During the following days, Kilian spent his time amid the noisy trucks and dusty tracks, Nigerian work songs, shouts in Pichi, machete slashes, quarrels and arguments, and the leaves of banana, erythrina, and cocoa trees.
When he arrived at the yard in Sampaka, he was so tired he could barely eat; he attended the driving lessons given by Jacobo and Waldo, wrote a few lines of forced happiness to Mariana and Catalina, and went to bed early, itchy with sweat.
Antón and Jacobo were not oblivious to his struggles. At dinner, he barely spoke, and it was obvious that there was no friendship between him and Gregorio. They simply ignored each other, although Gregorio pestered Kilian by making comments in front of the manager, questioning his courage and strength, comments that made it difficult for Jacobo not to get involved in a fight with him.
One night when Kilian stood to go without finishing dessert, Antón decided to follow him to his room.
“Give it time, Son,” he said as they left the dining room. “It’s hard at first, but bit by bit, you will adapt. I know how you feel. I went through it as well.”
Kilian raised his eyebrows. “Did you also have to work with someone like Gregorio?”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Antón quickly interjected. “What I mean is . . .” He scratched his head and lowered his gaze. “I don’t know how or when, and I hardly know anything about the rest of Africa, but the day will come when this small island will take control of you, and you’ll never want to leave. It might be man’s amazing ability to adapt. Or perhaps there is something mysterious about this place.” He stretched out his hand to point out the landscape that extended into the distance and looked Kilian in the eye again. “But I don’t know anyone who has left here without shedding tears of grief.”
Years would have to pass for Kilian to understand each and every one of those words with the intensity of a curse fulfilled.
4
Fine City
The Fair City
“All right,” Jacobo said, giving in, “but you’re driving on the way back.”
Kilian quickly got into the open-back van that everyone called a picú, a simplification of the English pickup, before his brother changed his mind. After fifteen days of intensive classes with Waldo and Jacobo along the roads of the plantation, he had gotten his driving license for cars and trucks. Still, to venture into the city was another story.
“As soon as I’ve done the route once with you, I’ll be able to do it on my own,” he promised.
The manager had asked them to buy tools and materials from the stores in Santa Isabel. The day was swelteringly hot and hazy, typical of the dry season, which lasted from November until the end of March. In the dry, trees were felled for new farmland, firewood was prepared for the dryers, the cocoa trees were pruned, and the bikoro, the weed that grew around it, was cleared. Additionally, the seed nurseries were tended, and the roads and tracks on the plantation were built and mended. Kilian had learned that the most important task was ground clearing, keeping the machetes in use despite the terrible heat, up and down, from one side to the other, to get rid of the weeds that mysteriously sprung up from one day to the next.
It was early in the morning, and Kilian was already sweating inside the picú. Soon the itching that had taken control of his body from day one would return. He would have given anything to have four hands to scratch himself. Unfortunately, the remedies passed on by Manuel had not solved the problem. He could only hope that his skin would become used to the surroundings and the stinging pains would fade.
“You have no idea how much I miss the fresh mountain air!” He sighed, thinking of Pasolobino. “This heat will be the death of me.”
“Stop being dramatic!” Jacobo drove with his elbow leaning on the open car window. “At least our clothes aren’t sticking to our skin at the moment. Wait and see when the wet comes. From April to October, you’ll be terribly sticky all day.”
He stretched his arm out the window so his hand could play with the breeze.
“Thank God, today we’ll have the Saharan wind’s apprentice, the harmattan, to relieve us.”
Kilian noticed that the sky above the narrow road was covered by a fine suspended dust and had taken on a reddish-gray hue.
“I don’t understand how this annoying wind that clouds everything and hurts the eyes can be a relief.” He remembered the snow-clearing gales. “To me it’s stifling.”
“Well, wait and see when it really blows! You won’t be able to see anything, not even the sun, for days. You will chew sand!”
Kilian made a face of disgust. Jacobo looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His brother’s skin was sunburned, but weeks more would have to pass before it developed into a deep tan. The same would happen with his mood. He himself had gone through this process. As Kilian’s arms became more muscular and his skin tougher, he would become less like an aloof teenager and grow used to the rigors of the wild land. Jacobo could imagine what was going through his brother’s head. Between the suffocating heat, the exhausting work, the inane arguments of the laborers and foremen, his body being possessed by a continuous burning, and his marvelous relationship with the insufferable Massa Gregor, his brother surely felt incapable of encountering any of the wonders he had imagined before coming to the island. Perhaps, Jacobo thought, the time had come to introduce him to some of his native girlfriends to lift his spirits. One of the advantages of a bachelor’s life in Fernando Po was that there were no limits to desire!
“So, how are things going in Obsay?” Jacobo asked nonchalantly.
Kilian took a few seconds to answer. Jacobo was the only person he could confide in, but he did not want to seem whiny. Jacobo radiated power and energy from every pore of his skin. He never went unnoticed. Kilian had never seen him sad, not even during his school days. Jacobo was sure of what he wanted out of life: to enjoy every second to the fullest without asking any deep questions. He had to work because he had no choice, but if there was a bad harvest one year, it was not his problem; he would get paid all the same. He would not suffer. Jacobo never suffered for anything.
“Has the cat caught your tongue?”
“Eh? No, no. Gregorio is still the same, making me lose face in front of the laborers. He tells them behind my back not to pay any attention to me, as I’m new, but later he sends them to me to sort out their problems. Waldo told me.”
“He’s jealous of you. Garuz said he needed someone to put things right in that yard. It was very intelligent on his part to send someone new who shows interest in doing things right. If you continue like this, you’ll soon be in charge of the main yard.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not a leader. It’s difficult to get the laborers to do what I tell them. I have to repeat things twenty times. They wait until I get annoyed and shout at them, and then they look at me with a smile and do it.”