Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

Meanwhile, at the back of his mind throbbed the name Van Doren had mentioned, Judith’s name and the name of the place he could reach in a few hours by train. And another face and identity acquired a precise contour in spite of his confusion, exacerbated by his not being accustomed to drinking alcohol, a woman who looked American and spoke Spanish with a strange accent but who was a Spaniard: Miss Santos, the always useful Stevens told him, and then corrected himself, Doctor Santos, the head of the Department of Romance Languages, who was happy to greet a compatriot, she said, though she had been in America for so many years she was no longer sure where she came from. Van Doren had mentioned Judith Biely’s name and the name of Wellesley College, then remained silent and devoted himself to observing the effect of his confidence, studying Ignacio Abel from his corner of the dinner table where Ignacio had Dr. Santos on his right, more aseptic and American in her gestures, taking small sips of water, never wine. It was she who named the place, not because Ignacio Abel had asked but because someone spoke of the many European professors, Germans in particular, coming to American universities. They spoke of Einstein at Princeton, of Thomas Mann settling in California, and Dr. Santos said to Ignacio Abel, assuming no one else would recognize the name, “I’m not sure you’re aware that Pedro Salinas is at Wellesley College. Do you know him personally?”

The names, pronounced innocently, had a chemical effect. Everything became more unreal, as if out of focus, the dining room lit by a large chandelier, the faces, the voices, and the storm that rattled the windows. He reacts suddenly, shaken to his nerve endings not by the imminent expectation of satisfaction but only by the enunciation of its possibility: Judith Biely doesn’t belong to the irretrievable past; she’s not an invention; she has a life apart from him, she’s returned to America, she perhaps was at her dying mother’s bedside; she might be attending a dinner like this one, with its tedium of courtesies; she’s in a place he could travel to by train or car in a few hours; she’s on the same plane of existence as the poet Salinas, whom Dr. Santos has mentioned so casually, not knowing that by doing so she has extended another thread to Judith, Salinas’s student last year at the School of Philosophy. Judith had a book of his poems he’d signed; sometimes she asked Ignacio Abel to read verses aloud so she could hear the intonation and asked him the meaning of difficult words. (How strange to read those poems and think they could have been inspired by Señora de Salinas, one of Adela’s good friends, though somewhat older, as fond as Adela of English-style teas and lectures for ladies at the Lyceum Club; even stranger to recall the Lyceum Club and think it had ever existed, not in the remote past but a year ago, not even that, in the city that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s planes are flying over tonight, Franco’s rebel troops tightening their grip around three sides of Madrid, said the newspaper Ignacio Abel leafed through nervously this very morning at the Faculty Club, providing no details, dryly enunciating the course of destiny.) “My wife and his are good friends,” he said, returning to the conversation, conscious of the inattentiveness Dr. Santos would have noticed, and to compensate he forced himself to continue talking, relieved he could rest from English. From the window in his office at University City he’d watch Professor Salinas drive by every morning on the way to the Philosophy Building, and more than once they’d run into each other in the hallway. Dr. Santos listened, leaning forward with her pale Spanish face and American gestures, not suspecting that Ignacio Abel wasn’t speaking to her but to himself, Judith’s name now almost on his lips, because when he told her about running into Pedro Salinas in the Philosophy Building, he was invoking Judith without naming her, thinking about one of those times when resignation and decency and the normal order of life were overturned, as in the middle of some task when the phone rang and it was Judith calling him. As she left one of Salinas’s seminars, she saw the row of telephone booths recently installed in the lobby and couldn’t resist the temptation. He said he’d meet her right away and hung up so quickly he forgot to ask where she’d be waiting. He put on his jacket and crossed the office, eluding those who approached to consult with him. What excuse would he invent if he ran into someone he knew? He’d see Judith in a lobby filled with people or in the cafeteria and have to control himself so as not to embrace her. The impulse that guided his feet down the stairs had nothing to do with his will. In a few minutes he drove the distance between his office and the Philosophy Building, and as he climbed the staircase he saw in the distance the dean, García Morente, with his owl’s glasses and absurd sideburns, and he looked away so he wouldn’t have to stop and greet him. In the high, translucent stained-glass windows, the morning sun was transformed into a silvery brilliance that filled the lobby, reflecting the beautiful polished surfaces, the tiles on the walls and the banisters, the marble flagstones on which students’ footsteps resonated, the hammering of workmen, the din of voices. After looking for Judith in the cafeteria, he went back to the lobby and in a flash of inspiration jumped on one of the automatic elevators. He found her on the terrace, leaning against the railing, her hair pushed back and her face turned toward the gentle March sun, her back to a Guadarrama horizon exaggerated by the distance, the peaks still covered with snow, her legs bare in short white socks. I like that you look for me without knowing whether you’ll find me.

He could get up right now from the table, fold his napkin, and go out to look for her, without hope or dignity, not encouraged by any promise but only by the words that have continued acting on him like the drops of a drug entering his bloodstream and going straight to his brain. From across the table Philip Van Doren observes him, smoking, hardly having tasted the dinner, watching and watching over him, intrigued by the consequences of his words, the dosage of information he’d administered just a few hours before, impatient to know what the president’s wife could be saying to Ignacio Abel, who’s turned toward her after conversing with Dr. Santos. He could get up without remorse, leaving her in midsentence, and go look for Judith, as shameless as on other occasions when he left a meeting in the office or a family dinner: though Judith hasn’t called him or may not wish to see him, he is summoned not by her desire but by the fact of her existence. If you were to call me, she read aloud from the book, with its austere cover, signed by Salinas, in which she’d underlined the many words she didn’t know and made notes in the margins. But Ignacio Abel didn’t believe those lines, in part because of his general indifference to poetry and because he didn’t associate those ecstasies of love with Señora Bonmati de Salinas. Too much the professor, he told Judith, lowering the level of his skepticism so as not to annoy her; too self-involved to lose his head over a woman and too busy with all those official tasks he was involved in. I would leave it all, throw it all away. And she said, “If you’re so sure Salinas is lying, it’s because you’re just like him”—suddenly irritated in Madame Mathilde’s house one very hot morning at the end of May, close to the end, turning her back to him, her skin glowing with sweat. Now he has nothing, nothing he’d need to leave behind to go away with her. The president’s wife compassionately inquires about his wife and children, doesn’t he know anything about them, are they in danger. He nods and puts on the required expression of sorrow, and at the same time feels in the beating of his heart, in the pit of his stomach, that he was ready to leave right away and drive for hours to look for Judith or sit on a bench in the station waiting for a train that would take him to Wellesley College. Without hope, almost without purpose, simply letting himself be carried along, seized by the undeniable fact of Judith Biely’s presence in the world. “I’m sure we can find a way for them to join you soon. I can imagine how you must feel after so much time away from your children, your wife.” Alcohol made self-pity easy, the imposture Van Doren didn’t fail to notice, catching loose threads of the conversation, willfully joining in, pulling his shirt cuffs back from his hairy wrists, his neck muscles constrained by his tie; he’d need to use his influence with the International Red Cross, he said, looking Ignacio Abel in the eye, enthusiastically seconded by Stevens, who if necessary would appeal to his contacts in the State Department. And as Van Doren spoke, he was silently asking Ignacio Abel whether he really wanted to reunite with his wife and children or was he capable of acknowledging to himself that the only thing he wanted was to see Judith Biely again.