The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Fifteen

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The first few days passed in a whirlwind. I worked without a break and went out little, just to take a quick walk as evening fell. At that hour I would usually run into one of my neighbors: the mother and son arm in arm from the apartment opposite me, two or three of the children from the upper floors racing down the staircase, a woman running home to prepare dinner. Only one shadow disturbed my activities during that first week: the wretched tennis outfit. Until I decided to send Jamila to La Luneta with a note: “I need magazines with pictures of tennis outfits. Doesn’t matter if they’re old.”

“Siñora Candelaria say Jamila come back tomorrow.”

So Jamila went back to the boardinghouse the next day and returned with a bundle of magazines she could barely carry.

“Siñora Candelaria say Siñorita Sira look these magazines first,” she told me in her sweet voice and awkward Spanish.

She’d arrived flushed with haste, buzzing with energy, brimming with hope. In a way she reminded me of myself in my early years at the workshop on Calle Zurbano, when my role was simply to run back and forth to do errands and make deliveries, moving through the streets agile and unconcerned as a street cat. I’d let myself get distracted by any little amusement that might allow me to steal a few minutes away, putting off my confinement between four walls as long as possible. Nostalgia threatened to bring me down, but in time I was able to withdraw and dodge it breezily: I learned to develop the skill of flight whenever I sensed melancholy approaching.

I threw myself anxiously into the magazines. All of them were out of date, many of them well thumbed, some even missing their covers. Few were fashion magazines, most were general in their subject matter. While some of them were French, by and large they were Spanish or from the Protectorate itself: La Esfera, Blanco y Negro, Nuevo Mundo, Marruecos Gráfico, Ketama. Several pages had their corners folded over; perhaps Candelaria had scanned through them already and was flagging pages for me. I opened them, and the first thing I saw wasn’t what I’d been expecting. In one photograph, two gentlemen with brilliantine-combed hair and dressed entirely in white shook hands over a net, while their left hands held tennis rackets. In another picture, a group of extremely elegant women were applauding as a trophy was handed over to a male player. I realized at this point that my note to Candelaria hadn’t specified that the tennis outfits had to be for women. I was about to call Jamila for her to go back to La Luneta when I let out a cry of delight. In the third magazine I found just what I needed. An extensive feature showed a woman tennis player in a light-colored sweater and a sort of split skirt, halfway between a normal skirt and a pair of broad trousers: something I’d never seen before, and probably neither had any of the magazine’s readers, judging by the detailed attention the photographs seemed to be paying to this piece of gear.

The text was in French and I could barely understand it, but a few references immediately stood out: the tennis player Lilí Álvarez, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli, a place called Wimbledon. Despite my satisfaction at having found a reference to the garment I was working on, this feeling was soon clouded over by a sense of unease. I closed the magazine and examined it carefully. It was old, yellowing. I looked for the date: 1931. It was missing its back cover and had stains on its edges, and some of its pages were torn. I was seized with worry. I couldn’t show an old relic like this to the German woman to ask her opinion about the outfit; it would overturn my whole false image as a sophisticated dressmaker on the cutting edge of fashion. I paced the house nervously, trying to find a solution, a strategy: anything I could use to resolve this unforeseen problem. After clattering back and forth along the hall tiles several dozen times, the only thing that occurred to me was to copy the design and try to pass it off as an original idea. But I had no idea how to draw, and the result would have been so clumsy that it would have brought me several rungs down the scale of my supposed pedigree. Unable to calm myself, I decided to resort to Candelaria one more time.

Jamila had gone out. The light demands of the new house allowed her endless periods of leisure, something that would have been inconceivable in her days packed with duties at the boardinghouse. Seeking to make up for lost time, the girl was going out constantly, using the excuse of having to do some little errand: “Siñorita want Jamila go buy sunflower seeds, yes?” Before I’d even answered she’d be trotting down the stairs in search of sunflower seeds, or bread, or fruit, or simply fresh air and freedom. I tore the pages out of the magazine and stuck them in my purse, then decided that I would go to La Luneta myself.

When I arrived I didn’t find the Matutera. There was no one home but the new servant girl toiling away in the kitchen, and the schoolmaster sitting beside the window, afflicted with a bad cold. He greeted me warmly.

“Well, well, how nicely life seems to be treating us now that we’ve changed our den,” he said, an ironic comment on my new appearance.

I barely paid attention to his remark, having other urgent matters to deal with.

“You don’t happen to know where I might find Candelaria, Don Anselmo?”

“Not in the slightest, child; you know she’s always here and there, flitting about like a lizard’s tail.”

I twisted my fingers nervously. I needed to find her, I needed a solution. The schoolmaster sensed my unease.

“Something up with you, girl?”

In desperation I turned to him for help.

“You aren’t by any chance good at drawing, are you?”

“Me? Absolutely not. Anything harder than an equilateral triangle and I’m lost.”

I didn’t have the faintest idea what that was, but all that mattered was that my old boardinghouse ally couldn’t help me. I went back to twisting my fingers and leaned out onto the balcony to see if I could see Candelaria returning. I looked at the street filled with people, tapped nervously on the railing. Then I heard Don Anselmo’s voice behind me.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re after and we’ll see if I can help?”

I turned around.

“I need someone who draws well to copy some designs from a magazine.”

“Go to Bertuchi’s academy.”

“Whose?”

“Bertuchi, the painter.” The expression on my face gave away my ignorance. “Honestly, girl, you’ve been in Tetouan for three months and you still don’t know who Master Bertuchi is? Mariano Bertuchi, the greatest painter in Morocco?”

I didn’t know who this Bertuchi was, nor was I in the least bit interested. All I wanted was an urgent solution to my problem.

“And he’ll be able to draw me what I need?” I asked anxiously.

Don Anselmo gave a laugh, followed by a fierce coughing attack. The three packs of Toledo cigarettes a day were costing him dearly.

“The things you think of, Sirita, my child! How is Bertuchi going to draw clothing designs for you? Don Mariano is an artist, a man completely immersed in his painting, in making this country’s traditional arts survive and disseminating the image of Morocco beyond its borders—he’s not a portrait artist working on a commission! It’s just that in his school you’ll be able to find a number of people who’ll be able to give you a hand: young painters without a lot to do, girls and boys attending painting classes.”

“And where is this school?” I asked, putting on my hat and quickly grabbing my bag.

“Next to the Puerta de la Reina.”

The confusion on my face must have moved him again, because—after another rough laugh and one more bout of coughing—he got up from his seat with some effort and added, “Come on, then, let’s go; I’ll come with you.”

We left La Luneta and entered the mellah, the Jewish quarter. As we walked down its tidy, narrow streets, I silently remembered my aimless wanderings on the night with the guns. Everything seemed different by daylight, however, with the small businesses and the currency exchanges open. We then went into the Moorish alleys of the medina, with its labyrinthine web in which I still found it hard to get my bearings. Despite the height of my heels and the tubular narrowness of my skirt, I tried to walk at a good trot over the cobblestones. Don Anselmo was prevented from keeping pace, due to his age and his cough, not to mention his incessant chatter about the coloring and the luminosity of Bertuchi’s paintings; about his oils, his watercolors, and pen-and-ink drawings; about what the painter had done to promote the school of indigenous arts and the fine arts preparatory school.

“Have you sent any letters back to Spain from Tetouan?” he asked. “Well, almost all the stamps of the Protectorate are based on Bertuchi’s drawings. Pictures of Alhucemas, Alcazarquivir, Xauen, Larache, Tetouan. Landscapes, people, scenes of everyday life: all come from his brush.”

We walked on, he talking, I trying to quicken the pace as I listened.

“And the posters and placards to promote tourism, haven’t you seen those either? I don’t imagine that in these ill-fated times anyone is planning to come out to Morocco for pleasure, but for years it’s been Bertuchi’s art that has been responsible for spreading the word about this country’s bounties.”

I knew which posters he was referring to. They were stuck up in a lot of places; I used to see them every day. Prints of Tetouan, Ketama, Arzila, and other spots of interest. And under them, the line “Spanish Protectorate in Morocco.” It would not be long before they changed the name.

We reached our destination after a good walk on which we found ourselves passing men and souqs, goats and children, jackets and djellabas, voices haggling, well-swathed women, dogs and puddles, chickens, the smells of coriander and mint, of baking bread and olive dressings; in short, a torrent of life. The school was on the edge of the city, in a building that belonged to an old fort that loomed over the city wall. There was a certain amount of bustle in its vicinity, with young people coming in and out, some of them carrying large folders under their arms, some of them alone, and some chatting in groups.

“Here we are. I’ll leave you and take advantage of this outing to get a little glass of wine with some friends who live in La Suica. I haven’t been getting out much lately and I have to make the most of it every time I do.”

“And how do I get back?” I asked, doubtful. I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the twists and turns of our route, thinking the schoolmaster would be making the return journey with me.

“Don’t worry about that, any of these young men would be delighted to help you. Good luck with the drawings—you’ll tell me later how you got on.”

I thanked him for coming with me, went up the steps and into the enclosure. I noticed several stares suddenly lighting on me; in those days they can’t have been used to the presence of a woman like me in that school. I went halfway into the entrance hall and stopped, uneasy, lost, not knowing what to do or whom to ask for. Before I had time to take my next step, I heard a voice behind me.

“Well, well—my pretty neighbor.”

I turned, with no idea who could possibly have uttered those words, and saw the young man who lived opposite me. There he was, this time on his own. Many pounds heavier and with a lot less hair than someone who hadn’t yet reached thirty should have. He didn’t even let me speak.

“You seem a little adrift. Can I help?”

It was the first time he had ever addressed me. Even though we’d crossed paths several times since my arrival, I’d always seen him accompanied by his mother. On those occasions neither of us had murmured more than a polite good afternoon. I was also familiar with a less pleasant aspect to their voices: the one I heard from my house almost every night, when mother and son became embroiled in the most heated, stormy discussions. I decided to be candid with him: I hadn’t prepared any evasions.

“I need someone to do some drawings for me.”

“Might I ask what they’re of?”

His tone wasn’t rude, merely curious. Curious, direct, and slightly affected. He seemed much more confident on his own than in the company of his mother.

“I’ve got some photos from years ago and I want someone to draw me some sketches based on them. As I’m sure you know, I’m a dressmaker. They’re for an outfit I need to sew for a client; I have to show it to her first to get her approval.”

“Have you got the photographs with you?”

I gave a quick nod.

“Do you want to show them to me? I might be able to help.”

I looked around me. There weren’t too many people, but enough to make me uncomfortable about showing the clippings publicly. I didn’t have to tell him this—he guessed for himself.

“Shall we go outside?”

Once we were out on the street, I took the old pages out of my handbag. Without saying a word, I held them out to him and he looked at them carefully.

“Schiaparelli, the muse of the surrealists—how interesting. I do adore surrealism, don’t you?”

I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was asking me, and at the same time I was in a terrible rush to solve my problem, so I drew the thread of the conversation back, ignoring his question.

“Do you know who would be able to do them for me?”

He looked at me through his thick glasses and smiled without parting his lips.

“Would you mind if I helped?”

That very night he brought me the sketches; I hadn’t expected him to get them done so soon. I was already set for the end of the day, having put on my nightdress and a broad velvet housecoat that I’d sewn for myself to kill time in the empty days I had spent waiting for customers. I’d just had dinner from a tray in the living room, and it still held the leftovers of my frugal sustenance: a bunch of grapes, a piece of cheese, a glass of milk, some crackers. Everything was silent and switched off, except for a standing lamp still on in a corner. I was surprised to hear someone at the door at nearly eleven o’clock. I quickly approached the peephole, curious and alarmed in equal measure. When I saw who it was, I drew the bolt and opened the door.

“Good evening, my dear. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Don’t worry, I was still up.”

“I’ve got a few little things for you,” he said, allowing me to glimpse several pieces of cardboard that he had been hiding behind his back.

He didn’t hold them out to me but kept them half concealed as he remained impassive on the threshold, with his work out of my sight and an apparently inoffensive smile on his face. I hesitated a few moments, not wanting to invite him in at that late hour.

I eventually got the message. He didn’t mean to show me a single bit until I had let him through.

“Please, do come in,” I agreed at last.

“Thank you, thank you,” he whispered gently, not hiding his satisfaction at having gotten what he wanted. He was dressed in a shirt and a pair of trousers, but with a felt dressing gown over them. And with his little glasses. And those slightly affected gestures of his.

He studied the entrance hall critically, then went into the living room without waiting for me to invite him all the way in.

“I like your home very much indeed. It’s very airy, very chic.”

“Thank you, I’m still settling in. Would you be kind enough to show me what it is you’ve brought?”

My neighbor didn’t need me to say any more to know that if I’d allowed him in at that time of night, it wasn’t to hear his comments on decorative matters.

“Here’s your little assignment,” he said, at last showing me what he had kept hidden.

Three boards sketched in pencil and pastels depicted three angles and poses of a model with such perfect proportions that she no longer appeared realistic, dressed in a unique skirt that wasn’t really a skirt. My approval must have shown instantly on my face.

“I take it you think they’re good?” he said with a touch of undisguised pride.

“I think they’re extremely good.”

“You’ll keep them, then?”

“Of course. You’ve gotten me out of a really difficult situation. Please tell me how much I owe you.”

“Your thanks, no more than that; it’s a welcome present. Mama says we have to be nice to our neighbors, even though she only likes you so-so. I think you seem too confident to her, and just a little bit frivolous,” he observed ironically.

I smiled, and the tiniest current of sympathy seemed to join us momentarily; just a whiff that disappeared as quickly as it had come when we heard his progenitor yelling her son’s name through the half-open door.

“Féééééé-lix!” She stretched out the e like the elastic on a slingshot, and once she’d extended it as far as she could, she fired off the second syllable hard. “Féééééé-lix!” she repeated. He rolled his eyes and made an exaggerated gesture of despair.

“Can’t live without me, poor thing. I’m off.”

His mother’s harsh voice called for him again, a third time with that infinite initial vowel.

“Ask me again whenever you like; I’d be delighted to do more drawings for you, I’m crazy about anything from Paris. Well, I’m going back to the dungeon now. Good night, my dear.”

I closed the door and spent a long while examining the drawings. They really were delightful; I couldn’t have imagined a better outcome. That night I went to bed with a pleasant feeling.

The next day I was up early; I was expecting my client at eleven for the first fittings, but I wanted to finalize every detail before she arrived. Jamila was not yet back from the market, but she was due at any moment. At twenty to eleven the doorbell rang, and I thought perhaps the German lady had come early. I was again wearing the navy blue outfit: I’d decided to use it as though it were a work uniform, elegance of the most pure and simple kind. That way I’d make the most of my professional attire and conceal the fact that I hardly had any autumn clothes in my wardrobe. My hair was already done, my makeup perfect, and my old silver scissors were hanging around my neck. Just one little touch was missing: the invisible disposition of a woman of the world. I assumed the attitude quickly and opened the door confidently. And then the world crumbled at my feet.

“Good morning, miss,” said the visitor, taking off his hat. “May I enter?”

I swallowed.

“Good morning, Commissioner. Of course—please, do come in.”

I led him to the living room and offered him a seat. He approached a chair unhurriedly, distractedly looking about the room as he walked through. His eyes moved slowly over the elaborate plaster moldings on the ceiling, the damask curtains, the large mahogany table covered in foreign magazines. And the old chandelier, beautiful and striking, which Candelaria had gotten hold of God knows where or for how much, and through what dark machinations. I felt my pulse speeding up and my stomach turning over.

At last he sat down and I sat opposite him, in silence, waiting to hear what he had to say, trying to hide my anxiety at his unexpected presence.

“Well, I see that things are progressing full steam ahead.”

“I’m doing the best I can. I’ve started working; I was just waiting for a client.”

“And what is the work you’re doing exactly?” he asked. He knew the answer all too well, but for some reason he wanted me to tell him.

I tried to speak in a neutral tone of voice. I didn’t want him to see me afraid and guilty looking, but on the other hand I didn’t mean to come across to him as an overly confident, bold woman either, which he more than anyone knew I wasn’t.

“I sew. I’m a dressmaker.”

He didn’t answer, he just looked at me with his piercing eyes and waited for me to continue my explanations. I gave them to him sitting up straight on the edge of the sofa, without displaying even a trace of the poses from the sophisticated repertoire I’d rehearsed a thousand times for my new persona. No spectacular leg crossing or casual smoothing of my hair. Not even the slightest batting of my eyelashes. Composure and ease, those were the only things I was trying to convey.

“I used to sew before in Madrid; I’ve spent half my life doing it. I worked in the atelier of a very well regarded dressmaker, where my mother worked as well. I learned a lot there: it was an excellent atelier, and we used to sew for important women.”

“I understand. A very respectable occupation. And whom do you work for now, if I might ask?”

I swallowed again.

“Not for anyone. For myself.”

He raised his eyebrows in an expression of feigned surprise.

“And may I ask, how was it that you managed to set up this business all on your own?”

Commissioner Vázquez might be inquisitive as the devil and hard as steel, but above all he was a gentleman and as such formulated his questions with immense courtesy. Courtesy seasoned with a touch of skepticism that he didn’t try to hide. He seemed much more relaxed than on his visits to the hospital. He wasn’t so strained, so tense. It was a shame that I wasn’t able to offer him answers that matched the standard of his elegance.

“I had the money lent to me,” I said simply.

“My word, how lucky you’ve been,” he said ironically. “And would you be so kind as to tell me who the person was who’s done you this extremely generous favor?”

I didn’t think I could do it, but the reply came out of my mouth instantly. Instantly, and confidently.

“Candelaria.”

“Candelaria the Matutera?” he asked with a half smile loaded with sarcasm and disbelief in equal measure.

“Yes, that’s right, señor.”

“Well now, how interesting. I didn’t know there was so much to be made from black market dealings these days.”

He looked at me again with those eyes like drills, and I knew then that my luck was balanced at exactly the midpoint between survival and being cast into the abyss. Like a coin that’s been thrown into the air, with equal odds of landing heads or tails, or a clumsy tightrope walker on the wire, as likely to end up on the floor as to remain suspended. Or a tennis ball served by the model in the picture my neighbor sketched, an unlucky shot propelled by a graceful player dressed in Schiaparelli: a ball that doesn’t cross the court but rather stops for the eternity of a few seconds on the edge of the net before tumbling one way or the other, unsure whether to grant the point to the glamorous tennis player sketched in pastels or her anonymous opponent. Salvation on one side, total collapse on the other, and me in the middle. That’s how I saw myself in front of Commissioner Vázquez on that autumn morning. I closed my eyes, breathed in through my nose. Then I opened my eyes again and spoke.

“Listen, Don Claudio: you advised me to get some work, and that’s what I’m doing. This is a decent business, not a fleeting pastime nor a cover for something unsavory. You have a lot of information about me: you know why I’m here, the reasons for my fall, and the circumstances that prevent me from leaving. But you don’t know where I’ve come from and where I want to go, and now, if you’ll allow me, I’m going to tell you. I come from a humble home: my mother was single, raised me on her own. As for my father, the father who gave me the money and jewels that were largely responsible for my misfortune, I didn’t learn about him until several months ago. I knew nothing of him until one day he suddenly got the idea into his head that he was going to be murdered for political reasons, and when he stopped to measure up his past, he decided to recognize me as his daughter and bequeath me a part of his inheritance. Until then, however, I hadn’t even known his name, nor had I enjoyed a single wretched cent of his fortune. So I started working at a young age. At first my duties were nothing more than making deliveries and sweeping the floor for a pittance, as I was still a child. I was the same age as those girls in their Milagrosa school uniforms who just passed by on the street; maybe one of them was your own daughter on her way to school, that world of nuns, penmanship, and Latin declensions, which I never had the chance to master because in our house I had to learn a trade and earn a living. But I was happy to do it, believe it or not: I loved sewing, and I had a knack for it, so I learned, I tried hard, I persevered and in time became a good seamstress. And if there came a day when I gave it up, it wasn’t on a whim, but because things had become difficult in Madrid with the political situation. A lot of our clients went abroad, the workshop shut down, and I was never able to find more employment.

“I’ve never looked for trouble, Commissioner; everything that’s happened to me this past year, all the crimes I’m supposedly implicated in haven’t come about of my own will, as you know very well, but because one unfortunate day some swine crossed my path. And you cannot even imagine what I’d give to erase that hour when that bastard entered my life, but there’s no going back, and his problems are now my problems, and I know I’ve got to get myself out of them one way or another: that’s my responsibility, and as such I am taking it on. You should know, though, that the only way I can do that is by sewing—I’m not good for anything else. If you shut this door to me, if you cut off these wings, you’ll be suffocating me, because I won’t be able to devote myself to anything else. I’ve tried, but I haven’t found anyone willing to hire me because I have no other skills. So I’m asking you a favor, just one: let me continue with this workshop and don’t investigate any further. Trust in me, don’t bring me down. The rent on this apartment and all the furniture has been paid for, down to the last peseta; I haven’t cheated anyone for them, and I don’t owe anything to anyone. All this business needs is someone to do its work, and that’s what I’m for, ready to give it my all, night and day. Just allow me to work in peace, I won’t create any trouble for you, I swear to you by my mother, who is all I’ve got. And when I finally earn the money I owe in Tangiers, when I’ve settled my debt and the war is over, I’ll go back to her and not trouble you any longer. But until then, I’m asking you, Commissioner, don’t demand any more explanations of me, and let me keep going. This is all I ask of you: take your foot off my neck and don’t suffocate me before I’ve started, because by doing that you will gain nothing and I, meanwhile, will lose everything.”

He didn’t reply, nor did I say another word; we just sat looking at each other. Contrary to all my expectations, I’d managed to get to the end of my speech with my voice still firm and my temper serene, without falling apart. At last I had got it all out, stripped myself of all the resentment I’d been feeling for so long. Suddenly I felt immensely tired. I was tired of having been stabbed in the back by an unscrupulous bastard, of the months I’d been living in fear, feeling constantly under threat. Tired of carrying around such heavy guilt, burdened down like those unfortunate Moorish women I used to see walking along together slowly, bent over, wrapped in their haiks and dragging their feet, carrying packages and bundles of firewood on their backs, or bunches of dates, little kids, buckets of clay, and sacks of lime. I was fed up with feeling afraid, humiliated; fed up with living such a sad life in that strange land. Tired, drained, exhausted, and yet ready to fight my way out of my ruin tooth and nail.

It was the commissioner who finally broke the silence. First he stood up; I did the same, carefully smoothing out the wrinkles from my skirt. He picked up his hat and turned it around a few times, looking at it with great concentration. It was no longer the soft summer hat of a few months earlier; now it was a dark winter fedora, a fine hat of chocolate-colored felt that he rotated in his hands as though it hid the key to his thoughts. When he had stopped moving it around, he spoke.

“Very well. I accept. If no one comes to me with any evidence, I won’t inquire into how you’ve fixed things to set this all up. From now on I’m going to allow you to work and move your business forward. I’m going to let you live undisturbed. Let’s see if we’re lucky and that keeps trouble away from us both.”

He didn’t say any more, didn’t wait for me to reply. No sooner had he finished speaking than he gave a gesture of farewell with a movement of his jaw and went over to the door.

Five minutes later Frau Heinz arrived. What thoughts went through my head during the time that separated the two of them is something I’ve never been able to remember. The only memory I’ve retained is that when the German woman rang the doorbell and I went over to open it, I felt like the weight of a whole mountain had been lifted from my soul.