The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Sixty-Four

__________


Panic mixed with a desire to burst out laughing. A laughter that was bitter, and dark. How strange our emotions are, how easily they can deceive us. One simple kiss from Manuel Da Silva had toppled all my convictions about his shady morals, and just an hour later I’d learned that he’d given the order to have me eliminated, my body tossed out through a train window into the night. The Judas kiss.

“You don’t need to take anything, just your papers,” Marcus warned me. “You’ll get everything back in Madrid.”

“There’s one thing I can’t leave behind.”

“You can’t take anything, Sira. There isn’t time, the train’s about to leave again; if we don’t hurry, we’ll have to jump while it’s on the move.”

“Just a second . . .” I went over to the overnight bag and grabbed its contents out with both hands. The silk nightgown, a slipper, the hairbrush, a bottle of eau de cologne: everything was spread out on the bed, as though hurled around by the fury of a madman or the strength of a tornado. Finally I found what I’d been looking for right at the bottom: the notebook with the fake patterns, the minutely stitched statement of Manuel Da Silva’s betrayal of the British. I squeezed it hard to my chest.

“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing my handbag with my other hand. I couldn’t leave that behind either; it contained my passport.

We raced out into the corridor just as the whistle sounded; when we reached the door, the locomotive had already replied with its own, and the train was beginning to pull away from the station. Marcus got off first as I threw the notebook, handbag, and shoes onto the platform—it would have been impossible to jump with the shoes on: I’d sprain an ankle the moment I hit the ground. Then he reached his hand out to me; I took it and jumped.

The furious shouts of the stationmaster weren’t long in coming; we saw him running toward us, flapping his arms. Two railway workers came out from inside the station, alerted by the voices; meanwhile the train, oblivious to what it was leaving behind, continued on its way, picking up speed.

“Come, Sira, come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Marcus said tensely.

He picked up one of my shoes and handed it to me, then the other. I held them in my hands but didn’t put them on: my attention was on something else. The three railway employees had gathered around us, while the stationmaster reprimanded us for our behavior with angry shouts and gestures. A couple of tramps wandered toward us, curious, and a few moments later the man from the station canteen and a young waiter joined the group, wondering what had happened.

And then, in the middle of that chaos of urgent movement and clamorous voices, we heard the sharp squeal of the train braking.

Everyone on the platform suddenly fell silent and still, blanketed in silence, while the wheels crunched over the tracks, emitting a long, high-pitched sound.

Marcus was the first to speak.

“They’ve set off the alarm.” His voice turned more serious, more commanding. “They’ve realized that we jumped. Come on, Sira, we’ve got to get out of here right away.”

The whole group automatically sprang into action again. We were back to the bellowing, the orders, the steps in no particular direction, and the irate gestures.

“We can’t go,” I replied, turning around and around, scanning the ground. “I can’t find my notebook.”

“Forget the damned notebook, for God’s sake!” he shouted, furious. “They’re coming for you, Sira, they’re under orders to kill you!”

He grasped my arm and pulled, as though ready to drag me bodily after him.

“You don’t understand, Marcus, I’ve got to find it, whatever happens, we can’t leave it behind,” I insisted as I kept looking. Then I spotted something. “There it is! There!” I shouted, trying to wriggle free while gesturing at something in the middle of the darkness. “There, on the tracks!”

The screeching sound of the brakes was lessening and finally the train drew to a halt, the windows filled with heads leaning out, trying to see what was going on. The voices and shouts of the passengers added to the incessant scolding of the railway workers. And then we saw them. Two shadows, dropping down from one of the coaches and running toward us.

I calculated the distance and time. I could still climb down and get the notebook, but climbing back up onto the platform would take much longer; it was a considerable height and my legs probably weren’t up to it. But in any case I had to try to recover those patterns, whatever it took. I couldn’t go back to Madrid without all the information I’d recorded in them. Then I felt Marcus’s arms grabbing me hard from behind. He moved me away from the edge, almost knocking me off my feet, and jumped down onto the tracks.

From the exact moment I took the notebook, everything was a mad dash. A dash across the platform, a dash echoing on the flagstones of the empty station hall, a dash across the dark forecourt outside the station entrance. Hand in hand, tearing through the night, as we’d done once before. Until we reached the car.

“What the hell have you got in this notebook that you’d risk our lives for it?” he asked, trying to recover his breath as he started up the car and left the station with a powerful burst of acceleration.

My breathing labored, I kneeled on the seat to look behind us. In the dust thrown up by our back wheels I could make out the men from the train running toward us as hard as they could. At first there were only a couple of meters between us, but bit by bit the distance grew, until I saw them giving up. One of them first, slowing down until he came to a stop, spent, with his legs apart and his hands on his head as though he couldn’t believe what had just happened. The other held out for a few feet more and then lost energy, too. The last thing I saw was him doubling over, clutching his stomach, and throwing up what he’d so eagerly eaten not long before.

When I was sure that they were no longer following us, I sat back down and—still having trouble breathing—answered Marcus’s question.

“The best patterns I’ve ever done in my life.”