In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  He remembers his stubborn insistence on remaining skeptical at first, as if he’d touched something familiar that instantly disintegrated into sand. On Monday, July 20, the day following his failed appointment with Judith, Ignacio Abel went out at eight-thirty in the morning convinced that if he followed the routines of any other Monday, some semblance of normality would be reestablished. To the west he heard the rumble of distant cannon fire. A small plane flew back and forth over the city with the persistence and lack of purpose of a blowfly. There was a thread of hysteria in the triumphant announcement on the radio, interspersed haphazardly with threats. With the blood of heroic militiamen and armed forces loyal to the Republic, with the courage and sacrifice of all anti-Fascists and the enthusiastic collaboration of our valiant aviators, the most glorious pages in the history of our people are being written. He walked outside, where it was a little cooler. There was a certain reluctance in the widely spaced firing of the cannon, as if any one of the shots might be the last. It had been like this in 1932, in 1934. Gunfire and empty streets and stores with metal shutters closed, people who raised their arms as a precaution when they turned a corner, then nothing. From every town in Spain, with unanimous Republican fervor, come long lines of volunteers to combat the insurgents. Cool, showered, slightly dazed by a sleepless night, without breakfast, remembering with the strangeness of a dream his long walks through Madrid the night before, Ignacio Abel clutched the handle of his briefcase as he crossed Príncipe de Vergara on his way to the repair shop where they’d promised his car would be ready first thing that morning. The owner of the dairy store on the corner of Don Ramón de la Cruz gave him a friendly wave from behind the counter (perhaps he’d go back there to have breakfast after he picked up the car); an ice seller passed by, dozing in the driver’s seat of a wagon pulled by a skinny horse, leaving a trail of water on the paving stones. The rout of rebels in the Sierra de Guadarrama confirms the imminent victory won by the blood and daring of the people’s militias. If you followed your old routine, the life that had always been connected to that routine would automatically resume. If you dressed and combed your hair before the mirror and adjusted the knot in your tie and didn’t turn on the radio and descended the echoing marble stairs at the usual clip, things might return to normal. The only extraordinary, though irrelevant, thing was the distant, grudging cannon fire and the flight of the old-fashioned small airplane, gleaming in the distance as the morning sun shone on it, producing the iridescent effects of an insect wing. In the victorious assault by popular forces on the Mountain Garrison, where cowardly conspirators attempted to barricade themselves, the Republican air force has again written a glorious page. “They’re defeated,” said the doorman, opening the door and speaking with no danger of being overheard by residents who in that bourgeois district might favor the rebels. “In Barcelona they had to surrender. In Madrid you can see they haven’t even dared to come out on the street. But you take care, Don Ignacio, they say Fascists are shooting from the terraces, the miserable bastards.” Like a detail remembered from the previous night’s bad dream, he saw his brother-in-law Víctor’s face in the light of a passageway where the sound of conspiring armed men came from a room at the end of the hall. In a radio address the popular Communist Party deputy Dolores Ibárruri gave an impassioned speech to the working people of Madrid, telling them to pursue without mercy the reactionary jackals who shoot like cowards from balconies and bell towers at the working-class forces. He’d left his house with determination but in reality had no idea where he’d go once he had the car. To University City, to the Plaza de Santa Ana—or to the La Coruña highway, if it was true that a heroic squadron of loyal airplanes from the Cuatro Vientos base repelled the insurgents advancing from the north in a doomed attempt to take control of the peaks and passes of the Sierra. But only a few minutes before leaving the house he’d managed to reach the Civil Guard barracks in the village, and a voice responded with the Fascist slogan—“Arriba España!”—before slamming down the phone. Hour after hour there is confirmation of the imminent reestablishment of Republican order throughout the nation and the defeat of the insurgents who at this point can expect no mercy. On his way to the repair shop in the Jorge Juan alleyway he passed the Hotel Wellington, where a doorman of imposing stature and livery scrutinized the end of the street with a whistle in his mouth, hailing a taxi for a foreign couple dressed for travel who waited under the awning next to a pile of trunks, suitcases, and hatboxes. Forty rebel officers, faced with inevitable defeat, commit suicide in Burgos. As he crossed under the double row of trees on the central walk of Calle Velázquez, he heard a flock of birds and felt a breeze as cool as at dawn in the shade of the acacias. Turning at the corner of Jorge Juan toward Alcalá, a line of cars, the faces of young men at the windows, appeared so unexpectedly that Ignacio Abel jumped back onto the sidewalk to avoid being run down. The last of the cars, its top down, was a green Fiat identical to his own. It was almost nine, and most of the stores on Jorge Juan were still closed—the dairies, the charcoal store, the bakery—but the metal shutters of the car repair shop were raised. Cannons rumbled again in the distance, followed by what sounded like a series of fireworks. Next to the shop entrance, the owner’s son, a boy of fourteen or fifteen dressed in a coverall, sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his head between his knees. When he got closer he saw that the boy’s knees were knocking against each other and his head, covered by his hands, shook convulsively. Spittle hung from the boy’s chin, and a puddle of vomit lay between his legs. In the vast space of the shop, lit by a skylight, a strong odor of gasoline mixed with the stench of vomit, but not a single car was there. Lying face-up on the cement floor, his legs spread and his arms outstretched, was the shop owner, blood on his mouth and in the middle of his chest, and a piece of cardboard propped on his coverall: For being a Fascist. “He didn’t want them to take the cars,” said the boy, standing now, sobs breaking his voice. “He told them they weren’t his cars—what would he say to his customers?”

  He remembers the primal fear, the one that returns at night, the darkness deeper and full of danger. Retiring when it was still daylight, checking the bolts and locks, hiding like a child under the blankets, closing his eyes tight and covering his ears, as if seeing or hearing were enough to attract misfortune. Serenos and porters of urban properties are instructed that law enforcement officers and militias are authorized to carry out residential searches only when they have been officially charged with that mission and must always show their credentials. One night he watched through the peephole as armed men took away his neighbor on the other side of the landing. The Ministry of the Interior reminds you that only the police, the Assault Guard, and the Civil Guard may make arrests. His neighbor was in pajamas and offered no resistance. They’d almost never exchanged more than a gesture of greeting. He didn’t feel compassion but rather relief. A few days later, the man’s wife appeared, dressed in black. Life in Madrid goes on, the spirit of the people heightened by reports of daily advances by the Republican forces and defeats of the insurgents. In streets empty of people after nightfall, you could hear the approach of any vehicle before you saw it. He was in his study reviewing some blueprints when a car stopped at the entrance to his building. Those who take advantage of temporarily chaotic circumstances to carry out acts against another person’s life or property will be considered rebels, and the maximum penalty established by law will be imposed. He left the pencil on the wide sheet of blue paper and took off his reading glasses. He made certain the shutters were closed, according to official instructions. He walked into the hall, feeling under his feet the familiar vibration of the street door closing. There were very few occupied apartments left in the building, according to the doorman. He went to stand in the middle of the spacious living room. The footsteps might remain on a lower floor or reach his landing, then continue up the stairs, perhaps because the militiamen wanted to make sure that residents followed orders to keep their terraces locked, to prevent t
he enemy from shooting from them. There might be shouts, pleas, sobs, and blows with rifle butts echoing up and down the marble-lined staircase. But this time he heard only footsteps, and he waited, almost with serenity, his Socialist Party and union identification ready, the framed photos of him with Fernando de los Ríos, with President Azaña, with Don Juan Negrín in full view on the table in the living room, along with his and Adela’s wedding picture, in a silver frame, and those of Miguel and Lita in their First Communion outfits. In the children’s room hung a painting of the Holy Spirit, a gift from Don Francisco de Asís and Doña Cecilia. Negligence, not dignity, was why he hadn’t bothered to remove religious ornaments from the house. Now it would be dangerous to try to hide them. Ignacio Abel waited by the door, beneath the chandelier wrapped in white cloth, oddly calm, listening to the muffled voices. He assumed they’d pound on the door with their fists and rifle butts, but they rang the bell, with some urgency though not too much, like an impatient deliveryman. He preferred to wait a little before responding. Better if they didn’t think he’d been standing by the door or had a reason to believe they’d come for him as soon as the car engine stopped on the street, in the strange silence of a summer night. But there was no reason to make them impatient: why let them think he was playing for time to burn or hide things, trying to flee to the attic or roof through the service door. After the second ring, longer and more insistent than the first, he opened the door and decided he wouldn’t ask for identification. It was just three men, aside from the doorman, young, carrying muskets and pistols. Ignacio Abel immediately identified who was in command: the shortest one, wearing round glasses and a clean shirt, the only one not carrying a musket, only a pistol, the one who smoked. The second had a remote expression and wore a military cap with a red tassel dangling over his forehead, and the third, who looked familiar, had the large face of someone he knew, someone he’d seen often but couldn’t place, a man young yet slow and flabby who walked almost without lifting his feet off the ground. Now he remembered, didn’t know whether it was cause for relief or alarm: it was one of the clerks at his office, the one who every morning delivered the tray of mail. So they know who I am, whose house they’ll be searching. The clerk now had long sideburns, his chubby cheeks darkened by a beard, and he wore a military tunic, unbuttoned, with the insignia of the infantry at the cuff. The doorman, lagging behind them, greeted him with equivocal effusiveness.

  “Don Ignacio, these comrades, they’ve come for a routine search.”

  The man in charge looked askance at him.

  “Papers,” he said.

  “I told you the señor is trustworthy,” the doorman said.

  “Haven’t you heard? There are no more señores here.”

  As if they’d entered a church, the militiamen looked at the size of the rooms, the soaring door frames, the high ceilings with wreathed moldings, the polished parquet floors, though weeks had passed since the maids waxed them. The clerk made a slight gesture of recognition toward Ignacio Abel and nearly bowed his head, as he did when he left the mail on his desk and asked if he desired anything else. The one who seemed most directly under the command of the patrol leader took off his tasseled cap to wipe away sweat. Ignacio Abel saw that on his closely shaved nape he’d left in stubble the initials FAI. In the men’s presence he saw his own house with discomfort, irritation, almost with fear, the unnecessary spaciousness of a reception room where no reception had ever been held, the rich folds of curtains that fell luxuriously to the floor, the rooms that followed one after the other through double-paned glass doors. But they didn’t seem to search with much zeal or be in a hurry to find something compromising.

  “You stay here,” the leader told the doorman, who, like an uncomfortable visitor, didn’t move from the entrance hall, while Ignacio Abel showed the militiamen each of the rooms, opening closets whose farthest corners, behind the hanging clothes, they examined with flashlights.

  “So large an apartment just for you?”

  “I don’t live alone. My wife and children are on vacation in the Sierra.”

  “On our side or theirs?”

  “On theirs, I think.”

  “Well, don’t worry, you can join them before long.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “You’re not hoping their side wins.”

  “You’ve seen my identification.”

  “These days anybody can arrange to get a union card, but not an apartment like this.”

  The short one spoke, the one with the round glasses and clean shirt; the others watched and nodded. Ignacio Abel tried to make eye contact with the ex-clerk but didn’t, wanted to remember his name but couldn’t. Their witnessing the disorder in the kitchen, the dishes piled up in the sink, upset him. They searched the maids’ room, the leader supervising from the doorway, directing them to lift up the mattresses and open a trunk against the wall. He didn’t recall ever having looked in the room. When one of the men turned on the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, he was surprised the room was so narrow: two bunk beds, the trunk, a shelf lined with newspaper, a tiny window with a flowered curtain, photos of movie stars tacked to the wall, an old night table that must have been discarded many years ago by Don Francisco de Asís and Doña Cecilia, and on it a small copper Virgin. He felt embarrassment rather than remorse, but he understood he wouldn’t have felt this way if he hadn’t been afraid. The patrol leader looked around, said nothing. Ignacio Abel led them to his office and stood to one side after turning on the light.

  “And whose room is this?”

  “My office.”

  “It looks like the office of a minister.”

  “I work here. It’s my study.”

  “You can call anything work.”

  “And these two in the picture? Old servants?”

  “They’re my parents.”

  “Are they in the Sierra with the insurgents too?”

  “They died many years ago.”

  “And all these maps? Maybe you use them to find out if the enemy’s nearby.”

  “They’re not maps. They’re plans. I work at University City. You know that.”

  “Don’t use formal address with us—we’re all friends.”

  It was hot in the house with all the shutters closed. The former clerk, with calculated impertinence, looked through papers on the desk and let them fall to the floor; he averted his eyes when Ignacio Abel looked at him and exchanged a glance with the other man. Then he opened the drawers one by one and let them fall to the floor. When he found the last one locked, he signaled to the leader.

  “Why do you keep that one locked?”

  “No particular reason. Here’s the key.”

  “Are you getting nervous?”

  “I have no reason to.”

  “Smoke?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’re used to better tobacco?”

  “No, it’s just that I don’t smoke.”

  “Okay, we’re going.”

  For a moment he felt relief, a weakness in the muscles more revelatory than his dignity would allow him to recognize. Then he saw the eyes of the patrol leader and the smile of the former clerk and understood that the plural included him. Okay, we’re going. The one in the tasseled cap stepped on something and Ignacio Abel heard glass breaking and wood cracking. The framed photo of Lita and Miguel on the swing was no longer on his desk.

  “Just a moment,” he said, noticing the difference fear had made in the sound of his voice. “There must be some misunderstanding.”

  “No misunderstanding,” said the leader, the cigarette in his left hand, on his wrist an expensive watch that Ignacio Abel hadn’t spotted before. “Don’t think you fooled us with all your cards and your photographs with Republican reactionaries. Nobody gives us orders. To us you’re nobody, worse than nobody. The comrades in construction remember you well. You hired strikebreakers and invited the Assault Guards every time a strike was called. Now you’re going to pay.”

>   The clerk took him by the left arm and the one in the tasseled cap by the right; in the grip of their large hands his own weak muscles embarrassed him. Without pushing or pulling him they led him across the hall, and they passed the doorman, still standing like a humble visitor. He thought of Calvo Sotelo on the night just a few weeks earlier when they’d come for him: how they said in surprise that he didn’t resist, didn’t assert his immunity as a deputy to those arresting him. He remembered the neighbor from the apartment across the landing, tiny in the peephole in his pajamas, and the woman on her knees clutching awkwardly at the trousers of the man taking him away. He was still in his building and also far away. As they reached the landing on a lower floor he heard a door closing and understood that a neighbor must be peering through the peephole, grateful not to be the one arrested. The black vehicle that would take him away started up as soon as the entrance door opened. It was a rather small van, on its roof a panel with a drawing of a bar of soap from which bubbles rose. LÓPEZ SOAPS. The clerk, forcing him to bend to get into the van, squeezed his head hard, pressing his fingers into his skull. Dear Miguel and Lita, dear Judith, dear Adela. With the street lamps out and the windows shuttered, Calle Príncipe de Vergara was a tunnel of darkness opening before the van’s headlights. He was in the back seat. Nobody would shoot him in the back of the head without his realizing it, without his knowing he’d die, the way Calvo Sotelo had been shot, twice. He asked where they were taking him. He asked in a voice so low the sound of the engine erased it, and he had to swallow and clear his throat to repeat the question.