“There is no need,” José replies, desolate, putting a hand on your shoulder.
Tears shine in his wrinkled eyes. He has been like a father to you in this initially strange land. The passing of time is evident in his teeth. When your father wrote about José in his letters or told stories in front of the fire on winter evenings, he always said that he had never seen teeth so perfect and white. That was an eternity ago.
Hardly anything is left.
You will not see José again.
The intoxicating smell of nature’s greenery, the solemn sounds of the deep songs, the racket of the celebrations, the nobility of friends like José, and the constant heat on the skin will eventually feel distant. You will no longer be part of all this. The moment you get on the plane, you will go back to being an ?pottò, a foreigner.
“My dear friend José . . . I want to ask you one last favor.”
“Name it.”
“When it suits you, sometime, if you could, I would like you to take some flowers to my father’s grave. He is all alone in this land.”
How sad it is to think that your remains may rest in a forgotten place, where there will be nobody to spend a few minutes in front of your grave.
“Antón will have fresh flowers on his grave as long as I live.”
“Tenki, mi fren.”
Thank you, my friend. For getting me out of trouble. For helping me to understand a world so different from mine. For teaching me to love it. For being able to see further than the money that first brought me here. For not judging me.
“Mi hat no gud, ?sé.”
“Yu hat e stron, mi fren.”
My heart is not good. Your heart is strong, my friend. Your heart is not well, but your heart is strong.
It will survive all that comes.
You will survive, yes. But you will never forget that for many years, you spoke in four languages that are all unable to describe how you now feel: Tu hat no gud.
The plane is waiting on the runway.
Good-bye, vitémá, bighearted man. Look after yourself. Tek kea, mi fren. Shek mi jan.
Take care. Shake my hand.
You will let the clouds drag you for thousands of kilometers until you land in Madrid, where you take the train to Zaragoza. Later, you will get on a coach and, in a short time, be with your own again. All the hours of the journey will seem too few to distance yourself from these years, the best years of your life.
And this, recognizing that the best years of your existence were spent in distant lands, will be a secret that you will keep in the deepest recesses of your heart.
You cannot know that your secret will see the light of day over thirty years from now. You cannot know that one day, the two halves of the photo so cruelly separated will be joined together again.
Clarence does not exist yet.
Nor your other Daniela.
As the plane gains height, you will watch the island grow smaller and smaller. The place that once invaded your very being will turn into a slight speck on the horizon and then disappear completely. Other people will travel on the plane with you. Each of you will remain silent. Each of you will carry your stories with you.
You can only whisper a few words, surrendering to the tightness in your chest: “? má we è, etúlá.”
Good-bye, your beloved island in the sea.
1
The Cruelest Month
Pasolobino, 2003
Clarence held a small piece of paper in her hands. It had been stuck to one of the many almost-transparent blue-and-red-bordered envelopes particular to a past era. The writing paper was wafer thin, so that it would weigh less and be cheaper to send. As a result, portraits of lives were squeezed within impossible margins.
Clarence read the bit of paper for the umpteenth time. At first, she had been curious. But now, she felt an increasing sense of disquiet. It was written in a different hand than the one used on the letters strewn on the sitting room table:
. . . I will not be returning to Fernando Po, so, if you don’t mind, I will rely on Ureca friends so that you can continue sending your money. She is fine, she is very strong. She’s had to be, now that she is missing her good father, who, I’m sorry to tell you as I know how it will affect you, died a few months ago. Don’t worry, her children are also fine—the eldest, working, and the other making use of his studies. If you could see how different everything is compared to when you worked on the cocoa . . .
That was it. No dates. Not even a name.
Whom was this letter addressed to?
The addressee could not be from her grandfather’s generation. The texture of the paper, the ink, the style, and the handwriting were all more modern. Furthermore, as was made clear from the last phrase, the letter was addressed to a man. This limited the circle to her father, Jacobo, and her uncle Kilian. Last, the paper had appeared beside one of the few letters written by her father. It was strange. Why had not all the letters been kept? She imagined Jacobo saving the note, then deciding to take it out again without noticing that a piece of it had been torn off in the process. Why had her father done this? Was the information contained in the letter that compromising?
Clarence tore her gaze from the letter with a stunned look, placing it on the big walnut table behind the black leather chesterfield sofa as she rubbed her sore eyes. She had been reading for over five hours without a break. She sighed and got up to throw another log on the fire. The ash logs began to spit as the fire took hold. The spring had been wetter than normal, and she was cold after sitting for so long. She stretched her palms toward the fire, then rubbed her forearms and leaned against the mantelpiece, over which hung a rectangular wooden trumeau topped with a carved wreath. In the mirror, she saw a tired young woman with circles under her green eyes and rebellious strands of chestnut-colored hair escaping from her thick plait. She brushed them away from her round face and examined the fine lines on her forehead. Why was she so alarmed after reading those lines? She shook her head as if a shiver had run through her body, went back to the table, and sat down.