María Dueñas - The Time in Between

Gonzalo Alvarado, this father of mine who at last had a face and a name, was speaking more calmly now. Halfway through his speech he began to look more like the man he must have been on any other day: sure of himself, forceful in his gestures and his words, used to giving orders and to being right. It had been hard for him to start; it couldn’t be pleasant to face a lost love and an unknown daughter after a quarter century of absence. But he had now regained his composure, the owner and master of the situation. Firm in his speech, sincere and raw as only someone with nothing left to lose can be.

“You know something, Sira? I really loved your mother; I loved her very much, very much indeed. If only everything had been different, so that I could have kept her with me forever. But regrettably that’s not the way it was.”

He looked away from me and turned back to her. Toward her big hazel-colored eyes tired from sewing. Toward her beautiful maturity with neither cosmetics nor embellishments.

“I didn’t fight for you much, Dolores, did I? I was unable to confront my family, and I wasn’t worthy of you. Then, as you know, I adjusted to the life that was expected of me, I got used to another woman and another family.”

My mother listened in silence, apparently impassive. I couldn’t have said whether she was hiding her emotions or whether those words didn’t provoke either cold or heat in her at all. She remained, quite simply, stern in her posture, her thoughts inscrutable, sitting upright in the beautifully tailored suit I’d never seen her in before, doubtless made from the fabric remnants of some woman with more material and more luck in life than she.

Rather than stopping in the face of her impassivity, my father kept on talking. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe me or not, but the truth is that now I find myself coming toward the end, my heart grieves that I’ve let so many years go past without taking care of you both, and without even having gotten to know you, Sira. I should have insisted more, I shouldn’t have given up trying to keep you close, but things were the way they were. And Dolores, you were too dignified, you wouldn’t allow me to devote only the leftover scraps of my life to you. If it couldn’t be everything, then it would be nothing. Your mother is very tough, girl, very tough and very firm. And I, I was probably weak and a fool, but, well, this isn’t the time for regrets.”

He remained silent a few seconds, thinking, not looking at us. Then he breathed in slowly through his nose, breathed out again hard, and shifted position, leaning forward in his armchair as though wanting to be more direct, as though he had decided to approach head-on what he seemed to have to tell us. He seemed finally ready to extract himself from the bitter nostalgia that kept him flying over the past, ready now to focus himself on the earthly demands of the present.

“I don’t want to occupy you any longer with my melancholy thoughts, forgive me. Let’s get to the point. I’ve called you here to transmit my last wishes. I ask you both to understand me and not misinterpret them. My intention is not to compensate you for the years I haven’t given you, or to demonstrate my remorse with gifts, still much less to try to buy your good regard at this point. All I want is to leave the ends nicely tied up, which rightfully I think should be put in order for when my time comes.”

For the first time since we’d settled down, he rose from his armchair and made his way toward the desk. I followed him with my gaze, observing the broad back, the fine cut of his jacket, the agile step despite his corpulence. Then I looked at the portrait hanging on the back wall toward which he was headed, large and impossible not to notice. It was an oil in a gilt frame of an elegant woman dressed in the fashion of the beginning of the century, neither beautiful nor the contrary, with a tiara on her short wavy hair and a severe expression on her face. When he turned around he gestured toward it with a movement of his chin.

“My mother, the grande dame Carlota, your grandmother. You remember her, Dolores? She passed away seven years ago; if she’d done it twenty-five years ago, you, Sira, would probably have been born in this house. Anyway, we’ll let the dead rest in peace.”

He was talking without looking at us now, busy with whatever he was doing behind the desk. He opened drawers, took out objects, riffled through papers, and returned to us with his hands full. As he approached he didn’t take his eyes off my mother.

“You’re still beautiful, Dolores,” he observed as he sat down. He was no longer tense, his initial discomfort only a memory. “I’m sorry, I haven’t offered you anything, will you drink something? I’ll call Servanda…” He made as though to get up again, but my mother interrupted him.

“We don’t want anything, Gonzalo, thank you. Let’s finish this, please.”

“Do you remember Servanda, Dolores? The way she used to spy on us, the way she’d follow us and then go telling tales to my mother?” Suddenly he gave a laugh, hoarse, quick, bitter. “Remember when she caught us locked in the ironing room? And now look, how ironic after all these years: my mother rotting in the cemetery, and me here with Servanda, the only person who takes care of me, what a pathetic fate. I should have dismissed her when my mother died, but where could the poor woman have gone then, old and deaf and with no family. And besides, she probably had no choice but to do what my mother told her to do: it wasn’t the time to be losing her job just like that, even though Doña Carlota had an unbearable nature and would drive her servants down a road of misery.”

He remained seated on the edge of his armchair, without leaning back, his large hands resting on the heap of things he had brought over from his desk. Papers, packages, cases. From the inside pocket of his jacket he now took out some metal-framed glasses and positioned them on his face.

“Well then, to practical matters, one thing at a time.”

First he took up a package that was really two large envelopes, bulky and held together at the middle by an elastic band.

“This is for you, Sira, to open up a new path in your life. It isn’t a third of my capital as by rights should be yours as one of my three descendants, but it’s all I can give you at the moment in cash. I’ve barely been able to sell anything, things are going badly for every sort of transaction right now. And I’m not in a position to leave you property, either: you’re not legally recognized as a daughter of mine and the inheritance taxes would swallow you up, not to mention that you’d be embroiled in endless lawsuits with my other children. But here you’ve got almost a hundred and fifty thousand pesetas. You seem smart like your mother; I’m sure you’ll be able to invest them well. With this money I also want you to take care of her, to make sure she doesn’t lack for anything and to support her if one day she needs it. The truth is, I would have preferred to split the money in two, half for each of you, but as I know Dolores would never accept it, I’ll leave you in charge of everything.”

He held the packet out; before taking it I looked over at my mother, disconcerted, not knowing what to do. With a nod—quick and concise—she conveyed her consent. Only then did I hold out my hands.

“Thank you very much,” I mumbled to my father.

He prefaced his reply with a mirthless smile. “No reason to thank me, daughter, no reason at all. Well then, let’s get on.”

He took up and opened a small box lined in blue velvet. Then he took another, this time maroon colored, smaller, and did the same. And so on successively till there were five. He left them open on the table. The jewels inside didn’t shine brightly, there wasn’t much light, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t guess how valuable they were.