In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  In the house in the Sierra, being deprived of Judith had been more tolerable because it fell into the order of things. As soon as he left the station and breathed the hot air of Madrid in the July twilight, he could no longer not look for her. He wouldn’t have the patience to read the paper, thicker in its Sunday edition. He got out of the taxi at the corner of Calle del Prado and Plaza de Santa Ana with the premonition that one of the women with short hair and a print summer dress would be Judith, that he’d see her coming out the doorway of her pensión or behind the glass of the ice cream shop where she liked to have horchata and meringue ice cream, her two new Spanish passions. Searching for her was a way to invoke her presence. He could feel her in the sensual touch of warm air at nightfall, in the luminous blue sky over the fantastic tower of the Hotel Victoria, which she loved from the first morning she saw it above Madrid when she opened her window. But perhaps she was still in Granada, and the sense of imminence was an illusion, his search fruitless. Ignacio Abel walks along the Plaza de Santa Ana, filled with open-air cafés where people are having beers and soft drinks, grateful for the first signs of the night’s cool breeze. At the open balconies you can see the lighted interiors of houses, family conversations and the clink of dishes blending with music from the radios: the broadcast of a concert by the Municipal Band of Madrid, conducted by Maestro Sorozábal. A bewildered imagination allies itself with knowledge of those mundane details and for a few seconds, like a hallucination, a night in July, a night seventy-three years ago, falls before one’s eyes. The Municipal Band of Madrid is playing on the Paseo de Rosales, and the person listening will smell the recently watered grass in the Parque del Oeste. By consulting the newspaper program for Unión Radio on the night of Sunday, July 12, you can find out which piece of music is heard through the open balconies while Ignacio Abel sits down, disheartened, on a still warm stone bench on the Plaza de Santa Ana, the paper folded on his lap, the hand that had been holding it sticky with ink. In his house at 89 Calle Velázquez, Deputy José Calvo Sotelo, who’s also spent the day in the Sierra, listens to the concert on the radio with his wife and children in a living room I imagine as pretentious, a room with old religious paintings and Spanish furniture, the kind Don Francisco de Asís likes. Lieutenant José Castillo walks along Calle de Augusto Figueroa, erect in his black Assault Guard uniform, swinging his arms, his right hand brushing the holster where he carries his pistol with instinctive caution, because in recent months, ever since he fired on the Fascists accompanying the coffin of Second Lieutenant Reyes on the Plaza de Manuel Becerra, he’s received anonymous death threats. Calvo Sotelo is a man of solemn haughtiness, with a broad, fleshy face and the bearing of someone who has occupied with complete confidence his position of supremacy in the world; he speaks with a warm voice and a rhetoric somewhere between exalted and apocalyptic, which captivates the ladies and arouses the boundless admiration of Don Francisco de Asís when he reads Calvo Sotelo’s parliamentary speeches aloud to Doña Cecilia. Lieutenant Castillo is slim, short, erect, almost rigid when in uniform, with round glasses and thinning hair plastered to his skull. He’s said goodbye to his wife at the entrance to the house on Augusto Figueroa where they live with her parents—the young, recently married couple can’t afford their own place yet. Only in the middle of the festive Sunday night crowd on the Plaza de Santa Ana does Ignacio Abel capitulate and decide he’ll return to his house on Príncipe de Vergara, taking a long walk across Madrid; he’ll sleep better if he’s tired; he’ll eat something standing up in the kitchen, and on his way to the bedroom he’ll pass through the rooms in the dark where the furniture and lamps have been covered with white cloths since the family moved to the Sierra at the beginning of July. As Ignacio Abel walks down Calle de Alcalá on his way to Cibeles, Lieutenant Castillo crosses Augusto Figueroa toward Fuencarral and looks at his wristwatch to make sure he will report for duty punctually at the Assault Guard barracks behind the Ministry of the Interior. He’ll cross the Puerta del Sol, and on the large ministry clock it’s a few minutes before ten, still enough time. In Calvo Sotelo’s house, someone has turned off the lights in the living room to lessen the heat and make it more pleasant to listen to the concert by the Municipal Band in the Parque del Oeste. In the shadowy living room the radio dial shines brightly, illuminating the heavy-lidded, strong face of Calvo Sotelo. Lieutenant Castillo is crossing the street when suddenly there’s a commotion, and in the midst of the confusion his heart contracts in his chest and his right hand holds on to his pistol without taking it out of the holster. Lieutenant Castillo is stunned by the mass of human shapes and the hollow sound of shots, so close they don’t seem like gunfire, and when he opens his eyes he sees only blurry forms that quickly slip away because he’s lost his glasses and is bleeding, the smell of gasoline makes him dizzy, he’s in a taxi on its way to the emergency room. By the time the audience applauds at the end of the Municipal Band’s concert and the musicians pack up their scores and instruments, Lieutenant José Castillo is dead. José Calvo Sotelo has never crossed paths with him and will never know he’s been killed or that because of the crime he’ll die in just a few hours. Before lying down, Calvo Sotelo kneels in his pajamas before a large crucifix hanging above his bed. It’s no more than a fifteen-minute walk from Calvo Sotelo’s house on Calle Velázquez, corner of Maldonado, to Ignacio Abel’s on Príncipe de Vergara. At two in the morning, Ignacio Abel tosses in his bed, unable to sleep, listening through the open balcony to the sound of cars in the empty city, thinking of Judith Biely and counting the days until he can see her, only a week. “It’s better if we stay silent for a while. We’ve said too much and written too much.” In the middle of the night, in the great sound of the city that stretches beyond the half-closed shutters through which an occasional breath of wind comes in, each life seems lodged in the orbit of a solar system, distant from all the rest. José Calvo Sotelo slept so soundly in his conjugal bed beneath the large crucifix that he didn’t hear the violent pounding of gun butts right away, the voices ordering him to open the door. On Tuesday morning, the fourteenth, Ignacio Abel buys the daily Ahora and the face of José Calvo Sotelo fills the front page, the broad, solemn face that now belongs to a dead man. Day after day that week he buys newspapers, listens to heated conversations in the cafés and unsubstantiated news on the radio, and calculates the time remaining until he can see Judith Biely. In history books names have a crushing finality, and events follow one another like necessary links in a chain of cause and effect. In the infinite present that one would like to imagine in its entirety, in the innermost throbbing of time, every detail entangled, voices upon voices, page after page in newspapers half read, waves of words breaking against the unknown of the day, against what tomorrow will bring and what no one can foresee.

  Two atrocious crimes in the space of a few hours. An Assault Guard lieutenant and Señor Calvo Sotelo assassinated in Madrid. Lieutenant Castillo waylaid and shot when he left his house shortly before ten o’clock on Sunday night. The head of Spanish Renewal abducted in the small hours, shot dead, his body dumped in the municipal cemetery. The corpse of Lieutenant Castillo moved to Security Headquarters. Señor Calvo Sotelo’s family says he was tricked into leaving his home; he’d spent Sunday in Galapagar, just outside Madrid. Minutes before he was killed, Lieutenant Castillo said goodbye to his young wife at their front door. Many German tourists visit Ceuta and Tetouan, in Morocco. An automobile collides with a motorcycle, and the cyclist and his companion are seriously injured. In Michigan, the morgues are filling up with the dead, victims of a heat wave afflicting the United States, and doctors claim they have never seen so many die from heat stroke. In Murcia, numerous people with right-wing affiliations are arrested. Fire destroys a shack, and the ragpicker who lived there is hurt. A man dives from a board into a pond and smashes his face against a rock. Rafael Díaz Rivera, thirteen years of age, desperate at having gambled and lost 90 céntimos given to him for an errand, commits suicide in Priego by hanging himself from a tree
. Hundreds of athletes representing twenty-two countries will gather in Barcelona next Sunday, July 19, to celebrate the great People’s Olympiad. One eleven-year-old boy stabs another and leaves him gravely wounded. The ghost some residents of Tarragona believed they saw was actually an old, mentally disturbed woman. Four armed men attack a radio station in Valencia and gag the announcer in order to give a Fascist-leaning speech in which they proclaim that the hour is near and the redemptive movement will come soon. Gypsies shoot and seriously wound a farmer, intending to rob him. At the monument to the dead at Verdun, German veterans fraternize with French in a homage that evokes deep emotion. A truck runs over a child, and the boy’s father attacks one of the drivers of the vehicle. The German-Austrian peace pact can lead the way to an alliance among Germany, Austria, and Italy. Mussolini says the accord should be greeted with satisfaction by lovers of peace. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Swim Club of Sevilla, a comedy festival was held in which participants wore grotesque bathing costumes. Last Sunday a dinner was held at the Brazilian embassy in honor of the president of the Republic and Señora de Azaña, attended by members of the government, eminent diplomats, and other prominent figures. The public lines up at the door to Security Headquarters to view the body of Lieutenant Castillo. At the yearling bullfight held in Madrid to benefit the Railroad Workers’ Widows and Orphans Fund, the bullfighter Señorita Julita Alocén made her debut. All the parliamentary minorities in the Popular Front condemn the murders of Señores Castillo and Calvo Sotelo and confirm their loyalty and support for the Republican government. Three people attack a peasant and extract his blood after anesthetizing him. In honor of his birthday Commissar Maxim Litvinov has been awarded the Order of Lenin. Señorita Lidia Margarita Corbette, of Swiss nationality, attempted to end her life by shooting herself with a pistol. The president of the Republic will spend his summer vacation in Santander. It is believed Il Duce has the peaceful goal of unifying Europe. Four cars of a train out of Bilbao careen over an embankment, killing four people and injuring sixty. Barcelona police raid a secret meeting of affiliates of the Spanish Falange. Soviet expedition lost in Kazakhstan desert. The director general of security announces his deep involvement in efforts to discover those responsible for the murders of Lieutenant Castillo and Señor Calvo Sotelo. An intoxicated motorist driving his car at top speed crashes into a wall. The blacksmith of Coria del Río, José Palma León, called Oselito, will run from Sevilla to Barcelona inside a wagon wheel to participate in the People’s Olympiad. To perform the autopsy on the body of Señor Calvo Sotelo, the occipital region was shaved, revealing two entry wounds made by bullets fired at close range. In honor of the feast of the Virgin of Carmen, lively celebrations, including a bullfight, have been held in the picturesque village of Santurce. The body of Don José Calvo Sotelo, dressed in a Franciscan habit and holding a crucifix, lay in state in a mahogany coffin with silver fittings. In London, a thirty-three-year-old mother of five is executed for poisoning her husband. The hippopotamus at the Barcelona Zoo has successfully given birth to a robust offspring. The permanent delegation of the Cortes prolongs the state of emergency. The terrace of the Hotel Nacional was the site of a banquet in honor of Dr. Guillermo Angulo, a pediatrician, for his recent appointment to the competitive position of director of children’s services in the National Institute of Social Welfare. The file on the death of Lieutenant Castillo has been given to a special judge, Señor Fernández Orbeta, who is proceeding with great diligence. A farm worker climbs through the window of a room where a young woman is sleeping and she shoots him to death. Señor Calvo Sotelo’s abductors cut the phone lines to prevent anyone from calling for help. Medieval festivities in Hitler’s Germany a great success. City in Anatolia is fuel to flames. Beginning next week, audiences at the National Palace are suspended until after the summer vacation of his excellency the president. The family of Señor Calvo Sotelo says he was taken from his home on the pretext of an official investigation. The eminent astronomer Señor Comas y Solá warns of the possibility of great electromagnetic disturbances in 1938. The director general of security congratulates the Murcia police on the capture of a dangerous Fascist who escaped prison. Lieutenant Castillo and his young wife married in Madrid last May. The eminent Spanish professor Señor García y Marín delivers the inaugural address at the formal opening session of the International Congress of Administrative Sciences in Warsaw. The military commander of Las Palmas, General Balmes, was examining a jammed automatic pistol when the weapon discharged and the bullet entered his stomach and exited his back. A Catalán engineer discovers a wine-based fuel to profitably replace gasoline. The efforts of the special tribunal successfully identify the leader of the abductors who entered the home of Señor Calvo Sotelo last Sunday. A young woman aboard a Spanish yacht anchored in Gibraltar accidentally shoots herself with the revolver she was handling and is seriously injured. When the British sovereign was on his way to Hyde Park to present new flags to a regiment of guards, a man broke through the police cordon and rushed at the monarch, revolver in hand. Those responsible for the death of Captain Faraudo have not surfaced, and the prosecutor demands seven years of imprisonment for the detained accomplices. The eminent Dr. Marañón and his family have left in the Madrid-to-Lisbon mail plane for the capital of the neighboring republic. The man responsible for the attack on King Edward VIII is a social reformer who has taken part in campaigns against the death penalty. A man who killed his mother and aunt in Barcelona has been sentenced to sixty years in prison. The widow of Señor Calvo Sotelo arrived in Lisbon yesterday and intends to spend the summer vacation with her family in Estoril. An army unit that represents Spain in Morocco has rebelled, turning on its own country and committing shameful acts against the nation. The heat wave in the United States has claimed the lives of 4,600 people. At this time, air, sea, and land forces, with the sad exception previously indicated, remain loyal to their duty and have turned against seditious elements to bring down this senseless, shameful movement. The Republican government is in control of the situation and states that in a matter of hours it will report to the nation.