In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  “I’ll be back Thursday night, Friday morning at the latest,” he said to Adela, who hadn’t looked him in the eye or registered his presence since she came home from the hospital, and when she did talk to him, it was in a neutral, unemotional tone. Only he was aware, and perhaps his sensitive son too, of that indifference, that subtle retaliation, a wound inflicted with a blade that left no trace, discrediting anything he might do or say, the adulterous husband whose betrayal only she knew of, the man overwhelmed by a guilt she alone administered, for it wasn’t dispensed in public or through familial vilification. Adela, contrary to what Ignacio Abel in his cowardice expected, said nothing to anyone, sought no refuge in her parents or her brother, who questioned her solicitously, certain that the reason she’d attempted to take her own life was the infidelity of her husband, whom he’d never trusted. Not even to Víctor did she acknowledge that this had been her intention. She regained consciousness in the hospital bed and at first didn’t remember anything or know where she was. As she gradually recalled in disconnected flashes the letters and photographs, the key in the drawer lock, walking in high heels on the path soft with pine needles, the water entering her nose, she decided she would explain nothing, at first because of fatigue and then so as not to allow anyone to join in a resentment she preferred to discharge whole on the person who had humiliated her; it would belong to her marital intimacy as much as her love of earlier times. She wouldn’t raise her voice. She wouldn’t make any accusation or cause a scene. She wouldn’t lower herself to that level, despite the injury that the man she’d trusted for sixteen years had inflicted on her. She wouldn’t give anyone, least of all him, the opportunity to feel sorry for her, and she wouldn’t offer him the spectacle of a hysteria that would allow him to feel justified in his impulse to run away from a suffocating situation. She wouldn’t grant him the benefit of rejecting and then gradually accepting the false explanations, the promises to change inspired only by male cowardice and a transitory remorse. All she did was agree distractedly if he spoke to her, or look away, or imply with a subtle gesture she no longer believed anything that came out of his mouth, reducing his status from an adulterous husband to a mediocre impostor, a contemptible hypocrite. On Sunday morning, when the table was already set and lunch delayed because she and her parents still hoped Víctor would come from Madrid, she saw Ignacio Abel approach her and the children and understood he was going to tell them he’d go back to Madrid after lunch and not that night, or the next morning, as he had assured them on Saturday morning when he arrived. (The car was in the shop for repairs; the mechanic told him he could pick it up on Monday or Tuesday; one constantly makes plans in life, taking the immediate future for granted.) She saw that he was approaching but didn’t have the courage. Almost with pity (he was so impaired, so anxious in recent days), Adela noted his nervousness, she knew him so well, better than anyone, the way his gestures betrayed him, too awkward to lie, too lacking in courage to know what he wanted. She acted as if she were devoting all her attention to how the always negligent maids had arranged the silverware and napkins on the table under the trellis, on the north side of the garden, where it wasn’t so hot, where a stream that flowed over mossy rocks highlighted the sensation of coolness. When they were alone the fiction they usually performed in front of others was more uncomfortable. Without witnesses, they didn’t know how to speak. He delayed the moment of saying he’d leave after lunch; Adela guessed how disconcerting the continuing postponement of lunch was for him; time stood still and at the same time it was fleeing; the train’s departure was approaching without the meal arriving, without his saying anything. It was a relief for Ignacio Abel when Don Francisco de Asís came out to the garden holding his pocket watch. He too was waiting, wondering why his reckless fool of a son was so late in coming from Madrid. “And he knows how his mother worries,” said Don Francisco de Asís, with no theatrics now, looking older, his shirt without a collar, his suspenders hanging beside his trousers. “It’s nothing. He’s always late. We shouldn’t make others wait. Let’s eat.” Adela spoke to her father, but Ignacio Abel knew it was him she was addressing, letting him know she was aware of his impatience and couldn’t care less whether he went back to Madrid that afternoon.

  “How annoying. And to think how much he likes my rice and chicken. Something must have happened to him.”

  “I demanded his word of honor as my son and a gentleman that he wouldn’t attend Calvo Sotelo’s funeral.”

  “God rest his soul.”

  “And the poor Assault Guard lieutenant too.”

  “I feel sorry for his widow, so young, she wasn’t to blame for anything.”

  “They say she was pregnant.”

  “What a feat for whoever committed the crime, making an orphan of a baby who hasn’t been born yet.”

  “He promised me he’d come today. Something’s happened to the boy.”

  “What happened to him is what happens every Sunday, Mamá. He gets distracted in Madrid and always arrives late.”

  “Or with all this upset the trains aren’t running.”

  “Of course they’re running. I’ve heard them go by on time all morning.”

  “A sign that nothing serious has happened and you don’t have to worry.”

  “We should have waited a little longer to put in the rice. There was no hurry.”

  “But Mamá, we’re all famished.”

  “That boy doesn’t eat right when he’s alone in Madrid. At least if I see him eating well on Sunday, I rest a little easier.”

  “Keep a plate covered for him, and when he comes you’ll see how hungry he is when he eats.”

  “But Adela, you know that if the rice sits too long it’s no good and the taste is ruined.”

  “Your chicken and rice is a classic, Mamá. It gets better with time.”

  “What ideas you have, Papá.”

  Don Francisco de Asís and Doña Cecilia called each other Papá and Mamá. Ignacio Abel listened to the conversation and could predict the exchange almost word for word, just as he predicted the saffron-heavy taste of Doña Cecilia’s rice casserole and the sucking sounds of the diners, including the paterfamilias, as Don Francisco de Asís called himself. So many Sundays, one after the other, exactly the same, so many summers around this same table, the present identical to the past and undoubtedly to the future. Víctor would arrive at the last moment and Doña Cecilia would urge the maid to serve him his plate of rice, lamenting that its time was past, it’s a shame but rice can’t wait. Víctor would devour it, denying with a full mouth his mother’s protestations because the rice was delicious, he liked it better this way. But this Sunday lunch ended and Víctor hadn’t arrived, and Doña Cecilia, as she had so often, ordered the maid to keep the señorito’s plate of rice covered in the pantry, listening for a car coming down the road or a whistle announcing the arrival of a train.

  He remembers the torpor into which the heat of a July afternoon and Doña Cecilia’s rice-and-chicken casserole immersed the people in the house after Sunday dinners. “If it’s so hot here,” someone would say, about to succumb to sleep, “I don’t want to think what they’re suffering in Madrid.” “There’s a difference of only three degrees centigrade.” The day before, on Saturday, he’d bought the paper before boarding the train, and a report on the Council of Ministers said nothing about the rumors of a military coup. “Everybody envies the noble Spanish institution of the siesta.” “I can’t get over how upset I am about that boy not tasting the rice today.” He couldn’t imagine that in a few hours he’d be with Judith, hearing her voice. “He still might come and have it for tea.” Impatient, he’d ring the bell at Madame Mathilde’s, which would emit a sound of chimes. “It’s not good anymore.” He’d cross the hot, dark house smelling of perfume and disinfectant, push the door open. “Your rice is incomparable, Mamá.” The sound of their voices was as lethargic as the cicadas at that hour of high heat. Ignacio Abel went into the cool, shadowy bedroom, put on a clean shirt and tie
, and washed his hands with lavender soap. He looked at his watch over and over again with a reflexive gesture. Through the open window came the sound of the rusted swing his children were sitting on. Had he heard the train whistle? Impossible—it wasn’t due for another half hour. He’d have time to wait, alone, on a bench on the platform. Nothing mattered to him now. Only the expectation of his encounter with Judith, more and more real as the minutes brought it closer. He’d arrive in Madrid and the suffocating tension of Friday night would have dissipated, erased by the heat and the invincible normality. He’d take a taxi and ride through the empty city on a summer Sunday to the chalet of Madame Mathilde. Someone entered the bedroom and he turned, thinking he’d see Adela’s face. But it was Don Francisco de Asís in his collarless shirt and house slippers, his face that of a helpless old man.

  “Ignacio, you shouldn’t go to Madrid this afternoon. My daughter should have told you this, but I’ll say it. Don’t go. Wait a few days.”

  “I have to work tomorrow, early. You know I can’t stay.”

  “Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.”

  Ignacio Abel closed his overnight bag, which was on the bed. He put his wallet and the keys to his apartment in a trouser pocket. He couldn’t waste a minute. Time on our hands. Don Francisco de Asís blocked the door, not a trace of farce on his slack features, shorter than he was; the image of the man he’d had for so many years had suddenly disappeared, and in his place was an old man dying of fear, his voice turned into the sound of entreaty.

  “You’ll know how to take care of yourself, but my son won’t. My son will look for misfortune—if something hasn’t happened to him already and that’s why he didn’t come today. You have good judgment and he doesn’t, you know that. Promise me if something happens to him you’ll help him. You’re my son, just as he is. You’ve been like my own son since the day you walked into my house. What each of us thought or didn’t think doesn’t matter. You’re a good man. You know as well as I do that shooting down people as if they were animals doesn’t solve problems. All I’m asking is that when you’re in Madrid, if you find out my son’s involved in something idiotic, you’ll help him out. When will you be back?”

  “Thursday night. Friday at the latest.”

  “You’re a good man. Bring him back with you. My son’s almost forty years old and he is worse than a child—no sense. Why deceive ourselves? He’ll never get anything right. But I don’t want him in trouble. I don’t want him killed. Or doing something stupid. Don’t let him.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Please give me your word, Ignacio. I’m not asking for more. Give me your word and I’ll be reassured and able to reassure his mother.”

  “You have my word.”

  Ignacio Abel made a move to walk out of the room with his bag in one hand and his hat in the other, but Don Francisco de Asís didn’t move. He grabbed his son-in-law by the neck with both hands, embraced him, and gave him two kisses.

  25

  HE’D NEVER SEE HER AGAIN. He knew it with the dizzying sensation of not finding a step in the dark, or when on the verge of sleep one’s heart stops for a second. He knew it when his longing turned to uncertainty as the train pulled into Madrid and he got off and made his way through the crowd on the platform, looking for the closest exit and a taxi. Judith had promised him a meeting, and he didn’t know whether it was to be a parting or a reconciliation. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not show up. He desired her so much he couldn’t accept the idea of not seeing her after waiting so many days, after so many futile phone calls and letters. The Sunday afternoon crowd filled the station, young men and women wearing neckerchiefs and vaguely military shirts with large circles of sweat under their arms, feeding off one another’s energy, both sexual and revolutionary, chanting slogans, directing defiant looks at his tie and shoes, his obvious bourgeois status. His age, too, would have made him suspect. How distant he felt from those people who had invaded the train at each of the stops in the Sierra—distant not from their arrogance or political extremism but from their youth. He heard vendors’ shouts, train whistles, anthems, fragments of conversations as he walked past. Everything less insistent than the stabbing pain in his stomach, the pressure in his temples, the sweat soaking his shirt, the knot of his tie squeezing his neck. Boys in caps and beggars’ rags hawking the afternoon papers, waving the wide, recently printed sheets, black ink running in enormous headlines. Announcements of departing trains blaring over loudspeakers. Groups of police and armed civilians in the station lobbies. If they stopped him to demand his papers or ask him a question, he’d surely miss the chance of finding a taxi. Taxis are the first to disappear when there’s a disturbance. So many armed men, yet so few in uniform, rifles in their hands and pistols on the slant in their belts, red or red-and-black kerchiefs tied around their necks. The train was slow, it was already after seven, Judith must be growing impatient. With luck, if he found a taxi, he could get to Madame Mathilde’s before seven-thirty. Perhaps he ought to call from a booth or use the telephone in the station café to let her know he’d be late but was on his way. He patted his wallet, looked for loose coins in his pockets as he continued walking toward the exit. But if he stopped to call and the phone was in use or didn’t work, he’d lose crucial time for nothing. A corpulent, well-dressed man walking ahead of him, who’d ridden in the same car of the train, had been stopped and roughed up as they searched his clothing. A wallet and a handful of coins and keys fell to the floor, and a swarm of urchins began to fight over them while the armed men guffawed. The police, close by, watched and did nothing. “This is an outrage,” the man repeated, his face red, as Ignacio Abel walked past, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. “An unspeakable outrage.” He walked faster, his heart pounding. If they stopped him, if he didn’t find a taxi, he’d lose her forever. Your whole life can depend on one minute. From a delivery truck that braked abruptly, fast-moving newsboys unloaded large bundles of papers. He bought one and glanced at it as he hurried out. The government of the Republic is in control of the situation, and in a few hours it will inform the nation that the situation is under control. For the moment it seemed it wasn’t in control of syntax. But perhaps Judith hadn’t arrived on time either. She’d be lost, like him, at the other end of the city, without streetcars or taxis, her walk interrupted by one of those armed groups, frightened perhaps. SECURITY FORCES AND CIVIL GUARDS CHEERED ON THE STREETS OF MADRID. But she wasn’t afraid of anything and was a foreigner besides. She’d want to witness everything and write an article about it. Or perhaps she’d left Madrid. Her friends at the embassy had told her that for a time it would be dangerous to remain in Spain. Philip Van Doren had invited her to join him in Biarritz at the end of July. How I wished we could have left together but I can’t go on wanting things I can’t have. Van Doren smiled and with a contemptuous movement of his hand dispelled any serious danger, as if waving away a cloud of tobacco smoke. “As long as they take turns killing one another nothing will happen. A Communist, a Falangist, a factory worker, a business owner. Catholic countries have a talent for eloquent funerals, the Anarchists imitate Catholic pageantry when they bury one of their own, and don’t they all talk about martyrs, Professor Abel? A well-administered bloodbath guarantees social peace.” He remembered the blood shed by the Falangist or Communist selling papers one May afternoon on Calle de Alcalá: the puddle, bright red under the sun, gushing out of a black hole. The blood of martyrs. To the last drop. The blood that will wash away injustice. He left the station, eyes lowered, his briefcase held tightly under his arm, the newspaper in his sweaty hands. No one had stopped him. General Queipo de Llano has declared a state of war in Sevilla. But there was no taxi at the stand. At dawn vigorous action will be taken against all rebellious centers. Time slipping away minute by minute, she sitting in the armchair in the bedroom, not on the bed, fully dressed, unlike other times. He’d never see her undressed again. The thought pained him. How was he going to find her—Judith’s blond h
air backlit against a window, her figure in the large mirror in front of the bed, her legs crossed, ill humored because of the heat, tired of waiting. She must be looking impatiently at her watch, sorry she agreed to a meeting she perhaps didn’t want. On the esplanade in front of the station, where the afternoon sun beat down, there was a loud noise of bombs and someone shouted at Ignacio Abel, gesturing at him from a doorway. He dropped to the ground, not letting go of his briefcase, his body flattened against the burning-hot edges of paving stones, in his chest the vibration of an underground train. A little farther away, in the shade of a café awning, several people sought protection behind a man in an undershirt who aimed a rifle at the terraces across the way. They looked around as if they’d taken shelter in a sudden downpour and were searching the sky for signs of clearing. Isolated shots became bursts of fire, followed by silence. As if obeying an order, Ignacio Abel and the man on the ground in front of him stood, brushing off their clothes, the people protected by the café awning dispersed, abandoning the man who pointed the rifle, now in another direction. Cars moved again. A woman didn’t get up. She lay not face-down but on her side, as if she’d stretched out for a short nap in the middle of the esplanade. The man who’d been searched by the patrol in the station, standing next to the fallen woman, took out a white handkerchief and waved it at the cars driving by. His eyes met Ignacio Abel’s: recognizing him from the train, the man imagined he must be on his side because he also wore a suit and tie and was more or less the same age, and thought he could count on his help. But Ignacio Abel looked away, stopped an approaching taxi that had suddenly appeared, and urged the driver on. He saw the eyes watching him in the rearview mirror. He felt his face and found a little blood on his fingers, the sting of a scrape on his cheek. He’d hurt himself when he pressed his face against the paving stones. If he wasn’t careful he’d stain his shirt, the light linen of his summer jacket. He had his briefcase but had lost his hat and the newspaper. “If you hadn’t been right in front of me, I wouldn’t have stopped,” the cab driver said. “I’m doing you a service and getting myself away from the trouble. The way things are, they’d either shoot me or steal the car, and you can’t say which is worse. But I saw that you’re a respectable person in a fix and I wasn’t going to run you down . . .” For Ignacio Abel, the driver’s words evaporated into air like the images on the other side of the window, or the sensation of gunfire and lying vulnerable on the ground in a large open space. “. . . the same in ’32, with Sanjurjo, and in ’34, in Asturias. Things seem to blow up every two years . . .” The driver didn’t give up, looking in the rearview mirror at the face of his silent passenger, so well dressed he probably sympathized with the rebels and that’s why he didn’t say anything. “. . . around O’Donnell things’ll be calmer, but you never know. Just in case, I’m going up to my cabin and tomorrow, God only knows, probably tomorrow it’ll all be over, though to me this looks blacker than a storm cloud, what do you think? . . .” Words dissolving as Ignacio Abel looked again and again at his watch and was alarmed each time the taxi braked and seemed about to be trapped, surrounded by clusters of people. The driver sounded the horn and blows fell on the car; an open truck full of men waving flags blocked their way. He’d never get out of the center of town and reach the clear spaces of the Salamanca district, beyond the Retiro, the small hotels with gardens on Calle O’Donnell, which since last fall had been the prelude to his meetings with Judith Biely, the sparsely built frontier territory at the edge of Madrid where it was unlikely anyone would catch them going into Madame Mathilde’s house or leaving it, discreetly, separately, burning with desire, Judith’s eyes adjusting to the daylight after one or two hours in the dark.