The Time in Between: A Novel (58 page)

He took his glasses off once again to rub his eyes, then refilled his glass and lit another cigarette.

“You’re very tired,” I said. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

He looked at me with the face of a little lost boy. A little lost boy who was carrying the weight of more than fifty years of existence on his back, along with the highest posting in the Spanish colonial administration and a ministerial role with a precipitous ending. He replied with crushing honesty.

“I don’t want to leave because I can’t bear the idea of going back to being alone in that big gloomy house that up till now has been my official residence.”

“Stay and sleep here if you prefer,” I offered. I knew it was reckless on my part to invite him to spend the night, but I could sense that given the state he was in, he might do something crazy if I shut the doors of my house and drove him out to wander the streets of Madrid alone.

“I fear I won’t be able to sleep a wink,” he acknowledged, with a half smile heavy with sadness, “but I would be grateful if you’d allow
me to rest here awhile; I won’t be any trouble, I promise. It will be like a refuge in the midst of the storm: you can’t imagine how bitter the solitude of the banished man can be.”

“Consider yourself at home. I’ll bring you a blanket in case you want to lie down. Take off your jacket and tie—make yourself comfortable.”

He followed my instructions while I went off in search of a blanket. When I returned he was in his shirtsleeves, refilling the glass with cognac once again.

“Last one,” I said authoritatively, taking the bottle away.

I put a clean ashtray on the table and the blanket on the back of the sofa. Then I sat down next to him and gently took his arm.

“It’ll all pass, Juan Luis, give it time. Sooner or later, eventually, it’ll all pass.”

I rested my head on his shoulder and he put his hand in mine.

“From your mouth to God’s ears, Sira,” he whispered.

I left him alone with his demons and retired to bed. As I made my way back through the hallway to my bedroom I heard him talking to himself in Arabic; I didn’t understand what he was saying. It took me some time to fall asleep; it was probably past four when I managed to reconcile myself to a strange, troubling slumber. I woke to the sound of the front door closing at the other end of the hallway. I looked at the time on my alarm clock. Twenty to eight. I would never see him again.

__________

M
y fears about being followed suddenly lost all urgency. Before troubling Hillgarth with suppositions that might be unfounded, I had to make immediate contact with him to get Beigbeder’s information and letters to him. His situation was much more important than my fears: not only for himself, but for my friend, and everyone. Which was why that morning I tore to shreds the pattern I’d planned to use to convey my suspicions about being followed and replaced it with a new one: “Beigbeder visited me last night. Out of ministry, state of extreme nervousness. Being sent under arrest to Ronda. Fears for his life. Gave me letters to send to Mrs. Fox to Lisbon by embassy diplomatic bag. Awaiting instructions. Urgent.”

I considered going to Embassy at noon to attract Hillgarth’s attention. Although the news of the ministerial dismissal would undoubtedly have reached him first thing in the morning, I knew that all the details the colonel had told me would be of considerable interest. And besides, I sensed that I should get rid of the letters addressed to Rosalinda as quickly as possible: knowing the sender’s position, I was sure those pages went beyond mere intimate personal correspondence and constituted an arsenal of political fury that I really never ought to have in my possession. But it was Wednesday, and like every Wednesday
I had my trip to the beauty salon planned, so I preferred to use the regular channels of transmission before raising the alarm with an emergency action that would allow me to hand over the information only a couple of hours earlier. I forced myself to work through the morning, I was visited by two clients, I picked unenthusiastically at some food, and at a quarter to four I left home for the hairdresser’s, with the tube of patterns firmly wrapped in a silk handkerchief in my handbag. It looked like there was rain on the way, but I decided against taking a taxi: I needed to get some fresh air on my face to dispel the fog that was destroying me. As I walked, I recalled the details of Beigbeder’s unsettling visit the previous night and tried to predict the plan that Hillgarth and his people would come up with for getting hold of the letters. Lost in these thoughts, I wasn’t aware of anyone following me; perhaps my own concerns kept me so engrossed that if there was someone there, I simply didn’t notice.

The messages were hidden in the locker without the curly-haired girl who looked after that sort of cloakroom showing the slightest sign of complicity when she caught my eye. Either she was a superb collaborator or she hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening right under her nose. The hairdressers dealt with me as skillfully as they did every week, and while they put a wave in my hair—which had now grown down past my shoulders—I pretended to be absorbed in the current issue of a magazine. Though I had little interest in that women’s magazine full of pharmaceutical remedies, sickly sweet stories full of morals, and a long article on Gothic cathedrals, I read it from cover to cover without taking my eyes off it, so as to avoid contact with the rest of the clientele sitting nearby, whose conversations didn’t engross me in the slightest. Unless my visit coincided with that of a client of mine—which happened not infrequently—I had no desire to have even the most cursory chat with anybody.

I left the hairdresser’s salon without the patterns, my hair perfect and my soul still troubled. The afternoon weather remained disagreeable, but I decided to take a walk instead of returning directly home. I preferred to keep myself distracted, distanced from Beigbeder’s letters, while I waited for news from Hillgarth about what to do with
them. I wandered aimlessly up the Calle Alcalá as far as the Gran Vía; the stroll was calm and safe at first, but as I went on walking I noticed how the density of people on the pavements increased, well-turned-out passersby mixing with bootblacks, street sweepers, and crippled tramps showing their scars shamelessly in the hope of some charity. It was then that I realized I’d ventured beyond the perimeter that Hillgarth had marked out: I was entering a rather dangerous zone where I might perhaps run into someone who had once known me. They probably wouldn’t ever suspect that this woman walking in an elegant grey wool coat had supplanted the sewing girl I was years ago, but just in case I decided to go into a cinema to kill time for the rest of the afternoon, while also avoiding being any more exposed than I needed to be.

The Palacio de la Musica movie theater was playing
Rebecca.
The showing had already started, but I didn’t care; I wasn’t there for the plot, I just wanted a little privacy while enough time went by for someone to get instructions to my home about what to do. The usher accompanied me to one of the last rows on one side, while Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine hurtled down a twisting highway in a car with the roof down. As soon as my eyes had become used to the dark, I realized that the main seating area was almost full; my row and the ones around it, however, being farther back, had only a few people scattered here and there. To my left were several couples; to my right, no one. But not for long: just a couple of minutes after I arrived, I noticed someone taking a seat at the far end of the row, no more than ten or twelve places away. A man. Alone. A man alone whose face I couldn’t make out in the shadows. Some man or other, whom I wouldn’t have paid any attention to but for the fact that he was wearing a light-colored raincoat with the collar up, identical to that of the person who’d been following me for more than a week. A man who seemed—judging by the direction of his gaze—to be less interested in the plot of the movie than in me.

A cold sweat trickled down my back. Suddenly I knew that all my suspicions hadn’t been imaginary: that man was there because of me, he’d most probably followed me from the hairdresser’s, perhaps
followed me even since I’d left home; he’d been following me the whole time; he’d watched as I paid for my ticket at the box office and as I went through the foyer into the hall and found my seat. Watching me without my noticing him hadn’t been enough for him, however: once he’d tracked me down, he’d installed himself a few feet away, blocking my exit. And I—careless and overwhelmed by the news of Beigbeder’s dismissal—had decided at the last minute not to share my suspicions with Hillgarth, even though they’d been growing with each day that passed. My first thought was to escape, but I realized at once that I was cornered. I couldn’t get to the right-hand aisle without him letting me by; if I decided to go to the left I’d have to bother a whole mass of patrons who’d grumble at the interruption and would have to get up or move their legs aside to let me pass, which would give the stranger more than enough time to leave his seat and follow me. Then I remembered Hillgarth’s advice during our lunch at the American legation: faced with any suspicion that I was being followed, maintain calm, self-control, and an appearance of normality.

The brazenness of the stranger in the raincoat didn’t presage anything good, however; what till now had been a hidden, subtle pursuit had given way abruptly to an ostentatious declaration of intent. I’m here so that you can see me, he seemed to be saying wordlessly. So that you know I’m watching you, and that I know where you go; so that you’re aware that I can step into your life anytime I want to: look, today I’ve decided to follow you to the cinema and block your exit; tomorrow I can do with you whatever I feel like.

I pretended to ignore him and tried hard to focus on the movie, unsuccessfully. The scenes passed before my eyes without any meaning or coherence: a gloomy, majestic mansion, an evil-looking housekeeper, a heroine who always does the wrong thing, the ghost of a fascinating woman floating in the air. The whole audience seemed captivated; my concerns, however, were on another matter closer at hand. As the minutes ticked by and the screen was filled with a succession of images in white, black, and grey, I let my hair fall over the right side of my face several times and so tried covertly to scrutinize the stranger. I wasn’t
able to make out his features: the distance and the darkness prevented me. But a sort of silent, tense relationship was established between us, as though we were united by a common lack of interest in the movie. Neither of us held our breath when the nameless heroine broke that porcelain figurine, nor were we overcome with a sense of panic when the housekeeper tried to persuade her to hurl herself out of the window. We didn’t even feel our hearts freeze when we suspected that Maxim de Winter himself might have murdered his depraved wife.

The words “The End” appeared after the fire at Manderley, and the cinema began to be flooded with light. My immediate reaction was to hide my face; for some ridiculous reason I felt that the light would make me seem more vulnerable to my pursuer. I tilted my head, allowed my hair to obscure my face again, and pretended to be engrossed in looking for something in my handbag. When I finally raised my eyes slightly and looked over to my right, the man had disappeared. I remained in my seat until the screen had gone blank, fear clutching the pit of my stomach. Once they had turned on all the lights and the final dawdling spectators left the hall, the ushers came in to collect bits of trash and items accidentally dropped between the seats. It was only then—still afraid—that I steeled myself and got up.

The main lobby was still crammed full and noisy; a downpour was falling on the street and the spectators waiting to leave were mingling with those waiting for the next showing to begin. I took refuge, half hidden behind a column off to one corner, and amid the crowds, the voices, and the thick smoke of a thousand cigarettes, I felt anonymous and momentarily safe. But the fragile feeling of security only lasted a few minutes, which was how long it took for the mass to start to dissolve. The new arrivals were now ready to enter the main hall to lose themselves in the adventures of the de Winters and their ghosts. The remainder of us—the better prepared under the protection of umbrellas and hats, the more reckless under jackets with hoods or collars up and newspapers held open over their heads, the bravest simply filled with daring—began gradually to quit the lavish world of the cinema and go out into the street to confront everyday reality, a reality that on
that autumn night showed itself through a thick curtain of inclement falling water.

Finding a taxi was a lost cause, so just like the hundreds of other people who preceded me I braced myself, and with nothing but a silk scarf to cover my hair and the collar of my coat up, I set off back home in the rain. I kept up a fast pace, wanting to get to shelter as soon as possible, to escape from the downpour and from the dozens of suspicions that assailed me as I walked. I turned my head constantly: now I thought he was following me, now I thought he’d stopped. Anyone in a raincoat made me quicken my pace, even if his silhouette wasn’t that of the man I feared. Someone ran past me, and when I felt him brush my arm I ducked for cover by the window of a closed pharmacy; a tramp tugged at my sleeve begging for charity and all he received was a startled cry. I tried to adjust my pace to match that of various respectable-looking couples, until my closeness made them suspicious and they moved away from me. The puddles were covering my stockings with spatterings of mud; my left heel got trapped in a drain. I crossed the streets quickly and anxiously, barely looking at the traffic. The headlights of a car dazzled me at a crossing; a little farther on I was honked at by another car and almost run over by a tram; just a few yards beyond that I managed to leap out of the way of a dark car that probably hadn’t seen me in the rain. Or maybe it had.

I arrived drenched and breathless; the doorman, the night watchman, a handful of neighbors, and five or six nosy passersby were milling about just inside the entrance, assessing the damage done by the water that had seeped into the building’s basement. I went up the stairs two at a time without anyone noticing me, pulling off the drenched scarf as I looked for my keys, relieved at having managed to make it back without running into my pursuer and longing to sink into a hot bath to tear the cold and panic from my skin. But my relief was short-lived. As brief as the seconds it took me to reach the door, enter the apartment, and see what was going on.