The last names that appeared on the tree, though, showed a clear break with a petrified past. The names of Daniela and Clarence broke the monotony. It was as if at the time of their birth, something was already changing, as if their parents were marking them in some way with new meaning. As adults, they learned that Kilian had chosen the name Daniela without his wife, Pilar, being able to stop him. It was a name that he had always liked, and that was it. But Clarence was named by her mother, a great reader of romance novels, who had foraged through her husband’s traveling past until she came up with a name grand enough to satisfy her: Clarence of Rabaltué. Jacobo had not offered any objections, perhaps because the name, coming from an old African city, reminded him every day of that idyllic past so often recalled by both him and Kilian.
Standing before the tree for a moment, Clarence let her mind open new boxes on the lines immediately above those of herself and her cousin. What names would future generations have, if there would be any? She smiled. At the speed she was going, years would pass before another line was filled, which was a shame, as she understood life as a long chain where all the links with names and surnames formed a solid and extensive whole. She could not understand how anyone could not know of the generations before that of their grandparents. But of course, not everyone had the good fortune of growing up in the same familiar environment. In her case, her understandable, if slightly oversized, attachment to her birthplace, her valley and her mountains, went above and beyond mere genetics. It was something deeper and more spiritual that calmed her existential fear of nothingness. Perhaps because of this wish to be part of an intimate link between the past and the future, Clarence had succeeded in focusing her linguistics research on the study of Pasolobinese. The recent defense of her doctoral thesis, which had left her exhausted and saturated with the academic world, had made her not only the world’s foremost theoretical expert on the nearly extinct language, but also the guardian of her cultural inheritance. It brought her great pride.
Nevertheless, she had to admit that on occasion, she regretted the amount of time this study had taken away from her life. Especially with relationships. Her love life was a disaster. For one reason or another, her boyfriends never managed to stick around longer than twelve months. She had this in common with Daniela, only it did not seem to affect her cousin as much, maybe because she was six years younger or simply because she was more patient. Clarence smiled again, thinking about how lucky both of them, as only children, had been to grow up together. What would she have done without the girl who replaced all her childhood dolls? Despite being so different, they felt like sisters, sharing thousands of experiences and adventures. She remembered the honor code that they agreed on when Daniela was old enough to go to parties with her: If they felt the same way about a boy, the one who met him first got a clear run. Luckily, because of their personalities—Daniela was shyer, more practical, and perhaps less passionate—and because of their tastes—Clarence was attracted to solitary, mysterious men with muscular bodies and her cousin to average ones—their loyalty had never been put to the test.
Clarence sighed and let her imagination fly for a few seconds, envisioning the names of her invisible descendants on the chart.
Suddenly, a shiver went up her body, as if someone had blown on the back of her neck or tickled her with a small feather. She made a face and turned quickly, frightened, before immediately feeling ridiculous. She knew that no one would be back for a few days and all the doors were well shut—she was not overly skittish, though perhaps more than she would like to be.
She shook her head and focused on what she had to do: call Julia. She passed through one of the diamond-paneled doors into the room underneath the large wooden staircase. Her office was dominated by a wide American-oak table where her cell phone was sitting.
She looked at the clock and calculated that Julia, a fairly methodical woman, would have gotten home from church by now. When she was in Pasolobino, she and a friend went to five o’clock mass, took a walk around the village, and had a hot chocolate before driving home.
Strangely, Julia did not answer at the house. Clarence called her cell phone and learned that she was now playing a card game with another friend. She was so focused that they hardly talked. Just enough to agree to meet the following day. She felt a little disappointed. There was nothing else to do but wait.
For one day.
She decided to go back to the sitting room and tidy up the papers that she had spread out. She returned the letters to their place and slipped the note into her purse.
After the excitement of the last few hours, she suddenly did not know what to do with the rest of the day. She sat on the sofa in front of the fire, lit another cigarette, and thought of how much had changed since Antón, Kilian, and Jacobo went to the island, especially time. Clarence had computer, e-mail, and telephone to instantly connect with her loved ones. These developments made her generation impatient; they could not handle uncertainty, and any slight delay became a slow torture.
Now, the only thing concerning Clarence was that Julia could explain the meaning of those few lines. In her mind, they could only mean one thing: her father might have regularly sent money to a strange woman.
The rest of her life had suddenly taken second stage.
The next day, at exactly half past five, Clarence was at the church entrance, waiting for Julia. She had been admiring the majestic silhouette of the Romanesque tower for only a few minutes when the door opened and the trickle of people attending daily mass emerged, greeting her gently. She quickly spotted Julia, small, sensibly dressed, with a short chestnut bob recently trimmed and a pretty scarf around her neck. Julia gave her a beaming smile.
“Clarence! Haven’t seen you for a while!” She gave her two loud and friendly kisses and linked their arms to walk out of the church grounds and past the stone wall topped by high ironwork railings. “I’m sorry I didn’t pay you much attention yesterday, but you called me in the middle of a good hand. What brought you here? Work?”
“I don’t have many classes this term,” answered Clarence, “so I have free time to do research. And you? Are you going to stay long this time?”
Julia’s mother’s family was native to the valley of Pasolobino. She still owned one of the many houses dotted around the fields a few kilometers from the village. Her mother had married a man from a neighboring valley. They traveled to Africa when she was very small, leaving her to be minded by her grandparents until her parents’ hardware store began to do well and they could bring her with them. There, Julia married and gave birth to two children. After finally settling down in Madrid, she and the children enjoyed short holidays in Pasolobino, occasionally joined by her husband. After her husband’s death two years ago, Julia’s visits to her birthplace got longer and longer.