by Maria Duenas
I tried to protest, alarmed and filled with panic. He didn’t let me—he halted my objections with a raised hand and went on talking.
“I imagine that in Madrid by now they’ve stopped most police proceedings along with any legal cases that aren’t political or on a significant scale: with all they’ve been through, I don’t imagine anyone has any interest in coming to Morocco in pursuit of an alleged typewriter company swindler and thief of her father’s estate, accused by her own brother. A few weeks ago these would have been reasonably serious matters, but nowadays they’re trivial compared to what’s happening in the capital.”
“And so?” I asked, unsure.
“And so what you’re going to do is stay right where you are, not make the slightest attempt to leave Tetouan, and do everything you can to avoid causing the least bit of trouble. My assignment is to oversee the supervision and security of the Protectorate zone, and I don’t think you’re a great threat to that. But just in case, I don’t want you out of my sight. So you’ll stay here awhile and steer clear of any kind of trouble. And you are not to consider this a piece of advice or a suggestion; it’s got the full force of an order. It’s a rather unusual kind of detention: I’m not putting you in jail or restricting you to house arrest, so you will enjoy relative freedom. But you are absolutely forbidden from leaving the city without my prior consent, is that clear?”
“Until when?” I said, without affirming what he had asked. The idea of remaining alone for an indefinite period in that unfamiliar city seemed the worst possible option.
“Until the situation calms down in Spain and we see how things are resolved. Then I’ll decide what to do with you; right now I have neither the time nor the means to deal with your affairs. For the immediate future, you’ll only have one problem to face: the debt to the hotel in Tangiers.”
“But I have no way of paying that much . . . ,” I explained, again on the verge of tears.
“I know: I’ve searched your luggage from top to bottom, and apart from a jumble of clothes and a few papers, I’ve been able to confirm that you don’t have anything else with you. But for now you’re the only person we’ve got whom we can hold responsible, and in this matter you’re just as implicated as Arribas. Which means that in his absence, you will be the one who’ll have to meet the demands. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to get you out of this, because Tangiers knows I’ve got you here, absolutely under control.”
“But he took my money . . . ,” I insisted, my voice breaking with tears again.
“I know that, too, and stop that damned crying once and for all, would you please? In his note Arribas makes it all clear: in his own words the scoundrel expresses quite openly that he means to leave you high and dry and without a cent, taking all your belongings with him. And dragging a pregnancy with you that you ended up losing no sooner than you set foot in Tetouan, stepping off the bus.”
The confusion in my face, mixed with my tears, pain, and frustration, forced him to frame a question.
“You don’t remember? I was the one waiting for you there. We’d got a tip-off from the police in Tangiers alerting us to your arrival. It seems some bellhop in the hotel made a comment to the manager about your hasty departure; he thought you looked strange and raised the alarm. They then discovered that you had left the room with no intention of returning. Since the sum you owed was considerable, they alerted the police, tracked down the taxi driver who had taken you to the La Valenciana bus stop, and discovered that you were headed here. In normal circumstances I would have sent one of my men to fetch you, but with things being so tempestuous lately I now prefer to supervise everything personally to avoid unpleasant surprises, so I decided to find you myself. No sooner had you gotten off the bus than you fainted in my arms; I brought you here myself.”
A few blurry recollections were starting to take shape in my memory. The stifling heat of that bus, which everyone just called La Valenciana. The shouting inside, the baskets with live chickens, the sweat and smells coming off the bodies and the bundles that the passengers, Moors and Spaniards, were carrying with them. The feeling of a thick moisture between my thighs. And once we’d arrived in Tetouan, the extreme weakness as I got off, the shock when I realized that a hot substance was running down my legs, a thick, black trickle that I was leaving behind me. No sooner had I touched the tarmac of the new city than a man’s voice was emerging from a face half obscured under a hat brim. “Sira Quiroga? Police. Come with me, please.” At that moment I was assailed by an infinite weakness, my mind clouding over and my legs no longer able to support me, and I lost consciousness. Now, weeks later, I was once again looking at that face, still uncertain whether it belonged to my executioner or my savior.
“Sister Virtudes has been in charge of passing information on to me about your progress. I’ve been trying for days to speak to you, but until now they denied me access. They told me you have pernicious anemia, as well as a number of other things. But, well, it seems you’re doing better now, which is why they’ve allowed me to see you and are going to discharge you in the next few days.”
“And where will I go?” My anxiety was as overwhelming as my fear. I felt unable to confront an unknown reality all by myself. I’d never done anything without help, I’d always had someone walking ahead to show me the way: my mother, Ignacio, Ramiro. I felt useless, unfit to face life and its challenges alone, unable to survive without a hand leading me firmly, without a head making decisions for me, without a nearby presence in whom to trust, and on whom to depend.
“On that matter,” he said, “I’ve been looking for a place—don’t think it’s easy, the way things are now. In any case, I want to learn more of your story. So if you feel strong enough I’d like to come back and see you again tomorrow, in case there may be some detail that will help us to resolve the problems that were dumped on you by your husband, your fiancé . . .”
“Or whatever that son of a bitch was,” I completed with an ironic grimace as weak as it was bitter.
“Were you married?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“That’s better for you,” he concluded decisively. Then he consulted his watch. “Well, I don’t want to tire you out any further,” he said, getting up, “I think that’s enough for today. I’ll come back tomorrow, I don’t know what time; when I have a moment free. We’re up to our eyeballs right now.”
I watched him as he made his way toward the hospital exit, walking with the agile, determined step of someone who isn’t in the habit of wasting time. Sooner or later, when I was fully recovered, I’d have to find out whether that man really did believe in my innocence or just wanted to be rid of the heavy burden that had fallen on him, as though from the sky, at the most inconvenient time. I couldn’t think about that then: I was exhausted and afraid, and the only thing I wanted was a deep sleep, and to forget about everything.
Commissioner Vázquez returned the following evening, at seven, maybe eight, when the heat was no longer so intense and the light more filtered. No sooner did I see him come through the door at the far end of the pavilion than I lifted my weight on my elbows and with great effort, almost dragging myself, sat up. When he reached me, he sat down on the same chair as the day before. I didn’t even greet him. I just cleared my throat, readied my voice, and began to tell him everything he wished to hear.
Chapter Seven
___________
That second meeting with Don Claudio took place on a Friday in late August. The following Monday he returned to collect me. He had found lodgings for me and wished to accompany me there. In other circumstances, such apparently chivalrous behavior might have been interpreted differently, but at that time, neither he nor I doubted that his interest in me was strictly professional, that I was simply an object worth having in his safekeeping in order to avoid serious complications.
I was dressed when he arrived, perched on the edge of the already made bed in mismatched clothes that were now too big for me, my hair in an untidy bun
. The suitcase at my feet was filled with the miserable remains of my calamity, and my bony fingers were clasped on my lap as I struggled unsuccessfully to gather my strength. When I saw him arrive I tried to get up, but he indicated with a gesture that I should remain seated.
Positioning himself on the edge of the bed opposite mine, he merely said, “Wait. We have to talk.”
He regarded me for a few seconds with those dark eyes capable of drilling through a wall. By now I realized that he was neither a grey-haired young man nor a youthful old man: he was a man somewhere between forty and fifty, schooled in manners and skilled in his police work, well built, with a soul somewhat battered from dealing with scum of every kind. A man, I thought, with whom I ought not to have any sort of problem.
“Look, this isn’t standard procedure. Due to current circumstances, I’m making an exception for you, but I want you to be absolutely clear about the real situation. Although I personally believe that you’re just the unsuspecting victim of a con man, the whole matter has to be settled by a judge, not me. But things being the way they are in these confused times, I fear a lawsuit is out of the question. And nothing will be gained by keeping you locked up in a cell till God knows when. So, just as I told you the other day, I’m going to allow you your freedom, but—pay attention—under supervision and with limited movement. And to remove any temptation I’m not going to return your passport to you. Also, you remain free on the condition that while you recover, you’ll find a decent way to earn a living and save enough to pay off your debt to the Continental. I asked them to give you one year to settle the outstanding bill and they accepted. So now you can start finding a way to scrape up this money, from under a rock if need be, but honestly and without getting into any trouble, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured.
“And don’t fail me; don’t try any tricks with me, and don’t force me to come down hard on you, because if you cross me I’ll set the machinery in motion, and you’ll be shipped off to Spain at the earliest opportunity and get seven years in the Quiñones women’s prison before you know what hit you, understand?”
At such a grave threat I was unable to say anything coherent; I just nodded. Then he got up; a couple of seconds later I did the same. He moved quickly and nimbly; I had to make a tremendous effort just to keep up with him.
“So let’s be off,” he concluded. “Leave that, I’ll take the suitcase, you can’t even lift your own shadow. I’ve got the car at the door; say good-bye to the nuns, thank them for looking after you so well, and let’s go.”
We made our way through Tetouan in his car, and for the first time I was able to appreciate the city that would for an undetermined time become my own. The hospital was on the outskirts; bit by bit as we progressed farther in, the volume of people grew. At nearly midday, the streets were full. Although there were hardly any motorcars around, the commissioner was constantly having to sound his horn to open up a passageway between the bodies moving unhurriedly in a thousand directions. There were men in light-colored linen suits and panama hats, boys in shorts running races, Spanish women with their shopping baskets laden with vegetables, Muslim men in turbans and striped djellabas, Arab women covered in voluminous garments that allowed only their eyes and feet to be seen. There were uniformed soldiers and girls in flowery summer dresses, barefoot local children playing amid the chickens. And the constant din of voices, stray words and phrases in Arabic and Spanish, interminable greetings to the commissioner each time someone recognized his car. It was hard to imagine that in this very setting only weeks earlier there had emerged a movement that was now being considered a civil war.
We didn’t initiate any conversation over the course of the drive; our journey wasn’t supposed to be a pleasure trip, but a precise step in a procedure for moving me from one place to another. From time to time, however, when the commissioner sensed that something that appeared before our eyes might seem strange or new to me, he gestured to it with his jaw and, his eyes always fixed straight ahead, spoke some concise words to name it. “Riffians,” I remember him saying one such time as he indicated a group of Berber women dressed in striped full skirts and big straw hats with colored pom-poms. The ten or fifteen brief minutes of our journey were enough for me to absorb some of the shapes, smells, and names that I would become familiar with during that new phase of my life. The High Commission, the prickly pears, the caliph’s palace, the water carriers on their donkeys, the Moorish quarter, the Dersa and the Ghorgiz, the bakalitos, the mint.
We got out of the car at the Plaza de España; a couple of Moorish boys rushed over to carry my luggage and the commissioner allowed one of them to do so. Then we went into La Luneta, located next to the Jewish quarter, next to the medina. La Luneta, my first street in Tetouan: narrow, noisy, irregular, and rowdy, full of people, taverns, cafés, and chaotic bazaars where you could buy anything and everything. We reached a large door, went in, and ascended a staircase. The commissioner rang a bell on the first landing.
“Good morning, Candelaria. I’m here with the delivery you were expecting,” my companion said to the plump woman in red who had just opened the door, gesturing toward me with a brief movement of his head.
“But what kind of delivery is this, Commissioner?” she replied, placing her hands on her hips and giving a powerful guffaw. Then immediately she stepped aside and let us pass. Her place was sunny, gleaming in its modesty, and of somewhat questionable aesthetics. While she had a seemingly natural flippancy, beneath it you sensed that this visit from the police was making her extremely uneasy.
“A special delivery,” he explained, putting the suitcase down in the little foyer beneath a calendar with the image of the Sacred Heart. “You’ll have to put this young lady up for a while, and for the time being, without charging her anything; you’ll be able to settle accounts with her once she starts to earn her living.”
“But my place is filled to the brim, by Christ on the cross! And I get sent at least half a dozen bodies a day that I have to turn away!”
She was lying, of course. This olive-skinned woman was lying, and he knew it.
“I don’t want to hear about all your problems, Candelaria; I’ve told you you’re going to have to put her up somehow.”
“Since the uprising people haven’t stopped turning up in search of lodging, Don Claudio! I’ve even got mattresses on the floor!”
“That’s enough of your tales. The traffic in the Strait has been interrupted for weeks and these days not even seagulls are making the crossing. Like it or not, you’ll have to do what I ask; look at it as payment for all the things you owe me. And what’s more, you don’t just have to give her lodging, you have to help her. She doesn’t know anyone in Tetouan, and she’s got a pretty ugly story behind her, so make some space for her because this is where she’s going to be staying from now on, is that clear?”
“Like water, sir,” she replied, without the slightest enthusiasm. “Clear as water.”
“So I leave her in your safekeeping. If there’s any problem, you know where to find me. I’m not too pleased that this is where she’ll be staying; she’s already been corrupted, she’s not going to learn a lot of good from you, but anyway . . .”
“You don’t distrust me now, do you, Don Claudio?”
The commissioner didn’t allow himself to be fooled by the woman’s playful tone.
“I always distrust everybody, Candelaria; that’s what they pay me for.”
“And if you think I’m so bad, why in heaven’s name are you bringing this jewel to me, my dear commissioner?”
“Because as I’ve already told you, the way things are, I don’t have anywhere else to take her—don’t think I’m doing it because I want to. In any case, I’m leaving you responsible for her. Start dreaming up some way for her to make a living: I don’t think she’ll be able to return to Spain for quite some time, and she has to make some money because she’s got a bit of business to settle around here. Let’s see if you can’t g
et her hired as a saleswoman in some shop, or in a hairdresser’s; somewhere decent, mind you. And be so kind as to stop calling me your dear commissioner—I’ve told you a hundred times.”
She observed me then, paying attention for the first time. Top to bottom, quickly and without curiosity, as though she were simply assessing the amount of weight that had just been dumped on her. Then she returned her gaze to my companion and with mocking resignation accepted the assignment.
“You can be sure that Candelaria will take care of it, Don Claudio. I don’t know where I’ll put her, but you can rest assured knowing that she’ll be in heavenly bliss here with me.”
The celestial promises of the landlady apparently didn’t sound at all convincing to the policeman, as he still needed to tighten the screws a little more to conclude the negotiations. With modulated voice and index finger raised vertically to the level of his nose, he offered a final piece of advice that didn’t allow for any banter in response.
“Just watch out, Candelaria, watch out, be very careful—things are unsettled at the moment and I don’t want any more problems than are strictly necessary. So don’t think of getting her mixed up in any of your trouble. I don’t trust a hair on your head, or hers, so I’ll make sure you’re watched closely. And if I hear of any strange goings-on I’ll bring you before the commission, and not even a Sursum Corda will get you out of there again, clear?”
We both murmured a heartfelt “Yes, sir.”