María Dueñas - The Time in Between

When I was sure that they were no longer following us, I sat back down and—still having trouble breathing—answered Marcus’s question.

“The best patterns I’ve ever done in my life.”

Yes, Gamboa did indeed suspect something when he brought you the orchids. So he hid and waited to see who the owner of the hat was. And then he saw me coming out of your room. He knows me very well, I’ve been in the company’s offices several times. Armed with this information, he went in search of Da Silva, but his boss didn’t want to see him—he told him he was busy with some important business and that they’d talk the following morning. And they did talk today. When Da Silva found out what it was about, he flew into a rage, fired him, and began to take measures.”

“And how do you know all this?”

“Because Gamboa came looking for me this afternoon. His nerves are in shreds, he’s terribly afraid and looking for someone to protect him, which is why he thought he might feel safer approaching the English, with whom he used to have excellent relations. Even he doesn’t know what Da Silva is up to, because he hides things from everyone, including the people he trusts, but his current state made me fear for your safety. As soon as I’d spoken to Gamboa I went to your hotel, but you’d already left. I reached the station as the train was just pulling away, and when I saw Da Silva alone on the platform I thought everything was all right. Until the very last moment, when I saw him gesturing to two men leaning out of one of the windows.”

“What kind of gesture?”

“An eight—five fingers of one hand and three of the other.”

“My cabin number…”

“It was the only detail they were still missing. Everything else had already been arranged.”

I was assailed by a strange feeling—terror mixed with relief, weakness, and rage all at once. The taste of betrayal, perhaps. But I knew I had no reason to feel betrayed. I’d deceived Manuel, hidden behind an inoffensive, seductive front, and he’d tried to repay me in kind, without getting his hands dirty or compromising a speck of his elegance. Disloyalty in exchange for disloyalty—that’s the way things worked.

We continued along dusty roads, over potholes and craters, passing through sleeping towns, desolate villages, and patches of wasteland. The only light we saw in all that time was from the headlamps of our car opening a path for us through the thick darkness—there wasn’t even a moon. Marcus realized that Da Silva’s men would not remain at the station—they’d probably find some way of following us—so he kept driving fast, never letting up, as though we still had those two undesirables clinging to our tail.

“I’m almost sure they won’t dare cross into Spain; they’d be getting themselves into unknown territory where they don’t control the rules of the game. Of their own private game, that is. So we shouldn’t lower our guard till we’re over the border.”

It would have been natural for Marcus to question me further about why Da Silva was trying to get rid of me after treating me so deferentially only days earlier. He’d seen us with his own eyes, dining and dancing at the casino; he knew that I’d been going around in his car every day, receiving gifts from him at my hotel. Perhaps he was waiting for some explanation of the nature of our relationship, maybe some clarification of what had gone on between us, something that could throw a little light on the reasons for his brutal order when I was just about to walk out of his country and his life. But I didn’t utter a word.

He kept talking, without taking his attention from the road, making observations and proposing interpretations in the hope that at some point I might decide to contribute something. “Da Silva,” he went on, “opened the doors to his house wide for you, allowing you to witness everything that happened there last night, though I don’t know what that is.”

I didn’t reply.

“And you don’t seem to have any intention of telling me.”

It was true, I didn’t.

“Now he’s convinced that you got close to him because you were under orders from someone else, and he suspects that you’re not just a simple foreign dressmaker who showed up in his life by chance. He thinks you became friends with him because you meant to investigate his affairs, but he’s wrong in his assumptions about who it is you’re working for, because according to our tip-off from Gamboa, he incorrectly believes you to be working for me. In any case, he wants you to keep your mouth shut. Forever, if that can be arranged.”

Still I didn’t say anything; I preferred to keep my feelings hidden behind a front of feigned obliviousness. Until my silence had become intolerable for both of us.

“Thank you for protecting me, Marcus,” I murmured.

I didn’t fool him. I didn’t fool him, or soften him up, or move him with my false helplessness.

“Who is it you’re mixed up with, Sira?” he asked slowly, never taking his eyes off the road.

I turned and looked at his profile in the gloom. The refined nose, the strong jaw, the determination, the certainty. He seemed like the same man from our days in Tetouan. Seemed.

“Who are you with, Marcus?”

On the back seat, invisible but so close, we were joined by a third passenger in the car: suspicion.

When we crossed the border it was past midnight. Marcus showed his British passport, and I showed my Moroccan one. I noticed him looking at it, but he didn’t ask any questions. We didn’t see any sign of Da Silva’s men, just a couple of sleepy policemen who weren’t particularly keen to waste their time on us.

“Perhaps we should find somewhere to get some sleep, now that we’re in Spain and we know they haven’t followed us, and they can’t have overtaken us. Tomorrow I can take a train and you can go back to Lisbon,” I suggested.

“I’d rather go on to Madrid,” he muttered.

We continued driving, passing not a single other vehicle on the road, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts. Suspicion had brought doubt, and the doubt had led to silence: a silence that was thick and uncomfortable, pregnant with mistrust. An unfair silence. Marcus had just yanked me out of the worst fix I’d been in in my life and was going to drive through the night just to make sure I arrived safely at my destination, and I was repaying him by refusing to give him any information that might ease his mind. But I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t say any more to him. First I had to be sure about what I’d suspected ever since Rosalinda opened my eyes during our early morning conversation. Or perhaps I could say something. A fragment from the previous night, a snippet, a clue. Something that would be useful to us both—to him by satisfying his curiosity at least in part, and to me as a way of preparing the ground while I waited to confirm what I suspected.

We’d gone past Badajoz and Mérida. We’d been silent since the frontier post, dragging our mutual distrust along worn-out old roads and Roman bridges.

“Do you remember Bernhardt, Marcus?”

The muscles of his arms seemed to tense up, his fingers clinging more tightly to the steering wheel.

“Yes, of course I remember him.”

Suddenly the dark interior of the car was flooded with images and smells of that day we’d shared, after which nothing had ever been the same between us. A summer evening in Morocco, my house on Sidi Mandri, a supposed journalist standing by the balcony doors waiting for me. Tetouan’s packed streets, the gardens of the High Commission, the caliph’s band enthusiastically singing anthems, jasmine and orange trees, military stripes and uniforms. Rosalinda absent, and an enthusiastic Beigbeder playing the great host, still unaware that the time would come when the man to whom he was paying tribute would end up striking off his head and sending it spinning in the dirt. A group of German backs forming a ring around the special guest with the cat’s eyes, and my companion asking my help to get hold of secret information. Another time, another country, and yet, deep down, everything almost exactly the same. Almost.