María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“But this thing with the guns, Candelaria, selling the guns…,” I murmured fearfully.

“That’s what there is, child; that’s what we’ve got, and I swear to you on my mother’s grave that I mean to get as much as I can from them. You think I wouldn’t prefer that it was something cleaner, that instead of pistols they’d left me a cargo of Swiss watches or silk stockings? Of course I would. But it just so happens that the only things we’ve got are weapons, and it just so happens that we’re at war, and it just so happens that there are people who might be interested in buying them.”

“But what if they catch you?” I asked again uneasily.

“And there she goes again! Well, if they pick me up, we pray to Christ of Medinaceli that Don Claudio has a little pity in him, we swallow a spell in the clink, and that’s all there is to it. I should remind you that you only have eleven months left to pay your debt, and at the rate you’re going you won’t be able to cover it in twenty years sewing for the women on the streets. So however honorable you may want to be, the way you’re insisting on going about things, not even a guardian angel will be able to keep you out of prison. Or from ending up spreading your legs in some run-of-the-mill brothel giving soldiers just back from the front a little release.”

“I don’t know, Candelaria, I don’t know. It scares me so much…”

“You know, I get the shits, too, thinking of death, even though you may think I’m made of stone. Doing my usual little deals isn’t the same thing as trying to put a dozen and a half revolvers on the market during wartime. But we have no other way out, child.”

“How would you do it?”

“Don’t you worry about that, I’ll track down my contacts. I don’t think it’ll take more than a few days to shift the merchandise. And then we’ll find a place in the best part of Tetouan, we’ll set everything up, and you’ll get started.”

“What do you mean, ‘you’ll get started’? What about you? Aren’t you going to be in the workshop with me?”

She laughed silently and shook her head.

“No, child, no I won’t. I’ll be in charge of getting you the money to pay the first few months’ rent and buy what you need. Then, when everything’s ready, you’ll get to work and I’ll stay here, in my house, waiting for the end of the month when we divide up the profits. What’s more, it’s better if people don’t associate you with me: I’ve hardly got the best reputation, and I don’t belong to the same class as the ladies we need as customers. So I’ll take charge of providing the initial money, and you provide the hands. Then we share. That’s what’s called an investment.”

A slight scent of Pitman Academies and Ramiro’s plans suddenly invaded the darkness in the room, and I was about to travel back to an earlier phase in my life that I had no wish to relive. I banished the feeling with invisible slaps and returned to reality in search of more clarification.

“What if I don’t earn anything? If I can’t get the customers?”

“Well, then we’re in a mess. But don’t be too pessimistic. There’s no need to go expecting the worst: we’ve got to be positive and just face up to the matter. No one is going to come along and sort out your life or mine what with all the miseries we have behind us, so we either struggle for ourselves or we won’t be left with any choice but to fight hunger off with our fists.”

“But I gave the commissioner my word that I wouldn’t get into any trouble.”

Candelaria had to struggle not to laugh.

“And my Francisco promised me—in front of the village priest—that he’d respect me till the end of his days, and the son of a bitch beat me more than a rug, damn him. It’s hard to believe, girl, just how innocent you still are after all the blows luck has given you lately. Think about yourself, Sira, think about yourself and forget everything else, because in these bad times, it’s a case of eat or be eaten. What’s more, things aren’t really as serious as all that: we’re not going to shoot anyone, we’re just going to move some merchandise we have left over, and as they say, if it’s a gift from God, then Saint Peter should bless it. If everything works out well, Don Claudio will see your business all set up, nice and clean and shiny, and if he ever asks you where you got the cash, you tell him I lent it to you out of my savings, and if he doesn’t believe you or he doesn’t like the idea, he should have left you in the hospital in the care of the Sisters of Charity instead of bringing you to my place. He’s always tied up with a heap of problems and never wants any trouble, so if we give him everything without making any noise, he won’t bother with investigations. I’m telling you, I know him well; we’ve been butting heads for years now. You don’t have to worry about him.”

Despite her bravado and her peculiar philosophy of life, I knew that Candelaria was right. The more times we went around and around the subject, however much we turned it upside down and inside out, looked at it front and back, this pitiful plan was quite simply a reasonable solution to remedy the miseries of two poor women, alone and rootless, who in rough times were dragging heavy pasts behind them. Propriety and honor were lovely concepts, but they didn’t give you food to eat, or pay your debts, or take away your cold on winter nights. Moral principles and irreproachable behavior were for another kind of creature, not for an unhappy pair with battered souls.

Candelaria interpreted my silence as a proof of assent. “Well then? I start moving the goods tomorrow?”

I felt myself dancing blindly on the edge of a precipice. In the distance, the radio waves were still broadcasting General Queipo’s incendiary speech from Seville between bits of interference. I sighed deeply. My voice sounded, at last, low and sure. Or almost.

“Let’s do it.”

My partner-to-be, satisfied, smiled and gave me a tender pinch on the cheek. Then the wily old survivor got ready to leave, rearranging her housecoat and hoisting her large frame up over the shabby old cloth slippers that had probably been with her for half her lifetime. Candelaria the Matutera, the opportunist, quarrelsome, shameless, and charming, was already at the door on her way out to the hallway when, still speaking in a half whisper, I threw out my last question. In reality, it hardly had anything to do with what we’d been talking about that night, but I felt a certain curiosity to know what her reply would be.

“Candelaria, whose side are you on in this war?”

She turned, surprised, but didn’t hesitate a second before replying in a potent whisper.

“Me? I’m a diehard supporter of whichever side wins, my angel.”

The days following that encounter with the pistols were terrible. Candelaria bustled about incessantly from her room to mine, from the dining room out to the street, from the street to the kitchen, always in a hurry, focused, muttering a muddled litany of grunts and growls whose meaning no one could decipher. I didn’t interfere in her comings and goings, nor did I ask how the negotiations were doing; I knew that when everything was ready she’d be sure to fill me in.

A week passed, until—at last—she had something to announce. She returned home after nine o’clock that night, when we were already sitting before our empty plates, awaiting her arrival. Dinner went ahead as usual, lively and confrontational. When it was over, as the guests scattered around the boardinghouse to get on with their final activities of the day, we began to clear the table together. As we were carrying away the dirty dishes and cutlery, she spilled out to me drop by drop the remainder of her plans. “Tonight the matter will all be set, honey; the deed will be done. Tomorrow morning we’ll start to get your thing moving; I can’t wait to be over with this damned mess, angel, once and for all.”