María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“He’s in business, that’s what Da Silva told me.”

She took my explanation with a wry laugh.

“Don’t be naïve, Sira. Nowadays the word ‘business’ is like a huge black umbrella that can cover a multitude of sins.”

“So are you telling me I shouldn’t help him?” I said, trying not to sound confused.

“No. What I’m trying to do is advise you to be very careful and not to take any more risks than you have to, because you don’t even know who this man is you’re trying to protect or what he’s involved in. It’s strange the turns life takes, isn’t it?” she went on with a half smile, pushing that eternal blond lock of hair back from her face. “He was crazy about you in Tetouan, and you refused to get involved with him at all despite the attraction between you. And now after such a long time, in order to protect him you’d risk being unmasked, throwing away the mission, and God knows what else, and all this in a country where you’re on your own and barely know anybody. I still don’t understand why you were so reluctant to start something serious with Marcus, but whatever impression he made on you must have been extremely deep for you to be exposing yourself like this for him.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times. I didn’t want a new relationship because my betrayal by Ramiro was still fresh, because I still had wounds that hadn’t healed.”

“But some time had passed…”

“Not enough. I was panicking at the idea of suffering again, Rosalinda, I was so afraid. The thing with Ramiro was so painful, so brutal, so, so overwhelming… I knew that sooner or later Marcus would end up leaving, too, and I didn’t want to go through that again.”

“But he never would have left you like that. Sooner or later he would have come back, perhaps you could have left with him.”

“No. Tetouan wasn’t his home, and it was mine, with my mother just about to arrive, two charges against me in Madrid, and Spain still at war. I was confused, I was bruised, still distressed by what had happened to me before, anxious for news of my mother, and constructing a fake personality to win clients in a foreign land. Yes, I built a wall to avoid falling desperately in love with Marcus, you’re right. And just the same he managed to get past it. He slipped through the net and reached me. I haven’t loved anyone else since, nor have I been attracted to any man, not really. His memory has been what’s kept me strong, allowed me to face my solitude, and believe me, Rosalinda, when I tell you I’ve been very much alone this whole time. And when I thought I was never going to see him again, life put him in my path at the worst possible moment. I don’t mean to rescue him, or build a bridge back to the past in order to recover what’s lost; I know that’d be impossible in this lunatic world we’re living in. But if I can at least help him avoid being wiped out on some street corner, I’ve got to try to do it.”

She must have noticed that my voice was shaky, because she took my hand and squeezed it hard.

“Well then, let’s focus on the present,” she said firmly. “As soon as the morning gets going I’ll start to mobilize my contacts. If he’s still in Lisbon, I’ll be able to find him.”

“I can’t see him, and I don’t want you to talk to him either. Use some intermediary, someone who can get the information to him without him knowing it’s coming from you. All he needs to know is that Da Silva not only doesn’t want anything to do with him but he’s given orders for him to be removed if he becomes a bother. I’ll notify Hillgarth about the other names when I get to Madrid. Or rather, no,” I corrected myself. “Better to give Marcus all the names; write them down, I know them by heart. Let him deal with getting the word around; he probably knows them all.”

I felt a huge tiredness, almost as great as the distress I’d been carrying around inside me ever since Beatriz Oliveira had passed me that sinister list in the church of São Domingos. It had been a horrible day: the novena and what had come with it, the subsequent meeting with Da Silva, and the exhausting struggle to get him to invite me to his house; the sleepless hours, the wait in the dark beside the hotel trash cans, the tortuous journey to Lisbon stuck to the body of that foul-smelling egg man. I looked at my watch. There was still a half hour before he was to fetch me in his three-wheeler. Just to shut my eyes now and curl up on Rosalinda’s unmade bed seemed like the greediest of temptations, but now wasn’t the moment to think about sleep. First I had to catch up with my friend about her life, if only briefly: who knew if we would meet again?

“Tell me, quickly—I don’t want to go without hearing a bit about you. How have you worked things out since leaving Spain, what’s become of your life?”

“At first it was hard, I was alone, with no money and plagued by the uncertainty surrounding Juan Luis’s situation in Madrid. But I couldn’t just sit down and cry over what I’d lost: I had to make a living. At times it was even fun. I lived through a few scenes worthy of the finest comedy: there were a couple of decrepit old millionaires who offered to marry me, and I even managed to dazzle a senior Nazi officer who swore that if I’d agree, he was prepared to run off to Rio de Janeiro with me. Sometimes it was enjoyable; other times, to tell the truth, it was no fun whatsoever. I found ex-admirers who pretended not to recognize me, and old friends who turned away from me, people I’d helped once upon a time and who now seemed to be afflicted with amnesia, and liars who pretended to be very badly off to avoid my asking to borrow anything from them. That wasn’t the worst of it, however; the hardest thing in all that time was having to break off all contact with Juan Luis. First we gave up the telephone calls after he learned that they were being tapped, then we stopped using the post. And then came the dismissal and the arrest. The last letters for a long while were the ones he gave you and that you passed on to Hillgarth. And then, the end.”

“Have you been able to secure any information about how he is doing now?”

She sighed deeply before answering and pushed her hair back from her face one more time.

“Reasonably well. They sent him to Ronda, which was almost a relief because he’d thought they were going to destroy him completely, with accusations of high treason against the fatherland. But they ended up not establishing a court martial against him, more out of their own self-interest than out of compassion—getting rid of a minister like that, a minister who’d only been appointed a little more than a year earlier, would have had a serious negative impact on the Spanish population and on world opinion.”

“Is he still in Ronda?”

“Yes, but now just under house arrest. He lives in a hotel, and it seems they’re beginning to give him some freedom of movement. He’s started getting excited about some plans again, you know how restless he is, always needing to be active, involved in something interesting, coming up with ideas and making things happen. I’m confident that he’ll be able to come over to Lisbon before too long, and then we’ll see,” she concluded, her smile heavy with melancholy.

I didn’t dare to ask her what they were, these new plans that followed his being hurled into the pit with those who’d been stripped of glory. The ex-minister who was so friendly toward the English had very little clout in the New Spain that was so cozy with the Axis; a lot would have to change before he’d be in any position to show up back there.

I looked at my watch again; I only had ten minutes left.

“Keep telling me about yourself, how you managed to get by.”

“I met Dimitri, a White Russian who’d fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution. We became friends, and I convinced him to make me his partner in the club he was planning to open. He’d provide the money, I’d be responsible for the décor and for providing contacts. El Galgo was a success right from the start, which meant that not long after the business started operating, I threw myself into the search for a house to allow me finally to get out of the little room where some Polish friends had been hiding me. And then I found this apartment. If you can call something with twenty-four bedrooms an apartment.”