The Time in Between: A Novel (30 page)

“Someone important.”

“Who?” I said again, tugging at his sleeve, unable to contain my curiosity.

He gave another mischievous smile and covered his mouth theatrically as though wanting to divulge a great secret. He whispered in my ear, slowly.

“Your friend is the beloved of the high commissioner.”

“Commissioner Vázquez?” I asked in disbelief.

He replied to my suggestion first with a laugh and then an explanation.

“No, you lunatic, no—Claudio Vázquez just deals with the police, keeping the local delinquents in check, not to mention the brainless troop he has in his command. I very much doubt he has free time for extramarital affairs, or at least not to have a regular little friend he puts in a villa with a pool on the Paseo de las Palmeras. Your client, sweetheart, is the lover of Lieutenant Colonel Juan Luis Beigbeder y Atienza, Spain’s high commissioner in Morocco and governor general
of the Spanish enclaves. The most important military and administrative post in the whole Protectorate, to be quite clear.”

“Félix, are you sure?” I murmured.

“Let my mother live to eighty fit as a fiddle if I’m lying to you. No one knows how long they’ve been together, she’s been in Tetouan a little over a month: enough, in any case, for everyone to know who she is and what’s going on between them. He’s been high commissioner, officially named by the government in Burgos since not that long ago, though he’s been acting high commissioner since practically the beginning of the war. They say Franco’s delighted with him because he’s endlessly recruiting warlike Moorish boys for him, to send to the front.”

Not in my most elaborate fantasy could I have imagined Rosalinda Fox as the lover of a lieutenant colonel in the Nationalist faction.

“What’s he like?”

The curiosity in my voice made him laugh again delightedly.

“Beigbeder? You don’t know him? The truth is, he hasn’t been seen as much lately—he must spend most of his time shut away in the High Commission—but in the past when he was undersecretary for Indigenous Affairs you could have seen him out on the street at any time. Back then, of course, he could go about unnoticed: he was just a serious, anonymous officer with barely any social life. He was almost always out on his own and didn’t usually attend the soirées at the Hípica Club, the Hotel Nacional, or the Salón Marfil. And he didn’t spend his whole life playing cards like the laid-back Colonel Sáenz de Buruaga, who on the day of the uprising even gave the first orders from the casino terrace. A discreet sort, Beigbeder, rather solitary even.”

“Attractive?”

“Of course he doesn’t do anything for me, but still he does seem to have his appeal to you people—you’re ever so strange, you women.”

“Describe him to me.”

“Tall, thin, stern looking. Dark, his hair combed back. With round glasses, mustache, something intellectual about him. In spite of his post and the way times are right now, he usually goes about dressed in civvies, with exceptionally boring dark suits.”

“Married?”

“Probably, though it would seem that while he’s been here he’s always lived alone. But it’s not unusual among soldiers that they don’t take their families everywhere they go.”

“Age?”

“Old enough to be her father.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, that’s your problem. If you worked less and went out more, I’m sure you’d run into him sooner or later and then you’d be able to confirm what I’m telling you with your own eyes. He still goes for a walk from time to time, though now he’s always accompanied by a couple of escorts. They say he’s an extremely cultured gentleman who speaks several languages and has lived outside Spain for many years; completely different to begin with from the national heroes we’re used to having in these parts, though of course his position indicates that he is on their side. Perhaps he and your client met abroad somewhere; maybe she’ll explain it to you sometime and then you will tell me. You know how fascinated I am by these romantic
affaires
. Well, I’ll leave you, girl—I’m taking the witch to the cinema. A double bill:
Hermana San Sulpicio
and
Don Quintin the Bitter
; I’ve really got quite an afternoon of glamour awaiting me. With the chaos of this war, we haven’t had a single decent film come over here in nearly a year. How I’d love to see a good American musical. You remember Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
Top Hat
? ‘I just got an invitation through the mails: “Your presence requested this evening, it’s formal—top hat, white tie, and tails.’ ”

He went out crooning away to himself, and I shut the door behind him. This time it wasn’t his mother watching indiscreetly through the peephole, but me. I observed him, as with that little tune still in his mouth he tinklingly drew his keys from his pocket, found his latchkey, and inserted it into the lock. When he disappeared I went back into the workshop and resumed my work, still struggling to believe what I had just heard. I tried to keep working for a while longer but could feel myself lacking the will. Or the strength. Or both. I remembered the turbulent activity of the previous day and decided to allow myself the rest of the afternoon off. I considered copying Félix and his mother and
going to the cinema, since I deserved a bit of distraction. With that in mind I left the house, but inexplicably my steps took me in a different direction, leading me to the Plaza de España instead.

I was met by the beds of flowers and the palm trees, the colored pebbles on the ground and the white buildings surrounding the square. The stone benches, as on any other afternoon, were filled with couples and groups of girls. A pleasant smell of savories was wafting from the little cafés nearby. I crossed the square toward the High Commission, which I’d seen so many times since my arrival and which had aroused so little curiosity in me before now. Very close to the caliph’s palace, the large white colonial-style building surrounded by leafy gardens housed the main seat of the Spanish administration. Through the vegetation it was possible to make out the two main stories and a third shorter one, the turrets at the corners, the green shutters and the orange tiles that finished it off. Imposing-looking Arab soldiers, stoic under their turbans and broad cloaks, stood guard at the large iron gate. Imperious high-ranking officers of the Spanish army in Africa wearing chickpea-colored uniforms went in and out of a small side door, looking impeccable in their breeches and well-shined boots. There were also native soldiers swarming around, moving from one side to the other, with European-style military jackets, wide trousers, and some kind of brownish bands around their calves. The bicolor national flag was waving against a blue sky that already seemed to announce the arrival of summer. I stood there watching that incessant movement of men in uniform until I noticed how many stares my immobility was attracting. Flustered and uncomfortable, I turned and went back to the square. What was I looking for outside the High Commission, what was I expecting to find, why had I gone there? No reason, probably; at least, no concrete reason except to get a closer look at the habitat of my client’s unexpected lover.

___________

S
pring was turning to a gentle summer of luminous nights, and I went on sharing my earnings from the workshop with Candelaria. The bundle of pounds sterling at the bottom of the chest grew till it was almost large enough to pay the amount due; there wasn’t long to go before the deadline for me to repay the debt to the Continental. I took comfort in knowing that I’d be able to do it, that I would at last be able to buy my freedom. As ever, news of the war continued to come in on the radio and in the press. General Mola died, the battle of Brunete began. Félix continued his nighttime forays, and Jamila remained always by my side, developing her sweet, strange Spanish, starting to help me out with a few small jobs: a loose piece of tacking, a button, a fastening. There was almost nothing to interrupt the monotony of the days in the workshop, only the sounds of domestic chores and snatches of distant conversations in the neighboring apartments that drifted in through the open windows of the building’s central courtyard. That, and the constant commotion of the children upstairs who were already on holiday from school, going out to play on the road, sometimes en masse, sometimes one at a time. None of those noises bothered me. Quite the contrary: they kept me company, they managed to make me feel less alone.

One afternoon in mid-July, however, the noises and voices were louder, the running more hurried.

“They’ve arrived, they’ve arrived!” Then more voices, shouts and slamming of doors, names repeated between loud sobs: Concha, Concha! Carmela—my sister! Esperanza, at last, at last!

I heard them moving pieces of furniture around and racing up and down the stairs dozens of times. I heard laughter, crying, orders shouted. Fill the bathtub, get out some more towels, bring the clothes, the mattresses—the girl, the girl, give the girl something to eat. And more crying, more emotional shouting, and more laughter. And the smell of food and the noise of pots and pans in the kitchen at altogether the wrong time of day. And again—Carmela, oh God, Concha, Concha! The bustle didn’t calm down until well after midnight. Only then did Félix appear at my house and I was finally able to ask him.

“What’s going on in the Herreras’ house? Everyone’s been behaving so strangely today!”

“Haven’t you heard? Josefina’s sisters have arrived. They’ve managed to get them out of the Red Zone.”

The following morning I heard the voices and the shuffling around again, though rather calmer now. All the same, there was incessant activity right through the day—people coming and going, the doorbell, the telephone, children running down the corridor. And betweentimes there was more sobbing, more laughter, more crying, and again more laughter. In the afternoon someone rang my doorbell. I thought that perhaps it was one of them; maybe they needed something, to ask a favor, to borrow something: half a dozen eggs, a quilt, possibly a little jug of oil. But I was wrong. The person at the door was someone altogether unexpected.

“Señora Candelaria says for you to come whenever you can to La Luneta. The schoolmaster Don Anselmo has died.”

Paquito, the fat son of the fat mother, had sweatily brought me the message.

“You go on ahead, and tell her I’ll be right over.”

I told Jamila the news and she cried pitifully. I didn’t shed any tears, but I felt them in my soul. Of all the people who made up that
restless tribe, he was the one I was closest to, the one who had the most affectionate relationship with me. I put on the darkest suit I had in my closet; I hadn’t yet made space in my wardrobe for mourning clothes. Jamila and I made our way hurriedly along the streets and quickly arrived at our destination. After going up the flight of stairs, we couldn’t get any farther: a dense group of men stood crammed together, blocking the entrance. We elbowed our way through the teacher’s friends and acquaintances who were respectfully waiting their turn to approach and bid their final farewell.

The door to the boardinghouse was open, and before we had even crossed the threshold I could smell burning wax and hear a resonant murmur of female voices praying in unison. Candelaria came out to meet us as we went in. She was in a black suit that was quite clearly too small for her, and on her majestic bosom swung a medallion with the face of the Virgin. In the middle of the dining room, on the table, an open coffin held the ashen body of Don Anselmo in his Sunday best. A shudder ran down my spine to see him, and I could feel Jamila’s nails digging into my arm. I gave Candelaria two kisses and she left the trace of a stream of tears next to my ear.

“There he is—fallen on the battlefield itself.”

I recalled those fights between dinner courses that I’d witnessed so many times. The bones of the anchovies and the bits of peel from the African melons, wrinkled and yellow, flying from one side of the table to the other. The poisonous jokes and the indecent ones, the forks poised like spears, the yelling of one faction, then the other. The provocations and the threats of eviction that the Matutera never carried through. The dining table transformed into a virtual battlefield. I tried to hold back a sad laugh. The dried-up sisters, the fat mother, and a few women who lived nearby, sitting at the window and in mourning from head to foot, were still reciting the mysteries of the rosary in monotonous, tearful voices. For a moment I imagined Don Anselmo alive, with a Toledo between his lips, shouting lividly between coughing fits for them to damn well stop praying for him once and for all. But the schoolmaster was no longer among the living, and they were. And sitting by his dead body,
however present and warm it might still be, they could now do whatever they saw fit. Candelaria and I sat down beside them, and the Matutera coupled her voice to the rhythm of the prayers while I pretended to do likewise, but my mind was running along other channels.

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.

I moved my reed chair toward hers till our arms were touching.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

“Candelaria, I have to ask you something,” I whispered in her ear.

Christ, listen to us.
Christ, hear us.

“Tell me, my angel,” she replied in an equally low voice.

Heavenly God the Father, have mercy upon us.
God the Son, redeemer of the world.

“I’ve heard they’ve been getting people out of the Red Zone.”

God the Holy Spirit.
Most Holy Trinity, who is One God.

“That’s what they’re saying . . .”

Holy Mary, pray for us.
Holy Mother of God.
Blessed Virgin of Virgins.

“Can you find out how they’re doing it?”

Mother of Christ.
Mother of the Church.

“Why do you want to know?”

Mother of Heavenly Grace.
O purest of Mothers.
Most chaste of Mothers.

“To get my mother out of Madrid and bring her over to me in Tetouan.”