The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Eleven

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I reached the way out of baker Menahen’s in less than five minutes. In the process I caught myself several times on nails and splinters that were impossible to see in the darkness. I grazed my wrist, tripped on the haik, slipped, and nearly lost my balance as I climbed up a huge pile of boxes stored in a disordered heap against a wall. Once I’d reached the door, the first thing I did was to arrange the haik so that all that could be seen of my face were my eyes. Then I slid the rusty bolt, took a deep breath, and stepped outside.

There was no one in the alley, not a shadow or a sound. My only company was the moon, moving freely between the clouds. I started walking slowly, sticking close to the left side, and before long I’d arrived at La Luneta. Before turning onto the street I paused at the corner to determine the lay of the land. Yellowish lights hung from the cables over the road to serve as street lamps. Looking left and right, I was able to recognize some of the establishments—now asleep—in which chaotic life went on during the day: the Hotel Victoria, Zurita Pharmacy, Levante Bar where they would often sing flamenco, Galindo the tobacconist’s, and a salt depository; the Teatro Nacional, the Indian bazaars, four or five taverns whose names I didn’t know, La Perla Jeweler’s, which belonged to the Cohen brothers, and La Espiga de Oro, where we’d go every morning to buy our bread. All of them silent, closed, peaceful as the dead.

Once on La Luneta, I struggled to adapt my pace to the weight of my cargo. After a short stretch, I directed myself toward the mellah, the Jewish quarter. The linear pattern of its extremely narrow streets comforted me, for its precise grid made it impossible to lose one’s bearings. Then I entered the medina, and at first everything went well as I passed by familiar places: the Bread Souq, the Meat Souq. I didn’t meet anyone, not a soul, not even a dog or a blind tramp begging for alms. All I could hear was the muffled sound of my own slippers dragging along the paving stones and the murmur of some fountain or other lost in the distance. I noticed that the pistols seemed less and less heavy, that my body was getting used to its new dimensions. From time to time I patted myself down just to confirm that everything was still in place: first the sides, then the arms, then the hips. I was still tense and couldn’t quite manage to relax, but at least I was walking with reasonable calm down the dark, winding streets between the whitewashed walls and the wooden doors studded with thick-headed nails.

To banish the worry from my head, I made myself imagine what those Arab houses were like on the inside. I’d heard they were beautiful and cool, with patios, fountains, and galleries of mosaics and tiles; with carved wooden ceilings and sunlight caressing the flat roofs. There was no way you could tell all that from the street, where all you could see were their whitewashed walls. I kept musing in this way, until after a while, when I thought I’d walked enough and was a hundred percent sure that I hadn’t raised the slightest suspicion, I decided to head toward Puerta de la Luneta. And it was then, precisely at that moment, that I noticed—at the end of the alley I was walking down—a couple of figures approaching. Two soldiers, officers in breeches, with sashes at their waists and the red caps of the Spanish regulars; four legs walking resolutely, their boots sounding on the cobbles as they talked in quiet, nervous voices. I held my breath as a thousand grim images torpedoed my mind like explosions battering a wall. Suddenly I feared that just as I passed them all the pistols would come loose from their ties and scatter noisily onto the ground; I imagined that it might occur to one of them to pull my hood back and expose my face, that they would make me speak, that they’d discover I was a Spanish compatriot of theirs dealing guns illegally and not some local woman on her way to nowhere in particular.

The men passed alongside me; I stuck as closely as I could to the wall, but the alley was so narrow that we almost brushed against one another. They didn’t pay me the least bit of attention, however, ignoring my presence as though I were invisible and continuing their conversation as they proceeded hastily on their way. They were talking about detachments and munitions, about things I didn’t understand or want to understand. Two hundred, two fifty at the most, one of them said as they passed. No, absolutely not, I’m telling you that’s not right, replied the other vehemently. I didn’t see their faces, I didn’t dare look up, but as soon as their voices faded into the distance I picked up my pace and finally felt I could breathe again.

Just a few seconds later, however, I realized I shouldn’t have declared victory quite so soon: looking up, I discovered that I didn’t know where I was. In order to keep my bearings I would have had to take a right turn three or four corners earlier, but the unexpected appearance of the soldiers had thrown me so much that I hadn’t. At the thought that I was lost, a shiver ran over my skin. I’d crossed the streets of the medina many times but still didn’t know its secrets and mysteries. Without sunlight to guide me and in the absence of the usual activity and sounds, I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was.

I decided to turn back and retrace my steps but was unable to do so. When I thought that I was about to walk into a little square I knew, I found an archway instead; when I expected a passageway, I came across a mosque or a flight of stairs. I proceeded awkwardly along the winding streets, trying to associate every corner with its daytime activities in order to get my bearings. But the more I walked, the more lost I felt in those intricate streets that defied all laws of reason. With the craftsmen asleep and their shops shut, I couldn’t tell whether I was passing through the district of the coppersmiths or the tinsmiths, or whether I was going through the section where by day the thread makers, weavers, and tailors worked. In the area where vendors’ stands with honey sweets, round flatbreads, mountains of spices, and bunches of basil might have helped me to orient myself, I found only locked doors and bolted shutters. Time seemed to have stopped, everything seemed like an empty stage set without the voices of the merchants and the buyers, without the trains of donkeys laden with panniers or the women from the Rif sitting on the ground, surrounded by green vegetables and oranges that they might never be able to sell. My anxiety increased: I didn’t know what time it was, but I was only too aware that there was less and less time remaining before six o’clock. I picked up the pace; exiting an alleyway, I went into another, and another, and yet another; I retraced my steps, attempting to correct my route again. Nothing. Not a clue, not a sign: everything had suddenly been transformed into an accursed labyrinth with no way out.

My confused steps ended up taking me close to a house with a large lamp hanging over the door. At once I could hear laughing, chatter, immoderate voices singing in chorus the words of “Mi jaca” to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune piano. I decided to approach, anxious to find some reference point that would allow me to recover my sense of direction. I was just a few feet away when a couple came out quickly, speaking Spanish: a man who seemed to be drunk, clinging to an older woman with dyed blond hair who was laughing heartily. I realized then that I was standing outside a brothel, but it was already too late to try to pass myself off as a worn-out old local woman: the couple was just a few steps away from me. Morita, come with me, morita, my lovely, I’ve got something to show you, look, look, morita, the man said, slobbering, holding an arm out to me while his other hand gripped his crotch obscenely. The woman tried to restrain him as she laughed, while I jumped away from his reach and ran off wildly, clasping the haik around my body with all my strength.

I left the brothel behind me, that place filled with flesh from the barracks playing cards, bellowing out popular songs, and feverishly handling the women; all of them momentarily freed from the certainty that someday soon they’d be crossing the Strait to confront the grim reality of the war. And then, as I sped away in haste, luck finally came to my aid when turning a corner I found myself face to face with the Souq el Foki.

I was filled with relief at having regained my bearings: at last I knew how to escape from the cage that the medina had become. Time was racing, and I would have to do the same. Moving with the longest strides my covering would allow, I reached Puerta de la Luneta in only a few minutes. But a new shock awaited me there: one of the feared military control posts that had prevented the people from Larache from getting into Tetouan. Several soldiers, guard barriers, and a couple of vehicles: enough to intimidate anyone who wanted to get into the city for any reason less than pure. I could feel my throat becoming dry, but I knew I couldn’t avoid passing right in front of them, let alone stop to consider what I should do, so with my eyes fixed once again on the ground I decided to continue on my way with the weary walk that Candelaria had advised. I passed the control with my blood pounding in my temples as I held my breath, expecting to be stopped at any moment and asked where I was going, who I was, what I was hiding. To my good fortune, they barely glanced at me. They ignored me, just as I’d been ignored by the officers I’d passed in the narrow alley. What danger could the glorious uprising fear from that plodding old Moroccan woman who made her way through the dawn streets like a shadow?

I came down into the open area of the park and forced myself to recover my composure. With feigned calm I crossed the gardens filled with sleeping shadows, so strange in that stillness, without the noisy children or couples or elderly people who would wander amid the fountains and the palm trees in daytime. As I proceeded I could see the station looming clearer and clearer in sight. Compared to the low houses of the medina, it suddenly looked grand and troubling to me, half Moorish and half Andalusian, with its turrets and green tiles, its huge archways over the entrances. Several dim lamps illuminated the façade, casting its silhouette against the bulk of the Ghorgiz, those imposing mountains from which the men from Larache were supposed to arrive. I’d only been by the station once before, when the commissioner had taken me in his car from the hospital to the boardinghouse. Other times I’d seen it at a distance, from the vista of La Luneta, unable to gauge the scale of the thing. Standing before it in the dimness, I found its size so threatening that I suddenly missed the cozy narrowness of the alleyways in the Moorish quarter.

But there wasn’t time to allow fear to bare its teeth at me again, so I recovered my daring and set about crossing the Ceuta road, which at that time of morning had not so much as a speck of dust moving on it. I tried to buoy up my spirits by calculating times, telling myself that in a short while it would all be over, that I’d already gone through most of the ordeal. It comforted me to think that I’d soon be rid of those tight bandages and pistols that were bruising my body and the voluminous clothes that felt so strange. It wouldn’t be long now.

I went into the station through the main entrance, which was wide open, and was met by a flood of cold light illuminating the space, a sharp contrast to the darkness of night I’d just left behind. The first thing I noticed was a large clock reading a quarter to six. I sighed in relief under the fabric covering my face: my delay hadn’t been too bad. I walked with slow deliberateness across the concourse while my eyes, hidden behind the veil, quickly surveyed the scene. The ticket desks were closed, and there was only an old Muslim man flat out on a bench with a bundle at his feet. At the far end of the room, two big doors opened onto the platform. On the left was another door with a prominent sign marked Café. I found the timetable board to my right, but I didn’t stop to study it, just sat down on a bench beneath and settled myself in to wait. No sooner had I done so than a feeling of gratitude ran through my whole body from head to foot. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how tired I was after the immense effort of walking nonstop laden with all that sinister weight.

Although no one appeared on the concourse the whole time I remained sitting there immobile, I heard sounds that told me I was not alone. Some of them came from outside, others from the platform. Footsteps and men’s voices, sometimes quiet, at other times louder. They were young voices, and I assumed they would have been soldiers in charge of guarding the station. I tried not to think about the fact that they were probably under orders to fire without hesitation at anything suspicious. There were some other sounds, too, coming from the café. It comforted me to hear them, for at least I could tell that the café employee was at work and in place. I let ten minutes pass, which they did with exasperating slowness. There wasn’t time for the twenty minutes Candelaria had told me to wait, so when the hands of the clock showed five to six, I gathered up my strength, got heavily to my feet, and walked over to my destination.

The café was large, with at least a dozen tables, all of them unoccupied except for one where a man was dozing with his head hidden by his arm; beside him rested an empty wine bottle. I made my way over to the counter, dragging my slippers, without the slightest idea of what I ought to say or what I was going to hear. Behind the bar, a gaunt, dark-skinned man with a cigarette butt between his lips was busy putting plates and cups in orderly piles, apparently not paying the least attention to that woman with her face covered who was about to place herself right in front of him. As he saw me approach the counter, he simply said loudly and dismissively, without removing his cigarette from his mouth, “Seven thirty, the train doesn’t leave till seven thirty.” Then, in a low voice, he added a few words in Arabic that I didn’t understand. “I’m Spanish, I don’t understand you,” I mumbled from behind the veil. He opened his mouth, unable to hide his disbelief, and what was left of his cigarette fell unnoticed onto the floor. Then he whispered the message: go to the urinals on the platform and close the door, they’re waiting for you there.

I slowly retraced my steps, returning to the concourse, and from there went out into the night. First, I readjusted the haik and lifted the veil farther up until it was almost grazing my eyelashes. The broad platform looked empty, and beyond there was nothing but the rocky mass of the Ghorgiz, dark and immense. The soldiers, four of them, were all together, smoking and talking under one of the arches that opened onto the tracks. They flinched when they saw a shadow appear; I noticed how they tensed up, how they brought their boots together and straightened their postures, how they adjusted their rifles on their shoulders.

“You there—halt!” shouted one of them as soon as he saw me. My body stiffened against the metal weapons stuck to it.

“Leave her, Churruca, can’t you see she’s a Moor?” another said immediately.

I remained still, neither advancing nor retreating. They didn’t approach but remained where they were, some fifty feet away, discussing what to do.

“I don’t care one way or another if she’s Moorish or Christian. The sergeant said we have to ask everybody for identification.”

“Christ, Churruca, you’re so slow. We’ve told you ten times already that he meant everybody Spanish, not the Muslims,” the other soldier explained. “Why can’t you learn?”

“You’re the ones who don’t learn. Come on, ma’am, let’s see your papers.”

I thought my legs were going to fold under me, that I was about to collapse. It seemed the game was up. I held my breath and felt a cold sweat soaking my skin.

“You’re so dumb, Churruca,” said another one standing behind him. “The natives don’t wander around with their ID documents—when are you going to learn that this is Africa, not your village square?”

Too late: the scrupulous soldier was already two steps away from me, a hand held out for some document as he searched for my gaze among the folds of fabric covering me. He didn’t find it, however—my eyes remained fixed on the ground, focused on his mud-stained boots, on my old slippers, and the little space that separated our two pairs of feet.

“If the sergeant finds out you’ve been bothering a Moroccan woman who’s not under any suspicion, you’re going to swallow three long nights of arrest in the Alcazaba, kid.”

The grim possibility of that punishment finally made this Churruca see sense. I couldn’t see the face of my savior—my gaze was still fixed on the ground. But the threat of arrest had its abrupt effect, and the punctilious pigheaded soldier, after thinking about it for a few nerve-wracking seconds, withdrew his hand, turned, and moved away from me.

I blessed the good sense of his companion who had stopped him, and when the four soldiers were back together under the arch I turned and resumed my course. Making my way slowly along the platform, heading nowhere in particular, I attempted to recover my composure. Once I’d done that, I was finally able to concentrate my efforts on getting to the urinals. I began to pay attention to my surroundings then: a couple of Arabs dozing on the ground, leaning their backs on the walls, and a scrawny dog crossing the tracks. It took me a while to find my goal; to my good fortune it was almost at the other end of the platform, far from where the soldiers were. Holding my breath, I pushed the glass-paneled door and went into a kind of anteroom. There was barely any light, but I didn’t want to look for the switch, preferring instead to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I could make out the sign for men to my left and women to my right. And at the back, against the wall, I could see what seemed like a heap of fabric that was slowly beginning to shift. A head covered by a hood emerged cautiously from the bulk, eyes meeting mine in the gloom.

“Have you brought the merchandise?” asked a low voice quickly in Spanish.

I nodded and the bulk rose up stealthily until it had been transformed into the figure of a man dressed, like me, in the Moorish style.

“Where is it?”

I lowered my veil to be able to speak more easily, opening the haik and showing him my bound-up body.

“Here.”

“My God,” was all he muttered. There was a world of emotions concentrated in those two words: fear, anxiety, urgency. His tone was serious; he seemed to be a well-educated man.

“Can you take it off yourself?” he asked then.

“I’ll need time,” I whispered.

He pointed me toward the women’s section and we both went in. It was a narrow space, with a small window through which traces of moonlight glimmered, sufficient enough that we didn’t need any more.

“Hurry, we can’t waste any time. The morning patrol is about to arrive, and they search the station from top to bottom before the first train leaves. I’ll have to help you,” he said, closing the door behind him.

I let the haik drop to the floor and held my arms out to the sides so that this stranger could start rummaging around every corner of me, untying knots, loosening bandages, and freeing my frame from its sinister covering.

Before starting he lowered the hood of his djellaba, and I found myself looking at a serious, pleasant-faced Spaniard, middle-aged, with several days of stubble. His hair was brown and curly, disheveled by the effects of the big garment under which he’d probably been hidden for quite some time. His fingers began to work, but it wasn’t an easy task. Candelaria really had made an effort, and not one of the guns had shifted position, but the knots were so tight and there were so many yards of fabric that undoing them took us longer than we both would have wished. Neither of us spoke, surrounded by white tiles and only accompanied by the squat toilet in the floor, the rhythmic sound of our breathing, and an occasional murmur that punctuated the process: there we go, this way now, move a little, that’s it, bring your arm up a little, careful. Despite the pressure, the man from Larache acted with infinite delicacy, almost modesty, avoiding my more intimate areas or grazing past my naked skin an inch beyond what was strictly necessary. As though afraid to stain my integrity with his hands, as though the cargo I had attached to me was an exquisite wrapping of tissue paper and not a black casing of objects destined to kill. At no point did his physical closeness trouble me, neither his involuntary caresses nor the intimacy of our almost-touching bodies. It was without question the most pleasurable moment of the night—not because a man was running his hands across my body after so many months, but because I believed that, with that action, my ordeal was almost over.

Everything proceeded at a good pace. The pistols came out of their hiding places one by one, ending up in a heap on the floor. When there were only a few left, just three or four, I calculated that in five minutes, ten at the most, we’d be done. Then suddenly the calm was broken, making us hold our breaths and freeze in the middle of what we were doing. From outside in the distance came the agitated sounds of the beginning of some new activity.

The man breathed in hard and took a watch out of his pocket.

“They’re here already, the relief patrol, they’ve come early,” he said. In his cracked voice I could make out distress and anxiety, and the wish not to convey either of those feelings.

“What do we do now?” I whispered.

“Get out as quickly as possible,” he said immediately. “Get dressed, fast.”

“And the pistols that are left?”

“Doesn’t matter. What you’ve got to do now is escape: it won’t be long before the soldiers come in to check that everything’s in order.”

As I wrapped myself in the haik, my hands trembling, he unstrapped a filthy canvas sack from his belt and began shoving the pistols inside.

“Which way do we get out?” I whispered.

“That way,” he said, raising his head and gesturing at the window with his chin. “You jump first, then I’ll throw the pistols and come out myself. But listen carefully: if I’m not able to join you, take the pistols, run with them parallel to the tracks, and leave them next to the first sign you see announcing a stop or a station, and someone will go get them. Don’t look back and don’t wait for me; just run and escape. All right, let’s go—get ready to get up there, put a foot in my hands.”

I looked up at the narrow window. It seemed impossible that we’d fit through it, but I didn’t say anything. I was so afraid that I just did exactly what I was told, blindly trusting the decisions of this anonymous Mason whose name I’d never learned.

“Wait a moment,” he said then, as though he’d forgotten something.

He pulled his shirt open and withdrew a small canvas bag, a sort of pouch.

“First put this away, it’s the money agreed. In case things get complicated once we’re outside.”

“But there are still some guns left . . . ,” I stammered as I patted down my body.

“Doesn’t matter, you fulfilled your part, so that’s what you should be paid,” he said as he hung the bag around my neck. I let him do it to me, staying still, as though numbed. “Come on now, we can’t waste a second.”

Finally I responded. Resting one foot in his linked hands, I pushed myself up until I’d gripped the window frame.

“Open it, fast,” he insisted. “Up you go—tell me quickly what you see and hear.”

The window opened onto the dark countryside. Sounds were coming from somewhere outside my range of vision: motors, wheels squealing on the gravel, firm footsteps, greetings and orders, imperious voices barking out tasks with sharp determination, as though the world was about to end, even though morning had not yet begun.

“Pizarro and García, to the cafeteria. Ruiz and Albadalejo, the ticket desks. You to the offices, you two to the urinals. Come on, everyone, quick as a flash,” shouted someone with furious authority.

“I can’t see anyone, but they’re coming this way,” I said with my head still outside.

“Jump,” he commanded.

I didn’t. I was worried about the height, I still had to get my body out, I was unconsciously refusing to get out alone. I wanted the man from Larache to reassure me that he’d be coming with me, that he’d lead me by the hand to wherever I had to go.

The men could be heard coming ever closer. The creak of the boots on the ground, the powerful voices assigning tasks. Quintero, to the women’s bathroom; Villarta, to the men’s. They certainly weren’t the slovenly recruits I’d come across on my arrival, but a patrol of fresh young men eager to fill the beginning of their day with activity.

“Jump and run!” the man repeated urgently, gripping my legs and pushing me upward.

I jumped, and fell, and the sack of pistols fell after me. I’d barely hit the ground before I heard the crash of doors being kicked open. The last sounds I heard were the rough shouts aimed at someone I never saw again.

“What are you doing in the women’s bathrooms, moro? What were you throwing out the window? Villarta, quick, go outside and see if he’s thrown something out there.”

I began to run. Blindly, furiously. Sheltered by darkness, and hauling the sack with the guns; deaf, oblivious, not knowing if they were following me or wanting to think about what had become of the man from Larache faced with the soldier’s rifle. I lost a slipper, and one of the last pistols finally came detached from my body, but I didn’t stop to retrieve either of them, I just kept following the path of the tracks, half barefoot, not stopping, not thinking. I crossed open fields, orchards, fields of sugarcane, and small plantations. I tripped, got up, and kept running without calculating the distance my strides were covering. Not a single living thing greeted me, and nothing got in the way of the deranged rhythm of my feet, until—in the shadows—I was able to make out a sign covered in writing. Malalien Station, it said. That would be my destination.

The station was about a hundred yards from the sign, lit up by a single yellowish lamp. I stopped my wild running at the sign and looked around quickly in every direction to see if there was anyone to whom I could hand over the weapons. My heart was about to burst, and my mouth was dry and filled with grit as I struggled in vain to silence my labored breathing. No one came out to meet me, no one waited for the merchandise. Perhaps they’d arrive later, or perhaps never.

It took me less than a minute to make my decision. I put the sack down on the ground, flattened it as much as possible, and started to pile little rocks on it at a feverish pace, scraping at the ground, yanking up earth, stones, and brush till it was reasonably well covered. When I thought it no longer looked like a suspicious bulge, I left.

With barely enough time to recover my breath, I resumed my running in the direction of what I could make out as the lights of Tetouan. Now that I’d shed the cargo, I decided to shed the rest of my ballast. I opened up the haik without stopping and with some difficulty managed bit by bit to undo the remaining knots. The three pistols that were still tied to me fell out onto the road, first one, then another, and finally the last one. By the time I had almost reached the city, all my body had left was exhaustion, sadness, and pain. And a pouch full of banknotes hanging around my neck. Not a trace of the guns.

I got myself back up onto the curb of the Ceuta road and slowed my pace again. I’d lost the other slipper, too, so I disguised myself again in the figure of a wrapped-up barefoot Moorish woman wearily making her way up to La Luneta gate. I didn’t have to make an effort to appear tired, for my legs couldn’t manage anything more. My limbs were stiff, I was filthy, and I had blisters and bruises all over. An infinite weakness was invading my bones.

I entered the city as the shadows were beginning to lighten. The muezzin was calling the Muslims to first prayers from a nearby mosque, and the bugle of the Intendencia Barracks was playing reveille. The day’s news was appearing hot off the presses of La Gaceta de África, and shoeshine boys were beginning to circulate around La Luneta, yawning. Menahen the baker had already fired up his oven, and Don Leandro was piling up his store’s groceries with his apron tied firmly around his waist.

All these everyday scenes passed before my eyes as though they were alien, not demanding any of my attention. Although I knew Candelaria would be pleased when I handed over the money and would praise me for carrying out an impressive deed, deep down I didn’t feel the least bit of satisfaction, only the black gnawing of a deep anxiety.

While running frantically across the fields, while digging my nails in the earth to cover up the sack, while walking along the road, throughout my last actions of that long night, all I could think about were a thousand different sequences of events with just one protagonist: the man from Larache. In one of these, the soldiers discovered that he hadn’t thrown anything out the window, that it had all been a false alarm, that the man was no more than a confused, sleepy Arab, and so they’d let him go; the army was under express orders not to bother the local population unless there seemed to be something particularly disturbing afoot. In another very different scenario, no sooner had they opened the door to the toilets than the soldiers could see it was a Spaniard in disguise; they cornered him in the bathroom, pointing their rifles six inches from his face, and shouted for reinforcements. Once these arrived, they interrogated him, perhaps identifying and detaining him; perhaps they took him back to headquarters and he tried to escape; or perhaps they killed him, a shot in the back as he jumped the tracks. There were a host of other possible scenarios, but I knew I’d never be able to discover which of them turned out to be closest to the truth.

I went in through the front door, exhausted and filled with fears as morning dawned over the map of Morocco.