The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  Beigbeder naturally stopped spending so much time at Rosalinda’s house, but they still saw each other daily in other places: at the High Commission, on jaunts to the outskirts of town. To many people’s surprise—including my own—Beigbeder consistently treated his lover’s husband impeccably. He organized a day’s fishing for him at the mouth of the Smir River, and a wild boar hunt in Jemis de Anyera. He helped to arrange his travel to Gibraltar for him to drink English beer and talk polo and cricket with his countrymen. He did everything he could, in short, to behave toward him as his position demanded when dealing with such a peculiar foreign guest. The two men’s characters could not have been more different, however; it was curious to witness the contrast between these two men who were both so important in the life of the same woman. Perhaps that was exactly why they never clashed.

  “Peter considers Juan Luis a proud, backward Spaniard, like an old-fashioned Spanish caballero out of a Golden Age portrait,” Rosalinda explained to me. “And Juan Luis thinks Peter is a snob, a ridiculous, incomprehensible snob. So they are like two parallel lines: they can never come into conflict because they’ll never find a point where they meet. The only difference being—for me—that as a man Peter doesn’t even come up to Juan Luis’s heel.”

  “And no one has told your husband about the two of you?”

  “About our relationship?” she asked, lighting a cigarette and brushing her hair back from her eyes. “I imagine they have, some viper tongue must have come to his ear to spit poison, but he’s utterly indifferent.”

  “I don’t understand how he could be.”

  She shrugged.

  “Nor do I, but as long as he doesn’t have to pay for a house and he’s surrounded by servants, copious amounts of alcohol, hot food, and blood sports, I don’t think anything else matters to him. It would be different if we lived in Calcutta; there I suppose he would probably make an effort to keep up appearances at the very least. But here no one knows him; this isn’t his world, so he isn’t the slightest bit bothered by anything people tell him about me.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “The one thing we know for sure, querida, is that he has no interest in me whatsoever,” she said with a mix of sarcasm and sadness. “Anything at all is worth more to him than I am: a morning’s fishing, a bottle of gin, or a hand of cards. I’ve never mattered to him. What would have been strange is if I’d started mattering now.”

  And while Rosalinda was in hell battling with a monster, I also—at last—found my life overturned. It was a windy Tuesday and Marcus Logan showed up at my house before noon.

  Our friendship had been getting stronger—a good friendship, no more than that. We were both aware that one day when we least expected it he would have to leave, that his presence in my world was transitory. Marcus and I were of course very much attracted to each other, and we weren’t short on opportunities for that to transform itself into something more. There was a complicity, there were glances, and glancing touches, veiled comments, admiration, and desire. There was closeness, there was tenderness. But I forced myself to hold back my feelings; I refused to go any further, and he accepted it. Restraining myself took a huge effort on my part: doubt, uncertainty, nights lying awake. But rather than having to face the pain of being left by him, I preferred to remain with the recollection of those memorable moments we’d spent together in those agitated, intense times. Nights of laughter and drinking, of kif pipes and noisy rounds of cards. Trips to Tangiers, outings, chats; moments that I would never get back and that I treasured in my store of memories.

  Marcus’s unexpected arrival at my Sidi Mandri house that morning brought with it the end of one time and the start of another. One door was closing, and another was beginning to open. And me, right there in the middle, unable to hold on to what was ending, longing to embrace what was to come.

  “Your mother is on her way. Last night she boarded a British merchant vessel at Alicante headed for Oran. She arrives in Gibraltar in three days. Rosalinda will make sure she can come across the Strait without any trouble; she’ll tell you herself how the crossing will happen.”

  I wanted to give him my deepest thank-you but was suddenly overtaken by a torrent of tears. So all I was able to do was hug him as hard as I could and soak the lapels of his jacket.

  “I’ve also reached the moment when it’s time for me to be on my way,” he added a few moments later.

  I looked at him, sniffing. He reached for his white handkerchief and held it out to me.

  “My agency is recalling me. My job in Morocco is over, I’ve got to go back.”

  “To Madrid?”

  “To London, for now. Then to wherever they send me.”

  I hugged him again, and I cried again. And when I was finally capable of containing the turmoil of emotions and starting to control that unruly assault of sentiments that mixed the greatest of joys with a terrible sadness, my broken voice finally came out.

  “Don’t go, Marcus.”

  “If only it were up to me. But I can’t stay, Sira, they need me somewhere else.”

  I looked at his beloved face again. It still bore the leftovers of scars, but very little remained of the battered man who’d arrived at the Nacional one summer night. That day I was meeting a stranger and was filled with anxieties and fears; now I was facing the painful task of saying good-bye to someone very close to me, closer perhaps than I wanted to admit.

  I sniffed again.

  “Whenever you want to give an outfit to one of your girlfriends, you’ll know where to find me.”

  “When I want a girlfriend, I’ll come and get you,” he said, holding his hand out to my face. He tried to dry my tears with his fingers, and I shivered at his caress, wishing violently that this day had never arrived.

  “Liar,” I murmured.

  “Lovely.”

  His fingers ran over my face to the roots of my hair and through it down to the back of my neck. Our faces came closer, slowly, as though afraid to act on something that had been hovering in the air for so long.

  The unexpected click of a key made us pull apart. Jamila came in, panting, bringing an urgent message.

  “Siñora Fox say Siñorita Sira run to las Palmeras.”

  Things were up and running, and we were approaching the end. Marcus took his hat, and I couldn’t resist hugging him one more time. There were no words, there was nothing more to say. A few seconds later, all that remained of his solid, close presence was the trace of a light kiss on my hair, the image of his back, and the painful noise of the door closing behind him.

  PART THREE

  EL CASINO DE MADRID

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ___________

  From the moment of Marcus’s departure and my mother’s arrival, my life turned upside down. She arrived one cloudy afternoon looking emaciated, her hands empty and her soul battered. She had no luggage, just her old handbag, the dress she had on, and a fake passport attached by a safety pin to the strap of her brassiere. Her body looked like it had borne the passing of twenty years; her thinness made her eye sockets and collarbones stand out, and the first few greying hairs I remembered were now entire locks. She came into my house like a child dragged awake in the middle of the night: disoriented, confused, disconnected. As though she hadn’t fully understood that her daughter lived there, and that from that moment on, she would, too.

  I’d imagined that reunion, which I’d so wished for, as a moment of unbounded joy. That’s not how it was. If I had to choose one word to describe the picture, it would be sadness. She barely spoke and didn’t display any enthusiasm for anything. She just hugged me hard and then kept hold of my hand, clinging to it as though afraid that I was about to run off somewhere. Not a laugh, not a tear, and very few words—that was all. She hardly wanted to taste the meal that Candelaria, Jamila, and I had prepared for her: chicken, omelet, tomato salad, anchovies, Moorish bread, all the things we imagined she’d gone without in Madrid for such a long time. She
didn’t have anything to say about the workshop, nor about the room where I’d put her, with a big oak bed and a cretonne quilt that I’d sewn. She didn’t ask me what had become of Ramiro, or show any curiosity about what it was that had led me to settle in Tetouan. Needless to say, she didn’t speak a word about the grim journey that had brought her to Africa, or even once mention the horrors she had left behind.

  It took her some time to adjust—I never thought I’d see my mother like that. The ever-determined Dolores, who was always in control, with just the right thing to say at the right moment, had been transformed into a furtive, inhibited woman I found hard to recognize. I devoted myself to her, body and soul. I practically stopped working; there weren’t any major events coming up, and my clients wouldn’t mind waiting. Day after day I brought her breakfast in bed: buns, churros, toast with olive oil and sugar, anything that would help her put some weight back on. I helped her bathe and I cut her hair; I sewed her new clothes. It was hard getting her out of the house, but bit by bit our morning walk became compulsory. We went arm in arm along the Calle del Generalísimo, reached the square with the church; sometimes, if the timing worked out, I would accompany her to Mass. I took her to see picturesque corners, little nooks and crannies, made her help me choose fabrics, listen to popular songs on the radio, and decide what we were going to eat. Till slowly, step by little step, she began to return to the person she used to be.

  I never asked her what went on in her head over the course of this transition, which seemed to last an eternity: I hoped she’d tell me sometime, but she never did, and I didn’t insist. Nor was I particularly curious: I guessed that her behavior was no more than an unconscious way of dealing with the uncertainty produced by relief mixed with pain and sorrow. Which was why I simply allowed her to adapt, just remaining by her side, ready to help her if she needed support, with a handkerchief in my hand to dry the tears she would never shed.

  I noticed that she was getting better when she began to make little decisions for herself: today I think I’ll go to the ten o’clock Mass; I thought I might go with Jamila to the market to buy ingredients to make a paella, what do you think? Bit by bit she stopped cowering each time she heard the crash of something falling on the floor, or the engine of a plane flying over the city. Going to Mass and the market soon became a routine, and other activities were then added to these. The most important of all was returning to her sewing. In spite of my efforts, ever since she’d arrived she hadn’t shown the slightest interest in dressmaking, as if that hadn’t been the framework of her existence for more than thirty years. I showed her the foreign fashion illustrations that I had purchased in Tangiers, I talked to her about my clients and their foibles, tried to animate her by reminding her about different outfits we’d once sewn together. Nothing. I got nowhere, as though I were speaking a language she didn’t understand. Until one morning she poked her head through the doorway into the workroom and asked, Can I give you a hand? I knew then that my mother had come back to life.

  Three or four months after her arrival we managed to attain a state of peace. Now that she was back on her feet, the days became less full of frantic activity. The business was going well and allowed us to give Candelaria some money each month with enough left to keep us comfortably, so there was no longer any need to work relentlessly. We started getting along well again, even though neither of us was the woman she had once been, and we were a bit like strangers. Strong Dolores had become vulnerable, and little Sira was now an independent woman. But we accepted each other, appreciated each other, and with our roles clearly defined there was never any more tension between us.

  The bustle of the first phase of my life in Tetouan seemed so distant, as though it were centuries ago. The adventures and anxieties were in the past. Staying out till the early hours and living without having to explain myself; all that had been left behind, giving way to ease. And sometimes the palest normality, too. My memories of the past, however, lived on with me still. Although the pain of Marcus’s absence began to lessen bit by bit, memories of him still clung to me, like an invisible companion whose outline only I could make out. How often I regretted not having ventured further in my relationship with him, how often I cursed myself for having remained so strict, how much I missed him. All the same, I was glad that I hadn’t let myself get carried away by my feelings; if I had, the fact that he was far away from me would have been much more painful.

  I didn’t lose touch with Félix, but with my mother’s arrival came an end to his nighttime visits and the traffic between our front doors, the outlandish lectures on culture, and his exuberant, delightful company.

  My relationship with Rosalinda changed, too: the presence of her husband was much more protracted than we’d anticipated, sucking up her time and health like a leech. Fortunately, after almost seven months, Peter Fox decided to return to India. No one ever knew how the alcohol fumes had permitted a shard of lucidity to enter his thoughts, but he did make the decision of his own accord, one morning, when his wife was about ready to fall apart. All the same, his departure didn’t bring about much good, apart from providing a sense of immense relief. Naturally he was never convinced that the sensible thing to do would be to carry through the divorce and put an end to that sham of a marriage. On the contrary, he thought he would go to Calcutta to sell off his business interests and then return to settle down once and for all with his wife and son, to enjoy an early retirement with them in the peaceful, cheap Spanish Protectorate. And just so they didn’t start getting used to the good life too early, he also decided that their allowance, unchanged for years, wasn’t going to be raised by a single pound.

  “In an emergency you can get your friend Beigbeder to help,” he suggested by way of farewell.

  To everybody’s good fortune, he never returned to Morocco. The stress of that unwelcome cohabitation did, however, cost Rosalinda nearly half a year of convalescence. In the months that followed Peter’s departure, she remained in bed, leaving the house no more than three or four times. The high commissioner practically relocated his work to her bedroom, and the two of them used to spend long hours there, she surrounded by pillows, reading, and he doing his paperwork at a small table by the window.

  The doctor’s orders to remain in bed until she returned to normal didn’t prevent her social bustle, but it did reduce it considerably. All the same, no sooner had her body begun to show signs of recovery than she made an effort to open her house up to her friends, giving little parties without leaving her bed. I was at almost all of them, and my friendship with Rosalinda remained absolutely firm. But nothing was ever the same again.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ___________

  On April 1, 1939, the end of the civil war was declared; from then on there were no more factions or currencies or uniforms dividing the country. Or at least that was what they told us. My mother and I received the news with mixed feelings, unable to predict what that peace would bring with it.

  “And what’s going to happen in Madrid now, Mother? What are we going to do?”

  We spoke almost in whispers, unsettled, standing on a balcony watching the bustling crowds teeming on the street. There were shouts nearby, an explosion of euphoria and unleashed nerves.

  “How I wish I knew,” was her dark reply.

  The news flew back and forth riotously. They said that passenger boats would be resuming their crossings of the Strait, that trains would soon be ready to reenter Madrid. The pathway toward our past was beginning to clear, and there was no longer any reason for us to remain in Africa.

  “Do you want to go back?” she asked me at last.

  “I don’t know.”

  I really didn’t know. I was filled with nostalgia for Madrid: images of childhood and youth, tastes, smells, the names of streets, and recollections of people. But deep down I wasn’t sure that this was weighty enough to demand a return that would mean dismantling everything I’d worked so hard to build in Tetouan, the white city that was home t
o my mother, my new friends, and the atelier that supported us.

  “Perhaps, for the time being at least, it would be best if we stayed,” I suggested.

  She didn’t reply; she just nodded, left the balcony, and returned to work, to take refuge among the threads so as not to have to think about the implications of that decision.

  A new state was born; a New Spain, they called it. For some people, what arrived were peace and victory; others, however, saw the blackest of chasms opening up before them. Most foreign governments gave legitimacy to the triumph of the Nationalists, recognizing their regime without a moment’s hesitation. The structures that had been set up during the conflict began to be dismantled, and the institutions of power began to take their leave of Burgos and prepare for a return to the capital. A new administrative tapestry began to be woven, and work had begun on reconstructing everything that had been destroyed. They accelerated the process of purging undesirables, while those who’d contributed to the victory lined up to receive their piece of the pie. The wartime government continued finalizing decrees, measures, and laws for a few months: its restructuring had to wait until well into the summer. I didn’t learn of all this myself, however, until July, when word reached Morocco. Even before it had escaped the walls of the High Commission and spread into the Tetouan streets; long before the name and photograph appeared in the newspapers and everyone in Spain started wondering who that dark-haired man was, with the dark mustache and the round glasses; even before all that, I already knew whom El Caudillo had designated to sit at his right hand in the sessions of his first peacetime Council of Ministers: Don Juan Luis Beigbeder y Atienza. The new minister for foreign affairs, the only military member of the cabinet ranking lower than general.