by Maria Duenas
“I’ve got to go,” she said, getting up. “I’d forgotten I have to do unas compras, some shopping before I go back to get ready. I’ve been invited to cocktails at the house of the Belgian consul.”
She spoke without looking at me as she adjusted her gloves, her hat. I watched her with curiosity, wondering with whom would this woman be going to all these parties, with whom did she share this freedom to come and go; I wondered about her carefree, privileged background, constantly traversing the world, leaping from one continent to another to speak confusing languages and drink tea that tasted of a thousand different places. Comparing her seemingly leisurely life with my everyday work, I felt the touch of something running down my spine that resembled envy.
“Do you know where I can buy a bathing suit?” she asked suddenly.
“For you?”
“No, for meu filho.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, sorry—my son?”
“Your son?” I asked in disbelief.
“His name’s Johnny, he’s five years old and es un amor . . . an absolute darling.”
“I haven’t been in Tetouan long either, I don’t think I can help you,” I said, trying not to show my uneasiness. In the idyllic life that only a few seconds earlier I’d been imagining for that flighty, childlike woman, there might have been room for friends and admirers, for glasses of champagne, transcontinental travels, silk lingerie, parties till dawn, haute couture evening wear, and—with a great deal of effort—perhaps a husband as young, frivolous, and attractive as she was. But I never could have guessed that she would have a son, because I had never imagined her to be a woman with a family. And yet it seemed she was.
“Anyway, not to worry, I’ll find one somewhere,” she said by way of farewell.
“Good luck. And remember, I’ll be expecting you in five days.”
“I’ll be here, I promise.”
She left and did not keep her promise. Instead of the fifth day, she turned up on the fourth: without prior notice and in a tearing hurry. Jamila announced her arrival to me at around noon when I was doing a fitting for Elvirita Cohen, the daughter of the owner of the Teatro Nacional on my old street, La Luneta, and one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Siñora Fox say she need see Siñorita Sira.”
“Tell her to wait, I’ll be with her in a minute.”
One o’clock had gone by, twenty past probably, because I still had to make quite a few adjustments to the dress that the beautiful Jewish girl with the smooth skin was going to show off at some social event. She spoke to me in her musical Haketia: bring it up a bit here, mi reina, how lovely it looks, mi weno, ah yes.”
It was through Félix, as usual, that I had learned what the situation was like for Sephardic Jews in Tetouan. Some of them wealthy, others humble, all of them discreet; good businessmen who had set up shop in North Africa after their expulsion from the Peninsula centuries earlier. At last they were Spaniards with all their rights, ever since the government of the Republic had agreed officially to recognize their origins just a couple of years earlier. The Sephardic community made up more or less one-tenth of Tetouan’s population in those days, but it wielded a good part of the city’s economic power. They built most of the new buildings in the ensanche and set up many of the best shops and businesses in the city: jewelers, shoemakers, fabric and clothing stores. Their financial might was reflected in their educational centers—the Alliance Israélite Universelle—in their own casino and their synagogues, where they gathered for their prayers and festivals. No doubt it would be in one of these that Elvira Cohen would debut the grosgrain dress that she was trying on when I received my third visit from the unpredictable Rosalinda Fox.
She was waiting in the front room, seemingly troubled by something, standing beside one of the balcony doors. The two clients greeted each other from a distance with remote courtesy: the Englishwoman distracted, the Sephardic girl surprised and curious.
“I’ve got a problem,” she said, approaching me rapidly the moment the click of the door announced that we were alone.
“Tell me. Would you like to sit down?”
“I’d rather have a drink, por favor.”
“I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything but tea, coffee, or a glass of water.”
“Evian?”
I shook my head, thinking I ought to supply myself with a little bar for raising the spirits of my clients at moments of crisis.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered as she sat, languidly. I did the same in the armchair opposite, crossed my legs with careless ease, and waited for her to tell me about the reason for her untimely visit. First she drew out a cigarette from her tortoiseshell case, lit it, and tossed the case carelessly onto the sofa. After the first drag, thick and deep, she realized that she hadn’t offered me one and apologized, making a gesture to rectify her behavior. I stopped her—no, thank you. I was expecting another client shortly and didn’t want the smell of tobacco on my fingers within the intimate space of the fitting room. She closed the cigarette case, and at last she spoke.
“I need an evening gown, a stunning outfit for tonight. An unexpected engagement has come up and I have to go dressed como una princesa.”
“Like a princess?”
“Eso—right. Like a princess. In a manner of speaking, of course. I need something very elegant.”
“I only have your evening dress ready for the second fitting.”
“Could that be ready for tonight?”
“Absolutely impossible.”
“And any other designs?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t have anything I can offer you: I don’t work with ready-to-wear clothes, I make everything to order.”
She took another long drag on her cigarette, but this time she didn’t do it distantly; rather, she watched me fixedly through the smoke. That expression of an unconcerned girl from her previous visits had disappeared from her face, and her gaze was now that of a woman who was anxious but determined not to be defeated.
“I need to find a solution. When I moved from Tangiers to Tetouan, I packed some baúles, some trunks for sending to my mother in England with things I wasn’t going to be using. Accidentally the trunk with all my evening wear also ended up there. I’m waiting for them to be sent back. I’ve just learned that I’ve been invited tonight to a reception hosted by the German consul. Es la primera ocasión, the first time I’ll be seen in public at an event in the company of a, a . . . a person with whom I have a . . . a . . . a very special relationship.”
She was speaking quickly but carefully, making an effort for me to understand everything she was saying in that attempted Spanish of hers, which, because of her nerves, sounded more Portuguese influenced and more peppered with words from her own English language than at either of our previous meetings.
“Bueno, it is very important for this person and for me that I make a good impression on the members of the German colony in Tetouan. Hasta ahora, so far, Mrs. Langenheim has helped me to meet some of them because she is half English, but tonight, esta noite, it’s the first time I will appear in public with this person openly together and that’s why I need to go extremely bien vestida, very, very well dressed, and . . . and—”
I interrupted her; there was no need for her to keep exercising her Spanish so much to no end.
“I’m so sorry, I really am. I’d love to be able to help you, but it really is impossible. As I’ve just said, I don’t have anything ready in my studio and I cannot finish your dress in just a few hours: I’ll need at least three or four days for it.”
She put out her cigarette stub in silence, lost in thought. She bit her lip and paused for a few seconds before looking up and resuming her assault with a question that was quite clearly uncomfortable.
“Perhaps you might be able to lend me one of your own evening outfits?”
I shook my head while I tried to come up with some plausible excuse to hide the p
itiful fact that in reality I didn’t have any.
“I don’t think so. All my clothes stayed behind in Madrid when the war broke out, and I’ve been unable to retrieve them. All I have here are a few everyday clothes, nothing for the evenings. I don’t have much of a social life, you understand? My fiancé is in Argentina, and I—”
To my great relief she interrupted me at once.
“Ya veo. I see.”
We sat in silence for a few endless seconds, each hidden in her discomfort, attention focused on opposite ends of the room. One toward the balcony doors; the other toward the archway separating the living room from the entrance hall. She finally broke the tension.
“Creo que—tengo que irme. I think I must leave now.”
“I’m sorry, please believe me. If we’d had just a little more time . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence, realizing at once there was no point in dwelling upon what couldn’t be fixed. I tried to change the subject, distract her attention from the sad reality that she was looking forward to a long disastrous night with the man with whom she was no doubt in love. I was still intrigued by the life of this woman who at other times had been so confident and graceful and who, at this moment, was pensively gathering up her things and heading for the door.
“Tomorrow everything will be ready for the second fitting, all right?” I said, as a rather unhelpful solace.
She smiled vaguely and went out without saying another word. I was left alone, standing there immobile, partly annoyed at my inability to help a client in trouble and partly still intrigued by the strange way in which Rosalinda Fox’s life was taking shape before my eyes: a globe-trotting young mother who lost trunks filled with eveningwear in the same way that one might forget one’s purse hastily on a park bench or café table.
I leaned out onto the balcony half hidden by the shutters and watched as she arrived at the street. She made her way to a bright red automobile parked opposite my front door. I assumed there must have been someone waiting for her, perhaps the man she was so eager to please that night. I couldn’t help my curiosity and I tried to make out a face, plotting out imaginary scenarios in my mind. I assumed he was German; perhaps that was why she so longed to create a good impression among his compatriots. I assumed him to be young, attractive, a bon vivant, worldly and confident like her. I barely had time to develop my fantasies because when she reached the car and opened the right-hand door—the one I supposed to be the passenger seat—I saw the steering wheel and realized she would be the one driving. There was no one waiting for her in that English car: she started it up and she left, as alone as she had arrived. Without a man, without a dress for that night, and, most likely, with no hope of finding any solution over the course of the afternoon.
As I tried to get the bad taste from that meeting out of my mouth, I set about reestablishing order among the objects that Rosalinda’s presence had altered. I picked up the ashtray, blew off the bits of ash that had fallen onto the table, straightened a corner of the rug with the tip of my shoe, plumped up the cushions on the sofa, and began rearranging the magazines she’d leafed through while I finished attending to Elvirita Cohen. I was about to close the copy of Harper’s Bazaar that was lying open at an advertisement for Helena Rubenstein lipsticks when I recognized the photograph of a design that looked vaguely familiar. A thousand memories of a different time flocked back to my mind like birds. Without being completely conscious of what I was doing, I shouted Jamila’s name as loudly as I could. A mad dash brought her to the living room in a heartbeat.
“Go, quick as you can, to Frau Langenheim’s house and ask her to find Señora Fox. She has to come see me immediately; tell her it’s a matter of the greatest urgency.”
Chapter Eighteen
___________
The person who created the design, my dear ignoramus, was Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, son of the great Mariano Fortuny, who was probably the best painter of the nineteenth century after Goya. He was an incredible artist, closely linked to Morocco, as a matter of fact. He came over during the African war and was stunned by the light and exoticism of this place. He took it upon himself to give it shape in many of his paintings; one of his best known, in fact, is The Battle of Tetouan. But if Fortuny père was a masterly painter, his son is a true genius. He paints, too, but in his studio in Venice he also designs stage sets, and he’s a photographer, an inventor, a scholar of classical techniques, and a designer of fabrics and dresses, like the legendary Delphos that you—you little phony—have just pirated in a domestic reinterpretation, a version I presume to have been highly successful.”
Félix was speaking while lying on the sofa and holding the magazine with the photograph that had triggered my memory. As for me, drained by the intensity of the afternoon, I was listening, immobile, with no energy left even to hold a needle between my fingers. I’d just told him everything that had happened in the previous few hours, starting at the moment when my client announced her return to the workshop with a powerful slam of her brakes that brought my neighbors to their balcony windows. She ran up, her haste echoing in the stairwell. I was waiting for her with the door open, and without even stopping to greet her I put forward my idea.
“We’re going to try and make an emergency Delphos—do you know what I’m talking about?”
“A Fortuny Delphos?” she asked, incredulous.
“A fake Delphos.”
“You think it’ll be possible?”
We held each other’s gaze a moment. In hers I could see a flash of newly revived hope. I didn’t know what she could see in mine. Perhaps determination and fearlessness, a desire to be victorious, to find a way out of her crisis. Deep down my eyes probably also betrayed a certain terror of failure, but I attempted to keep that hidden as much as I could.
“I’ve tried it before; I think we should be able to do it.”
I showed her the fabric that I’d picked out, a big piece of greyishblue satin that Candelaria had managed to get hold of in one of her latest transactions. Obviously I refrained from mentioning where it had come from.
“What time is your engagement?”
“At eight.”
I looked at the time.
“Well then, this is what we’re going to do. It’s almost one now. As soon as I’m done with my next fitting, which begins in just ten minutes, I’ll soak the material and then leave it to dry. I’ll need between four and five hours, which takes us to six in the evening. And I’ll have to have at least another hour and a half to make it up: it’s very simple, just some straight stitches, and besides, I’ve already got your measurements, you won’t need a fitting. Even so, I’ll need a bit of time to do it and to do the finishing touches. It’ll take us right up to the last minute. Where do you live? I’m sorry to ask, it’s not out of curiosity . . .”
“On the Paseo de las Palmeras.”
I ought to have guessed; many of the best houses in Tetouan were located there. A remote, discreet neighborhood to the south of the city, close to the park, almost at the foot of the imposing Ghorgiz, with fine residences surrounded by gardens. Beyond them, the orchards and sugarcane plantations.
“In that case it’ll be impossible for me to get the dress to your home.”
She looked at me inquiringly.
“You’ll have to come here to dress,” I clarified. “Be here around seven thirty, made up, hair done, ready to go, with the shoes and the jewelry you’re planning to wear. I’d advise you not go with too much, or anything too showy: the dress doesn’t require it, it’ll look more elegant with simple accessories, you understand?”
She understood perfectly. After thanking me for my efforts with great relief, she left again. Half an hour later, and with Jamila’s help, I embarked on the most unexpected and reckless piece of work in my brief career as a dressmaker on my own. I knew what I was doing, however, because in my time at Doña Manuela’s I’d helped with just that same job on another occasion. We did it for a customer who had as much style as she had irregular economic
resources—Elena Barea was her name. When she was going through good economic times, we would sew sumptuous designs for her in the finest materials. Unlike other women of her class, however, who during times of financial duress would invent trips or engagements or illnesses to justify their inability to pay their debts, she never hid herself away. When hard times made an appearance at her husband’s unreliable business, Elena Barea never stopped visiting our workshop. She’d come back, laughing, unembarrassed at the volatility of her fortunes, and working right there side by side with the owner, she would contrive to reconstruct old outfits to make them pass for new, changing the cuts, adding trimmings, and reconfiguring the more unexpected parts. Or she would very sensibly choose fabrics that weren’t too costly and creations that needed only the simplest kinds of production work: in that way she managed to pare down the total of her bills as far as possible without overly reducing her elegance. Hunger sharpens your ingenuity, she would always conclude with a laugh. Neither my mother nor Doña Manuela nor I could believe our eyes the day she arrived with her strangest order yet.
“I’d like a copy of this,” she said, taking something that looked like a rolled tube of blood-colored fabric out of a small box. She laughed at our expressions of astonishment. “This, ladies, is a Delphos, a unique dress. It’s a creation of the artist Fortuny: they make them in Venice, and they’re only sold in a few extremely select establishments in the great European cities. Look what a wonder of color, look at the pleating. Their creator keeps the techniques used to make them absolutely secret. It fits like a glove. And I, my dear Doña Manuela, want one. Fake, of course.”
She took one end of the fabric between her fingers and as if by magic a dress appeared, of red satin, sumptuous and stunning, that reached down to the floor, hanging impeccably and ending round and open at the bottom; a bullring end, that’s what we used to call that kind of finish. It was a sort of tunic covered with thousands of tiny vertical pleats. Classic, simple, exquisite. Four or five years had passed since that day, but my memory had retained intact the whole process of producing that dress because I had participated in every part of it. From Elena Barea to Rosalinda Fox, the technique would be the same; the only problem, however, was that we barely had any time and I’d have to work at the pace of a demon. Helped throughout by Jamila, I heated pans of water that, once boiled, we tipped into the bathtub. Scalding my hands, I lowered the material into it and left it to soak. The bathroom filled with steam as we nervously watched the experiment, drops of sweat forming on our foreheads and the condensation making our reflections in the mirror disappear. After a while I decided it would be all right to remove the material, which was now dark and unrecognizable. We drained out the water, and each taking an end, we twisted the strip as hard as we could, turning it lengthways in opposite directions as we’d done so many times with the sheets in the boardinghouse on La Luneta to get the last drop of water out of them before stretching them out in the sun. Except that this time we weren’t going to stretch the piece of material out to its full extent but rather the exact opposite: the aim was to keep it as tightly squeezed as possible while drying so that once all the humidity had gone, the silk fabric would be transformed into a wrinkled object retaining as many pleats as possible. Then we put the twisted material in a basin and carried it between us up to the roof. We turned the ends of the fabric in opposite directions again until it looked like a thick rope that twisted in on itself in the shape of a big spring. Next we laid out a towel and placed upon it, like a coiled snake, the object that just a few hours later would become the gown in which my English client would make her first public appearance on the arm of the enigmatic man of her life.