María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“But you don’t have any money either; you spend all day complaining that you don’t have enough to feed us.”

“You’re right, I’m broke. It’s been very hard to get hold of merchandise lately at the borders. They’ve posted soldiers armed up to the teeth, and it’s not humanly possible to get past them to Tangiers to find goods unless you have fifty thousand safe-conducts, which no one is going to give me. And getting to Gibraltar is even harder, with the Strait closed to traffic and the low-flying warplanes ready to bomb anything that moves. But I’ve got a way for us to get the rooms we need to set up the business; something that—for the first time in my whole damned life—has come to me without my seeking it out and for which I haven’t even had to leave my house. Come over here and I’ll show you.”

Then she went over to the corner of the room where all the useless odds and ends were heaped.

“First just pop down the corridor and check if the sisters have still got their radio on,” she commanded in a whisper.

By the time I returned with confirmation that that was indeed the case, she had moved away the cages, the basket, the chamber pots, and the basins. All that was left in front of her was the trunk.

“Lock the door, turn on the light, and come over here,” she demanded imperiously without raising her voice any more than she had to.

The bare bulb on the ceiling quickly filled the room with a dim glow. When I appeared at her side she had just lifted the lid. At the bottom of the trunk was a piece of rumpled, filthy blanket. She lifted it out carefully, almost delicately.

“Take a good look in there.”

What I saw rendered me speechless, nearly lifeless. A pile of dark pistols, ten, twelve, perhaps fifteen or twenty of them were scattered at the bottom in disarray, their barrels pointed every which way, like a platoon of sleeping assassins.

“Did you see them?” she whispered. “I’ll close it back up. Give me the material to put on top, and turn the light out again.”

Candelaria’s voice, though quiet, was just as it always was; I never knew how mine sounded because the impact of what I’d just seen prevented me from formulating a single word for quite some time. We returned to the bed and she resumed her whispering.

“Some say this business with the uprising took people by surprise, but that’s a dirty lie. Absolutely everybody knew there was some powerful stuff brewing. Everyone was preparing for quite some time, and not only in the barracks and at the Llano Amarillo. They say that even in the Spanish Casino there was an arsenal hidden behind the bar; it’s anyone’s guess whether that’s true or not. In the first weeks of July, I had a customs agent lodged in this room awaiting his posting, or at least that’s what he said. Things smelled a bit fishy to me, why should I lie to you, because if you ask me that man wasn’t a customs agent or anything even close. But, well, since I never ask questions because I don’t like people getting involved in my dealings either, I made up his room, put a hot meal on the table for him, and that was that. After July eighteenth I never saw him again. Whether he joined the uprising, or he ran off through the Moorish villages to the French zone, or they took him off to Monte Hacho and had him shot the next morning, I haven’t the faintest idea. And I didn’t ask, either. The thing was, after four or five days, they sent this little lieutenant over to me to collect his belongings. Without a word I handed over what little there was in the wardrobe, made the sign of the cross, considered the matter closed. But when Jamila was cleaning the room for the next guest and sweeping under the bed I suddenly heard her scream as if she’d seen the devil himself holding his pitchfork, or whatever the Muslims take for the devil. Right there, in the corner, she’d run the broom into this pile of guns.”

“So then you kept them?” I asked in a whisper.

“What else was I going to do? Was I supposed to go out searching for the lieutenant at headquarters with everything that was going on?”

“You could have handed them over to the commissioner.”

“To Don Claudio? You’re crazy, girl!”

This time it was me who with a loud “sssshhhh” quieted her down. “Why would I give the pistols to Don Claudio? As it is, he’s got me on a leash, you want him to lock me up for life? I kept them because they were in my house, and what’s more, the customs agent still owed me for two weeks, so the guns were more or less payment. They’re worth a lot of money, girl, even more now, the way things are, so those pistols are mine and I can do whatever I please with them.”

“And you’re planning to sell them? That could be very dangerous.”

“Well, for crying out loud, of course it’s dangerous, but we need the cash to set up your business.”

“Candelaria, don’t tell me you’re going to get yourself mixed up in all this trouble just for me…”

“No, child, no,” she interrupted. “Let’s see if I can explain. I’m not getting mixed up in any trouble on my own, we’re doing it together. I’ll be responsible for finding someone who wants to buy the merchandise and with whatever I can get for it we’ll set up your workshop and split the profits fifty-fifty.”

“Why don’t you sell them yourself and get what you can for them without setting up a business for me?”

“Because that’s bread for today and hunger tomorrow, and I’m more interested in something that’ll give me a return in the long run. If I sell the goods and in two or three months everything I get for them goes straight into the cooking pot, what will I live on if the war goes on?”

“What if they catch you trying to sell the pistols?”

“Then I’ll tell Don Claudio it’s something we’re both in together, and we’ll end up going wherever he sends us.”

“To prison?”

“Or the civilian cemetery, depending on where the bastard decides.”

Although she had made this last grim prediction with a teasing wink, my feeling of panic was increasing by the second. Commissioner Vázquez’s steely stare and his severe warnings remained fresh in my memory. Stay away from any trouble, don’t mess around with me, behave respectably. His words had created a whole chain of undesirable associations: police station, women’s prison, robbery, fraud, debt, charge, trial. And now, as if that were not enough, arms dealing.

“Don’t get yourself mixed up in this trouble, Candelaria, it’s too dangerous,” I begged her, scared to death.

“Then what will we do?” she asked in a rushed whisper. “Live on air? Eat snot? You arrived without a cent, and I no longer have any means myself. As for the other guests, the only ones who pay me are the mother, the schoolteacher, and the telegraph man, and we’ll see just how long they manage to stretch out the little they have. The other three wretches and you have showed up with just the clothes on your backs, but I can’t throw you out on the street. Them out of charity and you because the last thing I need would be to have Don Claudio coming after me for explanations. So you tell me how I’m going to manage.”

“I can keep sewing for the same women; I’ll work more, I’ll stay awake all night if I have to. We’ll split what I earn between the two of us… ”

“And how much is that? How much do you think you can earn making tatty old clothes for the neighbors? A few coins here and there? Have you already forgotten how much you owe in Tangiers? Are you planning to live in this lousy little room for the rest of your life?” The words tumbled out of her mouth in a flustered, hissing torrent. “Look, honey, with those hands of yours you’ve got an enormous treasure, and it’s a terrible sin not to make the most of it as God wants you to. I know life has given you some harsh blows, that your fiancé behaved very badly toward you, that you’re in a city where you don’t want to be, far from your country and your family, but this is what there is, what’s happened has happened and time never goes backward. You’ve got to press ahead, Sira. You’ve got to be brave, take risks, fight for yourself. With the misadventures you’ve been through, no nice young gentleman is about to come knocking on your door to set you up in an apartment. What’s more, after your experience, I don’t think you’re going to want to depend on a man for quite some time, either. You’re very young, and at your age you can still hope to make a new life for yourself. Something better than letting your best years shrivel away sewing hems and sighing over what you’ve lost.”