Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

“You can drop me off here, Don Ignacio. You continue on your way home. I can take a streetcar from here.”

“Door-to-door service,” he said with a smile and shrugged, confounded by a feeling of shyness he wouldn’t admit to anyone, not even Judith Biely. “Let’s see if I can corrupt you with the comforts of bourgeois life.”

“The people in the CNT are calling me a strikebreaker as it is.”

“That can’t be anything to worry about.”

They went up Calle de Santa Engracia, past the magnificent Water Tower, rising above the city like a Persian funerary monument before the distant blue curtain of the Sierra. Ignacio Abel drove in silence, listening to Eutimio, observing out of the corner of his eye the change in the other man’s posture as they approached his neighborhood: uncomfortably erect, knees together, unwilling to abandon himself to an intimacy as easily withdrawn as granted. Before it reached its limits, Madrid expanded into rural spaciousness, rows of low houses in front of which women embroidered in the sun, sitting on rush chairs in large lots surrounded by plank fences covered with faded election posters. A dusty, village light floated above the Cuatro Caminos traffic circle: ragpickers’ wagons, herds of goats, cowbells and the bells of streetcars, circling a waterless fountain that looked like a stage set, a fountain dislodged from the bourgeois promenade for which it was built. The strongest notes of color were the green and red of geraniums on the balconies. A group of children kicking a ball made of rags in the middle of the street interrupted their game to run alongside the car. They winked and made mocking faces, almost pressing their noses to the windows. One ran with a crippled leg, leaning on a crutch; on the head of another a rash of ringworm was turning white.

“Be careful, Don Ignacio, these kids could throw themselves under the wheels.”

Behind grilles, from balconies and the doorways of small workshops, taverns, and grocery stores, suspicious, attentive eyes observed the car’s passing. Three men approached, dressed in white shirts and old jackets, caps above their faces, legs far apart. In the waistband of one of them was the black butt of a pistol. They stood motionless in front of the car in the middle of the street, looking at Ignacio Abel, who kept the engine running and, with instinctive caution, had both hands still and visible on the steering wheel, his eyes alert and at the same time avoiding their questioning, defiant stares.

“Don’t worry, Don Ignacio, these are good boys.”

“What do they want?”

“They’re on watch.”

Eutimio lowered his window and signaled to the one wearing a pistol, who examined the interior of the car, a contemptuous expression at the corner of his mouth where a cigarette burned. A boy’s nose was flattened against each window, open mouths fogging the glass with their breath, their eyes looking inside as if into an aquarium.

“You can trust this gentleman, comrade,” said Eutimio, avoiding the other man’s eyes, which were close, the smoke of his cigarette in his face. “He’s my boss at work and I’ll answer for him.”

The men spoke briefly among themselves, then moved aside to allow them to pass, coming together again to watch the car, like watching a train or ship move away. In his rearview mirror, Ignacio Abel saw the men recede and let out a sigh of relief not as inaudible as he imagined.

“They frightened you a little, Don Ignacio. Nothing to worry about. You have to understand that in this neighborhood, when you see a car like yours, it means something bad’s going to happen.”

“The Falangists?”

“Or the monarchists. Or the boys from Young Popular Action. They speed up Santa Engracia and run over whatever’s in front of them. They shoot and don’t care who they hit. Last week they killed a poor woman sweeping at her front door. The class struggle, Don Ignacio. They lean their heads out of car windows, stretch out their arms, and shout ‘ Arriba España! ’ Then they turn into Cuatro Caminos and nobody can find them.”

Now Ignacio Abel observed more attentively his expressions and glances, as well as the mixture of discomfort and confidence Eutimio felt when he was recognized close to home. The confined space of the car and their physical proximity had favored an ease of manner that would vanish as soon as Eutimio got out, with a gesture of farewell that would conceal the intention to shake hands instead of thanking him by bending his head slightly as he stood on the sidewalk, having removed his beret. A blind at a balcony moved to one side; a woman’s hand shook a curtain of cheap cloth; some boys playing leapfrog interrupted their game, and one turned his head to look at the car with an expression at once serious and adult; the rope some girls were jumping, colored ribbons in their hair, remained motionless on the pounded earth; young men in shirtsleeves approached the door of a tavern.

“I’m inviting you to have a glass of wine and get the fear out of your body, Don Ignacio.”

“Eutimio, come on, this wasn’t anything to worry about.” Having shown his alarm so obviously embarrassed Ignacio Abel. Affectionate, almost paternal, Eutimio still took some pleasure in the weakness of a superior, more evident because when he got out of the car, Ignacio Abel found himself without defenses in unfamiliar territory. “I’ll have a glass if you let me invite you.”

He had plenty of time: he didn’t have an appointment with Judith Biely and had no desire to return home on a May evening that seemed to have halted in a luminosity not yet dimmed by twilight. When he returned home he’d permit himself the consolation of telling Adela the truth — this would soothe the conscience of a recent, still inexpert liar — but she’d probably think his conversation with a foreman in a tavern in Cuatro Caminos was a lie, one of many she didn’t bother to pretend she believed. Distracted, happy, almost virtuous, as if today’s truth somehow would compensate for deceit on so many other occasions, he wouldn’t even notice Adela’s incredulity.

“Don’t worry about the car, Don Ignacio, you can trust us here. You don’t have to lock it. We’re poor but honest, like in the operettas.”

The children not only looked at the car — the soft green paint, the butter-colored leather top, the crank handle, nickel-plated like the wheel spokes — they looked at him in particular, as if he were from another universe: white hands, made-to-measure suit, the peak of a handkerchief in his jacket pocket, the gleam of his silk tie, his two-toned shoes. The children’s black eyes were a mirror that reflected a distorted version of himself, the tall, strange man they were seeing, the one who got out of the car, slamming the door and looking around with an expression of instinctive guardedness, like a colonial dignitary on an inspection tour, benevolent, perhaps, but always distant, possessing an arrogance that didn’t need to be a personal attitude because it was engraved on the character of his caste. He thought of his own children as he looked at these faces, which had a radiant dignity in spite of the poverty. He saw not the man he was now but the boy who so many years ago, late in the afternoon, went out fearfully to play on another street much like this one, in his neighborhood at the other end of Madrid. For a few seconds the children’s voices had echoed in a kind of concave eternity, in the realm outside time of games and street songs, the ones he’d listened to so often in the porter’s lodging, coming through the window high above his head, at the level of the sidewalk. He hadn’t been one of them, not even then. A pure moment recovered from that distant time made him stop in the doorway of the tavern, happy and lost, blinking as if the afternoon light had blinded him.