by Maria Duenas
“Images of designs, foreign fashion magazines. Doña Manuela had them by the dozen; when they got old she’d give them to us and I’d take them home, and I never tired of looking at them.”
“That’ll be hard to get hold of, too; since the uprising you know the borders have been closed and we aren’t receiving very much from outside. But, well, I know someone with a safe-conduct to Tangiers, I’ll sound him out to see if he can bring me some as a favor; he’ll give me a hefty bill in exchange, but, well, God knows . . .”
“Let’s hope he gets lucky, and be sure that there’s a good pile of the best ones.” I recalled the names of some of the ones I used to buy myself in Tangiers toward the end, when Ramiro was beginning to drift away from me. I had taken refuge for entire nights in their beautiful drawings and photographs. “The American ones—Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and a couple from France,” I added. “As many as he can find.”
“Consider it done. What else?”
“For the fitting room, a triple mirror. And another couple of armchairs. And an upholstered bench for putting the clothes down on.”
“And?”
“Material. Some swatches of the best fabrics to use as samples, not whole pieces until we’ve got things under way.”
“They have the best ones at La Caraqueña; we’re having nothing to do with the burrakía that the Moors sell next to the market, which are far less elegant. I’ll also go see what the Indians on La Luneta can get me, as they’re very smart and always keep something special out back. And they’ve also got good contacts with the French neighborhood, so let’s see if they might not be able to get some interesting little things out of there. Keep talking.”
“A sewing machine, a Singer from America if possible. Even though almost all the work is done by hand, it’s useful to have one. And also a good iron and ironing board. And a pair of mannequins. As for the rest, it’s best if I sort those out quickly myself, just tell me where I’ll find the best shop.”
And on and on we went, organizing everything. First I would place my order and then Candelaria would scheme tirelessly to get us what we needed. Sometimes things would appear disguised and at strange times, covered in blankets and carried by men with sallow faces. Sometimes the deliveries would happen in daylight, witnessed by whoever was out on the streets. Furniture arrived, and painters, and electricians; I received parcels, tools, and an endless variety of goods. Wrapped in my new image as a woman of the world radiating glamour and ease, I supervised the whole process from beginning to end with an expression of resolve, my eyelashes thick with mascara, my new hairstyle perpetually groomed, my feet shod in stylish high heels. I dealt with any contingencies that presented themselves and allowed myself to come to be known among the neighbors, who would greet me discreetly when they passed me at the front door or on the stairs. Downstairs on the ground floor there was a milliner’s and a tobacconist’s; on the main floor, opposite me, lived an older lady in mourning and a chubby young man with glasses whom I took to be her son. Upstairs lived families with crowds of children who tried to nose out whatever they could about their newest neighbor.
Everything was ready in a few days; all we still needed were customers. I remember as though it were yesterday the first night I slept there, alone and terrified. I barely managed a moment’s sleep. In the small hours I heard the last domestic shufflings in the nearby apartments: some child crying, a radio turned on, the mother and son opposite arguing noisily, the sound of crockery and water coming out of the tap as someone finished washing the last dishes from a late dinner. As the early hours of the morning progressed, the external sounds fell silent and other ones, imaginary ones, took their place: it seemed that the furniture creaked too much, that there were footsteps on the floor tiles in the hallway, that shadows were spying on me from the newly painted walls. Before sensing even the first ray of sunlight, I was already out of bed, unable to contain my anxiety any longer. I made my way to the living room, opened the shutters, and leaned out to wait for morning to come. The minaret of a mosque sounded the call to fajr, the first prayers of the day. There still wasn’t anyone on the streets, and the mountains of the Ghorgiz, barely perceptible in the gloom, began to appear, majestic, with the arrival of the first light. Bit by bit, sluggishly, the city was being set in motion. The Moorish servant girls began to arrive, wrapped in their haiks and shawls. Some men went out to work headed in the opposite direction, and a number of black-veiled women, in twos and threes, made their way hurriedly to an early Mass. I didn’t wait to see the children heading out to school, or the shops and offices opening up for the day, or the maids going out for churros, or the mothers heading for the market to choose the things that the young Moorish delivery boys would then carry back to their houses in the big baskets they bore on their backs. Before all that had begun, I’d gone back inside to the living room and sat down on my brand-new maroon-colored taffeta sofa. What for? To wait for my luck to change at last.
Jamila arrived early. We smiled nervously; it was the first day for both of us. Candelaria had given up the girl’s services to me, and I appreciated the gesture: we’d become very fond of each other, and she’d be a good ally for me, a younger sister. “It’ll take me two minutes to find myself a Moorish maid,” Candelaria had said. “You take Jamila, she’s a good girl, you’ll see how much help she’ll be to you.” And so sweet Jamila came with me, delighted to be getting out of the heavy burden of boardinghouse chores and beginning a new line of work with her Siñorita that would allow her youth to be somewhat less wearisome.
Yes, Jamila arrived, but no one else followed. Not on that first day, or the following one, or the next. Those three mornings I opened my eyes before dawn had broken and I got myself ready with the same scrupulous care. My clothes and my hair impeccable, the house spotless, the glamorous magazines with their elegant smiling women on the covers, the tools in order in the workshop: everything perfect, waiting for someone to require my services. No one, however, seemed to have any intention of doing so.
Sometimes I’d hear noises, footsteps, voices on the stairs. Then I’d run on tiptoes to the door and look anxiously through the peephole, but the sounds never turned out to be for me. My eye fixed to the round opening, I saw figures go past, burdened servant girls, delivery boys, the porter in her apron, the postman coughing, and an endless procession of other figures. But nobody came who was ready to order her wardrobe from my workshop.
I hesitated between telling Candelaria and continuing to wait patiently. I hesitated another day, two days, three, till I had almost lost count. Finally I made my decision: I’d go to La Luneta and ask her to work her contacts, to resort to anything necessary to let potential clients know that the business was now up and running. Unless she could do that, our joint venture would die before it had even begun. But I didn’t get the chance to call on the Matutera to act, because that very morning, at last, the doorbell rang.
“Guten Morgen. My name is Frau Heinz, I am new in Tetouan and I need some clothes.”
I received her dressed in a suit that I’d sewn for myself only a few days earlier. A navy blue tube skirt, narrow like a pencil skirt, with a fitted jacket but no blouse underneath, and with the top button placed just at the point beyond which the décolletage would cease to be decent. And yet tremendously elegant, all the same. As a finishing touch, around my neck hung a long silver chain that ended in an old pair of scissors of the same metal; they were no use for cutting because of their age, but I had found them in an antiquarian’s bazaar while I was looking for a lamp and decided immediately that I wanted to make them a part of my new image.
The new arrival had barely looked me in the eye as she introduced herself—her gaze seemed more concerned with gauging the distinction of the establishment in order to be sure that it was of the level she required. It turned out that I found it easy to attend to her—I just had to pretend that I wasn’t myself but Doña Manuela reincarnated in the person of an attractive and competent foreigner. We sat down in the
living room, each of us in one armchair, her with a determined pose that was a little manly, and me with my very best leg-crossing that I’d practiced a thousand times. With her broken Spanish she told me what she wanted. Two day suits, two outfits for going out at night. And an outfit for playing tennis.
“No problem,” I lied.
I didn’t have the slightest idea of what the hell an outfit for such an activity might be, but I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge my ignorance. I wouldn’t have admitted it even if I’d been standing before a firing squad. We consulted the magazines and examined styles. For the evening wear she chose creations from two of the great designers of the time, Marcel Rochas and Nina Ricci, selected from the pages of a French magazine with all the haute couture of the 1936 autumn/winter season. The ideas for the daywear came from the American Harper’s Bazaar: two outfits from the house of Harry Angelo, a name I’d never heard mentioned before, though I was extremely careful not to admit as much. Delighted at the array of magazines in my possession, the German lady made a great effort to ask me in her rudimentary Spanish where I had obtained them. I pretended not to understand her: if she were to learn of the wiles my business partner the Matutera used in getting hold of them, my first client would have been out the door as fast as her legs could carry her, never to be seen again. After picking the designs, we moved on to the choice of fabrics. With the samples that a variety of shops had supplied me with, I laid out before her a whole catalog whose colors and qualities I described for her, one by one.
It took relatively little time to reach a decision. Chiffon, velvet, and organza for the evening wear; flannel and cashmere for daytime. As for the pattern and fabric for the tennis outfit, we didn’t discuss that; I’d work it out when the time came. She stayed a long hour. Halfway through, Jamila, dressed in a turquoise caftan and with her huge dark eyes painted with kohl, made her silent appearance with a burnished tray carrying Moorish pastries and sweet tea with mint. The German lady accepted, delighted, and with a barely noticeable wink of complicity I conveyed my gratitude to my new servant. The final task was to take the measurements. I jotted the information down quickly in a leather-covered notebook: the cosmopolitan version of Doña Manuela into which I’d transformed myself was proving extremely useful. We agreed on a first fitting for five days later and said our good-byes with exquisite politeness. Good-bye, Frau Heinz, and thank you for the visit. Good-bye, Fräulein Quiroga, until next time. No sooner had I closed the door than I covered my mouth with my hand to stop myself from screaming and squeezed my legs together to stop myself from stamping on the floor like a wild colt. If I’d given free rein to my impulses, I would have let loose all the enthusiasm I felt at knowing that our first client had been snagged and there was no going back now.
I worked morning, afternoon, and night over the next few days. It was the first time I’d put together items of that scope all on my own, without the supervision or the help of my mother or Doña Manuela. I worked with all my senses, and then some, but even so, the fear of failure didn’t leave me for a second. I mentally took apart the outfits from the magazines, and when I couldn’t get any more out of the pictures I sharpened my imagination and intuited the things I wasn’t able to see. I marked up the materials with a bit of soap and cut pieces with as much fear as precision. I assembled, disassembled, and reassembled. I tacked, overcast, attached, took apart, and reconstructed on a mannequin until the result looked satisfactory. A lot had changed in fashion since I’d begun to move in that world of fabrics and threads. When I started at Doña Manuela’s workshop in the mid-twenties, loose lines were predominant; low waists and wide cuts for daytime, cleanly cut straight gowns of exquisite simplicity for the night. The thirties brought with them longer garments, fitted waists, bias cuts, prominent shoulders, and voluptuous outlines. Fashions were changing, just as times were changing, and with them the demands of our clientele and the dressmaker’s arts. But I knew how to adapt: I would have liked to be able to handle my own life with the same ease that I could accommodate myself to the whims of the fashion trends dictated from Paris.
Chapter Fifteen
___________
The first few days passed in a whirlwind. I worked without a break and went out little, just to take a quick walk as evening fell. At that hour I would usually run into one of my neighbors: the mother and son arm in arm from the apartment opposite me, two or three of the children from the upper floors racing down the staircase, a woman running home to prepare dinner. Only one shadow disturbed my activities during that first week: the wretched tennis outfit. Until I decided to send Jamila to La Luneta with a note: “I need magazines with pictures of tennis outfits. Doesn’t matter if they’re old.”
“Siñora Candelaria say Jamila come back tomorrow.”
So Jamila went back to the boardinghouse the next day and returned with a bundle of magazines she could barely carry.
“Siñora Candelaria say Siñorita Sira look these magazines first,” she told me in her sweet voice and awkward Spanish.
She’d arrived flushed with haste, buzzing with energy, brimming with hope. In a way she reminded me of myself in my early years at the workshop on Calle Zurbano, when my role was simply to run back and forth to do errands and make deliveries, moving through the streets agile and unconcerned as a street cat. I’d let myself get distracted by any little amusement that might allow me to steal a few minutes away, putting off my confinement between four walls as long as possible. Nostalgia threatened to bring me down, but in time I was able to withdraw and dodge it breezily: I learned to develop the skill of flight whenever I sensed melancholy approaching.
I threw myself anxiously into the magazines. All of them were out of date, many of them well thumbed, some even missing their covers. Few were fashion magazines, most were general in their subject matter. While some of them were French, by and large they were Spanish or from the Protectorate itself: La Esfera, Blanco y Negro, Nuevo Mundo, Marruecos Gráfico, Ketama. Several pages had their corners folded over; perhaps Candelaria had scanned through them already and was flagging pages for me. I opened them, and the first thing I saw wasn’t what I’d been expecting. In one photograph, two gentlemen with brilliantine-combed hair and dressed entirely in white shook hands over a net, while their left hands held tennis rackets. In another picture, a group of extremely elegant women were applauding as a trophy was handed over to a male player. I realized at this point that my note to Candelaria hadn’t specified that the tennis outfits had to be for women. I was about to call Jamila for her to go back to La Luneta when I let out a cry of delight. In the third magazine I found just what I needed. An extensive feature showed a woman tennis player in a light-colored sweater and a sort of split skirt, halfway between a normal skirt and a pair of broad trousers: something I’d never seen before, and probably neither had any of the magazine’s readers, judging by the detailed attention the photographs seemed to be paying to this piece of gear.
The text was in French and I could barely understand it, but a few references immediately stood out: the tennis player Lilí Álvarez, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli, a place called Wimbledon. Despite my satisfaction at having found a reference to the garment I was working on, this feeling was soon clouded over by a sense of unease. I closed the magazine and examined it carefully. It was old, yellowing. I looked for the date: 1931. It was missing its back cover and had stains on its edges, and some of its pages were torn. I was seized with worry. I couldn’t show an old relic like this to the German woman to ask her opinion about the outfit; it would overturn my whole false image as a sophisticated dressmaker on the cutting edge of fashion. I paced the house nervously, trying to find a solution, a strategy: anything I could use to resolve this unforeseen problem. After clattering back and forth along the hall tiles several dozen times, the only thing that occurred to me was to copy the design and try to pass it off as an original idea. But I had no idea how to draw, and the result would have been so clumsy that it would have brought me several rungs down the
scale of my supposed pedigree. Unable to calm myself, I decided to resort to Candelaria one more time.
Jamila had gone out. The light demands of the new house allowed her endless periods of leisure, something that would have been inconceivable in her days packed with duties at the boardinghouse. Seeking to make up for lost time, the girl was going out constantly, using the excuse of having to do some little errand: “Siñorita want Jamila go buy sunflower seeds, yes?” Before I’d even answered she’d be trotting down the stairs in search of sunflower seeds, or bread, or fruit, or simply fresh air and freedom. I tore the pages out of the magazine and stuck them in my purse, then decided that I would go to La Luneta myself.
When I arrived I didn’t find the Matutera. There was no one home but the new servant girl toiling away in the kitchen, and the schoolmaster sitting beside the window, afflicted with a bad cold. He greeted me warmly.
“Well, well, how nicely life seems to be treating us now that we’ve changed our den,” he said, an ironic comment on my new appearance.
I barely paid attention to his remark, having other urgent matters to deal with.
“You don’t happen to know where I might find Candelaria, Don Anselmo?”
“Not in the slightest, child; you know she’s always here and there, flitting about like a lizard’s tail.”
I twisted my fingers nervously. I needed to find her, I needed a solution. The schoolmaster sensed my unease.
“Something up with you, girl?”
In desperation I turned to him for help.
“You aren’t by any chance good at drawing, are you?”
“Me? Absolutely not. Anything harder than an equilateral triangle and I’m lost.”
I didn’t have the faintest idea what that was, but all that mattered was that my old boardinghouse ally couldn’t help me. I went back to twisting my fingers and leaned out onto the balcony to see if I could see Candelaria returning. I looked at the street filled with people, tapped nervously on the railing. Then I heard Don Anselmo’s voice behind me.