María Dueñas - The Time in Between

I would often remember Ignacio, my first boyfriend, as well. I didn’t miss his physical presence, since Ramiro’s had been so brutally intense that his—so sweet, so mild—already seemed distant and vague to me, a nearly faded shadow. But I couldn’t prevent myself from nostalgically recalling his loyalty, his tenderness, and the certainty that nothing painful could happen to me by his side. And much, much more frequently than it should have, the memory of Ramiro assailed me abruptly, stabbing me sharply in the gut. It hurt, of course it hurt, horribly. Still, I managed to get used to living with it like someone carrying a heavy load: dragging it along though it slows your pace and demands great effort, but not allowing it to prevent you from making your way onward.

All those invisible presences—Ramiro, Ignacio, my mother, things lost, things past—began to transform themselves into companions that were more or less volatile, more or less intense, companions that I’d have to learn to live with. They invaded my mind when I was alone, in the silent evenings toiling away in the workshop between patterns and bastings, when I went to bed or in the gloom of the living room on the nights when Félix wasn’t there, when he was off on his clandestine wanderings. The rest of the day they usually left me alone, probably sensing that I was too busy to stop and pay them any attention. I had enough to think about with a business to run and an invented personality to continue fabricating.

With the arrival of spring, the volume of work increased. The weather was changing, and my clients needed lighter outfits for the bright mornings and the imminent Moroccan summer nights. A few new faces appeared, a few more German women, some more Jews. Thanks to Félix I managed to get a more or less precise idea of them all. He used to pass the clients at the main entrance or on the stairs, the landing, or the street when they were entering or leaving the workshop. He amused himself by looking for snippets of information to create their profiles: who they were, their families, where they were going, where they’d come from. Then later, when he’d leave his mother slumped in her armchair, her half-closed eyes rolled up and boozy drool hanging from her mouth, he would reveal to me what he had learned.

That was how, for example, I discovered certain details concerning Frau Langenheim, one of the German ladies who had quickly become regulars. Her father had been the Italian ambassador to Tangiers and her mother was English; her husband, an older mining engineer, was tall, bald, and a respected member of the small but determined German colony in Spanish Morocco. He was one of the Nazis, Félix told me, who almost unexpectedly and to the astonishment of the Republicans had secured directly from Hitler the first outside assistance for Franco’s army, just a few days after the uprising. It would be a while before I’d be able to gauge to what extent the activities of my client’s stiff husband had proved crucial to the course of the civil war. However, thanks to Langenheim and Bernhardt, another German living in Tetouan—whose half-Argentine wife was an occasional client of mine—Franco’s troops, without having planned for it and in a tiny period of time, got hold of a fine arsenal of military assistance, which enabled them to transport their men to the Peninsula. Months later, as a sign of gratitude and recognition for her husband’s significant actions, my client would be granted the greatest honor in the Protectorate from the hands of the caliph, and I would dress her in silk and organza for the occasion.

Long before that official event, Frau Langenheim arrived at the atelier one April morning with someone I’d not seen before. She rang the bell, and Jamila opened the door; I was waiting in the living room, meanwhile, pretending to examine the weft of a fabric against the light that was streaming in through the balcony windows. In reality I wasn’t examining anything at all; I had simply adopted that pose to receive my clients in order to establish an air of professionalism.

“I’ve brought an English friend, for her to see the things you make,” said the German’s wife as she stepped confidently into the room.

A woman appeared beside her, blond and extremely thin. I calculated that she must have been more or less my own age, but because of the ease with which she behaved she could easily have lived a thousand lives by now, each the length of mine. My attention was drawn to the devastating confidence she radiated and the unaffected elegance with which she greeted me, lightly grazing my fingers with hers while with an airy gesture she pushed a wave of hair back from her face. Her name was Rosalinda Fox, and she had skin so light and fine that it seemed to be made of tissue paper, as well as a strange form of speaking in which words from different languages leapt about chaotically in an extravagant and sometimes incomprehensible torrent.

“I need wardrobe immediately; entonces creo que…, I believe you and I, vamos… er… a entendernos. We will understand each other, I mean,” she said, polishing off the sentence with a slight laugh.

Frau Langenheim refused the invitation to be seated with an I’m- in-a-rush-dear-I’ve-really-got-to-go. In spite of her surname and the jumble of her origins, she spoke Spanish fluently.

“Rosalinda, my dear, I’ll see you this evening at Consul Leonini’s cocktail party,” she said, bidding her friend good-bye. “ Adiós, querida —bye, sweetie, bye.”

I sat down with the woman who had just arrived, and I began the routine I’d used on so many first visits. I displayed my catalog of poses and expressions as we leafed through magazines and examined fabrics; I gave her advice and she made choices; then she reconsidered her decisions, corrected herself, and chose again. The elegant naturalness with which she behaved made me feel comfortable with her right from the start. Sometimes I found the artificiality of my behavior tiring, especially when I was facing particularly demanding clients. That wasn’t the case here: everything flowed with no tension or unreasonable demands.

We moved into the fitting room and I took measurements, noting the catlike slenderness of her bones, the smallest I’d ever seen. We continued to talk about fabrics and patterns, about sleeves and necklines, then we went back over what she had chosen, confirming the details before I drew up the order. A morning dress in patterned silk, a suit in coral-pink laine glacée , and an evening gown inspired by the latest collection from Lanvin. I gave her a fitting date for ten days later and with that I thought we were done. But the new client decided it wasn’t yet time to leave, and, still comfortably settled on the sofa, she took out a tortoiseshell cigarette case and offered me one. We smoked awhile, commenting on designs in some of the magazines as she described her tastes to me in her foreigner’s half language. Pointing at various photos, she asked me how you said “embroidery” in Spanish, how you said “shoulder straps” and “buckle.” I clarified the things she was unsure about, we laughed at the delicate awkwardness of her pronunciation, and we had another cigarette before she decided to leave, calmly, as though she had nothing to do and no one waiting for her anywhere. First she touched up her makeup, looking without much interest at her reflection in the little compact mirror. Then she rearranged her waves of golden hair and retrieved her hat, her bag and gloves, all elegant and of the finest quality, but also brand-new. I said good-bye to her at the door, listened to her heels tapping down the stairs, and heard no word of her until many days later. I never bumped into her on my walks at dusk, never met up with her at any establishment; no one spoke to me of her, nor did I make any attempt to find out who this Englishwoman was who seemed to have so much time on her hands.