by Maria Duenas
“I’ve brought you a visitor, my child,” announced the nun. I thought I could make out a slight trace of concern in her singsong tone. When the new arrival identified himself, I understood why.
“Commissioner Claudio Vázquez, ma’am,” said the stranger by way of greeting. “Or is it ‘miss’?”
He had a tanned face in which two dark, shrewd eyes shone. His hair was almost white, his bearing supple, and he wore a light-colored summer suit. In my weakened state I wasn’t able to tell whether he was an older man with the bearing of a younger man or a younger man prematurely grey. In any case, it mattered little at that moment: the more urgent thing for me was to find out what it was he wanted from me. Sister Virtudes gestured him toward a chair along a nearby wall; swiftly he drew it closer to the right side of my bed and sat down, placing his hat at his feet. With a smile as kind as it was firm he gestured to the sister that he’d rather she leave.
The light was coming in in torrents through the broad windows of the hospital pavilion. Beyond them, the wind was lightly rustling the garden’s palm and eucalyptus trees beneath a dazzling blue sky, testimony to a magnificent summer day for anyone who didn’t have to spend it lying in a hospital bed in the company of a police commissioner. With their impeccable white sheets stretched taut, the two beds on either side of me, like almost all the others, were unoccupied. When the sister left, disguising her vexation at not being able to witness the meeting, the commissioner and I were left in the pavilion with only the company of two or three distant bedridden patients and a young nun silently scrubbing the floor at the far end. I was scarcely sitting up, with the sheet covering me up to my chest, allowing only two increasingly weakened bare arms, my bony shoulders, and my head to emerge. My hair was pulled back into a dark plait to one side of my face, which was thin and ashen, drained by my collapse.
“The sister told me you’re already somewhat recovered, so we’ve got to talk, all right?”
I assented with just a nod of the head, unable even to guess what that man wanted with me; as far as I knew, being torn apart and confused were not against the law. Then the commissioner drew a small notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and consulted some notes. He must have been going over them recently because he didn’t have to riffle through pages to find them; he simply directed his gaze to the page in front of him and there they were.
“Well then, I’ll begin by asking you some questions; just answer with a simple yes or no. You are Sira Quiroga Martín, born in Madrid on June eighth, 1911, correct?”
His tone was courteous, which didn’t mean it was not direct and inquisitive. A certain deference to my condition lessened the professional tone of the meeting, but it didn’t hide it completely. I corroborated the accuracy of my personal details with a nod.
“And you arrived in Tetouan this past July fifteenth, coming from Tangiers.”
I nodded again.
“In Tangiers you were lodged from March twenty-third at the Hotel Continental.”
Another nod.
“In the company of”—he consulted his notebook—“Ramiro Arribas Querol, native of Vitoria, born October twenty-third, 1901.”
I nodded again, this time lowering my gaze. It was the first time I had heard his name after all that time had passed. Commissioner Vázquez didn’t seem to notice that I was beginning to lose my composure, or perhaps if he did, he didn’t want me to notice it; in any case he proceeded with his interrogation, ignoring my reaction.
“And at the Hotel Continental you left an outstanding bill of three thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine French francs.”
I didn’t reply. I just turned my head to one side to avoid catching his eye.
“Look at me,” he said.
I ignored him.
“Look at me,” he repeated. His tone remained neutral: it was no more insistent the second time than the previous time, neither friendlier nor more demanding. It was, quite simply, the same. He waited patiently for a few moments until I obeyed him and looked at him. But I didn’t reply. He reformulated his question without losing his temper.
“Are you aware that at the Hotel Continental you left an outstanding bill of three thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine francs?”
“I think so,” I replied finally in a whisper. And again I drew my eyes away from his and turned my head back to one side. And I started to cry.
“Look at me,” he insisted a third time.
He waited awhile, until he realized that this time I no longer had the intention, or the strength, or the courage to face him. Then I heard him get up from his chair, walk around the foot of the bed, and approach on the other side. He sat down on the neighboring bed, on which my eyes were set, his body destroying the smoothness of the sheets, and fixed his eyes on mine.
“I’m trying to help you, ma’am. Or miss, it’s all the same to me,” he explained firmly. “You’ve gotten yourself into a tremendous bit of trouble, although I realize it’s not your own fault. I think I know how it all happened, but I need you to confirm my suspicions. If you don’t help me, I won’t be able to help you, you understand?”
With some effort I managed to say yes.
“Well then, stop crying and let’s get down to it.”
I dried my tears with the turndown of the sheet. The commissioner gave me a brief minute. No sooner had he sensed that my crying had abated than he was conscientiously back at his task.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” I murmured.
“Look, you’ve been accused by the management of the Hotel Continental of having left a pretty sizable bill unpaid, but that’s not all. The matter, regrettably, is much more complicated. We’ve learned that there is also a charge against you from the Casa Hispano-Olivetti for fraud to the value of twenty-four thousand eight hundred and ninety pesetas.”
“But I, but . . .”
He gestured for me to stop talking. He had more to say.
“There is another charge against you for stealing jewelry from a private residence in Madrid.”
The impact of what I’d heard destroyed any capacity I had to think or answer coherently. The commissioner, aware of my confusion, tried to calm me.
“I know, I know. Calm down, don’t trouble yourself. I’ve read all the papers you were carrying in your suitcase and from them I’ve been able more or less to reconstruct what happened. I’ve found the note you were left by your husband, or your fiancé, or lover, or whatever this Arribas was, and also a certificate confirming these jewels were given to you, and a document setting out that the previous owner of these jewels really is your father.”
I didn’t remember having brought those papers with me; I didn’t know what had become of them since Ramiro had put them away, but if they were among my things it had to be because I had taken them from the hotel room myself without being aware of doing so at the moment of my departure. I sighed with some relief to learn that in them might perhaps be found the key to my redemption.
“Talk to him, please, talk to my father,” I begged. “He’s in Madrid, his name is Gonzalo Alvarado, he lives on Calle Hermosilla, number nineteen.”
“There’s no way we can track him down. Communication with Madrid is terrible. The capital is in turmoil, a lot of people are displaced: detained, fled, or leaving, or hidden, or dead. Besides, things for you are even more complicated because the charge came from Alvarado’s own son, Enrique, I think that’s his name, your half brother, right? Yes, Enrique Alvarado,” he confirmed after checking his notes. “It seems a servant informed him a few months back that you had been in the house and had left quite changed, carrying some parcels: they suppose that the jewels were in them, they believe that Alvarado senior might have been the victim of blackmail or submitted to some kind of extortion. In short, a pretty ugly business, even if these documents do appear to exonerate you.”
Then he drew from one of the outer pockets of his jacket the papers that my father had given me when we had met months earlier.
“Luckily for you, Arribas didn’t take them with him along with the jewels and the money, perhaps because they might have been compromising for him. He ought to have destroyed them in order to protect himself, but in his rush to disappear he didn’t. You should be grateful to him, because right now that’s the only thing that’s going to save you from prison,” he observed ironically. Then immediately afterward he closed his eyes briefly, as though trying to draw his last words back in. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to offend you; I imagine that in your state you have no intention of being grateful to a man who’s treated you as he has.”
I didn’t reply to his apology, just weakly formulated another question.
“Where is he now?”
“Arribas? We don’t know for sure. Perhaps in Brazil, could be Buenos Aires. Maybe in Montevideo. He boarded a transatlantic ship under the Argentine flag, but he could have disembarked at a number of ports. It seems he was accompanied by three other individuals: a Russian, a Pole, and an Italian.”
“And you aren’t going to go after him? You aren’t going to do anything to follow his trail and arrest him?”
“I’m afraid not. We don’t have much on him, just an unpaid bill that he shares with you. Unless you want to press charges for the jewels and the money he took from you, though to tell you the truth I don’t think it would be worth it. It’s true that it was all yours, but the source is pretty unreliable and you’re being accused of theft as well. Anyway, I think it unlikely that we’ll hear of his whereabouts again. They’re usually pretty smart, these con men, they know the ways of the world and how to disappear and reinvent themselves four days later at any spot on the globe in the most unexpected manner.”
“But we were going to start up a new life, we were going to open a business, we were just waiting for confirmation,” I babbled.
“You’re referring to the thing with the typewriters?” he asked, taking another envelope out of his pocket. “You wouldn’t have been able to do it—you didn’t have the authorization. The owners of the academies in Argentina didn’t have the least interest in expanding their business to the other side of the Atlantic, and they made this clear in April.” He saw the confusion in my face. “Arribas never told you that, did he?”
I recalled my daily visits to the reception desk, hopeful, longing to receive that letter that I believed would change our lives. Ramiro had already had it for months without ever letting me know. My resolve to defend him was dissipating, turning to smoke. I clung with what little strength I had to my last remaining trace of hope.
“But he loved me . . .”
The commissioner smiled with a touch of bitterness mixed with something like compassion.
“That’s what all his kind say. Look, miss, don’t fool yourself: men like Arribas only love themselves. They can be affectionate and seem generous; they’re usually charming, but at the moment of truth the only thing that interests them is their own hide, and at the first sign of things getting a little tricky they’re out the door like a shot. They’ll step on anyone they need to so as not to be caught in a lie. This time the person hurt worst has been you; bad luck, without a doubt. I don’t question that he thought highly of you, but one fine day a better project came along and you became a burden he was no longer interested in dragging along. That’s why he left you. Don’t try and think about it any more. You’re not at fault for anything, but there isn’t a lot we can do to alter what is irreversible.”
I didn’t want to plunge further into those thoughts about the sincerity of Ramiro’s love; it was too painful for me. I preferred to return to practical matters.
“And the thing with Hispano-Olivetti? What am I supposed to have to do with that?”
He breathed in and breathed out hard, as though readying himself to broach something that didn’t appeal to him.
“That business is even more tangled. Right now, there’s no cast-iron proof to exculpate you, though personally I would surmise that it’s another scam into which you’ve been drawn by your husband, or your fiancé, or whatever this Arribas is. The official version of the facts is that you are the owner of a business that has received a number of typewriters that were never paid for.”
“He thought of setting up a business in my name, but I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t know . . . I didn’t . . .”
“That’s what I believe, that you had no idea about all the things he was using you to front. Let me tell you what I think really happened. Correct me if I’m wrong: your father gave you some money and some jewels, correct?”
I nodded.
“And then Arribas offered to register a company in your name, and to put all the money and jewels away in the safe of the company where he worked, correct?”
I nodded again.
“Well, he didn’t do it. Or rather, he did do it, but not as a simple deposit in your name. With that money he made a purchase from his own company, pretending that it was an order from the import-export firm he told you about, Quiroga Typewriters, for which you appeared as owner. He paid punctually with your money, and Hispano-Olivetti suspected absolutely nothing: just one more order, a large one, well negotiated, and that was that. As for Arribas, he then resold the machines, I don’t know to whom or how. Thus far everything was quite correct as far as Hispano-Olivetti’s accounting was concerned, and satisfactory for Arribas who, without having a single cent of his own money, had done a terrific deal in his favor. Well, a few weeks later he arranged another large order in your name, which was again fulfilled in a timely manner. The full cost of this order wasn’t met at the time; only a first installment came in, but since you were known to have good credit no one was suspicious: they imagined that the rest of the sum would be met according to the terms agreed. The problem is that the payment was never made: Arribas once again sold the merchandise, again took the profits and got out, with you and with all your capital practically intact, as well as a good slice he had managed to get with the resale and the purchase he never paid for. A coup, yes indeed, although someone should have suspected something because as I understand it your departure from Madrid was rather abrupt, was it not?”
Like a flash I remembered arriving at our home on the Plaza de las Salesas that March morning, Ramiro’s nervous rush in taking the clothes from the wardrobe and filling suitcases, the urgency he instilled in me to do the same without wasting a second. With these images in my mind, I confirmed the commissioner’s assumption. He went on.
“And so to cap it all Arribas didn’t just take your money, but he had also used it to get greater profit for himself. A very smart guy, no doubt about it.”
Tears came to my eyes again.
“Stop that. Keep your tears to yourself, please: there’s no point crying over spilt milk. But unfortunately, these things have really happened at the least convenient and most complicated time.”
I swallowed, tried to control myself, and managed to resume the conversation one more time. “Because of what you were saying the other day about the war?”
“We still don’t know how all this is going to end, but right now the situation is extremely complicated. Half of Spain is in the hands of the rebels, and the other half remains loyal to the government. The situation is unstable and no reliable news is getting out; in short, an utter disaster.”
“And here? How are things here?”
“Moderately calm at the moment; in the weeks just past, everything was in much greater turmoil. This is where it all started, didn’t you know? It was here that the insurrection arose; it was from here, from Morocco, that General Franco appeared and the troop movements began. There were bombardments in the first few days; the Republic’s air force attacked the High Commission in response to the uprising, but through bad luck they missed their target and one of the Fokkers caused quite a few civilian injuries, the death of several Moorish children, and the destruction of a mosque, which was considered by the Muslims to have been an attack on them, and they automatically took the side of the rebels. At the same time,
there were also countless arrests and shooting of defenders of the Republic who were against the insurrection: the European prison filled almost to bursting, and they set up a sort of detention camp in El Mogote. Finally with the fall of the Sania Ramel Aerodrome here, very close to this hospital, the government’s bastions in the Protectorate were all done for, meaning that now the whole of the north of Africa is controlled by rebel soldiers and the situation is more or less calm. Now the worst of it is happening on the Peninsula.”
Then he rubbed his eyes with his left thumb and index finger; after that he moved his palm slowly upward, over his eyebrows, his forehead, and the roots of his hair, over the crown of his head and down the back of his neck until it reached his collar. He spoke low, as though to himself. “Let’s just see if this damned business comes to an end once and for all . . .”
I pulled him out of his contemplation: I couldn’t contain my uncertainty a second longer. “But am I going to be able to leave or not?”
My untimely question forced him back to reality. Decisive.
“No. Absolutely not. You won’t be able to go anywhere, least of all to Madrid. At the moment the government of the Republic is there: the people are supporting it and getting ready to resist for as long as they possibly can.”
“But I’ve got to go back,” I insisted weakly. “That’s where my mother is, my home . . .”
He struggled to keep his impatience in check. My insistence was troubling him more and more, though he tried not to contradict me, bearing in mind my delicate state. In other circumstances he might have treated me with much less leniency.
“Look, I don’t know which side you’re on, if you’re with the government or in favor of the insurrection.” His voice had recovered all its strength after the brief moment of decline; most likely tiredness and the tension of these turbulent days had momentarily taken their toll. “To be honest, after everything I’ve had to witness in these past weeks, your position doesn’t trouble me all that much; in fact, I’d just rather not know about it. All I do is go on with my work, trying to keep political issues on the sidelines; there are too many people worrying about them already, unfortunately. But ironically, luck—for once, though it’s hard to believe—has come down on your side. Here in Tetouan, the heart of the uprising, you’ll be absolutely safe because no one but me will take an interest in your business with the law, and believe me, it’s pretty murky business. Enough to keep you—under normal conditions—in prison for quite some time.”
