by Maria Duenas
I knew that when Candelaria finally managed to track down a place for me to set up my workshop, my life would take a new turn and I would yet again have to mold myself to it. In anticipation of this, I decided to change: to remake myself altogether, unburdening myself of the old baggage to start from scratch. In the previous few months I’d slammed the door on my entire yesterday; I’d stopped being a humble dressmaker and transformed myself successively into a whole heap of different women. A civil-service candidate, heiress of a major industrialist, globe-trotting lover to a scoundrel, hopeful aspirant to run an Argentine company, frustrated mother of an unborn child, a woman suspected of fraud and theft in debt up to her eyebrows, and a gunrunner camouflaged as an innocent local woman. In even less time now I’d have to forge a new personality for myself, since none of the earlier ones would do. My old world was at war, and my love had evaporated, taking with him my possessions and my illusions. The child who had never been born had dissolved into a puddle of congealed blood as I got off a bus, there was a file with my details circulating through the police forces of two countries and three cities, and the small arsenal of pistols that I’d transported attached to my skin might already have taken a life. Intending to turn my back on such pitiful baggage, I decided to confront the future from behind a mask of security and courage, preventing people from seeing my fear, my miseries, and the dagger that was still piercing my soul.
I decided to begin with the outside, to give myself the façade of a woman who was worldly and independent, to keep people from seeing my reality as the victim of a bastard and the dark origins of the establishment I was about to open. To do that I’d have to put a layer of makeup over the past, invent a present in great haste, and plan out a future as false as it was magnificent. And I’d have to act quickly; I had to begin right away. Not one more tear shed, not another lament. Not a single submissive look back. Everything should be present, everything should be today. So I chose a new personality that I drew out of my sleeve like a magician might whip out a string of handkerchiefs or the ace of hearts. I decided to transform myself, and my choice was to adopt the appearance of a woman who was solid, solvent, experienced. I’d have to fight hard to get my ignorance mistaken for haughtiness, my uncertainty for sweet apathy, for no one even to suspect my fears, hidden in the firm tread of a pair of high heels and a look of confident determination. For no one to guess at the immense effort I was still making every day to overcome my sadness, one bit at a time.
The first move was to set about changing my style. The uncertainty of recent times, the miscarriage, and convalescence had reduced my body by at least six or seven kilos. The bitterness and the hospital had eliminated the roundness of my hips, some of the volume of my breasts, part of my thighs, and any curviness that had ever existed around my waist. I didn’t try too hard to recover any of that but began instead to feel comfortable with my new silhouette: one more step forward. Retrieving from my memory how some of the foreign women in Tangiers dressed, I decided to adapt my scant wardrobe with adjustments and repairs. I’d be less strict than my compatriots, more suggestive without being indecorous or indecent. Brighter, more colorful tones, lighter-weight fabrics. Blouse buttons a little more open at the neck and skirts just a little shorter. At the cracked mirror in Candelaria’s room, I reinvented myself, trying out and making my own all those glamorous ways women crossed their legs, which I’d observed every day at aperitif time on the terraces, the elegant way they’d make their way with such poise along the broad sidewalks of the Boulevard Pasteur, and the grace with which their recently manicured fingers would lift up a French fashion magazine, a gin fizz, or a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder.
For the first time in more than three months I paid attention to how I looked, and I discovered that I needed to quickly revamp myself. A neighbor plucked my eyebrows, another gave me a manicure. I went back to using makeup after months with my face bare: I chose pencils to outline my lips, carmine to fill them out, colors for my eyelids, rouge for my cheeks, liner and mascara for my eyes. One day I had Jamila cut my hair with the sewing scissors, following exactly a photo in the old issue of Vogue I’d brought in my suitcase. The thick dark mop that had come halfway down my back fell in worn locks onto the kitchen floor, like the wings of dead crows, till I was left with a smooth straight crop along the line of my jaw, with a part on one side and a tendency to fall untamed over my right eye. To hell with that hot, thick, long hair that had so fascinated Ramiro. I couldn’t have said whether the new haircut suited me or not, but it made me feel fresher, freer. Renewed, taken away forever from those afternoons under the fan blades in our room at the Hotel Continental, from those endless hours with no shelter but his body encircling mine and the great thick mane spread like a shawl over the sheets.
Candelaria’s plans were realized only a few days later. First she identified three properties in the ensanche that were available for immediate rental. She explained the details of each one to me, we weighed up together what was good and bad about each, and finally we made our decision.
The first place Candelaria had told me about seemed to be the perfect site: large and modern, never before lived in, close to the post office and the Teatro Español. “It’s even got a movable shower just like a telephone, honey, except that instead of hearing the voice of the person who’s talking to you there’s a gush of water coming out that you can point wherever you want,” explained the Matutera, astounded by the marvel. We ruled it out, however, because it adjoined a still-empty plot littered with stray cats and junk. The ensanche was growing, but there were still places, here and there, that hadn’t yet been developed. We thought that the setting might perhaps not offer quite the right image to the sophisticated customers we aimed to attract, so the workshop with the telephone shower was ruled out.
The second proposal was positioned on Tetouan’s main road, in those days called the Calle República, in a beautiful house with turrets on its corners and close to Plaza de Muley el Mehdi, which would soon become known as Primo de Rivera. This site also seemed at first glance to have everything we needed: it was spacious, with an imposing presence, and it was not located next to a vacant lot, but rather on a corner that opened onto two central, well-used arteries. The building next door, however, was home to one of the finest dressmakers in the city, a seamstress of a certain age with a solid reputation. We weighed up the situation and decided to rule out that place, too: better not to upset the competition.
So we went for the third option. The property that finally would end up being converted into my workplace and my home was a large apartment on the Calle Sidi Mandri, in a building with a tiled façade close to the Casino Español, Benarroch passage, and the Hotel Nacional; not far from the Plaza de España, the High Commission, and the caliph’s palace with its imposing sentries guarding the entrance and an exotic array of sumptuous turbans and cloaks swaying in the air.
Candelaria closed the deal with Jacob Benchimol, a Jew who from that moment, and with considerable discretion, became my landlord in exchange for the punctual sum of three hundred and seventy-five pesetas a month. Three days later, I, the new Sira Quiroga, falsely metamorphosed into someone I perhaps wasn’t but might end up being one day, took possession of the place and threw open the doors to a new phase in my life.
“On you go, on your own,” said Candelaria, handing me the key. “It’s best that we’re not seen going around together too much from now on. I’ll be over in just a little bit.”
I made my way through the comings and goings of La Luneta, the subject of constant male glances. I didn’t remember ever having received even a quarter as many in the months gone past, when my image was that of an insecure young woman with her hair drawn back into an unattractive bun, walking lethargically and dragging along the clothing and injuries of a past she was trying to forget. Now I moved with feigned confidence, forcing myself to emanate an air of arrogance and savoir faire that no one would have guessed at only a week earlier.
Even t
hough I tried to impose a leisurely rhythm on my steps, it didn’t take me more than ten minutes to reach my destination. I’d never noticed the building before, even though it was only a dozen paces from the main road in the Spanish quarter. I was pleased at first sight to note that it combined all the features I’d considered desirable: an excellent location and an imposing front door, a certain air of Arab exoticism from the tiles of the façade, a certain air of European sobriety in the arrangement of the interior. The shared hallways were elegant and well proportioned; the staircase, while not being too broad, had a handsomely forged handrail that curved gracefully as it ascended.
The main door was open, as they all were in those days. I assumed there was a caretaker, though there was none to be seen. I began to climb the stairs nervously, almost tiptoeing, trying to muffle the sound of my tread. While outside I’d increased in confidence and poise, deep down I was still intimidated and preferred to go unnoticed as much as possible. I arrived at the main floor without passing anyone and found myself on a landing with two identical doors. Left and right, both closed. The first belonged to the neighbors I had not yet met. The second was mine. I took the key out of my pocket, inserted it into the lock with nervous fingers, then turned it. I pushed shyly and for several seconds didn’t dare to go in; I just cast my eyes over what the gap in the door allowed me to see. A large reception room with bare walls and a floor of geometric tiles in white and maroon. The start of a corridor at the back. On the right, a large living room.
Over the years there have been many times when my destiny has delivered me unexpected moments, unforeseen twists and turns that I’ve had to handle on the fly as they appeared. Occasionally I was ready for them; very often I wasn’t. Never, however, was I so aware of entering a new stage as I was that afternoon in October when I finally dared to cross the threshold and my steps sounded hollowly in the unfurnished apartment. Behind me was a complicated past, and in front of me, like an omen, I could see a space opening out, a great empty space that time would take care of filling up. But with what? With things, and affections. With moments, sensations, and people: with life.
I walked toward the living room in the half gloom. Three closed balcony doors protected by green wooden shutters kept the daylight out. I opened them one by one, and the Moroccan autumn poured into the room, filling out the shadows with sweet premonitions.
I savored the silence and solitude, waiting a few minutes before undertaking any activity. As those minutes passed I didn’t do anything, just remained standing there in the center of that emptiness, getting used to my new place in the world. After a short while, when I thought it was time to break out of that lethargy, I finally summoned a reasonable dose of decisiveness and got going. With Doña Manuela’s old workshop as my reference point, I went over the whole apartment and mentally parceled out the different areas. The living room would serve as the main reception area: that’s where ideas would be presented, patterns consulted, fabrics and styles chosen, and orders placed. The room closest to the living room, a sort of dining room with a bay window in the corner, would be the fitting room. A curtain halfway down the corridor would separate that outer area from the rest of the apartment. The next stretch of the passageway and its corresponding rooms would be converted into the working area: workshop, storeroom, ironing room, the depository of off-cuts and hopes, whatever would fit. The third part, at the back, the darkest and least elegant part, would be for me. That is where the real me would live, the woman in pain, forcibly expatriated, debt-ridden, burdened with lawsuits and insecurities. The woman who had nothing to her name but a half-empty suitcase and a mother alone in a distant city who was struggling to survive. Who knew that setting up this business had cost the price of a large heap of pistols. That would be my refuge, my private space. From there outward, if luck finally stopped turning her back on me, would be the public domain of the dressmaker lately arrived from Spain to set up the most magnificent fashion house that the Protectorate had ever seen.
I returned to the entrance and heard someone knocking on the door. I opened it at once, knowing who it was. Candelaria slipped in like a particularly solid earthworm.
“How do you find it, girl? Do you like it?” she asked anxiously. She’d tidied herself up for the occasion; she was wearing one of the outfits I’d made for her, a pair of shoes she’d inherited from me and that were two sizes too small for her, and a somewhat unwieldy hairdo that her dear friend Remedios had done for her in great haste. Beyond the clumsy makeup on her eyelids, her dark eyes had a contagious gleam. It was a special day for the Matutera, too, the start of something new and unexpected. With the business almost ready to begin, she had done everything she possibly could do for the first time in her stormy life. Perhaps the new phase would make up for the hunger in her childhood, the beatings she received from her husband, the continual threats she’d been hearing for years from the police. She’d spent three-quarters of her life cheating, constructing cunning wiles, hurtling onward, and arm wrestling with bad luck; maybe it was finally time for her to take a rest.
I didn’t reply immediately to her question about what I thought of the place; first I held her gaze a few moments, stopping to weigh up everything that this woman had meant to me ever since the commissioner had deposited me in her house like an unwanted package.
As I regarded her in silence, unexpectedly I saw the shadow of my mother pass in front of her face. Dolores had very little in common with the Matutera. My mother was all rigor and temperance; Candelaria was pure dynamite. Their modes of being, their ethical codes, and the way they faced up to what fate offered them were quite different, but for the first time I saw a certain similarity between the two of them. Each, in her way and in her own world, belonged to a stock of brave women who fight their way through life with the little that luck gives them. For myself and for them, for all of us, I, too, had to fight to make that business stay afloat.
“I like it very much,” I replied at last with a smile. “It’s perfect, Candelaria; I couldn’t have imagined a better place.”
She returned my smile and pinched me on the cheek, brimming with affection and a wisdom as old as time. We both sensed that from then on everything would be different. Yes, we’d still see each other, but only from time to time, and discreetly. We’d no longer be sharing a roof, no longer be together to witness the arguments fought across the tablecloth, no longer be clearing the table together after dinner or talking in whispers in the darkness of my wretched room. But we both knew that until the end of time we would be joined by something that no one else would ever hear us speak of.
Chapter Fourteen
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In less than a week I was all set up. Spurred on by Candelaria, I went about organizing the space, asking her for certain pieces of furniture, equipment, and tools. She took it all on, bringing to it her ingenuity as well as the banknotes, ready to sacrifice her very eyelashes to this business whose fortunes remained uncertain.
“Ask me loud and clear, my angel, because I’ve never seen a fancy dressmaker’s workshop in my goddamn life, so I have no idea what equipment a business like this needs. If we didn’t have the war on our backs the two of us could just go to Tangiers and get some marvelous French furniture at Le Palais du Mobilier, and while we were there half a dozen pairs of panties in La Sultana, but since we’re stuck in Tetouan with broken wings and I don’t want people to associate you too much with me, what we’ll do is you’ll ask me for things and I’ll figure out a way to get hold of them through my contacts. So just set me going, child: tell me what I’ve got to go hunt for and where to start.”
“First, the living room. It has to represent the image of the establishment, to give a sense of elegance and good taste,” I said, recalling Doña Manuela’s workshop and all the residences I’d seen on my deliveries. Although the apartment on Sidi Mandri, built to the proportions of Tetouan, was much smaller in its look and scale than the fine houses of Madrid, my memory of old times could serve as an examp
le of how to arrange the present.
“And what do we put in it?”
“A gorgeous sofa, two pairs of good armchairs, a large table in the center, and two or three smaller ones to serve as side tables. Damask curtains over the balcony doors and a big lamp. That’ll be enough for now. Not many things, but very stylish and of the best quality.”
“I don’t see how I’m going to be able to get hold of all that, girl—Tetouan hasn’t got shops with such extravagant stock. Let me think a bit; I have a friend who works with a transport company, I’ll see if maybe I can get him to make me a delivery . . . Anyway, don’t you worry about it, I’ll sort it out somehow, and if any of the things are second- or thirdhand but of good, really good quality, I don’t think that matters much, right? That way it’ll seem as though the house has more old-fashioned class. Go on.”