The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Twenty-One

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The conversations, bursts of laughter, and rhythmic clattering of the typewriters all fell silent in unison as the four pairs of eyes turned to look at me. The room was grey, filled with smoke, smelling of tobacco and the rancid stench of concentrated humanity. There was no sound but the buzzing of a thousand flies and the lethargic rhythm of the blades of a wooden fan turning above our heads. And after a few seconds, the admiring whistle of someone passing along the corridor who saw me standing there in my best suit, surrounded by four desks behind which four sweaty bodies in shirtsleeves were trying to work. Or at least, that’s how it looked.

“I’ve come to see Commissioner Vázquez,” I announced.

“He’s not in,” said the fattest one.

“But he won’t be long,” said the youngest one.

“You can wait for him,” said the skinniest one.

“Have a seat if you want,” said the oldest one.

I settled in a chair with a gutta-percha seat and waited there, motionless, for more than an hour and a half. Over the course of those endless ninety minutes, the quartet tried to give the impression that they were going back to their activities, but they weren’t. They just made a point of pretending to be working, looking at me brazenly and killing flies with a newspaper folded in two, exchanging obscene gestures and passing scrawled notes, no doubt full of references to my breasts, my behind, and my legs, and everything they could do to me if I showed any warmth toward them. Finally Don Claudio arrived, acting like a one-man band—walking fast, simultaneously taking off his hat and jacket, firing off orders while trying to decipher a couple of notes that someone had just handed him.

“Juárez, I want you out on Calle del Comercio, there have been some stabbings. Cortés, if you don’t have the thing about the match factory on my desk before I count to ten, I’m sending you to Ifni in the blink of an eye. Bautista, what’s happened with the robbery in the Wheat Souq? Cañete . . .”

And there he stopped. He stopped because he’d seen me. And Cañete, who was the skinny one, was left without an assignment.

“Come on through,” he said simply, gesturing me toward an office at the back of the room. He put his jacket—which was by now half off—back on. “Cortés, the thing with the match factory can wait. And the rest of you, you have things to do,” he warned.

He closed the glass door that separated his little office from the larger one and offered me a seat. Although the room was smaller, it was infinitely more pleasant than the adjacent space. After hanging his hat on a hat stand, he settled in behind a desk covered in papers and folders. Then he turned on a Bakelite fan and the breath of cool air reached my face like a miracle in the middle of the desert.

“Well, tell me.” His tone wasn’t particularly friendly, nor the contrary. His appearance was somewhere between the nervous, worried air of our first meetings and the calmness of the autumn day when he finally released his grip on my throat. As in the previous summer, his face was once again tanned. Perhaps because like many Tetouanis he often went to the beach nearby at Río Martín. Or perhaps simply because of his nonstop wanderings as he solved problems from one end of the city to the other.

I knew the way he worked, so I made my request and braced myself for his unending battery of questions.

“I need my passport.”

“Might I ask why?”

“To go to Tangiers.”

“Might I know what for?”

“To renegotiate my debt.”

“Renegotiate it in what sense?”

“I need more time.”

“I thought your workshop was running without any problems; I’d hoped you would have managed to get together the amount you owe. I know you have good customers, I’ve been told that, and they speak highly of you.”

“Yes, that’s right, things are going well. And I’ve saved.”

“How much?”

“Enough to deal with the bill at the Continental.”

“So?”

“Certain other matters have come up for which I also need money.”

“What sort of matters?”

“Family matters.”

He looked at me with feigned disbelief.

“I thought your family was in Madrid.”

“Exactly, that’s just the point.”

“Explain yourself.”

“My only family is my mother. And she’s in Madrid. I want to get her out of there and bring her to Tetouan.”

“And your father?”

“I’ve already told you, I hardly know him. I’m only interested in tracking down my mother.”

“I understand. And how were you planning to do that?”

I told him every little bit of what Candelaria had told me, without mentioning her name. He heard me out as he had always done, his eyes fixed on mine as though concentrating all five of his senses on absorbing my words, although I was sure he already knew all the details of how transfers from one zone to the other were carried out.

“When do you mean to go to Tangiers?”

“As soon as possible, if you’ll give me permission.”

He sat back in his chair and stared at me hard. With the fingers of his left hand he began a rhythmic tapping on the desk. If I’d been able to see beyond his flesh and bones, I’d have watched his brain getting into gear—weighing up my proposal, discounting possibilities, analyzing and deciding. After what must have been a short while but felt endless to me, his fingers stopped dead and he slapped the surface of the table hard. I knew then that he’d made his decision, but before letting me hear it he went over to the door and stuck his head outside and spoke.

“Cañete, prepare a border pass for El Borch checkpoint in the name of Miss Sira Quiroga. Immediately.”

I breathed in deeply when I knew that at last Cañete had been given something to do, but I said nothing until the commissioner had returned to his place and informed me directly.

“I’m going to give you your passport, a safe-conduct, and twelve hours for you to go to Tangiers and back tomorrow. Talk to the manager of the Continental and see what you can arrange. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to do much, to be honest with you. But it can’t hurt to try. Keep me informed. And remember: I don’t want any funny business.”

He opened a drawer, rummaged around in it, and when he pulled his hand back out he was holding my passport. Cañete came in, put a piece of paper down on the table, and looked at me with desire. The commissioner signed the document, and without looking up he fired a “Get out of here, Cañete” at his subordinate. Then he folded up the piece of paper, inserted it into my passport, and handed it over to me without a word. Next he got up and held the door open, inviting me to leave. The four pairs of eyes that I had met on my arrival had become seven pairs by the time I left the office. Seven men twiddling their thumbs, awaiting my reappearance like the Second Coming, as though it was the first time in their lives they’d seen a presentable woman in that police station.

“What’s going on today, are we all on vacation?” Don Claudio asked no one in particular.

Everyone automatically set to work in a bustle of frantic activity: taking bits of paper out of folders, talking to one another about matters of apparent importance, and sounding typewriter keys that in all likelihood they were hitting randomly.

I left and began to walk along the pavement. As I passed the open window I saw the commissioner come back into the office.

“F*ck, boss, what a nice piece of ass,” said a voice I couldn’t place.

“Shut your mouth, Palomares, or I’ll send you on guard duty to the top of Las Monas Peak.”