In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  But he wouldn’t have been able to explain to his wife that the antagonism he felt toward her family was due not to ideological but to esthetic differences, the same silent antagonism he felt toward the inexhaustible Spanish ugliness of so many commonplace things, a kind of national depravity that offended his sense of beauty more deeply than his convictions regarding justice: the stuffed heads of bulls over the bars in taverns; the paprika red and saffron-substitute yellow of bullfight posters; folding chairs and carved desks that imitated the Spanish Renaissance; dolls in flamenco dresses, a curl on their forehead, which closed their eyes when leaned back and opened them as if resuscitated when they were upright again; rings with cubic stones; gold teeth in the brutal mouths of tycoons; the newspaper obituaries of dead children—he rose to heaven, he joined the angels—and their tragic white coffins; baroque moldings; excrescences carved in granite on the vulgar façades of banks; coat and hat racks made with the horns and hooves of deer or mountain goats; coats of arms for common last names made of glazed ceramic from Talavera; funeral announcements in the ABC or El Debate; photographs of King Alfonso XIII hunting, just a few days before he left the country, indifferent or blind to what was happening around him, leaning on his rifle beside the head of a dead deer, or erect and jovial next to a sacrifice of partridges or pheasants or hares, surrounded by gentlemen in hunting outfits and gaiters and servants in poor men’s berets and espadrilles and smiles diminished by toothless mouths. He sometimes thought his excessive anger had more to do with esthetics than ethics, with ugliness than injustice. In the rotunda of the Palace Hotel monarchist gentlemen raised their teacups and extended their little fingers adorned with a small ring and a very long polished nail. In the most successful movies characters profaned the marvelous technology of sound by breaking into folksongs, dressed in awful regional outfits, mounted on donkeys, leaning against window grilles hung with flowerpots, wearing broad-brimmed hats or berets or rustic bandannas. The Heraldo reported with patriotic fervor that at the beginning of the great bullfight for the festival of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza the matador’s team had performed the promenade to the vibrant rhythms of the “Himno de Riego,” the national anthem. In the house of the Ponce-Cañizares Salcedo family, at the end of a gloomy hallway, tiny electric candles burned in the small lamps framing a full-color print of Jesus of Medinaceli that had an artistic roof of Mudéjar inspiration and a small railing simulating an Andalusian balcony. In the Renaissance armchair in the dining room filled with dark wood furniture that imitated a style between Gothic and Moorish and had inlaid medallions of the Catholic sovereigns, Don Francisco de Asís Ponce-Cañizares, retired member of the Honorable Provincial Delegation of Madrid, read aloud in a grave voice the lead articles and parliamentary accounts in the ABC, and Doña Cecilia listened to him, half bewildered and half impatient, and said “Good” or “Of course” or “How shameful” each time Don Francisco de Asís concluded a paragraph in the cavernous tone of a sacred orator and at the same time noted the pangs of emotion and those of stomach upset, about which he’d inform the family in detail. Don Francisco de Asís was intoxicated by the apocalyptic prose of Calvo Sotelo’s speeches in Parliament and of reporters who spoke of Asiatic hordes or mobs filled with Bolshevik resentment or the virile martial joy of German youth cheering the Führer, waving olive branches, raising their right arms in unison in the stadiums. He liked words like “horde,” “mob,” “vortex,” “collapse,” and “collusion,” and as he read and became more emotional, his voice deepened and he accompanied his reading with oratorical gestures, angry blows on the table, an accusatory index finger. He loved sonorous verbal turns and expressions in Latin: alea iacta est; sic semper tyrannis; he who laughs last laughs best; better to die with honor than to live in shame; better honor without ships than ships without honor; the clarions of destiny; the moment of truth; the straw that broke the camel’s back. The fervent articles by correspondents in Germany and Italy and the Falangist publications his son Víctor brought home provided him with a poetic prose somewhat less old-fashioned but just as intoxicating and allowed him the gratification of feeling in tune with the youthful dynamism of the new day. But it was true that toward Ignacio Abel he’d always demonstrated a resounding affection of bear hugs and kisses that included a curious mixture of admiration and indulgence: admiration of his son-in-law’s brilliance and the tenacity with which he overcame the difficulties of his origins and the early deaths of his parents; indulgence of his political convictions, which he attributed, if he thought about them at all, more to a sentimental loyalty to the memory of his Republican and Socialist father than to real personal radicalism. How could he be an extremist and still be so fond of well-cut suits and good manners? If Ignacio Abel was a Socialist, he had to be one in the civilized, semi-British mode of Don Julián Besteiro or Don Fernando de los Ríos. But according to the uncle who was a priest, he shouldn’t let himself be deceived, because those Socialists were the worst ones, the most insidious! Who but Fernando de los Ríos, with all his unctuous manners, had devised the blasphemous divorce law when he was minister of justice? Deep down, Don Francisco de Asís must have compared the perseverance and integrity of his son-in-law, who came from nothing and created himself, with the uselessness of his own son, who always had everything but couldn’t complete his law degree and spent years bouncing from one job to another, not understanding anything, his head filled with stupidities, becoming involved in futile projects and dubious business schemes, dazzled now by a Falangist enthusiasm that in Don Francisco de Asís’s heart provoked not sympathy but alarm and distrust. He was afraid something awful would happen to his son, that he’d take part in a conspiracy and be sent to prison, or that one day he’d end up dead in the street after one of those gunfights between Falangists and Communists, he was always so inept, as a boy so easily intimidated in spite of his bravado.

  How different from his son-in-law, almost his other son, so serious and aloof, walking into the garden that morning with his firm bearing, his solid way of being in the world, his dark double-breasted suit, his shoes—made to measure in the best English shoe store in Madrid—stepping on the gravel, holding the briefcase that the girl took from him so she could carry it, heavy with documents and blueprints that required his attention even on a day off, for he had a position with a great deal of responsibility in the construction of University City, as Don Francisco de Asís took pleasure in telling his friends. In fact, El Sol had published Ignacio Abel’s photograph a few days earlier, and Don Francisco de Asís—breaking with custom because he defined himself as an unyielding reader of the ABC—had bought that paper and read aloud to Doña Cecilia the article on their son-in-law’s talk at the Student Residence, and then cut out the page and kept it in a folder in the imitation Renaissance desk in his study. Not very shrewd, in no way inclined to think ill of anyone, because of elderly innocence or lack of imagination or excessive reverence for the formalities, Don Francisco de Asís, as he himself said, would have put his hand in fire for his son-in-law, who didn’t smoke, barely drank more than a glass of wine at meals, never raised his voice, not even when discussing politics, which rarely happened, not even at meals when his brother-in-law Víctor or the uncle the priest would hotly argue the calamity of the Republic, the constant anarchy, the insolence of the workers, the need in Spain for a providential figure like the Duce or the Führer, or at least the sadly missed General Primo de Rivera, a strong man. On such occasions his son-in-law didn’t respond, never used an uncouth word; he was a Socialist but thanks to his work had been able to buy a car and a spacious apartment with an elevator in the most elegant section of Calle Príncipe de Vergara, between Goya and Lista no less; he sent the children to the Institute School so they’d have a secular education, and didn’t permit scapulars to be hung around their necks, but he hadn’t opposed their taking Communion or their mother teaching them prayers; he didn’t waste his evenings sitting idly in cafés; the time he didn’t devote to his work he spent with his
wife and two children, Don Francisco de Asís’s only two grandchildren, who sadly wouldn’t carry to the next generation the family name of Ponce-Cañizares. Last night he probably worked late at University City and early this morning drove to the house in the Sierra. Immune to his habitual coldness, Don Francisco de Asís offered a festive celebration when he saw his son-in-law, and gave him a wet kiss of welcome on each cheek. The two children struggled to be closer to him, to carry his briefcase and recount the adventures and explorations of the past few days, and they competed to mention the books they had read. They reminded him to take them and their mother that afternoon to the irrigation pond; they asked him if what he’d promised before his arrival was true, that he wouldn’t leave tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, but would drive them back to Madrid on Monday morning. When he saw his wife, he looked her in the eye and kissed her on the lips, and his son saw from behind how he put his hand on her waist and pressed her lightly to him.

  The benevolent attitude that Adela’s extreme sensitivity to him detected with relief and almost with gratitude was in fact the consequence of his deception. Perhaps her husband wouldn’t have placed his hand on her waist when he kissed her if he hadn’t embraced another woman the previous afternoon; his gestures of tenderness compensated for the offense she didn’t know she’d received; they were the remnants of an effusiveness another woman had awakened; the result of the liar’s relief at not being caught; the joy of the man who has seen in himself the surge of a desire he no longer imagined possible in his life and has reached a satisfaction he didn’t recall ever experiencing. As they’d often done when the children were small, that afternoon they walked with them on the path that led through pine groves and thickets of rockrose to the irrigation pond—the reservoir that had fed the old electrical power plant, a half-abandoned building at the edge. From time to time they caught sight of an unsociable custodian who once frightened the children and served as a character in their stories about enchanted houses beside a lake. That Ignacio Abel had so readily agreed to the excursion was another indication of his good mood and not merely his impatience to leave the close familial ambience, which after the snores of siesta culminated in praying the rosary, followed by a comforting snack of thick hot chocolate and anise biscuits, the work of Doña Cecilia’s legendary confectionery talent. The four of them, away from the others, seemed to commemorate an earlier time it wasn’t difficult to imagine as happier, the summers when the children were small, when their hands had to be held on the path and they tired so quickly that their father carried them on his shoulders, so small they had to be watched constantly so they wouldn’t go in the deep parts of the pond. They played Hansel and Gretel and left breadcrumbs along the path, and on the way back they would see whether birds had eaten them. But if they went too far into the game, the boy would burst into tears because he really was afraid his parents would abandon them, and he’d put his arms around Adela’s legs, his little face red and wet with tears while his sister laughed. The water in the pond had a green transparency and reflected on its surface the tops of the pines and the dark mass of the brick building that once housed turbines. The October sun was still high, gilding the bluish distances, the soft afternoon colors. The children looked for flat stones along the edge, then threw them at well-aimed angles over the smooth surface of the water, shouting their disagreement, returning to the old complicity of games now that both had left early childhood but were closer to it than either imagined. His father’s camera hung around Miguel’s neck, and as they walked in the woods he imagined he was making his way through the Amazon jungle or the heart of Africa, a solitary reporter because his sister didn’t want to join him in the game. Sitting on the grass in the warm afternoon air, Ignacio Abel and Adela also seemed to have returned to an earlier time, the young father and mother the children see at a protective distance, engaged in their mysterious conversations but also vigilant, perhaps anxious, afraid an accident or a mishap might occur if they looked away even for a moment from the children. How strange to have Adela so close when she didn’t know anything, to hold her open, melancholy gaze and not awaken any suspicion in her, to speak to her so naturally with no need to pretend or lie. He observed Adela while he listened to her. As had happened a few nights earlier in the Residence, he saw her as he hadn’t seen her for some time, precisely the time when she lost the last embers of her youth. A click sounded and Miguel had taken their picture from the edge of the pond.

  “Are you really planning to go to America next year? And can you take us with you?”

  She knew him too well not to be aware that his mood could be temporary. She was grateful for the gestures of tenderness, the quick kiss on the lips, the hand at her waist, but she protected herself instinctively against disappointment and at the same time protected her children, especially the boy, who was more fragile and also closer to her, with a more excitable imagination: now, at the pond’s edge, he talked to his sister about traveling to America on ocean liners or airplanes, made exaggerated gestures with his arms to suggest the size of things, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty.

  “I have to consult with Negrín first. And I have to see what they offer and how long I’ll have to stay. However it turns out, you’ll all come with me.”

  But Adela detected a touch of insincerity in his voice, though he himself didn’t know he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Now he was in the two worlds, two simultaneous times, yesterday afternoon with Judith and today with Adela and the children, in the dim light of the bar at the Florida and in the comfortable sun at the edge of the pond, smelling rockrose and thyme and resin, not divided but duplicated, ablaze with love and at the same time settled into the solid routine he’d constructed over the years, which that afternoon reached a kind of visual plenitude, like a completed painting, like the maturation of the last fruits of October, pomegranates and quince, yellow squash, persimmons, bursting golden grapes in the garden. He had so little experience, or so little capacity for real introspection, he didn’t imagine the guilt and anguish lying in wait; he didn’t even ask himself what Judith Biely might be feeling. She didn’t exist for him in an autonomous, complete way but only as a projection of his own desire.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing, work.”

  “You seemed to be in another world.”

  “Perhaps I ought to go back to Madrid tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You promised the children we’d drive back together early on Monday.”

  “If I go back, it’s not on a whim.”

  “Don’t tell them you’ll take them to America if you’re not going to do it. Don’t make promises you know you won’t keep.”

  “And you, would you like to make the trip?”

  “What I’d like is never to be separated from you. Where we are doesn’t matter.”

  She blushed when she said this and looked younger. She resembled the overly shy woman who no longer counted on finding a man, which she’d been when they met, the one for whom her parents predicted the same familial destiny as the maiden aunts, with whom she sometimes spent Sunday afternoons praying the rosary. With her wide hips settled on the warm grass beside the pond, her ankles tended to swell. Her black hair styled with an out-of-date wave made her seem older. But her eyes suddenly looked as they had fifteen years earlier and had a passionate, vulnerable expression, as if she’d passed from not expecting anything to wanting it all, from conformity to audacity, and from there to anticipated disillusionment, to skepticism regarding what life could offer her. Now she might have wished that her children weren’t so near, that they didn’t shout so much while they looked for smooth stones along the edge and then threw them at the water. For her it was a contretemps when they approached, tired and hungry, their cheeks reddened by exercise and the Sierra breeze, demanding the snack they’d brought in a wicker basket. For Ignacio Abel it was a relief. The sun began to go down behind the pines, the air acquired a touch of dampness that intensified the mountain odors, the
smell of thyme and rockrose and dry pine needles. The bells and the lowing of cows, the smaller bells of sheep, emphasized acoustically the sensation of amplitude and distance. If the air had been clearer, the white smudge of Madrid would have been visible on the horizon. It would be cold as soon as the setting sun no longer reached the pond, raising a faint golden mist over it. Secretly disloyal, unpunished in his dissimulation, Ignacio Abel decided he’d invent an excuse to return to Madrid on Sunday afternoon. He wouldn’t wait until then to hear Judith Biely’s voice; he’d go to the village to buy something and try to call her from the only phone, located in the station café. He looked up, coming out of his absorption, his secret trip to that other, invisible, contiguous world. Sitting on a rock, his daughter ate a sandwich and read a novel by Jules Verne. Adela took a few awkward steps along the bank, ridding her legs of numbness, brushing pine needles and grass stems from her skirt. His son was looking at him with wide-open eyes, as if he’d read his mind and was aware of his deceit, as if he already knew that the next afternoon his father would go back to Madrid alone, and if he went to America, he would also go alone.

  10

  WHERE HAD JUDITH come from, bringing with her a different world, bursting into his life like someone who abruptly enters a room, someone unexpected who opens the door and is followed by cold outside air that in a few seconds has altered the closed atmosphere. Her very presence was an upheaval, the new arrival who rings the bell brusquely and makes all eyes look. Judith Biely always moved quickly among much slower people, like an emissary of herself, detached from her will and character, the luminous advance of something that might be a promise of another life in another, less harsh country whose colors were less gritty or mournful, a tangible woman and at the same time the illusion and synthesis of what Ignacio Abel found was most desirable in women, in the very substance of the feminine: changing, unpredictable, entering unexpectedly, leaving so quickly that trapping an image of her on his retina, one that would remain fixed in memory, was as impossible as stopping time, or suspending it so a secret meeting might last longer. Judith Biely was like that in the only photograph of her Ignacio Abel keeps in his wallet, slightly out of focus because she was turning to one side at the moment the automatic camera shot the picture, a faint mist around her eyes, her smiling mouth, responding with a lighthearted expression to something that attracted her attention and forgetting for an instant that she was posing for a photograph, the precise instant captured in it. She must have been waiting uncomfortably for the flash to go off inside the booth on the street when something or someone made her turn her face slightly and smile, and the light exploded on her chin and cheeks, the curls in her hair, her slightly smudged eyes where a gleam of light stands out, as does one on her lips. It’s the imperfection of the photo that appeals to Ignacio Abel: the impersonal quality of chance causes Judith to be more present without the interference of a photographer’s eye and intention, as if she were really there, in that rescued moment. And to make the photo even truer, it’s not of the Judith he remembers but the one who hadn’t yet traveled to Madrid, the one not yet distorted by familiarity or the obsession of desire, intact in her distance and as much herself as when she burst into his life a few months later, in a future about which she still knows nothing when she smiles in the photograph, because she doesn’t know she’s about to receive the offer that will make her change her plans by moving forward the trip to Spain.