The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  “They can’t let my mother know. We don’t have a telephone, you know that.”

  “I’ll get someone to call Félix Aranda and he’ll tell her. I’ll also arrange for someone to pick you up and take you to Tetouan tomorrow morning.”

  “And where are you staying?”

  “At the home of some English friends on the Rue de Hollande. I don’t want anyone to know I’m in Tangiers. A car brought me straight here from their house; I haven’t even set foot on the street.”

  She fell silent for a few seconds and then started speaking again, her voice lower. Lower and more ominous.

  “Things are looking really bad for Juan Luis and me, Sira. We’re being permanently watched.”

  “Who?” I asked, hoarse.

  She gave a sad half smile.

  “Everyone. The police. The Gestapo. The Falange.”

  My fear burst out of me in a question, my voice a thick whisper. “And what about me? Will they be watching me, too?”

  “I don’t know, querida, I don’t know.”

  She smiled again but this time didn’t manage to conceal the trace of anxiety that lingered on her lips.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ___________

  There was a knock at the door, and someone came in without waiting for permission. With my eyes still half closed, through the gloom I could make out a uniformed maid carrying a tray. She put it down somewhere outside my field of vision and drew the curtains. The room immediately filled with light, and I covered my head with the pillow. Although this muffled the noise, my ears filled with little signals that allowed me to follow what the recent arrival was doing. The porcelain of the cup coming into contact with the saucer, the bubbling of the hot coffee coming out of the pot, the scraping of a knife against a piece of toast as it spread the butter. When everything was ready, she approached the bed.

  “Good morning, señorita. Your breakfast is ready. You’ll have to get up now, there will be a car at the door for you in an hour.”

  I replied with a grunt. I wanted to say thank you, I get it, leave me alone. The girl hadn’t understood that I meant to keep sleeping.

  “They’ve asked me not to leave till you’re up.”

  She spoke Spanish with a Spanish accent. Tangiers had filled up with Republicans since the war had ended, and she was probably a daughter of one of those families. I grunted again and rolled over.

  “Please, señorita, get up. Your coffee and toast will get cold.”

  “Who sent you?” I asked without removing my head from its refuge. My voice sounded like it was coming from inside a cave, perhaps because of the barrier of feathers and material that separated me from the outside world, perhaps an effect of the catastrophic night before. Even as I finished formulating it, I realized how ridiculous the question was. How could this girl know who it was who’d sent her to me? I, on the other hand, had no doubt whatsoever.

  “I got the order from the kitchen, señorita. I’m the maid for this floor.”

  “Well, you can go now.”

  “Not until you’re up.”

  The young maid was obstinate, with the persistence of someone who has been well drilled. Finally I withdrew my head and pushed the hair away from my face. When I moved the sheets aside I realized that I was wearing an apricot-colored nightgown that didn’t belong to me. The girl was waiting for me, holding a matching dressing gown; I decided not to ask her where it had come from—how would she know? I guessed that somehow or other Rosalinda had arranged for both things to be brought to the room. There weren’t any slippers, however, so I walked barefoot over to the little round table that had been set with my breakfast. My stomach was growling.

  “Can I give you any milk, señorita?” she asked as I sat down.

  I nodded, unable to say anything: my mouth was already full of toast. I was ravenous as a wolf; I remembered I hadn’t had dinner the previous night.

  “If it’s all right, I’ll draw your bath for you.”

  I nodded again while I chewed, and within a few seconds I heard the water gushing hard out of the taps. The girl returned to the room.

  “You can go now—thank you. Tell whoever sent you that I’m up.”

  “They’ve told me to take your clothes to be ironed while you’re having your breakfast.”

  I took another bite of toast and nodded wordlessly again. Then she took up my clothes, which had been tossed in a jumble on a little armchair.

  “Does señorita require anything else?” she asked before leaving.

  With my mouth still full, I brought a finger to my temple, as though simulating a gunshot, though unintentionally. She looked at me in alarm and I noticed then that she was only a child.

  “Something for my headache?” I explained when I was finally able to swallow.

  She showed that she’d understood with an emphatic nod and slipped away without another word, keen to escape as soon as possible from the bedroom of the madwoman she must have thought me.

  I polished off the toast, an orange juice, a couple of croissants, and a bun. Then I poured myself a second cup of coffee, and when I picked up the milk jug the back of my hand brushed past the envelope that was leaning against a little vase that held a couple of white roses. I felt something like an electric shock, but I didn’t pick it up. There wasn’t anything written on it, not a single letter, but I knew it was for me and I knew who’d sent it. I finished my coffee and went into the steam-filled bathroom. I closed the taps and tried to make out my reflection in the mirror, which was so misted up that I had to wipe it with a towel. Pitiful, that was the only word that occurred to me as I looked at my reflection. I undressed and got into the water.

  When I came out of the bathroom the remains of the breakfast had been taken away and the balcony doors were wide open. The palm trees in the garden, the sea, and the intense blue sky over the Strait seemed to fill the room, but I barely paid them any attention—I was in a hurry. I found my clothes, ironed, at the foot of my bed: the suit, slip, and silk stockings, all ready to put back onto my body. And on the nightstand, on a little silver tray, a bottle of water, a glass, and a bottle of aspirin. I gulped down two tablets; I reconsidered and took another. Then I returned to the bathroom and drew my damp hair back into a low bun. I put on just a little bit of makeup—all I had with me was powder and lipstick. Then I got dressed. All set, I muttered to the air. I corrected myself at once. All nearly set. Just one little detail missing. The one that had been waiting for me on the table where I’d had breakfast half an hour earlier: the cream-colored envelope with no apparent addressee. I sighed, and picking it up with just two fingers put it away in my bag without giving it another look.

  I went out, leaving behind someone else’s nightdress and the dent of my body in the sheets. My fear didn’t want to be left behind, so it came with me.

  “Mademoiselle’s bill has already been settled, and there’s a car waiting for you,” the concierge said discreetly. I didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver, but I didn’t ask whom the former belonged to and whom the latter worked for. I just settled into the back seat and without saying a word let them take me home.

  My mother didn’t ask me how the party had gone or where I’d spent the night. I assumed that whoever had brought her the message the previous night had been so convincing that he or she barely left space for any concern. If she noticed how out of sorts I was looking, she didn’t give any indication that she was at all curious about it. She just looked up from the piece of clothing she was working on and said good morning. Not effusive, not annoyed. Neutral.

  “We’re out of silk braid,” she announced. “Aracama’s wife wants us to move the fitting from Thursday to Friday, and Frau Langenheim wants us to change the way the shantung dress hangs.”

  She went on with her sewing, making comments on the latest news, while I drew up a chair opposite her and sat down, so close that my knees were almost touching hers. Then she started telling me something about the delivery of some pieces of sati
n that we’d ordered the previous week. I didn’t let her finish.

  “They want me to go back to Madrid and work for the English, to pass them information about the Germans. They want me to spy on their wives.”

  Her right hand stopped in midair, holding the threaded needle between stitches. She was halfway through a sentence, her mouth open. Her posture immobile, she looked over the little spectacles she used for sewing and fixed on me a look that was filled with unease.

  I didn’t go on talking right away. First I took a breath in, and out, a couple of times—deeply, big gulps, as though finding it hard to breathe.

  “They’re saying Spain’s full of Nazis,” I went on. “The English need people to inform them about what the Germans are doing: who they’re meeting, where, when, how. They thought about setting me up in a workshop to sew for their wives, and then afterward to tell them what I see and hear.”

  “And what answer did you give them?”

  Her voice, like mine, was barely a whisper.

  “I told them no. That I couldn’t, that I didn’t want to. That I’m doing well here, with you. That I have no interest in going back to Madrid. But they’re asking me to think about it.”

  The silence stretched out across the whole room, between the fabric and the mannequins, surrounding the spools of thread, coming to rest on the sewing boards.

  “And would it help stop Spain from getting into another war?” she asked finally.

  I shrugged. “In theory anything might help, or at least that’s what they think,” I said, not too convinced. “They’re trying to set up a network of secret informers. The English want us Spaniards to remain on the sidelines of what’s happening in Europe, not to ally ourselves with the Germans and not to intervene; they say that’d be best for everyone.”

  She lowered her head and focused her attention on the piece of fabric she was working on. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds: she just thought, contemplated unhurriedly as she caressed the material with the tip of her thumb. Finally she looked up and slowly removed her glasses.

  “Do you want my advice, my child?” she asked.

  I nodded emphatically. Yes, of course I wanted her advice: I needed her to confirm that my turning them down was reasonable, I longed to hear from her mouth that the plan was utter madness. I wanted her to go back to being my old mother and ask who on earth did I think I was, going around playing at being a secret agent? I wanted to be reunited with the strong Dolores of my childhood: the prudent, decisive one, the one who always knew what was right and what was wrong. The one who brought me up, showing me the straightest path, from which one unfortunate day I had diverged. But the world hadn’t changed only for me: my mother’s foundations were different now, too.

  “Join them, child. Help them, collaborate. Our poor Spain can’t get into another war, it hasn’t the strength left.”

  “But, Mother . . .”

  She didn’t let me go on.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to live through a war, Sira. You haven’t woken up day in and day out to the noise of machine-gun fire and mortars exploding. You haven’t eaten worm-infested lentils month after month, you haven’t lived through a winter without bread, without coal, without glass in the windows. You haven’t existed alongside broken families and starving children. You haven’t seen eyes that were filled with hate, with fear, or both at once. The whole of Spain has been devastated, no one has the strength anymore to go through that same nightmare again. The only thing the country can do now is weep over its dead and move forward with what little it has left.”

  “But. . . ,” I insisted.

  She interrupted me again. Without raising her voice, but firm.

  “If I were you, I’d help the English, I’d do what they ask. They’re working in their own interests, don’t kid yourself about that; everything they’re doing they’re doing for their own country, not for ours. But if what’s good for them benefits us all, thank God for it. I imagine the request came to you from your friend Rosalinda?”

  “We talked for hours yesterday; she left a letter for me this morning, though I haven’t read it yet. I presume it’s instructions.”

  “Everywhere people are saying that Beigbeder only has a matter of days left as a minister. It looks like they’re going to kick him out for exactly this reason, for becoming friendly with the English. I imagine he’s mixed up in this somewhere, too.”

  “Both of them had the idea,” I confirmed.

  “Well, he should have put the same effort into getting us out of the other war that they got us into in the first place, but that’s in the past and there’s nothing to be done about it now. What we have to do is look to the future. You’ll decide, child. You’ve asked my advice and I’ve told you what I think: with a great deal of pain in my heart, but understanding that it’s the most responsible thing to do. It will be hard for me, too: if you leave, I’ll go back to being alone, and I’ll have to live again with the uncertainty of not hearing from you. But yes, I think you should go to Madrid. I’ll stay here and keep the workshop going. I’ll find someone to help me, you needn’t worry about that. And God knows when it’ll all be over.”

  I couldn’t reply. I no longer had any excuses. I decided to go outside onto the street, to get some air. I had to think.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ___________

  I walked into the Palace Hotel at noon one day in the middle of September, with the confident stride of someone who had spent half her life strutting along the hallways of the best hotels on the planet. I was in a suit of laine glacée the color of thick blood, and my hair had been recently cut to just above the shoulder. On my head was a sophisticated felt hat with feathers on it, from the studio of Madame Boissenet in Tangiers: a real pièce de résistance, which (according to her) was how the elegant women in occupied France referred to such hats. The outfit was complemented by a pair of crocodile shoes with ultra high heels, which I’d obtained from the best shoemaker on the Boulevard Pasteur. In my hands a matching handbag and a pair of calfskin gloves dyed pearl grey. Two or three heads turned as I passed. I didn’t react.

  Behind me a bellhop was carrying a nécessaire de voyage, two Go-yard suitcases, and a few more hatboxes. The rest of the baggage, the furniture, and the shipment of fabrics would be arriving by truck the following day, having made it across the Strait without any trouble—as they were bound to do, given that the customs transit papers were stamped and restamped till they appeared to be the most official documents in the universe, courtesy of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I, meanwhile, had arrived by plane; it was the first time I had flown in my life. From the Sania Ramel Aerodrome to Tablada in Seville; from Tablada to Barajas. I left Tetouan with my Spanish papers in the name of Sira Quiroga, but someone altered the passenger list so that I wouldn’t appear on it under that name. During the course of the flight I used my little emergency sewing scissors to cut my old passport into a thousand shreds, which I hid in a knotted handkerchief; after all, it was a document from the Republic, which wouldn’t be of any use to me in the New Spain. I landed in Madrid with a brand-new Moroccan passport. Alongside the photograph an address in Tangiers and my newly acquired identity: Arish Agoriuq. Strange? Not particularly. It was just my name and surname written back to front, with the h that my neighbor Félix had added in the early days of the business left just where it was. It wasn’t really a proper Arab name, but it sounded foreign, and it wouldn’t arouse suspicion in Madrid, where no one had a clue what people were called down there in the land of the Moors, down there in the land of Africa, in the words of the old paso doble.

  In the days leading up to my departure I followed all the instructions in Rosalinda’s long letter, word for word. I made contact with the people I was supposed to in order to get hold of my new identity. I chose the best materials from the shops she recommended and ordered them to be sent with the bills to a local address, of whom I never discovered. I went back to Dean’s Bar and ordered a Blo
ody Mary. If my decision had been no, I would have had to settle for a modest lemonade. The barman served me, impassive. He made comments—as though reluctantly—on what might have seemed just banalities: that the previous night’s storm had wrecked one of the awnings; a boat named Jason sailing under an American flag was due to dock the following Friday at ten in the morning with a cargo of English merchandise. From that innocuous comment I was able to extract the information I needed. On that Friday at the specified hour I headed for the American embassy in Tangiers, a beautiful Moorish mansion stuck right in the medina. I informed the soldier who was controlling access to the building that I was there to see Mr. Jason. He lifted a heavy internal telephone and announced in English that his visitor had arrived. After receiving instructions, he hung up and invited me into an Arab courtyard surrounded by whitewashed arches. There I was met by an official who almost without a word led me swiftly through a labyrinth of corridors, stairways, and galleries to a white terrace in the highest part of the building.

  “Mr. Jason,” he said simply, gesturing toward a man at the far side of the roof terrace, then vanished, trotting back down the stairs.

  This man had extremely thick eyebrows, and his name wasn’t Jason, but Hillgarth. Alan Hillgarth, naval attaché of the British embassy in Madrid and coordinator of the activities of the Secret Intelligence Service in Spain. A wide face, ample brow, and dark hair perfectly parted and combed back with brilliantine. He approached me, dressed in a grey alpaca suit whose quality I was able to recognize even at a distance. He walked confidently, holding a black leather briefcase in his left hand, and then introduced himself, shaking my hand and inviting me to take a few moments to enjoy the view. It was indeed impressive. The port, the bay, the whole strait, and a strip of land beyond.

  “Spain,” he said, pointing to the horizon. “So near, and yet so far away. Shall we sit?”

  He gestured toward a wrought iron bench and we sat down. He drew a small metal box of Craven A cigarettes from his jacket pocket. I accepted one and together we smoked, looking out to sea. We could barely hear any sounds from nearby, just a few voices in Arabic wafting up from the nearby streets, and from time to time the shrill sounds of the gulls that were flying over the beach.