The Time in Between: A Novel Read online

  Amid the turbulence of those days in which the political fighting made theater audiences quake and governments lasted three paternosters, we barely had the chance to cry over what we’d lost. Three weeks after the advent of our enforced inactivity, Ignacio appeared with a bouquet of violets and the news that he had at last passed his civil service exam. The plans for our little wedding stifled any feelings of uncertainty, and on a little table we planned the event. Although the new breezes that swept in with the Republic carried on them the fashion for civil weddings, my mother—whose soul housed simultaneously, and with no contradiction, her condition as single mother, an iron Catholic spirit, and a nostalgic loyalty to the deposed monarchy—encouraged us to celebrate a religious wedding in the neighboring church of San Andrés. Ignacio and I agreed; how could we not, without toppling that hierarchy of order in which he submitted to all my desires and I deferred to my mother’s without argument. Nor did I have any good reason to refuse: the dreams I had about celebrating that marriage were modest ones, and it made no difference to me whether it was at an altar with a priest and cassock or in a large room presided over by a Republican tricolor flag.

  So we prepared to set the date with the same parish priest who twenty-four years earlier, on June eighth, as dictated by the calendar of saints’ days, had given me the name Sira. Sabiniana, Victorina, Gaudencia, Heraclia, and Fortunata had been other possibilities that went with the saints of the day.

  “Sira, Father, just put Sira—it’s short, at least.” That was my mother’s decision, in her single motherhood. And so I was Sira.

  We would celebrate the marriage with family and a few friends. With my grandfather, who had neither his legs nor his wits, mutilated in body and spirit during the war of the Philippines, a permanent mute presence in his rocking chair next to our dining room balcony windows. With Ignacio’s mother and sisters who’d come in from the village. With our next-door socialist neighbors Engracia and Norberto and their three sons, as dear to us as if the same blood flowed right across the landing. With Doña Manuela, who took up the threads again to give me the gift of her final piece of work, in the form of a bridal dress. We would treat our guests to sugar-plum pastries, sweet Málagan wine and vermouth. Perhaps we would be able to hire a musician from the neighborhood to come up and play a paso doble, and some street photographer would take a dry-plate picture for us, which would adorn our home, something we did not yet have and for now would be my mother’s.

  It was then, amid this jumble of plans and preparations, that it occurred to Ignacio to prepare me to take the test to make me a civil servant like him. His brand-new post in administration had opened his eyes to a new world: that of the administration of the Republic, an area where there existed professional destinies for women that lay beyond the stove, the wash house, and drudgery; through which the female sex could beat a path, elbow to elbow with men, in the same conditions and with their sights set on the same dreams. The first women were already sitting as deputies in the parliament; the equality of the sexes in public life was proclaimed. There had been recognition of our legal status, our right to work, and universal suffrage. All the same, I would have infinitely preferred to return to sewing, but it took Ignacio just three evenings to convince me. The old world of fabrics and backstitches had been toppled and a new universe was opening its doors to us: we had to adapt to it. Ignacio himself could take charge of my preparation; he had all the study topics and more than enough experience in the art of putting himself forward and failing countless times without ever giving in to despair. As for me, I would do my share to help the little platoon that we two would make up with my mother, my grandfather, and the progeny to come. And so I agreed. Once we were all set, there was only one thing we lacked: a typewriter on which I could learn to type in preparation for the unavoidable typing test. Ignacio had spent months practicing on other people’s machines, passing through a via dolorosa of sad academies smelling of grease, ink, and concentrated sweat. He didn’t want me to have to go through the same unpleasantness, hence his determination that we should obtain our own equipment. In the weeks that followed we launched ourselves on our search, as though it would turn our lives totally around.

  We studied all the options and did endless calculations. I didn’t understand about detailed performance features, but it seemed to me that something small and light would be most suitable for us. Ignacio was indifferent to the size, but he did take extraordinary care over prices, installment payments, and terms. We located all the sellers in Madrid, spent hours standing at their window displays, and learned to pronounce exotic names that evoked distant geographies and movie stars: Remington, Royal, Underwood. We could just as easily have chosen one brand as another; we could just as well have ended up buying from an American establishment as a German one, but our choice settled finally on the Italian Hispano-Olivetti on Calle de Pi y Margall. How could we have known that with that simple act, with the mere fact of having taken two or three steps and crossed a threshold, we were signing the death sentence on our time together and irreparably twisting apart the strands of our future.

  Chapter Two

  ___________

  I’m not going to marry Ignacio, Mother.”

  She was trying to thread a needle and my words made her freeze, the thread held between her fingers.

  “What are you saying, girl?” she whispered. Her voice seemed to emerge broken from her throat, laden with confusion and disbelief.

  “That I’m leaving him, Mother. That I’ve fallen in love with another man.”

  She scolded me with the bluntest reproaches she could bring herself to utter, cried out to heaven, begging God to intercede, appealing to the whole calendar of saints, summoning dozens of arguments to persuade me to retract my intentions. When it became clear that none of it was doing any good, she sat down in the rocking chair next to my grandfather’s, covered her face, and began to cry.

  I bore the moment with a feigned fortitude, trying to hide the nerves that lay behind the bluntness of my words. I was afraid of my mother’s reaction: Ignacio had come to be the son she’d never had, the presence that filled the masculine gap in our little family. They talked to each other, they understood each other, they got along. My mother made the stews he liked, shined his shoes, and turned his jackets inside out when the attrition of time had begun to rob them of their luster. He, in turn, complimented her when he saw her in her finery for Sunday Mass, brought her egg-yolk sweets, and—half in jest and half seriously—sometimes told her that she was more beautiful than I.

  I was aware that my daring would bring down all that comfortable domesticity. I knew that it would topple the scaffolding of more lives than just my own, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. My decision was firm as a post: there would be no wedding and no civil service exams; I wouldn’t learn to type on the little table and never would I share children, bed, or joys with Ignacio. I was going to leave him, and the strength of a gale would not be enough to curtail my resolve.

  The Hispano-Olivetti storefront had two large display windows that showed their products off to passersby with proud splendor. Between the two of them was a glass door, with a bar of burnished bronze crossing it diagonally. Ignacio pushed it and we went in. The tinkling of a little bell announced our arrival, but no one came out to meet us right away. We stopped there, inhibited for a couple of minutes, looking at everything displayed with such reverence, not daring even to brush against the pieces of polished wood furniture where those typewriting marvels rested, one of which we were about to select as the one most suited to our plans. At the back of the spacious room devoted to the displays, there was apparently an office. From it came men’s voices.

  We didn’t have to wait much longer. The voices knew that there were customers, and one of them—housed in a rotund body, darkly dressed—approached us. As soon as the affable clerk greeted us, asking what we were interested in, Ignacio began to talk, describing what he wanted, requesting information and advice. Mustering al
l his professionalism, the clerk proceeded to enumerate the features of each machine on display in rigorous detail, with such monotonous technical precision that after twenty minutes I was ready to fall asleep from boredom. Ignacio, meanwhile, absorbed the information through all his senses, indifferent to me and to anything other than gauging what was being offered to him. I decided to move away from them, totally uninterested. Whatever Ignacio chose would be a good choice. I couldn’t care less about keys, carriage return levers, or margin bells.

  So I dedicated myself to walking through the other parts of the display in search of something with which to appease my boredom. I stared at the big advertising posters on the walls proclaiming the store’s products with colored illustrations and words in languages I did not understand. Then I approached the windows and watched pedestrians hurrying past along the street. After a while I returned unwillingly to the back of the store.

  A big cupboard with mirrored doors ran along part of one wall. I considered my reflection in it, noticing that a couple of strands had come loose from the bun in my hair. After attending to that I took advantage of the opportunity to pinch my cheeks and give my bored face a little color. Then I examined my attire at leisure. I had made myself get into my best dress; after all, this purchase was supposed to be a special occasion for us. I smoothed out my stockings, upward from my ankles; slowly and deliberately I adjusted the dress on my hips, at the waistline and collar. I retouched my hair again and looked at myself from the front and the side, calmly observing the copy of myself that the mirror glass returned to me. I struck poses, made a couple of dance steps, and laughed. When I tired of the sight, I continued wandering around the room, killing time as I ran my hand slowly over the surfaces, snaking languidly around the pieces of furniture. I barely paid any attention to what had really brought us there; to me there was nothing to distinguish between those machines apart from their size. There were big, solid ones, yet there were small ones, too; some seemed light, others heavy, but to my eyes they were no more than a mass of dark unwieldy contraptions unable to generate the slightest charm. I positioned myself reluctantly in front of one of them, brought my index finger toward the keys, and pretended to press the letters closest to me. The s, the i, the r, the a. “Si-ra,” I repeated in a whisper.

  “Lovely name.”

  The man’s voice came from just behind me, so close that I could almost feel his breath on my skin. A shudder ran up my spine and I turned around, startled.

  “Ramiro Arribas,” he said, holding out his hand. It took me a moment to react, perhaps because I wasn’t used to anyone greeting me so formally, perhaps because I had not yet managed to absorb the impact this unexpected presence had on me.

  Who was this man, where had he come from? He clarified it himself, his eyes still fixed on mine.

  “I am the manager of the establishment. I’m sorry not to have attended to you earlier; I was trying to place a call.”

  And watching you through the blinds that separate the office from the showroom, he should have added. He didn’t say it, but he let it be guessed at. I intuited it from the depths of his gaze, the sonority of his voice, from the fact that he had approached me rather than Ignacio and the length of time he held my hand. I knew that he had been watching me, considering my erratic wanderings around his establishment. He had seen me arranging myself in front of the mirrored cupboard: readjusting my hair, conforming the lines of the dress to my shape, and fixing my stockings by running my hands up my legs. Perched in the shelter of his office, he had absorbed the outlines of my body and the slow cadence of each of my movements. He had appraised me, calibrated the shapes of my silhouette and the lines of my face. He had studied me with the sure eye of someone who knows exactly what he likes and is used to getting what he wants with the immediacy that his desires dictate. And he resolved to show this to me. I had never seen this before in any other man; I had never believed myself capable of awaking such a desire in anyone. But just as animals scent food or danger, with the same primal instinct I knew that Ramiro Arribas, like a wolf, had decided to come for me.

  “Is that your husband?” he said, gesturing toward Ignacio.

  “My fiancé,” I managed to answer.

  Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I thought I sensed the trace of a satisfied smile at the corners of his lips.

  “Perfect. Please, come with me.”

  He made way for me, and as he did, he positioned his hand gently at my waist as though it had been waiting to be there its whole life. He greeted Ignacio pleasantly, dispatched the salesclerk to the office, and took up the reins of the matter with the ease of someone who gives a clap and makes pigeons take flight. He was like a conjuror combed with brilliantine, the features of his face marked with angular lines, a broad smile, a powerful neck, and a bearing so imposing, so manly and decisive, that beside him my poor Ignacio looked like he was a century away from reaching manhood.

  He learned that the typewriter we were planning to buy would be for teaching me to type, and he praised the idea as though it were a matter of great genius. Ignacio saw him as a competent professional who offered technical details and beneficial payment options. For me he was something more: a tremor, a magnet, a certainty.

  We took a while longer to finalize the negotiations. Over the course of that time the signals coming from Ramiro Arribas didn’t stop for a single second. An unexpected, glancing touch, a joke, a smile; double entendres and looks that pierced the depths of my being. Ignacio, self-absorbed and unaware of what was happening before his very eyes, finally decided on the portable Lettera 35, a machine with round white keys on which the letters of the alphabet were set with such elegance that they seemed to be carved with a chisel.

  “Superb decision,” the manager concluded, praising Ignacio’s good sense. As though he had been the master of his own free will and hadn’t been manipulated with the great salesman’s wiles to buy that particular model. “The best choice for slender fingers like those of your fiancée. Do please allow me, miss, to see them.”

  I quickly sought Ignacio’s gaze to gain his consent, but I didn’t find it: he had gone back to focusing on the typewriter. I held my hand out shyly. Faced with my fiancé’s innocent passivity, Ramiro Arribas stroked my hand slowly and shamelessly, finger to finger, with a sensuality that gave me goose bumps and made my legs shake like leaves in a summer breeze. He only let go when Ignacio looked away from the Lettera 35 and asked for instructions on completing the purchase. They agreed that we’d leave a deposit of 50 percent that afternoon and make the balance of the payment the following day.

  “When can we take it away?” Ignacio asked.

  Ramiro Arribas consulted his watch.

  “The boy from the warehouse is doing a few errands and won’t be coming back this afternoon. I fear it won’t be possible to get your model till tomorrow.”

  “And this one? We can’t keep this one?” Ignacio insisted, keen to close the negotiations as soon as possible. Once the model had been chosen, everything else seemed to him to be bothersome procedures that he wanted to eliminate swiftly.

  “Please, don’t even suggest such a thing. I can’t allow Miss Sira to use a typewriter that other customers have been fiddling with. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll have a new one ready, with its own case and packaging. If you let me have your address,” he said, looking at me, “I’ll take charge personally of getting one to your house before noon.”

  “We’ll come and collect it ourselves,” I interrupted. I could sense that the man was capable of anything, and a wave of terror made me shudder to think that he might show up before my mother, asking for me.

  “I can’t come over till the evening, I have to work,” said Ignacio. As he spoke, an invisible rope seemed to tie itself slowly around his neck, ready to hang him. Ramiro barely had to take the trouble to pull at it just a little.

  “And what about you, miss?”

  “I don’t work,” I said, avoiding his gaze.

  “You
could arrange to make the payment, then?” he suggested casually.

  I couldn’t find the words to say no, and Ignacio didn’t even sense how that simple-seeming proposal was looming over us. Ramiro Arribas accompanied us to the door and bid us farewell warmly, as though we were the best customers in the shop’s history. With his left hand he vigorously patted my fiancé’s back, with his right he shook mine once again. And he had words for us both.

  “You’ve made a superb choice in coming to Casa Hispano-Olivetti, Ignacio, believe me. I assure you, you won’t forget this day for a long time. And you, Sira, please come back at about eleven o’clock. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  I spent the night tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. It was madness, and I still had time to get out of it. All I had to do was to decide not to go back to the shop. I could stay home with my mother, help her to beat the mattresses and scrub the floor with linseed oil, chat with the women who lived next door on the square, then make my way toward the Cebada market for a quarter pound of chickpeas or a piece of cod. I could wait for Ignacio to return home from the ministry and make excuses for my failure to fulfill my task with any simple lie: that my head hurt, that I thought it was going to rain. I could lie down awhile after lunch, feigning some general malaise. And then Ignacio would go alone, he would complete the payment to the manager, pick up the typewriter, and it would all be over. We would never hear of Ramiro Arribas again, he’d never again cross our path. Bit by bit his name would sink into oblivion and we’d move ahead with our little everyday lives. As though he’d never caressed my hands, desire just there below the surface; as though he’d never consumed me with his eyes from behind the blinds. It was that easy, that simple. And I knew it.

  I knew it, but I pretended not to know. The next day I waited for my mother to go out on her errands. I didn’t want her to see me getting myself ready: she would have suspected I was up to something strange if she’d seen me all done up so early in the morning. As soon as I’d heard the door close behind her, I began hastily to get myself together. I filled a basin to wash myself, I sprinkled myself with lavender water, heated the curling tongs on the stove, ironed my only silk blouse, and removed my stockings from the line where they’d spent the night drying in the night dew. They were the same ones from the previous day: I had no others. I forced myself to calm down and put them on carefully, so that I wouldn’t cause a run. And each of those mechanical movements, repeated a thousand times in the past, for the first time had a defined recipient, an objective and a goal: Ramiro Arribas. It was for him that I was dressing and perfuming myself, for him to see me, for him to smell me, for him to touch me lightly once again and once again lose himself in my eyes. It was for him that I decided to leave my hair loose, falling lustrous halfway down my back. For him I tightened my waist, squeezing the belt hard over my skirt till I could scarcely breathe. For him: all just for him.