María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“I need refuge. I don’t like thunderstorms.”

I could have asked him if he was crazy. I could have informed him that he’d given me a terrible fright, shouted at him that he was an idiot, and closed the window without another word. But I did none of these things, because at that very moment a little light came on in my brain: perhaps this bizarre request could now be turned to my favor.

“I’ll let you come over if you help me out,” I said, addressing him informally without even thinking about it.

“Open the door, I’ll be right over.”

Needless to say, my neighbor knew that the exchange for two hundred and seventy-five pesetas was twelve Reichsmarks fifty. Just as he knew very well that a presentable invoice couldn’t be drawn up on a cheap little sheet of paper with a worn old pencil, so he went back over to his house and returned at once with several pieces of marble-colored English paper and a Waterman fountain pen from which purple ink flowed out to create exquisite calligraphy. And he displayed all his ingenuity (which was considerable) and all his artistic talent (likewise considerable) and in just half an hour, between thunderclaps, and in his pajamas, he had not only drawn up the most elegant invoice that any European dressmaker in North Africa could ever have imagined, but he had also given my business a name. Chez Sirah had been born.

Félix Aranda was an unusual man. Amusing, imaginative, and cultured, yes. And also curious, and a busybody. And a bit eccentric and somewhat intrusive, too. The nighttime transit between his apartment and mine became a familiar ritual. Not exactly daily, but frequently. Sometimes we’d go three or four days without seeing each other, sometimes he’d come over five nights in a week. Or six. Or even seven. The regularity of our meetings just depended on something quite apart from us: on how drunk his mother was. What a strange relationship, what a dismal familial existence was being lived out behind the door opposite. Since the death of their father and husband years earlier, Félix and Doña Encarna had traveled through life together, to all appearances utterly harmonious. Every evening between six and seven they would take a walk together; they would attend masses and novenas together, stock up on medicine at the Benatar pharmacy, greet their acquaintances courteously, and have tea and pastries at La Campana. He, always offering her his arm, protecting her affectionately, walking at her pace: careful there, Mama, don’t trip, this way, Mama, careful, careful. She—proud of her child—boasting of his talents left and right: my Félix says, my Félix does, my Félix thinks, oh, my Félix, what would I do without him?

The solicitous chick and the clucking hen were transformed, however, into a couple of monsters when they entered their most private territory. No sooner had they crossed the threshold of their home than the old lady wrapped herself in the uniform of a tyrant and took out her invisible whip to inflict the utmost humiliation on her son. Scratch my leg, Félix, my calf itches; not there, higher; you’re so useless, child, how could I have given birth to an offspring like you? Put the tablecloth on properly, I can see it’s not straight; not like that, that’s even worse; put it back the way it was, you ruin everything you touch, little piece of shit, why couldn’t I have left you in the foundling hospital when you were born? Look in my mouth and see if my pyorrhea has gotten any worse, get out the Agua de Carmen that relieves my flatulence, rub my back with camphorated alcohol, file down this callus, cut my toenails, be careful, you fat lump of lard, you’ll have my toe off; bring over the handkerchief so I can cough up some phlegm, bring me a Sor Virginia patch for my lumbago; wash my hair and put my curlers in, more carefully, idiot, you’re going to make me bald…

That was how Félix grew up, with a double life whose two sides were as disparate as they were pitiful. No sooner had his father died than the beloved son stopped being that overnight: while he was still growing, and without anyone outside suspecting a thing, he became the focus of affection and treats in public and the object of all his mother’s furies and frustrations in private. As though with the slash of a scythe, all his dreams were hacked down to the ground: leaving Tetouan to study fine art in Seville or Madrid, working out his confused sexuality and meeting other people like him, beings with unconventional spirits yearning to fly free. Instead he found himself facing the prospect of living permanently under the black wing of Doña Encarna. He completed his bachelor’s with the Marianists at the Colegio del Pilar with brilliant qualifications that were of no use to him because his mother had taken advantage of her position as a suffering widow to get him an administrative position that was colored rat grey. Stamping forms in the General Supplies Office of the Municipal Services Division: the perfect job to beat down the most brilliant kind of creativity and keep it chained like a dog—now I’m offering you a slice of succulent meat, now I’m kicking you hard enough to burst your belly.

He bore the blows with a monklike patience. And so, over the years, they maintained their imbalance unchanged, her tyrannizing him, and him docile, bearing up, tolerating. It was hard to know what it was that Félix’s mother was looking for in him, why she treated him like that, what she wanted from her son apart from what he would always have been ready to give. Love, respect, compassion? No, she had these without having to make the least effort. He wasn’t stingy with his affections—far from it, dear old Félix. Doña Encarna wanted something more. Devotion, unconditional availability, attention to her most ludicrous whims. Submissiveness, submission. Precisely what her husband had demanded of her in life. I assumed this was why she had gotten rid of him. Félix never told me openly, but like the boy in the fairy tale leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind him, he left me clues along the way. All I did was follow them to reach my conclusion. The late Don Nicasio had probably been killed by his wife just as one dark night Félix would perhaps end up disposing of his mother.

It would be hard to say how long he would have been able to bear that wretched daily life had a solution not come to him in the most unexpected way. Somebody grateful for a well-done piece of work; a sausage and a couple of bottles of El Mono anisette as a gift; let’s try it, Mama, go on, just a little glass, just wet your whistle. But it wasn’t only Doña Encarna’s lips that enjoyed the sickly sweet taste of the liqueur, but also her tongue, and her palate, and her throat, and her intestinal tract, and from there the fumes went to her head, and that same alcoholic night Félix found himself faced with a way out. From then on, the bottle of anisette was his great ally, his one salvation and escape route out to the third dimension of his life. And never again was he just a model son when out in the public eye and a disgusting little rag in private; from then on he also became an uninhibited night walker, a fugitive in search of the oxygen he was lacking at home.

“A little bit more of the El Mono, Mama?” he would ask after dinner, without fail.

“Oh, go on then, give me just a drop. To clear my throat a bit better, I think I caught a chill in church this afternoon.”

The four fingers of thick liquid went down Doña Encarna’s gullet at vertiginous speed.

“It’s what I’ve told you before, Mama, you don’t wrap yourself up enough,” Félix went on affectionately as he refilled the glass to the same level. “Come on, drink it up quickly, you’ll see how fast you’ll warm up.” Ten minutes and three drinks of anisette later, Doña Encarna was snoring, half conscious, and her son was fleeing like a just-freed sparrow on the way to seedy dives, to meet up with people whom in daylight and in the presence of his mother he wouldn’t have dared even to greet.