María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“The sister told me you’re already somewhat recovered, so we’ve got to talk, all right?”

I assented with just a nod of the head, unable even to guess what that man wanted with me; as far as I knew, being torn apart and confused were not against the law. Then the commissioner drew a small notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and consulted some notes. He must have been going over them recently because he didn’t have to riffle through pages to find them; he simply directed his gaze to the page in front of him and there they were.

“Well then, I’ll begin by asking you some questions; just answer with a simple yes or no. You are Sira Quiroga Martín, born in Madrid on June eighth, 1911, correct?”

His tone was courteous, which didn’t mean it was not direct and inquisitive. A certain deference to my condition lessened the professional tone of the meeting, but it didn’t hide it completely. I corroborated the accuracy of my personal details with a nod.

“And you arrived in Tetouan this past July fifteenth, coming from Tangiers.”

I nodded again.

“In Tangiers you were lodged from March twenty-third at the Hotel Continental.”

Another nod.

“In the company of”—he consulted his notebook—“Ramiro Arribas Querol, native of Vitoria, born October twenty-third, 1901.”

I nodded again, this time lowering my gaze. It was the first time I had heard his name after all that time had passed. Commissioner Vázquez didn’t seem to notice that I was beginning to lose my composure, or perhaps if he did, he didn’t want me to notice it; in any case he proceeded with his interrogation, ignoring my reaction.

“And at the Hotel Continental you left an outstanding bill of three thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine French francs.”

I didn’t reply. I just turned my head to one side to avoid catching his eye.

“Look at me,” he said.

I ignored him.

“Look at me,” he repeated. His tone remained neutral: it was no more insistent the second time than the previous time, neither friendlier nor more demanding. It was, quite simply, the same. He waited patiently for a few moments until I obeyed him and looked at him. But I didn’t reply. He reformulated his question without losing his temper.

“Are you aware that at the Hotel Continental you left an outstanding bill of three thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine francs?”

“I think so,” I replied finally in a whisper. And again I drew my eyes away from his and turned my head back to one side. And I started to cry.

“Look at me,” he insisted a third time.

He waited awhile, until he realized that this time I no longer had the intention, or the strength, or the courage to face him. Then I heard him get up from his chair, walk around the foot of the bed, and approach on the other side. He sat down on the neighboring bed, on which my eyes were set, his body destroying the smoothness of the sheets, and fixed his eyes on mine.

“I’m trying to help you, ma’am. Or miss, it’s all the same to me,” he explained firmly. “You’ve gotten yourself into a tremendous bit of trouble, although I realize it’s not your own fault. I think I know how it all happened, but I need you to confirm my suspicions. If you don’t help me, I won’t be able to help you, you understand?”

With some effort I managed to say yes.

“Well then, stop crying and let’s get down to it.”

I dried my tears with the turndown of the sheet. The commissioner gave me a brief minute. No sooner had he sensed that my crying had abated than he was conscientiously back at his task.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” I murmured.

“Look, you’ve been accused by the management of the Hotel Continental of having left a pretty sizable bill unpaid, but that’s not all. The matter, regrettably, is much more complicated. We’ve learned that there is also a charge against you from the Casa Hispano-Olivetti for fraud to the value of twenty-four thousand eight hundred and ninety pesetas.”

“But I, but…”

He gestured for me to stop talking. He had more to say.

“There is another charge against you for stealing jewelry from a private residence in Madrid.”

The impact of what I’d heard destroyed any capacity I had to think or answer coherently. The commissioner, aware of my confusion, tried to calm me.

“I know, I know. Calm down, don’t trouble yourself. I’ve read all the papers you were carrying in your suitcase and from them I’ve been able more or less to reconstruct what happened. I’ve found the note you were left by your husband, or your fiancé, or lover, or whatever this Arribas was, and also a certificate confirming these jewels were given to you, and a document setting out that the previous owner of these jewels really is your father.”

I didn’t remember having brought those papers with me; I didn’t know what had become of them since Ramiro had put them away, but if they were among my things it had to be because I had taken them from the hotel room myself without being aware of doing so at the moment of my departure. I sighed with some relief to learn that in them might perhaps be found the key to my redemption.

“Talk to him, please, talk to my father,” I begged. “He’s in Madrid, his name is Gonzalo Alvarado, he lives on Calle Hermosilla, number nineteen.”

“There’s no way we can track him down. Communication with Madrid is terrible. The capital is in turmoil, a lot of people are displaced: detained, fled, or leaving, or hidden, or dead. Besides, things for you are even more complicated because the charge came from Alvarado’s own son, Enrique, I think that’s his name, your half brother, right? Yes, Enrique Alvarado,” he confirmed after checking his notes. “It seems a servant informed him a few months back that you had been in the house and had left quite changed, carrying some parcels: they suppose that the jewels were in them, they believe that Alvarado senior might have been the victim of blackmail or submitted to some kind of extortion. In short, a pretty ugly business, even if these documents do appear to exonerate you.”

Then he drew from one of the outer pockets of his jacket the papers that my father had given me when we had met months earlier.

“Luckily for you, Arribas didn’t take them with him along with the jewels and the money, perhaps because they might have been compromising for him. He ought to have destroyed them in order to protect himself, but in his rush to disappear he didn’t. You should be grateful to him, because right now that’s the only thing that’s going to save you from prison,” he observed ironically. Then immediately afterward he closed his eyes briefly, as though trying to draw his last words back in. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to offend you; I imagine that in your state you have no intention of being grateful to a man who’s treated you as he has.”

I didn’t reply to his apology, just weakly formulated another question.

“Where is he now?”

“Arribas? We don’t know for sure. Perhaps in Brazil, could be Buenos Aires. Maybe in Montevideo. He boarded a transatlantic ship under the Argentine flag, but he could have disembarked at a number of ports. It seems he was accompanied by three other individuals: a Russian, a Pole, and an Italian.”

“And you aren’t going to go after him? You aren’t going to do anything to follow his trail and arrest him?”

“I’m afraid not. We don’t have much on him, just an unpaid bill that he shares with you. Unless you want to press charges for the jewels and the money he took from you, though to tell you the truth I don’t think it would be worth it. It’s true that it was all yours, but the source is pretty unreliable and you’re being accused of theft as well. Anyway, I think it unlikely that we’ll hear of his whereabouts again. They’re usually pretty smart, these con men, they know the ways of the world and how to disappear and reinvent themselves four days later at any spot on the globe in the most unexpected manner.”