María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“The money should cover your preliminary expenses. The stay at the Palace and your rent for the new atelier are being taken care of by us; that’s all been arranged already, as has the salary for the girls who’ll be working for you. Income for the work will be all yours. Just the same, if you do need any more cash, let us know right away: we have an open budget line for these operations, so there are no problems as far as financing is concerned.”

I was all ready now, too. I was holding the folders against my chest, sheltered in my arms as though they were the child I’d lost years earlier rather than an assortment of information about a swarm of undesirables. My heart was still in its place, obeying my internal orders not to rise up to my throat and choke me. Finally we got up from that table on which nothing was left but what looked like the innocent remains of a lengthy lunch: plates, empty coffee cups, a full ashtray, and two displaced chairs. As though nothing had happened there but a pleasant conversation between a couple of friends who—chatting away, relaxed, between one cigarette and the next—had been catching up on each other’s lives. Except that Captain Hillgarth and I weren’t friends. And neither of us was remotely interested in the other’s past, or our presents. All we were concerned about, the two of us, was the future.

“One last detail,” he warned.

We were about to leave; he already had his hand on the doorknob. He drew it back and looked at me fixedly from under his thick eyebrows. In spite of the long session we’d had together, he still looked exactly as he had in the morning: not a hair out of place, his tie still impeccably knotted, his shirt cuffs spotless. His face remained impassive, not particularly tense, nor particularly relaxed. The perfect image of a man capable of handling himself with perfect self-control in any situation. He lowered his voice till it was little more than a hoarse murmur.

“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. We’ve never met before. And as for your enrollment into the British Secret Intelligence Service, from this moment you’re no longer the Spanish citizen Sira Quiroga to us, nor the Moroccan Arish Agoriuq. You’re just the SOE special agent codenamed Sidi, with a base of operations in Spain. The least conventional of the recent conscripts, but just the same, one of our own.”

He held out his hand. Firm, cold, self-confident. The firmest, coldest, most self-confident hand I’d ever shaken in my life.

“Good luck, Agent Sidi. We’ll be in touch.”

No one but my mother knew the real reasons for my unexpected departure. Not my clients, not even Félix and Candelaria: I deceived everyone with the excuse that I was going to Madrid to empty out our old house and settle a few matters. My mother would have to invent little lies to justify the length of my absence: business, some indisposition, perhaps a new boyfriend. We weren’t worried that anyone would suspect any intrigue or connect the dots: even though the channels of transport and communication were fully functional by now, contact between the Spanish capital and North Africa remained very limited.

I did, however, want to say good-bye to my friends and to ask them wordlessly to wish me luck, so we organized a lunch for my last Sunday. Candelaria came dressed like a fine lady in her own right, with her bun thick with hairspray, a necklace of fake pearls, and the new outfit we’d sewn for her a few weeks earlier. Félix came over with his mother, whom he hadn’t been able to get rid of. Jamila was with us, too—I was going to miss her like a little sister. We toasted with wine and soda water and said good-bye with noisy kisses and earnest wishes for a good journey. It wasn’t until I closed the door when they left that I realized how much I was going to feel their absence.

With Commissioner Vázquez I used the same strategy, but I immediately realized that the lie would never stick. How would I be able to pull the wool over his eyes? He knew all about the outstanding debts in Madrid and the panic I felt at having to face up to them. He was the only person who sensed that there was something more complex behind my innocent departure, something I couldn’t talk about. Not to him, not to anybody. Perhaps that was why he preferred not to inquire. In fact he barely said a word: he just did what he always did, he looked at me with his explosive gaze and advised me to take care. Then he accompanied me to the exit to shield me from the dirty slobberings of his subordinates. At the police station door we said good-bye. Until when? Neither of us knew. Perhaps soon, or perhaps never.

Apart from the fabrics and sewing tools I carried to Spain, I also bought a decent number of magazines and a few pieces of Moroccan craftwork in the hope of giving my Madrid workshop an exotic air suited to my new name and my supposed past as a prestigious dressmaker in Tangiers. Embossed copper trays, lamps with pieces of glass in a thousand colors, silver jugs, a few ceramic pieces, and three large Berber rugs. A little bit of Africa right in the center of our exhausted Spain.

When I went into the grand apartment on Núñez de Balboa for the first time, everything was ready, waiting for me. The walls painted in glossy white, the oak floor recently polished. The layout, organization, and order were a replica on a larger scale of my Sidi Mandri house. The first section was a series of three adjoining rooms, three times the size of their equivalent in my old place. The ceilings infinitely higher, the balcony doors more stately. I opened one, but when I looked out I didn’t find Dersa Mountain, or the Ghorgiz, or the air fragrant with traces of orange blossom and jasmine, or lime wash on the neighboring walls, or the voice of the muezzin calling to prayer from the mosque. I closed it quickly, cutting off my melancholy. Then I walked on. In the last of the three main rooms were the rolls of material that had come over from Tangiers, a paradise of dupioni silk, guipure lace, muslin, and chiffon. Their shades ranged from the palest memory of sand on the beach to fire red, pink, coral, and every possible blue between the sky of a summer morning and a turbulent sea on a stormy night. The fitting rooms—two of them—felt double their size thanks to the imposing three-way mirrors framed in gilt marquetry. The large cutting table, ironing boards, naked mannequins, tools, and threads, just the usual. Beyond that, my own space: immense, disproportionate, ten times more than I needed. I immediately sensed Rosalinda’s hand in the whole setup. Only she knew how I worked, how I’d organized my house, my things, my life.

In the silence of my new home I was visited once again by the question that had been drumming in my head for a couple of weeks. Why, why, why? Why had I agreed to this, why was I embarking on this uncertain, lonely adventure, why? I still had no answer. Or at least, no definitive answer. Perhaps I’d accepted out of loyalty to Rosalinda. Perhaps because I thought I owed it to my mother and my country. Perhaps I hadn’t done it for anyone else, but just for myself. What’s certain is that I’d said yes, let’s do it: fully aware of what I was doing, with a promise to myself that I’d take on the job with determination and without hesitation, fears, or insecurities. There I was, squeezed into the character of the nonexistent Arish Agoriuq, walking through her new habitat, heels clicking down the stairs, dressed with all the style in the world and ready to transform herself into the falsest dressmaker in Madrid. Was I afraid? Yes, intense fear was clinging to the pit of my stomach. But in check. Tamed. Under my control.

My first message reached me via the building’s porter: the girls who would be working for me would be turning up the following morning. They arrived together, Dora and Martina, with an age difference of two years. They looked alike, and yet different at the same time, as though complementing each other. Dora seemed to be in better shape, Martina won out on features. Dora seemed smarter, Martina sweeter. I liked them both. What I didn’t like, however, were the wretched clothes they were wearing, their faces of chronic hunger, and their shyness. Fortunately these things were quickly resolved. I took their measurements and soon I had a couple of uniforms ready for each of them: the first people to make use of my arsenal of fabrics. With a few of the banknotes from Hillgarth’s envelope I sent them to the La Paz market in search of provisions.