María Dueñas - The Time in Between

My confused steps ended up taking me close to a house with a large lamp hanging over the door. At once I could hear laughing, chatter, immoderate voices singing in chorus the words of “Mi jaca” to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano. I decided to approach, anxious to find some reference point that would allow me to recover my sense of direction. I was just a few feet away when a couple came out quickly, speaking Spanish: a man who seemed to be drunk, clinging to an older woman with dyed blond hair who was laughing heartily. I realized then that I was standing outside a brothel, but it was already too late to try to pass myself off as a worn-out old local woman: the couple was just a few steps away from me. Morita, come with me, morita, my lovely, I’ve got something to show you, look, look, morita, the man said, slobbering, holding an arm out to me while his other hand gripped his crotch obscenely. The woman tried to restrain him as she laughed, while I jumped away from his reach and ran off wildly, clasping the haik around my body with all my strength.

I left the brothel behind me, that place filled with flesh from the barracks playing cards, bellowing out popular songs, and feverishly handling the women; all of them momentarily freed from the certainty that someday soon they’d be crossing the Strait to confront the grim reality of the war. And then, as I sped away in haste, luck finally came to my aid when turning a corner I found myself face to face with the Souq el Foki.

I was filled with relief at having regained my bearings: at last I knew how to escape from the cage that the medina had become. Time was racing, and I would have to do the same. Moving with the longest strides my covering would allow, I reached Puerta de la Luneta in only a few minutes. But a new shock awaited me there: one of the feared military control posts that had prevented the people from Larache from getting into Tetouan. Several soldiers, guard barriers, and a couple of vehicles: enough to intimidate anyone who wanted to get into the city for any reason less than pure. I could feel my throat becoming dry, but I knew I couldn’t avoid passing right in front of them, let alone stop to consider what I should do, so with my eyes fixed once again on the ground I decided to continue on my way with the weary walk that Candelaria had advised. I passed the control with my blood pounding in my temples as I held my breath, expecting to be stopped at any moment and asked where I was going, who I was, what I was hiding. To my good fortune, they barely glanced at me. They ignored me, just as I’d been ignored by the officers I’d passed in the narrow alley. What danger could the glorious uprising fear from that plodding old Moroccan woman who made her way through the dawn streets like a shadow?

I came down into the open area of the park and forced myself to recover my composure. With feigned calm I crossed the gardens filled with sleeping shadows, so strange in that stillness, without the noisy children or couples or elderly people who would wander amid the fountains and the palm trees in daytime. As I proceeded I could see the station looming clearer and clearer in sight. Compared to the low houses of the medina, it suddenly looked grand and troubling to me, half Moorish and half Andalusian, with its turrets and green tiles, its huge archways over the entrances. Several dim lamps illuminated the façade, casting its silhouette against the bulk of the Ghorgiz, those imposing mountains from which the men from Larache were supposed to arrive. I’d only been by the station once before, when the commissioner had taken me in his car from the hospital to the boardinghouse. Other times I’d seen it at a distance, from the vista of La Luneta, unable to gauge the scale of the thing. Standing before it in the dimness, I found its size so threatening that I suddenly missed the cozy narrowness of the alleyways in the Moorish quarter.

But there wasn’t time to allow fear to bare its teeth at me again, so I recovered my daring and set about crossing the Ceuta road, which at that time of morning had not so much as a speck of dust moving on it. I tried to buoy up my spirits by calculating times, telling myself that in a short while it would all be over, that I’d already gone through most of the ordeal. It comforted me to think that I’d soon be rid of those tight bandages and pistols that were bruising my body and the voluminous clothes that felt so strange. It wouldn’t be long now.

I went into the station through the main entrance, which was wide open, and was met by a flood of cold light illuminating the space, a sharp contrast to the darkness of night I’d just left behind. The first thing I noticed was a large clock reading a quarter to six. I sighed in relief under the fabric covering my face: my delay hadn’t been too bad. I walked with slow deliberateness across the concourse while my eyes, hidden behind the veil, quickly surveyed the scene. The ticket desks were closed, and there was only an old Muslim man flat out on a bench with a bundle at his feet. At the far end of the room, two big doors opened onto the platform. On the left was another door with a prominent sign marked Café. I found the timetable board to my right, but I didn’t stop to study it, just sat down on a bench beneath and settled myself in to wait. No sooner had I done so than a feeling of gratitude ran through my whole body from head to foot. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how tired I was after the immense effort of walking nonstop laden with all that sinister weight.

Although no one appeared on the concourse the whole time I remained sitting there immobile, I heard sounds that told me I was not alone. Some of them came from outside, others from the platform. Footsteps and men’s voices, sometimes quiet, at other times louder. They were young voices, and I assumed they would have been soldiers in charge of guarding the station. I tried not to think about the fact that they were probably under orders to fire without hesitation at anything suspicious. There were some other sounds, too, coming from the café. It comforted me to hear them, for at least I could tell that the café employee was at work and in place. I let ten minutes pass, which they did with exasperating slowness. There wasn’t time for the twenty minutes Candelaria had told me to wait, so when the hands of the clock showed five to six, I gathered up my strength, got heavily to my feet, and walked over to my destination.

The café was large, with at least a dozen tables, all of them unoccupied except for one where a man was dozing with his head hidden by his arm; beside him rested an empty wine bottle. I made my way over to the counter, dragging my slippers, without the slightest idea of what I ought to say or what I was going to hear. Behind the bar, a gaunt, dark-skinned man with a cigarette butt between his lips was busy putting plates and cups in orderly piles, apparently not paying the least attention to that woman with her face covered who was about to place herself right in front of him. As he saw me approach the counter, he simply said loudly and dismissively, without removing his cigarette from his mouth, “Seven thirty, the train doesn’t leave till seven thirty.” Then, in a low voice, he added a few words in Arabic that I didn’t understand. “I’m Spanish, I don’t understand you,” I mumbled from behind the veil. He opened his mouth, unable to hide his disbelief, and what was left of his cigarette fell unnoticed onto the floor. Then he whispered the message: go to the urinals on the platform and close the door, they’re waiting for you there.

I slowly retraced my steps, returning to the concourse, and from there went out into the night. First, I readjusted the haik and lifted the veil farther up until it was almost grazing my eyelashes. The broad platform looked empty, and beyond there was nothing but the rocky mass of the Ghorgiz, dark and immense. The soldiers, four of them, were all together, smoking and talking under one of the arches that opened onto the tracks. They flinched when they saw a shadow appear; I noticed how they tensed up, how they brought their boots together and straightened their postures, how they adjusted their rifles on their shoulders.