“Who isn’t gray?” asked a red-faced Clarence, sitting down beside her cousin.
They looked at the clock and realized that they had been talking for over an hour. For the first time in her life, Daniela lamented the presence of her cousin.
Since neither of them answered, Clarence said, “Well, Laha. Are you prepared to make a second go of it?”
Laha gave a pained expression and put out his arm to take Daniela’s hand. “No, please!” he begged her. “Don’t let her torture me anymore.”
Daniela squeezed his fingers in hers. Laha had large, thin hands. You could see that they had not seen much physical work.
“Don’t you worry,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “I’ll look after you.”
Clarence arched her left eyebrow.
Well, well, thought Clarence as she walked toward the exit. Is it my imagination, or are my darling cousin’s eyes gleaming each time they meet Laha’s? What mischievous spirits! Perhaps they have reserved Laha for Daniela?
Suddenly, something unexpected happened.
Laha, walking clumsily in his boots, did not judge the height of the step between the building and the snow correctly. He slipped and had time only to grab on to Clarence, who, on turning to help him, fell on her back to the floor.
Laha collapsed on top of her.
With all the sunlight of that radiant day concentrated in one shaft of light on the eyes of her friend, his face a few centimeters from hers, Clarence’s stomach jumped. She no longer had any doubts . . .
What had Simón said on the Sampaka plantation?
He had recognized her from her eyes, the same as the men in her family, which from a distance appeared green, but up close were gray . . .
In that same instant, Clarence recognized in Laha’s eyes her own, and Kilian’s, and Jacobo’s. Up to that very moment, she could have sworn they were green. But at this distance, she could clearly make out the dark little lines of the iris that made them a deep gray. Laha had inherited the family eyes!
She felt like crying with relief, happiness, and fear for what she had finally discovered.
And now that she knew it was Laha—and not another—whom she had gone to find on Bioko, in some part of her heart, she let surface her shame as the daughter of someone who had abandoned his own child and denied him the right to his space, beside hers, on the house’s family tree.
13
Boms de Llum
Wells of Light
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Daniela zipped up her anorak.
“My head still hurts a bit,” Clarence answered, resting her book on her lap.
Laha looked at her, distraught. “You don’t know how sorry I am about the fall.”
Daniela frowned. She hoped it was just the bumps and bruises making Clarence reluctant to join their drive, but she doubted it. When Clarence and Laha were on the ground, their faces so close together, Daniela had felt a sudden twinge of jealousy. Laha and Clarence had held each other’s gaze for much longer than necessary. And her cousin still seemed dazed.
There were voices and laughing coming from the kitchen. Clarence rolled her eyes.
“I’d go out the back door.”
“I’m surprised they took so long . . . ,” Daniela remarked.
Laha opened his mouth to ask what they meant, but Daniela made a gesture for him to hush. They could clearly hear the neighbors interrogating Carmen about Laha.
Daniela pulled Laha’s arm. “We’d better go,” she whispered. “Don’t make a sound. Bye, Clarence.”
Laha swallowed a laugh and, on tiptoe, followed Daniela. Clarence tried in vain to focus on her book again, but the neighbors’ nosy questions continued. How would the neighbors of Pasolobino have reacted if her father had brought his African son home decades ago? And now . . . what would happen when they found out he was another member of the family?
Fernando Laha of the House of Rabaltué.
Clarence sighed.
She felt incapable of looking him in the eye for fear that he would guess her torment. She felt incapable of explaining something that was still perhaps nothing more than a coincidence. How was she going to ask her father? If it was not true, she would both insult Jacobo and wound Laha with false hopes. And if it was true, she could not imagine how she was going to get confirmation.
And to top it all, those two, Laha and Daniela, seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. She remembered Daniela’s joke about the papal bull that was needed in times past to marry a cousin . . .
Her heart gave a start.
What was she thinking? Daniela was the first person she should have shared her suspicions with! She should know! Her silence was allowing the blossoming of . . .
She closed her eyes, and her mind wandered to a beach passionately bathed in cyan waters. A man and a woman lay on the sand, enjoying each other’s bodies, oblivious to the hundreds of turtles who veered around them. In the distance, the songs of the birds and the chattering of the colored parrots could be heard, insistently repeating that what was an intensely clear blue was not the sea, but the sky, that what was white was a blanket of snow covering the meadows, that the turtles were not turtles but enormous rocks, and that the bodies that desired caresses were not those of Clarence and Iniko, but others.
The sun trail got its name from the dozen villages that had been built over the centuries on the highest part of the mountain’s southern slope, which was bathed in sun from the first rays of dawn to the last at dusk. The houses of each village had been laid out in tiers so that all could enjoy the king of light, a precious gift in such a cold place.
The narrow, battered road started at the valley’s main road, twisted round the slope until it reached the first village, cut a straight scar along the mountain, and wound back down to the last bend, the tightest one of all, tossing travelers back onto the main road again.
During the journey, it was possible to feel as though time had stood still. Laha marveled at the Romanesque churches, the emblazoned gates, the houses with arched entryways and porticoes with crosses carved in stone. He found it incredible that, a few kilometers away, the tourist maelstrom was in full flow.
“I didn’t think so many people lived in these villages,” Laha commented.
“Many of the houses are second homes refurbished by the descendants of the original owners,” Daniela explained. “I call them the prodigal sons.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because when they visit, they insist on finding out about recent changes, then hold meetings to suggest ideas or protest what’s been done. As the days pass and the end of the holidays get closer, their energies weaken until they file back toward the city. And so on until the next holidays.”
Laha remained thoughtful. Daniela’s words had had an impact on him.
“I’m one of them as well,” he murmured with a heavy heart.