“Normally, there are no problems,” he added, “but you never know . . . A while ago, on other plantations, the farm laborers rioted, complaining about their contract conditions. They were lucky that the territorial guard intervened.” Kilian began to get a little nervous. “But don’t you worry about it, that was many years ago. Now they live fairly well. And one of the jobs of the whites is to prevent conflicts among the coloreds. You’ll learn.”
Jacobo slowed down as they approached the plantation.
Santa Isabel had left a deep impression on Kilian, but the entrance to the Sampaka plantation made him catch his breath.
The landscape had completely changed; what had been city buildings and kilometers of cocoa trees became a red earthen track flanked by enormous palm trees that rose into the sky and blocked out the sunlight. For each meter the car advanced through the tunnel of palms, alternately producing intermittent light and shade, his curiosity gave way to a certain anxiety. What would he find at the end of this dark, seemingly endless passage? He had the feeling of descending into a cave through a regal corridor, as if a troubling force drew him in while a voice in his head whispered that once on the other side, he would never again be the same.
He did not know it then, but years later, he would have to order new palms for that drive, which would become an emblem not only of the most majestic plantation on the island, but of his own relationship with the country. For now, it was simply the gateway to a plantation whose size totaled nine hundred hectares.
At the end of the drive, they stopped to say hello to a short, well-built man with white curly hair, sweeping the steps of the first building.
“How are you, Yeremías?” asked Jacobo from the car window. “You get plenty hen?”
“Plenty hen, Massa! A lot of hens!” answered the man with a smile. “We’re never short of eggs here! Welcome back!”
“Yeremías is the handyman,” explained Jacobo to Kilian and Manuel. “He is the gatekeeper, the night watchman, the one who wakes us up in the morning and brings us bread! And he is in charge of the henhouse and telling the gardinboy what to do!” He turned back. “Eh, wachimán! Remember these faces, because we will be going out a lot at night!”
Yeremías nodded and waved as the car slowly made its way through the hens and goats. Before them appeared the central yard, called Sampaka, like the plantation, where there were two swimming pools, one for the black workers and another for the white owners and staff. Kilian realized he would need to learn to swim. On the plantation, a river running through it—also called Sampaka—there were two more yards, Yakató, named after the African eggplant that looked like a tomato, and Upside, or the upper part, which was pronounced obsay in African English.
Altogether, the three yards contained a large number of buildings apart from the storehouses, garages, and new cocoa dryers. There were homes for over five hundred laborers’ families, a carpenter’s workshop, a chapel, a small school for the youngest children, a hydroelectric station that produced light and power for both the manufacturing facilities and the yards and homes, and a hospital with a surgery, two rooms with fourteen beds, and a house for the doctor. In the biggest yard, one in front of the other and beside the main stores, were the manager’s house and the house for European employees, mostly Spaniards.
Kilian was stunned. No matter how much he had been told, he could not have imagined that a single property could encompass a small town with hundreds of inhabitants, surrounded by the exuberant landscape of a cocoa plantation. Wherever he looked, there was movement and action: men carrying boxes and tools, and trucks that came with supplies or workers. It was a continuous coming and going of black men, all dressed in khaki-colored shirts and ripped trousers, all barefoot or with leather-strapped sandals covered in dust.
Suddenly, he felt a knot in his stomach.
The excitement of the journey was turning into something like vertigo. He was afraid!
He was with his father and his brother—and a doctor—and he was short of breath. How was he going to fit into that vortex of green and black? And the heat, the bloody heat, it was now threatening to suffocate him.
He could not breathe. He could not think.
He felt like a coward.
He closed his eyes, and his mind filled with images of home, the fire burning in the hearth, the snow falling on the slate roofs, his mother preparing desserts, the cows stumbling on the stones in the streets.
The images came one after another, slowly calming his spirits. He had never felt so caught off guard.
He was homesick.
He would have given anything to close his eyes and appear in the House of Rabaltué. He had to overcome this . . . What would his father and brother think if they could read his mind?
He needed to breathe fresh air, but there was none to be found.
For a while, Antón watched his son. He had not noticed that the car had stopped in front of the employees’ house. After such a long journey, he thought that his sons would like to get fixed up in their rooms, wash, and rest a while before meeting the manager. They would have time enough to see the main stores and the plantation the next day. They got out of the car, and Antón said to Manuel, “Until Dámaso goes, you will stay here. Afterward, you will move into the doctor’s house.”
He addressed the others. “Jacobo will go with you to your rooms and show you where the dining room is. I’m going to let Mr. Garuz know that you are here. We’ll see each other in half an hour. Ah! Jacobo . . . it would be nice if your brother had a harmless salto.”
Jacobo fixed not one but two glasses of water mixed with brandy, taking them to Kilian’s twenty-square-meter room with a bed, a large wardrobe, a nightstand, two chairs, a table, and a washbasin with a mirror. The drink had an immediate relaxing effect on Kilian’s unsettled mood. Bit by bit, he began to breathe normally, the tightness in his chest began to abate, his knees stopped shaking, and he felt prepared for his first interview with the owner and manager of the plantation.
Lorenzo Garuz received them in his office, where he had been speaking to Antón for a while. Garuz was a strong man in his forties with thick dark hair, a sharp nose, and a short mustache. He had a friendly but firm voice, and his tone was that of someone well used to giving orders. Sitting on the floor, a small boy with dark curly hair and slightly sunken eyes like the manager’s amused himself by taking bits of paper out of a metal wastebasket and then putting them back in.
Garuz welcomed Kilian and Manuel—and Jacobo on his return from the holidays—and immediately checked if they had brought all the necessary papers. Kilian noticed that his father was frowning. Garuz finally put the papers away in a drawer and motioned for them to sit down in front of his desk. On the ceiling, a ventilator slowly moved some air around.
“Right, Manuel,” he started to say, “you already have experience here on the island, so I don’t have to explain much to you. Dámaso will be here for another fifteen days. He will bring you up to speed on everything. This is the biggest plantation, but the men are young and strong. Things won’t be too complicated. Machete cuts, bumps, bruises, malaria attacks . . . nothing serious.” He interrupted himself. “Can I ask you a couple of things?”