The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  I heard them moving pieces of furniture around and racing up and down the stairs dozens of times. I heard laughter, crying, orders shouted. Fill the bathtub, get out some more towels, bring the clothes, the mattresses—the girl, the girl, give the girl something to eat. And more crying, more emotional shouting, and more laughter. And the smell of food and the noise of pots and pans in the kitchen at altogether the wrong time of day. And again—Carmela, oh God, Concha, Concha! The bustle didn’t calm down until well after midnight. Only then did Félix appear at my house and I was finally able to ask him.

  “What’s going on in the Herreras’ house? Everyone’s been behaving so strangely today!”

  “Haven’t you heard? Josefina’s sisters have arrived. They’ve managed to get them out of the Red Zone.”

  The following morning I heard the voices and the shuffling around again, though rather calmer now. All the same, there was incessant activity right through the day—people coming and going, the doorbell, the telephone, children running down the corridor. And betweentimes there was more sobbing, more laughter, more crying, and again more laughter. In the afternoon someone rang my doorbell. I thought that perhaps it was one of them; maybe they needed something, to ask a favor, to borrow something: half a dozen eggs, a quilt, possibly a little jug of oil. But I was wrong. The person at the door was someone altogether unexpected.

  “Señora Candelaria says for you to come whenever you can to La Luneta. The schoolmaster Don Anselmo has died.”

  Paquito, the fat son of the fat mother, had sweatily brought me the message.

  “You go on ahead, and tell her I’ll be right over.”

  I told Jamila the news and she cried pitifully. I didn’t shed any tears, but I felt them in my soul. Of all the people who made up that restless tribe, he was the one I was closest to, the one who had the most affectionate relationship with me. I put on the darkest suit I had in my closet; I hadn’t yet made space in my wardrobe for mourning clothes. Jamila and I made our way hurriedly along the streets and quickly arrived at our destination. After going up the flight of stairs, we couldn’t get any farther: a dense group of men stood crammed together, blocking the entrance. We elbowed our way through the teacher’s friends and acquaintances who were respectfully waiting their turn to approach and bid their final farewell.

  The door to the boardinghouse was open, and before we had even crossed the threshold I could smell burning wax and hear a resonant murmur of female voices praying in unison. Candelaria came out to meet us as we went in. She was in a black suit that was quite clearly too small for her, and on her majestic bosom swung a medallion with the face of the Virgin. In the middle of the dining room, on the table, an open coffin held the ashen body of Don Anselmo in his Sunday best. A shudder ran down my spine to see him, and I could feel Jamila’s nails digging into my arm. I gave Candelaria two kisses and she left the trace of a stream of tears next to my ear.

  “There he is—fallen on the battlefield itself.”

  I recalled those fights between dinner courses that I’d witnessed so many times. The bones of the anchovies and the bits of peel from the African melons, wrinkled and yellow, flying from one side of the table to the other. The poisonous jokes and the indecent ones, the forks poised like spears, the yelling of one faction, then the other. The provocations and the threats of eviction that the Matutera never carried through. The dining table transformed into a virtual battlefield. I tried to hold back a sad laugh. The dried-up sisters, the fat mother, and a few women who lived nearby, sitting at the window and in mourning from head to foot, were still reciting the mysteries of the rosary in monotonous, tearful voices. For a moment I imagined Don Anselmo alive, with a Toledo between his lips, shouting lividly between coughing fits for them to damn well stop praying for him once and for all. But the schoolmaster was no longer among the living, and they were. And sitting by his dead body, however present and warm it might still be, they could now do whatever they saw fit. Candelaria and I sat down beside them, and the Matutera coupled her voice to the rhythm of the prayers while I pretended to do likewise, but my mind was running along other channels.

  Lord, have mercy upon us.

  Christ, have mercy upon us.

  I moved my reed chair toward hers till our arms were touching.

  Lord, have mercy upon us.

  “Candelaria, I have to ask you something,” I whispered in her ear.

  Christ, listen to us.

  Christ, hear us.

  “Tell me, my angel,” she replied in an equally low voice.

  Heavenly God the Father, have mercy upon us.

  God the Son, redeemer of the world.

  “I’ve heard they’ve been getting people out of the Red Zone.”

  God the Holy Spirit.

  Most Holy Trinity, who is One God.

  “That’s what they’re saying . . .”

  Holy Mary, pray for us.

  Holy Mother of God.

  Blessed Virgin of Virgins.

  “Can you find out how they’re doing it?”

  Mother of Christ.

  Mother of the Church.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Mother of Heavenly Grace.

  O purest of Mothers.

  Most chaste of Mothers.

  “To get my mother out of Madrid and bring her over to me in Tetouan.”

  Most virginal Mother.

  Most immaculate Mother.

  “I’d have to ask around . . .”

  Kindest of Mothers.

  Most admirable of Mothers.

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  Mother of Good Counsel.

  Mother of the Creator.

  Mother of the Savior.

  “Whenever I can. And now be quiet and keep praying, and let’s see whether between us all we can’t get Don Anselmo up to heaven.”

  The wake went on until dawn, and on the following day we buried the schoolteacher at the Catholic mission with solemn prayers for the departed and all the paraphernalia befitting the most fervent of believers. We accompanied the casket to the cemetery. It was very windy, as it so often was in Tetouan: a bothersome wind that ruffled the veils, lifted up skirts, and made the eucalyptus leaves snake along the ground. As the priest pronounced the last verses of the prayer I leaned over to Candelaria and conveyed my curiosity in a whisper.

  “If the sisters really thought the schoolmaster was an atheist son of Lucifer, I don’t know how they arranged this burial for him.”

  “Enough of that, enough of that, his soul is probably wandering in hell and his spirit will soon be coming to drag us off in our sleep . . .”

  I had to struggle not to laugh.

  “For God’s sake, Candelaria, don’t be so superstitious.”

  “Just trust me, all right? I’m an old dog and I know what I’m talking about.”

  Without another word, she went back to concentrating on the liturgy and didn’t so much as look at me again until after the final requiescat in pace. Then they lowered the body down into the grave, and when the gravediggers started to throw the first shovelfuls of earth onto him the group began to break up. We were making our way in an orderly manner toward the cemetery gate when Candelaria suddenly crouched down, and, pretending to refasten the buckle on her shoe, she let the sisters go on ahead with the fat woman and the neighbors. We watched them, lagging behind as they went off, their backs to us like a flock of crows, their black veils hanging down to their waists: half cloaks, they called them.

  “Come on then, you and I are going off to pay a tribute to the memory of poor old Don Anselmo—all this sadness, my child, it makes me ever so hungry . . .”

  We wandered over to El Buen Gusto and chose our pastries, then sat down to eat them on a bench in the church square, between palm trees and flower beds. Finally I asked her the question I’d been keeping on the tip of my tongue since first thing that morning.

  “Have you been able to find out anything about what I said?”

  She nodded, her mo
uth full of meringue.

  “It’s complicated. And costs a great deal.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s someone who deals with arrangements from Tetouan. I haven’t been able to find out all the details, but it seems that in Spain things are being done through the International Red Cross. They track people down in the Republican Red Zone, and somehow they’re able to bring them to a port on the Mediterranean, don’t ask me how because I don’t have the damnedest idea. Disguised, in trucks, on foot, God only knows. That’s where they board their ships, anyway. The ones who want to go into the Nationalist zone cross the border in the Basque country and go to France. And the ones who want to come to Morocco, they send them to Gibraltar if they can, though often things are difficult and they have to take them to other Mediterranean ports first. Their next destination is usually Tangiers and then, finally, they arrive in Tetouan.”

  I could feel my pulse racing.

  “And do you know who I’d have to talk to?”

  She smiled, a little sadly, and gave me an affectionate little slap on the thigh that left my skirt stained with icing.

  “Before you talk to anyone, the first thing you need is to have a good pile of banknotes available. And in pounds sterling. Did I or did I not tell you that English money was the best?”

  “I have everything I’ve saved these past months, which I haven’t touched,” I explained, ignoring her question.

  “And you still have the debt outstanding at the Continental.”

  “Perhaps it’ll be enough for both.”

  “I doubt that very much, my angel. It will cost you two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  Suddenly my throat was dry and the puff pastry lodged in it like a sticky paste. I started coughing, and the Matutera patted me on the back. When I was finally able to swallow, I blew my nose and asked, “You couldn’t lend it to me, Candelaria?”

  “I haven’t got a cent, child.”

  “And the money from the workshop that I’ve been giving you?”

  “It’s already spent.”

  “On what?”

  She sighed deeply.

  “Paying for this funeral, the medicines he’s needed lately, and a handful of bills that Don Anselmo left here and there. And it’s just as well Doctor Maté was a friend of his and isn’t going to charge me for the visits.”

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  “But he must have had some money saved from his pension,” I suggested.

  “He didn’t have a cent left.”

  “That’s impossible: it’d been months since he’d been out, he didn’t have any expenses . . .”

  She smiled with a mixture of sympathy, sadness, and mockery.

  “I don’t know how the old devil arranged it, but he managed to get all his savings to the International Red Aid.”

  Far though I was from having the amount of money I needed to bring my mother to Morocco and also pay off my debt, the idea didn’t stop rumbling around in my head. That night I hardly slept, preoccupied with turning the subject around in my mind a thousand times. I fantasized about the craziest possibilities and kept counting and recounting the notes I’d saved, but despite all my efforts, I couldn’t get them to multiply. And then, when dawn was almost breaking, another solution occurred to me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ___________

  The conversations, bursts of laughter, and rhythmic clattering of the typewriters all fell silent in unison as the four pairs of eyes turned to look at me. The room was grey, filled with smoke, smelling of tobacco and the rancid stench of concentrated humanity. There was no sound but the buzzing of a thousand flies and the lethargic rhythm of the blades of a wooden fan turning above our heads. And after a few seconds, the admiring whistle of someone passing along the corridor who saw me standing there in my best suit, surrounded by four desks behind which four sweaty bodies in shirtsleeves were trying to work. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

  “I’ve come to see Commissioner Vázquez,” I announced.

  “He’s not in,” said the fattest one.

  “But he won’t be long,” said the youngest one.

  “You can wait for him,” said the skinniest one.

  “Have a seat if you want,” said the oldest one.

  I settled in a chair with a gutta-percha seat and waited there, motionless, for more than an hour and a half. Over the course of those endless ninety minutes, the quartet tried to give the impression that they were going back to their activities, but they weren’t. They just made a point of pretending to be working, looking at me brazenly and killing flies with a newspaper folded in two, exchanging obscene gestures and passing scrawled notes, no doubt full of references to my breasts, my behind, and my legs, and everything they could do to me if I showed any warmth toward them. Finally Don Claudio arrived, acting like a one-man band—walking fast, simultaneously taking off his hat and jacket, firing off orders while trying to decipher a couple of notes that someone had just handed him.

  “Juárez, I want you out on Calle del Comercio, there have been some stabbings. Cortés, if you don’t have the thing about the match factory on my desk before I count to ten, I’m sending you to Ifni in the blink of an eye. Bautista, what’s happened with the robbery in the Wheat Souq? Cañete . . .”

  And there he stopped. He stopped because he’d seen me. And Cañete, who was the skinny one, was left without an assignment.

  “Come on through,” he said simply, gesturing me toward an office at the back of the room. He put his jacket—which was by now half off—back on. “Cortés, the thing with the match factory can wait. And the rest of you, you have things to do,” he warned.

  He closed the glass door that separated his little office from the larger one and offered me a seat. Although the room was smaller, it was infinitely more pleasant than the adjacent space. After hanging his hat on a hat stand, he settled in behind a desk covered in papers and folders. Then he turned on a Bakelite fan and the breath of cool air reached my face like a miracle in the middle of the desert.

  “Well, tell me.” His tone wasn’t particularly friendly, nor the contrary. His appearance was somewhere between the nervous, worried air of our first meetings and the calmness of the autumn day when he finally released his grip on my throat. As in the previous summer, his face was once again tanned. Perhaps because like many Tetouanis he often went to the beach nearby at Río Martín. Or perhaps simply because of his nonstop wanderings as he solved problems from one end of the city to the other.

  I knew the way he worked, so I made my request and braced myself for his unending battery of questions.

  “I need my passport.”

  “Might I ask why?”

  “To go to Tangiers.”

  “Might I know what for?”

  “To renegotiate my debt.”

  “Renegotiate it in what sense?”

  “I need more time.”

  “I thought your workshop was running without any problems; I’d hoped you would have managed to get together the amount you owe. I know you have good customers, I’ve been told that, and they speak highly of you.”

  “Yes, that’s right, things are going well. And I’ve saved.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough to deal with the bill at the Continental.”

  “So?”

  “Certain other matters have come up for which I also need money.”

  “What sort of matters?”

  “Family matters.”

  He looked at me with feigned disbelief.

  “I thought your family was in Madrid.”

  “Exactly, that’s just the point.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “My only family is my mother. And she’s in Madrid. I want to get her out of there and bring her to Tetouan.”

  “And your father?”

  “I’ve already told you, I hardly know him. I’m only interested in tracking down my mother.”

  “I understand. And how were you planning to do
that?”

  I told him every little bit of what Candelaria had told me, without mentioning her name. He heard me out as he had always done, his eyes fixed on mine as though concentrating all five of his senses on absorbing my words, although I was sure he already knew all the details of how transfers from one zone to the other were carried out.

  “When do you mean to go to Tangiers?”

  “As soon as possible, if you’ll give me permission.”

  He sat back in his chair and stared at me hard. With the fingers of his left hand he began a rhythmic tapping on the desk. If I’d been able to see beyond his flesh and bones, I’d have watched his brain getting into gear—weighing up my proposal, discounting possibilities, analyzing and deciding. After what must have been a short while but felt endless to me, his fingers stopped dead and he slapped the surface of the table hard. I knew then that he’d made his decision, but before letting me hear it he went over to the door and stuck his head outside and spoke.

  “Cañete, prepare a border pass for El Borch checkpoint in the name of Miss Sira Quiroga. Immediately.”

  I breathed in deeply when I knew that at last Cañete had been given something to do, but I said nothing until the commissioner had returned to his place and informed me directly.

  “I’m going to give you your passport, a safe-conduct, and twelve hours for you to go to Tangiers and back tomorrow. Talk to the manager of the Continental and see what you can arrange. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to do much, to be honest with you. But it can’t hurt to try. Keep me informed. And remember: I don’t want any funny business.”

  He opened a drawer, rummaged around in it, and when he pulled his hand back out he was holding my passport. Cañete came in, put a piece of paper down on the table, and looked at me with desire. The commissioner signed the document, and without looking up he fired a “Get out of here, Cañete” at his subordinate. Then he folded up the piece of paper, inserted it into my passport, and handed it over to me without a word. Next he got up and held the door open, inviting me to leave. The four pairs of eyes that I had met on my arrival had become seven pairs by the time I left the office. Seven men twiddling their thumbs, awaiting my reappearance like the Second Coming, as though it was the first time in their lives they’d seen a presentable woman in that police station.