Sira, page 37
For all that, I’d managed to enjoy it briefly, and still etched in my memory was the weekend he and I once spent together in a top-floor suite after our unexpected reunion in Lisbon, arriving at different times to enjoy two full days with each other, making up for lost time, reconciling our souls’ yearnings with our bodies’ impulses, going no farther from our room than the balcony with its views of the Puerta de Alcalá. This would be the first of our many secret encounters—how could I forget it? Now, however, it was the creep Ramiro Arribas who was passing himself off as someone else: a solvent Argentine businessman. My Marcus, meanwhile, no longer inhabited this world, and I, dressed in the black I hadn’t worn to mourn him, was incapable of preventing a rebellious tear from sliding down to my mouth, where it left a strange salty taste on my tongue.
I tried hard to keep my sadness in check and, sheltered behind a convenient newsstand, I watched the hotel entrance and the customers milling around there, the row of taxis, the uniformed porters carrying suitcases and belongings. I still didn’t know how I was going to do it, but sooner rather than later, I had to go in through that door, to get to room 417.
54
I returned to the guesthouse, and the landlady invited me to sit down for lunch. My intention had been to say no, thank you, but my mouth played a trick on me, and I accepted. At the table were a railway worker with soot under his fingernails, a candidate for a position at Telefónica, Señora Eusebia herself, and no one else. I supposed the other guests were eating out, at their own expense. Or not eating at all, perhaps. I was struck by flashes of the hostel in Tétouan again: the old master, the ugly sisters, the fool Paquito with his tyrannical mother, all of them sharing a pot of stew, a dish of sardines, or a watermelon in the courtyard, with Candelaria among them, serving them one by one and acting as arbiter in their bitter verbal disputes, putting out fires with her irresistible energy. The atmosphere here was unlike that at my first Moroccan home: it was infinitely duller and more impersonal. Neither was the cocido that the owner of the house served me very good: barely a handful of chickpeas boiled with some noodles, a small piece of potato, and some slices of carrot. No chorizo or morcilla or belly pork, no chicken. This tasteless, meager stew was what was eaten daily in most houses in Madrid. And to accompany it, some lettuce leaves with a drizzle of cheap oil and a pinch of salt. That was how postwar Spain fed itself in winter and summer, the time of year made no difference; for both the defeated and for many who were on the winning side, there was nothing else. I thought with disgust of the banquets the authorities had held in honor of Eva Perón, the sprawl of succulent delicacies, insulting to the millions of bodies whose bellies creaked when they went to bed, poor wretches who tried to trick their hunger with mouthfuls of water, potato peelings, heartbreaking guile, and the hope that one day everything might be better. Yet again I wondered whether such shameful extravagance was really needed to obtain Argentina’s wheat. And yet again I admired the dignified stoicism of the British.
As soon as I could, I shut myself in my room, took off my sad black clothes, hid the Grand Cross under my pillow for the moment, and took out my most unremarkable outfit from my suitcase. That afternoon I wouldn’t need to be in disguise, as I was going to an ordinary neighborhood where there was no danger of anyone recognizing me. I shook out my suit and hung it up, trusting that the creases would fade away by themselves—I didn’t want to ask the landlady for the iron, I didn’t want to see anyone. I lay on the clean sheets in my slip. Looking up at the damp ceiling, I set myself to thinking.
It was almost seven o’clock when I reached my destination at number ninety-something of Calle Santa Engracia, very near Glorieta de Cuatro Caminos. He’d told me himself during that other time that he lived there. It was not common in those days for people to move, so I assumed he still had the same address. Crossing my fingers for it to be so, I sat on a bench on the street to wait.
But at half past seven he hadn’t arrived. Nor at eight o’clock. Or half past eight, nine, or half past nine. Fed up, frustrated, at around ten o’clock I was about to leave when I saw him appear. He was coming from the entrance to the Metro, skinny, with his shoulders slumped and his tie loose, walking the dispirited walk of someone who was in no hurry to go home. I noticed again that he’d lost hair and gained a hardness in his features. Unlike Ramiro—unlike me, even—time had not been kind to him.
He walked past without seeing me, his head bowed and his hands in his pockets, keeping to his thoughts. Or worried or exhausted after a long day.
“Ignacio.”
I said his name to his back, but he didn’t hear me. After I’d spent so many hours alone and silent, my voice was barely audible. I cleared my throat and tapped his shoulder.
“Ignacio,” I said again.
He spun around, almost menacingly. I raised my hands, as if to show my innocence.
“It’s Sira. It’s me.”
The ferocity disappeared from his face, but he said nothing. He didn’t even move.
“I want to tell you something that might be of interest to you given your responsibilities. I’m sorry to turn up without warning. I’ll be quick. I just need a few minutes of your time.”
“I’m not in a hurry.”
He gestured at the nearby building with his chin.
“The family’s at my parents-in-law’s village for the summer. We can go up to my flat.”
I hadn’t been expecting the invitation, and I would’ve preferred not to go into his private space. We could have gone for a walk around that working-class neighborhood like we’d done so many times before, or sat outside a bar sharing horchata, surrounded by noisy anonymous people. But Ignacio was right, as ever. This wasn’t just a courtesy visit, and away from the street, I could fill him in more prudently.
The flat was in semidarkness. As soon as we were in the living room, he proceeded with the centuries-old routine southern peoples used to combat the sun. When it was beating down without mercy, the shutters were lowered, the curtains were drawn, and the windows, doors, and balconies were shut tight. When it went down, everything was opened again. Disciplined and thorough, Ignacio repeated the sequence while I surveyed his middling home. Neither too humble nor in any way luxurious, it was the home of a civil servant with a meager salary and good sense. It could’ve been his home or his neighbor’s or anyone else’s. There was nothing in it that gave it its own personality.
“I’m afraid I can only offer you a glass of tap water.”
I remembered then that he’d never liked to drink, nor had he ever smoked.
“I don’t want anything, thanks.”
“Have a seat, at least.”
I perched on the edge of an armchair. He sat opposite me, on a chair he pulled from under the dining table. Unhurried, he rolled up his shirtsleeves, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on his knees.
“Tell me.”
I would’ve liked to have begun with a brief chat about our lives, to hear about his children, for instance, and to announce that I was a mother, too. In reality, we were both indifferent to the other’s offspring. I wasn’t interested in whether his were good at math or drawing, and he couldn’t have cared less that Víctor now had eight teeth. But at least this would’ve helped to break the ice and given the situation a false sense of normalcy, nothing more than two old friends reunited and exchanging news.
But that wasn’t the case, it was clear, and there was no reason to pretend otherwise. Ignacio and I weren’t friends. We had gone our separate ways more than a decade before, when I left him to embark on my turbulent relationship with Ramiro. We’d had one brief encounter later, on my return from Morocco, after he followed me incognito through the streets of Madrid and slipped into my studio on Calle de Núñez de Balboa. That stormy night, I’d learned that he worked for the Directorate-General for Security of the Ministry of Governance. Using the powers he had in that role, he had forced me to show him my documentation, inspected my home from top to bottom, and fired a barrage of intrusive questions at me. After he’d scared the life out of me, there was also time that night for other things: for us to update each other on the preceding years with some degree of honesty, for him to admit that he performed his duties with bitter skepticism in a political regime with which he didn’t agree. For him to unsparingly open my eyes to the painful reality that my neighborhood and its people experienced after their side was defeated in the war.
I’d never imagined that we would meet face-to-face again, yet there we were once more, together in his living room.
“I imagine you were surprised to see me at the entrance to the Ritz, among the guests at Eva Perón’s banquet.”
He shrugged, saying neither yes nor no—we were both recalling that moment when he’d held me amid the commotion. I could almost feel his firm hand again, on my waist, stopping me from falling.
“I’ve been abroad for a couple of years. Now I’m back in Spain to cover her visit as a BBC reporter.”
“I know.” Of course he knew. How could he not? “But I assumed you’d be in Andalusia now,” he added.
“I arrived from Seville last night. It’s a quick visit, and confidential. Nobody knows I’m in Madrid.”
He didn’t bat an eye. I observed his thin, pale face, the dark rings under his eyes, his receding hairline. I’d better get to the point, I decided, not waste any more of his time, or mine.
“The decoration that Franco awarded to the first lady, the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, has been stolen. That’s what I came to tell you.”
“I know that, too.” I hid my surprise as best I could. “No one in the Argentine delegation has reported it,” he explained, “but we understand that the shipowner Dodero is trying to obtain a duplicate of the badge. The Cejalvo house informed us. They’re the ones responsible for making all official decorations. They sensed that the request was irregular and wanted to make us aware. So we gathered that the badge is missing, though we can’t openly confirm that with anyone in the Argentine entourage. We have express orders not to disturb them.”
The confusion on my face must’ve been telling. He leaned forward a little more, as if he wanted the gesture to embolden him.
“We don’t miss much, Sira. Or so we hope.”
“And will Dodero manage to acquire an identical piece before the end of the tour?”
“We’ve given the go-ahead to Cejalvo, and they’re working on it. It’s a complex and laborious job and will take a long time. We know they’re against the clock, but it’s still not certain that they’ll finish.”
“But it will be essential that Señora Perón wear it for her final event before leaving Spain, won’t it?”
“I would say so.”
“And if she didn’t wear it, it would be a direct affront to Franco, an unacceptable lack of consideration, don’t you think?”
He nodded, serious, while he loosened his tie until it was completely unknotted, then undid the top button of his shirt. Despite his efforts to keep the flat cool, the place was still hot.
“We’re conscious of all of that.”
“And it doesn’t worry you?”
“It does, a great deal.”
“And do you have a contingency plan?”
He paused, rolling the long fabric of his tie in his hands before replying.
“If I’m honest, no, not as yet.”
We were both silent for a moment, thinking. The sound of the few vehicles on the roads outside reached us through the balcony doors. An ugly cuckoo clock hanging over the sofa ticked wearily. Ignacio was the one who broke the silence, veering off topic abruptly.
“You never cease to amaze me, Sira. You appear, you disappear, you reinvent yourself, you mystify me. Now you’re back as a supposed reporter, rubbing shoulders with leaders and involved in murky business. Last I knew of you, you were working for Nazi customers. Then when Germany fell, you vanished. I’ve often wondered where you ended up.”
“I was doing my duty by sewing for those women,” I said simply. “For reasons that are beside the point now, it was what I was required to do.”
“You were hanging around with an English agent at the time.”
I didn’t like his airy tone, but Ignacio being who he was, I forgave him.
“I wasn’t just hanging around with him,” I explained, weighing my words carefully. “We were in a serious and sincere relationship, but in secret because of the circumstances. That English agent became my husband, and it will soon be a year since he died. I’m his widow, I have a son by him, and I’m trying to carry on with my life.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered in a dry tone.
I perceived sincerity in those three syllables.
“Let’s get back to the present. What I came to tell you is that I think I know where you’ll be able to find the Grand Cross. The real one.”
He straightened, with a look of disbelief on his face.
“But I want something in exchange,” I added.
I stood and took a few steps. The room was not very attractive, but I was moved by its simplicity, with its magazine rack and its workbox and its calendar, its mediocre prints of still lives and sea storms dotted around the walls, and its crocheted back covers on the armchairs. My home would’ve been like this, no doubt, if our lives hadn’t been thrown off course by the same cretin I was now trying to rid myself of. I was certain that if I’d carried on snooping around the flat, I would have found a mirror-fronted wardrobe in the bedroom, a canary in its cage, and in the kitchen, a pot of parsley and an apron hanging behind the door—the everyday things that people possessed.
Standing in the middle of the living room, wearing my Digby Morton suit, grotesquely out of place in that home and neighborhood, I made my demand.
“It’s essential that the person you find in possession of the badge goes to jail for a time.”
“That’s what will happen, of course, if we find whoever stole it.”
I shook my head.
“No. The person you’ll seize the decoration from isn’t the person who took it, but that must make no difference to you and your people. Even if he has alibis, even if they defend his innocence, it’s vital that he spends time in detainment.”
“Perhaps that’s something a judge should decide.”
I laughed cynically.
“Don’t talk rubbish, Ignacio. You put whoever you want in cells and prisons. In this dark Spain, that’s how things work. In any case, this is an embarrassing matter for everyone involved, humiliating and compromising both for the Argentine side and for Spain. For the sake of both countries, you and I know that nothing will ever be officially brought to light. It’ll be as if the Grand Cross never left the first lady’s neckline.” I clicked my fingers, the action of a conjurer about to do a trick. “Now you see it, now you don’t. As if nothing had happened.”
He looked at me thoughtfully, weighing my proposal, wondering, perhaps, what on earth the dressmaker’s apprentice he fell in love with in the Parque de la Bombilla was doing mixed up in this mess. The daughter of Señora Dolores, the girl from Calle de la Redondilla to whom he’d insisted on giving a typewriter back when he was still a naive and innocent young man.
“Promise me a month in jail for the person involved,” I said emphatically, “and I’ll give you all the details.”
He shifted position, crossing his legs.
“I could guarantee you that, and you could tell me, right now.”
“You could, but I’m not ready to share anything with you yet. I need a few days.”
“It’s not long before the gala dinner in Barcelona, the official farewell. The Generalísimo will be there, of course,” he reminded me. “It’ll be the visit’s crowning moment and the last chance for Doña Eva to wear the Grand Cross in public.”
I saw that, like me, he had the tour schedule memorized.
“You’ll have it by then.”
“Are you sure?”
I swallowed. No, I wasn’t sure. Far from it. My ideas were still hazy, a reckless plan riddled with pitfalls that could lead to disaster. But there was no sense in going forward if even I didn’t have faith in myself.
“You can count on it,” I reaffirmed. “But you must leave me to handle this. Don’t follow me or have anyone else do so. Don’t try to verify anything or probe anyone, anywhere. Just leave me be.”
He accompanied me to the door. How could he have guessed that I was carrying the coveted badge under my clothes? The simplest, the most sensible thing to do would have been to hand it over to him and explain what had happened with Juancito in the Sacromonte cave. But I didn’t, and I left him knowing no more than he’d already known, that at some stage Doña Eva had lost the Grand Cross, and Dodero, instead of crying over spilled milk, had raced off to demand a new jug. Instead of trying to find a badge whose whereabouts were uncertain, he’d decided to replace it with another one.
Spilling the beans, in short, would’ve been the most advisable action, would have gotten me out of the picture and allowed me to forget about the uncomfortable situation forever. But some new words had entered my vocabulary in recent days, and it was Ramiro who’d injected them into me with his demands and low tricks and baseness of today, and with the painful memories of the past that he’d dug up. And these words were stalking me now, to the point that they’d become my prime objective. Justice. Revenge. Retaliation. With his persistence, he’d awakened the bitterness in me.
From the Castilian cabinet in the entrance hall, Ignacio took out a card.
“Here are my phone numbers, at the Directorate-General and my private one. Call me when you think we can go ahead.”
