María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“And what answer did you give them?”

Her voice, like mine, was barely a whisper.

“I told them no. That I couldn’t, that I didn’t want to. That I’m doing well here, with you. That I have no interest in going back to Madrid. But they’re asking me to think about it.”

The silence stretched out across the whole room, between the fabric and the mannequins, surrounding the spools of thread, coming to rest on the sewing boards.

“And would it help stop Spain from getting into another war?” she asked finally.

I shrugged. “In theory anything might help, or at least that’s what they think,” I said, not too convinced. “They’re trying to set up a network of secret informers. The English want us Spaniards to remain on the sidelines of what’s happening in Europe, not to ally ourselves with the Germans and not to intervene; they say that’d be best for everyone.”

She lowered her head and focused her attention on the piece of fabric she was working on. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds: she just thought, contemplated unhurriedly as she caressed the material with the tip of her thumb. Finally she looked up and slowly removed her glasses.

“Do you want my advice, my child?” she asked.

I nodded emphatically. Yes, of course I wanted her advice: I needed her to confirm that my turning them down was reasonable, I longed to hear from her mouth that the plan was utter madness. I wanted her to go back to being my old mother and ask who on earth did I think I was, going around playing at being a secret agent? I wanted to be reunited with the strong Dolores of my childhood: the prudent, decisive one, the one who always knew what was right and what was wrong. The one who brought me up, showing me the straightest path, from which one unfortunate day I had diverged. But the world hadn’t changed only for me: my mother’s foundations were different now, too.

“Join them, child. Help them, collaborate. Our poor Spain can’t get into another war, it hasn’t the strength left.”

“But, Mother…”

She didn’t let me go on.

“You don’t know what it’s like to live through a war, Sira. You haven’t woken up day in and day out to the noise of machine-gun fire and mortars exploding. You haven’t eaten worm-infested lentils month after month, you haven’t lived through a winter without bread, without coal, without glass in the windows. You haven’t existed alongside broken families and starving children. You haven’t seen eyes that were filled with hate, with fear, or both at once. The whole of Spain has been devastated, no one has the strength anymore to go through that same nightmare again. The only thing the country can do now is weep over its dead and move forward with what little it has left.”

“But…,” I insisted.

She interrupted me again. Without raising her voice, but firm.

“If I were you, I’d help the English, I’d do what they ask. They’re working in their own interests, don’t kid yourself about that; everything they’re doing they’re doing for their own country, not for ours. But if what’s good for them benefits us all, thank God for it. I imagine the request came to you from your friend Rosalinda?”

“We talked for hours yesterday; she left a letter for me this morning, though I haven’t read it yet. I presume it’s instructions.”

“Everywhere people are saying that Beigbeder only has a matter of days left as a minister. It looks like they’re going to kick him out for exactly this reason, for becoming friendly with the English. I imagine he’s mixed up in this somewhere, too.”

“Both of them had the idea,” I confirmed.

“Well, he should have put the same effort into getting us out of the other war that they got us into in the first place, but that’s in the past and there’s nothing to be done about it now. What we have to do is look to the future. You’ll decide, child. You’ve asked my advice and I’ve told you what I think: with a great deal of pain in my heart, but understanding that it’s the most responsible thing to do. It will be hard for me, too: if you leave, I’ll go back to being alone, and I’ll have to live again with the uncertainty of not hearing from you. But yes, I think you should go to Madrid. I’ll stay here and keep the workshop going. I’ll find someone to help me, you needn’t worry about that. And God knows when it’ll all be over.”

I couldn’t reply. I no longer had any excuses. I decided to go outside onto the street, to get some air. I had to think.

Iwalked into the Palace Hotel at noon one day in the middle of September, with the confident stride of someone who had spent half her life strutting along the hallways of the best hotels on the planet. I was in a suit of laine glacée the color of thick blood, and my hair had been recently cut to just above the shoulder. On my head was a sophisticated felt hat with feathers on it, from the studio of Madame Boissenet in Tangiers: a real pièce de résistance, which (according to her) was how the elegant women in occupied France referred to such hats. The outfit was complemented by a pair of crocodile shoes with ultra high heels, which I’d obtained from the best shoemaker on the Boulevard Pasteur. In my hands a matching handbag and a pair of calfskin gloves dyed pearl grey. Two or three heads turned as I passed. I didn’t react.

Behind me a bellhop was carrying a nécessaire de voyage , two Go-yard suitcases, and a few more hatboxes. The rest of the baggage, the furniture, and the shipment of fabrics would be arriving by truck the following day, having made it across the Strait without any trouble—as they were bound to do, given that the customs transit papers were stamped and restamped till they appeared to be the most official documents in the universe, courtesy of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I, meanwhile, had arrived by plane; it was the first time I had flown in my life. From the Sania Ramel Aerodrome to Tablada in Seville; from Tablada to Barajas. I left Tetouan with my Spanish papers in the name of Sira Quiroga, but someone altered the passenger list so that I wouldn’t appear on it under that name. During the course of the flight I used my little emergency sewing scissors to cut my old passport into a thousand shreds, which I hid in a knotted handkerchief; after all, it was a document from the Republic, which wouldn’t be of any use to me in the New Spain. I landed in Madrid with a brand-new Moroccan passport. Alongside the photograph an address in Tangiers and my newly acquired identity: Arish Agoriuq. Strange? Not particularly. It was just my name and surname written back to front, with the h that my neighbor Félix had added in the early days of the business left just where it was. It wasn’t really a proper Arab name, but it sounded foreign, and it wouldn’t arouse suspicion in Madrid, where no one had a clue what people were called down there in the land of the Moors, down there in the land of Africa, in the words of the old paso doble.

In the days leading up to my departure I followed all the instructions in Rosalinda’s long letter, word for word. I made contact with the people I was supposed to in order to get hold of my new identity. I chose the best materials from the shops she recommended and ordered them to be sent with the bills to a local address, of whom I never discovered. I went back to Dean’s Bar and ordered a Bloody Mary. If my decision had been no, I would have had to settle for a modest lemonade. The barman served me, impassive. He made comments—as though reluctantly—on what might have seemed just banalities: that the previous night’s storm had wrecked one of the awnings; a boat named Jason sailing under an American flag was due to dock the following Friday at ten in the morning with a cargo of English merchandise. From that innocuous comment I was able to extract the information I needed. On that Friday at the specified hour I headed for the American embassy in Tangiers, a beautiful Moorish mansion stuck right in the medina. I informed the soldier who was controlling access to the building that I was there to see Mr. Jason. He lifted a heavy internal telephone and announced in English that his visitor had arrived. After receiving instructions, he hung up and invited me into an Arab courtyard surrounded by whitewashed arches. There I was met by an official who almost without a word led me swiftly through a labyrinth of corridors, stairways, and galleries to a white terrace in the highest part of the building.