María Dueñas - The Time in Between

I watched him as he made his way toward the hospital exit, walking with the agile, determined step of someone who isn’t in the habit of wasting time. Sooner or later, when I was fully recovered, I’d have to find out whether that man really did believe in my innocence or just wanted to be rid of the heavy burden that had fallen on him, as though from the sky, at the most inconvenient time. I couldn’t think about that then: I was exhausted and afraid, and the only thing I wanted was a deep sleep, and to forget about everything.

Commissioner Vázquez returned the following evening, at seven, maybe eight, when the heat was no longer so intense and the light more filtered. No sooner did I see him come through the door at the far end of the pavilion than I lifted my weight on my elbows and with great effort, almost dragging myself, sat up. When he reached me, he sat down on the same chair as the day before. I didn’t even greet him. I just cleared my throat, readied my voice, and began to tell him everything he wished to hear.

That second meeting with Don Claudio took place on a Friday in late August. The following Monday he returned to collect me. He had found lodgings for me and wished to accompany me there. In other circumstances, such apparently chivalrous behavior might have been interpreted differently, but at that time, neither he nor I doubted that his interest in me was strictly professional, that I was simply an object worth having in his safekeeping in order to avoid serious complications.

I was dressed when he arrived, perched on the edge of the already made bed in mismatched clothes that were now too big for me, my hair in an untidy bun. The suitcase at my feet was filled with the miserable remains of my calamity, and my bony fingers were clasped on my lap as I struggled unsuccessfully to gather my strength. When I saw him arrive I tried to get up, but he indicated with a gesture that I should remain seated.

Positioning himself on the edge of the bed opposite mine, he merely said, “Wait. We have to talk.”

He regarded me for a few seconds with those dark eyes capable of drilling through a wall. By now I realized that he was neither a grey-haired young man nor a youthful old man: he was a man somewhere between forty and fifty, schooled in manners and skilled in his police work, well built, with a soul somewhat battered from dealing with scum of every kind. A man, I thought, with whom I ought not to have any sort of problem.

“Look, this isn’t standard procedure. Due to current circumstances, I’m making an exception for you, but I want you to be absolutely clear about the real situation. Although I personally believe that you’re just the unsuspecting victim of a con man, the whole matter has to be settled by a judge, not me. But things being the way they are in these confused times, I fear a lawsuit is out of the question. And nothing will be gained by keeping you locked up in a cell till God knows when. So, just as I told you the other day, I’m going to allow you your freedom, but—pay attention—under supervision and with limited movement. And to remove any temptation I’m not going to return your passport to you. Also, you remain free on the condition that while you recover, you’ll find a decent way to earn a living and save enough to pay off your debt to the Continental. I asked them to give you one year to settle the outstanding bill and they accepted. So now you can start finding a way to scrape up this money, from under a rock if need be, but honestly and without getting into any trouble, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” I murmured.

“And don’t fail me; don’t try any tricks with me, and don’t force me to come down hard on you, because if you cross me I’ll set the machinery in motion, and you’ll be shipped off to Spain at the earliest opportunity and get seven years in the Quiñones women’s prison before you know what hit you, understand?”

At such a grave threat I was unable to say anything coherent; I just nodded. Then he got up; a couple of seconds later I did the same. He moved quickly and nimbly; I had to make a tremendous effort just to keep up with him.

“So let’s be off,” he concluded. “Leave that, I’ll take the suitcase, you can’t even lift your own shadow. I’ve got the car at the door; say good-bye to the nuns, thank them for looking after you so well, and let’s go.”

We made our way through Tetouan in his car, and for the first time I was able to appreciate the city that would for an undetermined time become my own. The hospital was on the outskirts; bit by bit as we progressed farther in, the volume of people grew. At nearly midday, the streets were full. Although there were hardly any motorcars around, the commissioner was constantly having to sound his horn to open up a passageway between the bodies moving unhurriedly in a thousand directions. There were men in light-colored linen suits and panama hats, boys in shorts running races, Spanish women with their shopping baskets laden with vegetables, Muslim men in turbans and striped djellabas, Arab women covered in voluminous garments that allowed only their eyes and feet to be seen. There were uniformed soldiers and girls in flowery summer dresses, barefoot local children playing amid the chickens. And the constant din of voices, stray words and phrases in Arabic and Spanish, interminable greetings to the commissioner each time someone recognized his car. It was hard to imagine that in this very setting only weeks earlier there had emerged a movement that was now being considered a civil war.

We didn’t initiate any conversation over the course of the drive; our journey wasn’t supposed to be a pleasure trip, but a precise step in a procedure for moving me from one place to another. From time to time, however, when the commissioner sensed that something that appeared before our eyes might seem strange or new to me, he gestured to it with his jaw and, his eyes always fixed straight ahead, spoke some concise words to name it. “Riffians,” I remember him saying one such time as he indicated a group of Berber women dressed in striped full skirts and big straw hats with colored pom-poms. The ten or fifteen brief minutes of our journey were enough for me to absorb some of the shapes, smells, and names that I would become familiar with during that new phase of my life. The High Commission, the prickly pears, the caliph’s palace, the water carriers on their donkeys, the Moorish quarter, the Dersa and the Ghorgiz, the bakalitos , the mint.

We got out of the car at the Plaza de España; a couple of Moorish boys rushed over to carry my luggage and the commissioner allowed one of them to do so. Then we went into La Luneta, located next to the Jewish quarter, next to the medina. La Luneta, my first street in Tetouan: narrow, noisy, irregular, and rowdy, full of people, taverns, cafés, and chaotic bazaars where you could buy anything and everything. We reached a large door, went in, and ascended a staircase. The commissioner rang a bell on the first landing.

“Good morning, Candelaria. I’m here with the delivery you were expecting,” my companion said to the plump woman in red who had just opened the door, gesturing toward me with a brief movement of his head.

“But what kind of delivery is this, Commissioner?” she replied, placing her hands on her hips and giving a powerful guffaw. Then immediately she stepped aside and let us pass. Her place was sunny, gleaming in its modesty, and of somewhat questionable aesthetics. While she had a seemingly natural flippancy, beneath it you sensed that this visit from the police was making her extremely uneasy.

“A special delivery,” he explained, putting the suitcase down in the little foyer beneath a calendar with the image of the Sacred Heart. “You’ll have to put this young lady up for a while, and for the time being, without charging her anything; you’ll be able to settle accounts with her once she starts to earn her living.”