María Dueñas - The Time in Between

Spring was turning to a gentle summer of luminous nights, and I went on sharing my earnings from the workshop with Candelaria. The bundle of pounds sterling at the bottom of the chest grew till it was almost large enough to pay the amount due; there wasn’t long to go before the deadline for me to repay the debt to the Continental. I took comfort in knowing that I’d be able to do it, that I would at last be able to buy my freedom. As ever, news of the war continued to come in on the radio and in the press. General Mola died, the battle of Brunete began. Félix continued his nighttime forays, and Jamila remained always by my side, developing her sweet, strange Spanish, starting to help me out with a few small jobs: a loose piece of tacking, a button, a fastening. There was almost nothing to interrupt the monotony of the days in the workshop, only the sounds of domestic chores and snatches of distant conversations in the neighboring apartments that drifted in through the open windows of the building’s central courtyard. That, and the constant commotion of the children upstairs who were already on holiday from school, going out to play on the road, sometimes en masse, sometimes one at a time. None of those noises bothered me. Quite the contrary: they kept me company, they managed to make me feel less alone.

One afternoon in mid-July, however, the noises and voices were louder, the running more hurried.

“They’ve arrived, they’ve arrived!” Then more voices, shouts and slamming of doors, names repeated between loud sobs: Concha, Concha! Carmela—my sister! Esperanza, at last, at last!

I heard them moving pieces of furniture around and racing up and down the stairs dozens of times. I heard laughter, crying, orders shouted. Fill the bathtub, get out some more towels, bring the clothes, the mattresses—the girl, the girl, give the girl something to eat. And more crying, more emotional shouting, and more laughter. And the smell of food and the noise of pots and pans in the kitchen at altogether the wrong time of day. And again—Carmela, oh God, Concha, Concha! The bustle didn’t calm down until well after midnight. Only then did Félix appear at my house and I was finally able to ask him.

“What’s going on in the Herreras’ house? Everyone’s been behaving so strangely today!”

“Haven’t you heard? Josefina’s sisters have arrived. They’ve managed to get them out of the Red Zone.”

The following morning I heard the voices and the shuffling around again, though rather calmer now. All the same, there was incessant activity right through the day—people coming and going, the doorbell, the telephone, children running down the corridor. And betweentimes there was more sobbing, more laughter, more crying, and again more laughter. In the afternoon someone rang my doorbell. I thought that perhaps it was one of them; maybe they needed something, to ask a favor, to borrow something: half a dozen eggs, a quilt, possibly a little jug of oil. But I was wrong. The person at the door was someone altogether unexpected.

“Señora Candelaria says for you to come whenever you can to La Luneta. The schoolmaster Don Anselmo has died.”

Paquito, the fat son of the fat mother, had sweatily brought me the message.

“You go on ahead, and tell her I’ll be right over.”

I told Jamila the news and she cried pitifully. I didn’t shed any tears, but I felt them in my soul. Of all the people who made up that restless tribe, he was the one I was closest to, the one who had the most affectionate relationship with me. I put on the darkest suit I had in my closet; I hadn’t yet made space in my wardrobe for mourning clothes. Jamila and I made our way hurriedly along the streets and quickly arrived at our destination. After going up the flight of stairs, we couldn’t get any farther: a dense group of men stood crammed together, blocking the entrance. We elbowed our way through the teacher’s friends and acquaintances who were respectfully waiting their turn to approach and bid their final farewell.

The door to the boardinghouse was open, and before we had even crossed the threshold I could smell burning wax and hear a resonant murmur of female voices praying in unison. Candelaria came out to meet us as we went in. She was in a black suit that was quite clearly too small for her, and on her majestic bosom swung a medallion with the face of the Virgin. In the middle of the dining room, on the table, an open coffin held the ashen body of Don Anselmo in his Sunday best. A shudder ran down my spine to see him, and I could feel Jamila’s nails digging into my arm. I gave Candelaria two kisses and she left the trace of a stream of tears next to my ear.

“There he is—fallen on the battlefield itself.”

I recalled those fights between dinner courses that I’d witnessed so many times. The bones of the anchovies and the bits of peel from the African melons, wrinkled and yellow, flying from one side of the table to the other. The poisonous jokes and the indecent ones, the forks poised like spears, the yelling of one faction, then the other. The provocations and the threats of eviction that the Matutera never carried through. The dining table transformed into a virtual battlefield. I tried to hold back a sad laugh. The dried-up sisters, the fat mother, and a few women who lived nearby, sitting at the window and in mourning from head to foot, were still reciting the mysteries of the rosary in monotonous, tearful voices. For a moment I imagined Don Anselmo alive, with a Toledo between his lips, shouting lividly between coughing fits for them to damn well stop praying for him once and for all. But the schoolmaster was no longer among the living, and they were. And sitting by his dead body, however present and warm it might still be, they could now do whatever they saw fit. Candelaria and I sat down beside them, and the Matutera coupled her voice to the rhythm of the prayers while I pretended to do likewise, but my mind was running along other channels.

I moved my reed chair toward hers till our arms were touching.

“Candelaria, I have to ask you something,” I whispered in her ear.

“Tell me, my angel,” she replied in an equally low voice.

“I’ve heard they’ve been getting people out of the Red Zone.”

“That’s what they’re saying…”

“Can you find out how they’re doing it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“To get my mother out of Madrid and bring her over to me in Tetouan.”

“I’d have to ask around…”

“Tomorrow morning?”