In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  But the Paseo del Prado was dark and silent; coming upon it, with its enormous somber trees and classical façades of large columns and granite cornices, was like arriving in another city and another time, a city indifferent to the upheavals of a distant, plebeian future. Ignacio Abel went down the central walk, always alert, looking for a streetcar or taxi. Judith might be in the Atocha Station, in which case he’d have lost any chance of finding her. She also could have left by car. He paused for a moment: perhaps Judith had sought refuge in Philip Van Doren’s house; wouldn’t it be better to retrace his steps and set out for the Gran Vía? Or look for her at the pensión on the Plaza de Santa Ana? The map of Madrid expanded into a labyrinth of possible routes, points of departure. Cars filled with suitcases, their curtains drawn, were leaving on the La Coruña highway and on the road to Burgos, carrying those traveling to their long seigniorial summers in the north, fleeing the city and the nation, many of them knowing with absolute certainty what everyone else was whispering and fearing: something was going to happen, the storm that will make the air crackle with explosions, and no one will know how to predict the moment the deluge will come and sink everything. But no one can imagine what will come or predict the scale of the disaster, not even those who helped unleash it. Now Ignacio Abel was walking toward Atocha, carried along by the inertia of his baseless decision—the express about to leave, the whistle and steam of the locomotive, Judith Biely beautiful and tall on the step in her hat and dress, jumping to the platform as the train starts to move and falling into his arms. His perturbed mind became agitated in a discord of impulses and imaginings: Judith fleeing him and Madrid on this night of brilliant fires and agitated crowds, Adela and his children isolated in the summer house, searching for news in a village where the electricity went off at eleven, radio signals didn’t come in clearly, and the only telephone was in the station; and he clutched Judith’s farewell letter in his trouser pocket, hurrying among the cars driving at top speed through the Plaza de Neptuno, blowing their horns to the rhythm of the shouts of excited people jammed into the Carrera de San Jerónimo in front of the Congress of Deputies, where all the windows were open and lit though the great door remained locked. He didn’t understand what they were shouting, the word every throat repeated. What could be the physical principle that ruled the movements of the crowd, regulated its powerful currents, the overflowing energy of the flood? A group of boys splashed in the water of the Neptune fountain as they climbed the statue to hang a red flag from the trident. Reality broke into implausible images that suddenly became commonplace. Where had the weapons come from that everyone seemed to be brandishing now with an air more festive than war-like, or the luxury automobiles with labor union slogans painted on the sides, driven not by solemn chauffeurs in service caps and uniforms but by young men in unbuttoned shirts or proletarian coveralls, chewing on cigarettes and shouting as they stepped on the accelerator like horsemen launching into a gallop? But walking down the Paseo del Prado was enough to enter darkness and silence again; the faint light of the street lamps revealed the large mass and columns of the museum. He’d walked in this same spot with Judith, among the myrtle hedges and flowerbeds on the lawn, under the gigantic cedars; he’d introduced her to the Botanical Garden, sunk into a darkness fragrant with fertile soil and vegetation behind the high locked gates. Among the gardens on the paseo he saw shadows moving, lit ends of cigarettes. Bargain-priced prostitutes and poor clients looked for corners favorable to the night’s lechery. The wide ogival vault of the station emerged at the end of a dusty esplanade where the unoccupied carousel of a deserted festival turned. Lanterns and little tricolor paper flags, huts with barbaric drawings in strong colors, shooting galleries with girls who looked sadly into the emptiness or applied lipstick to pursed lips, loudspeakers over which bullfight paso dobles and hurdy-gurdy tunes played for no one. A poster announced the wonder of Siamese twins joined at the head and a turtle woman who had hands and feet but no arms or legs. Under the awning of a stand selling drinks, scowling men smoked as they grouped around a radio that broadcast military marches and dance music. The iron-and-glass façade of the station shone like a beacon on the border of the night, and beyond it extended the empty lots and last suburbs of Madrid, the faint lines of lights on the nearby rural horizon. With all their windows lit, the buildings were sheets of black cardboard outlined against the intense navy blue of a night in July.

  A streetcar on fire came down Calle de Atocha, trailing a wake of black smoke above the curls of flames and flashes of blue sparks in the electric cables. Another bonfire rose above some houses, a column of smoke lit from inside by the flames devouring the roof of a church. If Judith was taking the train, he couldn’t stop her now: at the top of the station a clock showed ten minutes after ten. But perhaps no trains would leave tonight, or would leave late, trapped by the upheaval in the city. Shouldn’t he take a train too, go back to the village where Adela and his children were waiting, isolated from everything, in the house where the electricity would be turned off soon and candles and kerosene lamps lighted? Too many desires, too many loyalties and urgencies, the disassociated thought of his actions, his consciousness breaking apart like shards of a broken mirror crumbling as he crossed the waiting rooms and walked up and down platforms in the station that didn’t seem affected by the disturbance and disorder in the streets, where the night express trains were moving as indifferently as the carousel’s horses and carriages would go around at the next festival. Well-dressed people looked out the windows of the blue sleeping cars, uniformed employees pushed carts with opulent suitcases, trunks with metal-reinforced corners and stickers from international hotels. The best families in Madrid took the night express to Lisbon. He searched among the people: one by one he looked at the faces at the windows, the ones he saw walking along the illuminated passageways, those he saw through the window of the bar; from a distance he made out a figure with her back turned who for a moment was Judith, and then was a stranger who looked nothing like her. “She hasn’t left yet,” he told himself. “She hasn’t had time, she lost her courage, she hasn’t found a train ticket, if I go home now I’ll find a message from her, the phone will ring and it will be her, daring to call me because she knows I’m alone.” Three men in civilian clothes and armed with rifles came toward him. The metal of a bolt grated and the cold mouth of a barrel pressed against his chest. One of the men wore a military cap pulled down over his forehead. The one whose rifle jabbed at him had a cigarette in his mouth and blinked to keep the smoke out of his eyes. The third had a pistol in the belt worn over a threadbare jacket.

  “Come on, papers.”

  At first Ignacio Abel didn’t understand: who were these armed men without uniforms, why did they demand his documents so peremptorily? As it happened, he had his national identity card and his UGT card in his wallet.

  “A gent with a union card.” They looked at the identification in the light of a lamp: the man holding the rifle kept prodding him with it. Up close, the weapon was an enormous thing, crude, heavy, a log with hardware. It might go off in the hands of this nervous young man, who obviously didn’t handle it with much skill, and the bullet would shatter his chest. He might die right now, without warning, on this summer night, a step away from the well-dressed travelers who looked at their watches, impatient for the train to leave for Lisbon, in an act completely disconnected from the sequence of his life, on a platform in the Atocha Station. He heard shouts and shots nearby; bullets resounded against the metal rafters and a shower of pulverized glass fell from the vault. Called by someone, the three men lost all interest in Ignacio Abel and ran out with the dramatic gestures of film characters, crouching, looking from one side to the other, their weapons in their hands.

  He walked out of the station. The taxi stand was deserted. His legs trembled and his heartbeat accelerated. Perhaps right now the phone was ringing in his dark empty apartment and it was Judith calling him—knowing that only he would answer—perhaps regretful, perhaps
frightened and seeking refuge. Too many times I lacked the strength to do what I should have done and leave you. He’d open the door as quickly as he could because he’d heard the phone from the landing, and when he finally picked up the receiver, breathless, the voice he’d hear would be Adela’s, calling from the bar at the station in the Sierra, distressed at not having heard from him. The burning streetcar had overturned at the end of Calle de Atocha and continued to burn close to the carousel and stalls of the festival, surrounded by a group of children who threw things onto the flames, jumping just as they did around the bonfires on the night of San Juan. On a shack a canvas sign lit by a border of lightbulbs announced in large red letters the spectacle of the Spider Woman and the Alligator Man. Now he saw Judith phoning, persisting, the bell ringing for no one in the shadowy hall of his apartment. He saw what wasn’t before him, the faces lit by flames from the streetcar on the sidewalk of Atocha Square, and behind the glass doors of bars, and in the gloomy depths of drunkards’ taverns, and on the sidewalks where neighbors argued loudly, raising their voices above the discordant sounds of horns and radios—their faces blurred, spectral. He saw as in a revelation, as a certainty, that Judith was phoning not from her pensión on the Plaza de Santa Ana or a booth at the back of a café but from Van Doren’s house, beside the large windows that overlooked the horizon of roofs and fires in Madrid. She must be there, no doubt about it. He saw everything: Van Doren preparing for the journey she’d decided to join, the luxury trunks ready in the middle of the living room, the servants taking care of final details, and Judith deciding to call to ask him to come with them, out of love and the fear that something might happen to him. It will hurt as much as if a part of me had been torn out—and then in English—but this is the only decent sensible thing for me to do. The handwriting was almost illegible, it had been written so quickly, perhaps not because she was in a hurry to take a trip but because she wanted to finish a painful task as fast as she could. Roaring motorcycles of the Assault Guards went up Calle de Atocha in formation, making way for a fire truck, its bell sounding frantically and all its lights on. The more Ignacio Abel walked, the more suffocating the dense smoke and the smell of gasoline and burning wood became. Groups of children ran around as excited as on a festival night when they’ve been allowed to stay out late. Going up Atocha, he’d cross the heart of Madrid on a diagonal to reach the Gran Vía and the tower of the Palace of the Press, where he’d seen Judith for the second time and fallen in love with her. But he found himself trapped, pushed against a wall on the sidewalk when the fire truck tried to turn onto a narrower street and couldn’t get through, because there were too many people or because they stood in front of the truck to block its way. On a balcony a man in an undershirt and pajama bottoms smoked a cigarette and fanned himself with a newspaper as he leaned on the railing. Women’s screams mixed with the revving of the fire truck’s engine and the useless ringing of its bell. A young man carrying a wooden shotgun or a broomstick climbed onto the running board and began breaking windows, shattered glass falling to the street. The truck moved forward with a jerk and the young man fell to the ground on his back. The sound of the engine and the bell drowned out voices: Ignacio Abel saw open mouths moving in the nearby glare of the burning church. If he didn’t move away soon he’d be crushed by the torrent of people between the wall and the fire truck. He swallowed saliva that tasted of gasoline and ash and felt the glow of flames on his skin. But he could move only in the direction of the fire. If I died tonight, if I never saw you again. He moved ahead of the truck that was still blocked and the Assault Guards who’d dismounted their motorcycles and were waving their arms, blowing whistles or shouting orders no one paid attention to. Lightheaded from the smoke, he didn’t realize at first where he was. In a sudden break he went back in time to a vision from his childhood: in the church enveloped in flames he’d made his First Communion; in its gloomy nave, under candlelight, his father’s coffin had rested. Adjacent to the church was the secondary school he’d attended, with its corridors he’d walked so many times on his way to the classrooms or the church or the playgrounds, the favored student, the widow’s son. From attic windows, on balconies looking over the plaza, the fire’s brilliance turned transfixed faces red and gave them an enchanted air. The flames climbed up the church’s dome. Torrents of melted lead ran like lava onto the roofs. A woman in a housedress lay on a corner of the plaza, covering her face with bloody hands. From the fire truck came a stream of water that turned into steam on the church’s façade. “They fired from the bell tower,” someone said near the injured woman, who was leaning now against the wall, wiping blood on her apron. “They should all be killed.” From a balcony several armed men fired at the church tower. The flames shot out of the highest windows of the school after an explosion of glass. The dusty baroque altarpieces would be burning, and the painted plaster statues of saints, the confessionals with their sinister latticework where Ignacio Abel had kneeled so often, so long ago; the library would burn, the benches in the classrooms, the long tables in the laboratory, the oilcloth map of the world; the glass beakers and test tubes would shatter. (Once when he’d been in the plaza with Judith on a sunny winter morning, he’d pointed out the classroom windows, the ones from which he used to look out; they stood in silence for a moment and heard the sounds of children at recess, as distant as if they echoed from the far end of time.) The houses in the neighborhood were so close together that if a single spark leaped too far or a little wind came up, it would set fire to the frames of old beams and wattles. But people clustered around the fire truck to keep it from approaching the church, and with sticks and stones broke the windows of the cab and climbed onto the back to cut the hoses with knives. On the roof of the cab a little boy pretended to march with a broom on his shoulder, wearing a fireman’s helmet in which his head disappeared. Beside their overturned motorcycles the Assault Guards, much taller and huskier than those harassing them, vainly shook the nightsticks and pistols that people leaped to grab.

  But in memory, places and times are confused, that night’s faces, discontinuous images in the surreal city where he keeps looking for Judith as in a dream. Blazing fires and empty streets, tunnels of darkness, sirens and gunfire one after the other, the bells of emergency vehicles, radio loudspeakers hanging in the doorways of cafés broadcasting urgent, triumphant government communiqués or tirelessly repeating “Échale guindas al pavo” and the simple tunes of the flamenco-style band in “Mi jaca.” My pony gallops and cuts the wind when it passes through the port on the way to Jerez. All labor union members must report immediately to the headquarters of their organizations. He’d gallop if he could. He quickened his pace but didn’t want to walk too fast for fear of arousing suspicion, a man so well dressed didn’t belong in this neighborhood. He managed to leave the plaza where the church was burning, covering his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, and found himself, faint and lost, in alleyways he couldn’t recognize. He has searched for Judith Biely in dreams resembling this night, passing through urban labyrinths at once familiar and impenetrable. On a deserted street a blind man came toward him guided by a dog, tapping the wall with a stick that turned out to be a violin bow. There was a sputtering of gunfire and the dog arched its back and howled in fear, tightening the cord that held him around the neck like a noose. From the Plaza de Jacinto Benavente he could see above the roofs the illuminated clock at the top of the Telephone Company tower. A squad of Civil Guards on horseback rode down Calle Carretas at a trot, hooves rumbling on the paving stones in an unexpected parenthesis of solitude and silence, and beyond that rose an uproar that undoubtedly came from the Puerta del Sol. The display window of a shop that sold religious books and objects was smashed. Books, illustrations of saints, and plaster figures were being gathered up by a man and woman with an air of mourning who turned in fright when they heard him approach. The sidewalks along Calle Carretas were crowded with people heading for the Puerta del Sol, looking as if they’d just arrived in Madrid f
rom much poorer and hotter regions, inhabitants of the outermost suburbs, huts and caves next to garbage dumps and rivers of fetid water, pits of poverty, advancing in great tribal clans toward the center of a city to which they’d never been admitted, dirty berets, scabby heads, toothless mouths, feet bare or wrapped in rags, a crude humanity that preceded politics. The metal shutters on bullfighter and flamenco taverns were battened down as they passed. Young men hanging in clusters from the trucks that passed with a squeal of brakes as they swerved back and forth on the curves greeted the destitute crowd by waving flags and raising fists, but these people looked in astonishment and didn’t respond, alien to any indoctrination, observing with distrust the puerile habits of the civilized. They’d climbed out of their ravines of caves and hovels as if responding to a collective, archaic impulse awakened by the fire. They came with their nomads’ provisions and rags, their packs of dogs, women with children on their backs or hanging from their breasts. Never until tonight had they dared to invade in large groups the streets forbidden to them. At the corner of Calle Cádiz a sudden stampede dragged Ignacio Abel along with it. Disheveled women and a swarm of children stormed an open grocery store. A tall case filled with glass jars and tin cans of food fell against the counter. The women put handfuls of lentils and garbanzos in their pockets, ran out with armfuls of loaves of bread and strings of sausages. Someone knocked the scale to the floor with the swipe of a hand. A knife slit open a sack of flour and the children scattered it in the air, rolling in it, their eyes big in their whitened faces. A hand entered Ignacio Abel’s trouser pocket; others tugged at his briefcase. At the bottom of the stairs the store’s owner appeared, shouting curses, waving his fists in the air. The barrel of a shotgun was pressed against his chest. The store opened onto a narrow alley that smelled of urine and fried food. There, Ignacio Abel was brushing the flour from his clothes when a voice spoke to him.