María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“I still don’t understand.”

“The one thing we know for sure, querida, is that he has no interest in me whatsoever,” she said with a mix of sarcasm and sadness. “Anything at all is worth more to him than I am: a morning’s fishing, a bottle of gin, or a hand of cards. I’ve never mattered to him. What would have been strange is if I’d started mattering now.”

And while Rosalinda was in hell battling with a monster, I also—at last—found my life overturned. It was a windy Tuesday and Marcus Logan showed up at my house before noon.

Our friendship had been getting stronger—a good friendship, no more than that. We were both aware that one day when we least expected it he would have to leave, that his presence in my world was transitory. Marcus and I were of course very much attracted to each other, and we weren’t short on opportunities for that to transform itself into something more. There was a complicity, there were glances, and glancing touches, veiled comments, admiration, and desire. There was closeness, there was tenderness. But I forced myself to hold back my feelings; I refused to go any further, and he accepted it. Restraining myself took a huge effort on my part: doubt, uncertainty, nights lying awake. But rather than having to face the pain of being left by him, I preferred to remain with the recollection of those memorable moments we’d spent together in those agitated, intense times. Nights of laughter and drinking, of kif pipes and noisy rounds of cards. Trips to Tangiers, outings, chats; moments that I would never get back and that I treasured in my store of memories.

Marcus’s unexpected arrival at my Sidi Mandri house that morning brought with it the end of one time and the start of another. One door was closing, and another was beginning to open. And me, right there in the middle, unable to hold on to what was ending, longing to embrace what was to come.

“Your mother is on her way. Last night she boarded a British merchant vessel at Alicante headed for Oran. She arrives in Gibraltar in three days. Rosalinda will make sure she can come across the Strait without any trouble; she’ll tell you herself how the crossing will happen.”

I wanted to give him my deepest thank-you but was suddenly overtaken by a torrent of tears. So all I was able to do was hug him as hard as I could and soak the lapels of his jacket.

“I’ve also reached the moment when it’s time for me to be on my way,” he added a few moments later.

I looked at him, sniffing. He reached for his white handkerchief and held it out to me.

“My agency is recalling me. My job in Morocco is over, I’ve got to go back.”

“To Madrid?”

“To London, for now. Then to wherever they send me.”

I hugged him again, and I cried again. And when I was finally capable of containing the turmoil of emotions and starting to control that unruly assault of sentiments that mixed the greatest of joys with a terrible sadness, my broken voice finally came out.

“Don’t go, Marcus.”

“If only it were up to me. But I can’t stay, Sira, they need me somewhere else.”

I looked at his beloved face again. It still bore the leftovers of scars, but very little remained of the battered man who’d arrived at the Nacional one summer night. That day I was meeting a stranger and was filled with anxieties and fears; now I was facing the painful task of saying good-bye to someone very close to me, closer perhaps than I wanted to admit.

I sniffed again.

“Whenever you want to give an outfit to one of your girlfriends, you’ll know where to find me.”

“When I want a girlfriend, I’ll come and get you,” he said, holding his hand out to my face. He tried to dry my tears with his fingers, and I shivered at his caress, wishing violently that this day had never arrived.

“Liar,” I murmured.

“Lovely.”

His fingers ran over my face to the roots of my hair and through it down to the back of my neck. Our faces came closer, slowly, as though afraid to act on something that had been hovering in the air for so long.

The unexpected click of a key made us pull apart. Jamila came in, panting, bringing an urgent message.

“Siñora Fox say Siñorita Sira run to las Palmeras.”

Things were up and running, and we were approaching the end. Marcus took his hat, and I couldn’t resist hugging him one more time. There were no words, there was nothing more to say. A few seconds later, all that remained of his solid, close presence was the trace of a light kiss on my hair, the image of his back, and the painful noise of the door closing behind him.

From the moment of Marcus’s departure and my mother’s arrival, my life turned upside down. She arrived one cloudy afternoon looking emaciated, her hands empty and her soul battered. She had no luggage, just her old handbag, the dress she had on, and a fake passport attached by a safety pin to the strap of her brassiere. Her body looked like it had borne the passing of twenty years; her thinness made her eye sockets and collarbones stand out, and the first few greying hairs I remembered were now entire locks. She came into my house like a child dragged awake in the middle of the night: disoriented, confused, disconnected. As though she hadn’t fully understood that her daughter lived there, and that from that moment on, she would, too.

I’d imagined that reunion, which I’d so wished for, as a moment of unbounded joy. That’s not how it was. If I had to choose one word to describe the picture, it would be sadness. She barely spoke and didn’t display any enthusiasm for anything. She just hugged me hard and then kept hold of my hand, clinging to it as though afraid that I was about to run off somewhere. Not a laugh, not a tear, and very few words—that was all. She hardly wanted to taste the meal that Candelaria, Jamila, and I had prepared for her: chicken, omelet, tomato salad, anchovies, Moorish bread, all the things we imagined she’d gone without in Madrid for such a long time. She didn’t have anything to say about the workshop, nor about the room where I’d put her, with a big oak bed and a cretonne quilt that I’d sewn. She didn’t ask me what had become of Ramiro, or show any curiosity about what it was that had led me to settle in Tetouan. Needless to say, she didn’t speak a word about the grim journey that had brought her to Africa, or even once mention the horrors she had left behind.

It took her some time to adjust—I never thought I’d see my mother like that. The ever-determined Dolores, who was always in control, with just the right thing to say at the right moment, had been transformed into a furtive, inhibited woman I found hard to recognize. I devoted myself to her, body and soul. I practically stopped working; there weren’t any major events coming up, and my clients wouldn’t mind waiting. Day after day I brought her breakfast in bed: buns, churros, toast with olive oil and sugar, anything that would help her put some weight back on. I helped her bathe and I cut her hair; I sewed her new clothes. It was hard getting her out of the house, but bit by bit our morning walk became compulsory. We went arm in arm along the Calle del Generalísimo, reached the square with the church; sometimes, if the timing worked out, I would accompany her to Mass. I took her to see picturesque corners, little nooks and crannies, made her help me choose fabrics, listen to popular songs on the radio, and decide what we were going to eat. Till slowly, step by little step, she began to return to the person she used to be.