Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

SHE DID EVERYTHING carefully, not hurrying, as if putting into effect a plan she’d conceived long before, the only sign of negligence the disorder of the letters and photographs thrown on the floor and the toppled drawer with the little key in the lock, which Adela had noticed that morning, perhaps, as she supervised the cleaning of the study. The maids tended to dust inefficiently and to move things, and this irritated Ignacio Abel, who maintained in his workroom a peculiar equilibrium between discipline and disorder, frequently mislaying loose papers or newspaper clippings or photos from international magazines and later needing them urgently. She must have seen the key earlier, when the maids were straightening the rooms and airing the house, but it took her a long time to decide to open the drawer he always kept locked, and in fact she might not have noticed the presence of the key, since it was so small, a glint of metal in the study with its open balcony. She might not have felt the shock, or she might have resisted the temptation, at first not powerful, at least not conscious, not something that would have persisted like a thorn or a physical discomfort in the midst of the day’s activities. But she didn’t forget it, not even when she was absorbed in other tasks: going over menus for the next few days with the cook or talking on the phone with her mother — distraught, Doña Cecilia said, her body going to pieces, nothing but terrible news, decent people couldn’t go out anymore, couldn’t go to Mass without being insulted, and now they were slandering the poor nuns with that lie about giving poisoned candies to children, shouting vile things at the sisters on the street and threatening to burn down their convents. She listened to the plaintive whine of her mother’s voice on the phone but didn’t forget about the key. She seemed to see it, tiny and hateful, shining in the gloom when she lay down in bed with the curtains closed and the shutters open, seeking to alleviate a headache that became more oppressive on hot, overcast days, the gray light disorienting her sense of time. How she longed for the few days before the children finished the school year to pass quickly so they could leave Madrid for the dearly loved house in the Sierra, the relief of twilights and a breeze that carried the scent of pine and rockrose and returned her unconditionally to the happiness of her childhood, made not of memories but instinctive sensations, the singing of crickets in the damp and dark of the garden beyond the terrace, where the dinner table hadn’t been cleared yet, the creak of the swing where her children moved back and forth, bringing back to her, like an echo in time, that same creak and those other children’s voices, similar but belonging to her and her brother, so many years ago.

She had to overcome her depression, made worse by physical lethargy, to organize as if for a military campaign the annual tasks involved in moving to the Sierra (“The sooner all of you leave Madrid, dear girl, the better. Your father says something very bad is going to happen, and I ask him to stop reading the paper to me because you know how I get — I hardly have enough time to rush to the bathroom”): picking up the carpets, laundering all the linens, arranging the closets, waxing the parquet floors and the furniture before covering everything with cloths to keep out the desert dust of Madrid summers. But where would she find the strength to give orders to the maids and maintain the necessary authority if she shuffled around the house in a robe and slippers at this hour, her hair uncombed, with no desire to look at herself, no energy to scold the cook for playing the radio so loud, those commercials and flamenco songs resonating in her skull. Like the throb of pain in her temples, the little key insinuated itself into her conversations and actions. There were moments when she made an effort to forget it, others when she lamented the accident of having seen it and at the same time reproached herself for her curiosity and cowardice, her impatience to examine the inside of the drawer, her fear at what she might find there. But there also might be nothing to justify so much anxiety, and the best thing would be to sit calmly at the desk in the study, turn the key, and one minute later be cured of uncertainty and even allow herself a little remorse for having succumbed to curiosity and invaded a private place that didn’t belong to her.

She wasn’t blind and she wasn’t a fool; she couldn’t help but suspect, not because of her distrust but his typically male negligence, his inattentiveness to what he revealed in his actions. If he wasn’t there, Adela entered his study only to oversee the cleaning, moving with combined reverence and discretion in order not to disrupt anything, and at the same time act with invisible diligence to prevent the spread of disorder. She looked at things, examining a sheet on which something was drawn and putting it back in the same place, or perhaps imposing a certain geometric harmony on the objects and papers on the desk. (What envy she felt when Zenobia Camprubí told her she was Juan Ramón’s right hand, secretary, typist, almost his editor, that he read everything to her and considered nothing definitive, wouldn’t agree to have anything typed, until Zenobia had given her approval.) She put pencils and brushes in a jar, gathered together loose notes, visiting cards, pages torn out of a notebook, and placed them under a paperweight, not trying very hard to decipher the tiny handwriting he was well known for and that with the years had become less legible and closer to microscopic, though not more difficult for her to read. (It hurt even more to hear Zenobia talk about her exhausting duties — smiling, with her mixture of complaint and gratification, her light eyes brilliant, just like her light skin and American dentures — because Adela, too, had once enjoyed typing Abel’s articles and class notes, happy to help him, to do something useful that actively connected her to his work.) With caution, she preferred not to start reading, avoiding the possibility of learning something that might be painful; she checked the pockets of his jackets before sending them to the cleaner’s, trying not to look at what he’d written on some forgotten piece of paper, not wondering why there were two movie tickets for a matinee showing on a workday, not finding out whose phone number was written in the margin of a newspaper. What you don’t know can’t hurt you — it may never have existed in the first place. Curiosity was capitulation in advance, a sign of danger, of panic. Adela had been brought up not to question or have doubts about men’s behavior beyond the domestic sphere. You didn’t subject the honor of individuals to overly stringent scrutiny. If you did, you allowed and even encouraged an eruption of the indecent and the unacceptable, and once such a thing came to light, you couldn’t pretend you hadn’t seen it. Now the indecent was always on view in Spain, with an offensive carnality, and no one cared. In the daily life of an intelligent, vigorous man who didn’t intend to abandon other projects and was beginning to receive his first international commissions, a position with so much responsibility in the construction of University City demanded all his time. Since she had an honorable spirit and a passive character, Adela liked things to be what they seemed. Didn’t her husband always say a building has to honorably show what it is, what it’s made of, what it’s good for, and for whom? Some mornings the disorder was greater because he’d stayed up working until dawn; in order not to wake her, he’d slept on the divan, usually stacked with books and files of plans. Over time it became more customary for him to sleep in his study. The divan was large and comfortable; she made certain a blanket and clean pillow were always in the closet. Sometimes she was ill, and it was uncomfortable for the two of them to sleep together. From time to time, above all during this past year, he was so burdened with work that he didn’t get home until two or three in the morning. No matter how quietly he opened the door and moved down the hall, she heard him come in. She was awake, looking at the time on the luminous hands of the clock on the night table, or she’d dozed off and her sleep was so light the distant noise of the elevator woke her, or the friction of the key cautiously entering the lock. The footsteps approached; Adela closed her eyes and remained rigid in bed, attempting to give her breathing the regularity of sleep. He mustn’t know she’d been awake, waiting, mustn’t suspect he was being watched. But the footsteps didn’t stop at the bedroom; they continued on to his study. How clearly she heard everything in the silence of the apartment, how detectable each familiar sound, catalogued in memory: the study door opening and closing, the click of the lamp he turned on, the tired weight of his body on the springs of the divan. So exhausted, so many hours of work without respite, so many days without a break, so submerged in his concerns and obsessions: deadlines approaching, countless details requiring his attention, accidents at the sites, scaffolds collapsing because they were put up hurriedly and negligently, strikes, lost days, threats on the phone, anonymous letters in the mail. What else could I have wanted than to help you if you’d let me, if you had the confidence in me you had at the beginning and thought I was intelligent enough to understand what you told me.