by Maria Duenas
“I’ve never looked for trouble, Commissioner; everything that’s happened to me this past year, all the crimes I’m supposedly implicated in haven’t come about of my own will, as you know very well, but because one unfortunate day some swine crossed my path. And you cannot even imagine what I’d give to erase that hour when that bastard entered my life, but there’s no going back, and his problems are now my problems, and I know I’ve got to get myself out of them one way or another: that’s my responsibility, and as such I am taking it on. You should know, though, that the only way I can do that is by sewing—I’m not good for anything else. If you shut this door to me, if you cut off these wings, you’ll be suffocating me, because I won’t be able to devote myself to anything else. I’ve tried, but I haven’t found anyone willing to hire me because I have no other skills. So I’m asking you a favor, just one: let me continue with this workshop and don’t investigate any further. Trust in me, don’t bring me down. The rent on this apartment and all the furniture has been paid for, down to the last peseta; I haven’t cheated anyone for them, and I don’t owe anything to anyone. All this business needs is someone to do its work, and that’s what I’m for, ready to give it my all, night and day. Just allow me to work in peace, I won’t create any trouble for you, I swear to you by my mother, who is all I’ve got. And when I finally earn the money I owe in Tangiers, when I’ve settled my debt and the war is over, I’ll go back to her and not trouble you any longer. But until then, I’m asking you, Commissioner, don’t demand any more explanations of me, and let me keep going. This is all I ask of you: take your foot off my neck and don’t suffocate me before I’ve started, because by doing that you will gain nothing and I, meanwhile, will lose everything.”
He didn’t reply, nor did I say another word; we just sat looking at each other. Contrary to all my expectations, I’d managed to get to the end of my speech with my voice still firm and my temper serene, without falling apart. At last I had got it all out, stripped myself of all the resentment I’d been feeling for so long. Suddenly I felt immensely tired. I was tired of having been stabbed in the back by an unscrupulous bastard, of the months I’d been living in fear, feeling constantly under threat. Tired of carrying around such heavy guilt, burdened down like those unfortunate Moorish women I used to see walking along together slowly, bent over, wrapped in their haiks and dragging their feet, carrying packages and bundles of firewood on their backs, or bunches of dates, little kids, buckets of clay, and sacks of lime. I was fed up with feeling afraid, humiliated; fed up with living such a sad life in that strange land. Tired, drained, exhausted, and yet ready to fight my way out of my ruin tooth and nail.
It was the commissioner who finally broke the silence. First he stood up; I did the same, carefully smoothing out the wrinkles from my skirt. He picked up his hat and turned it around a few times, looking at it with great concentration. It was no longer the soft summer hat of a few months earlier; now it was a dark winter fedora, a fine hat of chocolate-colored felt that he rotated in his hands as though it hid the key to his thoughts. When he had stopped moving it around, he spoke.
“Very well. I accept. If no one comes to me with any evidence, I won’t inquire into how you’ve fixed things to set this all up. From now on I’m going to allow you to work and move your business forward. I’m going to let you live undisturbed. Let’s see if we’re lucky and that keeps trouble away from us both.”
He didn’t say any more, didn’t wait for me to reply. No sooner had he finished speaking than he gave a gesture of farewell with a movement of his jaw and went over to the door.
Five minutes later Frau Heinz arrived. What thoughts went through my head during the time that separated the two of them is something I’ve never been able to remember. The only memory I’ve retained is that when the German woman rang the doorbell and I went over to open it, I felt like the weight of a whole mountain had been lifted from my soul.
PART TWO
TANGIERS IN THE 1930s
Chapter Sixteen
___________
Over the course of the autumn there were other clients, moneyed foreigners, for the most part—my business partner the Matutera had been correct in her prediction. Several Germans. The occasional Italian. Several Spanish ladies, too, almost always the wives of businessmen, since the administration and the army were going through some stormy times. The occasional rich Jew, Sephardic, beautiful, with her smooth old Spanish in different cadences, speaking Haketia with its melodious rhythm and strange, archaic words.
Bit by bit the business began to flourish, word began to spread. Money was coming in: in Nationalist pesetas, in French and Moroccan francs, in silver hassani currency. I put it all away in a small strongbox under lock and key in the second drawer of my nightstand. On the last day of every month I’d bring the total over to Candelaria. It took the Matutera less time than an amen! to separate a handful of pesetas for day-to-day expenses and roll all the rest of the notes into a tight bundle that she would place deftly down her cleavage. With the monthly earnings in the hot refuge of her opulent breasts, she would rush out to see which of the moneychangers would give her the best deal. Not long afterward she would return to the boardinghouse, out of breath and with a thick roll of sterling pounds protected in the same hiding place. Still catching her breath from all that haste, she would draw the loot out. “Just sticking to what’s reliable, honey, because if you ask me the English are the smartest of the lot. Neither you nor I nor anyone else is going to be saving up Franco’s pesetas, since if the Nationalists end up losing the war, they won’t be any use to us at all, not even to wipe our asses with.” She divided it up fairly—half for me, half for her. “And may we never do without again, my angel.”
I got used to living alone, calm, unafraid. To being responsible for the workshop and myself. I worked a lot, entertained myself little. The volume of orders didn’t require extra hands, so I continued working alone. The activity was incessant nonetheless—threads, scissors, imagination, and an iron. Sometimes I’d go out in search of materials, to stock up on buttons or choose spools of thread and fasteners. I made the most of my Fridays above all: I’d approach the neighboring Plaza de España—the Feddán, the Moors called it—to see the caliph come out of his palace and cross over to the mosque on a white horse, under a green parasol, surrounded by local soldiers in fantastic uniforms, an imposing spectacle. Then I’d usually walk along what was already beginning to be called the Calle del Generalísimo, continuing as far as Plaza de Muley el Mehdi to pass in front of the church of Our Lady of Victories, the Catholic mission, which the war had packed full of prayers and people in mourning.
The war: so far away, and yet so present. From the other side of the Strait we would receive news that came in waves, from the press and by word of mouth. In their homes people would mark out the advances with colored pins on maps fixed to the walls. I learned about what was going on in my country in the solitude of my own home. The only extravagance I allowed myself in those months was to purchase a radio; thanks to this, I learned before the year was out that the government of the Republic had moved to Valencia and left the people to defend Madrid alone. The International Brigades arrived to help the Republicans; Hitler and Mussolini recognized Franco’s legitimacy; Primo de Rivera was executed in Alicante prison; my savings reached eighty pounds; Christmas arrived.
I spent that first African Christmas Eve in the boardinghouse. Though I tried to refuse the invitation, its owner persuaded me yet again with her overwhelming insistence.
“You’re coming for dinner at La Luneta, and that’s all there is to it—as long as Candelaria has room at her table nobody spends the holidays alone.”
I couldn’t refuse, but it cost me a tremendous effort. As the holiday approached, gusts of sadness began their invasion, through chinks in the windows and spaces under the doors, until the entire workshop was permeated with melancholy. How was my mother, how was she bearing the uncertainty of not hearing any word from me, how was she ma
naging to support herself in these dreadful times? Unanswered questions assailed me at every moment, increasing my sense of uneasiness. My neighborhood did little to cheer me: there was barely a flicker of joy to be felt there despite the shop decorations, the people exchanging greetings, and the children of the neighboring apartments humming carols as they trotted down the stairs. The sure knowledge of what was happening in Spain was so dark and heavy that no one seemed in the mood to celebrate.
I reached the boardinghouse after eight in the evening, after passing hardly anyone on the streets. Candelaria had roasted a couple of turkeys: the first proceeds from the new business had introduced a certain prosperity to her larder. I brought two bottles of sparkling wine and a round Dutch cheese brought over from Tangiers at the price of gold. I found the guests worn down, bitter, so very sad. Candelaria, on the other hand, tried hard to rally everyone’s spirits, her sleeves rolled up, singing at the top of her voice as she put the finishing touches on the dinner.
“I’m here, Candelaria,” I said, coming into the kitchen.
She stopped singing and stirring the pot.
“And what’s the matter with you, if I might know? Coming in with that miserable face like you’re being led off to the slaughterhouse.”
“Nothing’s the matter with me—what could be?” I said, looking for somewhere to put down the bottles while avoiding her gaze.
She wiped her hands on a cloth, grabbed my arm, and forced me to turn toward her.
“You don’t fool me, girl. It’s about your mother, isn’t it?”
I didn’t look at her, or answer.
“The first Christmas Eve out of the nest is ever so shitty, but you’ve got to grin and bear it, honey. I still remember mine, and you know in my house we were poor as mice and hardly did anything the whole night except sing, dance, and clap, with very little there to fill your belly. And yet for all that, blood is thicker than water, even if the only things you’ve shared with your people have been hardships and miseries.”
I still didn’t catch her eye, trying to look as though I was concentrating on finding a space to put the bottles down amid the mountain of odds and ends that occupied the table. A mortar, a pot of soup, a large dish of custard. An earthenware bowl filled with olives, three heads of garlic, a sprig of bay leaves. She went on talking, close and sure.
“But bit by bit it all passes, you’ll see. I’m sure your mother is fine, that tonight she’ll be having dinner with her neighbors, and that even though she’s remembering you and missing you, she’ll be glad to know that at least you have the luck of being outside Madrid, far away from the war.”
Perhaps Candelaria was right and my absence was more of a consolation to my mother than a sorrow. Maybe she thought I was still with Ramiro in Tangiers. She might have imagined us spending the evening having dinner in some stunning hotel, surrounded by unconcerned foreigners who danced between one course and the next, far from the suffering on the other side of the Strait. Although I’d tried to keep her informed by letter, everyone knew that the post from Morocco didn’t get to Madrid, so those messages had probably never even left Tetouan.
“You’re right,” I murmured, barely parting my lips. I was still holding the bottles of wine, looking carefully at the table, unable to find a place to put them. And I wasn’t brave enough to look Candelaria in the eye either, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to hold back my tears.
“I certainly am, child, don’t think about it anymore. However hard absence may be, knowing your daughter is far from the bombs and machine guns is a good reason to be glad. So come on—be happy, be happy!” she shouted, grabbing one of the bottles from my hand. “You’ll see, we’ll be livening up very soon, dear heart.” She opened it and raised it up. “To your mother, who gave you life,” she said. Before I had a chance to reply she had taken a long swallow of sparkling wine. “Now you,” she commanded, after wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. I didn’t have the least desire to drink, but I obeyed. It was to Dolores’s health. Anything for her.
We started dinner, but in spite of Candelaria’s efforts to keep spirits merry, the rest of us didn’t talk much. No one was even in the mood for an argument. The schoolmaster coughed till he looked like his sternum was going to split, and the shriveled-up sisters, even more shriveled up than usual, shed tears. The fat mother sighed, sniffed. The wine went to her Paquito’s head, he started talking nonsense, the telegraph man answered him back, and finally we laughed. Then Candelaria got up and raised her cracked glass to everyone. To those present, those absent, each and every one. We hugged, we cried, and for one night there was only one faction, the one made up of our sorry troupe.
The first months of the new year were calm and filled with nonstop work. During that time my neighbor Félix Aranda became an everyday presence. Besides the proximity of our homes, I was also brought closer to him in another dimension that couldn’t be gauged spatially. His somewhat peculiar behavior and my repeated need for assistance helped to establish a friendship between us at late hours of the night that would last for decades, through many phases of our lives. After those first sketches that solved my problem with the tennis player’s attire, there would be more occasions when Doña Encarna’s son offered a hand to help me leap gracefully over apparently insurmountable obstacles. Unlike the case of the Schiaparelli trouser-skirt, the second stumbling block that led me to seek another favor from him shortly after the first wasn’t prompted by artistic necessity, but by my ignorance in matters of money. It had all begun some time earlier with a small inconvenience that wouldn’t have posed any problem for anyone with a somewhat privileged education. However, the few years I had attended the modest school in my Madrid neighborhood hadn’t amounted to much. Which was why, at eleven o’clock on the night before my workshop’s first invoice was due to be delivered to the client, I had found myself hopelessly vexed by my inability to put in writing a description and price that corresponded to the work I had done.
It was in November. Over the course of the afternoon the sky had been turning dark grey, and when night fell it began to rain heavily, the prelude to a storm on its way over from the nearby Mediterranean: one of those storms that uprooted trees, knocked down electric wires, and made people huddle under their covers muttering a feverish torrent of litanies to Saint Barbara. Just a couple of hours before the weather changed, Jamila had taken the first orders, just completed, over to Frau Heinz’s house. My first five pieces of work—two for evening, two for daytime, and one for tennis—had been taken down from their hangers in the workshop, where they had been kept awaiting their final ironing. Then they had been packed up in their canvas bags and conveyed in three successive trips to their destination. Jamila’s return from the last trip brought with it a request.
“Frau Heinz ask that Jamila bring tomorrow morning bill in German marks.”
And in case the message hadn’t been absolutely clear, she handed me an envelope bearing a card with the message written on it. I sat down to think about how the hell I was going to make up an invoice, and for the first time my great ally, memory, refused to get me off the hook. Right through the setting up of the business and the creation of the first items of clothing, the designs I still treasured from the world of Doña Manuela had served as a resource I could draw on. The images I had memorized, the skills I’d learned, the mechanical movements and actions so often repeated had up till that moment furnished me with the inspiration to keep going and make a success of it. I knew down to the last detail how a good dressmaker’s studio worked, how to take measurements, cut the patterns, pleat skirts, affix sleeves, and attach lapels, but however hard I searched my mental catalog of techniques and observations, I found nothing that would serve as a reference point for how to create an invoice. I had handled so many of them when I worked for Doña Manuela in Madrid, and it had been my job to deliver them to the homes of our clients; in some cases I’d even returned with the payment in my pocket. Yet I had never stopped to open one of those envelopes and
examine its contents.
I considered resorting as usual to Candelaria, but looking out over the balcony I could see how dark it was already, with the imperious wind driving an ever denser rain as relentless flashes of lightning approached from the sea. In consideration of this scenario, the walk over to the boardinghouse seemed to be the sheerest path to hell. So I decided to sort it out on my own: I got hold of a pencil and some paper and sat down at the kitchen table, all ready to begin the task. An hour and a half later and I was still there, with countless scraps of crumpled-up paper surrounding me as I sharpened the pencil with a knife for the fifth time, but still with no idea how many German marks would be equivalent to the two hundred and seventy-five pesetas I had planned on charging her. And right then, in the middle of the night, something suddenly clattered hard against the windowpane. I leapt to my feet so fast that I knocked over the chair. I saw immediately that there was light in the kitchen opposite, and in spite of the rain, and in spite of the time, I could see in it the chubby figure of my neighbor Félix, with his glasses, his sparse, curling hair, and his arm raised, ready to throw a second fistful of almonds. I opened the window to ask him angrily for an explanation for such incomprehensible behavior, but before I’d had the chance to say a word his voice crossed the gap between us, filtered through the thick splattering of the rain on the tiles of the building’s central courtyard. The content of his message, however, came over loud and clear.