The Time in Between: A Novel (65 page)

“About what?” I asked, a little rudely.

“About what the devil someone so close to the wives of the German high command is doing letting herself be seen in public with a loyal friend to the British,” he replied with a thump on the table. Then his tone became gentler, as he immediately regretted his reaction. “Forgive me, please; we’ve all been very nervous lately, and besides, we knew you weren’t informed of the situation and couldn’t possibly have predicted the risks in advance. But trust me when I tell you that the Germans are planning a very powerful campaign to put pressure on British influence in Spain. This country is still crucial to Europe and could join the war at any moment. Actually the government is continuing to help the Axis shamelessly: they allow them to use the Spanish ports freely, they authorize mining operations wherever they please, and they’re even using Republican prisoners to work on military construction that could help with a possible German attack on Gibraltar.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and was silent for a few moments, concentrating on what he was doing. Then he went on.

“In the current circumstances we are at a clear disadvantage, and the last thing we want is to complicate matters even further,” he said
slowly. “Months ago the Gestapo launched a series of threatening actions that have already borne fruit: your friend Mrs. Fox, for example, had to leave Spain because of them. And regrettably there have been several other such cases: to take one close-to-home example, the old embassy doctor, who was a very good friend of mine. From now on, things are looking worse still. More direct and aggressive. More dangerous.”

I didn’t interrupt, I just watched, waiting for him to end his explanations.

“I don’t know if you understand the extent to which you’re compromised and exposed,” he added, lowering his voice. “Arish Agoriuq has become a very well-known figure among the German women living in Madrid, but if they start to see some wavering in your position as was almost the case yesterday, you could find yourself implicated in highly undesirable situations. And that’s no good. Neither for you, nor for us.”

I got up from my seat and walked over toward a window but didn’t dare approach it all the way. With my back to Hillgarth, I looked through the glass into the distance. The branches of the trees, filled with leaves, reached the height of the second story. It was still light—the evenings were already getting long. I tried to consider the implications of what I’d just heard. Despite the grim outlook, I wasn’t afraid.

“I think it would be best for me to stop collaborating with you,” I said at last without looking at him. “We’d avoid problems and live more peacefully. You, me, everybody.”

“Not at all,” he protested firmly behind me. “All I’ve just said was merely by way of prevention and as a warning for the future. We have no doubt of your ability to adapt when the time comes. But under no circumstances do we want to lose you, especially not now when we need you somewhere new.”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, astonished, turning around.

“We have another mission. We’ve received a request to collaborate, coming directly from London. Although in the beginning we were considering other options, in view of what happened this weekend we’ve decided to assign it to you. Do you think your assistant could take care of your workshop for a couple of weeks?”

“Well . . . I don’t know . . . perhaps . . . ,” I stammered.

“I’m sure she can. Put the word out among your clients that you’re going to be away for a while.”

“Where do I tell them I’m going to be?”

“There’s no need to lie, just tell them the truth: that you have some business to attend to in Lisbon.”

__________

T
he Lusitania Express left me at the Santa Apolónia Station one morning in mid-May. I was carrying two huge suitcases with my best clothes, a handful of detailed instructions, and an invisible supply of aplomb; I was trusting that this would be enough for me to make it through this tricky situation without too much trouble.

I’d hesitated for a while before I was able to convince myself to go ahead with this assignment. I’d reflected, weighed my options, and evaluated alternatives. I knew that the ball was in my court—only I could choose between continuing with that murky life or leaving it all behind and returning to normality.

The latter would probably have been the more sensible of the two options. I was fed up with deceiving everybody, with not being able to be straight with anyone, with complying with inconvenient orders and living in a constant state of alert. I was about to turn thirty. I’d become an unscrupulous liar and my personal history was no more than a pile of deceits, inconsistencies, and falsehoods. In spite of the apparent sophistication with which I lived, at the end of the day—as Ignacio had insisted on reminding me some months earlier—all that remained of me was a lonely ghost living in a house filled with shadows. And when I’d left the meeting with Hillgarth I felt a burst of hostility
toward him and his people. They’d entangled me in a strange, sinister adventure that was supposedly in my country’s interests, but as the months passed nothing appeared to straighten itself out, and the fear that Spain would enter the war continued to hang in the air on every street corner. All the same, I kept to his conditions without venturing from the rules—they’d forced me to become selfish and insensitive, to stick to an unreal side of Madrid and be disloyal to my people and my past. They’d made me fearful and unsettled; I’d spent nights lying wide awake, through hours of infinite anxiety. And now they wanted me to leave my father, too, the only presence who brought a speck of light into the dark passage of my days.

There was still time for me to say no, to dig my heels in and shout, “That’s it, enough is enough.” To hell with the British Secret Intelligence Service and all its stupid demands. To hell with the eavesdropping in the fitting rooms, the ridiculous lives of the Nazi wives and messages sewn into patterns. I didn’t care who would win that conflict that was so far away; it was entirely their problem if the Germans invaded Britain and ate their children raw or if the British bombed Berlin till it was left flat as an ironing board. That wasn’t my world: to hell with them all, forever.

To leave it all, and go back to normality: yes, that was undoubtedly the better option. The problem was, I didn’t know where to find it. Was it on the Calle de la Redondilla of my youth, among the girls I grew up with and who after the war were still struggling to keep their heads above water? Did Ignacio Montes take it away on the day he walked out of my square dragging a typewriter along with him, his heart broken into pieces? Or perhaps it was stolen from me by Ramiro Arribas when he left me, alone and pregnant and ruined, inside the walls of the Continental? Would I find normality in the Tetouan of my first few months, surrounded by the sad inhabitants of Candelaria’s boardinghouse, or did it dissolve into the sordid intrigues that had allowed the two of us to get ahead? Did I leave it behind in the house on Sidi Mandri, hanging from the threads in the workshop that I struggled so hard to set up? Maybe Félix Aranda took it one rainy night, or Rosalinda Fox when she left the storeroom at Dean’s Bar to disappear like a secret
shadow into the Tangiers streets? Would normality be with my mother, working wordlessly in the African afternoons? Was it eliminated by a deposed, arrested minister, or perhaps it was torn away by a journalist whom I never dared to love out of sheer cowardice? Where was it, when had I lost it, what had become of it? I searched for it everywhere: in my pocket, in the closets and drawers, between folds and stitches. That night I fell asleep without having found it.

The following day I awoke with a strange feeling of lucidity, and no sooner had I opened my eyes than I saw it: close by, just there with me, clinging to my skin. Normality wasn’t in the days I’d left behind me: it was only to be found in whatever fortune placed in my path each morning. In Morocco, in Spain, or in Portugal, running a dressmaker’s studio or in the service of British intelligence: wherever I chose to direct my course or lay down the foundations of my life, there it would be, my normality. Amid the shadows, under the palm trees on a square that smelled of mint, in the dazzle of grand halls lit by chandeliers or the stormy waters of war. Normality was simply whatever my own will, my commitment, and my word accepted as such, which was why it would always be with me. To look for it somewhere else or to try to retrieve it from yesterday made no sense at all.

I went to Embassy at midday with my thoughts in order and my mind clear. I checked that Hillgarth was finishing off his aperitif, leaning on the bar as he chatted to a couple of uniformed soldiers, before I dropped my handbag on the floor with brazen carelessness. Four hours later I received my first orders about the new mission: they summoned me for a facial the following morning at the beauty salon where I had my hair done every week. Five days later, I arrived in Lisbon. I stepped down onto the platform in a patterned gauze dress, white spring gloves, and an enormous sun hat: a froth of glamour amid the coal smoke from the locomotives and the grey hurry of the travelers. An anonymous motorcar was awaiting me, ready to transport me to my destination: Estoril.

We made our way through a Lisbon that was filled with wind and light, without rationing or electricity blackouts, with flowers, tiles, and street stalls of fresh fruits and vegetables. Without plots of land
filled with rubbish or ragged tramps, without shell craters, without arms raised in salute or the yoke and arrows of the Falange emblem painted in thick brushstrokes on the walls. We went through the posher neighborhoods, elegant with wide stone sidewalks and grand buildings guarded by statues of kings and explorers; we also crossed working-class neighborhoods with winding roads full of bustle and geraniums, and smelling of sardines. I was surprised by the majesty of the Tagus, the wailing of the foghorns at the port, and the squealing of the trams. Lisbon fascinated me—it was a city neither at peace nor at war. Nervous, agitated, throbbing.

We left Alcántara behind us, and Belém and its monuments. The waters beat hard as we made our way along the coast road. To our right were old villas protected by wrought iron railings that supported creeping vines heavy with flowers. Everything seemed different and noteworthy, but perhaps in another way than its mere appearance. I’d been warned to expect it—the picturesque Lisbon that I’d just been looking at out of my car window and the Estoril where I’d be arriving in a few minutes were full of spies. The slightest rumor came at a cost, and anyone with two ears was a potential informer, from the highest-ranking members of an embassy staff to waiters, shopkeepers, maids, and taxi drivers. The message I received once again was “Extreme caution.”

I had a room reserved at the Hotel do Parque, a magnificent residence for a largely international clientele, which tended to house more German guests than English. Nearby, at the Hotel Palacio, the opposite was the case. And then, at nighttime at the casino, everyone would come together under the same roof: in this theoretically neutral country, gaming and luck took no interest in war. The moment my car stopped a liveried bellhop opened the door while another took charge of my luggage. I entered the lobby as though stepping onto a carpet of safety and unconcern, and I removed the dark glasses that had been protecting me since I’d disembarked from the train. My eyes swept across the grand reception hall with a gaze of studied disdain. The sheen of the marble didn’t impress me, nor the rugs and velvet upholstery, nor the columns rising up to the ceiling, vast as those of a cathedral. Nor
did I pause to examine the elegant guests who individually or in groups sat reading the papers, chatting, drinking a cocktail, or watching life pass by. My potential to react to all that glamour was more than under control by now: I didn’t pay them the least attention, merely made my way decisively over to the desk to check myself in.

I ate alone at the hotel restaurant, then spent a couple of hours in my bedroom lying on my back staring at the ceiling. At a quarter to six the phone yanked me out of my self-absorption. I let it ring three times, swallowed, raised the receiver, and answered. And then the wheels began to turn.

__________

I
’d received my instructions days earlier in Madrid via a most unconventional channel. For the first time it hadn’t been Hillgarth who’d been responsible for giving them to me, but someone under his command. The woman who worked at the beauty salon who was there every week led me dutifully to one of the inner rooms where they did their beauty treatments. Of the three reclining chairs they used for these functions, the one on the right, almost horizontal, was already occupied by a client whose features I wasn’t able to make out. She had a towel wrapped around her hair like a turban, another round her whole body from her neckline to her knees. She had a kind of white mask covering her whole face apart from her mouth and eyes, which were closed.

I changed behind a screen and sat down in the adjacent seat in identical apparel. After the employee had reclined my backrest with a pedal and put the same mask on me, she left silently, shutting the door behind her. Only then did I hear the voice next to me.

“We’re glad that you will be undertaking the mission after all. We trust you, we think you’ll do a good job.”

She spoke without moving, her voice low and with a heavy English accent. Like Hillgarth she used the plural “we.” She didn’t identify herself.

“I’ll do my best,” I replied, looking at her out of the corner of my eye.

I heard the click of a lighter and a familiar smell filled the air.

“We’ve had a request directly from London to provide reinforcements,” she went on. “There are suspicions that a supposed Portuguese collaborator might be playing a double game. He isn’t an agent, but he has an excellent relationship with our diplomatic staff in Lisbon and he’s involved in various deals with British firms. There are indications, however, that he’s beginning to establish parallel relationships with the Germans.”