She opened the window and let the same rain wet her face. Being in the place where Antón, Jacobo, and Kilian had been for years brought on a tormenting mix of joy and sadness. Clarence thought of the men in her family. To see with her own eyes what they had built decades ago filled her with a curious sense of nostalgia.
How could she feel this way for a place she had never been? How was it possible that she could be filled with such a deep yearning for the memory of a loss she had yet to suffer?
This is what Kilian and Jacobo must have felt when their eyes filled with tears on remembering their young years in Guinea. A slight tightness of the chest and throat. A dull pain in the pit of her stomach.
“Are you feeling all right, Clarence?” Tomás asked. “Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes, Tomás.” She already knew that she would come back here. She had to see it in the light of a resplendent day. “Let’s go into Sampaka.”
From then on, the rain did not worry her. Even blindfolded, Clarence would have been able to draw out the car’s journey to the yard of red earth where the main house was built, big and square, partially supported by white columns, with a sloped roof and whitewashed walls highlighted by the green-painted wooden shutters, the same as the outside balcony that circled the upper part of the building, and a thick white-columned railing on both sides of the spectacular big steps.
Tomás parked the car in the porch under the balcony and beeped the horn, which could hardly be heard in the storm. However, when they got out of the car, it did not take long for a man around fifty, serious looking, with strong features and bronzed skin, to appear and greet Clarence pleasantly. He was wearing shorts and a blue shirt and had close-cropped gray hair—with a rebellious fringe—a wide face, and slightly sunken eyes.
“Welcome to Sampaka . . . Clarence, is that right? My name is Fernando Garuz.”
Clarence froze when she heard his name. Well, yes. F for Fernando! Was Julia referring to this Fernando? Was it that simple? Impossible!
“You’re younger than I’d thought you’d be.” She smiled without stopping to look around at everything she could in amazement.
“So, did you imagine it like this?”
“More or less. What surprises me most is the color. The four photos I saw were in black-and-white. And it’s very empty . . .”
“In this weather, nothing can be done. I’m afraid I won’t be able to show you around the plantation or the new nurseries. The most I can do is show you the buildings around the yard. You are going to be here for a few days, aren’t you? We can choose a more suitable time to tour the outside areas. Today, if you’d like, we can have coffee and chat.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” said Tomás.
“That won’t be necessary.” Fernando gave him some money. “I have to go to the city at midday. I’ll bring her.” He turned to the woman. “If that’s all right?”
“If you wouldn’t mind . . .” She took out a notepad and pen from her bag and asked Tomás to write his telephone number. “I’ll call you from the hotel if I need you again.”
The young man left, and Clarence followed Fernando to a small room with colonial furniture, where he made her the best coffee she had tasted in her whole life. They sat down in some rattan armchairs near a window, and he asked her more about her relationship to Sampaka. She answered quickly while analyzing his features and gestures, trying to find some trace that could link him to the men in her family. But nothing. They were not alike at all. Unless . . . maybe Julia had meant to say that this Fernando could help her in her search.
Clarence decided to start at the beginning.
“Are you possibly a relation of Lorenzo Garuz? At home, his name was sometimes mentioned.”
“Actually, I am.” Fernando smiled. She noticed that the gap in his upper incisors gave him a youthful air. “He was my father. He died last year.”
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“Thank you. He was very old . . .”
“And how is it you’re still here? Have you always lived in Guinea?”
“No, no. I was born in Santa Isabel.” Clarence pursed her lips. Julia had said to look for a Fernando born in Sampaka. “I spent my childhood between Guinea and Spain. Later, I was away for many years, until I finally settled here at the end of the ’80s.”
“In Sampaka?”
“At first, in another company in the city.”
“And how did you end up on the plantation? Was it not bought by the government after independence?”
“The plantation was left in the hands of someone who could be trusted. He did his best for the few years that the plantations continued, even if it was nothing like your father’s time. But they did something. You have to take into account it was the only means of getting foreign exchange for the country’s survival. After the liberty coup of ’79 did away with Macías Nguema, the old owners, among them my father, who had the majority of the shares, lost the property, and the government granted it to a high-ranking military officer.”
“And then, how did you manage to get it back?”
“When the officer died, at the beginning of the ’90s, I was already working on an agricultural development project, financed by the European Union and Spanish cooperation programs, to rejuvenate the cocoa plantations and to try and bring in new crops like pepper and nutmeg. The heirs of the officer agreed to sell the plantation.” He proudly added, “I managed to get back what belonged to my family from the beginning of the last century and return to the place of my childhood.”
Fernando offered Clarence another coffee, and she accepted.
“I suppose they named you Fernando after the island.”
“I think that in all Spanish families who had some connection to Guinea, there is a Fernando.”
Clarence cringed. That made things even more complicated.
“In yours too?” he asked, misinterpreting her expression.
“Eh? Ah, no, no. Only women at home,” she said, smiling. “And no Fernanda . . .” She stopped and decided to be careful. “Out of curiosity, did any of the archives from the 1950s survive?”
“There are some things. Before leaving, my father stored the workers’ files in a bookcase. When I came back, the office was a mess, but they had not burned anything, which was unusual. They must have realized that there was nothing dangerous.”
“And your father, did he ever come back?”
Fernando shrugged. “Yes, of course. He couldn’t go for very long without stepping foot on his island. He missed it constantly. I kept my promise of burying his remains under a ceiba. Do you know, until he died, my father dreamed of returning the plantation to its old glory?” He looked out the window, with a nostalgic gaze. “In this land, there is something infectious. I still believe the cocoa from Sampaka could return to mass production.”
Clarence sighed. “Fernando, now that I’m here . . . would it be too much to ask if I could have a look at the archives? It’s something stupid, but I’d like to see if there is anything on my grandfather or my father.”