María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“Of course not, no need to ask.”

I’d lost count of what number he was on, probably five or six. With the next gulp, the moment of melancholy passed. He’d relaxed and didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving.

“Rosalinda is happy in Lisbon, she’s building a life for herself there. You know what she’s like, able to adapt to anything with impressive ease.”

Rosalinda Fox—there was no one like my friend for reinventing herself and starting from scratch as many times as she needed to. What an odd couple she and Beigbeder made. How different they were, and yet how well they complemented each other.

“Go see her in Lisbon when you can, she’d so enjoy spending a few days with you. Her address is on the letters I’ve given you: don’t pass them on till you’ve copied it down.”

“I’ll try, I promise. Are you considering going to Portugal, too? What do you mean to do when all this is over?”

“When my arrest is over? How should I know, it could last years—I might never get out of it alive. The situation is very uncertain; I don’t even know what charges they’re going to bring against me. Revolt, espionage, treason against the fatherland: any outrageous thing. But if Fortune takes my part and it’s all over soon, then yes, I think I will go abroad. God knows I’m no liberal, but I’m absolutely repelled by the megalomaniac totalitarianism with which Franco has emerged from his victory, the monster that it’s engendered, and that many of us have conspired to feed. You can’t imagine how much I regret having played a part in enhancing his reputation in Morocco during the war. I don’t like this regime, not one bit. I don’t think I even like Spain; at least, I don’t like this monstrosity of Una, Grande y Libre that they’re trying to sell us. United, great and free! I’ve spent more years of my life outside this country than in it; I feel like a foreigner here, there are so many things that are strange to me.”

“You could always go back to Morocco,” I suggested. “With Rosalinda.”

“No, no,” he replied forcefully. “Morocco is over now. There’s no future for me there; after having been high commissioner I couldn’t take on a more modest post. Though it pains my heart to say it, I fear Africa is a closed chapter in my life now. Professionally, I mean, because in my heart I’ll be connected to it for as long as I live. Inshallah. May it be so.”

“And next?”

“Everything will depend on my military position; I’m in the hands of El Caudillo, Generalísimo of all the armies by the grace of God; there’s nothing to be done. As though God had anything to do with these devious matters. He might lift my arrest in a month or decide simply to execute me and put out a press release. Who’d have thought it twenty years ago—my whole life in the hands of little Franquito.”

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.

My 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.