María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“There are a lot of Germans in Madrid, too, aren’t there?” he asked.

It wasn’t an innocent question about the social environment of a neighboring country: it was a genuine interest in who my acquaintances were and what sort of relationship I had with them. He was coming closer. I knew what I had to say, which words to use: certain key names, weighty posts, and a feigned air of detachment.

“Oh, so many,” I went on dully. I sat back in my chair, dropping my hand with an apparent lack of interest; I crossed my legs again, had another sip. “It was Baroness von Stohrer, the ambassador’s wife, who made that comment last time she was in my studio, that Madrid had become the perfect German colony. And the truth is, some of them bring us a huge amount of work; Elsa Bruckmann, for example, who they say is a personal friend of Hitler’s, she’s in two or three times a week. And at the most recent party at Hans Lazar’s house—he’s the attaché for press and propaganda…”

I alluded to a couple of trivial anecdotes and dropped a few more names. With apparent unconcern, as though not finding them particularly important. And the more I spoke with feigned uninterest, the more I noticed Da Silva hanging on my words as though the whole world around him had stopped. He barely noticed the greetings that came at him from both sides, didn’t pick up his glass from the table, and allowed his cigarette to burn away between his fingers, the ash forming a fat grey worm at the tip. Until I decided to stop increasing the pressure.

“I’m sorry, Manuel; I’m sure this is all terribly boring for you: the parties, clothing, and frivolity of women with nothing to do. Tell me, how was your trip?”

Our conversation went on for another half hour, during which time neither he nor I mentioned the Germans again. Their scent, however, seemed still to be lingering in the air.

“I think it’s approaching dinnertime,” he said, looking at his watch. “Would you like… ?”

“I’m worn out. Would you mind if we left it for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow won’t be possible.” I noticed him hesitating a moment and held my breath; then he went on. “I have an engagement.”

Go on, go on, go on. All it needed was a little push.

“What a shame, it will be our last night.” My disappointment seemed genuine, almost as genuine as my desire to hear him say what I’d been waiting for over so many days. “I’ve arranged to go back to Madrid on Friday; there’s an awful lot of work waiting for me next week. Baroness de Petrino, Lazar’s wife, is hosting a reception next Thursday and I’ve got half a dozen German clients who want me to—”

“Perhaps you’d like to join us?”

I thought my heart had stopped beating.

“It’s just a little get-together of a few friends. Germans and Portuguese. At my house.”

How much would it be for you to take me to Lisbon?”

The man looked one way then the other to make sure that there wasn’t anyone watching us. Then he took off his cap and scratched his head furiously.

“Ten escudos,” he said, without taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

I held out a twenty.

“Let’s go.”

I had tried unsuccessfully to sleep: emotions and sensations raced across my mind all jumbled together, bumping against the walls of my brain. Satisfaction that the mission had finally begun to make progress, anxiety about what was awaiting me, unease at the terrible certainty of what I had learned. And on top of all that, the fear of knowing that Marcus Logan was on a grim list, which he probably had no idea existed, and frustration at having no way of alerting him about it. I had no clue where to find him, I’d only run into him in two places that were as different from each other as they were far apart. Perhaps the only place where they could give me any information would have been Da Silva’s own offices, but I didn’t dare approach Beatriz Oliveira again, especially now that her boss was back.

One in the morning, half past, a quarter to two. Sometimes I was hot, sometimes cold. Two, two ten. I got up several times, opened and closed the balcony doors, drank a glass of water, turned on the light, turned it off. Twenty to three, three, three fifteen. And then, suddenly, I thought I’d found the solution. Or at least something approaching it.

I put on the darkest clothes I could find in my closet: a black mohair suit, a lead-grey jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down to my eyebrows. The last things I took were the key to my room and a handful of banknotes. I didn’t need anything else, apart from luck. I tiptoed down the back stairs; everything was calm and there was practically no light. I continued on with no clear idea of where I was, letting my instinct guide me. The kitchens, the storerooms, the washrooms, the boiler rooms. I reached the street through a back door out of the basement. It definitely wasn’t a good omen; I’d just realized that it was the way they took out the trash, albeit rich people’s trash.

It was a dark night, with the lights of the casino glimmering a few hundred yards away, and from time to time I could hear one of the last late-night partygoers: a good-bye, a muffled laugh, the engine of a car. Then silence. I settled down to wait, my lapels raised and my hands in my pockets, sitting on a curb and protected by a pile of soda-siphon crates. I was from a working neighborhood myself, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the bustle would start: there were a lot of people who woke at the crack of dawn in order to make life more pleasant for those who could allow themselves the luxury of sleeping well into the morning. The first lights in the lower service floors of the hotel were on by four, and soon after that a couple of employees came out. They stopped to light a cigarette in the doorway, cupping the flame with their hands, and then wandered off in no apparent hurry. The first vehicle was a sort of van; without pulling in too close it disgorged more than a dozen young women and then was off again. They went in grumbling tiredly: the waitresses on the next shift, I guessed. The second motor was that of a three-wheeler. A skinny, badly shaved man got out and began to rummage in the back for something or other. Then I saw him go into the kitchen carrying a large wicker basket that didn’t seem to weigh much, and whose contents, with the darkness and the distance, I wasn’t able to identify. When he had finished, he headed back to the little vehicle, and it was then that I approached him.

Using a handkerchief, I tried to clean off the straw that covered the seat, but I couldn’t do it. The interior smelled of chicken droppings, and there were feathers, broken shells, and old bits of excrement everywhere. The breakfast eggs were presented to the guests exquisitely fried or scrambled on gold-edged porcelain plates. The vehicle that transported them from the laying coops to the hotel kitchens was a whole lot less elegant. I tried not to think about the soft leather of the seats in João’s Bentley as we made our way, swaying to the rhythm of the three-wheeler’s clattering. I was sitting on the egg-deliveryman’s right, the two of us squeezed into a narrow front seat less than three feet wide. Despite the tight quarters, we didn’t exchange a word, except when I needed to give him the address where he was to take me.

“Here it is,” I said when we arrived.

I recognized the façade.

“Another fifty escudos if you come and collect me in two hours.”

A gesture touching the brim of his cap meant that we had a deal.

The main door was shut; I sat on a stone bench to wait for the night watchman. With my hat pulled down and the lapels of my jacket still up, I got rid of my doubts by concentrating on trying to remove one by one the pieces of straw and feathers that had stuck to my clothes. Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long: within a quarter of an hour the man I was waiting for arrived, brandishing a large set of keys. He swallowed the tale I spun for him, in fits and starts, about having forgotten a handbag and let me in. I looked for the name on the mailboxes, ran up two flights of stairs, and rapped on the door with a bronze knocker that was bigger than my own hand.