The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  “What’s going on today, are we all on vacation?” Don Claudio asked no one in particular.

  Everyone automatically set to work in a bustle of frantic activity: taking bits of paper out of folders, talking to one another about matters of apparent importance, and sounding typewriter keys that in all likelihood they were hitting randomly.

  I left and began to walk along the pavement. As I passed the open window I saw the commissioner come back into the office.

  “Fuck, boss, what a nice piece of ass,” said a voice I couldn’t place.

  “Shut your mouth, Palomares, or I’ll send you on guard duty to the top of Las Monas Peak.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ___________

  I’d been told that before the war started there were several transport services a day covering the forty-five miles separating Tetouan from Tangiers. Nowadays, however, there was less traffic and the timetables varied, so no one was able to give me information with any confidence. Which was why I was anxious as I made my way the following morning to the La Valenciana depot, ready to put up with whatever I needed to in order to get myself taken to my destination by one of the large red buses. If the previous day I’d been able to put up with an hour and a half in the police station surrounded by those lumps of meat with eyes, I imagined that the wait surrounded by unoccupied drivers and grease-covered mechanics would be bearable, too. I put on my best suit again, a silk kerchief protecting my hair, and a pair of large sunglasses behind which I could hide my anxiety. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock when I approached the bus company depot on the outskirts of the town. I was walking quickly, focused on my thoughts—previewing the scene when I’d meet the manager of the Continental and going over the arguments I’d considered putting to him. There was something else, though, on top of my concern about paying the debt, another feeling that was equally disagreeable. For the first time since I’d left I would be going back to Tangiers, a city where every corner was infested with memories of Ramiro. I knew it would be painful and that the memory of the times we spent together would become real again. I could tell that it was going to be a difficult day.

  I passed few people on the way, and even fewer motorcars—it was still early. Which was why I was so surprised when one of them pulled up right beside me. A luxurious black Dodge, medium sized. I didn’t recognize the vehicle at all, but I knew the voice that came out of it.

  “Buenos días, Sira—what a surprise to find you here. Can I take you anywhere?”

  “I don’t think so, thank you. I’ve already arrived,” I said, gesturing to the La Valenciana depot.

  As I spoke, I noticed that my English client was wearing one of the suits that had come out of my workshop a few weeks earlier. Like me, she had a light-colored kerchief covering her hair.

  “You’re planning to take a bus?” she asked, a slight note of disbelief in her voice.

  “That’s right, Señora Fox, I’m going to Tangiers. But many thanks, all the same, for offering to give me a ride.”

  As though she’d just heard a particularly funny joke, Rosalinda Fox burst into musical laughter.

  “Absolutely not, Sira. Don’t even think about taking a bus, sweetie—I’m going to Tangiers, too—hop in. And stop calling me Señora Fox, por favor. We’re friends now? Aren’t we?”

  I quickly weighed up the offer and decided that there was nothing in it that contravened Don Claudio’s orders, so I accepted. Thanks to that unexpected invitation I would be able to avoid the uncomfortable journey on a bus that held such bad memories for me, and traveling with her would make it easier for me to forget my own unease.

  She drove up the Paseo de las Palmeras, leaving the bus depot behind us and skirting around large, beautiful residences, almost hidden in the leafiness of their gardens. She gestured toward one of them.

  “That’s my house, though I don’t think I’ll have it for long. I’ll probably be moving again soon.”

  “Out of Tetouan?”

  She laughed.

  “No, no, no, not for anything in the world. Only it might be that I’m moving to somewhere more comfortable; this villa is divine, but it’s been uninhabited for some time and it needs significant repairs. The pipes are in a horrific state, we almost don’t get drinking water, and I don’t want to imagine what it would be like spending a winter in conditions like those. I’ve told Juan Luis and he’s looking for another place a bit more comfortable.”

  She mentioned her lover quite naturally, securely, without the general vaguenesses and approximations of the day of the reception with the Germans. I didn’t let her see any reaction, as though I was completely aware of what there was between them, as though referring to the high commissioner by his Christian name was something I was quite used to in my day-to-day life as a dressmaker.

  “I do love Tetouan, it’s so beautiful. Partly it reminds me of the White Town in Calcutta, with its vegetation and the colonial houses. But that’s something I left behind me long ago.”

  “You don’t mean to go back?”

  “No, absolutely not. All that is in the past now: things happened that weren’t pleasant, and there were people who behaved in a rather ugly way toward me. Besides, I like living in new places: first in Portugal, now in Morocco, tomorrow, quién sabe, who knows? I was in Portugal a little over a year; first in Estoril and later in Cascais. Then the mood changed and I decided to take another route.”

  She spoke without pause, concentrating on the road ahead. I got the sense that her Spanish had improved since our first meeting; there were almost no traces of Portuguese left in it now, though she was still intermittently dropping in words and phrases from her own language. We had the car roof down, and the noise of the engine was deafening. She almost had to shout to make herself heard.

  “Until not that long ago, they had—there, in Estoril and Cascais—a divine colony of British people and other expatriates: diplomats, European aristocrats, Englishmen in the wine business, Americans from the oil companies . . . We had a thousand parties, everything was so very cheap: drinks, rent, domestic staff. But all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, it all changed. Suddenly half the world wanted to live there. The area filled up with new Brits who having lived in the four corners of the empire absolutely refused to spend their years of retirement being rained on in the old country. And with monarchist Spaniards who were already sensing what was just around the corner. And with German Jews, uncomfortable back home, eager to gauge Portugal’s potential as a place to transfer their businesses. And the prices went up immensely.” She shrugged, a childlike gesture, and added, “I suppose all that lost its charm, its enchantment.”

  The monotonous yellowish landscape of our journey was broken up occasionally by clusters of prickly pear cacti and sugarcane plantations. We went through a mountainous spot covered with pines, came back down to the dry area again. The corners of the silk kerchiefs that covered our hair were flying in the wind, bright under the sunlight, while she continued to recount the changes she’d been through upon her arrival in Morocco.

  “Back in Portugal people had told me a lot about Morocco, especially about Tetouan. In those days I was very good friends with General Sanjurjo and his delightful wife, Carmen—so sweet—did you know she used to be a dancer? My son Johnny used to play every day with their little son Pepito. I was so sorry to learn of José Sanjurjo’s death in that accidente terrible, that plane crash. He was an absolutely delightful man; not particularly attractive physically, to tell you the truth, but a very nice person. He always said I was so beauuuuuutiful. He was the one who introduced me to Juan Luis in Berlin in February last year. He fascinated me, naturally. I’d gone there from Portugal with my friend Niesha, two women on their own crossing Europe to Berlin in a Mercedes—imagine! We stayed at the Hotel Adlon, I’m sure you know it.”

  I made a gesture that was neither a yes nor a no; she went on talking without paying me much attention.

  “Berlin—my goodness. What a city—the cabarets, the parties, the
nightclubs—all of it so vibrant, so full of life; the reverend mother of my Anglican boarding school would have died of shock if she’d seen me there. One night I happened to run into the two of them in the hotel lounge tomando una copa, having a drink. Sanjurjo was in Germany visiting munitions factories; Juan Luis, who had lived there a number of years as military attaché to the Spanish embassy, was accompanying him on his tour. We had a little chitchat. In the beginning Juan Luis wanted to be discreet, not to say anything about their activities in front of me, but José knew I was a good friend. We’re on our way to the Winter Games, he said with a laugh, and we’re also getting ourselves ready for some war games. My querido José—if it hadn’t been for that terrible accident, it might be he and not Franco controlling the Nationalist army now, qué lástima, such a shame. Anyway, when we got back to Portugal, Sanjurjo kept reminding me of that meeting and talking to me about his friend Beigbeder: of the very good impression I’d made on him, of his wonderful life in Spanish Morocco. Did you know José was also high commissioner in Tetouan in the twenties? He was the one who designed the gardens of the High Commission—beautiful! And King Alfonso the thirteenth granted him the title of Marquis of the Rif. Because of that they used to call him the lion of Rif, my poor dear José.”

  On we went through the dry landscape. Rosalinda, unstoppable, was driving and talking inexhaustibly, jumping from one subject to another, crossing borders and periods of time without even making sure I was keeping up with her. Suddenly we braked in the middle of nowhere, our abrupt stop throwing up a cloud of dust and dry earth. We let a herd of famished-looking goats cross, in the care of a goatherd in a filthy turban and a frayed brown djellaba. When the last animal had crossed he raised the stick that he used as a crook to let us know we could continue on our way and said something we didn’t understand, opening a mouth filled with rotting teeth. Then she resumed her driving and her conversation.

  “A few months later the events of last July arrived. I’d just left Portugal and was in London, preparing for my move to Morocco. Juan Luis had told me that his work had been difficult at some moments during the uprising; there were a few points of resistance, gunshots and explosions, even blood in the fountains of Sanjurjo’s beloved gardens. But the people behind the uprising got what they’d wanted and Juan Luis helped, in his way. He informed Caliph Moulay Hassan, the grand vizier, and the other Muslim dignitaries about what was happening. He speaks Arabic perfectly, you know, he studied in the School of Oriental Languages in Paris and he’s lived in Africa for many years. He’s a great friend to the Moroccan people and loves their culture; he calls them his brothers and says we Spaniards are all Moors; es tan gracioso, he’s so funny.”

  I didn’t interrupt her, but vague images were forming in my mind of hungry Moors fighting in a foreign land, offering up their blood for a cause that wasn’t their own in exchange for a wretched wage and the pounds of sugar and flour that the army was said to give to families in the Moroccan villages while their men were fighting at the front. The organization that recruited those poor Arabs, Félix had told me, was run by our good friend Beigbeder.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “that same night he managed to bring all the Islamic authorities over to the side of the uprising, which was crucial to the success of the military operation. Afterward, in recognition of this, Franco named him high commissioner. They already knew each other from before, they’d been together somewhere or other. But they weren’t exactly friends, no, no. Actually, even though he’d accompanied Sanjurjo to Berlin a few months before, to begin with, Juan Luis hadn’t been party to the plans for the uprising; the organizers hadn’t counted on his involvement, I don’t know why. In those days he was in a much more administrative role, as undersecretary for Indigenous Affairs; he lived on the fringes of the military and on the edge of conspiracies, in his own world. He’s a very special man, more an intellectual than a military man of action. You know what I mean? He likes to read, talk, discuss, learn new languages . . . my dear, querido Juan Luis, he’s so, so romantic . . .”

  I was still finding it hard to marry the idea of the charming, romantic man my client was describing with a commanding officer of the rebel army, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting on. We arrived at a checkpoint manned by local soldiers armed to the teeth.

  “Por favor, give me your passport.”

  I took it out of my handbag together with the border pass that Don Claudio had provided me with on the previous day. I held out both documents of accreditation; she took the first and discarded the second without even looking at it. She put my passport together with hers and a folded piece of paper, which was probably an infinitely powerful safe-conduct that could have allowed her access to the very end of the world, if she were interested in visiting it. She accompanied the whole lot with her best smile and handed it over to one of the Moorish soldiers—mejanis, they call them. He took it all away with him into a little whitewashed hut. Immediately a Spanish soldier came out, stood to attention facing us with his most martial salute, and without a word returned our documents and gestured that we could continue on our way. She resumed her monologue, picking it up just where she had left off a few minutes earlier. Meanwhile, I was trying to recover my composure. I knew I had no reason to be nervous, that everything was officially in order, but just the same I couldn’t help that a feeling of anxiety had swarmed over my body like a rash.

  “In October last year I boarded a coffee ship in Liverpool that was headed for the West Indies with a stop in Tangiers. And there I stayed, just as I’d planned. Disembarking was absolutely crazy! The port at Tangiers is so, so dreadful—you do know it, right?”

  This time I nodded, actually knowing what she was talking about. How could I have forgotten my arrival with Ramiro more than a year earlier? The lights, the boats, the beach, the white houses descending from the green hill till they reached the sea. The ships’ foghorns and the smell of salt and tar. I turned my attention back to Rosalinda and her adventurous travels: now wasn’t the moment to start reopening that sack of melancholy.

  “Imagine, I had Johnny with me—my son—and Joker, my cocker spaniel, as well as the car and sixteen trunks of my things: clothes, rugs, porcelain, my books by Kipling and Evelyn Waugh, photograph albums, golf clubs, and my HMV—you know, the portable gramophone—with all my records: Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong . . . And of course I’d brought a good number of letters of introduction with me. That was one of the most important things my father taught me when I was just a girl, apart from horse riding and playing bridge, por supuesto. Never travel without letters of introduction, he always said; poor Daddy, he died a few years ago, of a heart attack,” she said.

  “I then made English friends right away, thanks to my letters: old civil servants who’d retired from the colonies, army officers, people from the diplomatic corps, the usual people. Quite dull, most of them, to tell you the truth, but it was thanks to them that I met other people who were delightful. I rented a charming little house next to the Dutch legation, found a servant, and settled there for a few months.”

  A few scattered little white structures had begun to dot our route, in anticipation of our arrival in Tangiers. The number of people walking on the side of the road was increasing, too: groups of Muslim women laden with bundles, children running bare-legged under their short djellabas, men covered in hoods and turbans, animals, yet more animals—donkeys carrying buckets of water, a skinny flock of sheep, occasionally a few chickens running excitedly about. Bit by bit the city began to take shape, and Rosalinda drove skillfully toward the center, turning corners at full speed as she went on describing the house in Tangiers that she’d liked so much and that she hadn’t left so very long ago. Meanwhile I was starting to recognize familiar places and trying not to remember the man I’d been there with in a time I’d thought was happy. At last she parked in the Place de France, with a screech of brakes that made dozens of passersby turn to look at us. Oblivious to them all, she r
emoved the kerchief from her head and touched up her rouge in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m dying for a morning cocktail at the El Minzah bar. But I’ve got a little bit of business to sort out first—will you come with me?”

  “Where?”

  “To the Bank of London and South America. To see if my loathsome husband has sent me my damned allowance once and for all.”

  I also took off my headscarf, all the while wondering when that woman would stop shattering my assumptions. Not only had she turned out to be a loving mother when I’d supposed her to be a freewheeling young woman; not only had she asked to borrow my clothes to go to a reception of expatriate Nazis when I’d assumed she’d have a luxurious wardrobe sewn by great international designers; not only did she have as her lover a powerful soldier twice her age when I’d expected her to be in love with a handsome, frivolous young foreigner. All that still wasn’t enough to put an end to all my suppositions, nothing of the sort. Now it turned out that there was also a husband in her life, absent but living, who didn’t seem too eager to support her.

  “I don’t think I can go with you, I’ve also got things to do,” I said in response to her invitation. “But we can arrange to meet up later.”

  “Muy bien.” She looked at her watch. “One o’clock?”

  I accepted. It wasn’t yet eleven; I’d have more than enough time for myself. I wouldn’t necessarily have any luck, but I would at least have time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ___________

  The bar of the El Minzah Hotel was just as it had been a year earlier. Animated clusters of stylishly dressed European men and women filled the tables and the bar drinking whiskey, sherry, and cocktails, forming groups in which the conversation jumped from language to language as easily as one might shift gears. In the middle of the room a pianist was lightening up the atmosphere with his melodious music. No one seemed to be in a hurry, everything seemed to be just as it had been in the summer of 1936 with the sole exception that there wasn’t a man waiting for me at the bar, speaking Spanish to the barman, but an Englishwoman chatting to him in English as she held a glass in one hand.