The man sped up and added, “Miss, I’m a taxi driver.” Clarence, wary, gave him a sideways look. “In Malabo, the taxis don’t have a specific color or special plate.”
Clarence gave him a weak smile. This was something that she had learned in the airport that same day. The singing and slightly melodious tone inspired confidence in her. She stopped, guessing him to be about thirty. His hair was very short, and he had a big forehead and a large nose and jaw. He seemed to have an honest smile.
She felt so tired and disoriented that she finally nodded.
A few minutes after getting into the taxi, Clarence was relaxed and feeling very lucky. The driver, whose name was Tomás, turned out to be a schoolteacher who drove the taxi in his free time. The fact that she herself was in education led to an interesting conversation.
Automatically, she began to mentally list the characteristics, hardly noticeable because he spoke Spanish very well, of the stuttering way Tomás spoke. Not an article was left out, nor did he confuse his tenses, pronouns, or prepositions, as she had read in some articles. At most, he pronounced rr the same as r, the d like a weak r, softened the ll a little, mixed the s and the z, and showed a tendency to put the emphasis on the final syllable.
Her nerves had certainly let her down, but the linguistic analysis soothed her.
She took another deep breath.
“And what do you think of Malabo?” Tomás asked.
“I haven’t been able to see much, as I only arrived today,” she admitted as she thought, Dirty, full of cables, and I got lost.
Tomás looked at her through the mirror.
“I’m sure you find it very different from your home. Visitors are surprised that a country as rich in oil as Guinea can look so poor. The new upper-class district of Peque?a Espa?a is near the shanty district of Yaundé.” He shrugged. “We are used to these contrasts. If you like, I could give you a quick tour.”
As if reading her mind, Tomás showed her some of the beautiful sites that she had seen in photos: the Town Hall Plaza, with its pretty gardens; the horseshoe-shaped bay; the Plaza de la Independencia, with its red-colored Palacio del Pueblo with its numerous arch windows; the Palacio de la Presidencia high above the old port . . . Neither the few black-and-white images from the colonial period that Clarence had seen nor the current color photos on her computer did justice to what she was seeing by night.
With her mouth open and her heart beating rapidly, Clarence transported herself to another time and imagined her father and her uncle, in white suits, walking along these same places, decades ago, waving to the people they knew, blacks and whites. She remembered she had read somewhere that life expectancy in Guinea was around fifty, and the image blurred. The people who could have lived with Kilian and Jacobo had to be all dead. The historic buildings now belonged to other eyes.
Her taxi driver finally got to the Avenida de la Independencia, full of civic buildings and restaurants, turned down Avenida de la Libertad, and then stopped the car; he got out and quickly opened the door for her. She paid him and added a generous tip in dollars.
“This is a good place,” said Tomás. “On the same street there are three restaurants and a small shopping center.” He hesitated. “Will you allow me to give you some advice? It’s better not to go out at night. A white woman, alone? It’s unusual.”
Clarence shivered, remembering her disastrous walk.
“Don’t worry, Tomás.” She found it strange that they were being formal with each other, but he had started it, and she did not want to appear bad mannered. “And thank you. Tomorrow I have to go to the Sampaka plantation. Could you take me?”
“Tomorrow . . .” Tomás thought for a few seconds. “Yes. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I don’t have school. I would be delighted to take you.”
He paused, then let his curiosity get the better of him. “Do you know anyone in Sampaka?”
“The manager. My father knows him. I’ve a meeting with him,” she answered with a half-truth.
In fact, Clarence had sent an e-mail to a certain F. Garuz, asking if he could show her round the plantation for her studies, to which he had readily agreed. The surname coincided with the manager of the plantation in her father’s time and, as regards the “F.,” she had concluded that it would be too much coincidence that it could correspond to a . . .
“With Mr. Garuz?” asked Tomás.
“Don’t tell me you know him . . .”
“This is a small island, miss. Here we all know one another!”
She looked at him in amazement. “Ah, of course. Then would ten o’clock be all right?”
“I’ll be here. Oh . . . who should I ask for?”
Clarence realized that she had not told him her name. “My name is Clarence.”
“Clarence! Like the city!”
“Like the city.”
After what she had read about Guinea, she supposed that in the following days, she would hear that comment more than once. She stretched out her hand.
“Thanks again and until tomorrow, Tomás.”
Back in her room, Clarence collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted. She could never have imagined such an intense first day. Luckily, she had plenty of time to rest before her trip to Sampaka, she thought with relief.
At ten on the dot, Tomás stopped the car at the door of the hotel. As on the previous day, he was wearing khaki shorts, a white shirt, and sandals. Clarence, who at the last minute had decided to change from a long summer skirt into trousers and a jacket, waited for him with a frustrated look.
It was pouring rain.
“It looks like you won’t be able to tour the plantation today,” said Tomás. “We’re in wet season. Water and more water. Luckily, today, I don’t think there’ll be any tornadoes.”
Clarence could not see anything, as the windows were spattered with heavy raindrops. She let herself be driven blind down the paved road. After about ten minutes, the car stopped at a tollbooth, where two bored guards, armed to the teeth, asked for the woman’s papers. Fortunately, the check went smoothly, as the guards knew Tomás.
Immediately after the young man announced that he had just taken the turnoff that led to what had been the iconic plantation, Clarence’s heart jumped, and she pressed her nose against the window.
“If it continues to rain like this,” Tomás predicted, “we won’t escape the poto-poto.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the blurred landscape.
“The mud. I hope you don’t have to stay in Sampaka for too long, or we won’t be able to get back.”
Just then, Clarence made out the white paint on the trunks of some enormous royal palm trees rising up into the sky like sacred guardians, immutable against the heavenly shower.
“Stop the car, Tomás, please,” she asked in a shaky voice. “It will only be for a second.”