Antonio Molina - In the Night of Time

She’d leave Madrid by train that night, he thought with painful clarity. While he waited for her, filled with impatience and desire, in Madame Mathilde’s house, Judith Biely would board a train at the South or North Station, on her way to La Coruña or Cádiz, because those were the two ports where ships for America could sail from, unless she traveled to Irún, on the border, to take a ship from the coast of France. Madame Mathilde had held on to the letter intentionally; she had let him wait to cover Judith’s flight, so he wouldn’t have time to go and search for her. I can’t keep writing in Spanish, so I’ll do it faster and clearer in English. She’d written quickly, knowing she was leaving, coldly resolved to carry out a plan perhaps made some time ago. I’ll miss you but eventually I’ll get over it, provided I don’t see you again. He folded the letter carelessly, put it in a jacket pocket — not ringing the bell that indicated his intention to leave the room, which guaranteed he wouldn’t cross paths with any other of Madame Mathilde’s clients — and went into the hall, where the old woman appeared before him, emerging from a shadowy corner as if she’d been waiting for him. “The drinks are on the house, don’t worry. I always like to keep a real gentleman happy. There are so few left and there’ll be even fewer if this business isn’t straightened out soon — didn’t you hear the radio?” Ignacio Abel almost pushed the obsequious madam out of the way as he handed her a few bills. “No, the señorita didn’t give me any other message, didn’t say anything to me, though come to think of it she was dressed for a trip.” She pressed his hand as she took the bills, understanding, almost maternal, bringing her painted face close to his as she spoke in a low voice. “And permit me to say something in complete confidence. If, as it seems, the señorita will be away for some time, and you want to fill her place, as it were, with discretion and hygiene, you only have to say so, because I can introduce you to a clean, good-looking girl prepared to accept the friendship of a gentleman of your distinction. It goes without saying that in this house the doors are wide open to you.” Ignacio Abel went out to the street, still carrying Judith’s letter in his hand. He saw before him the smile that twisted Madame Mathilde’s mouth slightly and the gleam at the back of her small, astute eyes beneath painted lids. Suddenly he knew. He remembered hearing the doorbell as he waited in the room, allowing himself to sink slowly into the darkness, into memories and lethargy: it was Judith who had rung and entered the house knowing he was in the room. Standing in the vestibule from where she could see at the end of the hall the door behind which he was waiting, Judith had handed Madame Mathilde the letter, speaking to her in a low voice, and then had gone, so close to him and yet resolved to disappear into a distance where he feels he’ll never find her, though he’s come to her country not to flee Spain or build a library close to the great river, but to look for her.

HE WENT OUT AND suddenly felt it wasn’t the city he’d arrived in a few hours earlier on a Sunday afternoon. If Judith had been so near less than an hour ago, he still had time to find her and keep her from leaving. It was night now, and the streets that went down to Cibeles and the Paseo del Prado were filled with cars and people. Windows were open and houses lit, revealing bedrooms and dining rooms from which came a magnified, discordant cacophony of radios, and silhouettes at the balconies. Suspicion turned into certainty, an accusation; a resentful lover’s rancor gave tangible reality to his suppositions: Judith had gone to Madame Mathilde’s house knowing he was waiting for her, had the self-possession to drop off the letter and leave, and the astuteness to speak in a low voice and perhaps ensure the old woman’s complicity with some money; in the pocket of the widow’s gown the bills he’d just given her were next to Judith’s. On Calle de Alcalá a crowd somewhere between boisterous and surly shoved him and shook raised fists and placards, waved red and red-and-black flags. In the background, toward the domes of the Gran Vía, a shifting light rose that had the drama of a red twilight. It smelled of smoke and burned gasoline, and ashes rained down on bare heads. Perhaps Judith had asked the taxi driver who took her to Madame Mathilde’s to wait for her by the gate, she wouldn’t be more than a moment; now Ignacio Abel thought he remembered hearing the sound of the waiting car’s engine, sure he’d heard the startling noise of a door opening and closing; when he went out to the vestibule, hadn’t he detected a faint trace of Judith’s scent? He examined the immediate past because he was obsessed with confirming he’d had her within reach, as if that might somehow alleviate the reality of her disappearance. Without a hat, briefcase in hand, I see him from the other side of the street as he walks quickly down Calle de Alcalá, paying no attention to the window of the travel agency that displays the scale model of an ocean liner his children always look at, as if he had an urgent appointment, reviewing the possible routes Judith might have taken just a few minutes earlier because by now he’s convinced she’d been very close by, and if he hurries and acts intelligently, he can find her. She had reached and was inside the Atocha or North Station or perhaps had returned to the pensión on the Plaza de Santa Ana and was closing her suitcases, the taxi, its motor running, at the entrance, the balconies lit around the plaza, the taverns full. Any possibility he chose would eliminate the others. If he had his car, if a taxi came along, if traffic weren’t so tied up, if so many people weren’t crowding the sidewalks, getting in his way, overflowing into the street. Without taxis or streetcars the distances in Madrid expanded. In twenty or twenty-five minutes he could reach the Atocha Station. In anticipation he saw the iron vault, the glass illuminating the plaza like a great globe of light. Tied to the ground as in dreams by the slowness of his steps, he saw himself running through the waiting room to a Judith dressed for travel and about to get on the train. But most likely he’d make the wrong decision and race between stations, exhausting himself and missing Judith’s departure. On the terrace of the Café Lion they’d brought out loudspeakers, and people gathered around them and climbed up on the iron chairs and tables to listen to proclamations repeated by a metallic-sounding voice, the optimism of official communiqués. The government can count on sufficient resources to crush the criminal attack that enemies of the regime and the working class have undertaken. He looked inside the café, imagining that Negrín would be there, but a sense of urgency he couldn’t control kept pushing him forward. A feverish public drank steins of beer and smoked and ate plates of seafood while sweating waiters plowed their way through, trays raised above their heads. Forces loyal to the Republic are fighting boldly to quash the insurrectionists once and for all. The announcer’s voice vibrated with the emphatic timbre of a sports rebroadcast. A column of heroic Asturian miners is approaching Madrid to offer their assistance to the people of the capital. So it was true they were going to revolt, he thought coldly, almost with relief, with an indifference born of unreality and distance to the voices he was hearing, the mob of bodies he had to pass to continue moving forward. After the official communiqué the “Himno de Riego” was played, followed by a piercing female voice singing “Échale guindas al pavo.” Repeated reports of the defeat of the uprising or of fanciful military exploits were shouted, mixing with the patrons’ hoarse voices ordering more rounds of beer and plates of grilled shrimp or fried squid. The felon Queipo de Llano is fleeing in fear from the enraged people of Sevilla, and soldiers deserting the rebel ranks are cheering the Republic. Again the sinister Spanish farce, he thought, the barracks interjection and bugle call, military parades to the rhythm of a paso doble, the eternal filth of the national fiesta. Trucks filled with armed peasants circled the crowd in a slow eddy around the fountain at Cibeles, then moved like a tide up the other section of Alcalá toward the Puerta del Sol. Through the trees in the garden the large windows of the Ministry of War were lit up as on the night of an official dance. At the entrance gates a small tank with a laughable cannon kept guard. The soldiers on duty came to attention every time an official car went in or came out. Rockets or gunfire exploded and the crowd swayed like a wheat field in the wind. Above the buildings on the Gran Vía, Ignacio Abel could see the dome of a church enveloped in flames. Red cinders fell on roofs with the splendor of fireworks. He turned toward the Paseo del Prado at the corner of Correos, where a parked truck was filled with Assault Guards, impassive under their service-cap visors that gleamed like patent leather in the low light. At the edge of the sidewalk a car brushed by him like a strong gust, and from it came warning shouts and the guffaws of young men who pointed rifles and pistols out the windows, a red-and-black flag flapping in the air like a boat’s slack sail. Each car, each truck bristling with flags and upraised fists and rifles. Each human group seemed to advance in one direction, but each group’s direction was different from all the others, and the general effect was of several parades coming together at a traffic barrier, a band competition. From the great whirlpool of Cibeles rose a discord of motors and horns, bursts of anthems, catcalls, rage. There was light in all the balconies of the Bank of Spain. Something was about to happen and nobody knew what, something must have occurred already and was irreparable, something desired and something feared. Judith Biely had disappeared forever or could appear in the crowd around any corner; enthusiasm and panic vibrated like simultaneous waves in the nocturnal heat, a fever rising, a carnival, a catastrophe.