The Time in Between

by Maria Duenas

  “And what are we to buy, señorita?” Dora asked, eyes like saucers.

  “Whatever you can find. They’re saying there isn’t much of anything right now. Whatever you see—didn’t you tell me you can cook? Well then, get to it.”

  The timidity took some time to disappear, though it did dissolve bit by bit. What were they afraid of, what was it that made them so introverted? Everything. Working for the strange African lady they believed me to be, the imposing building that housed my new home, the fear of not knowing how to get by in a sophisticated dressmaker’s atelier. As the days went by, however, they adapted themselves to their new lives: to the house, to the daily routines, to me. Dora—the elder—turned out to have a knack for sewing and was soon able to start helping me. Martina, meanwhile, was more like Jamila, more like I’d been in my youth—she liked being out on the street, the errands, the constant coming and going. Between them they managed the household; they were efficient and discreet, good girls, as they said in those days. They mentioned Beigbeder once; I never told them that I knew him. Don Juan, they called him. They remembered him fondly: they associated him with Berlin, with a time in the past from which they still retained vague memories and the residuals of the language.

  Everything progressed according to Hillgarth’s expectations. More or less. The first clients appeared; some of them were the ones he’d predicted, others weren’t. The season opened with Gloria von Fürstenberg, beautiful, majestic, her ebony-black hair combed into thick plaits that gathered at the back of her neck like the black crown of an Aztec goddess. Sparks flew from her large eyes when she saw the fabrics I had. She examined them, felt them, determined their caliber, asked about prices, discarded some of them immediately, tested the effect of others against her body. With her expert hand she chose the ones that best suited her out of the ones that weren’t excessively overpriced. She also ran her expert eye over the magazines, pausing on the designs that complemented her body and style. That Mexican woman with the German name knew exactly what she wanted, so she didn’t ask me for any advice, nor did I bother to give her any. Finally she opted for a gown in chocolate-colored silk gazar and an Ottoman evening coat. The first time she came alone and we spoke Spanish. For the first fitting she brought a friend, Anka von Fries, who ordered a wide dress in georgette and a ruby-colored velvet cloak decorated with ostrich feathers. As I listened to them talking to each other in German, I asked Dora to come in and join us. Well dressed, well fed, well groomed, the girl retained no trace of the terrified little sparrow who’d arrived with her sister just a few weeks earlier: she’d been transformed into a slender, silent assistant who kept mental notes of everything she heard and discreetly left the room every few minutes to jot the details down in a notebook.

  “I always like to keep exhaustive records of all my clients,” I’d warned Dora. “I want to understand what they say so I know where they’re going, who they’re going around with, and what plans they have. That way I may be able to get hold of new clients. I’ll be in charge of whatever they say in Spanish, but when they’re speaking German you’re responsible for that.”

  If Dora thought there was anything strange about the close attention paid to our clients, she didn’t show it. She probably thought it was quite reasonable, that this was normal behavior in this business that was so new to her. But of course it wasn’t. Noting down every syllable of names, positions, places, and dates that came out of the mouths of one’s clients isn’t normal in the least, but we did it every day, devoted and methodical, like good students. Then at night I’d go through my notes and Dora’s, extract any information I thought might be of interest, synthesize it into brief phrases, and finally transcribe it into inverted Morse code, adapting the long and short dashes to the straight and curving lines of the patterns that would never be part of a complete piece of work. The bits of paper with the handwritten notes were transformed to ashes in the small hours of each morning with a simple match. By the following dawn not a word of what had been written down remained, only a handful of messages hidden in the outlines of a lapel, a waistband, or a camisole.

  I acquired Baroness de Petrino as a client, too; wife to the powerful press officer Lazar, she was less spectacular than the Mexican woman but had far more money to spend. She chose the most expensive fabrics and didn’t skimp on indulging her whims. She brought me more clients—two German women, as well as a Hungarian. Over the course of many mornings my atelier was transformed into their main social meeting place, buzzing with a jumble of languages. I taught Martina to prepare tea the Moorish way, with the mint we planted in clay pots on the kitchen windowsill. I instructed her how to handle the teapots, how to casually pour the boiling water into the little glasses with silver filigree; I even taught her to paint her eyes with kohl and sewed her a silky gardenia-patterned caftan to give her an exotic air. A stand-in for my Jamila, so that I would have her with me always.

  Everything was going well, surprisingly well. I was moving ahead in my new life with complete confidence, entering the finest places with a sure step. When I was with my clients I acted with aplomb and decisiveness, protected by the armor of my fake exoticism. I brazenly muddled words from French and Arabic into my conversations; I might have been saying all kinds of nonsense in these languages, bearing in mind that I was only repeating simple expressions I’d heard on the streets of Tangiers and Tetouan whose precise meaning and usage I didn’t know. I made sure that in my polyglotism—as false as it was chaotic—I didn’t allow any bursts of the broken English I’d learned from Rosalinda to slip out. My position as a newly arrived foreigner allowed me a useful refuge for covering up my weak points and avoiding treacherous territory. No one seemed at all interested in my origins, however: they were more interested in my materials and what I was able to make from them. My clients would talk freely in the atelier; they seemed to feel comfortable there. They’d chat to one another and to me about what they’d done, what they were going to do, their common friends, their husbands and their lovers. And meanwhile Dora and I worked tirelessly—with materials, designs, and measurements out in the open; with secret notes in the back room. I didn’t know whether all those pieces of information I recorded every day had any value at all to Hillgarth and his people, but just in case, I tried to be minutely rigorous. On Wednesday afternoon, before my session at the hairdresser’s, I’d leave the tube of patterns in the predetermined locker. On Saturdays I’d visit the Prado, marveling so much at the artwork that I’d sometimes forget that I had something important to do there besides being enraptured by the paintings. Nor did I have the slightest problem with the transfer of envelopes filled with coded patterns: everything progressed so smoothly that my nerves didn’t even get a chance to gnaw at my innards. My portfolio was always received by the same person, a thin, bald employee who was probably also the one responsible for extracting my messages, although he never gave me the slightest sign of complicity.

  I went out from time to time, not too often. I went to Embassy on a few occasions at aperitif time. On my first visit I spotted Captain Hillgarth far off drinking whiskey on the rocks as he sat amid a group of compatriots. He noticed me right away, too—he couldn’t not have. But I was the only person who knew it—he didn’t make the slightest move at my arrival. I held my bag firmly in my right hand and we pretended not to have seen each other. I greeted a couple of clients who publicly praised my workshop to some other ladies; I drank a cocktail with them, received appreciative glances from several young men, and from the fake vantage point of my cosmopolitanism I discreetly watched the people around me. Class, frivolity, and money in their purest form spread across the counter and around the tables of a small corner bar decorated without the least bit of showiness. There were women in outfits made of the finest wools, alpacas, and tweeds, soldiers with swastikas on their armbands, and others in foreign uniforms I didn’t recognize, all of them with cuffs adorned with military stripes and many-pointed stars. There were incredibly elegant ladies dressed in two-p
iece suits, with three strands of hazelnut-sized pearls around their necks, with impeccable lipstick on their lips and divine hats, caps, and turbans on their perfectly coiffed heads. There were conversations in several languages, discreet laughter, and the sound of glass against glass. And floating in the air, subtle traces of perfumes from Patou and Guerlain, the feeling of cosmopolitan savoir faire and the smoke of a thousand Virginia cigarettes. The Spanish war that had just come to an end and the brutal conflict that was devastating Europe seemed to be tales from another galaxy in that environment of pure, simple sophistication.

  At one corner of the counter, standing erect and proud, solicitously greeting her customers while simultaneously controlling the incessant movement of the waiters, I saw the woman I assumed to be the proprietress of the establishment, Margaret Taylor. Hillgarth hadn’t told me in what kind of way he collaborated with her, but I had no doubt that it was more than a simple exchange of favors between the owner of a watering hole and one of her regular customers. I watched her as she handed a bill to a Nazi officer in a black uniform, with a swastika armband and high boots that shone like mirrors. That foreign woman, who looked both austere and distinguished, who had to have been some years past forty already, was surely another piece in the secret mechanism that the British naval attaché had activated in Spain. I couldn’t tell whether she and Captain Hillgarth exchanged glances at any point, whether any kind of silent message passed between them. I looked at them again out of the corner of my eye before I left. She was in discreet conversation with a young white-jacketed waiter, to whom she seemed to be giving instructions. Captain Hillgarth was still at his table, listening with interest to what one of his friends was saying. The whole group around him seemed to be just as alert to the words of the young man, who looked more carefree than the rest. From my vantage point on the other side of the shop I could see his theatrical gesticulations, perhaps imitating somebody. When he’d finished they all burst into laughter, and I heard the naval attaché crowing delightedly. Maybe it was only my imagination teasing me, but for a fraction of a second I thought he’d focused his gaze on me and winked.

  Madrid was entering autumn, while the number of my clients increased. I hadn’t yet received any flowers or candies, from Hillgarth or anyone else. Nor did I want any; I didn’t have time. Because if there was one thing that I was beginning to lack in those days, it was just that: time. The popularity of my new atelier spread quickly; word was getting around about the stunning fabrics to be found there. The number of orders increased daily, and I began to struggle to get them all done; I found myself having to deliver orders late and to postpone fittings. I was working hard, harder than ever before in my life. I went to bed very late, toiling through the small hours, and barely had any time to rest. There were days when the tape measure remained hanging around my neck from morning until the moment I got into bed. Money flowed constantly into my little safe box, but I was so uninterested that I didn’t even bother to stop and count it. Sometimes my memory—with a twinge of nostalgia—would return to those early days in Tetouan. The nights counting the banknotes one by one in my Sidi Mandri room, calculating anxiously how long it would be before I could clear my debt. Candelaria rushing back from the Jewish exchange houses with a roll of pounds sterling secreted in her cleavage. The almost childish delight the two of us took in dividing up the total: half for you, half for me, the Matutera would say, month after month, and may we never go without again, my precious. It felt as though there were centuries separating me from that other world, and yet only four years had passed. Four years like four eternities. Where was she now, that Sira who had had her hair cut by a little Moorish girl with the sewing scissors in the kitchen of the La Luneta boardinghouse? Where had they gone, the poses I’d practiced so many times in my friend’s cracked mirror? They’d been lost between the folds of time. Now I had my hair done in the best salon in Madrid, and those self-assured gestures were more mine than my own teeth.

  My hard work earned me more money than I’d ever dreamed of; I charged high prices and was constantly receiving hundred-peseta bills bearing the face of Christopher Columbus, five hundreds with the face of Don John of Austria. Yes, I was earning a lot, but a moment came when I couldn’t give any more of myself, and I had to notify Hillgarth through the pattern for a shoulder. It was raining that Saturday over the Prado Museum. As I gazed in delight at the paintings of Velázquez and Zurbarán, the inoffensive cloakroom man received my portfolio and, within it, an envelope with eleven messages that—as ever—would reach the naval attaché without delay. Ten of them contained conventional information abbreviated in the agreed manner. “Dinner 14th, home Walter Bastian, Calle Serrano, Lazars attending. Bodemuellers travel San Sebastián next week. Lazar wife making negative comments about Arthur Dietrich, her husband’s adjutant. Gloria von Fürstenberg and Anka Frier visit German consul end October. Various young men arrived last week from Berlin, staying Ritz, Friedrich Knappe receives, trains them. Husband Frau Hahn dislikes Kutschmann. Himmler arrives Spain 21 October, government and Germans preparing large reception. Clara Stauffer gathering material for German soldiers, her house Calle de Galileo. Dinner Puerta de Hierro club, date not sure, Count and Countess Argillo to attend. Heberlein organizing lunch his house, Toledo, Serrano Suñer, and Marchioness Llanzol invited.” The final message was different, and transmitted something more personal. “Too much work. Not time for everything. Fewer clients or seek help. Please inform.”

  The next day a beautiful bunch of white gladioli arrived at my door. They were delivered by a young man in a grey uniform whose cap bore the embroidered name of the florist: Bourguignon. I read the card first. “Always ready to fulfill your desires.” And a scribble by way of a signature. I laughed: I could never have imagined the cold-blooded Hillgarth writing that ridiculously soppy phrase. I moved the bouquet to the kitchen and undid the ribbon that was tying the flowers together; after asking Martina to get them into some water, I shut myself up in my room. The message leapt out of an interrupted line of short and long dashes: “Hire someone utterly trustworthy, no Red past or political affiliation.”

  Order received. And uncertainty had come with it.

  Chapter Forty-One

  __________

  When she opened the door I didn’t say a word; I just looked at her, containing my desire to throw my arms around her. She looked at me confused, running her eyes over me. Then she tried to meet my eyes, but perhaps the voilette of my hat prevented her from seeing them.

  “What can I do for you, señora?” she finally said.

  She was thinner. The passage of the years was visible on her. As petite as ever, but thinner and older. I smiled. She still didn’t recognize me.

  “I bring you greetings from my mother, Doña Manuela. She’s in Morocco, she’s gone back to sewing.”

  She looked at me, surprised, not understanding. She was turned out with her usual care, but her hair hadn’t been dyed for a couple of months and the dark suit she was wearing had accumulated the shine of many winters.

  “I’m Sira, Doña Manuela. Sirita, the daughter of Dolores, your employee.”

  She looked at me again, up and down. I bent down to bring myself to her level and lifted the little piece of netting on my hat so she could see my face.

  “It’s me, Doña Manuela, it’s Sira. Don’t you remember me?” I whispered.

  “Holy Mother of God, Sira! My child, I’m so delighted to see you!” she said at last.

  She hugged me and began to cry as I struggled not to let myself be set off, too.

  “Come in, my child, come in, don’t just stand there in the doorway,” she said when she was finally able to get her emotions under control. “But how incredibly elegant you are, child, I wouldn’t have recognized you. Come in, come into the living room. Tell me, what are you doing in Madrid, how are things, how is your mother?”

  She led me through to the main room and once again homesickness engulfed me. How many Feasts of the Magi had I, as a youn
g girl, visited that room, holding my mother’s hand, how excited I’d become as I tried to guess what gift would be waiting for me there. I remembered Doña Manuela’s home on the Calle Santa Engracia as a large, opulent apartment; not as fancy as the one on Zurbano where she’d set up her workshop, but infinitely less humble than ours on the Calle de la Redondilla. On this visit, though, I discovered that my childhood recollections had infected my memory with a perception that distorted reality. The house that Doña Manuela had lived in for her whole life as a single woman was neither large nor opulent. It was just a mediocre home, poorly laid out, cold, dark, and full of somber furnishings with worn, heavy velvet curtains that barely allowed any light in; an apartment covered with water stains, in which all the pictures were faded engravings and yellowed crochet doilies filled every corner.

  “Sit, child, sit. Would you like a drink? Can I make you a little coffee? It’s not really coffee, it’s roasted chicory, you know how hard it is to get hold of provisions these days, but a little bit of milk will hide the taste, though even that gets more watery every day, what can we do? I have no sugar as I’ve given my ration card to a neighbor for her children; at my age it hardly matters—”

  I interrupted her, taking her hand.

  “I don’t want anything, Doña Manuela, don’t worry about it. I’ve just come to see you to ask you something.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Are you still sewing?”

  “No, child, no. Ever since we closed the workshop in thirty-five I’ve not gone back to it. I’ve done the odd little thing for a friend or out of a sense of duty, but no more than that. If my memory serves, your wedding dress was the last big thing I did, and, well, since after all . . .”

  I preferred to dodge the subject she was referring to, so I didn’t let her finish.