In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  Moreno Villa’s bony hand was cold when he shook it. “You make me envious, Abel, leaving for America, disembarking in New York. I went so many years ago, and it’s as if I had been there yesterday. When you called to say you were coming to say goodbye, I took the liberty of bringing you a present.” He had a book on the desk, and before giving it to him he wrote a dedication on the title page. That copy must be somewhere, on a shelf in a library or a used-book store, the paper brittle after so many years, slightly more valuable because it has a dedication in the cautious hand of Moreno Villa, so similar to the line in his drawings, under the red letters of the title, Proofs of New York: “For Ignacio Abel, in the hope it will be of some help as a guide on his journey, Madrid, October 1936, from his friend J. Moreno Villa.” “It’s one of those books one publishes that no one will read,” he said, as if apologizing. “The advantage is that it’s short. I wrote it on my return trip. You can read it on your trip out. You don’t know the envy I feel.” And like Negrín that morning, Moreno Villa accompanied him to the door, leading him along bare halls and rooms of rococo opulence where at times the strokes of pendulum clocks echoed. They passed several footmen in knee breeches and long coats carrying boxes of papers, followed by a soldier in uniform pushing a large trunk with wheels.

  “The president is leaving,” said Moreno Villa. “He says it’s against his will.”

  “He’s leaving Madrid? The situation’s that bad?”

  “It seems the government doesn’t want to take any risks. But Don Manuel is suspicious and thinks they want him out of the way.”

  “They’ve always said he was a fearful man.”

  “I don’t think he’s afraid this time. He gives the impression of simply being tired. Sometimes he passes me and doesn’t see me. He pays no attention to what’s said to him. Not because he doesn’t care about the course of the war but because he doesn’t expect anyone to tell him the truth. Do you know his aide, Colonel Hernández Sarabia? A civilized man, fairly well read. He told me the president can barely sleep at night. The gunfire and shouting at the executions in the Casa de Campo keep him awake, just as they kept me awake at the Residence. Hernández Sarabia says that when it’s silent and the wind comes from that direction, you can hear the death throes of those who take a long time to die. In the summer, when the gunfire stopped, the frogs in the lake croaked again.”

  At the end of a corridor, outlined against the tall windows of a balcony facing west, I see a motionless figure, enveloped in the gray light of a rainy morning that resembles an old black-and-white photograph. At that distance the first thing Ignacio Abel saw was the gesture of the hand that held a cigarette, while the other was bent behind the man’s body, a fleshy hand against the black cloth of a jacket. The president had walked out of his office, where he spent hours writing, to stretch his legs and smoke a cigarette while looking through the large windows toward the horizon of oak groves and the Sierra de Guadarrama, invisible now under the clouds, his manner the same as on another occasion, not long ago, when he looked into the crowd that filled the Plaza de Oriente to cheer him, shouting in chorus the syllables of his last name on the day in May when he was elected to the presidency. He’d stood at the marble balustrade, looking out at the sea of heads in the plaza, his expression a cross between remoteness and mourning. He turned his head slowly when he heard Ignacio Abel’s and Moreno Villa’s footsteps.

  “Let’s greet the president.”

  “Let’s not, Moreno. I don’t want to bother him.”

  “He’ll ask me who you are and will be annoyed and think I brought you in behind his back and am scheming.”

  President Azaña exhaled smoke, his bulbous face swelling slightly.

  “Don Manuel,” said Moreno, “I’m sure you remember Ignacio Abel.”

  “I once drove you in my car to inspect the construction at University City,” Abel said. “And another time I was with you at the Ritz, at the dinner for the opening of the Philosophy Building.”

  “With Negrín, wasn’t it? The two of you wanted to convince me that razing those magnificent pine groves at Moncloa had been worth it.”

  Azaña’s eyes were a light, watery gray. He extended his right hand and held it almost inert while Ignacio Abel shook it. It was a soft hand, colder than Moreno Villa’s. Seen up close, the president looked older than he did just a few months earlier, and somewhat unkempt, with dandruff and white hairs on the wide lapels of a funereal jacket that had the shine of wear. An air of lethargy and extreme exhaustion slackened his features, made his skin colorless.

  “How’s your University City coming along? Have you completed the building we inaugurated with so much fanfare more than three years ago?”

  “For the moment everything has been suspended, I’m afraid, Don Manuel.”

  “An elegant way to say it. Negrín and the architect López Otero and the minister of education insisted on telling me that by October of this year they’d take me to the dedication of the completed site. But that was before the construction strike and all this began.”

  “Dr. Negrín has always been an optimist.”

  “I imagine by now he’s found reasons not to be. Though I couldn’t say. He doesn’t come to see me anymore. He’s probably busy, being a minister . . .”

  “Señor Abel leaves tomorrow for the United States. He came to say goodbye to me and pay his respects to you.”

  Azaña looked at Abel from behind his glasses, on his face an expression of subtle sarcasm.

  “On another of those official missions we sponsor so our most distinguished intellectuals can hurry out of Spain without losing their self-respect? The minute they cross the border and feel safe, they say bad things about the Republic.”

  “Señor Abel has been commissioned to design a building at a university in the United States,” said Moreno Villa, as if improvising an excuse. “A great library.”

  Azaña looked at the two of them but no longer seemed to see them, or didn’t trust them. The nail on his left index finger was yellow with nicotine; the tip of his right had an ink stain.

  “If you think I can do something when I’m there, let me know.”

  “No one can do anything. We’re our own worst enemies. Have a good trip.”

  The president bent his head slightly and without shaking hands returned to his office, to the notebook where he wrote in a tiny, regular script, in the light of a lamp even during the day, an artificial glow he liked to be enveloped in as if it were a refuge.

  About the rest of that day he remembers almost nothing, only the unreality in which everything seemed to sink in the face of his imminent journey, as if all the actions, once completed, were done for the last time. He’d have liked not to recall the solitude of the apartment on that final night, the hours approaching his departure, the electric light weakened by the damage of a recent bombing raid, the unpleasant taste of the cognac he drank to calm himself as he lay down on the bed, fully dressed, his suitcase on the floor, the documents in a folder on the night table. He took off his shoes, turned out the light, closed his eyes to rest for a few minutes. He woke with the anguished feeling that it was late and the truck would have left by the time he reached the station. But the clock on the night table told him that only a few minutes had passed. In the darkness a voice repeated his name from the end of the hall, on the other side of the closed door, secured on the inside with a double lock and bolt. A hand knocked gently to call him without raising an alarm, someone repeated his name, the mouth at the space between the door and the frame, breathing, pronouncing the name as if the sound would be enough to overcome the resistance of the wood, the thickness and weight of oak, the firmness of the steel lock and bolts. “Ignacio,” it said, “Ignacio, open the door.” This time violent steps on the staircase didn’t wake him, or the car coming to a stop on the sidewalk in the silence of four in the morning, or the glare of headlights shining through the shutters into the dark bedroom. It was a slow, familiar voice, which he identified as soon as the d
aze of sleep vanished. He sat on the edge of the bed. Had he dreamed the voice? He sat a while longer, alert now, his back straight, his hands on his knees, wanting to believe he wouldn’t hear that voice calling him again, the knocking on the door wouldn’t be repeated. If the silence hadn’t been so profound, Víctor’s voice wouldn’t have penetrated so clearly the closed doors and the space of empty rooms. He stood, trying to make no noise; he didn’t turn on the lamp for fear the click of the switch would betray him. He moved cautiously, one step and then another, pausing after each movement, advancing in the darkness from one room to another, catching glimpses of the white sheets covering the furniture. Before he reached the door, he froze when he heard the voice again, identified it without the slightest uncertainty, recognizing its impatience, the anger mixed with fear, the hoarseness of someone who hasn’t spoken aloud for a long time, perhaps hasn’t had water to drink, has a fever, is wounded. “Ignacio, for the sake of all you love best, open the door, I know you’re there, I hear you breathing.” But it was impossible for Víctor to detect his presence if Ignacio himself was barely aware of the silent breath in his nostrils, so still he could feel his heartbeat in his temples and in his chest. “Ignacio, they’re after me, I have no place to hide, let me in. I promise you I’ll leave before daybreak. No one saw me come in. I won’t compromise you, Ignacio, no one will see me leave, for the sake of all you love best.” Ignacio stretched out his arm until he touched the door. With extreme care he lifted the thin metal cover of the peephole. He peered out quickly, as if he might be observed from the outside. But he saw nothing. The landing was in darkness. The bulb in the ceiling light had blown out a while ago and the porter hadn’t changed it. He heard the brush of Víctor’s body against the door, adhering to it, his agitated breathing, the click of his tongue in a mouth with no saliva. His palm hit the door repeatedly but cautiously. The panting was interrupted by the voice repeating his name: “Ignacio, Ignacio, for God’s sake, open the door, if you don’t hide me they’ll kill me, I know you’re there, I hear you, even though you don’t want me to, I saw you come in and I know you haven’t left.” Now he closed his fist and hit the door with his knuckles, and with his other hand he turned the bronze doorknob as if trying out the possibility that it would not resist, that the door would open, allowing him to step into the safety of the other side. He stopped knocking for a while. Though Ignacio heard no footsteps, it was hard to tell whether he’d left. On the other side of the peephole, nothing but concave darkness. But he was still there, only he’d leaned his back against the door and slid down to the floor. And if he never left, if he passed out, if he stayed much longer, by the time Ignacio had to leave, it would be too late for the truck to Valencia. Perhaps he’d been wounded and was bleeding to death. Perhaps he’d spent many nights without sleep, fleeing from one hiding place to another, and was asleep at the door. But the voice sounded again, closer, hoarser, his lips against the edge of the door. “Ignacio, I swear I haven’t killed anybody, I haven’t harmed any of your people. Ignacio, open the door. What will your children think when they find out you let them kill me?” He could almost feel Víctor’s breath on his face, that other body glued to his, the sour smell of his fear. He listened for footsteps but didn’t hear any. The seconds ticked on his watch. A door suddenly opened then closed, keys and bolts turning after the rumble of the heavy wood door. Motionless, cold on his face, on the soles of his feet, Ignacio knew the voice spoke to him from farther away, perhaps only a few centimeters but already beyond this world. “Damn you, Ignacio. Damn you. You never had a heart. Not to be a red or to be a man. I know you’re there, Ignacio.”

  33

  HE LEFT THE FACULTY CLUB after lunch, relieved to be alone after spending the morning subjected to Stevens’s chatter, his inexhaustible enthusiasm, his condescending smile as if addressing an invalid. Stevens had said he’d come for him at nine that morning, and at five to nine he heard the car stopping in front of the house, and the horn. Ignacio Abel had been waiting for some time, reading, sitting beside the window, observing the treetops that disappeared into the distance, listening to the birds in the forest and those that flew by in high triangular formations across the clear sky, making loud cawing noises that raised distant echoes. He woke early, aware of having slept deeply, with no dreams of voices saying his name or phones ringing. He stayed in bed for a while, barely moving, content in the warm softness of the quilt and pillow, the clean sheets, their whiteness growing purer as the first light of day entered the room, a little before the sun appeared above the conical treetops. He saw his raincoat tossed at the foot of the bed, his shoes and socks on the floor, his trousers and shirt hanging over the chair, like the traces of someone else’s presence; weariness and the smell of cheap food and hotel rooms still clung to them. He took a long bath in hot water, submerged in the tub that had the spacious proportions of everything else in the house, and when he closed his eyes and lowered his head beneath the water, holding his breath, he felt himself dissolving in the weightlessness of rest, protected, absolved, his skin soothed by the touch of soap and sponge, his sex revived like an underwater plant or animal, bringing with no effort of memory the recollection of Judith’s body—no, not the recollection, the physical sensation, intense and fleeting, like having her close in a dream and losing her as he woke, as the water in the tub began to cool, his phantom lover accompanying him to places he’d never been with her. When he wiped the steam from the mirror he saw the exhausted face of his journey, the restless eyes of someone who hasn’t yet reached his destination. He soaped his face slowly, making a good deal of lather with the badger-hair brush, part of the pigskin case stamped with his initials, a gift from Adela on his last saint’s day, when they were still planning the entire family’s move to America. The razor slid gently over his skin, softened by the heat of the bath. He shaved as meticulously as in his bathroom in Madrid, though without the rush that tended to rule him then, the rush to get to the office right away or to meet Judith Biely early in the morning, the most gratifying secret encounter because it occurred at the busiest time of day. Today he was early and had time for everything. In the guesthouse time was as plentiful as space. The loose skin on his neck made shaving more difficult. The line of his jaw was no longer as clear as it had been. Age, which he’d rarely paid attention to—out of distraction, pride, the flattery of Judith’s love—had begun to slacken muscles that once were firm, softening his face, almost erasing in his dewlap the shape of his chin. But carefully shaven and combed, a straight part in the center of his hair, his sideburns cut cleanly at a suitable length, he looked younger and more respectable, not a dubious refugee or an upright pauper, one of those who read newspaper want ads at cafeteria counters or on park benches, or those fugitives from Hitler who’d begun to arrive in Madrid from Germany a few years earlier. How grateful Professor Rossman would have been for a room like this, a slow bath and clean clothes, a tranquility that didn’t alleviate uncertainty but left it suspended. Now he could finally put on the clothes he’d set aside with great care for this day: the white shirt, the cuffs and collar not worn, the spare suit he’d hung in the closet before going to sleep, the vest, the tie pin, the cuff links. He polished his shoes as well as he could, but there was no way to hide the cracks or worn soles, and one of the laces had to be tied gently because it was frayed and could break at any moment. I learn most from observing how everyday things wear out, the engineer Torroja had told him in Madrid: how they deteriorate, how time and use give them their true form and then destroy them. The soles of these shoes, cut and sewn by hand and now unrecognizable, the laces rubbing against the eyelets, subject to wear that in Torroja’s scientific mind was similar to that of the ropes on a ship or the steel cables of a bridge. He could toss his dirty clothes into a wicker basket in the bathroom, which Stevens had pointed out to him; the smell of them embarrassed him, signs of the lack of hygiene to which he’d gradually surrendered in recent months. On the closet door was a full-length mirror where he exa
mined himself, brushed his suit and hat and tried to give the brim the proper tilt. Too formal, perhaps, but maybe that was the effect of not having really dressed with care ever since being well dressed in Madrid had become strange and dangerous. He saw in the mirror not so much the person he was at this moment but the memory of the man he’d been a year ago, in this same suit, on the day in early October when he dressed to give his talk at the Student Residence, the first image of him that Judith Biely would remember, if she still remembered him.

  Too formal: the suit cut by a modern tailor in Madrid is, here at Burton College, suddenly old-fashioned, almost antiquated, compared with the students’ casual clothing and the flannels and checked jackets of the professors, who project an air of rural English gentry in harmony with the vague medieval mimesis of the architecture. That’s why it’s so easy to distinguish Ignacio Abel when he leaves the Faculty Club and walks along a path in the central quadrangle of the campus. He’s more formal and moves more slowly than the rest, more leisurely with his hands in his pockets and his excessive Spanish pallor, enjoying the early afternoon sun without his raincoat or a suitcase in hand, passing groups of young men and women carrying books and briefcases and hurrying to their classes or the library, where there is no more room for books, a pseudo-Gothic building that will be abandoned as soon as the new library is built, the one that exists only as an imaginative conjecture sketched in a notebook he carries in his pocket. He observes supple bodies and healthy faces that seem never to have been brushed by the shadow of fear or distorted by cruelty or anger. The girls in light dresses on the warm October morning, in flat shoes and white socks, and the boys in brightly colored sweaters, almost all of them bareheaded, mixing in a seemingly effortless camaraderie. The quality of their teeth allows their laughter: he recalls Negrín’s judgment when he observed people’s faces in Madrid with the eyes of a physician and saw the sad signs of malnutrition and lack of hygiene. Pasteurized milk and cod liver oil, abundant calcium for rotten teeth, would be the remedies for Spain’s backwardness! He has time; they won’t be picking him up for the dinner the president of the college is giving in his honor until six. Hours seemed to sprout within hours: he finished dressing this morning and still had time to eat breakfast, write a letter, and examine the solitude of the guesthouse. In the hallways hung oil portraits of men in colonial dress or nineteenth-century frock coats, landscapes of the banks of the Hudson with blue mountains in the background and hills covered by autumnal forests, and watercolor renderings of projected college buildings. On one crudely executed, vividly detailed picture, a label with the inscription Burton College, 1823 floated above a view of a large, fortified, Gothic-looking tower rising from a clearing, as meticulous as a medieval illuminated manuscript. Like an intruder or a phantom he walked down the oak steps of the staircase that led to the foyer. In the light of day everything was different from what he’d seen the evening before. He crossed a large library with half-empty shelves, a grand piano in the center, folding chairs propped against one wall. He crossed a sitting room that overlooked a garden and had a hearth where a fire of fragrant wood crackled, and deep leather armchairs beside which hung newspapers on frames. It seemed as if someone diligent and invisible had been waiting for him to wake. He heard the sounds of plates and flatware. At the end of a long dining room table was a breakfast service. A stout black woman said a jovial good morning and asked a series of questions he understood only gradually, deciphering the obvious sounds with some delay. He agreed to everything: he wanted coffee, he wanted sugar and milk, he wanted orange juice, butter and marmalade, rye bread. The woman was at once majestic and accommodating: she said things to him that were indecipherable when he thought he was on the point of understanding them, and she observed with indulgent patience as he attempted to say something and suddenly a trivial word would escape him. She watched him eat, respectful and affable, served him more milk and more coffee and slices of dark, porous bread, and indicated with gestures that he should spread on more butter and try each of the pots of marmalade arranged on the table. She quickly gathered the breakfast things and told him with exaggerated hand movements not to worry about anything, she’d come back later to clean the house. Her expression was sad as she watched him eat and said something about the Great War and the lack of food then, and that her husband (or her son) had fought in Europe and come back sickened by poison gas. There was something wholesome in everything around him, in the construction of the house and the thickness of the slices of bread, the rich density of the milk and the heavy china of the cup, a kind of robust cordiality that was also in the woman’s presence and the size of her hands, with their pink nails and white palms.