The Time in Between: A Novel (55 page)

I went out from time to time, not too often. I went to Embassy on a few occasions at aperitif time. On my first visit I spotted Captain Hillgarth far off drinking whiskey on the rocks as he sat amid a group of compatriots. He noticed me right away, too—he couldn’t not have. But I was the only person who knew it—he didn’t make the slightest move at my arrival. I held my bag firmly in my right hand and we pretended not to have seen each other. I greeted a couple of clients who publicly praised my workshop to some other ladies; I drank a cocktail with them, received appreciative glances from several young men, and from the fake vantage point of my cosmopolitanism I discreetly watched the people around me. Class, frivolity, and money in their purest form spread across the counter and around the tables of a small corner bar decorated without the least bit of showiness. There were women in outfits made of the finest wools, alpacas, and tweeds, soldiers with swastikas on their armbands, and others in foreign uniforms I didn’t recognize, all of them with cuffs adorned with military stripes and many-pointed stars. There were incredibly elegant ladies dressed in two-piece suits, with three strands of hazelnut-sized pearls around their necks, with impeccable lipstick on their lips and divine hats, caps, and turbans on their perfectly coiffed heads. There were conversations in several languages, discreet laughter, and the sound of glass against glass. And floating in the air, subtle traces of perfumes from Patou and Guerlain, the feeling of cosmopolitan savoir faire and the smoke of a thousand Virginia cigarettes. The Spanish war that had just come to an end and the brutal conflict that was devastating Europe seemed
to be tales from another galaxy in that environment of pure, simple sophistication.

At one corner of the counter, standing erect and proud, solicitously greeting her customers while simultaneously controlling the incessant movement of the waiters, I saw the woman I assumed to be the proprietress of the establishment, Margaret Taylor. Hillgarth hadn’t told me in what kind of way he collaborated with her, but I had no doubt that it was more than a simple exchange of favors between the owner of a watering hole and one of her regular customers. I watched her as she handed a bill to a Nazi officer in a black uniform, with a swastika armband and high boots that shone like mirrors. That foreign woman, who looked both austere and distinguished, who had to have been some years past forty already, was surely another piece in the secret mechanism that the British naval attaché had activated in Spain. I couldn’t tell whether she and Captain Hillgarth exchanged glances at any point, whether any kind of silent message passed between them. I looked at them again out of the corner of my eye before I left. She was in discreet conversation with a young white-jacketed waiter, to whom she seemed to be giving instructions. Captain Hillgarth was still at his table, listening with interest to what one of his friends was saying. The whole group around him seemed to be just as alert to the words of the young man, who looked more carefree than the rest. From my vantage point on the other side of the shop I could see his theatrical gesticulations, perhaps imitating somebody. When he’d finished they all burst into laughter, and I heard the naval attaché crowing delightedly. Maybe it was only my imagination teasing me, but for a fraction of a second I thought he’d focused his gaze on me and winked.

Madrid was entering autumn, while the number of my clients increased. I hadn’t yet received any flowers or candies, from Hillgarth or anyone else. Nor did I want any; I didn’t have time. Because if there was one thing that I was beginning to lack in those days, it was just that: time. The popularity of my new atelier spread quickly; word was getting around about the stunning fabrics to be found there. The number of orders increased daily, and I began to struggle to get them all done; I found myself having to deliver orders late and to postpone fittings.
I was working hard, harder than ever before in my life. I went to bed very late, toiling through the small hours, and barely had any time to rest. There were days when the tape measure remained hanging around my neck from morning until the moment I got into bed. Money flowed constantly into my little safe box, but I was so uninterested that I didn’t even bother to stop and count it. Sometimes my memory—with a twinge of nostalgia—would return to those early days in Tetouan. The nights counting the banknotes one by one in my Sidi Mandri room, calculating anxiously how long it would be before I could clear my debt. Candelaria rushing back from the Jewish exchange houses with a roll of pounds sterling secreted in her cleavage. The almost childish delight the two of us took in dividing up the total: half for you, half for me, the Matutera would say, month after month, and may we never go without again, my precious. It felt as though there were centuries separating me from that other world, and yet only four years had passed. Four years like four eternities. Where was she now, that Sira who had had her hair cut by a little Moorish girl with the sewing scissors in the kitchen of the La Luneta boardinghouse? Where had they gone, the poses I’d practiced so many times in my friend’s cracked mirror? They’d been lost between the folds of time. Now I had my hair done in the best salon in Madrid, and those self-assured gestures were more mine than my own teeth.

My hard work earned me more money than I’d ever dreamed of; I charged high prices and was constantly receiving hundred-peseta bills bearing the face of Christopher Columbus, five hundreds with the face of Don John of Austria. Yes, I was earning a lot, but a moment came when I couldn’t give any more of myself, and I had to notify Hillgarth through the pattern for a shoulder. It was raining that Saturday over the Prado Museum. As I gazed in delight at the paintings of Velázquez and Zurbarán, the inoffensive cloakroom man received my portfolio and, within it, an envelope with eleven messages that—as ever—would reach the naval attaché without delay. Ten of them contained conventional information abbreviated in the agreed manner. “Dinner 14th, home Walter Bastian, Calle Serrano, Lazars attending. Bodemuellers travel San Sebastián next week. Lazar wife making negative comments
about Arthur Dietrich, her husband’s adjutant. Gloria von Fürstenberg and Anka Frier visit German consul end October. Various young men arrived last week from Berlin, staying Ritz, Friedrich Knappe receives, trains them. Husband Frau Hahn dislikes Kutschmann. Himmler arrives Spain 21 October, government and Germans preparing large reception. Clara Stauffer gathering material for German soldiers, her house Calle de Galileo. Dinner Puerta de Hierro club, date not sure, Count and Countess Argillo to attend. Heberlein organizing lunch his house, Toledo, Serrano Suñer, and Marchioness Llanzol invited.” The final message was different, and transmitted something more personal. “Too much work. Not time for everything. Fewer clients or seek help. Please inform.”

The next day a beautiful bunch of white gladioli arrived at my door. They were delivered by a young man in a grey uniform whose cap bore the embroidered name of the florist: Bourguignon. I read the card first. “Always ready to fulfill your desires.” And a scribble by way of a signature. I laughed: I could never have imagined the cold-blooded Hillgarth writing that ridiculously soppy phrase. I moved the bouquet to the kitchen and undid the ribbon that was tying the flowers together; after asking Martina to get them into some water, I shut myself up in my room. The message leapt out of an interrupted line of short and long dashes: “Hire someone utterly trustworthy, no Red past or political affiliation.”

Order received. And uncertainty had come with it.

__________

W
hen she opened the door I didn’t say a word; I just looked at her, containing my desire to throw my arms around her. She looked at me confused, running her eyes over me. Then she tried to meet my eyes, but perhaps the
voilette
of my hat prevented her from seeing them.

“What can I do for you, señora?” she finally said.

She was thinner. The passage of the years was visible on her. As petite as ever, but thinner and older. I smiled. She still didn’t recognize me.

“I bring you greetings from my mother, Doña Manuela. She’s in Morocco, she’s gone back to sewing.”

She looked at me, surprised, not understanding. She was turned out with her usual care, but her hair hadn’t been dyed for a couple of months and the dark suit she was wearing had accumulated the shine of many winters.

“I’m Sira, Doña Manuela. Sirita, the daughter of Dolores, your employee.”

She looked at me again, up and down. I bent down to bring myself to her level and lifted the little piece of netting on my hat so she could see my face.

“It’s me, Doña Manuela, it’s Sira. Don’t you remember me?” I whispered.

“Holy Mother of God, Sira! My child, I’m so delighted to see you!” she said at last.

She hugged me and began to cry as I struggled not to let myself be set off, too.

“Come in, my child, come in, don’t just stand there in the doorway,” she said when she was finally able to get her emotions under control. “But how incredibly elegant you are, child, I wouldn’t have recognized you. Come in, come into the living room. Tell me, what are you doing in Madrid, how are things, how is your mother?”

She led me through to the main room and once again homesickness engulfed me. How many Feasts of the Magi had I, as a young girl, visited that room, holding my mother’s hand, how excited I’d become as I tried to guess what gift would be waiting for me there. I remembered Doña Manuela’s home on the Calle Santa Engracia as a large, opulent apartment; not as fancy as the one on Zurbano where she’d set up her workshop, but infinitely less humble than ours on the Calle de la Redondilla. On this visit, though, I discovered that my childhood recollections had infected my memory with a perception that distorted reality. The house that Doña Manuela had lived in for her whole life as a single woman was neither large nor opulent. It was just a mediocre home, poorly laid out, cold, dark, and full of somber furnishings with worn, heavy velvet curtains that barely allowed any light in; an apartment covered with water stains, in which all the pictures were faded engravings and yellowed crochet doilies filled every corner.

“Sit, child, sit. Would you like a drink? Can I make you a little coffee? It’s not really coffee, it’s roasted chicory, you know how hard it is to get hold of provisions these days, but a little bit of milk will hide the taste, though even that gets more watery every day, what can we do? I have no sugar as I’ve given my ration card to a neighbor for her children; at my age it hardly matters—”

I interrupted her, taking her hand.

“I don’t want anything, Doña Manuela, don’t worry about it. I’ve just come to see you to ask you something.”

“Tell me.”

“Are you still sewing?”

“No, child, no. Ever since we closed the workshop in thirty-five I’ve not gone back to it. I’ve done the odd little thing for a friend or out of a sense of duty, but no more than that. If my memory serves, your wedding dress was the last big thing I did, and, well, since after all . . .”

I preferred to dodge the subject she was referring to, so I didn’t let her finish.

“Would you like to come and sew with me?”

It took her a few seconds to reply, perplexed.

“Go back to work, you say? Go back to the old job, just like we used to do?”

I nodded, smiling, trying to inject a trace of optimism into her bewilderment. But she didn’t answer me right away; first she changed the direction of the conversation.

“And your mother? Why have you come to ask me instead of sewing with her?”

“I’ve told you, she’s still in Morocco. She went there during the war, I don’t know if you knew.”

“I knew, I knew,” she said softly, as though fearing that the walls would hear her and pass on the secret. “She showed up here one afternoon, just all of a sudden, unexpectedly, like you’ve done now. She told me everything was arranged for her to go to Africa, that you were there, and that somehow you’d managed to arrange for someone to get her out of Madrid. She didn’t know what to do; she was frightened. She came to ask my advice, to see what I thought of it all.”

My impeccable makeup didn’t allow her to see the distress that her words were causing: I’d never imagined that my mother would have had any hesitation between staying and going.

“I told her to go, to leave as soon as possible,” she went on. “Madrid was a hell. We all suffered so much, child, all of us. Those on the left, fighting day and night to stop the Nationalists getting in; those on the right, longing for just that, in hiding so as not to be found and taken in by the secret police. And those—like your mother and me—who weren’t of either faction, waiting for the horror to be over so that we
could get on with our lives in peace. All this without a government in charge, without anyone imposing a bit of order in that chaos. So I advised her that yes, she should go, she should get out of this agony and not pass up the opportunity to be reunited with you.”

Despite feeling overwhelmed by emotion, I decided not to ask anything about that meeting, which was now so long ago. I’d gone to see my old boss with a plan for the immediate future, so I chose to steer the conversation in that direction.

“You were right to encourage her, you don’t know how grateful I am to you for that, Doña Manuela,” I said. “She’s doing terrifically well now, she’s happy and working again. I set up a workshop in Tetouan in thirty-six, just a few months after the war started. Things were calm there, and even though the Spanish women weren’t in the mood for parties and dresses, there were some foreigners for whom the war hardly mattered. So they became my clients. When my mother arrived, we went on sewing together. And now I’ve decided to come back to Madrid and start again with a new workshop.”

“And you’ve returned alone?”

“I’ve been alone a long time, Doña Manuela. If you’re asking me about Ramiro, that didn’t last long.”

“So Dolores has stayed behind there without you?” she asked, surprised. “But she left specifically to be with you . . .”

“She likes Morocco: the climate, the atmosphere, the quiet life. We had very good clients and she’s made friends, too. She preferred to stay. But I missed Madrid too much,” I lied. “So we decided that I’d come back, I’d start to work here, and once the second atelier was up and running then we’d decide what to do.”