The Time in Between: A Novel (67 page)

To my good fortune, he chose the latter.

“As I was saying,” he went on once his assistant had left, “I don’t deal directly with the fabrics we import; that is, I keep myself informed
about the facts and figures, but I don’t know about the aesthetic matters that I presume will be of interest to you.”

“Perhaps you have an employee who might be able to help me,” I suggested.

“Yes, of course; my staff is extremely efficient. But I’d like to look after you myself.”

“I wouldn’t want to cause you any—” I interrupted.

He didn’t let me finish.

“It would be a pleasure to be able to assist you,” he said, gesturing to the waiter to refill our glasses. “How long did you mean to stay with us?”

“A couple of weeks. Apart from the materials, I’d like to make the most of my trip to visit some other suppliers, perhaps some designers’ studios. And shops, too: for shoes, hats, lingerie, notions . . . In Spain, as I’m sure you know, it’s barely possible to find anything decent these days.”

“I’ll give you all the contacts you need, you can count on that. Let me think: tomorrow morning I’m going on a short trip, I’m sure it’ll be a matter of a couple of days, no more than that. Would meeting on Thursday morning suit you?”

“Of course, but I must insist, I really don’t want to trouble you . . .”

He sat forward in his chair and leaned over, looking me straight in the eye.

“You could never be any trouble.”

That’s what you think, I thought, quick as a flash. My mouth, however, was fixed in a smile.

We went on chatting about trivialities; ten minutes, maybe fifteen. When I calculated that it was time to bring the meeting to an end I faked a yawn and immediately mumbled an embarrassed apology. “I’m so sorry. The overnight train was exhausting.”

“I’ll let you get some rest then,” he said, getting up.

“And besides, you have a dinner.”

“Ah yes, the dinner, that’s right.” He didn’t even bother to look at his watch. “I suppose they’ll be waiting for me,” he added reluctantly. I could tell he was lying. Or perhaps not.

As we walked over to the entrance lobby, he greeted various people
we passed, switching languages with incredible ease. A handshake here, a pat on the shoulder there; an affectionate kiss on the cheek of a frail old lady who looked like an Egyptian mummy, and a mischievous wink at two showy women overloaded with jewels from head to toe.

“Estoril is full of old cockatoos who used to be rich and aren’t any longer,” he whispered in my ear, “but they cling to yesterday tooth and nail, preferring to live on bread and sardines rather than sell what little they have left of their faded glory. You can see them with all their pearls and diamonds, wrapped in minks and ermines even in the height of summer, but they’re carrying handbags filled with cobwebs that haven’t seen a single escudo for months.”

The simple elegance of my dress fitted perfectly with our surroundings, and he made sure that everyone around us noticed it. He didn’t introduce me to anyone, nor did he tell me who anyone was: he just walked beside me, keeping to my pace, as though he were my escort: ever attentive, showing me off.

As we headed toward the exit I quickly weighed the result of the meeting. Manuel Da Silva had come to greet me, to invite me to a glass of champagne, and above all to measure me up: to evaluate with his own eyes just how far it was worth making the effort to take personal charge of the request that had come from Madrid. Someone via someone at the request of someone else had asked him as a favor to look after me, but there were two possible ways of doing that. One was by delegating: getting me looked after by some competent employee while he spared himself the obligation. The other required his own involvement. His time was worth gold dust, and he undoubtedly had countless commitments. The fact that he had offered to look after my insignificant needs himself suggested that my assignment was progressing along the right lines.

“I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.”

He held out his hand in farewell.

“A thousand thanks, Senhor Da Silva,” I said, offering mine. Not one hand, both of them.

“Please call me Manuel,” he said. I noticed that he held my hands a few seconds longer than was necessary.

“In that case, I’ll have to be Arish.”

“Good night, Arish. It’s been a real pleasure meeting you. Till we meet again, then, have some rest and enjoy our country.”

I went into the elevator and held his gaze until the two golden doors began to close, progressively narrowing my view of the lobby. Manuel Da Silva remained in front of them until he—first his shoulders, then his ears and neck, and finally his nose—disappeared as well.

When I was sure that I was beyond the reach of his gaze and we were beginning our ascent, I sighed so deeply that the young elevator attendant seemed about to ask if I was all right. The first step of my mission had just been completed: I’d passed the test.

__________

I
came down to breakfast early. Orange juice, the trilling of birds, white bread with butter, the cool shade of an awning, ladyfingers, and superb coffee. I stayed in the garden as long as I possibly could: compared to the bustle with which I began my days in Madrid, this felt like heaven itself. When I returned to my room I found an arrangement of exotic flowers on the desk. Out of pure thoughtless habit, the first thing I did was quickly untie the ribbon that adorned them in search of a coded message. But instead of finding any dots or dashes on the ribbon, what I found was a handwritten card.

My dear Arish,
Do make use of my driver João at your convenience, so that your
stay is more comfortable.
Till Thursday,

Manuel Da Silva

His penmanship was elegant and vigorous, and in spite of the good impression that I’d apparently made the previous night, his message wasn’t the least bit fawning, not even deferential. Courteous, but restrained and firm. Better that way. For now.

João turned out to be a grey-haired man in a grey uniform, with an impressive mustache, and at least a decade over sixty. He was waiting for me at the entrance to the hotel, chatting with other drivers who were much younger than he, smoking compulsively. Senhor Da Silva had sent him to take the young lady anywhere she wanted to go, he announced, looking me up and down, and making no attempt to hide it. I presumed this wasn’t the first time he’d been given a job of this kind.

“Shopping in Lisbon, please.” The truth, though, was that rather than seeing the streets and the shops, what really interested me was killing time while I waited for Manuel Da Silva to show his face again.

I learned at once that João was far from your typical discreet chauffeur focused on his work. No sooner had he started up the Bentley than he made some comment about the weather; a couple of minutes later he complained about the state of the roads; later I think I understood him to be ranting about prices. Faced with this clear eagerness to speak, I could assume one of two possible roles: that of a distant lady who considered employees inferior beings whom one needn’t even deign to look at, or an elegantly friendly foreigner who—while still maintaining her distance—was able to share her delight, even with the staff. It would have been more comfortable for me to take on the former personality and spend the day isolated in my own world, free from the interference of that old chatterbox, but I knew I shouldn’t when he mentioned, a couple of miles later, the fifty-three years he’d been working for the Da Silvas. The role of a haughty lady would have suited me extremely comfortably, certainly, but the alternative would prove much more useful. I needed to keep João talking, however exhausting it might become: if I could learn about Da Silva’s past, then perhaps I might find out something about his present.

We made our way along the coast road, with the sea roaring to our right, and by the time we began to spot the Lisbon docks I already had a clear idea of the Da Silva clan’s business empire. Manuel Da Silva was the son of Manuel Da Silva and the grandson of Manuel Da Silva: three men from three generations whose fortune had begun with a simple harborside tavern. From serving wine behind a counter the grandfather went on to sell it by the barrel; then the business moved to
a warehouse—dilapidated and no longer in use—that João pointed out to me as we passed. The son took up the inheritance and expanded the business, selling not only wine but other merchandise wholesale, soon making the first attempts at colonial trading. When the reins passed to the third Manuel, the business was already prosperous, but he achieved the greatest success of all. Cotton from the Cape Verde Islands, wood from Mozambique, Chinese silks from Macao. Lately he’d gone back to focusing on domestic operations, too: from time to time he’d travel to the interior of the country, although João wasn’t able to tell me what he dealt in there.

Old João was practically retired: a few years earlier a nephew of his had taken his place as personal chauffeur to the third Manuel Da Silva. But he remained active, carrying out a few minor tasks that the boss occasionally put his way: short trips, messages, errands of little significance. Such as—for example—taking a dressmaker at leisure around Lisbon one May morning.

At a shop in Chiado I bought several pairs of gloves, which were so hard to find in Madrid. At another, a dozen pairs of silk stockings, an impossible dream for Spanish women in the tough postwar years. A bit farther on, a springtime hat, perfumed soaps, and two pairs of sandals, then American cosmetics: mascara, lipstick, and heavenly scented night creams. What bliss in comparison with the sparseness of my poor Spain: everything available, opulent and varied, within immediate reach; you only had to take your purse out of your bag. João diligently took me from one place to the next, carried my shopping bags, opened and closed the back door of the car countless times for me to get in and out comfortably, recommended that I eat in a charming restaurant, and showed me streets, squares, and monuments. And along the way he furnished me with the thing I most desired: an incessant pattern of brushstrokes about Da Silva and his family. Some of them weren’t especially interesting: that his grandmother was the real driving force behind the original business, that his mother died young, that his elder sister was married to an ophthalmologist and the younger entered a convent of barefoot nuns. Other little tidbits excited me more. The old chauffeur reeled them off with a free and easy naïveté: Don Manuel had
a lot of friends, both Portuguese and foreign, some English, and yes, of course, the odd German lately, too; yes, he frequently had guests at his house; indeed, he liked everything always to be ready in case he decided to show up with guests for lunch or dinner, sometimes at his Lisbon residence in Lapa, sometimes in the Quinta da Fonte, his country house.

Over the course of the day I also had the chance to take a good look at the human fauna inhabiting the city. Lisboans of every kind, men in dark suits and elegant ladies,
nouveaux riches
lately arrived from the country into the capital to buy gold watches and fit false teeth, crowlike women in mourning, intimidating-looking Germans, Jewish refugees walking with heads bowed or queuing for a ticket to salvation, foreigners with a thousand different accents fleeing the war and its devastating effects. Among them, I suppose, would be Rosalinda. At my request, as though it had been a simple whim, João showed me the beautiful Avenida da Liberdade, with its black and white paving stones and trees that were almost as tall as the buildings that flanked its width. That was where she lived, at number 114; that was the address on the letters that Beigbeder had brought to my house on what was probably the bitterest night of his life. I looked for the number and found it above the large wooden door in the middle of an impressive tiled façade. Well, of course it would be this impressive, I thought, with a touch of melancholy.

Over the course of the afternoon we continued to make our way through the little crannies of the city, but at about five I felt myself beginning to wilt. The day had been devastatingly hot, and João’s relentless conversation had left my head fit to explode.

“Just one last stop, right here,” he suggested when I told him it was time to go back. He stopped the car in front of a café with a modern-looking entrance on the Rua Garrett. The Brasileira.

“No one can leave Lisbon without having a good cup of coffee,” he said.

“But João, it’s terribly late . . . ,” I protested, a plaintive tone in my voice.

“Five minutes, no more than that. Go in and ask for a shot, you won’t regret it.”

I agreed reluctantly: I didn’t want to be rude to my unexpected confidant, who might at any moment prove useful to me again. In spite of the overloaded decoration and the excessive number of locals, the place was cool and pleasant. The counter to the right, the tables to the left, a clock in front, golden moldings on the ceiling, and large paintings on the walls. They served me a small white porcelain cup and I took a cautious sip. Black coffee—strong and wonderful. João was right: a real pick-me-up. As I waited for it to cool, I reviewed the day’s events in my mind. I went back over a few little details about Da Silva, weighed them, and mentally organized them. When there was nothing left in the cup but the dregs, I put a banknote down beside it and stood up.

The meeting was so unexpected, so sudden and powerful, that there was no way I could react. There were three men walking in, chatting to one another at just the moment I was about to leave: three hats, three ties, three foreign faces speaking English. Two of them were unknown, the third wasn’t. And it had been more than three years since we’d said good-bye. In that time, Marcus Logan had barely changed.

I saw him before he saw me, so that by the time he noticed me I—in distress—had already turned away toward the door.

“Sira. . . ,” he murmured.

No one had called me that in a long time. My stomach tensed and I felt as if I was about to vomit my coffee onto the marble floor. Right there in front of me, little more than six feet away, with the last letter of my name still hanging from his lips and surprise fixed on his face, was the man with whom I’d shared such fears and joy; the man with whom I’d laughed and talked, wandered, danced, and cried; who had managed to give me back my mother and whom I resisted falling in love with even though for a few intense weeks there was something much stronger than a simple friendship that held us together. Instantly the past unfolded as if on a screen: Tetouan, Rosalinda, Beigbeder, the Hotel Nacional, my old workshop, the agitated days and endless nights. What could have been and yet was not, in a time that would never return. I wanted to throw my arms around him, say yes, Marcus, it’s me. I wanted to ask him to take me away from here, to run hand in hand with him as we’d once done through the shadows of an African garden,
to go back to Morocco, forget that there was such a thing as the Secret Intelligence Service, ignore the fact that I had a dark job to do and a sad, grey Madrid to return to. But I did none of those things, because clarity—with a cry of alarm stronger even than my own will—warned me that I had no choice but to pretend not to know him. And I obeyed.