María Dueñas - The Time in Between

She smiled vaguely and went out without saying another word. I was left alone, standing there immobile, partly annoyed at my inability to help a client in trouble and partly still intrigued by the strange way in which Rosalinda Fox’s life was taking shape before my eyes: a globe-trotting young mother who lost trunks filled with eveningwear in the same way that one might forget one’s purse hastily on a park bench or café table.

I leaned out onto the balcony half hidden by the shutters and watched as she arrived at the street. She made her way to a bright red automobile parked opposite my front door. I assumed there must have been someone waiting for her, perhaps the man she was so eager to please that night. I couldn’t help my curiosity and I tried to make out a face, plotting out imaginary scenarios in my mind. I assumed he was German; perhaps that was why she so longed to create a good impression among his compatriots. I assumed him to be young, attractive, a bon vivant, worldly and confident like her. I barely had time to develop my fantasies because when she reached the car and opened the right-hand door—the one I supposed to be the passenger seat—I saw the steering wheel and realized she would be the one driving. There was no one waiting for her in that English car: she started it up and she left, as alone as she had arrived. Without a man, without a dress for that night, and, most likely, with no hope of finding any solution over the course of the afternoon.

As I tried to get the bad taste from that meeting out of my mouth, I set about reestablishing order among the objects that Rosalinda’s presence had altered. I picked up the ashtray, blew off the bits of ash that had fallen onto the table, straightened a corner of the rug with the tip of my shoe, plumped up the cushions on the sofa, and began rearranging the magazines she’d leafed through while I finished attending to Elvirita Cohen. I was about to close the copy of Harper’s Bazaar that was lying open at an advertisement for Helena Rubenstein lipsticks when I recognized the photograph of a design that looked vaguely familiar. A thousand memories of a different time flocked back to my mind like birds. Without being completely conscious of what I was doing, I shouted Jamila’s name as loudly as I could. A mad dash brought her to the living room in a heartbeat.

“Go, quick as you can, to Frau Langenheim’s house and ask her to find Señora Fox. She has to come see me immediately; tell her it’s a matter of the greatest urgency.”

The person who created the design, my dear ignoramus, was Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, son of the great Mariano Fortuny, who was probably the best painter of the nineteenth century after Goya. He was an incredible artist, closely linked to Morocco, as a matter of fact. He came over during the African war and was stunned by the light and exoticism of this place. He took it upon himself to give it shape in many of his paintings; one of his best known, in fact, is The Battle of Tetouan . But if Fortuny père was a masterly painter, his son is a true genius. He paints, too, but in his studio in Venice he also designs stage sets, and he’s a photographer, an inventor, a scholar of classical techniques, and a designer of fabrics and dresses, like the legendary Delphos that you—you little phony—have just pirated in a domestic reinterpretation, a version I presume to have been highly successful.”

Félix was speaking while lying on the sofa and holding the magazine with the photograph that had triggered my memory. As for me, drained by the intensity of the afternoon, I was listening, immobile, with no energy left even to hold a needle between my fingers. I’d just told him everything that had happened in the previous few hours, starting at the moment when my client announced her return to the workshop with a powerful slam of her brakes that brought my neighbors to their balcony windows. She ran up, her haste echoing in the stairwell. I was waiting for her with the door open, and without even stopping to greet her I put forward my idea.

“We’re going to try and make an emergency Delphos—do you know what I’m talking about?”

“A Fortuny Delphos?” she asked, incredulous.

“A fake Delphos.”

“You think it’ll be possible?”

We held each other’s gaze a moment. In hers I could see a flash of newly revived hope. I didn’t know what she could see in mine. Perhaps determination and fearlessness, a desire to be victorious, to find a way out of her crisis. Deep down my eyes probably also betrayed a certain terror of failure, but I attempted to keep that hidden as much as I could.

“I’ve tried it before; I think we should be able to do it.”

I showed her the fabric that I’d picked out, a big piece of greyishblue satin that Candelaria had managed to get hold of in one of her latest transactions. Obviously I refrained from mentioning where it had come from.

“What time is your engagement?”

“At eight.”

I looked at the time.

“Well then, this is what we’re going to do. It’s almost one now. As soon as I’m done with my next fitting, which begins in just ten minutes, I’ll soak the material and then leave it to dry. I’ll need between four and five hours, which takes us to six in the evening. And I’ll have to have at least another hour and a half to make it up: it’s very simple, just some straight stitches, and besides, I’ve already got your measurements, you won’t need a fitting. Even so, I’ll need a bit of time to do it and to do the finishing touches. It’ll take us right up to the last minute. Where do you live? I’m sorry to ask, it’s not out of curiosity…”

“On the Paseo de las Palmeras.”

I ought to have guessed; many of the best houses in Tetouan were located there. A remote, discreet neighborhood to the south of the city, close to the park, almost at the foot of the imposing Ghorgiz, with fine residences surrounded by gardens. Beyond them, the orchards and sugarcane plantations.

“In that case it’ll be impossible for me to get the dress to your home.”

She looked at me inquiringly.

“You’ll have to come here to dress,” I clarified. “Be here around seven thirty, made up, hair done, ready to go, with the shoes and the jewelry you’re planning to wear. I’d advise you not go with too much, or anything too showy: the dress doesn’t require it, it’ll look more elegant with simple accessories, you understand?”

She understood perfectly. After thanking me for my efforts with great relief, she left again. Half an hour later, and with Jamila’s help, I embarked on the most unexpected and reckless piece of work in my brief career as a dressmaker on my own. I knew what I was doing, however, because in my time at Doña Manuela’s I’d helped with just that same job on another occasion. We did it for a customer who had as much style as she had irregular economic resources—Elena Barea was her name. When she was going through good economic times, we would sew sumptuous designs for her in the finest materials. Unlike other women of her class, however, who during times of financial duress would invent trips or engagements or illnesses to justify their inability to pay their debts, she never hid herself away. When hard times made an appearance at her husband’s unreliable business, Elena Barea never stopped visiting our workshop. She’d come back, laughing, unembarrassed at the volatility of her fortunes, and working right there side by side with the owner, she would contrive to reconstruct old outfits to make them pass for new, changing the cuts, adding trimmings, and reconfiguring the more unexpected parts. Or she would very sensibly choose fabrics that weren’t too costly and creations that needed only the simplest kinds of production work: in that way she managed to pare down the total of her bills as far as possible without overly reducing her elegance. Hunger sharpens your ingenuity, she would always conclude with a laugh. Neither my mother nor Doña Manuela nor I could believe our eyes the day she arrived with her strangest order yet.