María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“But you’re part of the regime—”

“I’m just a simple functionary without any power at all, just another rung in the whole big hierarchy,” he interrupted me. “I don’t have any way of doing anything more than hear their troubles, give them some indication of where they should go if I happen to know, and give them ten pesetas when they seem to be on the verge of despair. I’m not even a member of the Falange: I just fought on the side that I happened to find myself on and fate decided that ultimately I should end up winning. That was why I entered the ministry and took on the task they gave me. But I’m not on anyone’s side: I saw too many horrors and ended up losing respect for all of them. That’s why I just obey the orders I’m given, because it puts food on the table. So I keep my mouth shut, keep my head down, and work my ass off so that I can help my family get ahead, that’s all.”

“I didn’t know you had a family,” I said as I wiped my eyes with the handkerchief he held out to me.

“I got married in Salamanca, and when the war ended we came to Madrid. I have a wife, two little children, and a home where at least there’s always someone waiting for me at the end of the day, however tough and sickening that day has been. Our house isn’t anything like this one, but it’s always got the hearth lit and the children’s laughter in the hallway. My sons are named Ignacio and Miguel, my wife Amalia. I’ve never loved her like I loved you, and her ass doesn’t sway like yours as she walks down the street, and I’ve never desired her half as much as I desired you tonight when you held my hand. But she always puts on a brave face when there are troubles, she sings in the kitchen while she’s making a stew out of what little there is, and she puts her arms around me in the middle of the night when I’m assailed by nightmares and shout and cry because I’m dreaming that I’m back at the front and going to be killed.”

“I’m sorry, Ignacio,” I said in a whisper. My own tears barely allowed me to speak.

“I may be just a conformist, nothing special, a puppy-dog servant of a revanchist state,” he went on, looking me straight in the eye, “but you’re no one to tell me whether or not you like the man I’ve become. You can’t give me moral lectures, Sira, because if I’m bad, you’re even worse. At least I still have a drop of compassion left in my soul; I don’t think you have even that. You’re nothing but an egotist who lives in a massive house where all you can see is loneliness wherever you look; a woman without any roots, who denies her origins and is incapable of thinking of anyone but herself.”

I wanted to shout at him to shut up, to leave me in peace, to get out of my life forever, but before I was able to utter the first syllable my guts were transformed into a wellspring of uncontainable sobs, as though something had sprung loose inside. I cried. With my face covered, inconsolably, unstoppably. When I was able to stop and return to the immediate reality, it was past midnight and Ignacio was no longer there. He had left without making a sound, with the same delicacy with which he used to treat me. The fear and distress caused by his presence still clung to my skin, however. I didn’t know what the consequences of this visit would be; I didn’t know what would become of Arish Agoriuq after that night. Maybe the Ignacio of a few years ago would have taken pity on a woman he’d loved so much and would have decided to let her go on her way in peace. Or maybe as a devoted functionary of the New State he would choose to pass on to his superiors the suspicions he had about my fake identity. Perhaps—just as he himself had threatened—I’d end up being detained. Or deported. Or dead.

On the table there sat a box of candies that was much less innocent than it seemed. I opened it with one hand, while the other dried the last of my tears. All I found inside were two dozen milk chocolates. Then I looked over the wrapping until I found a light, almost imperceptible stitching on the pink ribbon tied around the packet. It took me just three minutes to decipher it. “Urgent meeting. Consult Doctor Rico. Caracas, 29. 11 a.m. Extreme caution.”

Alongside the box of candies was a glass I’d poured some hours earlier. Untouched. As Ignacio himself had said, none of us were the people we used to be. But even though life had turned us all around, he still didn’t drink.

Several hundred people, all of them well fed and even better dressed, saw in the New Year of 1941 in the Madrid Casino’s Royal Hall to the sound of a Cuban band. And among them, one more in the crowd, was me.

My original plan had been to spend that night alone, perhaps to invite Doña Manuela and the girls to share a capon and a bottle of cider, but the tenacious insistence of two of my clients, the Álvarez-Vicuña sisters, forced me to change my plans. I took great care in getting ready for the night, albeit reluctantly: I got my hair done in a low bun and made myself up, emphasizing my eyes with Moroccan kohl to give myself the appearance of the strange displaced creature that I was supposed to be. I designed a kind of tunic, silver grey, with full sleeves and a broad belt wrapped around it to complete the silhouette, something halfway between an exotic Moorish caftan and an elegant European evening dress. The sisters’ unmarried brother collected me at home, a man by the name of Ernesto whom I never got to know beyond his birdlike face and his oily deference toward me. On arriving at the casino I made my way confidently up the large marble staircase and once in the main hall pretended not to notice the splendor of the room, or the various pairs of eyes that undisguisedly bored into me. I even pretended to ignore the gigantic chandeliers from the La Granja glass factory that hung from the ceiling and the elaborate moldings on the walls that provided a backdrop for the grandiose paintings. Confidence, mastery over myself: that’s what my image emanated, as though I were a fish, and that opulence, water; as though that sumptuous place were my natural milieu.

But of course it wasn’t. In spite of living surrounded by fabrics as dazzling as the ones being worn that night by the women around me, the pace of the previous months hadn’t exactly been a leisurely ride, but instead a succession of days and nights in which my two occupations sucked away like leeches the integrity of a time that was ever more rarefied.

The meeting I’d had with Hillgarth two months earlier, immediately following the encounters with Beigbeder and Ignacio, had marked a before-and-after point in my way of behaving. I gave him detailed information about the former; the latter, meanwhile, I didn’t even mention. Perhaps I should have, but something stopped me: modesty, insecurity, perhaps fear. I was aware that Ignacio’s presence was the result of my carelessness: I should have informed the naval attaché the moment I suspected I was being followed. Perhaps if I had, I would have avoided having a representative of the Governance Ministry break into my house with no trouble at all, to sit and wait for me in my living room. But that meeting had been too personal, too emotional and painful to fit into the cold patterns of the Secret Intelligence Service. Keeping quiet about it went against the protocols I had been given. I’d ridden roughshod over the most fundamental rules of my mission, that was for sure. All the same, I risked it. Besides, it wasn’t the first time I’d hidden something from Hillgarth; I also hadn’t told him that Doña Manuela was a part of the past he’d forbidden me from revisiting. Fortunately neither the hiring of my old mistress nor the visit from Ignacio had any immediate consequences: no deportation order had appeared on the atelier door, no one had called me in for questioning in some sinister office, and the trench-coat ghosts had finally stopped their assault. Whether it was over for good, or just a temporary reprieve, I had yet to find out.