I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“And what do you want from me?” I asked, when I was again able to summon words to my mouth.
“Papers,” he insisted. “Passport, and customs papers for everything in this apartment that’s come from abroad. But first of all, change your clothes.”
He talked coldly, sure of himself. Professional, completely different from that other Ignacio, tender and almost childlike, whom I had stored in my memory.
“Can you show me some sort of credentials?” I said quietly. I guessed that he wasn’t lying, but I wanted to buy time to take it all in.
He drew a wallet from his inside jacket pocket. He opened it with the same hand that held it, with the facility of someone accustomed to proving his identity over and over again. And there indeed was his face and his name alongside the job and the ministry he had just mentioned.
“Just a moment,” I mumbled.
I went to my room; I quickly unhooked a white blouse and blue skirt from my closet, then opened the underwear drawer, about to take out something clean to put on, when my fingers brushed against Beigbeder’s letters, hidden under the folded slips. I hesitated a few seconds, unsure what to do about them, whether to leave them where they were or quickly find someplace safer. I ran my eyes hungrily across the room: maybe on top of the closet, maybe under the mattress. Perhaps between the sheets. Or behind the dressing-table mirror. Or in a shoe box.
“Be quick, please,” Ignacio shouted from far away.
I pushed the letters to the back, covered them completely with half a dozen bits of underwear, and closed the drawer with a dry thud. Anywhere else might be as good a place or as bad, but it wasn’t worth tempting fate.
I dried off, changed, took my passport from the nightstand, and returned to the living room.
“Arish Agoriuq,” he read slowly after I’d handed it over. “Born in Tangiers, resident in Tangiers. Shares your birthday—what a coincidence.”
I didn’t reply. I was suddenly overtaken by a terrible desire to throw up and had to struggle to stop myself.
“Might I know what this change in nationality was in aid of?”
My mind fabricated a lie, fast as the blinking of an eye. I’d never envisaged finding myself in a situation like this, nor had Hillgarth.
“I had my passport stolen and wasn’t able to request my papers from Madrid because it was the middle of the war. A friend fixed it for me to be given Moroccan citizenship so that I could travel without any trouble. It’s not a fake passport, you can check.”
“I already have done. And the name?”
“They thought it was better to change it, to make it more like an Arab name.”
“Arish Agoriuq? Is that Arab?”
“It’s Cherja,” I lied. “The dialect of the Rif villages,” I added, remembering Beigbeder’s linguistic skills.
He remained silent a few seconds, not taking his eyes off me. I could still feel my stomach turning over, but I fought to keep it under control to avoid having to run to the bathroom.
“I also need to know the objective of your stay in Madrid,” he insisted finally.
“To work. Sewing, as usual,” I replied. “This is a dressmaker’s studio.”
“Show me.”
I took him through to the back room and wordlessly showed him the rolls of material, the pictures of designs, and the magazines. Then I led him along the hallway and opened the doors to all the rooms. The spotless fitting rooms. The clients’ bathroom. The sewing room filled with fabric, patterns, and mannequins with half-assembled bits of clothing. The ironing room with various items awaiting their turn. And finally the storeroom. We walked together, side by side, as we’d walked so many times all those years before. I recalled that then he was almost a head taller than I—the difference didn’t seem so great now. It wasn’t that memory was playing tricks on me, however; when I was just a seamstress’s apprentice and he a would-be civil servant I wore shoes with barely any heel on them; five years on, my heels raised my height to halfway up his face.
“What’s in the back?” he asked.
“My bedroom, a couple of bathrooms, and four other rooms, two of them for guests and the other two empty. And also a lunch room, kitchen, and service quarters,” I reeled off.
“I want to see them.”
“What for?”
“I don’t have to give you an explanation.”
“Very well.”
I showed him the rooms one by one, my stomach tight, feigning a coolness that was a world away from my genuine state and trying not to let him see how my hand shook as it switched on the lights and opened the doors. I’d left Beigbeder’s letters to Rosalinda in the closet in my bedroom beneath my underwear; my legs trembled at the idea that it might occur to him to open the drawer and that he might find them. As he stepped into the room I watched him with my heart clenched. He went through it slowly and deliberately. He leafed through the novel I had on my nightstand with feigned interest, then put it back in its place; then he ran his fingers along the foot of the bed, picked up a brush from the dressing table, and looked out through the balcony doors a few seconds. I was praying that that would bring his visit to a close, but it didn’t. The part I most feared was still to come. He opened one side of the closet, the one containing my outer clothes. He touched the sleeve of a long jacket and the belt of another, then closed it. He opened the next door and I held my breath. He was face to face with a stack of drawers. He pulled out the first: scarves. He lifted the corner of one of them, then another, and another; and closed it back up again. He pulled out the next and I gulped: stockings. He closed it. When his fingers touched the third I felt the floor turn to liquid under my feet. There, covered by the silk slips, were the handwritten documents that revealed in detail and in the first person the circumstances of the scandalous ministerial dismissal that was being passed by word of mouth across all of Spain.
“I think you’re going too far, Ignacio,” I managed to whisper.
He kept his fingers on the handle of the drawer a few seconds more, as though considering what to do. I felt hot, I felt cold, anxious, thirsty. I felt as though it was about to be over. Until I noticed his lips parting for him to speak. “Let’s go on,” was all he said. He closed the closet door while I held back a sigh of relief and a desperate desire to burst into tears. I masked my emotions as best I could and resumed my role as a guide under duress. He saw the bathroom where I bathed and the table where I ate, the larder where I kept my food, the sink where the girls washed the clothes. Perhaps he didn’t go any further out of respect for me, maybe out of simple modesty, or because the protocols of his job set out certain restrictions he didn’t dare transgress; I never found out. We returned to the living room without a word while I thanked heaven that his search hadn’t been more exhaustive.
He sat back down in the same place and I sat opposite him.
“So, everything in order?”
“No,” he said emphatically. “Nothing’s in order—nothing at all.”
I shut my eyes, squeezed them tightly, and opened them again.
“And what is wrong?”
“Everything is wrong, nothing’s as it should be.”
Suddenly I thought I could see a chink of light.
“What did you expect to find, Ignacio? What did you hope to find that you didn’t find?”
He didn’t answer.
“You thought the whole thing was just a front, didn’t you?”
Again he didn’t answer, but he did veer the conversation back onto his turf and resumed his grip on the reins.
“I’m perfectly well aware of who it was that set up this show.”
“What show do you mean?” I asked.
“This joke of a workshop.”
“It’s no joke. We work hard here. I do more than ten hours a day, seven days a week.”
“I doubt it,” he said sourly.
I got up and walked over to his chair. I sat on one of the arms and took h
is right hand. He didn’t resist, nor did he look at me. I let his fingers touch my palms, my own fingers, slowly, for him to feel every inch of my skin. I just wanted to show him the evidence of my work, the calluses and rough patches that the scissors, needles, and thimbles had given me over the years. I noticed the way my touch made him shudder.
“These are the hands of a working woman, Ignacio. I can guess what it is you think I am, and what you think I do, but I want you to be absolutely clear that these aren’t the hands of a woman who’s being kept by anybody. I’m deeply sorry to have hurt you, you can’t imagine how sorry. I didn’t behave well with you. But that’s all in the past now and there’s no going back; you won’t make anything better by meddling in my life in search of ghosts that don’t exist.”
I stopped running my fingers over his but kept hold of his hand. It was icy. Bit by bit it began to warm up.
“Do you want to know what became of me after I left you?” I asked quietly.
He nodded without a word. He still wasn’t looking at me.
“We went to Tangiers. I fell pregnant and Ramiro abandoned me. I lost the child. I found myself suddenly in a strange country, sick, without any money, burdened with the debts that he’d left in my name and without so much as a place to drop dead. I had the police on my case, I found myself embroiled in certain activities on the very edge of the law. Then I set up a workshop thanks to the help of a friend and I started sewing again. I worked night and day, and I made friends, too, very distinguished people. I got used to spending time with them and became part of a world that was new to me, but I never stopped working. I also met a man I was able to fall in love with, and with whom I might perhaps have been happy again, a foreign reporter, but I knew that sooner or later he’d have to leave, and I fought against getting into another relationship for fear of making myself suffer again, of re-experiencing that atrocious feeling of being ripped apart that I’d had when Ramiro went off without me. Now I’ve come back to Madrid, alone, and I’m still working; you’ve seen all there is in this house. And as for what happened between you and me, I did penance for my sins, you needn’t have any doubt about that. I don’t know whether or not that’s good enough for you, but you can be sure I’ve paid a high price for all the pain I caused you. If there’s such a thing as divine retribution, I know in my conscience that between what I did to you and what was later done to me, the scales are more than balanced.”
I couldn’t tell whether what I’d said affected him, calmed him down, or confused him still further. We remained in silence a few minutes, his hand in my hands, our bodies close, each aware of the other’s presence. After a while I separated myself from him and moved back to my place.
“What have you got to do with Minister Beigbeder?” he demanded to know then. He spoke without bitterness. Without bitterness but without weakness either, halfway between the intimacy we’d shared moments earlier and the infinite distance of the time before. I could tell that he was making an effort to return to a professional attitude and that, unfortunately, it didn’t take him too much effort to achieve it.
“Juan Luis Beigbeder is a friend of mine from my Tetouan days.”
“What sort of friend?”
“He’s not my lover, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“He spent the night with you yesterday.”
“He spent it in my house, not with me. I don’t have any reason to explain my private life to you, but I’d rather clarify things so that you’re in no doubt: Beigbeder and I don’t have any kind of romantic attachment. Last night we didn’t go to bed together. Not last night, not ever. I’m not being kept by any minister.”
“Why then?”
“Why didn’t we go to bed together, or why don’t I have a minister keeping me?”
“Why did he come here and stay till eight in the morning?”
“Because he’d just learned that they’d sacked him and he didn’t want to be alone.”
He got up and walked over to one of the balcony doors. He started talking again as he looked out, his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Beigbeder is a cretin. He’s a traitor who’s sold himself to the British, a madman in thrall to an English slut.”
I laughed despite myself. I got up and walked over behind his back.
“You have no idea, Ignacio. You work for whomever it is you work for in the Governance Ministry and they’ve told you to terrorize all the foreigners who come through Madrid, but you don’t have the vaguest idea of who Colonel Beigbeder is or why he’s behaved the way he has.”
“I know what I need to know.”
“And what’s that?”
“That he’s been plotting, and that he’s disloyal to his country. And incompetent as a minister. That’s what everyone says about him, beginning with the press.”
“As if anyone could believe what this press says,” I remarked ironically.
“And who else should we believe? Your new foreign friends?”
“Perhaps. They know a lot more than you do.”
He turned and took a few decisive steps until he was just inches from my face.
“What do they know?” he asked hoarsely.
I realized it would be best if I said nothing, so I let him go on.
“Do they know I can get you deported by tomorrow? Do they know I can have you detained, that I can get this exotic Moroccan passport of yours turned into scrap paper and throw you blindfolded out of the country without anyone being any the wiser? Your friend Beigbeder is out of the government now; you don’t have a godfather anymore.”
He was so close to me that I could see just how much his beard had grown since he’d shaved that morning. I could see how his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he spoke; I could make out every movement of those lips that had once kissed me so often and were now spitting out rough threats.
With my reply I gambled everything on a single card. A card as false as I was myself.
“I no longer have Beigbeder, but I’ve still got other resources that you can’t even imagine. The clients I sew for have powerful husbands and lovers, and I’m good friends with many of them. They could give me diplomatic asylum in any one of half a dozen embassies if I asked for it, beginning with the German embassy—and I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who have a tight grip over your minister. I can save my skin with a simple phone call. The person who might not be able to save his skin is you if you keep sticking your nose where you aren’t wanted.”
I’d never lied so brazenly to anyone; it was probably the immensity of the fabrication that gave me my arrogant tone. I couldn’t tell whether or not he believed me. Perhaps he did—the story was only as unlikely as the course of my own life and yet there I was, his ex-fiancée, transformed into a Moroccan subject, as evidence that the most unlikely things can at any moment be transformed into pure reality.
“We’ll see about that,” he spat between his teeth.
He moved away from me and sat back down.
“I don’t like the person you’ve become, Ignacio,” I whispered behind him.
He gave a bitter laugh.
“And who are you to judge me? Maybe you think you’re superior because you spent the war in Africa and now you’ve come back with all the airs of a fine lady? You think you’re a better person than me because you take rogue ministers into your house and allow yourself to be fawned upon with candies while everyone else has even their black bread and lentils rationed?”
“I’m judging you because you matter to me, and because I want the best for you,” I said. My voice barely came out.
He replied with another laugh. Even more bitter than the one that had come before. More sincere, too.
“You don’t care about anyone but yourself, Sira. It’s all about me, myself, I. I’ve worked, I’ve suffered, I’ve paid for my guilt: just me me me. You’re not interested in anyone else—anyone. Have you even bothered to find out what became of your people after the war? Did it ever occur to you to go back to your neighborhoo
d, in one of those elegant suits of yours, to ask after them all, to see if anyone could use a little help? Do you know what became of your neighbors and your friends during all these years?”
His questions echoed like heavy blows to my conscience, like a fistful of salt thrown deliberately into my open eyes. I had no answer to that: I didn’t know anything because I’d chosen not to know. I’d respected my orders, I’d been disciplined. They told me not to leave a certain area and I hadn’t. I’d made an effort not to see the other Madrid, the authentic one, the real one. I focused my movements within the limits of an idyllic city and forced myself not to look at its other face: the one whose streets were filled with holes, craters in the buildings, windows without glass, and empty fountains. I preferred not to let my gaze light on whole families who rummaged through the trash in the hope of finding some potato peelings; not to look at the women in mourning who wandered the pavements with babies hanging from their shriveled breasts; I didn’t even spare a glance for the hordes of dirty, barefoot children who swarmed around there, and who, with their faces covered in dry snot and their little shaved heads covered in scabs, tugged at the sleeves of pedestrians and asked for some charity, please, señor, alms, I beg of you, señorita, some charity, señorita, God will repay your kindness. I’d been an excellent and obedient agent in the service of British intelligence. Scrupulously obedient. Disgustingly obedient. I’d followed the instructions they’d given me to the letter: I hadn’t returned to my neighborhood or set foot on the paving stones of my past. I’d avoided finding out what had become of my people, of the girlfriends from my childhood. I didn’t go to seek out my square, didn’t step into my narrow little street or go up my staircase. I didn’t knock at my neighbors’ doors, I didn’t want to know how they were doing, what had become of their families during the war or since. I didn’t try to discover how many of them had died, how many were in prison, how the ones who were still alive had managed to make it through. I wasn’t interested in hearing what rotten scraps they’d filled their cooking pots with, or whether their children were consumptive, malnourished, or barefoot. I didn’t worry about their wretched lives, filled with lice and chilblains. I belonged to another world now, a world of international conspiracies, lavish hotels, luxury hairdressers, and cocktails at aperitif time. That other wretched universe, rat grey, smelling of urine and boiled chard, had nothing to do with me. Or at least, that’s what I thought.