The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Ten

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The days following that encounter with the pistols were terrible. Candelaria bustled about incessantly from her room to mine, from the dining room out to the street, from the street to the kitchen, always in a hurry, focused, muttering a muddled litany of grunts and growls whose meaning no one could decipher. I didn’t interfere in her comings and goings, nor did I ask how the negotiations were doing; I knew that when everything was ready she’d be sure to fill me in.

A week passed, until—at last—she had something to announce. She returned home after nine o’clock that night, when we were already sitting before our empty plates, awaiting her arrival. Dinner went ahead as usual, lively and confrontational. When it was over, as the guests scattered around the boardinghouse to get on with their final activities of the day, we began to clear the table together. As we were carrying away the dirty dishes and cutlery, she spilled out to me drop by drop the remainder of her plans. “Tonight the matter will all be set, honey; the deed will be done. Tomorrow morning we’ll start to get your thing moving; I can’t wait to be over with this damned mess, angel, once and for all.”

No sooner had we finished the chores than each of us shut herself in her room without exchanging another word. The rest of the troop, meanwhile, were finishing their nighttime routines: eucalyptus gargles, the radio, hair curlers in front of the mirror, going over to the café. Trying to feign normality I threw a good-night out into the air before going to bed. I remained awake awhile, until bit by bit all the activity died down. The last thing I heard was Candelaria leaving her room and then—barely making a sound—closing the front door.

I fell asleep a few minutes after she’d gone out. For the first time in days I didn’t toss and turn for hours, nor was I visited by the dark portents of the previous nights—prison, police station, arrests, death. It was as though my nerves had finally decided to give me a respite on learning that the grim business was nearly over. I submerged myself in sleep, curled up with the sweet premonition that the following morning we’d begin to plan our future without the dark shadow of the pistols over our heads.

But my rest didn’t last long. I don’t know what time it was—two, three perhaps—when a hand grabbed my shoulder and shook me vigorously.

“Wake up, girl, wake up.”

I partly sat up, disoriented, still asleep.

“What’s going on, Candelaria? What are you doing here? You’re back already?” I managed to say with some difficulty.

“A disaster, child, a huge catastrophe,” the Matutera replied in a whisper.

She was standing alongside my bed, and through the fog of my sleepiness her voluminous figure seemed rounder than ever. She was wearing an overcoat I didn’t recognize, big and broad, done up to the neck. She began to unbutton it quickly as she gave flustered explanations.

“The army has been watching all the roads into Tetouan and the men who were coming from Larache to collect the merchandise didn’t dare come this far. I waited till nearly three in the morning without anyone showing up, and eventually they sent me some Berber kid to tell me that the access routes were much more heavily guarded than they’d thought, that they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to get out alive if they were to come into town.”

“Where were you supposed to meet them?” I asked, forcing myself to put everything she had been saying into place.

“In the lower Suica, around the back of a coal yard.”

I didn’t know the place she was referring to but didn’t try to clarify it any further. In my still sleepy head our failure was already being sketched in thick dark strokes: good-bye to the business, good-bye to the dressmaker’s studio. Welcome back to the uneasiness of not knowing what would become of me.

“So it’s all over then,” I said, rubbing my eyes to remove the last vestiges of sleep.

“Nothing of the sort, honey,” Candelaria stopped me, finishing taking off her coat. “We may have been forced to change our plans, but by all that’s holy I swear to you those pistols will be flying out of this house tonight. So get moving, girl, get up, there’s no time to lose.”

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying to me; my attention was focused on another matter: the image of Candelaria undoing the large shapeless dress she was wearing under the coat, a sort of loose smock of coarse wool that barely allowed you to make out the generous shape of her body. I watched in amazement as she undressed, not understanding the meaning of what she was doing and unable to work out the reason for that hurried stripping at the foot of my bed. Until, having removed her skirt, she began to extract objects hidden among her dense flesh. And then I understood. She had four pistols carried in her garters, six in her belt, two in the straps of her brassiere, and another pair under her armpits. The remaining five were in her handbag, tied into a piece of cloth. Nineteen in total. Nineteen butts with their nineteen barrels ready to leave the warmth of that robust body to be transported to a destination that at that very moment I began to suspect.

“And what do you want me to do?” I asked, terrified.

“Take these weapons to the train station, hand them over before six in the morning, and bring back the nine and a half thousand pesetas that were agreed on for the merchandise. You know where the station is, don’t you? Across the Ceuta road, at the foot of the Ghorgiz. There the men can collect it without having to enter Tetouan. They’ll be coming down from the mountain and they’ll head right over to collect it before dawn, without having to set foot in the city.”

Shock cut my sleepiness off at the root and suddenly I was awake as an owl.

“But why do I have to be the one to take them?”

“Because when I was coming back from the Suica, making a detour to figure out the best way to arrange things for the train station, that son of a bitch Palomares was coming out of the El Andaluz bar as it was closing. He stopped me at the gate of the Intendencia Barracks and told me that tonight he just might decide to come by the boardinghouse to carry out a search.”

“Who’s Palomares?”

“The nastiest piece of work of all the cops in Spanish Morocco.”

“One of Don Claudio’s?”

“He works under his command, yes. When he’s with him he sucks up to him, but when he’s off on his own, all his nastiness comes out. He’s terrorized half of Tetouan with threats of locking them up for life.”

“Why did he stop you tonight?”

“Because he felt like it, because that’s the kind of pig he is, and he likes lashing out and frightening people, especially women; he’s been doing it for years, and these days even more.”

“But did he suspect anything about the pistols?”

“No, child, no; fortunately he didn’t ask me to open my handbag nor did he dare touch me. He just said to me in that horrible voice of his, Where are you going so late, Matutera, you’re not mixed up in one of your shady little deals, you crooked old bitch, and I replied, I’ve just been visiting a dear friend of mine, Don Alfredo, who’s in a bad way with kidney stones. I don’t trust you, Matutera, you’re such a slut, a crook, the brute said right back to me, and I bit my tongue to stop myself from answering back, although I was about to shit all over his ancestors. But I just kept walking with my handbag tightly under my arm, trusting to Holy Mary that the pistols wouldn’t shift around on my body, and then I heard his filthy voice behind me saying, Just the same I’m going to come by your boardinghouse and give the place a good search, you old tart, just to see what I might find.”

“You really think he’s going to come?”

“He might, he might not,” she replied, shrugging. “If he manages to find himself a poor whore who’ll turn a trick for him and give him a bit of relief, then he’ll forget all about me. But if he can’t get it up tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if he knocked on the door, threw the guests into the hallway, and turned my house upside down without batting an eye. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“So you can’t leave the boardinghouse all night, just in case,” I whispered slowly.

“That’s right, my angel,” she said.

“And the pistols have got to disappear immediately so that Palomares doesn’t find them here,” I added.

“Exactly.”

“And we have to hand over the guns today because the buyers are waiting for them and won’t risk their lives coming into Tetouan to get them.”

“You couldn’t have put it more clearly, my princess.”

We remained silent for a few seconds, looking each other tensely in the eye. We must have looked pitiful, her standing half naked with rolls of flesh spilling out of her bra and girdle, me sitting cross-legged under the sheets in my nightdress, with my hair disheveled and my heart clenched. Not to mention the scattered black pistols.

Finally Candelaria spoke, her firm words emphasizing her certainty. “You’ve got to deal with it yourself, Sira. We have no other way out of this.”

“I can’t do it, I can’t . . . ,” I stammered.

“You’ve got to do it, honey,” she repeated darkly. “If you don’t, we’re lost.”

“But you’re forgetting everything else they have over me, Candelaria—the hotel debt, the accusations against me by the company and by my half brother. If they catch me doing this, I’ll be finished.”

“You’ll be finished if Palomares turns up tonight and finds us with all this in the house,” she replied, gazing back to the guns.

“But Candelaria, listen . . . ,” I insisted.

“No, you listen to me now, girl, and listen well,” she said imperiously. She spoke with a powerful hiss, her eyes open like saucers. Crouched down beside the bed till she was at my level, she proceeded to grab me by the arms and made me look right at her. “I’ve tried everything, I’ve thrown everything I’ve got into this, and things didn’t work out,” she said. “Luck can be a bitch like that: sometimes she lets you win, and other times she spits in your face and makes you lose. And tonight she said to me, No way, Matutera. I haven’t got any ammunition left, Sira, the game’s up for me. But not for you. You’re the only person now who can stop us from going under, the only one who can take out the merchandise and bring back the money. If it weren’t necessary I wouldn’t be asking you, God knows. But we have no choice, child: you’ve got to get going. You’re in this just like I am; this one’s both of ours, and we’ve got a lot riding on it. Our future is disappearing, girl, our whole future. If we don’t get this money, we won’t make it through. Now everything is in your hands. You must do it, for you and for me, Sira. For both of us.”

I wanted to keep refusing; I knew I had powerful reasons to say no, no way, absolutely not. But at the same time I knew Candelaria was right. I had agreed to be a part of that dark game, no one had forced me. We’d formed a team, each of us with a role to play. Candelaria’s was first to negotiate; mine, to work afterward. But we were both aware that sometimes the boundaries of things are elastic and imprecise, that they can shift, become blurred or diluted like ink in water. She’d done her part of the deal, and she’d tried. Luck had turned her back on her and she hadn’t managed to succeed, but that didn’t mean that all the possibilities had been exhausted. It was only fair that now I should take the risk.

I took a few seconds to speak; first I had to clear out of my head some images that threatened to leap at my jugular: the commissioner, his prison, the unknown face of this Palomares.

“Have you thought about how I’d do it?” I asked finally in a whisper.

Candelaria breathed out noisily in relief, recovering her lost spirits.

“The easiest thing in the world, my precious. Wait just a second, and I’ll tell you how.”

She left the room still half naked and returned in less than a minute, her arms filled with what seemed to be a huge piece of white linen.

“You’re going to dress like a little Moorish girl, with a haik,” she said, closing the door behind her. “You could fit the whole universe in one of these.”

That was certainly true. Every day I saw Arab women wrapped up inside these broad shapeless clothes, which resembled large cloaks and covered their heads, their arms, their whole bodies, front and back. Underneath this garment, one could certainly hide anything one wanted. A piece of fabric usually covered their mouth and nose, and the top part came down over their eyebrows. Only their eyes, their ankles, and their feet remained in view. I couldn’t have thought of a better way to go through the streets hiding a small arsenal of pistols.

“But first there’s something else we have to do, honey; let’s get to work.”

I obeyed without a word, allowing her to direct the situation. Without a thought she pulled the top sheet off my bed and brought it to her mouth. With a fierce bite she tore off the top hem and then began to rip the material, tearing a strip a couple of hand spans wide.

“Do the same thing with the bottom sheet,” she commanded. Between teeth and tearing it took us only a few minutes to reduce the sheets off my bed to a couple of dozen long strips of cotton. “And now, what we’re going to do is tie these strips around your body to hold the pistols. Raise your arms, I’m doing the first one.”

And so, without my even taking off my nightdress, the nineteen revolvers were attached around me, bandaged firmly with the strips of bedsheet. Each strip was for one pistol: first Candelaria would wrap the weapon in a folded-over piece of the fabric, then she’d put it against my body and go around me two or three times with the band. And finally she’d tie the ends tight.

“You’re all skin and bones, girl, you don’t have any meat left on you where I can tie the next one,” she said, having completely covered me front and back.

“My thighs,” I suggested.

And so she did, until—spread out under my chest and over my ribs, kidneys, shoulder blades, sides, arms, hips, and thighs—all of the cargo had finally been accommodated. I was like a mummy, covered in white bandages that made all my movements difficult, but that I’d have to learn to move around in right away.

“Put these on, they’re Jamila’s,” she said, placing at my feet some worn brownish-colored leather slippers. “And now the haik,” she added, holding up the large white linen cloak. “That’s it, wrap yourself up right to the head, and let me see how that looks on you.”

She looked at me with a half smile.

“Perfect, just another little Moorish girl. Before leaving, don’t forget, you’ve also got to arrange the veil over your face so it covers your mouth and nose. Come on, then, let’s go out, I’ve got to explain quickly to you where you’re going.”

I started to walk with difficulty, finding it hard to move my body at a normal pace. The pistols were heavy as lead and forced me to keep my legs apart and my arms away from my sides. We went out into the corridor, Candelaria walking ahead and me moving clumsily behind her; a big white bulk that bumped into the walls, the furniture, and the door jambs. Without noticing I knocked into a shelf, throwing its contents onto the floor: a plate from Talavera, an unlit oil lamp, and a sepia-colored portrait of some relative of Candelaria’s. The glass and porcelain shattered as soon as they hit the floor tiles, and the noise made the mattress springs creak in the four adjacent rooms as the sleeping guests were disturbed.

“What’s happened?” shouted the fat mother from her bed.

“Nothing, I just dropped a glass of water. Everyone back to sleep,” replied Candelaria with finality.

I tried to reach down to pick up the mess, but I couldn’t bend my body.

“Leave it, girl, leave it, I’ll sort it out later,” she said, moving some bits of glass aside with her foot.

And then, unexpectedly, a door opened just ten feet away from us. We were met by the curler-covered head of Fernanda, one of the aged sisters. Before she had the chance to ask us what had happened and what a Moorish woman in a haik was doing knocking over the furniture in the corridor at that hour of the morning, Candelaria launched a dart at her that rendered her mute and unable to react.

“If you don’t get back to bed this instant, when I wake up tomorrow I’ll tell Sagrario you’ve been seeing the assistant from the dispensary on Fridays in the cornisa.”

Fear that her pious sister should learn of her amours was more powerful than her curiosity, and without a word Fernanda slipped like an eel back into her bedroom.

“Onward, honey, it’s getting late,” the Matutera said in a commanding whisper. “Better if no one sees you coming out of this house; you never know if Palomares is around, and then we’d be screwed from the start. So we’ll go out the back.”

We went out onto the little patio behind the building and were greeted by the black night, as well as a twisted vine, a pile of junk, and the telegraph man’s old bicycle. We remained hidden in a corner and began speaking in low voices.

“Now what do I do?” I murmured.

She seemed to have everything well thought out and spoke firmly.

“You go up onto this bench and climb over the wall, but you’ve got to do it very carefully. If not, you’re going to get the haik tangled between your legs and find yourself face-first on the ground.”

I looked at the wall, which was about six feet high, and the smaller adjacent one I’d have to scale to get to the top and be able to jump down to the other side. Preferring not to wonder whether I’d be capable of doing it encumbered by the weight of the pistols and wrapped in all that cloth, I simply asked for further instructions. “And from there?”

“When you’ve jumped, you’ll be in the yard behind Don Leandro’s grocery store; from there, if you climb onto the boxes and barrels he’s got scattered about, you can easily get into the next yard, which is behind the pastry shop of Menahen the Jew. There, at the back, you’ll find a little wooden door that’ll let you out into a side alley, which is where the sacks of flour come in for the bakery. Once you’re outside, forget who you are. Cover yourself up well, hunch yourself over, and get walking toward the Jewish neighborhood, and from there, you go into the Moorish quarter. But take care, girl: don’t rush, and stay close to the wall, dragging your feet a little as though you were an old woman, so that no one will see you walking too nicely and some undesirable won’t try something. There are a lot of young Spanish lads who can get captivated by the charms of the Muslim women.”

“And then?”

“When you get to the Moorish quarter, walk around the streets a few times just to be sure that no one’s watching or following you. If you meet anyone, change your route cleverly or get as far away from them as you can. After a bit, come back out of Puerta de la Luneta and head down to the park—you know where I mean, right?”

“I think so,” I said, struggling to map the route in my mind.

“Once you’re there you’ll find yourself opposite the station: cross the Ceuta road and go in wherever you find it open, slowly and well concealed. Most likely there won’t be anyone there but a couple of half-asleep soldiers who won’t pay you the slightest attention. You’ll probably find some Moroccans waiting for the train to Ceuta; the Christians won’t start arriving till later.”

“What time does the train go?”

“Half past seven. But the Moors, as you know, have quite a different rhythm to their schedules, so nobody will find it strange that you’re wandering around there at six in the morning.”

“And should I board the train, too, or what do I do?”

Candelaria took a few seconds to reply, and I guessed that her plan hadn’t been plotted out much further.

“No, in theory you don’t need to take the train. When you reach the station, sit down for a little bit on the bench under the timetable board, let them see you there, and that way they’ll know that it’s you who’s got the merchandise.”

“Who is it that has to see me?”

“Don’t worry about that: whoever has to see you will see you. After twenty minutes, get up off the bench, go to the café, and find some way for the man working behind the counter to tell you where you are to leave the pistols.”

“That’s it?” I asked in alarm. “And if the café man isn’t there, or if he ignores me, or if I can’t speak to him, what do I do?”

“Ssssshhhh. Don’t raise your voice, they’ll hear us. Don’t you worry, somehow you’ll find out what you have to do,” she said impatiently, unable to imbue her words with the reassurance that was evidently needed. Then she decided to level with me. “Look, child, everything’s gone so bad tonight that they couldn’t tell me more than that: the pistols have to be at the station at six in the morning; the person carrying them has to sit for twenty minutes under the timetable board; and the café man is the one who will tell you how to make the delivery. More than that I don’t know, my child, and I’m really sorry about that. But don’t worry, precious, you’ll see how once you’re there everything will work itself out.”

I wanted to say I doubted it very much, but her worried face warned me not to. For the first time since I’d known her, the Matutera’s resolve and her tenacity in finding ingenious solutions to the muddiest situations seemed to have hit rock bottom. But I knew that if she’d been in a position to act herself, she wouldn’t have been afraid: she’d have managed to get to the station and do what was required using whatever wiles she had at hand. The problem was that this time Candelaria was tied hand and foot, immobilized in her house by the threat of a police search that might or might not happen that night. And I knew that if I wasn’t able to respond and take a firm grip on the reins, it would all be over for us. So I summoned up some strength from nowhere and armed myself with courage.

“You’re right, Candelaria: I’ll find a way, don’t worry about it. But first, tell me one thing.”

“Whatever you want, child, but move fast, it’s less than two hours to go till six,” she added, trying to disguise her relief at seeing me ready to keep fighting.

“Where will the guns end up? Who are these men from Larache?”

“You don’t care about that, girl. What matters is that they arrive when and where they’re supposed to; that you leave the merchandise where you’re told to and collect the money they have to give you: nine thousand five hundred pesetas, remember that, and count the notes one by one. Then you return in a flash. I’ll be waiting here holding my breath . . . ”

“We’re taking a huge risk, Candelaria,” I insisted. “At least let me know who it is we’re dealing with.”

She sighed deeply and her chest, barely half covered by the smock she’d thrown over herself at the last minute, rose and fell again as though under the influence of a pump.

“They’re Masons,” she whispered in my ear, as though afraid of pronouncing a curse. “They were supposed to arrive tonight in a van from Larache, most likely they’re already hiding out near Buselmal Springs or in some vegetable garden on the Río Martín plain. They come through the villages, they don’t dare travel on the main roads. They’ll probably pick the guns up wherever you leave them and won’t even get on the train. I’d say they’ll probably return to their city directly from the station, going back through the villages again and avoiding Tetouan completely; that is, if they aren’t caught first, God forbid. But anyway, that’s just a guess, because the truth is I haven’t a goddamn clue what these men are up to.”

She sighed deeply, looking out into the emptiness, and then went on in a low voice.

“What I do know, child, because everyone else knows it, too, is that those involved in the uprising have violently taken their anger out on anyone who has anything to do with Freemasonry. Some of them were shot in the head during their own meetings; the lucky ones fled as fast as they could to Tangiers or the French zone. Others were taken to El Mogote and someday they’ll be shot and never heard from again. And probably there are a few hiding in cellars, lofts, and storerooms, afraid that one day someone will betray them and they will be beaten out of their sanctuaries with rifle butts. That’s why I couldn’t find anyone at first who would dare buy the merchandise. After asking around I managed to get hold of the contact in Larache, and that’s how I know that’s where the pistols will end up.”

Then she looked me in the eyes, serious and dark like I’d never seen her before.

“Things are ugly, child, very ugly,” she said through clenched teeth. “There’s no pity here, no consideration, and anyone who’s worth anything gets taken away before you can say amen. Many poor wretches have already died, decent people who never killed a fly. Be very careful, honey; you’re not going to be the next one.”

Again I drew a crumb of good cheer out of nowhere, so that the two of us might convince ourselves of something even I didn’t believe.

“Don’t worry, Candelaria; you’ll see, we’ll get out of this somehow.”

And without another word, I made my way to the bench and began climbing with that sinister cargo strapped to my skin. I left the Matutera behind me, watching from beneath as she made the sign of the cross amid whispers and vines: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, may the Virgin of Miracles go with you, my angel. The last thing I heard was a noisy kiss she gave to her fingers at the end of the ritual. One second later I disappeared behind the garden wall and fell like a bundle into the grocer’s yard.