Iniko shrugged. “I suppose that everyone has memories they don’t want to relive,” he answered. “As Dimas said, those were very hard times.”
Clarence nodded, deep in thought. She began to imagine a confused and impossible story based on jigsaw pieces that only partly fitted. She would have to read all the letters that were at home!
A sudden urgency to return to Pasolobino and bombard her father with questions came over her, but when they got to Malabo, evening had fallen and this feeling had turned into one of disquiet.
She would have given anything to go back to the beach at Moraka and the little house in Ureca.
“Do you want to stay with me in the hotel tonight?” she asked Iniko. She did not want to be alone.
No . . . It was not that exactly.
She did not want to be without him.
11
The Return of Clarence
“Why are you staring at me?” Laha half shut his eyes while taking a sip of his beer and licking his lips. “Is it because you don’t want to forget my face?”
Clarence lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed, and he patted her on the arm.
“I promise to find any excuse for the company to send me to Madrid. How long is it from Madrid to Pasolobino?” He looked at his watch. “Iniko is taking a long time. Where could he have gone?”
“To Baney,” she answered in a subdued voice. “To collect Bisila.” She was not feeling very talkative that night.
“Ah!” Laha laughed. “You know more than me then!”
They were sitting on a terrace beside Malabo’s old port. It was a beautiful night, the most beautiful of all in her time there.
It was as if the heavens had conspired to offer her a good-bye she could not forget.
She looked at Tomás. She would also miss him. Rihéka, K?pé, and B?rihí had left a while ago, and Melania had not come to the simple going-away party that had been prepared for Clarence, even though she was already back from Luba. Nobody made any comment about the girl’s absence, an absence that Clarence appreciated because she would not have been able to look her in the face after her trip with Iniko, knowing that it would be Melania who would enjoy him once she left the island.
“I’m very sorry, but I have to go now,” said Tomás, getting up to go over to Clarence. “If you ever come back, you know.” He coughed and cleaned his glasses with the corner of his T-shirt. “. . . Call me and I’ll bring you wherever you want to go.”
“Even to the cemetery?” she joked.
“Even there. But I’ll wait at the gate!”
The two of them smiled. Tomás took one of Clarence’s hands, shook it in his, and put it on his heart as the Bubis would.
Clarence stayed standing until he was out of sight. She had to make a real effort not to burst into tears. She sat down and took a large sip of her drink.
“I hate good-byes,” she said.
“Well, the good-byes of today are nothing like before,” commented Laha, trying to cheer her up. “The Internet has gotten rid of a lot of tears.”
“It’s not the same,” she argued, thinking of Iniko. Laha was used to traveling the world and to making use of technology; not so for his brother. She very much doubted that she would see Iniko again, unless she came back to Bioko.
“Something is better than nothing.” Laha pushed back a lock of his curly hair.
Clarence looked at him with certain envy. Laha exuded a contagious optimism. If only she could spend more days with him! Well . . . with him and his family. She did not know how to explain it, but she had the feeling that she had been very close to discovering something. She had hardly had any time to think about Simón’s words and the fact that Laha, like so many others, was also called Fernando. Neither Iniko’s impetuosity nor her disappointing advances nor even her aversion toward Mamá Sade’s son had made her forget the initial reason for her visit. And if this was her last chance to ask Laha in person about his childhood . . . She decided to tell him about her meetings with Simón, leaving out the discovery that Bisila knew her father.
“Simón,” he said, puzzled. “His name sounds familiar, but I don’t know him. The truth is I know very little about Sampaka. When I was small, my grandfather used to take me there, but I’ve been there only a couple of times with Iniko since then. I already told you that my first memories were of school, here, in the city.”
“I thought since you were born there.”
“No. I was born in Bissappoo. My mother had gone there to spend a few days with her family in the village, and I got the urge to arrive early.”
Clarence froze. She had assumed that both brothers had been born in Sampaka.
“Oh . . .”
Laha squinted. “It seems as if you’re disappointed . . .”
“No. It’s just that I learned more about this place than I ever imagined I would, but I would have liked to have learned more about life in Sampaka when my father was there. It seems that the only one who remembers my family is Simón. And your mother,” she added, a touch reproachfully, “doesn’t like to remember her life there.”
“I don’t know why she doesn’t, Clarence, but I’m sure that if she remembered your father, she would have said it.”
Clarence shook her head. She had seen too many films. And in any case, if there was a grain of truth in any of it, the only way to continue would be, in addition to torturing her father with questions, for Laha to follow through on his suggestion and visit her in Spain. In Bioko, she could not do any more now.
“A last 33?” suggested Laha, getting to his feet.
“Yes, please.”
The bad thing about good-byes is that you begin to miss things as trivial as a beer before you leave, she thought.
At that moment, Iniko arrived and sat down beside her. He had a plastic bag in his hand.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said with a wink. “There was no way of getting out of that house. Here. My mother told me to give you this.”
Clarence opened the bag and took out a round hat of cloth and cork.
“A pith helmet?” she asked, giving the object a puzzled look. It seemed worn and had a tear on the rigid hoop.
“She said that you’d like it because it once belonged to someone like you.” He put his hands up. “Don’t ask me, because I don’t understand either. She also repeated several times to give her best regards to where you are going, that someone will accept them.”
“Is it a Bubi good-bye tradition or something like that?”
“I’m not sure. My mother is often a mystery even to me.”
Clarence put the helmet away. Soon after, Laha arrived with two beers.
“You don’t want one?” Clarence asked.
“I’m going now. Tomorrow I’ve to get up very early.” She noticed the lie in his voice and was grateful for his understanding. It was clear to Laha that on that final night, Iniko and Clarence did not need anyone else.
Clarence got up to give him a big hug, and her eyes filled with tears once again; because of that, her last image of Fernando Laha, walking along the run-down promenade, where decades before the sacks of cocoa from Sampaka departed for the rest of the world, was blurred.