The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  She sighed deeply, looking out into the emptiness, and then went on in a low voice.

  “What I do know, child, because everyone else knows it, too, is that those involved in the uprising have violently taken their anger out on anyone who has anything to do with Freemasonry. Some of them were shot in the head during their own meetings; the lucky ones fled as fast as they could to Tangiers or the French zone. Others were taken to El Mogote and someday they’ll be shot and never heard from again. And probably there are a few hiding in cellars, lofts, and storerooms, afraid that one day someone will betray them and they will be beaten out of their sanctuaries with rifle butts. That’s why I couldn’t find anyone at first who would dare buy the merchandise. After asking around I managed to get hold of the contact in Larache, and that’s how I know that’s where the pistols will end up.”

  Then she looked me in the eyes, serious and dark like I’d never seen her before.

  “Things are ugly, child, very ugly,” she said through clenched teeth. “There’s no pity here, no consideration, and anyone who’s worth anything gets taken away before you can say amen. Many poor wretches have already died, decent people who never killed a fly. Be very careful, honey; you’re not going to be the next one.”

  Again I drew a crumb of good cheer out of nowhere, so that the two of us might convince ourselves of something even I didn’t believe.

  “Don’t worry, Candelaria; you’ll see, we’ll get out of this somehow.”

  And without another word, I made my way to the bench and began climbing with that sinister cargo strapped to my skin. I left the Matutera behind me, watching from beneath as she made the sign of the cross amid whispers and vines: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, may the Virgin of Miracles go with you, my angel. The last thing I heard was a noisy kiss she gave to her fingers at the end of the ritual. One second later I disappeared behind the garden wall and fell like a bundle into the grocer’s yard.

  Chapter Eleven

  ___________

  I reached the way out of baker Menahen’s in less than five minutes. In the process I caught myself several times on nails and splinters that were impossible to see in the darkness. I grazed my wrist, tripped on the haik, slipped, and nearly lost my balance as I climbed up a huge pile of boxes stored in a disordered heap against a wall. Once I’d reached the door, the first thing I did was to arrange the haik so that all that could be seen of my face were my eyes. Then I slid the rusty bolt, took a deep breath, and stepped outside.

  There was no one in the alley, not a shadow or a sound. My only company was the moon, moving freely between the clouds. I started walking slowly, sticking close to the left side, and before long I’d arrived at La Luneta. Before turning onto the street I paused at the corner to determine the lay of the land. Yellowish lights hung from the cables over the road to serve as street lamps. Looking left and right, I was able to recognize some of the establishments—now asleep—in which chaotic life went on during the day: the Hotel Victoria, Zurita Pharmacy, Levante Bar where they would often sing flamenco, Galindo the tobacconist’s, and a salt depository; the Teatro Nacional, the Indian bazaars, four or five taverns whose names I didn’t know, La Perla Jeweler’s, which belonged to the Cohen brothers, and La Espiga de Oro, where we’d go every morning to buy our bread. All of them silent, closed, peaceful as the dead.

  Once on La Luneta, I struggled to adapt my pace to the weight of my cargo. After a short stretch, I directed myself toward the mellah, the Jewish quarter. The linear pattern of its extremely narrow streets comforted me, for its precise grid made it impossible to lose one’s bearings. Then I entered the medina, and at first everything went well as I passed by familiar places: the Bread Souq, the Meat Souq. I didn’t meet anyone, not a soul, not even a dog or a blind tramp begging for alms. All I could hear was the muffled sound of my own slippers dragging along the paving stones and the murmur of some fountain or other lost in the distance. I noticed that the pistols seemed less and less heavy, that my body was getting used to its new dimensions. From time to time I patted myself down just to confirm that everything was still in place: first the sides, then the arms, then the hips. I was still tense and couldn’t quite manage to relax, but at least I was walking with reasonable calm down the dark, winding streets between the whitewashed walls and the wooden doors studded with thick-headed nails.

  To banish the worry from my head, I made myself imagine what those Arab houses were like on the inside. I’d heard they were beautiful and cool, with patios, fountains, and galleries of mosaics and tiles; with carved wooden ceilings and sunlight caressing the flat roofs. There was no way you could tell all that from the street, where all you could see were their whitewashed walls. I kept musing in this way, until after a while, when I thought I’d walked enough and was a hundred percent sure that I hadn’t raised the slightest suspicion, I decided to head toward Puerta de la Luneta. And it was then, precisely at that moment, that I noticed—at the end of the alley I was walking down—a couple of figures approaching. Two soldiers, officers in breeches, with sashes at their waists and the red caps of the Spanish regulars; four legs walking resolutely, their boots sounding on the cobbles as they talked in quiet, nervous voices. I held my breath as a thousand grim images torpedoed my mind like explosions battering a wall. Suddenly I feared that just as I passed them all the pistols would come loose from their ties and scatter noisily onto the ground; I imagined that it might occur to one of them to pull my hood back and expose my face, that they would make me speak, that they’d discover I was a Spanish compatriot of theirs dealing guns illegally and not some local woman on her way to nowhere in particular.

  The men passed alongside me; I stuck as closely as I could to the wall, but the alley was so narrow that we almost brushed against one another. They didn’t pay me the least bit of attention, however, ignoring my presence as though I were invisible and continuing their conversation as they proceeded hastily on their way. They were talking about detachments and munitions, about things I didn’t understand or want to understand. Two hundred, two fifty at the most, one of them said as they passed. No, absolutely not, I’m telling you that’s not right, replied the other vehemently. I didn’t see their faces, I didn’t dare look up, but as soon as their voices faded into the distance I picked up my pace and finally felt I could breathe again.

  Just a few seconds later, however, I realized I shouldn’t have declared victory quite so soon: looking up, I discovered that I didn’t know where I was. In order to keep my bearings I would have had to take a right turn three or four corners earlier, but the unexpected appearance of the soldiers had thrown me so much that I hadn’t. At the thought that I was lost, a shiver ran over my skin. I’d crossed the streets of the medina many times but still didn’t know its secrets and mysteries. Without sunlight to guide me and in the absence of the usual activity and sounds, I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was.

  I decided to turn back and retrace my steps but was unable to do so. When I thought that I was about to walk into a little square I knew, I found an archway instead; when I expected a passageway, I came across a mosque or a flight of stairs. I proceeded awkwardly along the winding streets, trying to associate every corner with its daytime activities in order to get my bearings. But the more I walked, the more lost I felt in those intricate streets that defied all laws of reason. With the craftsmen asleep and their shops shut, I couldn’t tell whether I was passing through the district of the coppersmiths or the tinsmiths, or whether I was going through the section where by day the thread makers, weavers, and tailors worked. In the area where vendors’ stands with honey sweets, round flatbreads, mountains of spices, and bunches of basil might have helped me to orient myself, I found only locked doors and bolted shutters. Time seemed to have stopped, everything seemed like an empty stage set without the voices of the merchants and the buyers, without the trains of donkeys laden with panniers or the women from the Rif sitting on the ground, surrounded by green vegetables and oranges
that they might never be able to sell. My anxiety increased: I didn’t know what time it was, but I was only too aware that there was less and less time remaining before six o’clock. I picked up the pace; exiting an alleyway, I went into another, and another, and yet another; I retraced my steps, attempting to correct my route again. Nothing. Not a clue, not a sign: everything had suddenly been transformed into an accursed labyrinth with no way out.

  My confused steps ended up taking me close to a house with a large lamp hanging over the door. At once I could hear laughing, chatter, immoderate voices singing in chorus the words of “Mi jaca” to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano. I decided to approach, anxious to find some reference point that would allow me to recover my sense of direction. I was just a few feet away when a couple came out quickly, speaking Spanish: a man who seemed to be drunk, clinging to an older woman with dyed blond hair who was laughing heartily. I realized then that I was standing outside a brothel, but it was already too late to try to pass myself off as a worn-out old local woman: the couple was just a few steps away from me. Morita, come with me, morita, my lovely, I’ve got something to show you, look, look, morita, the man said, slobbering, holding an arm out to me while his other hand gripped his crotch obscenely. The woman tried to restrain him as she laughed, while I jumped away from his reach and ran off wildly, clasping the haik around my body with all my strength.

  I left the brothel behind me, that place filled with flesh from the barracks playing cards, bellowing out popular songs, and feverishly handling the women; all of them momentarily freed from the certainty that someday soon they’d be crossing the Strait to confront the grim reality of the war. And then, as I sped away in haste, luck finally came to my aid when turning a corner I found myself face to face with the Souq el Foki.

  I was filled with relief at having regained my bearings: at last I knew how to escape from the cage that the medina had become. Time was racing, and I would have to do the same. Moving with the longest strides my covering would allow, I reached Puerta de la Luneta in only a few minutes. But a new shock awaited me there: one of the feared military control posts that had prevented the people from Larache from getting into Tetouan. Several soldiers, guard barriers, and a couple of vehicles: enough to intimidate anyone who wanted to get into the city for any reason less than pure. I could feel my throat becoming dry, but I knew I couldn’t avoid passing right in front of them, let alone stop to consider what I should do, so with my eyes fixed once again on the ground I decided to continue on my way with the weary walk that Candelaria had advised. I passed the control with my blood pounding in my temples as I held my breath, expecting to be stopped at any moment and asked where I was going, who I was, what I was hiding. To my good fortune, they barely glanced at me. They ignored me, just as I’d been ignored by the officers I’d passed in the narrow alley. What danger could the glorious uprising fear from that plodding old Moroccan woman who made her way through the dawn streets like a shadow?

  I came down into the open area of the park and forced myself to recover my composure. With feigned calm I crossed the gardens filled with sleeping shadows, so strange in that stillness, without the noisy children or couples or elderly people who would wander amid the fountains and the palm trees in daytime. As I proceeded I could see the station looming clearer and clearer in sight. Compared to the low houses of the medina, it suddenly looked grand and troubling to me, half Moorish and half Andalusian, with its turrets and green tiles, its huge archways over the entrances. Several dim lamps illuminated the façade, casting its silhouette against the bulk of the Ghorgiz, those imposing mountains from which the men from Larache were supposed to arrive. I’d only been by the station once before, when the commissioner had taken me in his car from the hospital to the boardinghouse. Other times I’d seen it at a distance, from the vista of La Luneta, unable to gauge the scale of the thing. Standing before it in the dimness, I found its size so threatening that I suddenly missed the cozy narrowness of the alleyways in the Moorish quarter.

  But there wasn’t time to allow fear to bare its teeth at me again, so I recovered my daring and set about crossing the Ceuta road, which at that time of morning had not so much as a speck of dust moving on it. I tried to buoy up my spirits by calculating times, telling myself that in a short while it would all be over, that I’d already gone through most of the ordeal. It comforted me to think that I’d soon be rid of those tight bandages and pistols that were bruising my body and the voluminous clothes that felt so strange. It wouldn’t be long now.

  I went into the station through the main entrance, which was wide open, and was met by a flood of cold light illuminating the space, a sharp contrast to the darkness of night I’d just left behind. The first thing I noticed was a large clock reading a quarter to six. I sighed in relief under the fabric covering my face: my delay hadn’t been too bad. I walked with slow deliberateness across the concourse while my eyes, hidden behind the veil, quickly surveyed the scene. The ticket desks were closed, and there was only an old Muslim man flat out on a bench with a bundle at his feet. At the far end of the room, two big doors opened onto the platform. On the left was another door with a prominent sign marked Café. I found the timetable board to my right, but I didn’t stop to study it, just sat down on a bench beneath and settled myself in to wait. No sooner had I done so than a feeling of gratitude ran through my whole body from head to foot. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how tired I was after the immense effort of walking nonstop laden with all that sinister weight.

  Although no one appeared on the concourse the whole time I remained sitting there immobile, I heard sounds that told me I was not alone. Some of them came from outside, others from the platform. Footsteps and men’s voices, sometimes quiet, at other times louder. They were young voices, and I assumed they would have been soldiers in charge of guarding the station. I tried not to think about the fact that they were probably under orders to fire without hesitation at anything suspicious. There were some other sounds, too, coming from the café. It comforted me to hear them, for at least I could tell that the café employee was at work and in place. I let ten minutes pass, which they did with exasperating slowness. There wasn’t time for the twenty minutes Candelaria had told me to wait, so when the hands of the clock showed five to six, I gathered up my strength, got heavily to my feet, and walked over to my destination.

  The café was large, with at least a dozen tables, all of them unoccupied except for one where a man was dozing with his head hidden by his arm; beside him rested an empty wine bottle. I made my way over to the counter, dragging my slippers, without the slightest idea of what I ought to say or what I was going to hear. Behind the bar, a gaunt, dark-skinned man with a cigarette butt between his lips was busy putting plates and cups in orderly piles, apparently not paying the least attention to that woman with her face covered who was about to place herself right in front of him. As he saw me approach the counter, he simply said loudly and dismissively, without removing his cigarette from his mouth, “Seven thirty, the train doesn’t leave till seven thirty.” Then, in a low voice, he added a few words in Arabic that I didn’t understand. “I’m Spanish, I don’t understand you,” I mumbled from behind the veil. He opened his mouth, unable to hide his disbelief, and what was left of his cigarette fell unnoticed onto the floor. Then he whispered the message: go to the urinals on the platform and close the door, they’re waiting for you there.

  I slowly retraced my steps, returning to the concourse, and from there went out into the night. First, I readjusted the haik and lifted the veil farther up until it was almost grazing my eyelashes. The broad platform looked empty, and beyond there was nothing but the rocky mass of the Ghorgiz, dark and immense. The soldiers, four of them, were all together, smoking and talking under one of the arches that opened onto the tracks. They flinched when they saw a shadow appear; I noticed how they tensed up, how they brought their boots together and straightened their postures, how they adjusted their rifles on their shoulders.
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br />   “You there—halt!” shouted one of them as soon as he saw me. My body stiffened against the metal weapons stuck to it.

  “Leave her, Churruca, can’t you see she’s a Moor?” another said immediately.

  I remained still, neither advancing nor retreating. They didn’t approach but remained where they were, some fifty feet away, discussing what to do.

  “I don’t care one way or another if she’s Moorish or Christian. The sergeant said we have to ask everybody for identification.”

  “Christ, Churruca, you’re so slow. We’ve told you ten times already that he meant everybody Spanish, not the Muslims,” the other soldier explained. “Why can’t you learn?”

  “You’re the ones who don’t learn. Come on, ma’am, let’s see your papers.”

  I thought my legs were going to fold under me, that I was about to collapse. It seemed the game was up. I held my breath and felt a cold sweat soaking my skin.

  “You’re so dumb, Churruca,” said another one standing behind him. “The natives don’t wander around with their ID documents—when are you going to learn that this is Africa, not your village square?”

  Too late: the scrupulous soldier was already two steps away from me, a hand held out for some document as he searched for my gaze among the folds of fabric covering me. He didn’t find it, however—my eyes remained fixed on the ground, focused on his mud-stained boots, on my old slippers, and the little space that separated our two pairs of feet.

  “If the sergeant finds out you’ve been bothering a Moroccan woman who’s not under any suspicion, you’re going to swallow three long nights of arrest in the Alcazaba, kid.”