, Macías ordered a village to be burned because he believed its inhabitants were involved in subversive activities.
All historical events, along with the novel’s setting, have been rigorously checked. Nevertheless, I know that the most erudite readers on the topic of Guinea will be able to forgive some slight changes (such as the Nigerians leaving, which I brought forward in time in the novel) or subtleties (such as Anita Guau’s refurbishment) for literary reasons.
I am also conscious that the action is confined to the island of Fernando Po and not all of Guinea. The cultural differences between the insular and continental part, much bigger in size, made it impossible to give a deeper analysis of other points of view that have been dealt with only tangentially. My original idea, which I have kept to at all times, was to establish the comparison between the two small paradises my father always alluded to: the island and his home valley.
To familiarize myself on the contextual political and social history of Equatorial Guinea, I spent an extended period reading the maximum possible amount of material published on the region. Detailed below are those books, articles, and authors that have had an influence on the writing of this novel.