The Time in Between: A Novel (60 page)

He sat back down in the same place and I sat opposite him.

“So, everything in order?”

“No,” he said emphatically. “Nothing’s in order—nothing at all.”

I shut my eyes, squeezed them tightly, and opened them again.

“And what is wrong?”

“Everything is wrong, nothing’s as it should be.”

Suddenly I thought I could see a chink of light.

“What did you expect to find, Ignacio? What did you hope to find that you didn’t find?”

He didn’t answer.

“You thought the whole thing was just a front, didn’t you?”

Again he didn’t answer, but he did veer the conversation back onto his turf and resumed his grip on the reins.

“I’m perfectly well aware of who it was that set up this show.”

“What show do you mean?” I asked.

“This joke of a workshop.”

“It’s no joke. We work hard here. I do more than ten hours a day, seven days a week.”

“I doubt it,” he said sourly.

I got up and walked over to his chair. I sat on one of the arms and took his right hand. He didn’t resist, nor did he look at me. I let his fingers touch my palms, my own fingers, slowly, for him to feel every inch of my skin. I just wanted to show him the evidence of my work, the calluses and rough patches that the scissors, needles, and thimbles
had given me over the years. I noticed the way my touch made him shudder.

“These are the hands of a working woman, Ignacio. I can guess what it is you think I am, and what you think I do, but I want you to be absolutely clear that these aren’t the hands of a woman who’s being kept by anybody. I’m deeply sorry to have hurt you, you can’t imagine how sorry. I didn’t behave well with you. But that’s all in the past now and there’s no going back; you won’t make anything better by meddling in my life in search of ghosts that don’t exist.”

I stopped running my fingers over his but kept hold of his hand. It was icy. Bit by bit it began to warm up.

“Do you want to know what became of me after I left you?” I asked quietly.

He nodded without a word. He still wasn’t looking at me.

“We went to Tangiers. I fell pregnant and Ramiro abandoned me. I lost the child. I found myself suddenly in a strange country, sick, without any money, burdened with the debts that he’d left in my name and without so much as a place to drop dead. I had the police on my case, I found myself embroiled in certain activities on the very edge of the law. Then I set up a workshop thanks to the help of a friend and I started sewing again. I worked night and day, and I made friends, too, very distinguished people. I got used to spending time with them and became part of a world that was new to me, but I never stopped working. I also met a man I was able to fall in love with, and with whom I might perhaps have been happy again, a foreign reporter, but I knew that sooner or later he’d have to leave, and I fought against getting into another relationship for fear of making myself suffer again, of re-experiencing that atrocious feeling of being ripped apart that I’d had when Ramiro went off without me. Now I’ve come back to Madrid, alone, and I’m still working; you’ve seen all there is in this house. And as for what happened between you and me, I did penance for my sins, you needn’t have any doubt about that. I don’t know whether or not that’s good enough for you, but you can be sure I’ve paid a high price for all the pain I caused you. If there’s such a thing as divine retribution,
I know in my conscience that between what I did to you and what was later done to me, the scales are more than balanced.”

I couldn’t tell whether what I’d said affected him, calmed him down, or confused him still further. We remained in silence a few minutes, his hand in my hands, our bodies close, each aware of the other’s presence. After a while I separated myself from him and moved back to my place.

“What have you got to do with Minister Beigbeder?” he demanded to know then. He spoke without bitterness. Without bitterness but without weakness either, halfway between the intimacy we’d shared moments earlier and the infinite distance of the time before. I could tell that he was making an effort to return to a professional attitude and that, unfortunately, it didn’t take him too much effort to achieve it.

“Juan Luis Beigbeder is a friend of mine from my Tetouan days.”

“What sort of friend?”

“He’s not my lover, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“He spent the night with you yesterday.”

“He spent it in my house, not with me. I don’t have any reason to explain my private life to you, but I’d rather clarify things so that you’re in no doubt: Beigbeder and I don’t have any kind of romantic attachment. Last night we didn’t go to bed together. Not last night, not ever. I’m not being kept by any minister.”

“Why then?”

“Why didn’t we go to bed together, or why don’t I have a minister keeping me?”

“Why did he come here and stay till eight in the morning?”

“Because he’d just learned that they’d sacked him and he didn’t want to be alone.”

He got up and walked over to one of the balcony doors. He started talking again as he looked out, his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Beigbeder is a cretin. He’s a traitor who’s sold himself to the British, a madman in thrall to an English slut.”

I laughed despite myself. I got up and walked over behind his back.

“You have no idea, Ignacio. You work for whomever it is you work for in the Governance Ministry and they’ve told you to terrorize all the
foreigners who come through Madrid, but you don’t have the vaguest idea of who Colonel Beigbeder is or why he’s behaved the way he has.”

“I know what I need to know.”

“And what’s that?”

“That he’s been plotting, and that he’s disloyal to his country. And incompetent as a minister. That’s what everyone says about him, beginning with the press.”

“As if anyone could believe what this press says,” I remarked ironically.

“And who else should we believe? Your new foreign friends?”

“Perhaps. They know a lot more than you do.”

He turned and took a few decisive steps until he was just inches from my face.

“What do they know?” he asked hoarsely.

I realized it would be best if I said nothing, so I let him go on.

“Do they know I can get you deported by tomorrow? Do they know I can have you detained, that I can get this exotic Moroccan passport of yours turned into scrap paper and throw you blindfolded out of the country without anyone being any the wiser? Your friend Beigbeder is out of the government now; you don’t have a godfather anymore.”

He was so close to me that I could see just how much his beard had grown since he’d shaved that morning. I could see how his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he spoke; I could make out every movement of those lips that had once kissed me so often and were now spitting out rough threats.

With my reply I gambled everything on a single card. A card as false as I was myself.

“I no longer have Beigbeder, but I’ve still got other resources that you can’t even imagine. The clients I sew for have powerful husbands and lovers, and I’m good friends with many of them. They could give me diplomatic asylum in any one of half a dozen embassies if I asked for it, beginning with the German embassy—and I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who have a tight grip over your minister. I can save my skin with a simple phone call. The person who might not be able to save his skin is you if you keep sticking your nose where you aren’t wanted.”

I’d never lied so brazenly to anyone; it was probably the immensity of the fabrication that gave me my arrogant tone. I couldn’t tell whether or not he believed me. Perhaps he did—the story was only as unlikely as the course of my own life and yet there I was, his ex-fiancée, transformed into a Moroccan subject, as evidence that the most unlikely things can at any moment be transformed into pure reality.

“We’ll see about that,” he spat between his teeth.

He moved away from me and sat back down.

“I don’t like the person you’ve become, Ignacio,” I whispered behind him.

He gave a bitter laugh.

“And who are you to judge me? Maybe you think you’re superior because you spent the war in Africa and now you’ve come back with all the airs of a fine lady? You think you’re a better person than me because you take rogue ministers into your house and allow yourself to be fawned upon with candies while everyone else has even their black bread and lentils rationed?”

“I’m judging you because you matter to me, and because I want the best for you,” I said. My voice barely came out.

He replied with another laugh. Even more bitter than the one that had come before. More sincere, too.

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself, Sira. It’s all about me, myself, I.
I’ve
worked,
I’ve
suffered,
I’ve
paid for my guilt: just me me me. You’re not interested in anyone else—anyone. Have you even bothered to find out what became of your people after the war? Did it ever occur to you to go back to your neighborhood, in one of those elegant suits of yours, to ask after them all, to see if anyone could use a little help? Do you know what became of your neighbors and your friends during all these years?”

His questions echoed like heavy blows to my conscience, like a fistful of salt thrown deliberately into my open eyes. I had no answer to that: I didn’t know anything because I’d chosen not to know. I’d respected my orders, I’d been disciplined. They told me not to leave a certain area and I hadn’t. I’d made an effort not to see the other Madrid, the authentic one, the real one. I focused my movements
within the limits of an idyllic city and forced myself not to look at its other face: the one whose streets were filled with holes, craters in the buildings, windows without glass, and empty fountains. I preferred not to let my gaze light on whole families who rummaged through the trash in the hope of finding some potato peelings; not to look at the women in mourning who wandered the pavements with babies hanging from their shriveled breasts; I didn’t even spare a glance for the hordes of dirty, barefoot children who swarmed around there, and who, with their faces covered in dry snot and their little shaved heads covered in scabs, tugged at the sleeves of pedestrians and asked for some charity, please, señor, alms, I beg of you, señorita, some charity, señorita, God will repay your kindness. I’d been an excellent and obedient agent in the service of British intelligence. Scrupulously obedient. Disgustingly obedient. I’d followed the instructions they’d given me to the letter: I hadn’t returned to my neighborhood or set foot on the paving stones of my past. I’d avoided finding out what had become of my people, of the girlfriends from my childhood. I didn’t go to seek out my square, didn’t step into my narrow little street or go up my staircase. I didn’t knock at my neighbors’ doors, I didn’t want to know how they were doing, what had become of their families during the war or since. I didn’t try to discover how many of them had died, how many were in prison, how the ones who were still alive had managed to make it through. I wasn’t interested in hearing what rotten scraps they’d filled their cooking pots with, or whether their children were consumptive, malnourished, or barefoot. I didn’t worry about their wretched lives, filled with lice and chilblains. I belonged to another world now, a world of international conspiracies, lavish hotels, luxury hairdressers, and cocktails at aperitif time. That other wretched universe, rat grey, smelling of urine and boiled chard, had nothing to do with me. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

“You don’t know anything about them, do you?” Ignacio went on slowly. “Well then, you pay attention now, because I’m going to tell you. Your neighbor Norberto fell at Brunete; his elder son was shot the moment the Nationalist troops entered Madrid, although if you believe what people were saying he had also been involved in political
repression on the other side. The middle one is breaking rocks in Cuelgamuros and the youngest is in the El Dueso prison: he joined the Communist Party, so he probably won’t be getting out any time soon, that is if they don’t just execute him one of these days. Their mother, Señora Engracia, the one who used to look after you and treated you like her daughter when your mother went to work when you were just a kid, she’s on her own now: she’s gone half blind and wanders the streets as though deranged, turning over whatever she finds with a stick. There are no longer any pigeons or cats left in your neighborhood, they’ve eaten them all. And you want to know what happened to the girlfriends you used to play with on the Plaza de la Paja? I can tell you about them, too: Andreíta was blown up by a shell one evening as she was crossing Calle Fuencarral on her way to the workshop where she had a job—”

“I don’t want to know any more, Ignacio, I get the idea,” I said, trying to hide my agitation. He didn’t seem to hear me; he just went on enumerating these horrors.

“As for Sole, the one from the dairy, she became pregnant with twins by a militiaman who disappeared without leaving them so much as his surname; since she couldn’t look after the children because she didn’t have enough to support them, the people from the foundling hospital took them away and she never heard about them again. They say that she goes around offering herself up to the men who do the unloading in the Cebada market, asking one peseta for each act that she does right there up against the tiles of the wall; they say she goes over there without any panties, lifting up her skirt as the trucks start arriving in the early morning.”

Tears were beginning to stream down my cheeks.

“Shut up, Ignacio, shut up now, for God’s sake,” I whispered. He ignored me.

“Agustina and Nati, the poulterer’s daughters, they joined a group of nurses and spent the war working in the San Carlos hospital. When it all came to an end they were picked up at their house, put into a van, and from there taken to Las Ventas prison; they were tried in Las Salesas and sentenced to thirty years and a day. As for Trini, the baker—”

“Shut up, Ignacio, let it go,” I begged.

At last he yielded.

“I could tell you a lot more stories, I’ve heard almost all of them. People come daily to see me, people who knew us back then. All of them show up with the same refrain: I talked to you once, Don Ignacio, back when you were engaged to Sirita, the daughter of Señora Dolores, the seamstress who lived on the Calle de la Redondilla . . .”