The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Three

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With him I learned a new kind of life. I learned to be independent of my mother, to live with a man, and to keep a maid. To try to please him every moment and to have no other aim but to make him happy. And I also got to know another Madrid: the Madrid of sophisticated fashionable places; of shows, restaurants, and nightlife. Cocktails at Negresco, the Granja del Henar, Bakanik. Film premieres at the Real Cinema with organ accompaniment, Mary Pickford on the screen, Ramiro putting bonbons in my mouth, and me lightly grazing the tips of his fingers with my lips, almost melting with love. Carmen Amaya at the Teatro Fontalba, Raquel Meller at the Maravillas. Flamenco at Villa Rosa, the Palacio del Hielo cabaret. A lively, effervescent Madrid, through which Ramiro and I flitted as though there were no yesterday and no tomorrow. As though we had to consume the whole world every instant in case the future were never to arrive.

What was it about Ramiro, what did he do to me that turned my life upside down in just a couple of weeks? Even today, so many years later, I can put together a catalog with my eyes closed of everything about him that seduced me, and I’m convinced that if I’d been born a hundred times, a hundred times over I’d have fallen in love with him as I did then. Ramiro Arribas, irresistible, worldly, handsome as the devil. With his brown hair combed back, his stunning bearing of pure manliness, radiating optimism and confidence twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Witty and sensual, indifferent to the political asperity of the times, as though he were not quite of this world. A friend to everyone without taking anyone seriously, the constructor of grand plans, always knowing just the right word, just the right gesture for each moment. Now the manager of an Italian typewriter company, yesterday a German car rep, the day before yesterday what difference did it make, and next month God alone knew.

What did Ramiro see in me, why did he become infatuated with a humble dressmaker about to marry an unambitious civil servant? True love for the first time in his life, he swore to me a thousand times. There had been other women before, of course. How many, I asked? Some, but none like you. And then he would kiss me and I thought I was dancing on the edge of a faint. Nor would it be hard for me today to assemble another list of his impressions of me: I remember them all. The explosive blend of an almost childish naïveté with the bearing of a goddess, he said. A diamond in the rough, he said. Sometimes he treated me like a little girl and then the ten years that separated us seemed centuries. He would anticipate my whims, fill my capacity for surprise with the most unexpectedly inspired ideas. He’d buy me stockings at the Lyon silk shop, creams and perfumes, ice creams in exotic flavors; custard apple, mango, and coconut. He would instruct me—teaching me to use my cutlery properly, to drive his Morris, to decipher restaurant menus, how to inhale when smoking. He would talk to me about figures from the past and artists he’d once met; he’d recollect old friends and anticipate the splendid opportunities that might be awaiting us in any remote corner of the globe. He’d draw maps of the world, and he made me grow. Sometimes, however, that little girl disappeared and I’d rise up as a woman fully formed, and he wasn’t at all bothered by my lack of knowledge and experience: he desired me, he revered me just as I was and clung to me as though my body were the only mooring in the turbulent oscillations of his existence.

I installed myself with him from the start in his masculine apartment beside the Plaza de las Salesas. I brought hardly anything with me, as though my life were beginning anew, as though I were someone else and had been born again. My reckless heart and a few clothes were the only possessions I brought to his home. From time to time I’d go back and visit my mother; in those days she used to take on sewing work at home, but there was so little of it that she had barely enough to survive. She didn’t approve of Ramiro, disliking the way he behaved with me. She accused him of having dragged me away impulsively, of having used his age and position to trick me, to force me to give up all my existing bonds. She didn’t like that I was living with him unmarried, that I’d left Ignacio, and that I was no longer the way I’d always been. However hard I tried, I was never able to convince her that Ramiro hadn’t been the one pressuring me to act like this, that it was simply unbounded love that had brought me to him. Our discussions got harsher every day: we exchanged terrible reproaches and clawed at each other’s entrails. To each challenge from her I would reply with some bit of insolence, to each reproach with an even fiercer contempt. It was unusual for a meeting not to end with tears, shouts, and slamming doors, and so my visits became increasingly short and infrequent. And my mother and I more distant every day.

Until one day there was an approach on her part. She only did it in the role of an intermediary, certainly, but that gesture of hers—as we might have predicted—brought about a new turn in our separate paths. She showed up at Ramiro’s house in the middle of the morning. He was already out and I was still asleep. We had been out the previous night, first seeing Margarita Xirgu at the Teatro de la Comedia, then afterward going out to Le Cock bar. It must have been nearly four in the morning when we went to bed, and I was so exhausted that I didn’t even have the strength to wipe off the makeup that I’d recently begun using. Half asleep I heard Ramiro leaving at around ten; half asleep I heard the arrival of Prudencia, the maid who kept our domestic disarray in some order. Half asleep I heard her go out for the milk and bread and half asleep I heard a short while later that there was someone at the door. I thought that Prudencia had come back, having left her key behind, which she had done before. I got up, flustered, and in a foul mood approached the insistent knocking at the door, shouting, I’m coming! I didn’t even bother to put anything on: Prudencia’s stupidity didn’t deserve the effort. Sleepily I opened the door to find not Prudencia, but my mother. I didn’t know what to say. Nor did she. She just looked me up and down, her attention caught successively by my disheveled hair, the black mascara tracks running under my eyes, the remains of carmine around my mouth, and the indecent nightdress that allowed more naked flesh to be seen than her sense of decency would allow. I couldn’t bear her gaze, I couldn’t face her. Perhaps because I was still too bewildered by my late night, perhaps because the serene severity of her attitude disconcerted me.

“Come in, don’t stand there in the doorway,” I said, trying to hide the fluster that her unexpected arrival had caused.

“No, I don’t want to come in, I’m in a rush. I just came by to give you a message.”

The situation was so tense and outlandish that I would never have believed it if I wasn’t living through it that morning. My mother and I, who had shared so much and were so alike in so many ways, seemed to have been transformed into two strangers distrustful of each other, like stray dogs sizing each other up warily from a distance.

She remained standing at the door, serious, erect, her hair in a tight bun in which the first grey strands could be seen. Tall and dignified, her angular eyebrows framing the reproach in her stare. Somehow elegant in spite of the simplicity of her attire. When at last she stopped examining me carefully, she spoke. However—and in spite of what I had feared—her words were not intended to criticize me.

“I’ve come to bring you a message. A request that isn’t mine. You can accept it or not, you’ll see. But I think you should say yes. You think about it; better late than never.”

She would not cross the threshold, and her visit lasted only one more minute: as long as it took to give me an address and a meeting time that same afternoon before turning her back without the slightest formality of a good-bye. It seemed strange to me that she hadn’t communicated anything more, but I didn’t have too long to wait for what I feared to be said: just as long as it took her to start going down the stairs.

“And wash that face, comb your hair, and put something on, you look like a whore.”

I shared my astonishment with Ramiro at lunchtime. I couldn’t make any sense of it, I didn’t know what could be behind such an unexpected request. I was suspicious and begged him to go with me. Where? To meet my father. Why? Because that was what he’d requested. What for? Even with ten years of wondering I still wouldn’t have been able to guess at even the vaguest reason.

We had settled that I should meet my mother in the midafternoon at the address she mentioned: Hermosilla 19. A very good street, a very good building; much like the ones that in another time I had visited carrying newly sewn clothes. I was painstaking in composing my appearance for the encounter: I had chosen a blue woollen dress, a matching coat, and a small hat with three feathers tipped gracefully over my left ear. It had all been paid for by Ramiro, naturally: they were the first pieces of clothing to touch my body that hadn’t been sewn by my mother or myself. I was wearing high-heeled shoes and my hair fell loosely down my back; I barely wore any makeup. This afternoon I didn’t want any criticism. I looked at myself in the mirror before going out. A full-length one. The image of Ramiro was reflected behind me, smiling, admiring me with his hands in his pockets.

“You’re amazing. He’s going to be impressed.”

I tried to smile gratefully at the comment, but I just couldn’t. I was pretty, it’s true; pretty and special looking, someone quite different from whom I’d been just a few months earlier. Pretty, special looking, and scared as a mouse, scared to death, regretting that I’d accepted that unusual request.

From my mother’s expression when we arrived, I deduced that she was displeased to see Ramiro at my side. Seeing our intention to go in together, she stopped us without a thought.

“This is family business; if you don’t mind, you’ll remain here.”

And without waiting for a response, she turned and crossed through the imposing black iron and glass door. I wanted to have him beside me, I needed his support and his strength, but I didn’t dare face her down. I merely whispered to Ramiro that it would be best if he left and I followed her inside.

“We’ve come to see Señor Alvarado. He’s expecting us,” she announced to the doorman. He nodded and without a word he turned to accompany us to the elevator.

“Thank you, there’s no need.”

We went through the wide door and began to climb the stairs, my mother ahead of me, stepping firmly, without even touching the polished wood of the banister, in a suit I didn’t recognize. Me behind her, fearful, clinging to the handrail as though to a life vest on a stormy night. The two of us silent as tombs. Thoughts gathered in my head as we went up the steps one by one. First landing. Why did my mother move around so familiarly in that unknown place? Mezzanine. What would the man we were coming to see be like, why this sudden insistence on meeting me after so many years? Main floor. The rest of my thoughts remained crowded together in the limbo of my mind. I didn’t have time for them; we’d arrived. A large door to the right, my mother’s finger on the bell pressing firmly, without any sign of intimidation. The door opened at once, a shriveled old maid in a black uniform and spotless white cap.

“Good afternoon, Servanda. We’ve come to see the master of the house. I imagine he’s in the library.”

Servanda’s mouth was left half open, the greeting hanging from it, as though she had been visited by a couple of ghosts. When she managed to react and it seemed she was at last going to be able to say something, a faceless voice could be heard over hers. A man’s voice, hoarse, strong, from the back.

“Let them come through.”

The maid stepped to one side, still caught in a nervous fluster. She didn’t need to show us the way: my mother seemed to know it all too well. We walked down a broad corridor, passing large rooms, their walls covered with hangings, tapestries, and family portraits. Arriving at a double door, open on the left-hand side, my mother turned toward it. We then noticed a large man waiting for us in the middle of the room. And the powerful voice again.

“Come in.”

A large desk covered in paper, a large bookcase filled with books, a large man looking at me, first my eyes, then down, then back up again. Discovering me. He swallowed, I swallowed. He took a few steps toward us, put his hand on my arm, and squeezed, not too hard, as though wanting to be sure that I really existed. He smiled slightly, as though with an aftertaste of melancholy.

“You’re just like your mother was twenty-five years ago.”

He kept his gaze fixed on mine as he held on to me for a second, two, three, ten. Then, still without letting me go, he looked away and fixed his gaze on my mother. The weak, bitter smile returned to his face.

“How long it’s been, Dolores.”

She didn’t answer, nor did she avoid his eyes. Then he released his hand from my arm and held it out toward her; he didn’t seem to be after a greeting, just a contact, a glancing touch, as though hoping that her fingers would come out to meet his. But she remained immobile, not answering the invitation, until he seemed to awake from the enchantment, cleared his throat, and, in a tone that was as courteous as it was determinedly neutral, offered us a seat.

Instead of heading for the big work table where the papers were gathered, he invited us toward another corner of the library. My mother settled into one armchair, and he sat opposite. And me alone on a sofa, in the middle, between the two of them. Tense, uncomfortable, all three of us. He busied himself lighting a cigar. She remained sitting erect, her knees together and her back straight. Meanwhile, I scratched with my index finger at the wine-colored damask upholstery of the sofa, my attention focused on the task, as though I were trying to make a hole in the warp of the fabric and escape through it like a little lizard. The atmosphere filled with smoke, and the throat clearing returned as though in anticipation of some intervention, but before this could be spilled into the air my mother spoke. She was addressing me, though her eyes remained on him. Her voice forced me at last to lift my gaze to the two of them.

“Well, Sira, so this is your father, you meet him at last. His name is Gonzalo Alvarado, he’s an engineer, the owner of a foundry, and he has lived in this house forever. He used to be the son and now he’s the master of the house, that’s how it goes. A long time ago I used to come here to sew for his mother. We met then, and well, anyway, you were born three years later. Don’t think it was some cheap soap opera in which the unscrupulous young master tricks the poor little dressmaker or anything of the sort. When our relationship began, I was twenty-two years old, he was twenty-four: we both knew perfectly well who we were, where we were, and what we were up against. There was no deception on his part, nor any more than the appropriate illusions on mine. It was a relationship that ended because it couldn’t go anywhere, because it never should have begun. I was the one who decided to end it, it wasn’t him deciding to abandon you and me. And it has always been me who has insisted that you should have no contact. Your father tried not to lose us, insistently at first; then, bit by bit, he began to get used to the situation. He married and had other children, two boys. For a long time I heard nothing of him, until the day before yesterday when I received a message from him. He didn’t tell me why he wanted to meet you at this point; that we will learn now.”

As she talked, he watched her attentively, with serious appreciation. When she fell silent, he waited a few moments before speaking. He seemed to be thinking, measuring his words so that they might express precisely what he wanted to say. I made the most of those moments to observe him, and the first thing that occurred to me was that I never would have been able to imagine a father like this for myself. I was dark, my mother was dark, and in the very rare imaginary evocations I’d had of my progenitor, I’d always painted him like us, just another man, with a tanned complexion, dark hair and slim build. Also, I had always associated the image of a father with the appearance of those around me: our neighbor Norberto, the fathers of my friends, the men who filled the taverns and the streets of my neighborhood. Normal fathers of normal people: postal workers, salespeople, clerks, café waiters, or at most owners of a tobacconist’s, a grocer’s, or a vegetable stand in the Cebada market. The gentlemen I saw in my comings and goings along Madrid streets delivering orders from Doña Manuela’s workshop were to me like beings from another world, another species who in no way fit the mold I had mentally cast as paternal. And yet before me was just such a specimen. A man who was still good looking despite his somewhat excessive corpulence, with hair already greying that in its day must have been fair, and honey-colored eyes now a little red, dressed in dark grey, the owner of a grand home and patriarch of an absent family. A father unlike all the other fathers, who finally began to speak, addressing my mother and me alternately, sometimes both of us at once, sometimes neither.

“Well now, let’s see, this isn’t easy,” he said by way of beginning.

A deep breath, a drag on the cigar, smoke out. Eyes raised to meet mine at last. Then right to my mother’s. Then to mine again. And then he spoke again, and barely paused, for such a long and intense time that when I finally noticed we were almost in darkness, our bodies had been transformed into shadows, and the only light we had was the weak, distant reflection from a green tulip lamp on the desk.

“I’ve found you because I’m afraid that one of these days they’re going to kill me. Or I’ll end up killing someone and they’ll put me in prison, which would be like a death in life, it comes to the same thing. The political situation is about to explode, and when that happens only God knows what will become of all of us.”

I looked at my mother out of the corner of my eye, seeking some reaction, but her face didn’t betray the slightest sign of concern: as though instead of the warnings of an imminent death she’d heard someone announcing the time or predicting a cloudy day. He, meanwhile, went on voicing his premonitions and exuding streams of bitterness.

“And since I know that my days are numbered, I’ve set about doing an inventory of my life, and what have I found that I own among my belongings? Yes, money. Properties, too. And a company with two hundred employees for which I’ve worked myself to the bone for three decades, and where when they don’t organize a strike they humiliate me and spit in my face. And a wife who when she saw that someone had set fire to a couple of churches went with her mother and sisters to pray rosaries at San Juan de Luz. And two sons I don’t understand, a couple of wastrels who’ve turned fanatic and spend their days shooting people from the rooftops and worshipping the revered son of Primo de Rivera, who has brainwashed all the young gentlemen of Madrid with his romantic nonsense about reaffirming the national spirit. If I could, I would take them all into the foundry and get them working twelve hours a day to see if the national spirit might be restored in them by blows of the hammer and anvil.

“The world has changed so much, Dolores, don’t you see? The workers are no longer satisfied with going to the festival of San Cayetano and to the Carabanchel bulls, as the words of the zarzuela would have it. Now they’re trading their donkeys for bicycles, they’re joining unions, and the first time things go bad for them they threaten the boss with a bullet between the eyes. Probably they’re not wrong; living a life filled with deprivation and working from sunrise to sunset from your earliest years isn’t to anybody’s taste. But what’s needed here is much more than this. Raising a fist, hating those they have above them, and singing The Internationale won’t fix much; countries don’t change to the rhythm of an anthem. They naturally have more than enough reasons for rebelling, as there have been centuries of starvation here and a lot of injustice, too, but this won’t be fixed by biting the hand that feeds them. For that, to modernize this country, we’d need brave employers and qualified workers, a solid education system, and serious government leaders who remain in their posts long enough to get something done. But everything here is a disaster, everyone looks after himself, and no one bothers to work seriously to put an end to such madness. The politicians on both sides spend their days lost in their diatribes and fancy speeches in the parliament. The king is doing just fine where he is: he should have left long ago. The socialists, anarchists, and communists fight for their own interests just as they should, except that they ought to do it with good sense and order, without grudges or explosive tempers. The wealthy and the monarchists, meanwhile, flee like cowards abroad. And between one lot and the other, we’ll finally see the military take over, and then we’re going to be sorry. Or we’ll get ourselves into a civil war, unite against one another, take up arms, and end up killing one another, killing our brothers.”

He spoke emphatically, without pausing. Until suddenly he seemed to come back down to reality and understand that both my mother and I, in spite of having kept our composure, were utterly disconcerted, not knowing where he was going with the discouraging predictions he was making or what we had to do with that crude vomiting up of words.

“Sorry to be telling you all this in such an impulsive way, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I’ve now reached the moment to act. This country is falling apart. It’s a madness, it’s senseless, and as for me, as I’ve told you, one of these days they’re going to kill me. The ways of the world are changing, and it’s not easy to adjust to them. I’ve spent more than thirty years working like a beast, losing sleep for my business and trying to do my duty. But either the times aren’t on my side or I’m very wrong about something because in the end it’s all turned its back on me, and life seems to be suddenly spitting its vengeance at me. My sons have left me, my wife has abandoned me, and the day-to-day life in my company has turned into a hell. I’ve been left alone, I have no one’s support, and I’m convinced the situation can only get worse. Which is why I am preparing myself, putting my affairs in order, my papers, my accounts, arranging my final wishes, and trying to leave everything organized in case one day I don’t come back. And just as in my business, I’m also trying to put some order in my memories and my feelings, some of which I still have, though not many. The blacker everything around me becomes, the more I rummage among my feelings and retrieve the memory of the good things life has given me. And now that my days are running out, I’ve recognized one of the few things that was really worthwhile. Do you know what that was, Dolores? You. You and this daughter of ours who’s the spitting image of you in the years we were together. That was why I wanted to see you.”

Gonzalo Alvarado, this father of mine who at last had a face and a name, was speaking more calmly now. Halfway through his speech he began to look more like the man he must have been on any other day: sure of himself, forceful in his gestures and his words, used to giving orders and to being right. It had been hard for him to start; it couldn’t be pleasant to face a lost love and an unknown daughter after a quarter century of absence. But he had now regained his composure, the owner and master of the situation. Firm in his speech, sincere and raw as only someone with nothing left to lose can be.

“You know something, Sira? I really loved your mother; I loved her very much, very much indeed. If only everything had been different, so that I could have kept her with me forever. But regrettably that’s not the way it was.”

He looked away from me and turned back to her. Toward her big hazel-colored eyes tired from sewing. Toward her beautiful maturity with neither cosmetics nor embellishments.

“I didn’t fight for you much, Dolores, did I? I was unable to confront my family, and I wasn’t worthy of you. Then, as you know, I adjusted to the life that was expected of me, I got used to another woman and another family.”

My mother listened in silence, apparently impassive. I couldn’t have said whether she was hiding her emotions or whether those words didn’t provoke either cold or heat in her at all. She remained, quite simply, stern in her posture, her thoughts inscrutable, sitting upright in the beautifully tailored suit I’d never seen her in before, doubtless made from the fabric remnants of some woman with more material and more luck in life than she.

Rather than stopping in the face of her impassivity, my father kept on talking. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe me or not, but the truth is that now I find myself coming toward the end, my heart grieves that I’ve let so many years go past without taking care of you both, and without even having gotten to know you, Sira. I should have insisted more, I shouldn’t have given up trying to keep you close, but things were the way they were. And Dolores, you were too dignified, you wouldn’t allow me to devote only the leftover scraps of my life to you. If it couldn’t be everything, then it would be nothing. Your mother is very tough, girl, very tough and very firm. And I, I was probably weak and a fool, but, well, this isn’t the time for regrets.”

He remained silent a few seconds, thinking, not looking at us. Then he breathed in slowly through his nose, breathed out again hard, and shifted position, leaning forward in his armchair as though wanting to be more direct, as though he had decided to approach head-on what he seemed to have to tell us. He seemed finally ready to extract himself from the bitter nostalgia that kept him flying over the past, ready now to focus himself on the earthly demands of the present.

“I don’t want to occupy you any longer with my melancholy thoughts, forgive me. Let’s get to the point. I’ve called you here to transmit my last wishes. I ask you both to understand me and not misinterpret them. My intention is not to compensate you for the years I haven’t given you, or to demonstrate my remorse with gifts, still much less to try to buy your good regard at this point. All I want is to leave the ends nicely tied up, which rightfully I think should be put in order for when my time comes.”

For the first time since we’d settled down, he rose from his armchair and made his way toward the desk. I followed him with my gaze, observing the broad back, the fine cut of his jacket, the agile step despite his corpulence. Then I looked at the portrait hanging on the back wall toward which he was headed, large and impossible not to notice. It was an oil in a gilt frame of an elegant woman dressed in the fashion of the beginning of the century, neither beautiful nor the contrary, with a tiara on her short wavy hair and a severe expression on her face. When he turned around he gestured toward it with a movement of his chin.

“My mother, the grande dame Carlota, your grandmother. You remember her, Dolores? She passed away seven years ago; if she’d done it twenty-five years ago, you, Sira, would probably have been born in this house. Anyway, we’ll let the dead rest in peace.”

He was talking without looking at us now, busy with whatever he was doing behind the desk. He opened drawers, took out objects, riffled through papers, and returned to us with his hands full. As he approached he didn’t take his eyes off my mother.

“You’re still beautiful, Dolores,” he observed as he sat down. He was no longer tense, his initial discomfort only a memory. “I’m sorry, I haven’t offered you anything, will you drink something? I’ll call Servanda . . .” He made as though to get up again, but my mother interrupted him.

“We don’t want anything, Gonzalo, thank you. Let’s finish this, please.”

“Do you remember Servanda, Dolores? The way she used to spy on us, the way she’d follow us and then go telling tales to my mother?” Suddenly he gave a laugh, hoarse, quick, bitter. “Remember when she caught us locked in the ironing room? And now look, how ironic after all these years: my mother rotting in the cemetery, and me here with Servanda, the only person who takes care of me, what a pathetic fate. I should have dismissed her when my mother died, but where could the poor woman have gone then, old and deaf and with no family. And besides, she probably had no choice but to do what my mother told her to do: it wasn’t the time to be losing her job just like that, even though Doña Carlota had an unbearable nature and would drive her servants down a road of misery.”

He remained seated on the edge of his armchair, without leaning back, his large hands resting on the heap of things he had brought over from his desk. Papers, packages, cases. From the inside pocket of his jacket he now took out some metal-framed glasses and positioned them on his face.

“Well then, to practical matters, one thing at a time.”

First he took up a package that was really two large envelopes, bulky and held together at the middle by an elastic band.

“This is for you, Sira, to open up a new path in your life. It isn’t a third of my capital as by rights should be yours as one of my three descendants, but it’s all I can give you at the moment in cash. I’ve barely been able to sell anything, things are going badly for every sort of transaction right now. And I’m not in a position to leave you property, either: you’re not legally recognized as a daughter of mine and the inheritance taxes would swallow you up, not to mention that you’d be embroiled in endless lawsuits with my other children. But here you’ve got almost a hundred and fifty thousand pesetas. You seem smart like your mother; I’m sure you’ll be able to invest them well. With this money I also want you to take care of her, to make sure she doesn’t lack for anything and to support her if one day she needs it. The truth is, I would have preferred to split the money in two, half for each of you, but as I know Dolores would never accept it, I’ll leave you in charge of everything.”

He held the packet out; before taking it I looked over at my mother, disconcerted, not knowing what to do. With a nod—quick and concise—she conveyed her consent. Only then did I hold out my hands.

“Thank you very much,” I mumbled to my father.

He prefaced his reply with a mirthless smile. “No reason to thank me, daughter, no reason at all. Well then, let’s get on.”

He took up and opened a small box lined in blue velvet. Then he took another, this time maroon colored, smaller, and did the same. And so on successively till there were five. He left them open on the table. The jewels inside didn’t shine brightly, there wasn’t much light, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t guess how valuable they were.

“This was my mother’s. There’s more, but María Luisa, my wife, has taken them away with her on her pious exile. She has, however, left the most valuable ones, probably because they’re the least discreet. They’re for you, Sira. It would be safest if you never wear them: as you can see, they’re a little showy. But you can sell them or pawn them if you’re ever in need and you’ll get a considerable sum for them.”

I didn’t know how to reply; my mother did.

“Absolutely not, Gonzalo. All that belongs to your wife.”

“Not at all,” he interrupted her. “All this, my dear Dolores, is not my wife’s property: all this is mine and my wish is that it should pass from me to my daughter.”

“That cannot be, Gonzalo, it cannot be.”

“It certainly can be.”

“It can’t.”

“It can.”

The discussion ended there. Silence on my mother’s part, the battle lost. He closed the boxes one by one. Then he piled them in an orderly pyramid, the largest at the bottom, the smallest at the top. He moved the heap over toward me, sliding it along the waxed surface of the table, and when I had them in front of me, he turned his attention to a few sheets of paper. He unfolded them and showed them to me.

“These are some certificates for the jewels, with descriptions and appraisals and all that sort of thing. And there is also a notarized document affirming that they belong to me and that I am passing them on to you of my own free will. It’ll be useful to you should you ever need to prove that they’re yours; I hope you’ll never have to prove anything to anyone, but just in case.”

He folded up the pieces of paper, put them in a file, deftly tied a red ribbon around it, and placed that in front of me, too. Then he took up an envelope and drew from it a couple of leaves of yellowed paper, with stamps, signatures, and other formalities.

“And now one further thing, almost the last thing. How can I explain this to you?” A pause, an intake of breath, then a slow exhalation before he continued. “This document has been drawn up by me and my lawyer, and it has been notarized. What it says, in brief, is that I am your father and you are my daughter. What use will it be to you? Perhaps none, because if one day you try to make a claim to my inheritance, you’ll find that I’ve bequeathed it while I’m alive to your half brothers, meaning that you will never be able to obtain any more from this family than you will take with you when you leave this house today. But to me it is valuable: it’s a public recognition of something I should have done many years ago. I state here what it is that connects you and me, and now you can do whatever you please with it: show it to half the world or tear it in a thousand pieces and throw it in the fire; that is up to you alone.”

He folded the document, put it away, and handed me the envelope, then took up another from the table, the final one. The previous one had been large, of good-quality paper, with elegant handwriting and a notary’s letterhead. This second one was small, brownish, common looking, with an appearance of having been passed through a thousand hands before reaching ours.

“This is the last one,” he said, not raising his head.

He opened it, removed its contents, and examined it briefly. Then, without a word, passing over me this time, he gave it to my mother. Then he got up and went over to one of the balcony windows. He remained there in silence, his back to us, his hands in his trouser pockets, contemplating the evening—or nothing, I don’t know. What my mother had received was a small pile of photographs. Old, brown, and of poor quality, taken by a street photographer for next to nothing some spring morning more than two decades ago. A young couple, attractive, smiling. Complicit and close, caught in the fragile net of a love as great as it was inconvenient, unaware that after their years apart, when they were once again confronted with each other and with that testimony of yesterday, he would turn toward a balcony so as not to look at her face and she would clench her jaw so as not to cry in front of him.

My mother ran through the photographs one by one. Then she handed them over to me, without looking up. I considered them slowly and returned them to their envelope. He came back over to us, sat down, and took up the conversation again.

“With that we’re done with all the material issues. Now comes the advice. It’s not, daughter, that at this point I’m trying to leave you with some moral legacy; I’m not someone who inspires confidence or who preaches by example, but if you’d allow me a few more minutes after so many years, I’m sure that’s not too much to ask, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, my advice is as follows: leave here as soon as possible. Both of you, go far away, the farther from Madrid you can go the better. Out of Spain, if possible. Not into Europe, as the situation there doesn’t look too good either. Go off to America; if that’s too far, to Africa. To Morocco; go to the Protectorate, that’s a good place to live. A quiet place where nothing at all has happened since the end of the war with the Moors. Start a new life far from this crazy country, because when you least expect it something enormous is going to explode and no one here will be left alive.”

I couldn’t contain myself.

“And what about you, sir, why aren’t you going?”

He smiled bitterly. Then he held his big hand out to mine and gripped it hard. It was hot. He spoke without letting go.

“Because I no longer need a future, my daughter. I’ve already burned all my bridges. And please, don’t call me sir. I’ve completed my cycle, a bit prematurely no doubt, but I no longer have the desire nor the strength to fight for a new life. When you undertake a change like that you have to do it with dreams and hopes, with illusions. To go without them is merely to run away, and I have no intention of escaping anywhere; I’d rather stay here and confront whatever is coming. But you, Sira, you’re young, you must start a family, raise them well. And Spain is becoming a bad place. So that is what I recommend, as a father and a friend: leave. Take your mother with you, so she can watch her grandchildren growing up. And look after her as I wasn’t able to do, promise me that.”

He kept his gaze locked on mine until I nodded. I don’t know in what way he expected me to look after my mother, but I didn’t dare do anything but agree.

“Well, with that I think we’re finished,” he announced.

Then he got up, and we did the same.

“Take your things,” he said. I obeyed. Everything fit in my handbag apart from the largest of the cases and the envelopes of money.

“And now let me embrace you for the first and undoubtedly the last time. I doubt very much that we’ll see each other again.”

He wrapped my thin body in his big build and squeezed me hard; then he took my face in his large hands and kissed my forehead.

“You’re just as lovely as your mother. I wish you good luck in your life, my daughter. May God bless you.”

I wanted to say something in reply, but I couldn’t. The sounds remained trapped in my throat, the tears welled up in my eyes, and all I could do was turn around and go out into the hallway in search of the front door, stumbling, my sight cloudy and a stab of black sorrow wrenching my guts.

I waited for my mother on the staircase landing. The door had been left half open, and I watched as she came out observed by the sinister figure of Servanda lurking in the corridor. Her cheeks were ablaze and her eyes glassy, emotion finally perspiring on her face. I wasn’t there to witness what my parents did and said to each other in those five short minutes, but I’ve always believed that they, too, embraced and said good-bye to each other forever.

We went down the steps just as we had come up: my mother ahead, me behind. In silence. With the jewels, the documents, and the photographs in my handbag, the hundred and fifty thousand pesetas wedged under my arm, and the noise of my heels hammering on the staircase marble. Arriving at the mezzanine, I couldn’t contain myself: I grabbed her by the arm and forced her to stop and turn around. My face was right in front of hers, my voice was just a terrified whisper.

“Are they really going to kill him, Mother?”

“How should I know, daughter, how should I know . . .”