María Dueñas - The Time in Between

No sooner had we finished the chores than each of us shut herself in her room without exchanging another word. The rest of the troop, meanwhile, were finishing their nighttime routines: eucalyptus gargles, the radio, hair curlers in front of the mirror, going over to the café. Trying to feign normality I threw a good-night out into the air before going to bed. I remained awake awhile, until bit by bit all the activity died down. The last thing I heard was Candelaria leaving her room and then—barely making a sound—closing the front door.

I fell asleep a few minutes after she’d gone out. For the first time in days I didn’t toss and turn for hours, nor was I visited by the dark portents of the previous nights—prison, police station, arrests, death. It was as though my nerves had finally decided to give me a respite on learning that the grim business was nearly over. I submerged myself in sleep, curled up with the sweet premonition that the following morning we’d begin to plan our future without the dark shadow of the pistols over our heads.

But my rest didn’t last long. I don’t know what time it was—two, three perhaps—when a hand grabbed my shoulder and shook me vigorously.

“Wake up, girl, wake up.”

I partly sat up, disoriented, still asleep.

“What’s going on, Candelaria? What are you doing here? You’re back already?” I managed to say with some difficulty.

“A disaster, child, a huge catastrophe,” the Matutera replied in a whisper.

She was standing alongside my bed, and through the fog of my sleepiness her voluminous figure seemed rounder than ever. She was wearing an overcoat I didn’t recognize, big and broad, done up to the neck. She began to unbutton it quickly as she gave flustered explanations.

“The army has been watching all the roads into Tetouan and the men who were coming from Larache to collect the merchandise didn’t dare come this far. I waited till nearly three in the morning without anyone showing up, and eventually they sent me some Berber kid to tell me that the access routes were much more heavily guarded than they’d thought, that they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to get out alive if they were to come into town.”

“Where were you supposed to meet them?” I asked, forcing myself to put everything she had been saying into place.

“In the lower Suica, around the back of a coal yard.”

I didn’t know the place she was referring to but didn’t try to clarify it any further. In my still sleepy head our failure was already being sketched in thick dark strokes: good-bye to the business, good-bye to the dressmaker’s studio. Welcome back to the uneasiness of not knowing what would become of me.

“So it’s all over then,” I said, rubbing my eyes to remove the last vestiges of sleep.

“Nothing of the sort, honey,” Candelaria stopped me, finishing taking off her coat. “We may have been forced to change our plans, but by all that’s holy I swear to you those pistols will be flying out of this house tonight. So get moving, girl, get up, there’s no time to lose.”

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying to me; my attention was focused on another matter: the image of Candelaria undoing the large shapeless dress she was wearing under the coat, a sort of loose smock of coarse wool that barely allowed you to make out the generous shape of her body. I watched in amazement as she undressed, not understanding the meaning of what she was doing and unable to work out the reason for that hurried stripping at the foot of my bed. Until, having removed her skirt, she began to extract objects hidden among her dense flesh. And then I understood. She had four pistols carried in her garters, six in her belt, two in the straps of her brassiere, and another pair under her armpits. The remaining five were in her handbag, tied into a piece of cloth. Nineteen in total. Nineteen butts with their nineteen barrels ready to leave the warmth of that robust body to be transported to a destination that at that very moment I began to suspect.

“And what do you want me to do?” I asked, terrified.

“Take these weapons to the train station, hand them over before six in the morning, and bring back the nine and a half thousand pesetas that were agreed on for the merchandise. You know where the station is, don’t you? Across the Ceuta road, at the foot of the Ghorgiz. There the men can collect it without having to enter Tetouan. They’ll be coming down from the mountain and they’ll head right over to collect it before dawn, without having to set foot in the city.”

Shock cut my sleepiness off at the root and suddenly I was awake as an owl.

“But why do I have to be the one to take them?”

“Because when I was coming back from the Suica, making a detour to figure out the best way to arrange things for the train station, that son of a bitch Palomares was coming out of the El Andaluz bar as it was closing. He stopped me at the gate of the Intendencia Barracks and told me that tonight he just might decide to come by the boardinghouse to carry out a search.”

“Who’s Palomares?”

“The nastiest piece of work of all the cops in Spanish Morocco.”

“One of Don Claudio’s?”

“He works under his command, yes. When he’s with him he sucks up to him, but when he’s off on his own, all his nastiness comes out. He’s terrorized half of Tetouan with threats of locking them up for life.”

“Why did he stop you tonight?”

“Because he felt like it, because that’s the kind of pig he is, and he likes lashing out and frightening people, especially women; he’s been doing it for years, and these days even more.”

“But did he suspect anything about the pistols?”

“No, child, no; fortunately he didn’t ask me to open my handbag nor did he dare touch me. He just said to me in that horrible voice of his, Where are you going so late, Matutera, you’re not mixed up in one of your shady little deals, you crooked old bitch, and I replied, I’ve just been visiting a dear friend of mine, Don Alfredo, who’s in a bad way with kidney stones. I don’t trust you, Matutera, you’re such a slut, a crook, the brute said right back to me, and I bit my tongue to stop myself from answering back, although I was about to shit all over his ancestors. But I just kept walking with my handbag tightly under my arm, trusting to Holy Mary that the pistols wouldn’t shift around on my body, and then I heard his filthy voice behind me saying, Just the same I’m going to come by your boardinghouse and give the place a good search, you old tart, just to see what I might find.”

“You really think he’s going to come?”

“He might, he might not,” she replied, shrugging. “If he manages to find himself a poor whore who’ll turn a trick for him and give him a bit of relief, then he’ll forget all about me. But if he can’t get it up tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if he knocked on the door, threw the guests into the hallway, and turned my house upside down without batting an eye. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“So you can’t leave the boardinghouse all night, just in case,” I whispered slowly.

“That’s right, my angel,” she said.

“And the pistols have got to disappear immediately so that Palomares doesn’t find them here,” I added.

“Exactly.”

“And we have to hand over the guns today because the buyers are waiting for them and won’t risk their lives coming into Tetouan to get them.”

“You couldn’t have put it more clearly, my princess.”

We remained silent for a few seconds, looking each other tensely in the eye. We must have looked pitiful, her standing half naked with rolls of flesh spilling out of her bra and girdle, me sitting cross-legged under the sheets in my nightdress, with my hair disheveled and my heart clenched. Not to mention the scattered black pistols.