“I’ll be back in a second,” she said with a smile. “I need a bamboo stick.”
“Did you notice, Kilian?” said Jacobo when she had left. “She’s informal with you, but not with me.”
His brother shrugged. “It must be because you look more serious than me,” Kilian commented, and Jacobo let out a big guffaw. Kilian went on, “You know, you can go if you want. You probably want to have a coffee after having gone through that.”
“No way. I’ll wait until the nurse is finished with both of us.”
Kilian tried to make sure his voice did not sound frustrated. “Whatever you’d like.”
He could not speak to her alone, but he treasured the impression of her fingers on his ankle, on the instep of his foot, on his heel, on every centimeter that she had to touch while she was cutting the edges of the chigger egg sac with the bamboo until it came off completely. He memorized each and every one of her movements throughout the few short minutes it took, while Jacobo chatted on, as if there were nobody else in the room with them, about his brother’s upcoming trip to Spain. She seemed to be concentrated on what she was doing, but there was an instant when Kilian noticed her expression cloud over and a fine wrinkle appear between her eyebrows. It was when Jacobo joked, “And what will Sade do without you? Do you want me to look after her in your place?”
Kilian pursed his lips and did not answer.
In the weeks before his trip, Kilian could not help comparing himself to the Nigerian workers on the plantation. Like them, when he had arrived, he was a wiry lad full of curiosity; now he would return to his country years later a muscular, large, and well-built man. He had also collected things that he had bought to take home and earned a generous amount of money. The only difference was that the laborers went back to Nigeria because in their contracts, skillfully written so that the capital would not only not stay in Guinea, but would return to Nigerian territory, it was stipulated that they would receive fifty percent of their salary in the colony and the other fifty percent in their country. In Kilian’s case, the thousands of kilometers’ distance separated two extremes of the same country, so his trip would only involve a confrontation with his past, a past that six years on a cocoa plantation in tropical climes had not erased from his heart.
However, when he arrived in his valley after a night in Zaragoza—where many women now wore trousers; where the Fiat 1400 along with the occasional SEAT 600 had displaced the Peugeot 203, the Austin FX3, and the Citro?n CV; and where the café Ambos Mundos had disappeared—and made out the outskirts of Pasolobino after climbing up the stony path in the same dark-gray coat that he had not worn since leaving, behind the mare who, led by one of his cousins, had carried his bulky baggage, he felt a strange mixture of sensations. He lifted his face toward the rigid outline of the village against the clear sky of a cold March day in 1959.
Pasolobino and the House of Rabaltué were exactly as he remembered them, except for the building that was going to be the new school and the extension to the hay shed of his house. The people had not changed much either, even if time had aged them.
At first, Kilian found it hard to have a fluent conversation with Mariana, her gray hair done up in a discreet and tight bun that highlighted the new lines on her face. He could barely hold her maternal look. He used small talk as a barrier to keep his emotions under control. Still, Mariana did her utmost to catch him up. Kilian was jealous of her outward strength, with which she encouraged a gaunt and downhearted Catalina not to neglect her daily chores and to look after her husband, Carlos, because—she said—life goes very quickly and she had lost three children and a husband and continued to battle for the next ones to come, and there would be next ones; sooner or later, more always came. As far as she could remember, no house had stayed empty for long.
Kilian delivered presents all over the village. The most delicate objects, bought in the Dumbo store in Santa Isabel, were for his mother and sister: beautiful cotton and silk fabrics, two Manila blankets and bags, a gorgeous embroidered tablecloth, and new covers for the beds. For the relations and neighbors, he had brought tins of Craven A cigarettes and bottles of the best Irish and Scotch whiskies—luxuries in that part of the world—and fruits completely unknown in Pasolobino, like pineapples and coconuts. To the astonishment of everyone, he sliced a coconut in half with one blow of his machete, and then he offered those around him the chance to drink the liquid inside before tasting the crunchy coconut itself.
The girls from the neighboring houses, now women, smiled flirtatiously at him. On visits, he patiently answered the same questions while smoking his favorite cigarettes, Rumbo, and trying to adapt to Pasolobinese. They whispered between laughs when hearing the linguistic peculiarities of the plantation that had infected the good-looking young man, especially in his short and simple sentences and his strange vocabulary.
After the novelty of his return quieted down, Kilian got thrown into work in the sheds, pruning the trees and getting firewood ready, cleaning the weeds from the walls of the buildings, fertilizing the fields for the livestock, and plowing the plots for summer. He spent many hours outside in the slumbering fields, waiting for the timid greeting of the cold spring.
Nothing had changed much. The stables retained the heat of the animals restless for their impending freedom. The same smoke licked the sides of the stone chimneys crowned with the unshakable stones to frighten away the witches. Kilian had to work hard not to compare the world of Pasolobino with the island of Fernando Po. He found the streets dirty and uneven; the bodies, soft and milky white; the clothes, monochrome and boring; the sunlight, pale and weak; the green landscape, subdued; the climate, too serene; and the House of Rabaltué, cold and solid, like a rocky mountain.
However, when he admitted to himself that so many years had left a deeper mark than he thought on his body and soul, the blood pulsed in his veins, he closed his eyes, and his thoughts became a tornado of images that mercilessly threw him again at the feet of the colossal volcanic peak of Santa Isabel, permanently adorned in mists, covered in forest to near its summit and marked by the scars of its streams.
There, in the silence of his imagination, Kilian allowed himself to be possessed by the sun and the rain of a paradise where, day after day, the luxuriant growth of the thousands of plant species confirmed the absolute tenacity of the cycle of life.
Recurrent, constant.
Unstoppable.
8
The Royal Palm Tree Avenue
2003
She was finally in Santa Isabel!
She corrected herself: She was finally in Malabo!