María Dueñas - The Time in Between

There was a knock at the door, and someone came in without waiting for permission. With my eyes still half closed, through the gloom I could make out a uniformed maid carrying a tray. She put it down somewhere outside my field of vision and drew the curtains. The room immediately filled with light, and I covered my head with the pillow. Although this muffled the noise, my ears filled with little signals that allowed me to follow what the recent arrival was doing. The porcelain of the cup coming into contact with the saucer, the bubbling of the hot coffee coming out of the pot, the scraping of a knife against a piece of toast as it spread the butter. When everything was ready, she approached the bed.

“Good morning, señorita. Your breakfast is ready. You’ll have to get up now, there will be a car at the door for you in an hour.”

I replied with a grunt. I wanted to say thank you, I get it, leave me alone. The girl hadn’t understood that I meant to keep sleeping.

“They’ve asked me not to leave till you’re up.”

She spoke Spanish with a Spanish accent. Tangiers had filled up with Republicans since the war had ended, and she was probably a daughter of one of those families. I grunted again and rolled over.

“Please, señorita, get up. Your coffee and toast will get cold.”

“Who sent you?” I asked without removing my head from its refuge. My voice sounded like it was coming from inside a cave, perhaps because of the barrier of feathers and material that separated me from the outside world, perhaps an effect of the catastrophic night before. Even as I finished formulating it, I realized how ridiculous the question was. How could this girl know who it was who’d sent her to me? I, on the other hand, had no doubt whatsoever.

“I got the order from the kitchen, señorita. I’m the maid for this floor.”

“Well, you can go now.”

“Not until you’re up.”

The young maid was obstinate, with the persistence of someone who has been well drilled. Finally I withdrew my head and pushed the hair away from my face. When I moved the sheets aside I realized that I was wearing an apricot-colored nightgown that didn’t belong to me. The girl was waiting for me, holding a matching dressing gown; I decided not to ask her where it had come from—how would she know? I guessed that somehow or other Rosalinda had arranged for both things to be brought to the room. There weren’t any slippers, however, so I walked barefoot over to the little round table that had been set with my breakfast. My stomach was growling.

“Can I give you any milk, señorita?” she asked as I sat down.

I nodded, unable to say anything: my mouth was already full of toast. I was ravenous as a wolf; I remembered I hadn’t had dinner the previous night.

“If it’s all right, I’ll draw your bath for you.”

I nodded again while I chewed, and within a few seconds I heard the water gushing hard out of the taps. The girl returned to the room.

“You can go now—thank you. Tell whoever sent you that I’m up.”

“They’ve told me to take your clothes to be ironed while you’re having your breakfast.”

I took another bite of toast and nodded wordlessly again. Then she took up my clothes, which had been tossed in a jumble on a little armchair.

“Does señorita require anything else?” she asked before leaving.

With my mouth still full, I brought a finger to my temple, as though simulating a gunshot, though unintentionally. She looked at me in alarm and I noticed then that she was only a child.

“Something for my headache?” I explained when I was finally able to swallow.

She showed that she’d understood with an emphatic nod and slipped away without another word, keen to escape as soon as possible from the bedroom of the madwoman she must have thought me.

I polished off the toast, an orange juice, a couple of croissants, and a bun. Then I poured myself a second cup of coffee, and when I picked up the milk jug the back of my hand brushed past the envelope that was leaning against a little vase that held a couple of white roses. I felt something like an electric shock, but I didn’t pick it up. There wasn’t anything written on it, not a single letter, but I knew it was for me and I knew who’d sent it. I finished my coffee and went into the steam-filled bathroom. I closed the taps and tried to make out my reflection in the mirror, which was so misted up that I had to wipe it with a towel. Pitiful, that was the only word that occurred to me as I looked at my reflection. I undressed and got into the water.

When I came out of the bathroom the remains of the breakfast had been taken away and the balcony doors were wide open. The palm trees in the garden, the sea, and the intense blue sky over the Strait seemed to fill the room, but I barely paid them any attention—I was in a hurry. I found my clothes, ironed, at the foot of my bed: the suit, slip, and silk stockings, all ready to put back onto my body. And on the nightstand, on a little silver tray, a bottle of water, a glass, and a bottle of aspirin. I gulped down two tablets; I reconsidered and took another. Then I returned to the bathroom and drew my damp hair back into a low bun. I put on just a little bit of makeup—all I had with me was powder and lipstick. Then I got dressed. All set, I muttered to the air. I corrected myself at once. All nearly set. Just one little detail missing. The one that had been waiting for me on the table where I’d had breakfast half an hour earlier: the cream-colored envelope with no apparent addressee. I sighed, and picking it up with just two fingers put it away in my bag without giving it another look.

I went out, leaving behind someone else’s nightdress and the dent of my body in the sheets. My fear didn’t want to be left behind, so it came with me.

“Mademoiselle’s bill has already been settled, and there’s a car waiting for you,” the concierge said discreetly. I didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver, but I didn’t ask whom the former belonged to and whom the latter worked for. I just settled into the back seat and without saying a word let them take me home.

My mother didn’t ask me how the party had gone or where I’d spent the night. I assumed that whoever had brought her the message the previous night had been so convincing that he or she barely left space for any concern. If she noticed how out of sorts I was looking, she didn’t give any indication that she was at all curious about it. She just looked up from the piece of clothing she was working on and said good morning. Not effusive, not annoyed. Neutral.

“We’re out of silk braid,” she announced. “Aracama’s wife wants us to move the fitting from Thursday to Friday, and Frau Langenheim wants us to change the way the shantung dress hangs.”

She went on with her sewing, making comments on the latest news, while I drew up a chair opposite her and sat down, so close that my knees were almost touching hers. Then she started telling me something about the delivery of some pieces of satin that we’d ordered the previous week. I didn’t let her finish.

“They want me to go back to Madrid and work for the English, to pass them information about the Germans. They want me to spy on their wives.”

Her right hand stopped in midair, holding the threaded needle between stitches. She was halfway through a sentence, her mouth open. Her posture immobile, she looked over the little spectacles she used for sewing and fixed on me a look that was filled with unease.

I didn’t go on talking right away. First I took a breath in, and out, a couple of times—deeply, big gulps, as though finding it hard to breathe.

“They’re saying Spain’s full of Nazis,” I went on. “The English need people to inform them about what the Germans are doing: who they’re meeting, where, when, how. They thought about setting me up in a workshop to sew for their wives, and then afterward to tell them what I see and hear.”