The Time in Between: A Novel (59 page)

That there was a lamp lit in the living room when the house should have been dark was unusual, but there could have been an explanation
for it: although Doña Manuela and the girls usually turned everything off before leaving, it’s possible that that night they’d forgotten to do one final check. Which was why it wasn’t the light that struck me as out of place, but what I found at the entrance. A raincoat. A man’s, light colored. Hanging on the coatrack and dripping water with sinister calm.

__________

I
ts owner was waiting for me, sitting in the living room. No words came to my mouth for a stretch of time that seemed to last till the end of the world. The unexpected visitor didn’t speak right away either. We just both stared at each other, in a flustered jumble of memories and feelings.

“So,” he asked at last, “did you enjoy the film?”

I didn’t answer. Sitting in front of me was the man who had been following me for days. The same man who five years ago had left my life dressed in a similar coat; the same man who had disappeared into the mist dragging a typewriter when he learned that I was going to leave him because I had fallen in love with a man who wasn’t him. Ignacio Montes, my first boyfriend, had come back into my life.

“How far we’ve come, eh, Sirita?” he said then, getting up and walking over toward me.

“What are you doing here, Ignacio?” I managed to whisper finally. I hadn’t yet taken off my coat; I noticed water was dripping onto my feet and forming little puddles on the floor. But I didn’t move.

“I’ve come to see you,” he replied. “Dry yourself off and change your clothes; we’ve got to talk.”

He was smiling, and his smile said
Damn my desire to smile.
I realized
then that I was only a few feet from the door I’d just come in; perhaps I could try to run away, to tear down the stairs three at a time, reach the front door, go out into the street, run. I discarded the idea. I suspected it wouldn’t be in my interest to react impulsively without first learning what it was that I was being confronted by, so I simply walked toward him and looked him in the eye.

“What do you want, Ignacio? How did you get in, what have you come for, why have you been watching me?”

“Slowly, Sira, slowly. Ask me one question at a time, don’t get all worked up. But first, if you don’t mind, I’d rather the two of us could make ourselves comfortable. I’m a bit tired, you know—you had me up later than usual last night. Would you mind if I poured myself a drink?”

“You didn’t used to drink,” I said, trying to keep calm.

A laugh as cold as the blade of my scissors tore the room from end to end.

“What a good memory you have. With all the interesting things that must have happened to you in your life over all these years, it’s amazing that you still remember something that simple.”

It was amazing, yes, but I did remember. That, and a whole lot more. Our long evenings of aimless wandering, the dances amid the Chinese lanterns at the fair. His optimism and his tenderness in those days; myself when I was no more than a humble seamstress whose horizon stretched no farther than marriage with a man whose presence filled me now with fear and doubt.

“What’ll you have?” I asked, finally, trying to sound calm, not to show how unsettled I was.

“Whiskey. Cognac. I don’t mind: whatever you offer your other guests.”

I served him a glass, draining the bottle Beigbeder had been drinking from the previous night; there were just a couple of fingers left. When I turned back toward him I could see that he was wearing a regular grey suit—a better cloth and cut than he’d have worn when we were together, lower quality work than the ones worn by the men I’d been surrounded by lately. I put the glass down on the table beside him,
and it was only then that I noticed that on the table there was also a box of Embassy candies, wrapped in silver paper and finished off with a pink ribbon tied in a bow.

“Some admirer’s sent you a gift,” he said, stroking the box with his fingertips.

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t, I was suddenly breathless. I knew that somewhere in the wrapping of that unexpected gift was a coded message from Hillgarth, a message intended to pass unnoticed by anyone but me.

I sat far from him, at one end of the sofa, tense and still soaked. I pretended to ignore the box of candies and contemplated Ignacio in silence, drawing the wet hair back off my face. He was as thin as ever, but his face was no longer the same. The first white hairs were appearing at his temples even though he was barely more than thirty. He had bags under his eyes, lines at the edges of his mouth, and the weary air of not having led a peaceful life.

“Well, well, Sira, how long it’s been.”

“Five years,” I specified firmly. “Now tell me please what you’ve come for.”

“Several things,” he said. “But first I’d rather you put on some dry clothes. And when you come back, be so kind as to bring me your papers. Asking you for them while on the way out of the cinema seemed rather vulgar under the circumstances.”

“And why should I show you my papers?”

“Because from what I hear you’re a Moroccan citizen now.”

“And what’s that to you? You have no right to meddle in my life.”

“Who said I don’t?”

“You and I have nothing in common. I’m a different person, Ignacio, I have nothing to do with you or with anyone from the time we were together. A lot has happened in my life over these years; I’m no longer who I used to be.”

“None of us are who we used to be, Sira. No one ever is as they were after a war like ours.”

Silence spread out between us. My mind was filled with a thousand images from the past that flocked in like maddened seagulls, a thousand
feelings that crashed into one another without my being able to control them. Sitting opposite me was the man who might have ended up being the father of my children, a good man who did nothing but adore me and into whose heart I’d plunged a knife. Sitting opposite me, too, was the man who could become my worst nightmare, who might have spent five years gnawing on his rancor and might be able to do anything to make me pay for my betrayal. Turn me in, for example, accuse me of not being who I said I was, and bring the debts from my past back out into the light.

“Where did you spend the war?” I asked, almost afraid.

“In Salamanca. I went for a few days to see my mother and that’s where the uprising found me. I joined the Nationalists, I had no choice. What about you?”

“In Tetouan,” I said without thinking. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so specific, but it was too late to turn back now. Strangely, my reply seemed to please him. A faint smile appeared on his lips.

“Of course,” he said softly. “Of course, now it all makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“Something I needed to find out from you.”

“There is nothing you need to find out from me, Ignacio. The only thing you need to do is forget me and leave me in peace.”

“I can’t,” he said forcefully.

I didn’t ask why. I was afraid he’d ask me to explain myself, that he’d reproach me for leaving him and throw back in my face all the pain I’d caused him. Or even worse: I was afraid that he’d tell me he still loved me and beg me to come back to him.

“You’ve got to leave, Ignacio, you’ve got to get me out of your head.”

“I can’t, sweetheart,” he repeated, this time with a note of bitter irony. “I’d like nothing more than never to remember the woman who destroyed me, but I can’t. I work for the General Directorate of Security of the Governance Ministry; I’m charged with watching and following foreigners who cross our borders, especially those who settle in Madrid with a suggestion that they mean to remain permanently. And you’re one of them. At the top of the list.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“And what do you want from me?” I asked, when I was again able to summon words to my mouth.

“Papers,” he insisted. “Passport, and customs papers for everything in this apartment that’s come from abroad. But first of all, change your clothes.”

He talked coldly, sure of himself. Professional, completely different from that other Ignacio, tender and almost childlike, whom I had stored in my memory.

“Can you show me some sort of credentials?” I said quietly. I guessed that he wasn’t lying, but I wanted to buy time to take it all in.

He drew a wallet from his inside jacket pocket. He opened it with the same hand that held it, with the facility of someone accustomed to proving his identity over and over again. And there indeed was his face and his name alongside the job and the ministry he had just mentioned.

“Just a moment,” I mumbled.

I went to my room; I quickly unhooked a white blouse and blue skirt from my closet, then opened the underwear drawer, about to take out something clean to put on, when my fingers brushed against Beigbeder’s letters, hidden under the folded slips. I hesitated a few seconds, unsure what to do about them, whether to leave them where they were or quickly find someplace safer. I ran my eyes hungrily across the room: maybe on top of the closet, maybe under the mattress. Perhaps between the sheets. Or behind the dressing-table mirror. Or in a shoe box.

“Be quick, please,” Ignacio shouted from far away.

I pushed the letters to the back, covered them completely with half a dozen bits of underwear, and closed the drawer with a dry thud. Anywhere else might be as good a place or as bad, but it wasn’t worth tempting fate.

I dried off, changed, took my passport from the nightstand, and returned to the living room.

“Arish Agoriuq,” he read slowly after I’d handed it over. “Born in Tangiers, resident in Tangiers. Shares your birthday—what a coincidence.”

I didn’t reply. I was suddenly overtaken by a terrible desire to throw up and had to struggle to stop myself.

“Might I know what this change in nationality was in aid of?”

My mind fabricated a lie, fast as the blinking of an eye. I’d never envisaged finding myself in a situation like this, nor had Hillgarth.

“I had my passport stolen and wasn’t able to request my papers from Madrid because it was the middle of the war. A friend fixed it for me to be given Moroccan citizenship so that I could travel without any trouble. It’s not a fake passport, you can check.”

“I already have done. And the name?”

“They thought it was better to change it, to make it more like an Arab name.”

“Arish Agoriuq? Is that Arab?”

“It’s Cherja,” I lied. “The dialect of the Rif villages,” I added, remembering Beigbeder’s linguistic skills.

He remained silent a few seconds, not taking his eyes off me. I could still feel my stomach turning over, but I fought to keep it under control to avoid having to run to the bathroom.

“I also need to know the objective of your stay in Madrid,” he insisted finally.

“To work. Sewing, as usual,” I replied. “This is a dressmaker’s studio.”

“Show me.”

I took him through to the back room and wordlessly showed him the rolls of material, the pictures of designs, and the magazines. Then I led him along the hallway and opened the doors to all the rooms. The spotless fitting rooms. The clients’ bathroom. The sewing room filled with fabric, patterns, and mannequins with half-assembled bits of clothing. The ironing room with various items awaiting their turn. And finally the storeroom. We walked together, side by side, as we’d walked so many times all those years before. I recalled that then he was almost a head taller than I—the difference didn’t seem so great now. It wasn’t that memory was playing tricks on me, however; when I was just a seamstress’s apprentice and he a would-be civil servant I wore shoes with barely any heel on them; five years on, my heels raised my height to halfway up his face.

“What’s in the back?” he asked.

“My bedroom, a couple of bathrooms, and four other rooms, two of them for guests and the other two empty. And also a lunch room, kitchen, and service quarters,” I reeled off.

“I want to see them.”

“What for?”

“I don’t have to give you an explanation.”

“Very well.”

I showed him the rooms one by one, my stomach tight, feigning a coolness that was a world away from my genuine state and trying not to let him see how my hand shook as it switched on the lights and opened the doors. I’d left Beigbeder’s letters to Rosalinda in the closet in my bedroom beneath my underwear; my legs trembled at the idea that it might occur to him to open the drawer and that he might find them. As he stepped into the room I watched him with my heart clenched. He went through it slowly and deliberately. He leafed through the novel I had on my nightstand with feigned interest, then put it back in its place; then he ran his fingers along the foot of the bed, picked up a brush from the dressing table, and looked out through the balcony doors a few seconds. I was praying that that would bring his visit to a close, but it didn’t. The part I most feared was still to come. He opened one side of the closet, the one containing my outer clothes. He touched the sleeve of a long jacket and the belt of another, then closed it. He opened the next door and I held my breath. He was face to face with a stack of drawers. He pulled out the first: scarves. He lifted the corner of one of them, then another, and another; and closed it back up again. He pulled out the next and I gulped: stockings. He closed it. When his fingers touched the third I felt the floor turn to liquid under my feet. There, covered by the silk slips, were the handwritten documents that revealed in detail and in the first person the circumstances of the scandalous ministerial dismissal that was being passed by word of mouth across all of Spain.

“I think you’re going too far, Ignacio,” I managed to whisper.

He kept his fingers on the handle of the drawer a few seconds more, as though considering what to do. I felt hot, I felt cold, anxious, thirsty. I felt as though it was about to be over. Until I noticed his lips parting
for him to speak. “Let’s go on,” was all he said. He closed the closet door while I held back a sigh of relief and a desperate desire to burst into tears. I masked my emotions as best I could and resumed my role as a guide under duress. He saw the bathroom where I bathed and the table where I ate, the larder where I kept my food, the sink where the girls washed the clothes. Perhaps he didn’t go any further out of respect for me, maybe out of simple modesty, or because the protocols of his job set out certain restrictions he didn’t dare transgress; I never found out. We returned to the living room without a word while I thanked heaven that his search hadn’t been more exhaustive.