The Time in Between A Novel

PART THREE



EL CASINO DE MADRID





Chapter Thirty-Three

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From the moment of Marcus’s departure and my mother’s arrival, my life turned upside down. She arrived one cloudy afternoon looking emaciated, her hands empty and her soul battered. She had no luggage, just her old handbag, the dress she had on, and a fake passport attached by a safety pin to the strap of her brassiere. Her body looked like it had borne the passing of twenty years; her thinness made her eye sockets and collarbones stand out, and the first few greying hairs I remembered were now entire locks. She came into my house like a child dragged awake in the middle of the night: disoriented, confused, disconnected. As though she hadn’t fully understood that her daughter lived there, and that from that moment on, she would, too.

I’d imagined that reunion, which I’d so wished for, as a moment of unbounded joy. That’s not how it was. If I had to choose one word to describe the picture, it would be sadness. She barely spoke and didn’t display any enthusiasm for anything. She just hugged me hard and then kept hold of my hand, clinging to it as though afraid that I was about to run off somewhere. Not a laugh, not a tear, and very few words—that was all. She hardly wanted to taste the meal that Candelaria, Jamila, and I had prepared for her: chicken, omelet, tomato salad, anchovies, Moorish bread, all the things we imagined she’d gone without in Madrid for such a long time. She didn’t have anything to say about the workshop, nor about the room where I’d put her, with a big oak bed and a cretonne quilt that I’d sewn. She didn’t ask me what had become of Ramiro, or show any curiosity about what it was that had led me to settle in Tetouan. Needless to say, she didn’t speak a word about the grim journey that had brought her to Africa, or even once mention the horrors she had left behind.

It took her some time to adjust—I never thought I’d see my mother like that. The ever-determined Dolores, who was always in control, with just the right thing to say at the right moment, had been transformed into a furtive, inhibited woman I found hard to recognize. I devoted myself to her, body and soul. I practically stopped working; there weren’t any major events coming up, and my clients wouldn’t mind waiting. Day after day I brought her breakfast in bed: buns, churros, toast with olive oil and sugar, anything that would help her put some weight back on. I helped her bathe and I cut her hair; I sewed her new clothes. It was hard getting her out of the house, but bit by bit our morning walk became compulsory. We went arm in arm along the Calle del Generalísimo, reached the square with the church; sometimes, if the timing worked out, I would accompany her to Mass. I took her to see picturesque corners, little nooks and crannies, made her help me choose fabrics, listen to popular songs on the radio, and decide what we were going to eat. Till slowly, step by little step, she began to return to the person she used to be.

I never asked her what went on in her head over the course of this transition, which seemed to last an eternity: I hoped she’d tell me sometime, but she never did, and I didn’t insist. Nor was I particularly curious: I guessed that her behavior was no more than an unconscious way of dealing with the uncertainty produced by relief mixed with pain and sorrow. Which was why I simply allowed her to adapt, just remaining by her side, ready to help her if she needed support, with a handkerchief in my hand to dry the tears she would never shed.

I noticed that she was getting better when she began to make little decisions for herself: today I think I’ll go to the ten o’clock Mass; I thought I might go with Jamila to the market to buy ingredients to make a paella, what do you think? Bit by bit she stopped cowering each time she heard the crash of something falling on the floor, or the engine of a plane flying over the city. Going to Mass and the market soon became a routine, and other activities were then added to these. The most important of all was returning to her sewing. In spite of my efforts, ever since she’d arrived she hadn’t shown the slightest interest in dressmaking, as if that hadn’t been the framework of her existence for more than thirty years. I showed her the foreign fashion illustrations that I had purchased in Tangiers, I talked to her about my clients and their foibles, tried to animate her by reminding her about different outfits we’d once sewn together. Nothing. I got nowhere, as though I were speaking a language she didn’t understand. Until one morning she poked her head through the doorway into the workroom and asked, Can I give you a hand? I knew then that my mother had come back to life.

Three or four months after her arrival we managed to attain a state of peace. Now that she was back on her feet, the days became less full of frantic activity. The business was going well and allowed us to give Candelaria some money each month with enough left to keep us comfortably, so there was no longer any need to work relentlessly. We started getting along well again, even though neither of us was the woman she had once been, and we were a bit like strangers. Strong Dolores had become vulnerable, and little Sira was now an independent woman. But we accepted each other, appreciated each other, and with our roles clearly defined there was never any more tension between us.

The bustle of the first phase of my life in Tetouan seemed so distant, as though it were centuries ago. The adventures and anxieties were in the past. Staying out till the early hours and living without having to explain myself; all that had been left behind, giving way to ease. And sometimes the palest normality, too. My memories of the past, however, lived on with me still. Although the pain of Marcus’s absence began to lessen bit by bit, memories of him still clung to me, like an invisible companion whose outline only I could make out. How often I regretted not having ventured further in my relationship with him, how often I cursed myself for having remained so strict, how much I missed him. All the same, I was glad that I hadn’t let myself get carried away by my feelings; if I had, the fact that he was far away from me would have been much more painful.

I didn’t lose touch with Félix, but with my mother’s arrival came an end to his nighttime visits and the traffic between our front doors, the outlandish lectures on culture, and his exuberant, delightful company.

My relationship with Rosalinda changed, too: the presence of her husband was much more protracted than we’d anticipated, sucking up her time and health like a leech. Fortunately, after almost seven months, Peter Fox decided to return to India. No one ever knew how the alcohol fumes had permitted a shard of lucidity to enter his thoughts, but he did make the decision of his own accord, one morning, when his wife was about ready to fall apart. All the same, his departure didn’t bring about much good, apart from providing a sense of immense relief. Naturally he was never convinced that the sensible thing to do would be to carry through the divorce and put an end to that sham of a marriage. On the contrary, he thought he would go to Calcutta to sell off his business interests and then return to settle down once and for all with his wife and son, to enjoy an early retirement with them in the peaceful, cheap Spanish Protectorate. And just so they didn’t start getting used to the good life too early, he also decided that their allowance, unchanged for years, wasn’t going to be raised by a single pound.

“In an emergency you can get your friend Beigbeder to help,” he suggested by way of farewell.

To everybody’s good fortune, he never returned to Morocco. The stress of that unwelcome cohabitation did, however, cost Rosalinda nearly half a year of convalescence. In the months that followed Peter’s departure, she remained in bed, leaving the house no more than three or four times. The high commissioner practically relocated his work to her bedroom, and the two of them used to spend long hours there, she surrounded by pillows, reading, and he doing his paperwork at a small table by the window.

The doctor’s orders to remain in bed until she returned to normal didn’t prevent her social bustle, but it did reduce it considerably. All the same, no sooner had her body begun to show signs of recovery than she made an effort to open her house up to her friends, giving little parties without leaving her bed. I was at almost all of them, and my friendship with Rosalinda remained absolutely firm. But nothing was ever the same again.