Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

He said goodbye, promising he’d come back, and on the shaded side of the hill where the Residence stood like a tower keeping watch over the outskirts of Madrid, he looked for corpses, looked for Dr. Karl Ludwig Rossman. The scent of rockrose, thyme, and rosemary made him think of his children, the garden of the house in the Sierra, the path to the pond. He felt surrounded by death, days and nights haunted by an emptiness more powerful than the proximity of real people. Adela and his two children, their absence more real than his presence in the shadows of the house. And the thought of Judith Biely, invoked by his footsteps on dry grass, Judith coming toward him at nightfall through the grove of trees lit by paper lanterns while dance music from a radio played nearby, Judith still recently and secretly his, Judith seated with a group of foreign students, talking, looking at him with a complicity only he noticed. Behind the solitary dome of the Museum of Natural Sciences ran the irrigation ditch called the Canalillo. When the good weather came, metal tables and chairs were set up there, garlands of café lights hung among the tree branches. On the wall of the café kiosk, the whitewash was chipped by bullets and stained with blood. There were shoes in the summer’s dry undergrowth, widowed shoes that had lost their mates, some women’s, some men’s, some worn down, and others still with the gleam of a recent shoeshine. He stepped on things that crunched: a shotgun cartridge, eyeglass lenses. He examined the frames but none resembled Professor Rossman’s. In that cool morning at the end of August, the cicadas’ chirping merged with the sound of running water in the irrigation ditch. Beyond the shade of the Lombardy poplars, the great expanse of Madrid, a city calmed by summer. From the hill of the Residence, not a trace of smoke, not a sign of war.

FROM TIME TO TIME he dreams a phone is ringing and he wakes too slowly, misses the call by a few seconds. The rings continue, each one more shrill than the last, and because he doesn’t answer it, he won’t know who’s calling to ask for help, or to warn him of danger, or if it’s Judith Biely, and, receiving no answer, she’ll assume he’s no longer in Madrid and they won’t meet again, all because of a few moments’ delay. In the dream he wakes: one ring, then another, and his body unresponsive to his will, wood or tiles or a rug under his bare feet, his bewilderment at not remembering where the phone is, then a rush to reach it, his hand stretching out and touching the receiver at the instant the vibration of the final ring dies down. Though her image now escapes his dreams, Judith Biely hovers over them like an oppressive absence, an unconquered void, a knife’s edge present in the open wound, a footprint in damp sand. But if he had wakened more quickly and run unhesitatingly to the phone, she would have been there. If his fatigue hadn’t been so profound, he’d have reached the phone in time to hear the voice of one of his children: a voice distant, altered by interference but recognizable, a little strange after not hearing it for so long.

In reality the phone call in his dream and the one when he is awake coincided only once. He opened his eyes knowing it had rung many times, and he was lying in the large, unmade bed. His body was heavy, slow, as in the dream. Light filtered through the closed shutters, but the house was so dark it was impossible to estimate the time. The hall seemed to lengthen as he walked down it. He brought the receiver to his ear and asked who was calling. At first he didn’t recognize Bergamín’s voice, weak and harsh at the same time, nasal.

“Abel, what took you so long? Come to the Alliance as fast as you can. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Do you know where Professor Rossman is?”

“Come right away. I’m leaving town very soon.”

He understands now that there had been fear in Bergamín’s voice, hidden behind the urgency, just as it was there later in his small eyes, tearing because of the cold that wet the tip of his nose, irritated by so much wiping with the wrinkled handkerchief he returned to his pocket as if hiding something indecent. Or perhaps not fear exactly but an uneasiness he wouldn’t acknowledge, a disquiet because of a danger too varied or subtle to contemplate: the enemy might be advancing toward Madrid more quickly than anyone had foreseen; someone might doubt his orthodox loyalty to the cause in spite of his dedicated work at the Alliance and the articles he wrote blazing with a rage for justice; he might be compromised by having been seen with Ignacio Abel that morning in the courtyard of the Alliance, or making inquiries regarding the whereabouts of his German friend; he might be too late to board the plane at Barajas Airport that would take him to Paris and then on to Geneva to participate in the International Congress for Peace as a representative of Spanish intellectuals. He came out to the staircase of the Heredia Spinola Palace wearing a vaguely English formal suit for travel instead of the open shirt and aviator’s leather jacket, and the morning sun made him blink, his eyes sunken beneath his eyebrows, not used to the light, fatigued by so much work in the gloomy office where he spent nights on end writing articles or ballads in his tiny, meticulous hand, correcting galleys of The Blue Coverall. After calling Ignacio Abel, he’d sat with both hands in front of his face, his thin fingertips brushing his damp nose. He’d consulted his watch, confirming that the large baroque clock hanging on the wall with the weapons of the marquises of Heredia Spinola was running slow — weapons repeated in all the palace’s decorations, on the backs of chairs and fake-Renaissance carved credenzas, on ceiling frescoes and the chimneys of fireplaces. The plane to Paris was supposed to depart at eleven in the morning; it had the French flag clearly painted on the fuselage, so there was no danger of its being pursued by the enemy. He checked with his secretary that the car to the airport was ready in the courtyard and his briefcase with his passports, visas, and safe-conducts was already inside. With distracted pleasure he looked over the day’s newspapers spread out on the enormous desk in his office, with their usual news that at no moment relieved the uneasiness, the disquiet that he shouldn’t show even to himself, the fear that insinuated itself in his eyes, the drumming of fingers that reached for a cigarette or a match or counted the syllables of verses. He looked at the clock again and put on the tweed jacket suitable for travel, gathered up papers and put them in his portfolio and his pen in the breast pocket of his jacket, impatient, restless, irritated with Ignacio Abel, who sounded sleepy on the phone, who still hadn’t arrived though he’d told him to hurry. “Mariana, I’m leaving. When the architect Abel arrives give him the instructions, tell him how important it is for him to complete the mission he’s been entrusted with.” In a nearby hall the band was rehearsing for the masquerade ball the poet Alberti and his wife had been organizing for several days to honor the French writers visiting Madrid, taking advantage of the abundance of dress uniforms and carnival outfits in the wardrobes and trunks of the fugitive marquises. Bergamín was happy to miss the party. He avoided the collective festivities that Alberti and María Teresa León enjoyed so much, just as they relished poetry readings and speeches at the end of banquets honoring someone or other. Alberti had the slick profile of a film star; his wife, blond and buxom, her lips painted bright red, would put her hands on her hips and sway beside him, as if at any moment she might begin to sing a jota instead of reading a proclamation or reciting a war ballad. He heard her now, speaking loudly over the discord of the rehearsing instruments, giving instructions. When Bergamín spoke in public, he placed his lips too close to the microphone and hunched his shoulders instead of thrusting out his chest and lifting his chin; when anthems were sung and he raised his fist, he did so as if contracting rather than clenching it; and he was conscious of his own posture as well as his weak voice when singing “The Internationale.” He probably looked ridiculous now as he stepped out onto the palace stairs, his eyes squinting, frail among the militiamen and drivers going back and forth in the courtyard among the trucks that came and went, the workers gingerly moving paintings, sculptures, boxes of books, so many valuable objects rescued from churches in danger of being burned or palaces abandoned, subject to looting after the owners had been detained or executed. The implacable surgery of the people’s justice. He’d written the sentence himself in his beautiful hand, so tiny it damaged his eyes. He thought of the line when he saw Ignacio Abel coming through the entrance gate, agitated, for once not wearing a tie, afraid Bergamín had left. He’d have preferred not to see Abel. One minute more and he’d have watched him through the window of the car now waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, a gleaming Hispano-Suiza that perhaps had also belonged to the owners of the palace, on which there were no painted slogans but a modern, discreet sign on the doors: ALLIANCE OF ANTI-FASCIST INTELLECTUALS — PRESIDENT’S OFFICE. Ignacio Abel had already seen him. Bergamín signaled that he should follow him into the vestibule, where the leaded stained glass diffused an opalescent light tinted with bright reds, yellows, blues.