Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

In luminous, fitful dreams on the nights of his journey, Ignacio Abel was with her again in the innocence of their first times together. As he was losing everything, as his money ran out and his clothes deteriorated and he lost the most basic habits of hygiene, as he grew resigned to the idea that his journey would never end, Ignacio Abel recovered the phantom presence of Judith Biely with ever greater clarity. He’d wake from a few minutes of restless sleep in a station or in his berth on the ship with the gift of having heard her voice and touched her body; for a few seconds he saw her coming toward him, memory superimposed on the present like a double photographic plate. He woke one night certain he had been dreaming of her and didn’t know where he was. The tenuous light from the porthole over his berth situated him in space but not in time. He could have awakened after several hours of sleep or dozed for just minutes. He wasn’t sleepy and he wasn’t tired. He put on his raincoat over his pajamas and went up on deck, following narrow, poorly lit corridors empty of people. A sensation of sharp lucidity and physical lightness was as intense as the dream-like air the silence and solitude imparted to things. He leaned on a railing and saw nothing except the strings of lights hung over the deck, dimmed in a thick fog, immobile in the windless night. From time to time he heard the faint splash of water against the hull, and in the distance the siren of another ship, revealing the breadth of invisible space. Close by, he also heard a sound identical to a church bell, a bell monotonously repeating a certain cadence, like the summons to Mass or the recitation of the rosary in the late afternoon in a Spanish provincial town. His ears were adjusting to distant sounds as his eyes adjusted to the slow arrival of the light. He heard nearby voices but couldn’t see anyone. Then he began to distinguish forms leaning on the rail, overcoats thrown over nightgowns and pajamas, hands extended in a direction he couldn’t make out. Gradually he became aware of a raucous sound that seemed to come from the deepest holds of the ship. But it faded and the silence returned, and with it voices and water lapping against the hull, the voices becoming clearer, like the faces illuminated by lighters that burned for an instant, familiar faces after a week at sea. On one side a long line of blinking lights, on the other a tall, compact shadow, like a basaltic cliff, barely visible in the fog, black against the dark gray into which it was dissolving, dotted now with constellations, as the sound became more powerful, gradually discordant. Those cliffs surging out of the water were the towers of a city; that sea of steel-colored water and shores lost in the distance was a river. He’d have to review his documents again, prepare for another examination, for scornful, hostile looks, for patience and indignity. In the faces ravaged by so short a night, Ignacio Abel recognized those who were now his brothers: the fugitives from Europe carrying suitcases bound with cords, nervously handling briefcases of documents. How did he distinguish them from the others, the travelers for pleasure and the businessmen, those who had solid passports, unquestionable credentials. Perhaps when you crossed the border with one group or the other it was no longer possible to return. Perhaps he himself, when he submitted his papers to the scrutiny of the American customs agents, would discover that during the time he’d been traveling the Spanish Republic had been defeated and he was, as a consequence, the citizen of a nonexistent country. He went down to his cabin to dress and pack his suitcase, and when he returned with it to the deck, the fog had lifted. He discovered the faint colors things were taking on, the bronzes of the cornices, the blues of the sky, the somber greens of the water at the docks, the reds and ochers of the bricks, the glossy tiles reflecting the first light of day from atop the tallest buildings, where sometimes he could also see green patches of trees, autumnal ivy in golds and scarlets. Judith Biely hadn’t warned him and he hadn’t been able to imagine that New York wasn’t the black-and-white city of the movies.

THE CONDUCTOR IS announcing the name of the next station in a solemn, powerful voice that rises above the noise of the train. Other passengers are already standing, putting on hats, raincoats, light topcoats, looking out the windows with an air of fatigue, men tired after a full day’s work who return home at nightfall, picking up briefcases, folding newspapers, looking at a landscape so familiar they barely notice it, the immense width of the river, the bank the train runs along, so close to the water that small waves break against the tracks’ incline, the landscape of daily life that never seems to change, or only to the extent that the seasons change, night falls earlier or later, reds and yellows replace the bright greens in the treetops. There’s an end to each journey and to each flight, but where does desertion end, and when? The river’s current has an oily texture stained red in the declining light. You can keep running from misfortune and fear, but there is no hiding from remorse. The hills on the opposite bank acquire a darker and denser rust color, interrupted by white splashes of houses where lights are being turned on, though it’s not dark yet. Perfect places to take refuge, for two lovers to meet, for someone to come back to, tired and at peace, and not lock the door or fear noises in the night. With briefcases or small suitcases in hand and overcoat lapels raised against the damp cold of the woods and the river, the passengers will walk home along gravel paths. He too had walked from the small station in the Sierra, one afternoon in late September or early October, the vivid memory of an autumn that had just begun: early nightfall, the aroma of damp earth and pines, the smoke of an oak log rising from the chimney against the still blue sky, the creak of the gate and the cold iron on his hands, while from the house, at the end of the garden, came his children’s voices. Back then he didn’t have a car. He’d have returned by train, enjoying the trip, going over papers or letting his eyes linger on the stands of oak that had a gleam of dusty gold in the afternoon sun, the silhouette of a deer among the oaks, or the flash of a hare. He would walk on fallen leaves covering the gravel path that led to the house; as he got closer, the children’s faces became visible, pressed against a window, Adela standing behind them. The train whistle always alerted them of his arrival.

He prepares again for another arrival, his suitcase ready, his wallet in place, safe in his inside pocket, his passport in the other. Ignacio Abel touches the roughness of his beard, wondering about his appearance now that he’ll be scrutinized by the eyes of strangers: his suit not cleaned and pressed, his raincoat wrinkled, his shirt stained with coffee, the shoes he should have had shined this morning. Some passengers are moving toward the exit at the back of the car, others remain seated. Sudden weariness in his shoulders and the back of his neck, in fingers that have to grasp the suitcase, in feet that after more than two hours on the train have swollen inside his worn shoes, discouragement on an arrival so long postponed, the end of his journey but perhaps not of his flight and certainly not of his desertion. So much impatience to arrive here, and now he’d like the trip to last longer, a few hours, perhaps all night, to avoid all movement, the need to speak, to reestablish human communication, become again the man he was, avoid the anguish of answering questions — how was your trip, you must be very tired, what was it like to live in Madrid, is this the first time you’ve visited the United States. He’d give anything for this not to be his station, to remain seated a little longer, his neck against the back of the seat, his face near the glass, watching the autumnal woods go by, and the river, nothing more than that, making out from time to time a light on a dock, in the window of a solitary house, a house where lovers can hide or a woman and her children can hear the train whistle and know the father will arrive in a few minutes along the path through the trees.