In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  From the time she was very young, her urge to express herself had been as powerful as her desire to learn. Writing letters was an exercise of talent that hadn’t found its true channel until then, not in the literary attempts she showed no one, not in her journals, not in the articles she sent to the Brooklyn paper that asked her for more political analyses and fewer observations on the daily life of Spaniards. When she wrote letters she felt the new exaltation of having an interlocutor with whom there would be no misunderstandings, because his intelligence was a challenge and a complement to hers, and because basically they resembled each other a great deal, a fact they hadn’t needed more than a few minutes to recognize. Everything was memorable and new and deserved to be celebrated; wandering through Madrid produced euphoria. Explaining in a letter to the man she hadn’t known until a short time ago the most secret ambitions in her life and the nuances of the sexual passion it seemed they’d awakened to together was for her an unsurpassed experience: her hand flew over the paper, ink flowed from the pen, forming volutes of words in which her will almost didn’t intervene, words erupting with the memory of something that had occurred barely a few hours earlier, desire reborn in its invocation as it was sometimes in a distracted caress that made them return unexpectedly from the edge of exhaustion. (The book was somehow also in those letters. The book was in everything she did, yet it slipped away when she began looking for it consciously, when she sat in front of the typewriter searching, hoping for a first word that would unleash everything.) They told each other what they’d done and what they’d felt, and anticipated what they’d do when they met again, all they hadn’t dared to suggest or ask for aloud. A letter was a confession and an account of desire and also a brazen way of inciting passion in the other: as you’re reading, do what I imagine doing to you, let your hand move, guided by mine; let it be my hand caressing you though you’re not with me. How strange that it took them so long to become aware of the danger, to discover there was a price and damage and no remedy for the affront once it was committed. Each word an injury, the thread of ink a trail of poison.

  “Where do you keep the letters?”

  “You’ve asked me that before. In a desk drawer.”

  “At home or in the office?”

  “Where I have them closest to me.”

  “Your wife can find them.”

  “I always lock the drawer with a key.”

  “One day you’ll forget.”

  “Adela never looks at my papers. She doesn’t even come into my study.”

  “How strange that you’ve said her name.”

  “I didn’t realize I hadn’t said it.”

  “You don’t realize a lot of things. Tell me your wife’s name again.”

  “You’re my wife.”

  “When you divorce and marry me. Meanwhile your wife’s Adela.”

  “You never say her name either.”

  “Promise me something—burn my letters, or keep them in your office, in your safe. But please don’t have them at home.”

  “Don’t call it my home.”

  “There’s nothing else to call it.”

  “I don’t want to be away from your letters. I wouldn’t burn a single one, or a postcard, or a movie ticket.”

  “You keep movie tickets too?”

  “Finally I’m seeing you laugh this afternoon.”

  “I don’t want her to read what I’ve written to you. It embarrasses me. It frightens me.”

  “I always have the key with me.”

  “When she suspects something, she’ll break the lock. Or she won’t have to. She’ll pull the drawer and that day you’ll have forgotten to lock it.”

  “I know her very well—she doesn’t suspect anything.”

  “You don’t know her. I ask you things about her and you can’t answer. You become uncomfortable.”

  “She’s in her world and we’re in ours. We always said there was a barrier between the two.”

  “You’re the one who said it.”

  “What we had was enough.”

  “Only for a while. Now it’s enough for you.”

  “You know I want to live with you always.”

  “I know that’s what you say. I also know what you don’t do.”

  “I’m going to America with you after the summer.”

  “You’ve really told your wife and children?”

  “You know I have.”

  “You’ve told me you have. What if you’re lying?”

  “You don’t trust me anymore.”

  “I’m getting to know your voice, the way you look when something makes you uneasy. I see your face right now. I see you don’t want to go on with this conversation.”

  “I’m going to America with you.”

  “What if I don’t want to go back so soon? What if I’d rather stay in Spain a little longer?”

  “Spain is becoming a very dangerous place.”

  “I still have some money left. I can keep traveling a while longer in Europe.”

  “You don’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “And will you hide me when you’re at Burton College too? Will I have to wait for you to come and see me in New York?”

  “You wanted me to make that trip.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “What I want is to be with you. I don’t care where or how.”

  “But I do. I care where and how.”

  “You said you wouldn’t ask me for anything.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Your feelings have changed.”

  “I don’t want to see you in secret. I don’t want to share you with anybody else.”

  “You don’t share me.”

  “You sleep with Adela every night, not with me.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I touched her.”

  “It makes me ashamed. It makes me sad for her. Even if she doesn’t know, the sadness I feel for your wife humiliates her.”

  “She doesn’t know you exist.”

  “She looked at me that day at the Residence and realized something. As soon as she saw me, she didn’t trust me.”

  “But we’d just met.”

  “It doesn’t matter. A woman in love senses danger.”

  “You thought she was in love?”

  “I saw how she looked at you while you were giving your talk. I was sitting next to her. I think about it now and can’t believe it. Next to your wife and daughter.”

  “She’s less suspicious than you imagine.”

  “She saw how you were looking at me. Don’t keep the letters at home. Don’t call me from there.”

  “You’ve called me.”

  “With a good deal of embarrassment, because I was frightened. Only once.”

  “You gave me life that night.”

  “But then you went back to your home. We were in bed in Madame Mathilde’s house and I saw you in the mirror looking at your watch.”

  “You didn’t say you wanted us to spend the whole night together.”

  “I didn’t want you to say no.”

  “I wish you’d asked.”

  “She knows you’re with me. She’s watching you. Please, burn the letters, hide them somewhere else.”

  “I don’t want to be away from them.”

  “And what will you do when you finish the semester in America? Will you go back to Madrid, and will I have to wait for you to write to me?”

  “There’s no reason to talk about what’s so far away.”

  “I don’t want my entire life to depend on you.”

  “You knew what mine was like when we met.”

  “I didn’t know I’d fall so much in love.”

  But before the shame and guilt emerged they knew that paradise was lost, that they’d left it, or stopped deserving a state of grace as remote from their wills as a favorable wind that would have lifted them above the daily accidents and limitations of their lives and now, like wine, had come to an end. Their desire was no less intense b
ut now it had an edge of exasperation. As soon as it was satisfied, it dissolved into solitude, not gratitude, infected not with reluctance but with a secret disappointment, a kind of disrepute. The house of assignation no longer offered its usual sanctuary: like a remembered affront, they saw the bordello extravagance of Madame Mathilde’s room, the wounding vulgarity of the painted paper on the walls, the loose threads in the carpet; they smelled the cheap disinfectant, saw the unclean bathroom behind the Oriental screen partially covered by a manila shawl. They returned from the too-transient days in the house by the sea and Madrid’s June heat was unbreathable, its dry air like the breath of an oven, the immense weariness on suffocating cloudy days, the hostility in the glances of people on the street, sullen bodies sweating inside streetcars. For the first time they both could imagine a future when love would no longer illuminate them. In fleeting moments of lucidity and remorse, they saw each other again as if they’d never met, secretly ashamed of themselves, exhausted by the dejection of excitement sustained without pause for too long. Perhaps they should give themselves breathing space, free themselves for a while from their unhealthy obsession with being together, with writing so many letters and constantly waiting for them to arrive.

  The ring of the phone startled him one burning night in June at the end of a day when he’d been overcome by an uneasiness that in retrospect would take on the dubious value of a premonition. The word “accident” was used from the start, but with a strange inflection, something indeterminate it would have been preferable not to say, a suggestion of accusation, of a slightly troubling enigma. “Come right away, Adela’s had an accident.” It was the hostile voice of her ever-vigilant brother, self-appointed guardian of the family honor, endangered by an upstart intruder, the lamentable husband needed to continue the line but always dubious for his ideas and behavior. “She’s out of danger, but it might’ve been very serious.” He didn’t say much more, at first not even what had happened or where he was being asked to go. What mattered was to suggest by his tone of voice and scant information that they, the family, had gathered to help their daughter and sister, and once again the husband not only was irrelevant but also suspect, and so it was advisable to tell him no more than the essentials. That Adela had tripped or slipped and might have died, and they’d taken her to the closest hospital, the tuberculosis sanatorium. The sanatorium where the sudden anguish, the guilt, the appearance of strength so precariously maintained, collapsed all at once because of the seismic jolt of fear. When the telephone rang Ignacio Abel was sitting in his study at the desk with the open drawers he’d forgotten to lock that morning before leaving for work, rushing because of an urgent call, the desk beside the balcony where not a hint of a breeze moved the curtains and through which heat unmoderated by nightfall entered in an unmoving gust. He arrived home when the street lamps were beginning to go on and his daughter, who got up from her desk to greet him when she heard his key in the lock, said she didn’t know where her mother was, but neither of them was alarmed because she might have gone to Mass or to pay a visit or to a meeting of her readers’ club. He went into the living room with Lita and she brought him the paper, which he’d have preferred not to read because of its daily dose of alarming headlines, and especially because of the blank spaces of censored information, the disastrous news, the incompetent opinions. The government denied that health clinics had experienced a rush of sick children, victims of poisoned candies that according to unfounded rumors nuns had been handing out at the doors of some churches in working-class neighborhoods. Men who wished to join construction crews could do so, but were advised that the authorities would not tolerate the slightest violation of the law on the part of armed elements. He took off his jacket and tie and unfastened his sticky shirt collar, reduced by heat and fatigue to an invincible ennui. The boy came from his room and kissed him with that touch of excessive formality he’d been acquiring recently as he grew away from childhood. Perhaps he still felt some rancor because of the slap after the incident with the pistol. He asked his father whether he could help him with his geometry homework. For Ignacio Abel it was a relief to assist his son in matters that involved no emotional tension, when he could be generous with no effort, when he didn’t project too large a shadow over him. Miguel easily felt fearful, incompetent, inferior to his sister, who obtained with ease what was so difficult for him: excellent grades and her father’s visible approval. He kissed the boy and passed a hand distractedly through his hair as he reluctantly opened the paper. “Give me a few minutes and then we’ll look at the notebook in my study.” The daily circle of habits, their comfortable, boring repetition, like the sight of the furniture in the living room, the pictures on the walls and the clock on the mantel; like the entrance of the maid, who came from the kitchen drying her hands on her apron to ask whether he wanted something to drink before supper, the greasy shine of sweat on her face. He’d never have told Judith Biely that in his heart of hearts the routine was not at all oppressive.

  “Do you know where the señora has gone?”

  “No, señor. She left and didn’t say anything. I didn’t even see her go out.”

  “Did she leave a while ago?”

  “Yes. The children hadn’t come back from school yet.”

  Concern for Adela’s absence filtered weakly into his mind. He was tired, and in reality he was pleased she’d gone out because now he wouldn’t have to make an effort to engage in conversation or watch her for possible signs of unhappiness or suspicion. Through the open balcony came steamy air, heavy with the smell of geraniums and acacia blossoms, along with sounds from the street several floors below, the voices of men in a tavern doorway, car engines and horns, music from a radio, the sonorous texture of Madrid that he liked so much though he rarely heard it, muffled in this neighborhood that was still new, still growing, with wide, straight streets and rows of young trees.

  It was nine o’clock and Adela hadn’t returned yet. His son was waiting with his geometry notebook, standing at the door, undecided about attracting his attention. On the way to his study he placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and realized how much he’d grown. He turned on the light and instantly understood why Adela had left without saying anything to anyone and was so late coming home. The desk drawer he usually locked was overturned on the floor. There were envelopes and letters scattered around it, blue sheets densely covered with Judith Biely’s slanted handwriting, photographs, a handful of the most recent, the ones they’d taken of each other on the trip to Cádiz. Brusquely he told the boy to wait outside but noticed he’d seen the same thing his father had and probably understood, with his intuition for the dark areas of his parents’ intimacy and his instinct for alarm and censure, which Ignacio Abel had seen so often in his eyes, attributing to him an astuteness a boy scarcely could possess and that was only a child’s panic at the indecipherable disturbances of adults. He closed the door and examined the details of the disaster, overwhelmed by the eruption of the irreparable. The letters, all of them, from the first, dated last summer; the postcards; the trivial, obscene, equally accusatory details; the envelopes ripped by impatience, the sheets filled with writing and notes and exclamations in the margins, the greedy use of all the space on the paper. And the photos of Judith in Madrid and New York and leaning against a white railing on the deck of a ship: one, on the floor, stepped on, with the mark of a shoe clearly visible on it; another face-down on the desk, among the papers; another two on the floor, near the drawer, as if Adela hadn’t seen them or didn’t consider it necessary to look at them. On the floor, torn in two, was the letter he’d begun to write the night before and quickly put away when Adela came in to say good night. He looked at her standing there and felt embarrassed by his ardor: suddenly it seemed insincere, forced; writing love letters could also be a debilitating task.

  He touched his face; he’d turned red. Sweat made his shirt stick to his back; his hands were disagreeably damp. He gathered together the letters and photographs in a haphazard way
, returned the drawer to its place, and locked it. In a flash of belated and totally irrelevant lucidity he relived a moment that morning when, as he prepared the papers he had to carry in his briefcase, he’d looked at the drawer and told himself to be sure to lock it before he left and put the tiny key where he always put it, in the small inside pocket of his jacket where he didn’t keep anything else. At times throughout the day he made certain he had the key by patting the lining with automatic caution. The telephone rang and he picked up the receiver with a start: it must be Adela, calling from her father’s house, and he’d have to make the effort to improvise an unlikely explanation, which would worsen the indignity without resolving anything. Before speaking he recognized the voice of his brother-in-law, greeted by the girl on the other telephone, and he said nothing. The guardian brother, knight-errant of the family honor, must be calling to demand an explanation of the affront. His daughter knocked on the door of the study without opening it. “Papá, Uncle Víctor wants to talk to you.”

  21

  SHE DID EVERYTHING carefully, not hurrying, as if putting into effect a plan she’d conceived long before, the only sign of negligence the disorder of the letters and photographs thrown on the floor and the toppled drawer with the little key in the lock, which Adela had noticed that morning, perhaps, as she supervised the cleaning of the study. The maids tended to dust inefficiently and to move things, and this irritated Ignacio Abel, who maintained in his workroom a peculiar equilibrium between discipline and disorder, frequently mislaying loose papers or newspaper clippings or photos from international magazines and later needing them urgently. She must have seen the key earlier, when the maids were straightening the rooms and airing the house, but it took her a long time to decide to open the drawer he always kept locked, and in fact she might not have noticed the presence of the key, since it was so small, a glint of metal in the study with its open balcony. She might not have felt the shock, or she might have resisted the temptation, at first not powerful, at least not conscious, not something that would have persisted like a thorn or a physical discomfort in the midst of the day’s activities. But she didn’t forget it, not even when she was absorbed in other tasks: going over menus for the next few days with the cook or talking on the phone with her mother—distraught, Doña Cecilia said, her body going to pieces, nothing but terrible news, decent people couldn’t go out anymore, couldn’t go to Mass without being insulted, and now they were slandering the poor nuns with that lie about giving poisoned candies to children, shouting vile things at the sisters on the street and threatening to burn down their convents. She listened to the plaintive whine of her mother’s voice on the phone but didn’t forget about the key. She seemed to see it, tiny and hateful, shining in the gloom when she lay down in bed with the curtains closed and the shutters open, seeking to alleviate a headache that became more oppressive on hot, overcast days, the gray light disorienting her sense of time. How she longed for the few days before the children finished the school year to pass quickly so they could leave Madrid for the dearly loved house in the Sierra, the relief of twilights and a breeze that carried the scent of pine and rockrose and returned her unconditionally to the happiness of her childhood, made not of memories but instinctive sensations, the singing of crickets in the damp and dark of the garden beyond the terrace, where the dinner table hadn’t been cleared yet, the creak of the swing where her children moved back and forth, bringing back to her, like an echo in time, that same creak and those other children’s voices, similar but belonging to her and her brother, so many years ago.