In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  Van Doren closed his door more energetically than necessary, and when he sat across from them in a tubular easy chair covered in calfskin and placed his hands on his knees, he had the serenity of a dancer who has completed a leap without visible effort. Resting on the sporty fabric of his trousers, his hands stood out with obscene crudeness. The sound of the party was faint, intensifying in Ignacio Abel the sensation of distance, of losing his footing, of advancing in the darkness along a passage, extending his hands and not finding a solid point of reference to define the space. The close-fitting sleeves of Van Doren’s sweater revealed a portion of his muscular, hairy forearms. The watch on his left wrist and the bracelet on his right were gold, and both shook when he moved his hands. The pale light of the October afternoon shone on her hair and the taut skin of her cheeks and chin. Van Doren had rung a bell when he observed Judith lighting a cigarette and followed with his eyes the hand that left the burned match on the glass tabletop. The waiter came in, and Van Doren signaled to him to bring an ashtray, always in a hurry and with a touch of rage that his smile couldn’t conceal, not because he didn’t know how but because he didn’t try. Perhaps what he didn’t know was how to live without the sensation of frightening whoever was near him. The waiter changed Ignacio Abel’s unfinished, by now warm glass for another in which the cold left a cloud of condensation on its delicate, inverted-cone shape. Judith tasted hers in short sips, like her puffs on the cigarette, which she kept far from her face.

  “Modern architecture is my passion,” said Van Doren. “Painting, too, as you may have noticed, but in another way. Do you like Paul Klee?”

  That vigilant stare had followed his, incredulous, overwhelmed by five small canvases by Paul Klee, watercolors and oils, and not far from them a drawing of a still life, probably by Juan Gris.

  “Klee was my drawing professor in Germany.”

  “You studied at the Bauhaus?” Now Van Doren granted him the consideration that until then, for one reason or another, out of mistrust or simple arrogance, he’d only feigned.

  “One year, during the early period, in Weimar. I learned more in a few months than I had in my entire life.”

  But Van Doren had already lost interest. Still smiling, he was elsewhere, like someone who closes his eyes for a second, is asleep, and wakes with a start. He contracted his facial muscles and in an instant picked up the interrupted thread of his monologue.

  “But painting is a private pleasure, even when it’s enjoyed in a museum. You’re alone before the canvas, and the world around you no longer exists. Painting demands a degree of contemplation that at times is a problem for active people. When you’re still for a few minutes, don’t you regret it, feel you’re losing something? Of course a building can be enjoyed as privately as a painting. As you know, the esthetic emotion tends to be reinforced by the privilege of possession. But architecture always has a public part, accessible to anyone, on the street, outdoors. It’s an affirmation. Like a fist coming down on a table . . .”

  Van Doren made a fist with his right hand and held it up, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater almost to the elbow.

  “Look at that magnificent Telephone Company tower. Perhaps Judith has told you we own shares in it. My family, I mean, through American Telephone and Telegraph. The tower is a statement—the power of money, our dear Judith, who has radical sympathies as you know, would say. And she’s correct, of course she is, but there’s also something else. The marvel of telephone communications, and better still, radio waves that don’t require the laying of cables to transmit words through the atmosphere, making them resonate like echoes in the stratosphere, then retrieving them. A miracle for people our parents’ age, an act of witchcraft. But that tower is saying something else as well, and you as an architect are aware of what it means: the drive of your country, as powerful now as when the cathedrals were built. You approach Madrid and the Telephone Company Building is its cathedral. A tower of offices and a warehouse filled with machinery and cables, a symbol too, just like a church or a Greek temple or a pyramid.”

  He took a final sip of his drink, clicking his tongue, and looked sideways at his watch. Ignacio Abel studied the somewhat absent face of Judith, whose eyes were fixed on her cigarette smoke. Perhaps their mutual excitement had dissipated. Perhaps when the effect of alcohol and physical proximity had passed, neither would feel anything for the other.

  “But I see you’re impatient. I don’t want to waste your time or mine. I haven’t forgotten that you’re not a contemplative soul either. I suppose you haven’t heard of Burton College. It’s a small school, very select, about two hours by train north of New York, on the Hudson River. Beautiful country. The campus is in the middle of a natural landscape, the houses and farms of the early colonists surround it—”

  “And before that, those of the Indians expelled by the early colonists,” said Judith.

  Van Doren looked at her with absolute serenity, examining her slowly, then looking at Ignacio Abel as if to make certain he’d witnessed his magnanimity. It pleased him to give the impression that some kind of familiarity existed between Judith and him.

  “It was inevitable when we reached this point that our dear Judith would bring up the Indians. Sadly disappeared. You Spaniards know something about that. But if Judith permits, I’d prefer to go on with my story about Burton College. Right now the woods are turning red and yellow. I’m not sentimental, and I like Madrid a great deal, but I miss the autumn colors in that part of America. Judith knows what I’m referring to. Haven’t you ever been to the United States, Professor Abel? Perhaps the right moment is now. My family has been connected to Burton College for several generations. At one point, in fact, it was almost called Van Doren College. The land for the campus was a gift from a great-grandfather of mine. As you know, we settled there before the English arrived. We Dutch, I mean. Their New York was our New Amsterdam first, just as today’s Mexico was your New Spain—”

  “That’s why that part of the state is filled with Dutch names,” Judith interrupted, perhaps with some annoyance at his display of ancestors, she whose only forebears in America were her parents, immigrants who spoke English with a terrible accent and argued in Russian and Yiddish.

  “The Roosevelts, to name some prominent neighbors,” and Van Doren laughed. “Or the Vanderbilts. Or the Van Burens. Except in our family we’ve been more discreet. No politics, no speculative transactions. The last crisis barely affected us.”

  “It affected us,” said Judith, but Van Doren decided to ignore her.

  “Burton College has been the preferred area for our philanthropy. There’s a Van Doren Hall where symphonic concerts are given regularly, a Van Doren Wing in the hospital, specializing in pioneering treatments for cancer. And for years, since my father’s time, a project has existed that I love dearly because my father wanted to build it and died too soon: a new library, the Van Doren Library, the Philip Van Doren the Second Library, to be exact. Several architects have already done work for us, but I don’t like any of the proposals. Of course I’m not the one who decides, but what I say carries a good deal of weight with the board of trustees, and in the end, I’m the one who holds the purse strings.”

  “The one who has the frying pan by the handle,” said Judith, happy to correct Van Doren for his literal translation from English with a straightforward Spanish expression she’d learned not long before and liked very much.

  “So far everything they’ve presented to us has been a pastiche, as you can imagine.” Van Doren again pronounced a French word with mannered correctness. “Gothic pastiches, imitations of imitations, Greek temples, Roman baths, railroad stations, or exposition halls imitating Greek temples and Roman monuments, pastries in the Beaux-Arts style. But I don’t want that land profaned by a monstrosity that resembles a post office. I’d like you to see it. I’ll have photographs and plans sent to you. It’s a clearing in a forest of maples and oaks, high ground beyond the western edge of the campus, with a view of the Hudson.
The building will be seen from the trains that run along the riverbank, from the ships that sail up and down the river. Even from the New Jersey side. It’ll be the most visible building of the college. I picture it above the treetops, more hidden when they’re full of leaves, at the end of a walk that will lead away from the central quadrangle, a secluded, elevated path to books, its lights on until midnight. There will be books but also records of any kind of music, from anywhere in the world. Judith, with her excellent ear, will undoubtedly help me find recordings of Spanish music. My family has shares in some gramophone companies. I imagine soundproof booths for listening to the records, projection rooms where anyone can watch films. I’m interested in the project you have now in Spain to record the voices of your most eminent personalities. There’ll be reading rooms with large windows offering views of the woods and the river, the other buildings on campus. Not one of those lugubrious libraries like the ones in England that are mindlessly imitated in America, with smells of mildew and crumbling leather, stacks and card catalogues of dark wood, like coffins or funerary monuments, low lamps with green shades that give faces the color of death. I see a bright library, like those buildings and shops your teachers built in Germany, like the school you built in Madrid. A library that’s practical, like a good gymnasium, a gymnasium for the mind. A watchtower and a refuge as well.”

  “I want to work in that library,” said Judith, but Van Doren had no time to listen. He moved his large hands with their pink manicured nails and pushed up the sleeves of his sweater as if impatient to begin work on his imaginary library, to dig the foundation, level the uneven terrain, lay rows of red bricks or blocks carved from the gray stones found in the forest.

  “I didn’t invite you here today for you to say yes, to make a commitment to me,” Van Doren said. “You have many things to do, and so do I. Dr. Negrín has told me that this year will be particularly difficult for all of you, because he promised to inaugurate University City next October. Difficult, if you’ll permit me. Almost impossible.”

  “Have you visited the construction site?”

  Before answering, Van Doren smiled to himself, like someone who hasn’t decided to reveal completely what he knows, or who wants to give the impression that he knows more than he does.

  “That’s one of the reasons I came to Madrid in the first place. I’ve visited the site and consulted plans and models. A magnificent project, on a scale that has no equal in Europe, though its execution is slow and perhaps chaotic. I liked your building very much, of course, the one designed exclusively by you. The steam power plant, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “It’s almost not a building. It’s a box for holding machinery and controls. It’s not operating yet. Who showed it to you?”

  “Phil isn’t going to answer that question,” said Judith. Van Doren gave her a quick smile, a gesture, approving, not without flattery, what she’d said. He was a man who liked above all to know what others didn’t know and to have privileged access to what was unavailable to the rest. Ignacio Abel didn’t like Judith calling him “Phil” again.

  “It’s a cubic block and yet looks as if it emerged from the earth, was part of the earth,” Van Doren said. “It’s a fortress but doesn’t seem to weigh too much, this vigorous heart that pumps hot water and heat to the city of knowledge. One wants to knock on that gate in the wall and enter the castle. One sees immediately that you’ve worked with competent engineers. And that aside from your German teachers, you must admire some Scandinavian architects, I would assume. Was it difficult to have your project accepted?”

  “Not too bad. It’s a practical construction, so no one pays much attention to it. There was no need to add volutes or Plateresque eaves or to imitate El Escorial.”

  “A terrible building, don’t you agree? Compatriots of yours who are very proud of it took me to see it last week. It was like entering a sinister set for Don Carlo. One feels the weight of the granite as if it were the hand of Philip the Second in an iron glove. Or perhaps the hand of the statue of the Commendatore in Don Giovanni.”

  Van Doren burst into laughter, looking for Judith’s complicity, then turned to Abel, completely changing his tone.

  “Are you a Communist?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Checking up on me,” Judith said quietly in English, visibly irritated. She stood and went to the window, uncomfortable because of what seemed to be the beginning of an interrogation for which she perhaps felt partially responsible.

  “Some of your classmates and professors at the Bauhaus were. And I think you’re a man who likes to get things done. Who has practical sense and at the same time a utopian imagination.”

  “Do you have to be a Communist for that?”

  “Communist or Fascist, I’m afraid. You have to love big projects and immediate, effective action, and have no patience for empty talk, for delays. In Moscow or Berlin your University City would be finished by now. Even in Rome.”

  “But probably it would make no sense.” Ignacio Abel was aware of Judith’s gaze and attention. “Unless it was like a barracks or a reeducation camp.”

  “Don’t repeat propagandistic vulgarities that are unworthy of you. German science is the best in the world.”

  “It won’t be for very long.”

  “Now you’re talking like a Communist.”

  “Are you saying you have to be a Communist to be against Hitler?” Judith Biely said. She was standing by the window, angry, serious, agitated. Van Doren looked at her, not responding. The one he stared at intently was Ignacio Abel, who spoke without raising his voice, with the instinctive diffidence he felt when he expressed political opinions.

  “I’m a Socialist.”

  “Is there any difference?”

  “When the Communists came to power in Russia, they sent the Socialists to prison.”

  “The Socialists shot Rosa Luxemburg in Germany in 1919,” Judith said. The discussion produced a somewhat histrionic comic effect in Van Doren.

  “And when the Fascists or the Nazis win, Communists and Socialists will end up together in the same prisons, after having fought so much with one another. You cannot deny there’s a certain humor in that.”

  “I hope that doesn’t happen in my country, and we’ll inaugurate University City on time with no need for a Fascist or Communist coup.” Ignacio Abel would have liked to end the conversation and leave, but if he left now, when would he see Judith again?

  “I like your enthusiasm, Ignacio, if you’ll permit me to use your first name. I’ve heard you ended your lecture eloquently, with a revolutionary declaration. Judith didn’t tell me this, don’t blame her. I’d be delighted if you called me Phil and if we used informal address with each other, though I know we just met and Spain is a more formal place than America. I like it that you don’t seem to care about staying on the margins of the great modern currents, politically speaking.”

  “They seem horribly primitive to me.”

  “I visited the Soviet Union two years ago, and I’ve traveled extensively through Germany and Italy. I believe I’m a person without prejudices. An American open to the new things the world can offer. An innocent abroad, as Mark Twain, one of the great travelers of my country, put it. We’re a new nation compared to you Europeans. We feel sympathy for everything that’s a valiant break with the past. That’s how we were born, breaking with old Europe, putting an end to kings and archbishops.”

  “We did that in Spain just four years ago.”

  “And with what results? What have you brought to completion in this time? I drive through the country and once I leave Madrid I see only miserable villages. Skinny peasants on burros, goatherds, barefoot children, women sitting in the sun picking lice out of each other’s hair.”

  “You’re exaggerating, Phil,” Judith said. “Señor Abel’s feelings may be hurt. You’re talking about his country.”

  “About a part of it,” Ignacio Abel said quietly, furious with himself for not leaving, for continuing t
o listen.

  “You waste your energy on parliamentary battles, on speeches, on changes of government. You say you’re a Socialist, but inside your own party you’re fighting! Are you a Socialist in favor of the parliamentary system or a participant in the uprising last year to bring the Soviet revolution to Spain? I had the pleasure of meeting your coreligionist Don Julián Besteiro last year at a diplomatic dinner, and he seemed a perfect gentleman, but I also thought he was living in the clouds. Forgive me for speaking frankly: part of my work entails looking for information. We have a good deal of money invested in your country and wouldn’t like to lose it. We want to know whether it’s advisable for us to continue working and investing money here, or would it be more prudent to leave. Is it true that new elections will be held soon? I arrived in Madrid last month and the papers were full of photographs of the new government. Now I’ve read that a crisis has been announced and the government will change. Look at what Germany has accomplished in the same time. Look at the highways, the expansion of industry, the millions of new jobs. And it isn’t a question of racial differences, of efficient Aryans and lazy Latins, as some people believe. Look at what Italy has become in ten years. Have you seen the highways, the new railroad stations, the strength of the army? I also don’t have ideological prejudices, my dear Judith—it’s simply a practical question. In the same way I admire the formidable advances of the Soviet five-year plans. I’ve seen the factories with my own eyes, the blast furnaces, the collective farms plowed with tractors. Ten, fifteen years ago, the countryside was more miserable and backward in Russia than in Spain. Just two years ago Germany was a humiliated nation. Now once again it’s the leading power in Europe. In spite of the terrible, unjust sanctions the Allies imposed on it, especially the French, who wouldn’t be so resented if they were not also incompetent and corrupt—”