The Time in Between: A Novel (6 page)

“Well now, let’s see, this isn’t easy,” he said by way of beginning.

A deep breath, a drag on the cigar, smoke out. Eyes raised to meet mine at last. Then right to my mother’s. Then to mine again. And then he spoke again, and barely paused, for such a long and intense time that when I finally noticed we were almost in darkness, our bodies had been transformed into shadows, and the only light we had was the weak, distant reflection from a green tulip lamp on the desk.

“I’ve found you because I’m afraid that one of these days they’re going to kill me. Or I’ll end up killing someone and they’ll put me in prison, which would be like a death in life, it comes to the same thing. The political situation is about to explode, and when that happens only God knows what will become of all of us.”

I looked at my mother out of the corner of my eye, seeking some reaction, but her face didn’t betray the slightest sign of concern: as though instead of the warnings of an imminent death she’d heard someone announcing the time or predicting a cloudy day. He, meanwhile, went on voicing his premonitions and exuding streams of bitterness.

“And since I know that my days are numbered, I’ve set about doing an inventory of my life, and what have I found that I own among my belongings? Yes, money. Properties, too. And a company with two hundred employees for which I’ve worked myself to the bone for three decades, and where when they don’t organize a strike they humiliate me and spit in my face. And a wife who when she saw that someone had set fire to a couple of churches went with her mother and sisters to pray rosaries at San Juan de Luz. And two sons I don’t understand, a
couple of wastrels who’ve turned fanatic and spend their days shooting people from the rooftops and worshipping the revered son of Primo de Rivera, who has brainwashed all the young gentlemen of Madrid with his romantic nonsense about reaffirming the national spirit. If I could, I would take them all into the foundry and get them working twelve hours a day to see if the national spirit might be restored in them by blows of the hammer and anvil.

“The world has changed so much, Dolores, don’t you see? The workers are no longer satisfied with going to the festival of San Cayetano and to the Carabanchel bulls, as the words of the
zarzuela
would have it. Now they’re trading their donkeys for bicycles, they’re joining unions, and the first time things go bad for them they threaten the boss with a bullet between the eyes. Probably they’re not wrong; living a life filled with deprivation and working from sunrise to sunset from your earliest years isn’t to anybody’s taste. But what’s needed here is much more than this. Raising a fist, hating those they have above them, and singing
The Internationale
won’t fix much; countries don’t change to the rhythm of an anthem. They naturally have more than enough reasons for rebelling, as there have been centuries of starvation here and a lot of injustice, too, but this won’t be fixed by biting the hand that feeds them. For that, to modernize this country, we’d need brave employers and qualified workers, a solid education system, and serious government leaders who remain in their posts long enough to get something done. But everything here is a disaster, everyone looks after himself, and no one bothers to work seriously to put an end to such madness. The politicians on both sides spend their days lost in their diatribes and fancy speeches in the parliament. The king is doing just fine where he is: he should have left long ago. The socialists, anarchists, and communists fight for their own interests just as they should, except that they ought to do it with good sense and order, without grudges or explosive tempers. The wealthy and the monarchists, meanwhile, flee like cowards abroad. And between one lot and the other, we’ll finally see the military take over, and then we’re going to be sorry. Or we’ll get ourselves into a civil war, unite against one another, take up arms, and end up killing one another, killing our brothers.”

He spoke emphatically, without pausing. Until suddenly he seemed to come back down to reality and understand that both my mother and I, in spite of having kept our composure, were utterly disconcerted, not knowing where he was going with the discouraging predictions he was making or what we had to do with that crude vomiting up of words.

“Sorry to be telling you all this in such an impulsive way, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I’ve now reached the moment to act. This country is falling apart. It’s a madness, it’s senseless, and as for me, as I’ve told you, one of these days they’re going to kill me. The ways of the world are changing, and it’s not easy to adjust to them. I’ve spent more than thirty years working like a beast, losing sleep for my business and trying to do my duty. But either the times aren’t on my side or I’m very wrong about something because in the end it’s all turned its back on me, and life seems to be suddenly spitting its vengeance at me. My sons have left me, my wife has abandoned me, and the day-to-day life in my company has turned into a hell. I’ve been left alone, I have no one’s support, and I’m convinced the situation can only get worse. Which is why I am preparing myself, putting my affairs in order, my papers, my accounts, arranging my final wishes, and trying to leave everything organized in case one day I don’t come back. And just as in my business, I’m also trying to put some order in my memories and my feelings, some of which I still have, though not many. The blacker everything around me becomes, the more I rummage among my feelings and retrieve the memory of the good things life has given me. And now that my days are running out, I’ve recognized one of the few things that was really worthwhile. Do you know what that was, Dolores? You. You and this daughter of ours who’s the spitting image of you in the years we were together. That was why I wanted to see you.”

Gonzalo Alvarado, this father of mine who at last had a face and a name, was speaking more calmly now. Halfway through his speech he began to look more like the man he must have been on any other day: sure of himself, forceful in his gestures and his words, used to giving orders and to being right. It had been hard for him to start; it couldn’t be pleasant to face a lost love and an unknown daughter after a quarter
century of absence. But he had now regained his composure, the owner and master of the situation. Firm in his speech, sincere and raw as only someone with nothing left to lose can be.

“You know something, Sira? I really loved your mother; I loved her very much, very much indeed. If only everything had been different, so that I could have kept her with me forever. But regrettably that’s not the way it was.”

He looked away from me and turned back to her. Toward her big hazel-colored eyes tired from sewing. Toward her beautiful maturity with neither cosmetics nor embellishments.

“I didn’t fight for you much, Dolores, did I? I was unable to confront my family, and I wasn’t worthy of you. Then, as you know, I adjusted to the life that was expected of me, I got used to another woman and another family.”

My mother listened in silence, apparently impassive. I couldn’t have said whether she was hiding her emotions or whether those words didn’t provoke either cold or heat in her at all. She remained, quite simply, stern in her posture, her thoughts inscrutable, sitting upright in the beautifully tailored suit I’d never seen her in before, doubtless made from the fabric remnants of some woman with more material and more luck in life than she.

Rather than stopping in the face of her impassivity, my father kept on talking. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe me or not, but the truth is that now I find myself coming toward the end, my heart grieves that I’ve let so many years go past without taking care of you both, and without even having gotten to know you, Sira. I should have insisted more, I shouldn’t have given up trying to keep you close, but things were the way they were. And Dolores, you were too dignified, you wouldn’t allow me to devote only the leftover scraps of my life to you. If it couldn’t be everything, then it would be nothing. Your mother is very tough, girl, very tough and very firm. And I, I was probably weak and a fool, but, well, this isn’t the time for regrets.”

He remained silent a few seconds, thinking, not looking at us. Then he breathed in slowly through his nose, breathed out again hard, and
shifted position, leaning forward in his armchair as though wanting to be more direct, as though he had decided to approach head-on what he seemed to have to tell us. He seemed finally ready to extract himself from the bitter nostalgia that kept him flying over the past, ready now to focus himself on the earthly demands of the present.

“I don’t want to occupy you any longer with my melancholy thoughts, forgive me. Let’s get to the point. I’ve called you here to transmit my last wishes. I ask you both to understand me and not misinterpret them. My intention is not to compensate you for the years I haven’t given you, or to demonstrate my remorse with gifts, still much less to try to buy your good regard at this point. All I want is to leave the ends nicely tied up, which rightfully I think should be put in order for when my time comes.”

For the first time since we’d settled down, he rose from his armchair and made his way toward the desk. I followed him with my gaze, observing the broad back, the fine cut of his jacket, the agile step despite his corpulence. Then I looked at the portrait hanging on the back wall toward which he was headed, large and impossible not to notice. It was an oil in a gilt frame of an elegant woman dressed in the fashion of the beginning of the century, neither beautiful nor the contrary, with a tiara on her short wavy hair and a severe expression on her face. When he turned around he gestured toward it with a movement of his chin.

“My mother, the grande dame Carlota, your grandmother. You remember her, Dolores? She passed away seven years ago; if she’d done it twenty-five years ago, you, Sira, would probably have been born in this house. Anyway, we’ll let the dead rest in peace.”

He was talking without looking at us now, busy with whatever he was doing behind the desk. He opened drawers, took out objects, riffled through papers, and returned to us with his hands full. As he approached he didn’t take his eyes off my mother.

“You’re still beautiful, Dolores,” he observed as he sat down. He was no longer tense, his initial discomfort only a memory. “I’m sorry, I haven’t offered you anything, will you drink something? I’ll call
Servanda . . .” He made as though to get up again, but my mother interrupted him.

“We don’t want anything, Gonzalo, thank you. Let’s finish this, please.”

“Do you remember Servanda, Dolores? The way she used to spy on us, the way she’d follow us and then go telling tales to my mother?” Suddenly he gave a laugh, hoarse, quick, bitter. “Remember when she caught us locked in the ironing room? And now look, how ironic after all these years: my mother rotting in the cemetery, and me here with Servanda, the only person who takes care of me, what a pathetic fate. I should have dismissed her when my mother died, but where could the poor woman have gone then, old and deaf and with no family. And besides, she probably had no choice but to do what my mother told her to do: it wasn’t the time to be losing her job just like that, even though Doña Carlota had an unbearable nature and would drive her servants down a road of misery.”

He remained seated on the edge of his armchair, without leaning back, his large hands resting on the heap of things he had brought over from his desk. Papers, packages, cases. From the inside pocket of his jacket he now took out some metal-framed glasses and positioned them on his face.

“Well then, to practical matters, one thing at a time.”

First he took up a package that was really two large envelopes, bulky and held together at the middle by an elastic band.

“This is for you, Sira, to open up a new path in your life. It isn’t a third of my capital as by rights should be yours as one of my three descendants, but it’s all I can give you at the moment in cash. I’ve barely been able to sell anything, things are going badly for every sort of transaction right now. And I’m not in a position to leave you property, either: you’re not legally recognized as a daughter of mine and the inheritance taxes would swallow you up, not to mention that you’d be embroiled in endless lawsuits with my other children. But here you’ve got almost a hundred and fifty thousand pesetas. You seem smart like your mother; I’m sure you’ll be able to invest them well. With this money I also
want you to take care of her, to make sure she doesn’t lack for anything and to support her if one day she needs it. The truth is, I would have preferred to split the money in two, half for each of you, but as I know Dolores would never accept it, I’ll leave you in charge of everything.”

He held the packet out; before taking it I looked over at my mother, disconcerted, not knowing what to do. With a nod—quick and concise—she conveyed her consent. Only then did I hold out my hands.

“Thank you very much,” I mumbled to my father.

He prefaced his reply with a mirthless smile. “No reason to thank me, daughter, no reason at all. Well then, let’s get on.”

He took up and opened a small box lined in blue velvet. Then he took another, this time maroon colored, smaller, and did the same. And so on successively till there were five. He left them open on the table. The jewels inside didn’t shine brightly, there wasn’t much light, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t guess how valuable they were.

“This was my mother’s. There’s more, but María Luisa, my wife, has taken them away with her on her pious exile. She has, however, left the most valuable ones, probably because they’re the least discreet. They’re for you, Sira. It would be safest if you never wear them: as you can see, they’re a little showy. But you can sell them or pawn them if you’re ever in need and you’ll get a considerable sum for them.”

I didn’t know how to reply; my mother did.

“Absolutely not, Gonzalo. All that belongs to your wife.”

“Not at all,” he interrupted her. “All this, my dear Dolores, is not my wife’s property: all this is mine and my wish is that it should pass from me to my daughter.”

“That cannot be, Gonzalo, it cannot be.”