Daniela took the spoon out of her cup, clinked it against the edge a few times to get the last drops of coffee off the metal, took a sip, and frowned. “For me, colonization is like the rape of a woman. And if the woman resists, the rapist has the cheek to say that the woman was not serious, that deep down she was enjoying it, and he was doing it for her own good.”
Everyone froze. Daniela hung her head, a little embarrassed by her frankness.
Clarence got up and began to clear the plates from the table. Jacobo brusquely asked for another coffee. Kilian tapped his fingers on the table. Carmen began to flick through the recipe book that Laha had given her, and she asked him a couple of questions.
“Good,” Kilian said at last. “It’s Christmas. Let’s drop the hard topics.” He turned to Laha. “Tell us, how did someone from Bioko end up in California?”
“I think it was my grandfather’s fault,” he said thoughtfully, cupping his chin in his right hand. “He was insistent that his descendants focus on their studies. He always said the same thing, over and over. My brother, Iniko, used to get very annoyed. He took his own meaning out of it.” He wagged his index finger in the air as he mimicked the voice of an old man. “‘The most intelligent thing that I’ve ever heard a white man say, a good friend of mine, is that the biggest difference between a Bubi and a white man is that a Bubi lets the cocoa tree grow wild, but the white man prunes it to get more out of it.’”
Kilian choked on a piece of nougat.
The twenty-sixth of December dawned to a clear sky and a bright sun that blinded when reflected off the snow. After two days shut up in the house with nothing else to do but eat, Laha, Clarence, and Daniela were finally able to go to the ski slopes.
The girls had been able to get a ski suit for Laha, who felt ridiculous and clumsy in the rigid boots. Daniela gave him the basic instructions on how to walk on frozen snow and made sure she was close to him in case he fell. Beside him, she looked smaller. When they had managed to get the skis on him, Laha did not stop looking at her, terrified and holding on to her shoulders while she held on to his waist.
Clarence watched them, amused.
They made a good couple.
Her cousin was concentrated on giving the proper instructions. Laha tried to have confidence in her, but his brain went one way and his body the other.
After suffering through the first few runs, Laha decided he needed a coffee. Daniela went with him while Clarence took the chance to go down some of the pistes from higher up the mountain. She got onto the ski lift, almost grateful for the chance to be alone with the snowscape. As she went up the mountain, she noticed how the silence absorbed the voices and laughs of the skiers and calmed her mood. The brilliant white slope below her, the reflection of the nearby summits, the increasing cold on her cheeks, and the slight rocking of the lift gave her a sense of sluggishness, of vertigo, of unreality.
During these moments of drowsiness, her mind filled with fragments of conversation and images like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She found it hard to believe that Jacobo would have fallen in love with Bisila and then abandoned her with a small child. If it were true, her uncle Kilian must have been complicit. How could they have kept such an enormous secret? Was the moment of truth finally approaching? Was that why she was so nervous?
The only way to free the tightness in her chest was to ski down the hardest slope at top speed, pushing her body to the limit, while the other two, completely oblivious to her suspicions, relaxed in the cafeteria.
Laha felt happy talking to Daniela. He liked being with her. He liked how she held her cup with both hands to warm herself and how she blew on the white coffee to cool it down. As Daniela talked, her expressive eyes went from the coffee to him, to those at the table beside them, to those taking off their skis at the door of the cafeteria, and to what was happening at the bar. Laha deduced that it was not nervousness, but an ability to observe and analyze. How different she was from her cousin, he thought. Apart from being shorter and slimmer, Daniela seemed much more easygoing and rational than Clarence. She shared Carmen’s impulse to make those around her feel well—which he especially appreciated. Maybe for that reason he had not felt like a stranger for one moment since his arrival in Pasolobino. What was happening to him? He had just met her!
“You’re very quiet,” Daniela commented. “Has your first time skiing left you that wrecked?”
“It seems that it is not my forte!” Laha answered sadly. “And frankly”—he lowered his voice—“I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. The boots are so tight that the blood can’t reach my feet!”
“Don’t exaggerate!” Daniela gave a big laugh, and her face lit up.
“Would you like another coffee?” he asked, getting to his feet.
“Do you think you’ll be able to walk to the bar?”
Laha made as if he were concentrating on the difficult task of slowly putting one foot in front of the other, and Daniela, amused, followed him with her eyes. She felt very comfortable with Laha, too comfortable. She bit her lip. It was Clarence who should be with Laha rather than she. Then why had she left them alone? Her cousin had her confused. She and Laha behaved like two good friends, maybe especially close friends, but they had not held each other’s hand, nor looked with passion at each other. And if Clarence was in love with Laha and his feelings were not the same as hers? It was difficult for her to believe that someone like him would have accepted the invitation to share a few days with her family. It was also possible that he did not know and that Clarence was waiting for the right moment . . . Whatever way you looked at it, the situation got more complicated. It was the first time in Daniela’s life that her knees felt like rubber, thousands of butterflies fluttered in her stomach, and a constant hot flush was on her cheeks. Not good.
Laha brushed against her shoulder when he leaned down to leave the cup in front of her. He sat down, stirred the coffee with the spoon to dissolve the sugar, and asked her directly, “Do you like living in Pasolobino, Daniela?”
“Yes, of course.” A slight hesitation had preceded her answer. “Here I have my work and my family. And as you can see, it is a beautiful spot.” If Laha did not stop staring at her, she would end up blushing. “And you, where do you feel you’re from?”
“I don’t know how to put it.” Laha sat back and rested his chin in one of his hands. “I really do suffer an identity crisis. I’m Bubi, Equatorial Guinean, African, a bit Spanish, European by an unknown father, and an adopted American.”
Daniela was sorry that this confession had brought on a thin veil of sadness.
“Maybe in your heart you feel one option stands out above the rest,” she said.
He looked outside and recovered his cheerful attitude. “Look, Daniela.” He tilted his head slightly. “How is a black man meant to feel surrounded by so much white?” He stretched out his hand to point toward the snow. “Well, gray.”
“You’re not gray!” exclaimed Daniela, raising her voice.