The Time in Between: A Novel (20 page)

No one seemed surprised at the arrival of a Moorish woman at that time of the morning; they must have thought I was Jamila. I stood there contemplating the scene for a few seconds, still trapped in my haik, until a potent hissing from the corridor caught my attention. Turning my head I saw Candelaria waving her arms like a woman possessed while holding a broom in one hand and the dustpan in the other.

“Come inside, honey,” she commanded, agitated. “Come in and tell me, I’ve been sick with worry not knowing what happened.”

I’d decided to keep the more shocking details to myself and share
with her only the final result. That we no longer had the pistols, and we did have the money: that was what Candelaria wanted to hear, and that’s what I was going to tell her. The rest of the story I’d keep to myself.

I talked as she removed the covering from my head.

“It all turned out fine,” I whispered.

“Ay, my angel, come here and let me hug you! And isn’t my Sira worth more than all the gold in Peru, isn’t my girl greater than the Lord’s day!” squealed the Matutera. She threw the cleaning things on the floor, captured me in her bosom, and covered my face with big noisy kisses.

“Be quiet, Candelaria, for God’s sake; quiet, they’ll hear you,” I objected, fear still clinging to my skin. With no intention of heeding my warning, she strung her jubilation into a thread of curses directed at the policeman who had turned the house upside down earlier that night.

“What do I care if they hear me now that it’s all over? Damn you to hell, Palomares, you and all your kin! Damn you to hell—you couldn’t catch me!”

Sensing that this explosion of emotion after a long night of nerves wasn’t going to end there, I grabbed Candelaria’s arm and dragged her to my room, as she continued raining down curses.

“Screw you, son of a bitch! Screw you, Palomares, you didn’t find a thing in my house, even knocking over my furniture and tearing open the mattresses!”

“Quiet now, Candelaria, once and for all be quiet,” I insisted. “Forget about Palomares, calm down and let me tell you how it went.”

“Yes, child, yes, down to the last detail,” she said, finally trying to calm herself. She was still breathing hard, her housecoat was misbuttoned, and locks of tousled hair had escaped from her hairnet. She looked pitiful, and yet she radiated enthusiasm. “Sure enough, the big brute came at five in the morning and chucked us out into the street . . . and also . . . also . . . Well then, let’s forget about him, what’s past is past. You talk now, my jewel, tell me everything nice and slow.”

I narrated my adventure to her briefly, as I removed the bundle of money that the man from Larache had hung around my neck. I didn’t
mention escaping out of the window, nor the threatening shouts of the soldier, nor the pistols abandoned under the lone sign for the Malalien stop. I just handed her the contents of the pouch and then started to take off the haik and the nightdress I was wearing underneath.

“You can go rot, Palomares!” she shouted, laughing, throwing the banknotes in the air. “Go rot in hell, you haven’t caught me!”

Then her clamor stopped dead, and it wasn’t because she had suddenly recovered her good sense, but because what she had before her eyes prevented her from carrying on her excitement.

“But you’ve been massacred, child! You look just like the Christ of the Five Wounds!” she exclaimed on seeing my naked body. “Does it hurt a lot, my child?”

“A little,” I murmured, as I let myself drop like a dead weight onto the bed. I was telling a lie. The truth was that I was hurting right down to my soul.

“And you’re filthy as if you’d just been rolling around in a rubbish dump,” she said, her good sense fully recovered. “I’m going to put some pots of water on the fire to prepare you a nice hot bath. And then some liniment compresses for you where you’re hurt, and then . . .”

I didn’t hear any more. Before the Matutera had finished her sentence, I’d fallen asleep.

___________

A
s soon as the house had been put back together and we’d returned to our normal routines, Candelaria set about looking for an apartment in the
ensanche
in which she could install my business. Tetouan’s
ensanche,
so different from the Moorish medina, had been built according to European standards to meet the needs of the Spanish Protectorate: to house its civil and military installations and to provide lodging and businesses for the families from the Peninsula that were gradually making Morocco their permanent home. The new buildings, with white façades, ornamented balconies, and a look that was somewhere between modern and Moorish, lined the broad streets and spacious squares that made up a harmonious grid. Through them walked well-coiffed women and men in hats, uniformed soldiers, children dressed in the European style, and formal couples arm in arm. There were trolleys and a few automobiles, cake shops, brand-new cafés, and exclusive up-to-date shops. Order and calm permeated this universe, in contrast to the hustle and bustle, the smells and the voices of the souqs in the medina, which seemed to be somewhere out of the past, surrounded by walls and opening out to the world through seven gates. And between the two spaces, the Arab and the European, almost like a border, was La Luneta, the street I was about to leave behind me.

I knew that when Candelaria finally managed to track down a place for me to set up my workshop, my life would take a new turn and I would yet again have to mold myself to it. In anticipation of this, I decided to change: to remake myself altogether, unburdening myself of the old baggage to start from scratch. In the previous few months I’d slammed the door on my entire yesterday; I’d stopped being a humble dressmaker and transformed myself successively into a whole heap of different women. A civil-service candidate, heiress of a major industrialist, globe-trotting lover to a scoundrel, hopeful aspirant to run an Argentine company, frustrated mother of an unborn child, a woman suspected of fraud and theft in debt up to her eyebrows, and a gunrunner camouflaged as an innocent local woman. In even less time now I’d have to forge a new personality for myself, since none of the earlier ones would do. My old world was at war, and my love had evaporated, taking with him my possessions and my illusions. The child who had never been born had dissolved into a puddle of congealed blood as I got off a bus, there was a file with my details circulating through the police forces of two countries and three cities, and the small arsenal of pistols that I’d transported attached to my skin might already have taken a life. Intending to turn my back on such pitiful baggage, I decided to confront the future from behind a mask of security and courage, preventing people from seeing my fear, my miseries, and the dagger that was still piercing my soul.

I decided to begin with the outside, to give myself the façade of a woman who was worldly and independent, to keep people from seeing my reality as the victim of a bastard and the dark origins of the establishment I was about to open. To do that I’d have to put a layer of makeup over the past, invent a present in great haste, and plan out a future as false as it was magnificent. And I’d have to act quickly; I had to begin right away. Not one more tear shed, not another lament. Not a single submissive look back. Everything should be present, everything should be today. So I chose a new personality that I drew out of my sleeve like a magician might whip out a string of handkerchiefs or the ace of hearts. I decided to transform myself, and my choice was to adopt the appearance of a woman who was solid, solvent, experienced.
I’d have to fight hard to get my ignorance mistaken for haughtiness, my uncertainty for sweet apathy, for no one even to suspect my fears, hidden in the firm tread of a pair of high heels and a look of confident determination. For no one to guess at the immense effort I was still making every day to overcome my sadness, one bit at a time.

The first move was to set about changing my style. The uncertainty of recent times, the miscarriage, and convalescence had reduced my body by at least six or seven kilos. The bitterness and the hospital had eliminated the roundness of my hips, some of the volume of my breasts, part of my thighs, and any curviness that had ever existed around my waist. I didn’t try too hard to recover any of that but began instead to feel comfortable with my new silhouette: one more step forward. Retrieving from my memory how some of the foreign women in Tangiers dressed, I decided to adapt my scant wardrobe with adjustments and repairs. I’d be less strict than my compatriots, more suggestive without being indecorous or indecent. Brighter, more colorful tones, lighter-weight fabrics. Blouse buttons a little more open at the neck and skirts just a little shorter. At the cracked mirror in Candelaria’s room, I reinvented myself, trying out and making my own all those glamorous ways women crossed their legs, which I’d observed every day at aperitif time on the terraces, the elegant way they’d make their way with such poise along the broad sidewalks of the Boulevard Pasteur, and the grace with which their recently manicured fingers would lift up a French fashion magazine, a gin fizz, or a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder.

For the first time in more than three months I paid attention to how I looked, and I discovered that I needed to quickly revamp myself. A neighbor plucked my eyebrows, another gave me a manicure. I went back to using makeup after months with my face bare: I chose pencils to outline my lips, carmine to fill them out, colors for my eyelids, rouge for my cheeks, liner and mascara for my eyes. One day I had Jamila cut my hair with the sewing scissors, following exactly a photo in the old issue of
Vogue
I’d brought in my suitcase. The thick dark mop that had come halfway down my back fell in worn locks onto the kitchen floor, like the wings of dead crows, till I was left with a smooth straight crop along the line of my jaw, with a part on one side and a tendency to fall
untamed over my right eye. To hell with that hot, thick, long hair that had so fascinated Ramiro. I couldn’t have said whether the new haircut suited me or not, but it made me feel fresher, freer. Renewed, taken away forever from those afternoons under the fan blades in our room at the Hotel Continental, from those endless hours with no shelter but his body encircling mine and the great thick mane spread like a shawl over the sheets.

Candelaria’s plans were realized only a few days later. First she identified three properties in the
ensanche
that were available for immediate rental. She explained the details of each one to me, we weighed up together what was good and bad about each, and finally we made our decision.

The first place Candelaria had told me about seemed to be the perfect site: large and modern, never before lived in, close to the post office and the Teatro Español. “It’s even got a movable shower just like a telephone, honey, except that instead of hearing the voice of the person who’s talking to you there’s a gush of water coming out that you can point wherever you want,” explained the Matutera, astounded by the marvel. We ruled it out, however, because it adjoined a still-empty plot littered with stray cats and junk. The
ensanche
was growing, but there were still places, here and there, that hadn’t yet been developed. We thought that the setting might perhaps not offer quite the right image to the sophisticated customers we aimed to attract, so the workshop with the telephone shower was ruled out.

The second proposal was positioned on Tetouan’s main road, in those days called the Calle República, in a beautiful house with turrets on its corners and close to Plaza de Muley el Mehdi, which would soon become known as Primo de Rivera. This site also seemed at first glance to have everything we needed: it was spacious, with an imposing presence, and it was not located next to a vacant lot, but rather on a corner that opened onto two central, well-used arteries. The building next door, however, was home to one of the finest dressmakers in the city, a seamstress of a certain age with a solid reputation. We weighed up the situation and decided to rule out that place, too: better not to upset the competition.

So we went for the third option. The property that finally would end up being converted into my workplace and my home was a large apartment on the Calle Sidi Mandri, in a building with a tiled façade close to the Casino Español, Benarroch passage, and the Hotel Nacional; not far from the Plaza de España, the High Commission, and the caliph’s palace with its imposing sentries guarding the entrance and an exotic array of sumptuous turbans and cloaks swaying in the air.

Candelaria closed the deal with Jacob Benchimol, a Jew who from that moment, and with considerable discretion, became my landlord in exchange for the punctual sum of three hundred and seventy-five pesetas a month. Three days later, I, the new Sira Quiroga, falsely metamorphosed into someone I perhaps wasn’t but might end up being one day, took possession of the place and threw open the doors to a new phase in my life.

“On you go, on your own,” said Candelaria, handing me the key. “It’s best that we’re not seen going around together too much from now on. I’ll be over in just a little bit.”

I made my way through the comings and goings of La Luneta, the subject of constant male glances. I didn’t remember ever having received even a quarter as many in the months gone past, when my image was that of an insecure young woman with her hair drawn back into an unattractive bun, walking lethargically and dragging along the clothing and injuries of a past she was trying to forget. Now I moved with feigned confidence, forcing myself to emanate an air of arrogance and savoir faire that no one would have guessed at only a week earlier.

Even though I tried to impose a leisurely rhythm on my steps, it didn’t take me more than ten minutes to reach my destination. I’d never noticed the building before, even though it was only a dozen paces from the main road in the Spanish quarter. I was pleased at first sight to note that it combined all the features I’d considered desirable: an excellent location and an imposing front door, a certain air of Arab exoticism from the tiles of the façade, a certain air of European sobriety in the arrangement of the interior. The shared hallways were elegant and well proportioned; the staircase, while not being too broad, had a handsomely forged handrail that curved gracefully as it ascended.