They swapped green pastures for palm trees.
Clarence smiled as she imagined those brusque and reserved men from the mountains, tight-lipped and serious, accustomed to the white of the snow, the green of the fields, and the gray of the stones, discovering the bright colors of the tropics, the dark skin of half-naked bodies, the flimsy buildings, and the caress of the sea breeze. It still surprised her to imagine Jacobo and Kilian as the main characters in one of the many books or films in which the colonies are seen from a European viewpoint. Theirs was the only version she knew.
Clear and unquestionable.
The daily life on the cocoa plantations; the relations with the natives; the food; the flying squirrels; the snakes; the monkeys; the great multicolored lizards; the Guinea sand fly, the jején; the Sunday parties; the tom-tom of the tumba and droma drums . . .
This was what they had told them. The same as what appeared in Uncle Kilian’s first letters.
How hard they worked! How difficult life was there!
Indisputable.
. . . her children are also fine . . .
The date had to be 1977, or 1987, or 1997 . . .
Who could explain the meaning of those lines? She thought of asking Kilian and Jacobo, but quickly admitted that she would be very embarrassed to confess to having read all the letters. Occasionally curiosity had led her to ask daring questions during family dinners when the subject of the colonial past had come up, but both men had developed an uncanny ability to divert the conversation toward more innocent topics. Coming out with a question directly related to those lines and expecting a clear and honest answer was a lot to hope for.
Clarence lit a cigarette, got up, and went toward the window. She opened it a little so the smoke could escape and breathed in the fresh air of the rainy day that had slightly dampened the dark slate roofs of the stone houses that squeezed together below her. The elongated old quarter of Pasolobino still retained an appearance similar to that in the black-and-white photos from the beginning of the twentieth century, even though the majority of the houses had been refurbished and the streets were now paved instead of cobbled. Beyond the village, whose origins could be traced back to the eleventh century, extended the estates of tourist apartment blocks and hotels that had come with the ski resort.
She directed her gaze toward the snowy peaks, where the spruces ended and the rocks began, still hidden under a white blanket. The dancing mist on the summits was an astonishing sight. How did the men of her family withstand being so far from these mountains for so long, so far from the morning smell of the damp earth and the peaceful silence of the night? There must be some attraction in the splendor unfolded in front of her eyes when nearly all those who had traveled to the island had ended up returning home sooner or later.
Just then, the person she should ask came to mind. Why had she not thought of it before?
Julia!
No one better than Julia to answer her questions! She had lived on the island through the family’s history and shared her longing for the exotic stories of Jacobo and Kilian, and she was always willing to have long conversations with Clarence, whom she had treated with warmth since she was small, possibly because Julia only had boys of her own.
Clarence quickly put out her cigarette in an ashtray and went from the sitting room into her office to call Julia. As she crossed through the large foyer, she could not help but stop in front of the huge painting that hung over an exquisite wooden arch handcrafted by seventeenth-century artisans. It was one of the few treasures that had survived to attest to the lost nobility of the house.
The painting showed her father’s family tree. The first name she could read in the lower corner, which dated from 1395, Kilian of Rabaltué, continued to intrigue Clarence. No one could explain how an Irish saint who had traveled through France and ended up in Germany shared a name with the founder of her house. This Kilian probably crossed from France to Pasolobino through the Pyrenees, and his traveling gene, plus his hair’s copper streaks, set up house there. From his name, a large trunk rose straight up with reaching branches, on whose leaves the names of brothers and sisters were written along with their husbands and wives and the following generations’ descendants.
Clarence stopped at her grandfather’s generation, the pioneers of far-off lands, and went over the dates with her eyes. In 1898, Antón of Rabaltué, her grandfather, was born. He married Mariana of Malta, born in 1899, in 1926. In 1927, her father was born. In 1929, her uncle Kilian arrived, and in 1933, her aunt Catalina.
Family trees were very reliable in the area. Everyone knew where everyone else came from. In the appropriate box, she saw her own date of birth, name and surname, and the house where she was born. Sometimes the surnames were replaced by the name of the house and the village of origin, as many of the newcomers came from neighboring villages. The trunk drew one’s eyes from the first Kilian to the last heirs in direct line. It was normal for names to repeat themselves generation after generation, evoking past ages of counts and ladies—the old names on old papers had the strange ability to fuel her imagination: Mariana, Mariano, Jacoba, Jacobo, a Kilian or two, Juan, Juana, José, Josefa, more than one Catalina, Antón, Antonia . . . Through reading family trees, one of her great passions, Clarence was able to imagine how life flowed without major changes: being born, growing up, having offspring, and dying. The same earth and the same sky.