In the Night of Time

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  He speaks without moving and without taking his eyes off Judith. Words leave his mouth, though he barely separates his lips. He speaks and doesn’t think about what he’s going to say next, the sound of his own voice spurs him on. The fury is in the words, not in him. He maintains a monotonous neutrality, as if testifying at a trial or making a statement, being careful not to speak too quickly for the typist who’s transcribing it. Speaking alleviates and exalts him. It returns shame and lucidity to him in waves, and restores an abused but not abolished shadow of personal integrity. He can’t be the only one who’s fled, who hides behind a submissive courtesy, who before speaking must be certain not to offend or annoy anyone. His hands still rest on the table, one on top of the other, and the muscles in his face don’t move either, though the unequal light from the fire and oil lamp modifies the shadows. But he’s become more confident as he speaks, raising his voice a little or perhaps pronouncing words with more precision and a different kind of energy, just as he hasn’t once lowered his eyes or stopped speaking when Judith looked as if she were about to say something. He’s been silent for so long that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t stop talking. It’s now, stimulated by his own words, that he begins to realize how long his silence has lasted, the huge volume of what he’s kept silent, its monstrous proliferation, silence a habit and a refuge and a way of accommodating to the world, then transformed into the very space around him, the cell and bell jar where he’s lived in recent months. The silence in his apartment on sleepless nights, the silence in his office at University City; looking and keeping silent, looking away, not saying anything, traveling in silence on trains, alone in hotel rooms, in a cabin on the ship that crossed the Atlantic, in New York cafeterias where he sat by the window to look at the street and the signs painted in bright colors. He’s been silent for so long, and now words come easily to him, the images of what he’s seen and what he’d like to describe to Judith with absolute accuracy, though he suspects he won’t succeed. No explanation can convey the experience, the terror, the absurd truth that only someone who’s lived it can understand, though he tries in vain to turn it into words and moves his lips as if gasping for air, not looking away from Judith’s eyes; looking at her now with an openness he didn’t have before, slowly taking pleasure in her reclaimed features, her proximity, the marvel of her existence now that he has no hope, and desire is stunted by her physical reticence, by the inertia of a bitter male capitulation, wounded vanity, and sexual humiliation. But it’s this lack of hope that allows him to see Judith more clearly than ever, his attention for the first time free of the urgency of a desire that in its former fulfillment was always undermined by the fear of evanescence and loss. Now he sees Judith exactly as she is. Her voice reaches him as precisely as the brush of a hand on his eyelids.

  “If you know so much, tell me the honorable way to act. Tell me whether you think there’s a just way to behave.”

  “I don’t know anything. I don’t know whether I’m as much of a clown as the rest. Each person justifies his shameful behavior the best he can. Only the murdered are without guilt, and you don’t want to be one of them. Professor Rossman, or Lorca.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the paper. Professor Salinas was distraught. I wanted to think it was a rumor, a false report. Why would they have killed him?”

  “For no reason, Judith. He was innocent. Do you think that’s a small crime? Innocents are not wanted anywhere.”

  “You finally said my name.”

  “You haven’t said mine yet.”

  “‘Living in pronouns.’ Do you remember? I didn’t really understand the meaning of that poem. You explained it to me. The lovers can call each other only ‘you’ and ‘I’ so they won’t be found out.”

  “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

  “I already have the ticket. The ship sails tomorrow from New York. Three hundred of us are going. And many more will go soon. In small groups, to keep a low profile. Some will go to France first, others to England.”

  “The borders will be closed.”

  “We’ll cross where the smugglers do.”

  “This is not a novel, Judith.”

  “Don’t talk to me again in that mocking tone.”

  “I don’t want you to be killed.”

  “I asked you to tell me what can be done, and you haven’t answered.”

  “There’s nothing you can or should do. You’re lucky, it’s not your country. Forget about it because you can. Many more people were killed in Abyssinia than in Spain and neither of us lost any sleep over it. And neither did the democracies or the League of Nations. Hitler wants to expel all the Jews from Germany, and he’s put the Social Democrats and Communists in camps, and there hasn’t been a single international protest. Will anyone be shocked to learn that he’s helping Franco? In Russia they die of hunger by the millions and nobody cares, but all the generous lovers of justice are moved by Soviet propaganda. With some exceptions, this whole world is a horrifying place. Don’t they lynch Negroes in the south of your country? How many were killed three or four years ago in Paraguay, in the Chaco War? Hundreds of thousands. You may not have heard of it. Do you really believe that your actions, just or unjust, can make any difference? If you want to ease your conscience, join a committee of solidarity with the Spanish Republic. Ask for money in the street, collect warm clothing. The militiamen need it now in the Sierra. If you send them a sweater or a blanket, you’ll have been more useful than letting yourself be killed. If you collect just one can of condensed milk or a pack of cigarettes for them.”

  “I hear you speak and I don’t know you.”

  “I’m not here to tell you what you want to hear.”

  “I shouldn’t have come. I could have been in New York by now.”

  “Go on, then. Maybe by the time you get to Spain the Republic won’t have collapsed yet. They’ll welcome you with placards and bands. They’ll take you on a tour of some peaceful front. In Madrid they’ll give a dinner dance in your honor at the palace of the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. The meal they’ll serve will be much better and more abundant than the food they give the soldiers at the front—that is, if there are trucks to bring the food, or gasoline for the trucks, maybe there isn’t any, or it’s being used for parades or for taking people to slaughter. Alberti and his gang of poets in nicely pressed blue coveralls will recite yards of verses for you. They’ll take you to a bullfight and a flamenco performance. They’ll take pictures of you and you’ll be in the papers. They’ll present you as further confirmation that all over the world sympathy is growing for the struggle of the Spanish people against fascism. Then they’ll take you to the border and you’ll all go back to your countries with a clear conscience and the joy of having had a dangerous, exotic adventure. You’ll even go back with a tan.”

  “I’m leaving. I don’t have to listen to this. I’m ashamed of you.”

  She stood up and now looks at him from above, as if challenging him to try to block her way. His two hands are separated, parallel on the table, but that’s the only movement he’s made. He raises his eyes to her, then looks at the fire, then at the spot where Judith had been only a moment before. She’ll leave, and each step she takes will be a definitive parting. He thinks of Moreno Villa this summer, in his room at the Residence: now we’ve learned that in these times a casual departure may be forever. She’ll cross the darkened library, the foyer. He’ll hear the door shut, then wait for the car engine to start. Angry and nervous, Judith won’t begin to drive right away. The sound of the engine will become steady. Sitting still, his eyes on the fire, he’ll hear the sound fading until it’s gone, the red taillights dimming like embers at the end of the road, the tunnel of entwined tree branches. In the silence the patter of the rain will return, the crackle of the fire, a brief burst of logs burning. After a while no sign that Judith has been here, only the plate with her unfinished supper, the half-consumed bottle of beer. He’ll go up to bed, lighting his way with t
he oil lamp, and search for Judith’s scent on a towel. He’ll look in the mirror to brush his teeth, half his face erased by darkness, his own eyes eluding him. He makes no move to stop her, now that he still has her within reach. Judith speaks, framed by the door she’s just opened and at any moment will cross. She is calm.

  “You think you know everything, but you don’t know anything. The volunteers I know don’t go to Spain to be tourists, I can assure you. Many are already there receiving military training to join the Republican army. Many more will arrive from America and half the world. If there were so few differences between the two sides, and it all amounts to nothing more than savagery and senselessness, there wouldn’t be so many intelligent and brave people prepared to risk their lives in Spain. You know I’m not a fanatic. I don’t feel much sympathy for the Communists. But they’re organizing recruitment, and I’ll go to Spain with them and many others who aren’t Communists. If I hadn’t fallen in love with you, I probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with Spain. But by now it’s my other country, and what’s happening there breaks my heart. Just reading the names of the towns in the paper or hearing them pronounced on the radio. When they say ‘Madrid,’ it’s my city because you showed it to me. I lived two years in London and Paris and never stopped feeling like a foreigner. A foreigner who visited extraordinary museums with a guilty conscience because I got bored too soon and wasn’t European. I went to Madrid, and as soon as I took my first walk around the Plaza de Santa Ana, between the shoeshine boy and the grocery, it was as if I were back in New York. I like the Spanish. Me caen bien, as you say. I like the slow, shabby streetcars and the pots of red geraniums on the balconies. I like the Rastro as much as the Prado. But it isn’t the romanticism of an American, though you may think so. It’s political common sense. I was moved by the poor lining up with so much dignity to vote on the day of the last elections. I liked to go through your neighborhood and see people entering and leaving the new modern market you designed, with the flag on the façade. If Hitler and Mussolini help the military win in Spain, what will happen next in the world? I don’t want those people to enter Madrid.”

  “And what will you do to prevent it?”

  “Anything. Whatever I can. I can drive an ambulance and help in a hospital. I speak French, Yiddish, and a fair amount of Russian, aside from English and Spanish. I can act as an interpreter. Someone will have to help all those people who are arriving to communicate with the Spaniards. You say you’re not brave and not a revolutionary, and neither am I. You say what you like is to do something well, and that’s what I want. I don’t plan to argue politics. Ever since I was married I’ve had a horror of the aggressive arguments about Stalin and Trotsky, kulaks, five-year plans, world revolution, socialism. I want to work for the Spanish Republic. I want to be in Madrid, just as I was this time last year.”

  “That Madrid no longer exists.”

  “It can’t have disappeared in so short a time.”

  “You won’t recognize it.”

  “I prefer to find that out for myself.”

  “Stay with me. If you go now, I know I’ll never see you again.”

  “You didn’t count on seeing me now anyway. Nothing will happen to me in Spain.”

  “Even if nothing happens to you, if you go now you won’t come back. Think of how big the world is, how complicated it is for two people to meet. We’ve been lucky twice—there won’t be another time. When you came tonight, it was for a reason.”

  “I came to say goodbye.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “It was on my way.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I have to go now.”

  “Just stay the night. I’m not asking for anything else.”

  “I’m not your lover anymore.”

  “I’m not asking you to go to bed with me. The only thing I’m asking you is not to leave tonight. You’ll have to sleep somewhere.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want us to go on talking. I’m here with you and I can’t believe it’s true. So many times I imagined that I’d see you again and that we would talk and talk, without getting tired, without falling silent. I never stopped imagining what I’d say to you when I saw you again, all that I’d tell you. Thinking was talking to you. I don’t know how many letters I wrote to you in my head those three months in Madrid and while I was traveling. Crossing the ocean, when we reached New York. A lot of people were waiting at the gangplank, and I thought I saw your face, heard your voice calling me.”

  She’s gone out to the car to fetch her suitcase, which seems too light for the long trip she’s about to take. In her absence Ignacio Abel has remained attentive, afraid to hear the sound of the engine. He’s heard only the rain on the windows, the tin gutters, the slate eaves, the glass roof of an abandoned conservatory behind the house. Judith sits behind the wheel and watches the drops on the windshield, clouding the sight of the porch and the door she left ajar when she went out. She has both hands on the wheel and the nape of her neck rests against the back of the seat. She knows that he’s waiting inside the large, darkened house, perhaps still motionless at the table in the library, the candle almost extinguished, his thin face illuminated by the light of the fire. She knows him too well. She sees his long hands on the table, the prominent knuckles, hands that made no move toward her, no attempt to touch her. She thinks if she stays now, it’s because she doesn’t have the energy to face two more hours on the road, or the idea of arriving very late in New York and having to find a room in a cheap hotel. He’ll think that she’s taking too long, but he won’t move, fatalistic and alert, sitting at the table in the library, reduced inside the jacket whose shoulders are too wide. He does and doesn’t wait for her. The restlessness of another time is now a self-absorption that has a touch of physical neglect. When he saw her move toward the door, he felt a mixture of anguish and acceptance. Then something happens. The foyer and several windows in the house fill with light. Judith returns holding her suitcase, drops of rain wetting her face and hair. She knows he’s heard her steps and the door close. The electric light shines on the waxed wooden floor, but the hall that leads to the library is still in shadow. Judith pushes the door, hearing fragments of music and voices on the radio. Ignacio Abel is in front of the radio, his face lit by a candle. Judith puts down the suitcase and walks toward him. He looks at her and discovers in her eyes something that wasn’t there before, an unexpected gleam, a trace of another time. It frightens him suddenly to desire her so much, to be so hopelessly drawn to her, now that he can’t or isn’t allowed to touch her. She left a few minutes ago and now she’s back, a second chance, as if she’s returned from Madrid and not the distant past when she was his and he was hers.

  36

  HE CLIMBS THE STEPS deliberately, pausing on each one, sliding his right hand along the banister that follows the staircase conceived for the flair of evening gowns in another century. Amplified by the strange acoustical laws of the house, he hears water filling a bathtub. He is as conscious of this sound as he is of each step he takes, each heartbeat rebounding inside his chest, the air that doesn’t quite fill his lungs, makes him feel that he is beginning to suffocate, the feeling as powerful as the emptiness in his stomach. In his mind he sees Judith undress, behind the closed bathroom door perhaps, extending her hand to test the water temperature. It seems as if the dead of another time are watching him from the penumbra of the oil portraits, the solemn dead above him reproachfully examining an intruder, a thief whom they can’t expel. Time expands on this night so dense with words, and what happened a while ago already has the hazy quality of memory. Judith returned to the library with raindrops shining on her face and hair, and remained standing in the doorway, not recognizing the place she’d left just a few minutes earlier, which seemed so long a time to him. The ceiling-high shelves, grand piano, long table, and large globe of the world constituted the inhospitable stage set. He turned the porcelain switch, and they again fou
nd themselves in the space their words and presence had shaped as much as the flames in the fireplace and the candlelight, the dark room mirrored in the windowpanes, and the cold damp night. She asked him not to turn off the radio now that he’d found a station broadcasting the distant pulse of a song marked by clarinet solos and a woman’s melodious, high-pitched voice. Behind their conversation, the music and voices on the radio have continued to play, though they’ve barely heard them, just as they’ve heard the rain only intermittently, when they were silent for a moment, close to each other, the invisible gulf not abolished but at least no longer the hostile frontier across which they looked at each other, their words forming like ice crystals in no man’s land, the space between those who no longer touch. Judith shivered a little when she entered the library, the light damp cloth of her shirt rubbing against her skin. At other times, on spring nights in Madrid that suddenly turned cold, she’d taken shelter in his arms as they walked after leaving a booth in a café or in the rain along the banks of the Manzanares. He’d put his jacket over her shoulders. Now he saw that slight trembling in her and did nothing, sitting beside the fire, near the radio she’d asked him to leave on and to which she paid no attention, his hands resting on the worn leather of the armchair, incapable of moving toward her as if he’d lost the use of his legs, as impotent as when he heard her go out and thought she wouldn’t come back. She put some wood on the fire and sat on the floor, her legs crossed casually, looking at the flames as she hugged herself to take away the cold, looking at him, as formal and solemn in the armchair as the ghost of one of the former inhabitants of the house. Judith took off her shoes and wet socks. He would have liked so much to warm her feet. Her strong heel, the faint pulse in the modeling of her ankle, her long instep with sinuous blue veins, her toes with painted nails. He opened his mouth to say something, wanting to shorten the silence, but Judith interrupted him.