María Dueñas - The Time in Between

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.

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.

Its 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.”