The Time in Between: A Novel

by Maria Duenas

  “He’s in business, that’s what Da Silva told me.”

  She took my explanation with a wry laugh.

  “Don’t be naïve, Sira. Nowadays the word ‘business’ is like a huge black umbrella that can cover a multitude of sins.”

  “So are you telling me I shouldn’t help him?” I said, trying not to sound confused.

  “No. What I’m trying to do is advise you to be very careful and not to take any more risks than you have to, because you don’t even know who this man is you’re trying to protect or what he’s involved in. It’s strange the turns life takes, isn’t it?” she went on with a half smile, pushing that eternal blond lock of hair back from her face. “He was crazy about you in Tetouan, and you refused to get involved with him at all despite the attraction between you. And now after such a long time, in order to protect him you’d risk being unmasked, throwing away the mission, and God knows what else, and all this in a country where you’re on your own and barely know anybody. I still don’t understand why you were so reluctant to start something serious with Marcus, but whatever impression he made on you must have been extremely deep for you to be exposing yourself like this for him.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times. I didn’t want a new relationship because my betrayal by Ramiro was still fresh, because I still had wounds that hadn’t healed.”

  “But some time had passed . . .”

  “Not enough. I was panicking at the idea of suffering again, Rosalinda, I was so afraid. The thing with Ramiro was so painful, so brutal, so, so overwhelming . . . I knew that sooner or later Marcus would end up leaving, too, and I didn’t want to go through that again.”

  “But he never would have left you like that. Sooner or later he would have come back, perhaps you could have left with him.”

  “No. Tetouan wasn’t his home, and it was mine, with my mother just about to arrive, two charges against me in Madrid, and Spain still at war. I was confused, I was bruised, still distressed by what had happened to me before, anxious for news of my mother, and constructing a fake personality to win clients in a foreign land. Yes, I built a wall to avoid falling desperately in love with Marcus, you’re right. And just the same he managed to get past it. He slipped through the net and reached me. I haven’t loved anyone else since, nor have I been attracted to any man, not really. His memory has been what’s kept me strong, allowed me to face my solitude, and believe me, Rosalinda, when I tell you I’ve been very much alone this whole time. And when I thought I was never going to see him again, life put him in my path at the worst possible moment. I don’t mean to rescue him, or build a bridge back to the past in order to recover what’s lost; I know that’d be impossible in this lunatic world we’re living in. But if I can at least help him avoid being wiped out on some street corner, I’ve got to try to do it.”

  She must have noticed that my voice was shaky, because she took my hand and squeezed it hard.

  “Well then, let’s focus on the present,” she said firmly. “As soon as the morning gets going I’ll start to mobilize my contacts. If he’s still in Lisbon, I’ll be able to find him.”

  “I can’t see him, and I don’t want you to talk to him either. Use some intermediary, someone who can get the information to him without him knowing it’s coming from you. All he needs to know is that Da Silva not only doesn’t want anything to do with him but he’s given orders for him to be removed if he becomes a bother. I’ll notify Hillgarth about the other names when I get to Madrid. Or rather, no,” I corrected myself. “Better to give Marcus all the names; write them down, I know them by heart. Let him deal with getting the word around; he probably knows them all.”

  I felt a huge tiredness, almost as great as the distress I’d been carrying around inside me ever since Beatriz Oliveira had passed me that sinister list in the church of São Domingos. It had been a horrible day: the novena and what had come with it, the subsequent meeting with Da Silva, and the exhausting struggle to get him to invite me to his house; the sleepless hours, the wait in the dark beside the hotel trash cans, the tortuous journey to Lisbon stuck to the body of that foul-smelling egg man. I looked at my watch. There was still a half hour before he was to fetch me in his three-wheeler. Just to shut my eyes now and curl up on Rosalinda’s unmade bed seemed like the greediest of temptations, but now wasn’t the moment to think about sleep. First I had to catch up with my friend about her life, if only briefly: who knew if we would meet again?

  “Tell me, quickly—I don’t want to go without hearing a bit about you. How have you worked things out since leaving Spain, what’s become of your life?”

  “At first it was hard, I was alone, with no money and plagued by the uncertainty surrounding Juan Luis’s situation in Madrid. But I couldn’t just sit down and cry over what I’d lost: I had to make a living. At times it was even fun. I lived through a few scenes worthy of the finest comedy: there were a couple of decrepit old millionaires who offered to marry me, and I even managed to dazzle a senior Nazi officer who swore that if I’d agree, he was prepared to run off to Rio de Janeiro with me. Sometimes it was enjoyable; other times, to tell the truth, it was no fun whatsoever. I found ex-admirers who pretended not to recognize me, and old friends who turned away from me, people I’d helped once upon a time and who now seemed to be afflicted with amnesia, and liars who pretended to be very badly off to avoid my asking to borrow anything from them. That wasn’t the worst of it, however; the hardest thing in all that time was having to break off all contact with Juan Luis. First we gave up the telephone calls after he learned that they were being tapped, then we stopped using the post. And then came the dismissal and the arrest. The last letters for a long while were the ones he gave you and that you passed on to Hillgarth. And then, the end.”

  “Have you been able to secure any information about how he is doing now?”

  She sighed deeply before answering and pushed her hair back from her face one more time.

  “Reasonably well. They sent him to Ronda, which was almost a relief because he’d thought they were going to destroy him completely, with accusations of high treason against the fatherland. But they ended up not establishing a court martial against him, more out of their own self-interest than out of compassion—getting rid of a minister like that, a minister who’d only been appointed a little more than a year earlier, would have had a serious negative impact on the Spanish population and on world opinion.”

  “Is he still in Ronda?”

  “Yes, but now just under house arrest. He lives in a hotel, and it seems they’re beginning to give him some freedom of movement. He’s started getting excited about some plans again, you know how restless he is, always needing to be active, involved in something interesting, coming up with ideas and making things happen. I’m confident that he’ll be able to come over to Lisbon before too long, and then we’ll see,” she concluded, her smile heavy with melancholy.

  I didn’t dare to ask her what they were, these new plans that followed his being hurled into the pit with those who’d been stripped of glory. The ex-minister who was so friendly toward the English had very little clout in the New Spain that was so cozy with the Axis; a lot would have to change before he’d be in any position to show up back there.

  I looked at my watch again; I only had ten minutes left.

  “Keep telling me about yourself, how you managed to get by.”

  “I met Dimitri, a White Russian who’d fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution. We became friends, and I convinced him to make me his partner in the club he was planning to open. He’d provide the money, I’d be responsible for the décor and for providing contacts. El Galgo was a success right from the start, which meant that not long after the business started operating, I threw myself into the search for a house to allow me finally to get out of the little room where some Polish friends had been hiding me. And then I found this apartment. If you can call something with twenty-four bedrooms an apartment.”

  “Twenty-four bedrooms—that�
�s madness!”

  “Don’t you believe it; I did it in order to make something from it. Lisbon is full of expatriates without much cash who can’t manage a long stay in a fine hotel.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re running a guest house here.”

  “Something like that. For elegant guests, worldly people whose sophistication can’t save them from being at the edge of an abyss. I share my home with them, they share their capital with me as far as their means allow. There’s no price: there are some who’ve enjoyed a room for two months without paying me a single escudo, and others who in exchange for having stayed a week made me a present of a diamond rivière bracelet or a Lalique brooch. I don’t give anyone a bill: each contributes whatever he or she can. These are tough times, querida: everyone just needs to survive.”

  Indeed, to survive. And for me, the most immediate survival meant getting back into a three-wheeler smelling of chickens and making it back to my room in the Hotel do Parque before the morning began. I would have loved to keep chatting with Rosalinda until the end of time, lying on her big bed with no greater concerns than ringing a little bell to get someone to bring us our breakfast. But the time had come for me to go back, to resume reality, however dark it might appear. She accompanied me to the door; before opening it, she hugged me with her light body and breathed a piece of advice in my ear.

  “I barely know Manuel Da Silva, but everyone in Lisbon has heard of his reputation: a great businessman, seductive and charming, and also hard as ice, merciless with his opponents, and ready to sell his soul for a good deal. Be very careful—you’re playing with fire in the company of a dangerous man.”

  Chapter Sixty

  __________

  Clean towels,” announced the voice on the other side of the bathroom door.

  “Leave them on the bed—thank you,” I shouted.

  I hadn’t asked for towels, and it was odd that they should come and replace them at that time of the afternoon, but I assumed it was just a simple service mix-up.

  I was standing in front of the mirror in my bathrobe and had just finished putting on my mascara. That completed my makeup: all I had left to do was get dressed. There was still nearly an hour before João was due to collect me. I’d started getting ready early to occupy my mind with some activity to stop it from imagining a disastrous ending to my brief career. But I still had plenty of time. I left the bathroom knotting the belt of my bathrobe and then hesitated, deciding what to do. I’d wait a while before getting dressed. Or maybe not, maybe I should at least start putting my stockings on. Or no, perhaps I should . . . And then I saw him, and instantly everything else in the world ceased to exist.

  “Marcus, what are you doing here?” I stammered in disbelief. Someone had let him in when they were bringing the towels. Or perhaps not—I scanned the room and there wasn’t a towel to be seen.

  He didn’t answer my question. Nor did he greet me, or even bother to justify boldly invading my room.

  “Stop seeing Manuel Da Silva, Sira. Keep away from him, that’s all I’ve come to tell you.”

  He spoke firmly. He was standing, his left arm resting on the back of an armchair in one corner of the room. In a white shirt and grey suit, neither tense nor relaxed: just restrained. As though he had an obligation to fulfill and no intention of failing to fulfill it.

  I couldn’t reply: no words came to my mouth.

  “I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with him,” he went on, “but there’s still time to stop yourself from getting too involved. Get away from here, go back to Morocco . . .”

  “I live in Madrid now,” I managed to say at last. I was standing on the rug, still, barefoot, not knowing what to do. I remembered Rosalinda’s words that very same morning: I ought to be careful with Marcus, I didn’t know what world he was a part of now, or what business he was mixed up in. I shuddered. I didn’t know now, and maybe I never would. I waited for him to go on talking, to be able to gauge how honest I could be or how cautious; how much I should let out the Sira he knew, and how much I should keep playing the distant part of Arish Agoriuq.

  He moved away from the armchair and took a few steps toward me. His face was still the same, his eyes, too. The limber body, the hairline, the color of his skin, the line of his jaw; the shoulders, the arms that had so often linked with mine as we walked, the hands that had held my fingers, the voice. Everything was suddenly so near to me, so close, and so distant at the same time.

  “Leave as soon as you can, don’t see him again,” he insisted. “You don’t deserve to be with a fellow like that. I haven’t the slightest idea why you’ve changed your name, or why you’ve come to Lisbon, or what it was that brought you into contact with him. Nor do I know whether your relationship is something genuine or whether someone else has got you involved in this whole business, but I can assure you—”

  “There’s nothing serious between us. I’ve come to Lisbon to buy some materials for my workshop; someone I know in Madrid put me in touch with him and we’ve met a few times. He’s just a friend.”

  “No, Sira, don’t kid yourself,” he interrupted me sharply. “Manuel Da Silva doesn’t have friends. He has conquests, he has acquaintances and flatterers, and he has interested professional contacts, that’s all. And lately those contacts haven’t been quite to his taste. You’re getting involved in a murky business; we learn something new about him every day, and you should keep away from all that. He’s not the man for you.”

  “Then he isn’t for you, either. But you seemed good friends that night at the casino . . .”

  “We’re of interest to each other for purely commercial purposes—or rather, we used to be. Last I heard he doesn’t want to hear from me anymore. Not from me or anyone else English.”

  I sighed with relief; his words suggested that Rosalinda had managed to track him down and have someone pass on the message. We remained standing, facing each other, but the distance between us had become smaller without either of us even noticing. A step forward from him, one from me. Another from him, another from me. When we’d started talking we’d occupied opposite ends of the room, like boxers, suspicious and on our guard, each fearful of what the other might do. As the minutes had passed we’d been getting closer, perhaps unconsciously, until we were in the middle of the room, between the desk and the foot of the bed. Within reach of each other if we just made one more move.

  “I know how to look after myself, don’t worry. In the note you gave me at the casino you asked what had become of the Sira of Tetouan. Well, now you can see her—she’s become stronger. And also more skeptical, more disillusioned. Now I ask you the same question, Marcus Logan: what became of the battered journalist who arrived in Africa to conduct a long interview with the high commissioner that was never—”

  A knock at the door interrupted my question; there was someone outside. At an entirely unexpected time. Instinctively I grabbed hold of Marcus’s arm.

  “Ask who it is,” he whispered.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  “It’s Gamboa, Senhor Da Silva’s assistant. I’ve got something for you from him,” said the voice from the hall.

  With three stealthy strides, Marcus disappeared into the bathroom. I approached the door slowly, put my hand on the door handle, and took several breaths. Then I opened it, feigning casualness, to find Gamboa holding something light and colorful wrapped in tissue paper. I held out my hand to receive this thing I still hadn’t identified, but he didn’t give it to me.

  “It would be best if I were to put them down on a flat surface myself, they’re very delicate. Orchids,” he explained.

  I hesitated a few seconds. Although Marcus was hidden in the bathroom, it was rash to allow that man into the bedroom, but at the same time if I didn’t let him through it would look as though I were hiding something. And at that moment the last thing I wanted was to arouse suspicions.

  “Come in,” I accepted at last. “Please, put them down on the desk.”

&nbs
p; And then I realized. And wished the ground would open up under my feet and swallow me. That I’d be ingested in one gulp, sucked in, vanished forever. That way I wouldn’t have to face the consequences of what I’d just seen. There in the center of the table, between the telephone and a golden lamp, was something inconvenient. Something immensely inconvenient that nobody ought to see there. Still less the trusty manservant of Manuel Da Silva.

  I corrected myself as quickly as I spotted it.

  “Oh, no, it’d be better to put them here, on the stool at the foot of the bed.”

  He obeyed without comment, but I also knew that he’d noticed. How could he not have? The thing that was on that polished wooden desk surface was something that was so unconnected to me and so incongruous in a bedroom occupied by an unaccompanied woman that it had to stand out: Marcus’s hat.

  He came out of his hiding place when he heard the door close.

  “Go, Marcus. Get out of here—please,” I insisted, trying to guess how long it would take Gamboa to tell his boss what he’d just seen. If Marcus had realized the scale of the disaster that his hat could unleash, he gave no sign of it. “Stop worrying about me: tomorrow night I’m going back to Madrid. Today will be my last day, as of—”

  “You’re really leaving tomorrow?” he asked, taking hold of my shoulders. Despite my anxiety and fear, a feeling ran down my spine that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “Tomorrow night, yes. On the Lusitania Express.”

  “And you’re not coming back to Portugal?”

  “No, right now I’m not planning to.”

  “And to Morocco?”

  “Not there either. I’ll stay in Madrid; that’s where I have my workshop and my life.”

  We were silent for a few seconds. We were probably both thinking the same thing: how unlucky that once again our destinies had crossed paths at such a stormy time, how sad to have to lie to each other like this.