In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  He remembered something, staring fixedly into Judith’s very wide eyes where the fire was reflected: in the doorway of a church in the Salamanca district, across from the Retiro, which he passed almost every morning, a blind man with a dog played the violin, always Schubert’s or Gounod’s “Ave Maria” or the “Hymn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” a cap at his feet into which devout women dropped their alms, watched over by the dog, which wagged its tail at the sound of the coins. One day the church was burned and all that remained were the walls. The blind man disappeared, and he thought he wouldn’t see him again, but one morning, before he reached the ruins of the church, he heard the pious scraping of the violin: the blind man at the door of the ruined church, as if he hadn’t noticed its destruction or didn’t care. Now between one “Ave Maria” and another, he attacked “The Internationale” with the same mixture of sweetness and dissonance, or the “Himno de Riego,” or “To the Barricades.” One day as he was walking down the street, approaching the blind man on the sidewalk across from the church, a speeding car pulled ahead of him, an old luxury car with an open driver’s seat, a silvery shine on the spokes of the tires, heads and rifles protruding from the windows. He tried to go on, walking naturally, even when the car went into reverse, the tires squealing on the paving stones, the engine forced by an inexperienced driver; the rifle barrel aimed at the spot where the blind man stood; a burst of gunfire and laughter, the dog blown to pieces, transformed into bloody tatters. With his violin in one hand and the bow in the other, the blind man trembled, understood nothing; he kneeled hesitantly and with extended fingers felt the puddle of blood. But I’m not telling you this to discourage you, he told her. You’ll do what you have to do. I’m telling you this so you’ll have an idea of how things are. It was true: he didn’t want to dissuade her; what excited him most about Judith at this moment was what he’d seen glowing in her that disconcerted him so much and frightened him at times when he first knew her, a beautiful woman, independent, confident, smart, like the solitary women he’d seen crossing the avenues or sitting in the cafés of Berlin in their short skirts and high heels, laughing out loud, smoking, removing a shred of tobacco from their red-painted lips. The strong will that separates her from him is what makes him love her more. Judith speaks now, and for the first time she smiles.

  “I told my mother about you, in the hospital, a few days before she died. There was no way to deceive my mother. When I was writing less and my letters had a different tone, she knew that something was going on. Your letters were travel guides, she said. But this time she didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to give any sign of being concerned about me, afraid that any kind of censure would make me behave more foolishly. I talked to her about you, I even brought a photograph of you. I was showing it to her as if I’d just become engaged, as if you’d given me a ring. She put on her glasses to see you better. I’m glad to tell you this one is far more handsome than your former husband. He looks like a true gentleman to me, she said, and I felt proud and was annoyed with myself and turned red when she took off her glasses and asked what I knew she was going to ask, what she had guessed from the moment she saw the photo, or long before that, when my letters to her became infrequent. Is he married? But instead of scolding me when I told her yes, she moved her head and began to laugh but couldn’t; a cough came out instead, and she choked, so small in her nightdress, like a bird, just skin and bones, and her hands that had been so pretty and that she was so proud of as dry as a corpse’s. What’s the word in Spanish? Like sarmientos, like shoots on a vine. But it was clear she liked you, and I thought you would’ve liked her. A good man is hard to find, she said, and I was amazed she hadn’t been angry with me. A good man is hard to find but it can get even harder once you’ve found him. She asked me where you were, whether you planned to join me in America or was I thinking about going back to Spain, in spite of what the papers and the radio said was happening there. I’d been so afraid she’d find out about your existence, and now she only regretted not being able to meet you. So much fear and remorse for nothing.”

  He goes to the kitchen for a glass of water and to leave the tray with the remains of Judith’s supper. When he returns to the library, he doesn’t see her. Her shoes and socks are in the same place, in front of the fireplace, but the suitcase she’d put by the door is no longer there. A candle burning weakly on the table, wax dripping down the candlestick. The flame inside the oil lamp is a dull blue tongue. The music still plays on the radio, but is more distant, with whistles of interference. If Judith is upstairs now, she’s barefoot and he won’t hear her footsteps. He turns off the radio and hears the wind in the trees, and a short while later the gush of water filling a bathtub. Now he’s reached the second floor, and since he no longer hears the sound of water, he’s guided only by the line of light under a door at the end of the hall where his room is. His right hand trembles slightly as he feels his way along the walls. His fingertips are cold. He swallows a great deal of saliva, and a moment later his mouth is dry again, his tongue as rough as his lips. Each time he pushes a door, he’s afraid he’ll find it locked. He goes into the bedroom and sees Judith’s suitcase open on the floor, next to the night table, where a lamp is lit beneath a corolla of blue glass. Behind the bathroom door he hears the sound of a body moving in water. He’ll probably find it locked if he pushes it. He’ll try to turn the porcelain handle and it won’t move. The door is only half closed; he pushes it and hot steam comes out. With her wet hair lying straight back, Judith’s forehead is larger and the shape of her face changed. He sees her body submerged in water and foam but doesn’t dare lower his eyes. He sees her shoulders jutting out, her knees shiny and together. Her clothes are on the damp tile floor. “Hand me the towel,” says Judith, and he looks around and doesn’t understand. “It’s behind you, hanging on the door.”

  He has left the bathroom without closing the door all the way and is sitting on the bed, his back to the window where the shadows of the trees oscillate, and in the distance a train’s straight line of lights becomes visible. He’s heard her sink all the way into the water, emerge again, the foam perhaps spilling out of the tub, her eyes closed, her body brilliant when she stands, feeling for a towel. Then the rub of thick cloth against her reddened skin. He sees what he hears, his eyes fixed on the bathroom door where Judith will appear at any moment. He’s still wearing his jacket and tie. From an iron radiator with curved feet comes heat, but the cold he had felt before only in his fingertips has spread to his hands. He shivers. If he tried to stand up, he’d feel vertigo, be afraid of vanishing, of waking. No matter how much he tries to take a deep breath, the air doesn’t fill his lungs. He hears a knock against the glass shelf, the porcelain sink. Judith has been combing her hair and brushing her teeth. A faucet stops running. But no sound of the door opening. He looks up and Judith is in front of him, her shoulders bare, the towel knotted under her armpits. Long time no see: how long has it been since he’s heard that expression, which she’d say ironically and sweetly every time they were naked in front of each other. He makes an awkward effort to stand, but she dissuades him with another familiar gesture. She kneels in front of him and begins to untie his shoelaces. She removes a shoe, and when she lets it drop it bounces on the wooden floor. In the light of the lamp he sees her solid, lightly freckled shoulders, her face leaning forward, her collarbone, her breasts encircled by the towel. She removes the other shoe, letting it drop, and then his socks. She caresses his foot between her hands, and as she does so the towel loosens. Her slim body emerges and she doesn’t attempt to cover herself. She looks up, searching for his eyes, and holding his foot between both hands, she presses the broad, rough sole against her breasts. As much as the touch of her flesh, the intimacy of this act, no longer a figment of memory, moves him. She stands, he is about to say something, but she covers his lips with her index finger. We’ve talked enough. Everything is the same as before and much better than in memory. He tries to take off his clothes, but she doesn’t
let him. She arouses him and at the same time controls his urgency. There’s time, plenty of it. We’re not in a hurry, not anymore. Aloud she recalls: Time on our hands. Her hands tousle his hair, loosen his tie, pull it off, unbutton his shirt down to his belt. A train passes with a long, distant whistle, and he wonders how long ago he entered the house, returning from that dinner lost now in time, his intoxication and dizziness in Stevens’s car and the rain lashing the roof and windshield; how long since he heard the knocking and walked to the door. Time on our hands: his hands hold her breasts still damp from the bath, and Judith’s hands caress his face as if to recognize it, feeling the hard stubble of his beard. But now he’s not afraid and not dizzy and his hands aren’t cold. His heartbeats are just as strong but not rushed. She must be aware of them when she kisses his chest, pressing her lips softly. Judith pulls the blanket and lies down, the towel on the floor with his clothes and shoes, and remains motionless, covered up to her chin. He lies down on his side next to her, not completely eluding embarrassment at his own nakedness, and a moment before embracing her can’t remember or predict the exact sensation of her body, revealed simultaneously from the taste of her mouth to the softness of her abdomen and hips and knees and heels and the tips of her toes, from the hardness of a nipple to the scant, somewhat coarse hair on her pubis, coarse in contrast to her skin. He raises the blanket to see her in the light of the lamp. Judith’s knees and feet are cold, her eyes closed, her lips parted and sensuous, with a taste as singular as her eyes or her voice. Still awkward, he takes her in his arms, and after a few minutes she’s stopped shivering but continues to press against him, entwined in his legs. When his hand goes down to her stomach, she brings her thighs together and holds his wrist. There’s no hurry, she says in his ear, my whole body is here for you to caress.

  37

  IN THE DARK, JUDITH’S voice spoke his name so close to his ear he felt the brush of her breath and lips. But he was half asleep and didn’t really understand what the voice was saying: the three syllables of a declaration of love in Spanish or English or only the three of his name, pronounced like the key to a secret, with an inflection that makes the vowels slightly different, less rounded than in Spanish, with a short pause between them, each demanding a different position of the tongue and lips. For a moment the voice, both a call and a caress, has been the only thing that existed in the dark; he doesn’t know whether it’s in his wakefulness or his sleep, on one side or the other of waking, or when, or where. Around him night is an expanse of blackness with no shores or visual or auditory points of reference, just the voice in his ear pronouncing the name or the phrase with three syllables stressed the same in Spanish and in English. Perhaps he’s just fallen asleep and has dreamed with sweet exactitude the same thing that was happening to him. His consciousness and his sensations—the delicious fatigue, the naked body clinging to his, the damp skin—are as delicate a part of this darkness as the sound of the voice, forming and dissolving, slow undulations in the air, stripped of volume, as much a part of nature as the sound of rain and wind in the woods or the nearby squeak of a bat. The clothes on the floor, the open suitcases, the wallet in a pocket of his raincoat, the sketchbook, the pages of drawings left on the table by the window, the passport, restaurant receipts, hotel bills with dates and stamps and handwritten columns of numbers, the postcard for his children he forgot to mail in Pennsylvania Station because he thought he’d miss the train and still doesn’t remember, though he’ll be surprised to find it tomorrow when he feels in his jacket pockets, looking for a pencil. He’s shed everything temporarily in this suspension of time that isn’t going to last more than a few minutes, absolved of the past as well as the future, like a swimmer floating on his back in a lake, in the deepest part of a night without lights, holding Judith, who’s called him by name to find out if he’s awake or asleep, or simply to confirm their presence, his and her own, the name that is an invocation and a recognition, an incantation, air coming out of her mouth and floating and dissolving in the dark, both names, written by hand on an envelope, Ignacio Abel, Judith Biely, typed in the blank space above the dotted line on an official document, on a carbon copy, the letters gradually fading with the passage of the years, as this night in late October of 1936 remains in an increasingly distant past. But it grew dark hours ago—the light faded this evening and he continued to draw beside the great pit filled with underbrush and fallen leaves on whose walls the vertical striations of the steam shovel were visible—and though his eyes are now wide open he detects no sign of the inhospitable dawn, and what’s happened and is happening to him tonight has a simultaneous quality of memory and dream. Judith’s lips that have just curved to say his name now brush against his neck, and the hand that had grasped his now guides it along her torso, squeezing it lightly just as she parts her thighs, her index finger on his middle finger, the tip wet now and entering very carefully, as cautiously as her other hand searches for him, recognizes, almost squeezing, demanding again, reviving him in spite of his exhaustion with an intensity close to physical pain; again the two of them pressing together, ecstatic, Judith wide open and embracing him with her legs and digging her heels into his back as if she could receive him even deeper, covering with a hand the open mouth that moans above her face, saying things into his ear, words in Spanish and in English they taught each other and only now say into the other’s ear, Judith’s body shining with sweat in the dark as his shadow grows gigantic over her, his breathing violent in his nostrils, the rasping of a fallen animal, then collapses beside her, not all at once but slowly, tumbling, swooning, and kissing her eyelids, her temples, her cheeks, her lips.

  He’ll fall asleep, and when he wakes with the sensation of emerging from a very deep sleep—and with a brief shock of cold and alarm—it will already have begun very faintly to grow light and Judith won’t be beside him in bed. He’ll want to know the time, but last night, when Judith undressed him, she also took off his watch, and now it must be down among the clothes on the floor, probably stopped. He’ll notice his aching bones, his muscles without strength, the chilled odor of their bodies strong in the air, on the sheets. He’ll be afraid that Judith has left while he slept and he’ll listen, the silence of the house increasing his alarm, the rain as steady on waking as when it filtered into his sleep or they heard it in the background last night as they talked, the unceasing American rain that feeds the oceanic breadth of these rivers and makes these forests of trees grow like cathedrals. Because of that first gray light weakened by a mist that floats above the treetops, the night that remains in the hollows of the room will still be the previous night. He’ll get out of bed and go to the window, afraid Judith’s car won’t be in front of the house. On the fogged glass, isolated drops trace twisting paths. But he’ll confirm that the car is still there, black and compact, shiny in the rain. Then, still standing naked by the window, touching the cold glass made more opaque by his warm breath, he’ll hear like a confirmation that Judith hasn’t left, a sound of plates and cups in the kitchen, and smell the aroma of coffee and toasted bread. Waking up beside Judith and sharing breakfast are gifts he’s known very few times, a domestic expanse of love he tasted only during those four days in the house by the ocean, the anguished eve of their return to Madrid, to the heat and rage of the beginning of summer, to the discovery of the open drawer and photographs and letters thrown to the floor in his study and the ringing of the phone. Before dressing and going down to the kitchen, he’ll wash his face before the mirror in the bathroom where Judith showered this morning without waking him. He ought to shave: last night she passed her hands over his rough face and told him to be careful not to scratch her. But he’ll only run his fingers through his hair and go down, still unsure he’ll find her, and when he sees her in the kitchen, Judith will turn toward him smiling, already dressed for her trip, with a rested, serene expression and full of energy though she won’t have slept at all. He’ll remember to respect the condition she imposed last night for staying: not to a
sk her not to leave. He’ll have seen her packed suitcase in the foyer beside the door. He’ll think, as Judith sets out the plates for breakfast and the cups of coffee and divides the toast and scrambled eggs, that he has needed each of the days he has known her and all the time of their separation and the fear of never seeing her again and the certainty that now she’s about to leave without his being able to stop her, to appreciate the truth of this simple moment. Everything will have been a meticulous apprenticeship that began for him not when Moreno Villa introduced them at the Residence a year ago but a little earlier, the day he saw her from the back as she sat at the piano and then turned toward him, showing him her profile for a moment. As patiently as she’d repeated for him intimate words and turns of phrase in English, Judith had taught him how he had to kiss her on the mouth or caress her, holding his hand, pressing on his fingers, restraining his wrists, showing him the necessary precision for each caress, the rhythms of her desire. But she’d also taught him to converse passionately and to notice things with the esthetic intention, both premeditated and intuitive, that she brought to the way she dressed, chose shoes, a hat, a flower for a dress, and to the way she arranged the table now for breakfast, the plates and cups symmetrical, the knife, the fork, the coffee spoon, the pots of marmalade she found in the cupboards. Always fast and at the same time conscientious. Unhurriedly, she recalled her days in Madrid, her love for Spanish sayings. About to separate and not knowing whether they’ll meet again, they’ll resist the temptation to say definitive things, to show grief as minute by minute the line in time approaches, the irredeemable frontier of their parting. Their confessions will have remained in the sealed chamber of the previous night, in the wakeful light of the fire, when they still didn’t dare touch each other, not even take a step or stretch out a hand so that each would stay within the physical space of solitude that surrounded the other. Now, as they have breakfast, they’ll exchange pleasantries, not wanting to reduce with words the memory of what happened to them in the bedroom in complete darkness where gradually the window’s rectangle of attenuated luminescence grew more precise, barely letting them see each other, conjured up in shadow as in silence, repeating each other’s name. They’ll ask each other how they’ve slept, ask for the sugar or milk, offer a little more coffee. He’ll want to know how long it will take her to drive to New York and what time the ship sails and to which French port and in how many days the voyage will end. Judith will tell him that while he slept she’s looked at his sketches for the library, the drawings he did yesterday afternoon on the slope overlooking the river. He’ll tell her the building has to be visible from a distance but a surprise when entering its periphery: it must be seen from the river or from a passing train, but someone walking toward it will lose sight of it as he advances along a road through the trees, not only in summer when the trees are thick with leaves but in winter as well, because its exterior walls will be made of the local stone, whose color is between rusted iron and bronze, a tonality similar to bare trunks and the trunks covered with lichen. If anyone hears them, if anyone passing along the road sees them through the kitchen window, he’ll think they were up early to enjoy peacefully a shared breakfast, that a long day of work and a tired, contented return home at nightfall awaits them, that they must have had many days like the one just beginning in this house or in another, accustomed to a passion that time and experience will have tempered to comradeship but that continues to join them in an intimate sexual fever they don’t display before the eyes of anyone but that’s revealed in their every gesture. Knowing each other so well, there’s no part of the body of one that the other hasn’t explored and enjoyed, no appetite they can’t guess instantly; gradually noticing as the day brightens and the minutes pass that though they don’t want it to, their separation weighs on them, as if the ground beneath their feet is shrinking or becoming more fragile, as if gravity were becoming more emphatic and it was difficult for them to raise the hand that holds a fork, bring the cup to their lips, then take the few steps on the brittle floor, walking on thin ice, toward the foyer, toward the solid wooden door. With her back to him at the large kitchen window, facing a neglected, shaded garden where shreds of fog are slowly lifting, Judith will watch the progress of the light revealing muffled colors, fallen leaves, red, yellow, and ocher, whirled around by the storm at the beginning of the night and shining now in the rain, wooden eaves rotted by the damp, dripping branches, corners of gleaming ferns, a toolshed, its roof caving in, a low wall covered by the wine-colored leaves of a Virginia creeper. Ignacio Abel will embrace her from behind and she’ll shudder at his touch because she hasn’t heard him approach. He’ll kiss the back of her neck, bury his face in her hair, touch her lips, but he won’t ask her to stay, not even a few hours more, or to write to him when she reaches Spain, or long before that. If only it’s all over before she arrives, no matter who wins, he’ll think, ashamed of himself, a venal lover who’d accept any price as long as Judith’s in no danger and returns definitively settled, ready to stay in a place he knows she won’t move away from, where she has work she likes that gives her enough time to discover what she was seeking when she left for Europe almost three years ago, the shape of her destiny, what she felt as imminent, about to happen when she sat in front of the typewriter, and then slipped out of her hands. He hopes the French gendarmes stop her when she tries to cross the border, and deport her as they have so many others, fulfilling the democratic watchword that the Spaniards have to be left alone to go on killing one another until they’re sick and tired of their own blood, spilled with the help of the centurions of Mussolini and Hitler, German incendiary bombs and Italian machine guns that have already annihilated so successfully the people of Abyssinia. He’ll attempt to drive away those negative thoughts, more disloyal because, while he harbors the hope that Judith won’t accomplish her purpose of arriving in Spain and throwing herself into a war she can’t imagine, he’ll embrace her and delay releasing her when she wants to break free. Even if she doesn’t come back to me, even if in New York or on the ship or on the clandestine trek through France she meets the other, younger man I’ve always been afraid will take her away from me. Judith will move his hands away from her waist, saying she really does have to leave, looking at her watch with a spontaneity that suddenly wounds him, as if she were leaving only to run an errand or spend the day in New York and return at nightfall. In the foyer she’ll pick up the suitcase and he’ll be the one who makes the effort to unbolt the lock. When she goes to the car the grass will wet her shoes, though it’ll have been a while since it stopped raining. Now she will leave. Though she hasn’t climbed into the car yet or started the engine, Ignacio Abel’s already living in the country of daylight and obligations where Judith is not and where he is probably going to spend the rest of his life. I see the silent scene so clearly, the gray, damp start of the morning, Ignacio Abel—unshaven, in his white shirt, wearing shoes without socks—standing on the porch, dwarfed by the height of the columns, and Judith placing the suitcase in the back seat, not turning toward him, aware of his gaze, then opening the door on the driver’s side as if ready to get in and drive away. But she closes it, like someone who realizes at the last moment that she’s forgotten something, turns to him, and climbs the steps to the entrance. She’ll take his face in her hands that are cold and give him a long kiss, putting her tongue in his mouth, greedily searching for his. He puts out his hand but doesn’t touch her. If he did he wouldn’t be able to avoid the instinctive gesture of holding on to her. He’ll see the car drive away on the road through the woods. He’ll notice the deep, damp cold that comes up from the earth but will lack the courage to enter the house and face the rooms made gigantic by the loneliness and strangeness that will envelop him as he closes the door, bringing the avalanche of obligations, the normality it will be so difficult for him to become accustomed to, though gradually he’ll be drawn in by it, subjected to its charm, used to its daily doses of delay, expectation, and routine, one among so many
displaced professors from Europe, speaking English with a heavy accent, timid and rather stiff, excessively ceremonious, eager to please, to gain a certain confidence that compensates for what they’ve lost, dressing with a formality impervious to the easy clothing of America, waiting for letters from relatives scattered around the world or disappeared without a trace, beyond the reach of any inquiry.