María Dueñas - The Time in Between

It seemed the news from the Pitman Academies would never arrive, and to my surprise the delay didn’t seem to be causing Ramiro the slightest concern. We spent less and less time alone in our room at the Continental. There were fewer and fewer whispers, fewer references to all the things that till that moment had captivated him about me. He barely mentioned what used to drive him wild and what he had never tired of naming—my glowing skin, my goddess hips, my silky hair. He no longer complimented the charm of my smile, the freshness of my youth. He almost never laughed at what he used to call my blessed innocence, and I could tell that increasingly I was provoking in him less and less interest, less complicity, less tenderness. It was then, in the middle of those sad days when uncertainty filled me with mental anguish, that I began to feel unwell. Not only in my spirit, but in body, too. I felt bad, then terrible, worse. Perhaps my stomach hadn’t become completely used to the new foods that were so different from my mother’s stews and the simple dishes of the restaurants in Madrid. Perhaps that heavy, humid heat of early summer had something to do with my growing fragility. Daylight made me too uncomfortable, the smells of the street disgusted me and made me want to vomit. I struggled to summon the strength to get out of bed, the retching reappearing at the least expected moments, and I was overwhelmed by sleepiness at all hours. On some occasions—the minority—Ramiro seemed to be concerned: he’d sit down beside me, put his hand on my forehead, and speak sweetly to me. On other occasions—the majority—he would be distracted, lost to me. He paid me no heed, drifted away from me.

I stopped accompanying him on his nighttime outings: I barely had the energy and spirit to stay on my feet. I started to spend time on my own in the hotel, long, thick, stifling hours; hours of sticky haze, without a breath of air, lifeless. I imagined that he was dedicating himself to the same things he had been doing lately and in the same company: drinks, billiards, conversation and more conversation; stories and maps sketched on any scrap of paper on the white marble of the café tables. I thought he was doing the same things he’d done with me, but without me, and I could not guess that he had moved on to a new phase, that there was more; that he had gone beyond the borders of mere social life among friends to enter a new territory that was not at all unfamiliar to him. Yes, there were more plans. And also hands of cards, fierce poker games, parties till dawn. Betting, boasting, shady transactions, and exorbitant plans. Lies, toasts to the sun, and the emergence of a side of his personality that for months had remained hidden. Ramiro Arribas, the man of a thousand faces, had up till that moment shown me only one of them. It wouldn’t be long before I’d see the rest.

Every night he would come home later, and the worse for wear. His shirttails half untucked over his trouser waistband, his tie knot almost down to his chest, overexcited, smelling of tobacco and whiskey, stammering excuses in a thick voice if he found me awake. Sometimes he didn’t even touch me, falling into bed like a dead weight and instantly asleep, snoring so loudly that it was impossible for me to reconcile myself to sleep in the few remaining hours before the morning truly began. Other times he would embrace me awkwardly, slobbering his breath on my neck, then move away the clothes that were getting in his way and empty himself into me. And I let him do it without reproach, with no understanding at all of what was happening to us, unable to give that indifference a name.

There were some nights he didn’t arrive at all. Those were the worst: spending the small hours awake watching the yellow lights of the docks reflected on the black water of the bay, dawns spent wiping away tears and the bitter suspicion that it might perhaps have been a mistake, a massive mistake from which there was no longer any going back.

The end wasn’t long in coming. Ready to confirm once and for all the cause of my malaise but without wanting to worry Ramiro, I set off early one morning to the doctor’s office on Calle Estatuto. Doctor Bevilacqua, General Practice, Disorders and Illnesses, read the golden plaque on his door. He listened to me, examined me, asked questions. And there was no need for a test or for any other procedure to confirm what I already suspected, and what Ramiro—as I later discovered—had suspected, too. I returned to the hotel in a jumble of bewildered feelings. Hope, anxiety, joy, dread. I expected to find him still in bed, to kiss him awake and tell him the news. But I never got the chance to tell him that we were going to have a child because when I arrived he wasn’t there. All I found was the room turned upside down, the closet doors wide open, the drawers pulled from their runners, and the suitcases scattered on the floor.

We’ve been robbed, was the first thing I thought.

I was struggling to breathe and had to sit down on the bed. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, another, a third. When I opened my eyes again, I ran them over the room. Just one thought repeated itself in my mind: Ramiro, where is Ramiro? And then my eyes lighted on an envelope on the little nightstand, leaning on the base of the lamp, with my name in capital letters in the vigorous strokes of that handwriting I could have recognized from the far end of the world.

Sira, my love:

Before you read on, I want you to know that I adore you, and that your memory will live on in me until the end of time. When you read these lines I already will no longer be near you, I will have set out on a new course, and though I wish it with all my soul, I fear that it is impossible for you and the baby that I sense you are expecting to have a place in it right now.

I would like to ask your forgiveness for the way I’ve treated you lately, for my lack of devotion to you; I trust you will understand that the uncertainty created by lack of news from Pitman Academies has led me to seek out other ways to undertake the move toward my future. A number of proposals were studied, and just one of them selected; it’s an adventure as fascinating as it is promising, but it demands my dedication body and soul, and so there is no way of contemplating your presence in it at this time.

I have no doubt that the project I am embarking on today will be a total success, but for now, in its initial stages, it requires a considerable investment that exceeds my own financial capacities, which is why I have taken the liberty of borrowing your father’s money and jewels to meet the initial costs. I hope one day to be able to return to you everything that I am today taking as a loan, so that in years to come you can pass it on to your descendants just as your father did to you. I also trust that the memory of your mother in her self-denial and fortitude will be an inspiration to you in the coming phases of your life.

P.S. I would advise you to leave Tangiers as soon as possible; it is not a good place for a woman on her own, still less so one in your present condition. I fear there may be some people interested in finding me, and who failing to find me might seek you out. When you leave the hotel, try to do so discreetly and with little luggage: although I will seek to do it by all means possible, the urgency of my departure means I do not know if I will have the opportunity to settle the bill for the last months and I would never forgive myself if it should trouble you in any way.

I don’t remember what I thought. I retain intact the image of the scene in my memory—the bedroom turned upside down, the empty closet, the blinding light coming in at the open window, me on the unmade bed, holding the letter in one hand, clinging to the recently confirmed pregnancy with the other while thick drops of sweat slipped down my forehead. But the thoughts that went through my mind at that moment left no trace, because I have never been able to recall them. What I am sure of is that I got on with the task at hand like a machine that had just been activated, with movements full of haste but with no capacity for reflection or the expression of feeling. In spite of the contents of the letter and in spite of the distance, Ramiro was still determining the rhythm of my actions, and all that was left for me to do was, simply, to obey. I opened a suitcase and with both hands filled it with the first things I could grab hold of, without stopping to think about what would be necessary to take and what could be left behind. A number of dresses, some spare change on the nightstand, a hairbrush, a few blouses and a couple of old magazines, a handful of underwear, mismatched shoes, two jackets without their skirts and three skirts without their jackets, loose pieces of paper that had been left on the desk, some jars from the bathroom, a towel. When that chaos of clothes and objects reached the suitcase’s limit, I closed it, and, with a slam of the door, I left.