The Time in Between: A Novel (72 page)

My body was begging to run away from him but I couldn’t do it: not only because a heavy load of trunks and suitcases was momentarily blocking the hotel’s large revolving door, but for other much more forceful reasons. I’d just learned that twenty-four hours from now Da Silva was planning to wine and dine his German contacts. No doubt that was the meeting that Hillgarth’s wife had predicted, and it would probably be there that all the detailed information that the English were so keen to learn would be circulating. My next aim would be to try by any means to get myself invited to attend, but time wasn’t on my side. I had no choice but to rush ahead.

“My condolences, my dear Arish.”

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what he was referring to. He probably attributed my silence to the fact that I was moved.

“Thank you,” I murmured when the penny dropped. “My father wasn’t a Christian, but I like to honor his memory with a few minutes of religious devotion.”

“Do you feel like a drink? Maybe it’s not a good time, but I heard you’ve been by my office a couple of times and I’ve just come to return the visit. Please excuse my repeated absence: I’ve been traveling much more than I’d like lately.”

“I think a drink would do me good, thank you, it’s been a long day. And yes, I did stop by your office, but just to say hello; everything else has been going perfectly.” Plucking up all my courage, I managed to polish off the sentence with a smile.

We made our way out to the terrace where we’d sat on that first night and everything returned to how it had been. Or almost. All the props were the same; the palm trees moved by the breeze, the ocean in the background, the silver moon, and the champagne at just the right temperature. And yet there was something not quite right with the scene. Something that had nothing to do with me, or the setting. I watched Manuel as he greeted the patrons around us again, and then I realized that it was he who was jarring in the middle of the harmony: he wasn’t behaving naturally. He was trying hard to be charming, and
as usual deploying the whole catalog of friendly phrases and amiable expressions, but no sooner had the person he was addressing turned away than his mouth adopted a serious, determined grimace that automatically disappeared again the moment he turned his focus back on me.

“So you’ve bought more material . . .”

“And also thread, accessories, ornaments, and a million notions.”

“Your clients are going to be delighted.”

“The Germans especially.”

Now I’d thrown a stone into a pool of still water—it had to draw a response from him: this was my last chance to get myself invited to his house; if I couldn’t do it, the mission would be over. He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

“The German ladies are my most demanding clients, the ones who really appreciate quality,” I explained. “The Spaniards are concerned with the final look of the piece, but the Germans concentrate on the perfection of every little detail; they’re much more exacting. Fortunately I’ve been able to conform to their wishes and we get along without any problem. I think I’ve actually got a gift for keeping them happy,” I said, finishing off my sentence with a mischievous wink.

I brought the glass to my lips and had to force myself not to drain the whole thing in one go. Come on, Manuel, come on, I thought. React—invite me. I could be useful to you, I could entertain your guests’ companions while you negotiate over the spit of the wolf and find out how to get the English off your back.

“There are a lot of Germans in Madrid, too, aren’t there?” he asked.

It wasn’t an innocent question about the social environment of a neighboring country: it was a genuine interest in who my acquaintances were and what sort of relationship I had with them. He was coming closer. I knew what I had to say, which words to use: certain key names, weighty posts, and a feigned air of detachment.

“Oh, so many,” I went on dully. I sat back in my chair, dropping my hand with an apparent lack of interest; I crossed my legs again, had another sip. “It was Baroness von Stohrer, the ambassador’s wife, who made that comment last time she was in my studio, that Madrid had become the perfect German colony. And the truth is, some of them
bring us a huge amount of work; Elsa Bruckmann, for example, who they say is a personal friend of Hitler’s, she’s in two or three times a week. And at the most recent party at Hans Lazar’s house—he’s the attaché for press and propaganda . . .”

I alluded to a couple of trivial anecdotes and dropped a few more names. With apparent unconcern, as though not finding them particularly important. And the more I spoke with feigned uninterest, the more I noticed Da Silva hanging on my words as though the whole world around him had stopped. He barely noticed the greetings that came at him from both sides, didn’t pick up his glass from the table, and allowed his cigarette to burn away between his fingers, the ash forming a fat grey worm at the tip. Until I decided to stop increasing the pressure.

“I’m sorry, Manuel; I’m sure this is all terribly boring for you: the parties, clothing, and frivolity of women with nothing to do. Tell me, how was your trip?”

Our conversation went on for another half hour, during which time neither he nor I mentioned the Germans again. Their scent, however, seemed still to be lingering in the air.

“I think it’s approaching dinnertime,” he said, looking at his watch. “Would you like . . . ?”

“I’m worn out. Would you mind if we left it for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow won’t be possible.” I noticed him hesitating a moment and held my breath; then he went on. “I have an engagement.”

Go on, go on, go on. All it needed was a little push.

“What a shame, it will be our last night.” My disappointment seemed genuine, almost as genuine as my desire to hear him say what I’d been waiting for over so many days. “I’ve arranged to go back to Madrid on Friday; there’s an awful lot of work waiting for me next week. Baroness de Petrino, Lazar’s wife, is hosting a reception next Thursday and I’ve got half a dozen German clients who want me to—”

“Perhaps you’d like to join us?”

I thought my heart had stopped beating.

“It’s just a little get-together of a few friends. Germans and Portuguese. At my house.”

__________

H
ow much would it be for you to take me to Lisbon?”

The man looked one way then the other to make sure that there wasn’t anyone watching us. Then he took off his cap and scratched his head furiously.

“Ten escudos,” he said, without taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

I held out a twenty.

“Let’s go.”

I had tried unsuccessfully to sleep: emotions and sensations raced across my mind all jumbled together, bumping against the walls of my brain. Satisfaction that the mission had finally begun to make progress, anxiety about what was awaiting me, unease at the terrible certainty of what I had learned. And on top of all that, the fear of knowing that Marcus Logan was on a grim list, which he probably had no idea existed, and frustration at having no way of alerting him about it. I had no clue where to find him, I’d only run into him in two places that were as different from each other as they were far apart. Perhaps the only place where they could give me any information would have been Da Silva’s own offices, but I didn’t dare approach Beatriz Oliveira again, especially now that her boss was back.

One in the morning, half past, a quarter to two. Sometimes I was hot, sometimes cold. Two, two ten. I got up several times, opened and closed the balcony doors, drank a glass of water, turned on the light, turned it off. Twenty to three, three, three fifteen. And then, suddenly, I thought I’d found the solution. Or at least something approaching it.

I put on the darkest clothes I could find in my closet: a black mohair suit, a lead-grey jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down to my eyebrows. The last things I took were the key to my room and a handful of banknotes. I didn’t need anything else, apart from luck. I tiptoed down the back stairs; everything was calm and there was practically no light. I continued on with no clear idea of where I was, letting my instinct guide me. The kitchens, the storerooms, the washrooms, the boiler rooms. I reached the street through a back door out of the basement. It definitely wasn’t a good omen; I’d just realized that it was the way they took out the trash, albeit rich people’s trash.

It was a dark night, with the lights of the casino glimmering a few hundred yards away, and from time to time I could hear one of the last late-night partygoers: a good-bye, a muffled laugh, the engine of a car. Then silence. I settled down to wait, my lapels raised and my hands in my pockets, sitting on a curb and protected by a pile of soda-siphon crates. I was from a working neighborhood myself, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the bustle would start: there were a lot of people who woke at the crack of dawn in order to make life more pleasant for those who could allow themselves the luxury of sleeping well into the morning. The first lights in the lower service floors of the hotel were on by four, and soon after that a couple of employees came out. They stopped to light a cigarette in the doorway, cupping the flame with their hands, and then wandered off in no apparent hurry. The first vehicle was a sort of van; without pulling in too close it disgorged more than a dozen young women and then was off again. They went in grumbling tiredly: the waitresses on the next shift, I guessed. The second motor was that of a three-wheeler. A skinny, badly shaved man got out and began to rummage in the back for something or other. Then I saw him go into the kitchen carrying a large wicker basket that didn’t seem to
weigh much, and whose contents, with the darkness and the distance, I wasn’t able to identify. When he had finished, he headed back to the little vehicle, and it was then that I approached him.

Using a handkerchief, I tried to clean off the straw that covered the seat, but I couldn’t do it. The interior smelled of chicken droppings, and there were feathers, broken shells, and old bits of excrement everywhere. The breakfast eggs were presented to the guests exquisitely fried or scrambled on gold-edged porcelain plates. The vehicle that transported them from the laying coops to the hotel kitchens was a whole lot less elegant. I tried not to think about the soft leather of the seats in João’s Bentley as we made our way, swaying to the rhythm of the three-wheeler’s clattering. I was sitting on the egg-deliveryman’s right, the two of us squeezed into a narrow front seat less than three feet wide. Despite the tight quarters, we didn’t exchange a word, except when I needed to give him the address where he was to take me.

“Here it is,” I said when we arrived.

I recognized the façade.

“Another fifty escudos if you come and collect me in two hours.”

A gesture touching the brim of his cap meant that we had a deal.

The main door was shut; I sat on a stone bench to wait for the night watchman. With my hat pulled down and the lapels of my jacket still up, I got rid of my doubts by concentrating on trying to remove one by one the pieces of straw and feathers that had stuck to my clothes. Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long: within a quarter of an hour the man I was waiting for arrived, brandishing a large set of keys. He swallowed the tale I spun for him, in fits and starts, about having forgotten a handbag and let me in. I looked for the name on the mailboxes, ran up two flights of stairs, and rapped on the door with a bronze knocker that was bigger than my own hand.

It didn’t take them long to wake. First I heard somebody moving, with the weary tread of someone dragging along a pair of old slippers. The peephole was opened and on the other side I could see a dark eye full of sleep and surprise. Then I heard the sound of quick, more energetic footsteps. And voices—low, urgent voices. Though they were muffled by the thickness of the solid wooden door, I recognized one of
them. The one I was here for. It was confirmed when another eye, lively and blue, appeared at the little hole.

“Rosalinda, it’s me, Sira. Please, open up.”

A bolt—
thunk
. Another.

Our greeting was hasty, full of restrained joy and excited whispers.

“What a marvelous surprise! But what are you doing here in the middle of the night, querida? They told me you were coming to Lisbon but I wouldn’t be able to see you—how is everything in Madrid? How’s—”

My joy was great, too, but fear made me revert to a state of caution.

“Shhhhhhh . . . ,” I said, trying to contain her. She ignored me and continued with her enthusiastic welcome. Even having been dragged out of bed in the early hours of the morning didn’t diminish her usual glamour. Her delicate bone structure and transparent skin were covered by an ivory silk dressing gown that came down to her feet, her wavy hair was perhaps a little shorter, but her mouth was still running on in a jumble of English, Spanish, and Portuguese, just as it used to.

Having her so close to me unleashed a million questions that had long been coiled and ready to spring. What had become of her in the long months since she’d left Spain, what cunning wiles had allowed her to get ahead, how had she taken Beigbeder’s fall? Her house emanated an aura of luxury and well-being, but I knew that the fragility of her financial resources prevented her from affording a place like this on her own. I preferred not to ask. However heavy the pressures may have been, and however dark the circumstances, Rosalinda Fox continued to radiate the same positive vitality she always had, an optimism that could topple any wall, get around any obstacle, or raise the dead if she so willed it.

We walked down the long hallway arm in arm, talking amid whispers and shadows. Upon reaching her bedroom, she closed the door behind us and a memory of Tetouan immediately assailed me like a gust of African air. The Berber rug, a Moorish lamp, the pictures on the walls. I recognized a Bertuchi watercolor: the whitewashed walls of the Moorish quarter, the Riffian women selling oranges, an overloaded mule, haiks and djellabas, and—way out in the background—the
minaret of a mosque cut out against the Moroccan sky. I looked away; this wasn’t the time for nostalgia.