The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  The grim possibility of that punishment finally made this Churruca see sense. I couldn’t see the face of my savior—my gaze was still fixed on the ground. But the threat of arrest had its abrupt effect, and the punctilious pigheaded soldier, after thinking about it for a few nerve-wracking seconds, withdrew his hand, turned, and moved away from me.

  I blessed the good sense of his companion who had stopped him, and when the four soldiers were back together under the arch I turned and resumed my course. Making my way slowly along the platform, heading nowhere in particular, I attempted to recover my composure. Once I’d done that, I was finally able to concentrate my efforts on getting to the urinals. I began to pay attention to my surroundings then: a couple of Arabs dozing on the ground, leaning their backs on the walls, and a scrawny dog crossing the tracks. It took me a while to find my goal; to my good fortune it was almost at the other end of the platform, far from where the soldiers were. Holding my breath, I pushed the glass-paneled door and went into a kind of anteroom. There was barely any light, but I didn’t want to look for the switch, preferring instead to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I could make out the sign for men to my left and women to my right. And at the back, against the wall, I could see what seemed like a heap of fabric that was slowly beginning to shift. A head covered by a hood emerged cautiously from the bulk, eyes meeting mine in the gloom.

  “Have you brought the merchandise?” asked a low voice quickly in Spanish.

  I nodded and the bulk rose up stealthily until it had been transformed into the figure of a man dressed, like me, in the Moorish style.

  “Where is it?”

  I lowered my veil to be able to speak more easily, opening the haik and showing him my bound-up body.

  “Here.”

  “My God,” was all he muttered. There was a world of emotions concentrated in those two words: fear, anxiety, urgency. His tone was serious; he seemed to be a well-educated man.

  “Can you take it off yourself?” he asked then.

  “I’ll need time,” I whispered.

  He pointed me toward the women’s section and we both went in. It was a narrow space, with a small window through which traces of moonlight glimmered, sufficient enough that we didn’t need any more.

  “Hurry, we can’t waste any time. The morning patrol is about to arrive, and they search the station from top to bottom before the first train leaves. I’ll have to help you,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  I let the haik drop to the floor and held my arms out to the sides so that this stranger could start rummaging around every corner of me, untying knots, loosening bandages, and freeing my frame from its sinister covering.

  Before starting he lowered the hood of his djellaba, and I found myself looking at a serious, pleasant-faced Spaniard, middle-aged, with several days of stubble. His hair was brown and curly, disheveled by the effects of the big garment under which he’d probably been hidden for quite some time. His fingers began to work, but it wasn’t an easy task. Candelaria really had made an effort, and not one of the guns had shifted position, but the knots were so tight and there were so many yards of fabric that undoing them took us longer than we both would have wished. Neither of us spoke, surrounded by white tiles and only accompanied by the squat toilet in the floor, the rhythmic sound of our breathing, and an occasional murmur that punctuated the process: there we go, this way now, move a little, that’s it, bring your arm up a little, careful. Despite the pressure, the man from Larache acted with infinite delicacy, almost modesty, avoiding my more intimate areas or grazing past my naked skin an inch beyond what was strictly necessary. As though afraid to stain my integrity with his hands, as though the cargo I had attached to me was an exquisite wrapping of tissue paper and not a black casing of objects destined to kill. At no point did his physical closeness trouble me, neither his involuntary caresses nor the intimacy of our almost-touching bodies. It was without question the most pleasurable moment of the night—not because a man was running his hands across my body after so many months, but because I believed that, with that action, my ordeal was almost over.

  Everything proceeded at a good pace. The pistols came out of their hiding places one by one, ending up in a heap on the floor. When there were only a few left, just three or four, I calculated that in five minutes, ten at the most, we’d be done. Then suddenly the calm was broken, making us hold our breaths and freeze in the middle of what we were doing. From outside in the distance came the agitated sounds of the beginning of some new activity.

  The man breathed in hard and took a watch out of his pocket.

  “They’re here already, the relief patrol, they’ve come early,” he said. In his cracked voice I could make out distress and anxiety, and the wish not to convey either of those feelings.

  “What do we do now?” I whispered.

  “Get out as quickly as possible,” he said immediately. “Get dressed, fast.”

  “And the pistols that are left?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What you’ve got to do now is escape: it won’t be long before the soldiers come in to check that everything’s in order.”

  As I wrapped myself in the haik, my hands trembling, he unstrapped a filthy canvas sack from his belt and began shoving the pistols inside.

  “Which way do we get out?” I whispered.

  “That way,” he said, raising his head and gesturing at the window with his chin. “You jump first, then I’ll throw the pistols and come out myself. But listen carefully: if I’m not able to join you, take the pistols, run with them parallel to the tracks, and leave them next to the first sign you see announcing a stop or a station, and someone will go get them. Don’t look back and don’t wait for me; just run and escape. All right, let’s go—get ready to get up there, put a foot in my hands.”

  I looked up at the narrow window. It seemed impossible that we’d fit through it, but I didn’t say anything. I was so afraid that I just did exactly what I was told, blindly trusting the decisions of this anonymous Mason whose name I’d never learned.

  “Wait a moment,” he said then, as though he’d forgotten something.

  He pulled his shirt open and withdrew a small canvas bag, a sort of pouch.

  “First put this away, it’s the money agreed. In case things get complicated once we’re outside.”

  “But there are still some guns left . . . ,” I stammered as I patted down my body.

  “Doesn’t matter, you fulfilled your part, so that’s what you should be paid,” he said as he hung the bag around my neck. I let him do it to me, staying still, as though numbed. “Come on now, we can’t waste a second.”

  Finally I responded. Resting one foot in his linked hands, I pushed myself up until I’d gripped the window frame.

  “Open it, fast,” he insisted. “Up you go—tell me quickly what you see and hear.”

  The window opened onto the dark countryside. Sounds were coming from somewhere outside my range of vision: motors, wheels squealing on the gravel, firm footsteps, greetings and orders, imperious voices barking out tasks with sharp determination, as though the world was about to end, even though morning had not yet begun.

  “Pizarro and García, to the cafeteria. Ruiz and Albadalejo, the ticket desks. You to the offices, you two to the urinals. Come on, everyone, quick as a flash,” shouted someone with furious authority.

  “I can’t see anyone, but they’re coming this way,” I said with my head still outside.

  “Jump,” he commanded.

  I didn’t. I was worried about the height, I still had to get my body out, I was unconsciously refusing to get out alone. I wanted the man from Larache to reassure me that he’d be coming with me, that he’d lead me by the hand to wherever I had to go.

  The men could be heard coming ever closer. The creak of the boots on the ground, the powerful voices assigning tasks. Quintero, to the women’s bathroom; Villarta, to the men’s. They certainly weren’t the slovenly recruits I’d come across on my arrival, but a patrol
of fresh young men eager to fill the beginning of their day with activity.

  “Jump and run!” the man repeated urgently, gripping my legs and pushing me upward.

  I jumped, and fell, and the sack of pistols fell after me. I’d barely hit the ground before I heard the crash of doors being kicked open. The last sounds I heard were the rough shouts aimed at someone I never saw again.

  “What are you doing in the women’s bathrooms, moro? What were you throwing out the window? Villarta, quick, go outside and see if he’s thrown something out there.”

  I began to run. Blindly, furiously. Sheltered by darkness, and hauling the sack with the guns; deaf, oblivious, not knowing if they were following me or wanting to think about what had become of the man from Larache faced with the soldier’s rifle. I lost a slipper, and one of the last pistols finally came detached from my body, but I didn’t stop to retrieve either of them, I just kept following the path of the tracks, half barefoot, not stopping, not thinking. I crossed open fields, orchards, fields of sugarcane, and small plantations. I tripped, got up, and kept running without calculating the distance my strides were covering. Not a single living thing greeted me, and nothing got in the way of the deranged rhythm of my feet, until—in the shadows—I was able to make out a sign covered in writing. Malalien Station, it said. That would be my destination.

  The station was about a hundred yards from the sign, lit up by a single yellowish lamp. I stopped my wild running at the sign and looked around quickly in every direction to see if there was anyone to whom I could hand over the weapons. My heart was about to burst, and my mouth was dry and filled with grit as I struggled in vain to silence my labored breathing. No one came out to meet me, no one waited for the merchandise. Perhaps they’d arrive later, or perhaps never.

  It took me less than a minute to make my decision. I put the sack down on the ground, flattened it as much as possible, and started to pile little rocks on it at a feverish pace, scraping at the ground, yanking up earth, stones, and brush till it was reasonably well covered. When I thought it no longer looked like a suspicious bulge, I left.

  With barely enough time to recover my breath, I resumed my running in the direction of what I could make out as the lights of Tetouan. Now that I’d shed the cargo, I decided to shed the rest of my ballast. I opened up the haik without stopping and with some difficulty managed bit by bit to undo the remaining knots. The three pistols that were still tied to me fell out onto the road, first one, then another, and finally the last one. By the time I had almost reached the city, all my body had left was exhaustion, sadness, and pain. And a pouch full of banknotes hanging around my neck. Not a trace of the guns.

  I got myself back up onto the curb of the Ceuta road and slowed my pace again. I’d lost the other slipper, too, so I disguised myself again in the figure of a wrapped-up barefoot Moorish woman wearily making her way up to La Luneta gate. I didn’t have to make an effort to appear tired, for my legs couldn’t manage anything more. My limbs were stiff, I was filthy, and I had blisters and bruises all over. An infinite weakness was invading my bones.

  I entered the city as the shadows were beginning to lighten. The muezzin was calling the Muslims to first prayers from a nearby mosque, and the bugle of the Intendencia Barracks was playing reveille. The day’s news was appearing hot off the presses of La Gaceta de África, and shoeshine boys were beginning to circulate around La Luneta, yawning. Menahen the baker had already fired up his oven, and Don Leandro was piling up his store’s groceries with his apron tied firmly around his waist.

  All these everyday scenes passed before my eyes as though they were alien, not demanding any of my attention. Although I knew Candelaria would be pleased when I handed over the money and would praise me for carrying out an impressive deed, deep down I didn’t feel the least bit of satisfaction, only the black gnawing of a deep anxiety.

  While running frantically across the fields, while digging my nails in the earth to cover up the sack, while walking along the road, throughout my last actions of that long night, all I could think about were a thousand different sequences of events with just one protagonist: the man from Larache. In one of these, the soldiers discovered that he hadn’t thrown anything out the window, that it had all been a false alarm, that the man was no more than a confused, sleepy Arab, and so they’d let him go; the army was under express orders not to bother the local population unless there seemed to be something particularly disturbing afoot. In another very different scenario, no sooner had they opened the door to the toilets than the soldiers could see it was a Spaniard in disguise; they cornered him in the bathroom, pointing their rifles six inches from his face, and shouted for reinforcements. Once these arrived, they interrogated him, perhaps identifying and detaining him; perhaps they took him back to headquarters and he tried to escape; or perhaps they killed him, a shot in the back as he jumped the tracks. There were a host of other possible scenarios, but I knew I’d never be able to discover which of them turned out to be closest to the truth.

  I went in through the front door, exhausted and filled with fears as morning dawned over the map of Morocco.

  Chapter Twelve

  ___________

  I found the door of the boardinghouse open and the guests awake, gathered around the dining room table where they daily hurled their insults and oaths. The sisters in their dressing gowns and curlers, sobbing, as the schoolmaster Don Anselmo tried to console them with quiet words I couldn’t hear. Paquito and the traveling salesman were retrieving the picture of the Last Supper from the floor, in order to return it to its place on the wall. The telegraph man, in his pajama bottoms and undershirt, smoking nervously in a corner. The fat mother, meanwhile, was trying to cool her linden tea by blowing on it lightly. Everything was topsy-turvy, with bits of broken glass and the curtains torn down from their rods.

  No one seemed surprised at the arrival of a Moorish woman at that time of the morning; they must have thought I was Jamila. I stood there contemplating the scene for a few seconds, still trapped in my haik, until a potent hissing from the corridor caught my attention. Turning my head I saw Candelaria waving her arms like a woman possessed while holding a broom in one hand and the dustpan in the other.

  “Come inside, honey,” she commanded, agitated. “Come in and tell me, I’ve been sick with worry not knowing what happened.”

  I’d decided to keep the more shocking details to myself and share with her only the final result. That we no longer had the pistols, and we did have the money: that was what Candelaria wanted to hear, and that’s what I was going to tell her. The rest of the story I’d keep to myself.

  I talked as she removed the covering from my head.

  “It all turned out fine,” I whispered.

  “Ay, my angel, come here and let me hug you! And isn’t my Sira worth more than all the gold in Peru, isn’t my girl greater than the Lord’s day!” squealed the Matutera. She threw the cleaning things on the floor, captured me in her bosom, and covered my face with big noisy kisses.

  “Be quiet, Candelaria, for God’s sake; quiet, they’ll hear you,” I objected, fear still clinging to my skin. With no intention of heeding my warning, she strung her jubilation into a thread of curses directed at the policeman who had turned the house upside down earlier that night.

  “What do I care if they hear me now that it’s all over? Damn you to hell, Palomares, you and all your kin! Damn you to hell—you couldn’t catch me!”

  Sensing that this explosion of emotion after a long night of nerves wasn’t going to end there, I grabbed Candelaria’s arm and dragged her to my room, as she continued raining down curses.

  “Screw you, son of a bitch! Screw you, Palomares, you didn’t find a thing in my house, even knocking over my furniture and tearing open the mattresses!”

  “Quiet now, Candelaria, once and for all be quiet,” I insisted. “Forget about Palomares, calm down and let me tell you how it went.”

  “Yes, child, yes, down to the last detail,” sh
e said, finally trying to calm herself. She was still breathing hard, her housecoat was misbuttoned, and locks of tousled hair had escaped from her hairnet. She looked pitiful, and yet she radiated enthusiasm. “Sure enough, the big brute came at five in the morning and chucked us out into the street . . . and also . . . also . . . Well then, let’s forget about him, what’s past is past. You talk now, my jewel, tell me everything nice and slow.”

  I narrated my adventure to her briefly, as I removed the bundle of money that the man from Larache had hung around my neck. I didn’t mention escaping out of the window, nor the threatening shouts of the soldier, nor the pistols abandoned under the lone sign for the Malalien stop. I just handed her the contents of the pouch and then started to take off the haik and the nightdress I was wearing underneath.

  “You can go rot, Palomares!” she shouted, laughing, throwing the banknotes in the air. “Go rot in hell, you haven’t caught me!”

  Then her clamor stopped dead, and it wasn’t because she had suddenly recovered her good sense, but because what she had before her eyes prevented her from carrying on her excitement.

  “But you’ve been massacred, child! You look just like the Christ of the Five Wounds!” she exclaimed on seeing my naked body. “Does it hurt a lot, my child?”

  “A little,” I murmured, as I let myself drop like a dead weight onto the bed. I was telling a lie. The truth was that I was hurting right down to my soul.

  “And you’re filthy as if you’d just been rolling around in a rubbish dump,” she said, her good sense fully recovered. “I’m going to put some pots of water on the fire to prepare you a nice hot bath. And then some liniment compresses for you where you’re hurt, and then . . .”

  I didn’t hear any more. Before the Matutera had finished her sentence, I’d fallen asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ___________

  As soon as the house had been put back together and we’d returned to our normal routines, Candelaria set about looking for an apartment in the ensanche in which she could install my business. Tetouan’s ensanche, so different from the Moorish medina, had been built according to European standards to meet the needs of the Spanish Protectorate: to house its civil and military installations and to provide lodging and businesses for the families from the Peninsula that were gradually making Morocco their permanent home. The new buildings, with white façades, ornamented balconies, and a look that was somewhere between modern and Moorish, lined the broad streets and spacious squares that made up a harmonious grid. Through them walked well-coiffed women and men in hats, uniformed soldiers, children dressed in the European style, and formal couples arm in arm. There were trolleys and a few automobiles, cake shops, brand-new cafés, and exclusive up-to-date shops. Order and calm permeated this universe, in contrast to the hustle and bustle, the smells and the voices of the souqs in the medina, which seemed to be somewhere out of the past, surrounded by walls and opening out to the world through seven gates. And between the two spaces, the Arab and the European, almost like a border, was La Luneta, the street I was about to leave behind me.