In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  “We’ll have to stop, Don Ignacio. We have to put water in the radiator. The motor’s burning out.”

  “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  “I’m a disaster. I’m lost.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll ask in the village. We’ll find a road back to Madrid around here.”

  “But we have to go to Illescas, Don Ignacio. They entrusted us with a mission.”

  “Our mission right now is to not get killed.”

  “Did you see the Fascists? Did you see the Moors’ sabers shining?”

  “Slow down. The village seems empty.”

  “They must’ve evacuated it.”

  Never having learned the name of the village, Ignacio Abel remembered it as a phantom site. There was a fountain with several spouts at the entrance, and Miguel Gómez stopped the truck beside it. The three militiamen jumped down from the back, shaking their legs, telling jokes. Whose idea was it to send them for paintings, as if they worked for a moving company instead of killing Fascists? They were young; the evidence of danger and the spectacle of death were lost on them. “What do we do now, comrade? Go to Madrid without the paintings and not take any insurgents back with us?” Past the fountain, the only street in the village curved toward a small, arcaded square where the church stood. Not a single tree, no shade. Ignacio Abel washed his face in the fountain, drying it with the handkerchief he hadn’t forgotten to fold that morning into the breast pocket of his jacket. Miguel Gómez had unscrewed the radiator cap and was letting the engine cool before putting in water. The militiamen had taken out lunch pails and a bota of wine. They left their rifles leaning against the fountain wall and sat down in the sun to eat. Ignacio Abel moved away from the group, impatient to be alone, to find someone who’d tell him where they were and what would be the best way back to Madrid. He walked down the middle of the street. A little farther on a woman’s shawl, an open suitcase filled with tableware, folders of what seemed to be legal documents. He saw a door ajar and, after knocking on it a few times, pushed it open. He entered a kitchen, its walls curved like a cave and black with soot, where embers smoldered in a stove and a cooking pot sat nearby. The air held a residual odor of boiled garbanzos and rancid bacon. Something moving at the edge of his field of vision caused a rush of alarm: a canary in a cage, fluttering about, bumping into the wire sides. Back on the street, the vertical sun hit his eyes. Ignacio Abel was about to go back when he saw something projecting from the next corner: a shoe, the bottom edge of corduroy trousers, a man against the wall covered with bulletholes and spattered blood, in the middle of his chest a black hole of torn flesh and coagulated blood. He was lying face-up, but next to him was another man with his face to the ground, and a little beyond them two or three more piled up, and a barefoot woman with broad white thighs, her dress soaked in blood. Flies buzzed around their wounds, mouths, eyes. The air smelled of excrement and intestines. A vertical swaying shadow was projected onto the whitewashed wall: in a hayloft a man had been hanged from a hook on a pulley. His eyes were bulging, his swollen tongue sticking out of his mouth. At his feet a puddle of urine, both of his ears cut off.

  He tested his back against the wall, close to the legs of the hanged man. He felt rough wood: a door. He slipped inside. It was a stable. He stepped in manure. A hen looked at him with a severe air as she sat on a straw nest on top of a sack of wheat. We’re lost on the other side of the lines, he thought. No sign, no border. Madrid suddenly a place as unreachable as America. They kill as they advance, methodically eradicating with a pitiless efficiency no one can stop. They’ll discover the truck and in a few seconds they’ll have machine-gunned those three boys playing at war and poor Miguel Gómez, who won’t be able to get his hand on his pistol. An oblique thread of sun traversed the ground in the stable; a shadow crossed it, and then another. Ignacio heard with absolute clarity the metallic sound of a rifle on a shoulder. Then an engine starting up, the neighing of a horse, the sound of hooves, first on paving stones, then on the ground. In the silence, the minutes had the inconsistency of time in dreams. He was struck by fear that the engine he’d heard was the truck’s. But Miguel would never leave without me. He went out to the street, staying close to the wall, and when he reached the corner, he heard at his back the mechanism of a rifle bolt and a gruff voice ordering him to halt. Fear was a stab wound in the middle of his spine. He turned his head slowly and the person aiming at him was one of the three militiamen, pale in the wounding light of midday and as frightened as he was, and just as much a stranger. “Don Ignacio,” said Miguel Gómez, “where have you been?”

  They advanced along stray highways, unsure whether they were approaching the enemy or had already met him on the other side of the shifting frontline, whether at any moment they would fall into an ambush. The empty fields were a threat. No signs at the crossroads. They tried to be guided by the position of the sun and head north, but the roads seemed to go only west and south; in that direction lay Talavera de la Reina, and there the enemy certainly was advancing. But then where had they been when they came to that nameless village? Had they come across a regiment or just a scouting party? “They cut off her nose and ears,” said Miguel Gómez. Before or after raping her. Ignacio Abel was driving now. Miguel had agreed with no resistance, relieved really, leaning against the seat, holding on to the door handle, unable to forget the woman’s face, the enormous purple feet of the hanged man. The motor vibrated and roared beneath the sole of the foot stepping on the accelerator. Soon it would begin smoking again. A little faster, taking maximum advantage of the truck’s scant power and crude machinery. A little faster, but where? Along the harsh plain where they didn’t cross paths with anyone, a country uninhabited as if after a plague, barren fields and solitary houses, their roofs fallen in, vineyards disappearing into the distance on the reddish earth.

  “It was a miracle they didn’t see us. And those three idiots joking and making noise as if nothing was going on.”

  “Or maybe they thought there were more of us and ran away.”

  “How scared I was not to see you, Don Ignacio. How could I face my father if anything happened to you?”

  A sign carved into a boundary stone finally indicated the road: TO MADRID, 10 LEAGUES. They want Anarchist communism and we haven’t gotten as far as the decimal metric system. The road led to the national highway, and the slow river of refugees moving toward Madrid forced them to slow down. The multitude looked at the red banner with the emblem of the Fifth Regiment, didn’t move out of the way when the horn sounded. They had the air of fatigued, solemn poverty, of a primitive exodus, a universal migration leaving deserted lands behind. The mules, the donkeys, the carts with crude wooden wheels, the old men, fathers with children on their shoulders, women in black skirts and shawls, herds of goats, the cry of a newborn searching for its mother’s dry breast, the dust and silence enveloping everything, the unanimity of the flight, the urgency lessened by the exhaustion of walking since before dawn, leaving everything or almost everything behind, dropping on the road what became too heavy or unnecessary, like a trash heap the length of the highway, traces of shipwrecks in the dirty foam left by the sea when it recedes. They flee from an army of legionnaires, Moors, and Falangists who’ve been advancing toward Madrid since the end of July, fatigued from their killing spree. Now they lift their eyes and see Madrid for the first time, in the distance, as fantastic as the shapes of clouds, the formidable buildings, the terrifyingly wide streets they won’t dare cross for fear of the cars, the great yellow Telephone Company tower that Ignacio Abel and Miguel Gómez were grateful to see, shining in the sun above the rooftops.

  Night was falling when they entered the city, and under the trees along the Prado and Recoletos the café tables were full. A heavy rain had fallen; the air was clean and the leaves on the trees glistened. On the wet paving stones streetcar rails gleamed. The setting sun illuminated the width of Calle de Alcalá with a dusty light, gold and violet, striking the glass in the high windows of th
e buildings. Ignacio Abel took his leave of Miguel Gómez in the courtyard of the Alliance without saying much. He was dying of hunger, weariness, thirst, but he climbed the stairs of the palace two by two in search of Bergamín’s secretary. From the large hall came the sound of an energetic paso doble. He was in the doorway of Bergamín’s office when the poet Alberti appeared, dressed as a lion tamer in a red jacket with gold braid, white trousers, high boots, carrying a folder of printer’s proofs. He looked at Ignacio Abel and made a distracted gesture of greeting or recognition. In the waiting room Mariana Ríos was taking dictation at her typewriter from a tall man who was standing behind her, his hand resting on the back of her chair. The secretary stopped typing, opened a drawer, and handed Ignacio Abel a sealed envelope. She told him he’d find Professor Rossman in the morgue of the National Security Agency, on Calle de Víctor Hugo. He walked out of the Heredia Spinola Palace, leaving behind the lit balconies and dance music, tearing open the envelope to read its contents in the light of a street lamp: a judicial document written in an ornate hand and detailing the discovery of a man killed by bullet wounds caused by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators, the sole identity document on his person a card issued by the National Library in the name of Don Carlos Luís Rossman. On the table at the morgue, Professor Rossman wasn’t wearing his glasses but he did have on one of his felt slippers, held by a rubber band around the instep of his right foot. He had one eye open and the other almost closed, his face turned to one side, his upper lip drawn back and showing his gums with a few uneven teeth, his expression a frozen smile or one of surprise. Hunger and exhaustion, the growing unreality of it all, sank Ignacio Abel into a daze. In the labyrinth of narrow streets around the National Security Agency he walked to the Gran Vía to find the pensión where Señorita Rossman must have spent another day waiting for his call. The globes of the street lamps, painted blue as a precaution against night bombing raids, lit the corners with the sickly light of a theater set. Some militiamen asked for his papers in the Plaza de Vázquez de Mella, and he saw only the metal of their pistols and the lighted ends of their cigarettes. From a door came a reddish light, the noise of loud laughter, the music of a barrel organ, a brothel smell of disinfectant and perfume. What would he say to Señorita Rossman? What could he do but stand silent in the doorway of her room, so narrow her father would go out to a café to allow his daughter a few hours’ privacy. But Señorita Rossman wasn’t in the pensión, and the landlady told him she hadn’t appeared for several days; they’d come to ask for her from the office where she worked in the Telephone Company, and she, the landlady, had told them she didn’t know anything, she had enough troubles of her own—probably the German had left to avoid paying her monthly rent, and if she didn’t show up in another two or three days, she would have to collect the debt by taking anything of theirs that had value, even if it was only the suitcase on top of the wardrobe.

  From time to time Ignacio Abel thinks of Señorita Rossman; the phone rings and he thinks she must be calling, and before the ringing stops he knows he’s been dreaming. Before he left Madrid, he called the press censorship office in the Telephone Company Building several times, and was told that Señorita Rossman was out sick or had left for unknown reasons, and finally that no one by that name worked there. He didn’t call again.

  32

  STANDING NEAR THE window, Ignacio Abel watches the taillights of the car that brought him to the guesthouse move down the path through the trees. The sound of the engine gradually dissolves in the silence of the woods, where he can hear the dry rapping of a woodpecker. Above the dense treetops a pale blue light remains in the sky, where he can just make out the evening star. The trees are evergreens, pines standing high above the house. He sees no other building, and he doesn’t recall ever being submerged in so profound a silence. Stupefied, relieved, exhausted, hypnotized, he stays in front of the window, his coat still on, holding his hat, in his left hand the pain of having clutched the handle of the suitcase for so long, a gesture as instinctive now as patting his pockets to search for his passport or turning around thinking someone has called his name.

  He isn’t accustomed to the idea of having reached his destination. He can’t calculate the exact number of days that have passed since he left Madrid. And he doesn’t remember the day of the week or today’s date, just that it’s near the end of October. Trains, hotels, a ship’s cabin, border crossings, names of stations are confused in his memory, a continuous yet disconnected sequence of places, sensations, faces, days and nights. He isn’t who he was when he started this journey. What for so long had been the sound of a name and a black dot on a map is now what his eyes have seen since he reached the station, what he looks at as he stands at the window: fields where horses or cows graze, wooden houses and fences painted white, barns, narrow roads, autumnal woods where light continues to vibrate in spite of dusk. There will be no ragged refugees fleeing along these roads, no dead horses in the ditches with swollen bellies, no black smoke on the horizon, suitcases tossed beside the highway, their contents plundered or scattered by passing vehicles, the trampling of animals, the flood of refugees. Rhineberg was a promise, an enigma, a place difficult to imagine in Madrid, and now it’s the house in a clearing in the forest with a porch and wooden columns, large rectangular windows without curtains or grilles, built perhaps at the turn of the century by a tycoon whose taste was more neoclassical than Victorian. He’d touched one of the columns when he got out of the car—Professor Stevens had hurried to open the rear doors, first for him, then for Van Doren. The smooth paint and solid wood were soothing to the touch. Like someone who’s just disembarked after a long sea voyage, he feels the firm floorboards vibrating beneath his swollen feet. His body has become accustomed to constant movement: train wheels, iron bridges, turbine pistons continue to buzz in his ears. How distant now the night he left Madrid in the back of a truck, driving along the Valencia highway with its headlights off, surrounded by men who smoked in the darkness or slept leaning on bundles, covering themselves with old blankets and overcoats, clutching the handles of their suitcases. In the passageway of the crowded night train that carried him to Paris, he slept sitting on the floor; a plainclothes policeman woke him with a kick because he was blocking the way, and with ill humor demanded his papers. He got to his feet, fatigued and half asleep, numb with cold. At first he couldn’t find his passport in any of the pockets he patted with increasing alarm. The rough voice repeated, “Papiers, papiers,” and then the policeman thrust his flashlight close to Ignacio Abel’s face to compare it with the passport photograph, his hair smelling of pomade, his breath of tobacco.

  Things that just happened, unhinged from the present, plunge into a distant past: his final hours in the apartment he was about to abandon, his departure from Madrid, his journey through France at night, the ocean horizon unchanging for six days, the four days of anxious waiting in New York, the two hours on a train this afternoon along the banks of the Hudson. Instinctively he pats his passport in the inside pocket of his raincoat, as if listening to his heart. No one’s going to ask him for it now, tonight. No one will ask for his papers in America, Van Doren told him when they entered the foyer of the house and he took out his passport. He can empty his pockets and put his things in the desk drawers or the night table with no fear. He can hang his spare suit in the closet so it won’t be too wrinkled when he puts it on tomorrow to go to his first, and dreaded, social engagement, after sinking into a bathtub full of hot water for the first time in he doesn’t remember how long and shaving and combing his hair at the mirror above the sink, respectable again, an architect, a visiting professor. But he doesn’t do anything yet: physically he’s reached his destination, but his body holds the tension of the journey, the instinct to distrust, to keep vigilant. Standing at the window, Ignacio Abel drinks in the novelty of stillness and silence while the car’s taillights glow like two live coals in the growing darkness of the trees. He’s safe from immediate uncertainties. No urgent deadline,
no train to catch. He won’t hear footsteps tonight on the wooden steps that go up to the bedroom, and when he falls asleep no one will wake him by pounding on the door. The house has welcomed him with cordial austerity: the amplitude of the spaces, the bareness of the walls painted a light cream color, the suggestion of strength in the materials transmitted by touch to his hands when they brush the banister, to his body through his soles resting on wooden boards. Solid beams and powerful columns made of large tree trunks; stone foundations sunk into the fertile dark earth to the depths of living rock. From the car he observed the outcroppings of that rock and liked the variations in color, not as dark as the schist in Central Park: a greenish gray like patinaed bronze that corresponds subtly to the colors of the trees. In his legs there’s a trace of vibration, in his temples the buzz of electric cables. “The entire house is for you,” Philip Van Doren told him before he left, with a proprietary expression (he’s probably the owner, or was: someone in his family gave the building to the college). “I’ve made certain there’ll be no other guests in the next few days. Light the fire, use the library, play the piano, cook your supper. There’s more than enough food in the refrigerator and pantry. There’s stationery, and ink in the inkwells. There’s a typewriter, and a good record player in the library, and a collection of records. Rubinstein played that piano only a few months ago. You must have the impression that at Burton College we live like pioneers in the middle of these woods, but you’ll see how many eminent guests visit. There’s a good radio, though I’m afraid not good enough to pick up Spanish broadcasts . . .”