The Time in Between: A Novel Read Free

days in which the political fighting made theater audiences quake and governments lasted three paternosters, we barely had the chance to cry over what we’d lost. Three weeks after the advent of our enforced inactivity, Ignacio appeared with a bouquet of violets and the news that he had at last passed his civil service exam. The plans for our little wedding stifled any feelings of uncertainty, and on a little table we planned the event. Although the new breezes that swept in with the Republic carried on them the fashion for civil weddings, my mother—whose soul housed simultaneously, and with no contradiction, her condition as single mother, an iron Catholic spirit, and a nostalgic loyalty to the deposed monarchy—encouraged us to celebrate a religious wedding in the neighboring church of San Andrés. Ignacio and I agreed; how could we not, without toppling that hierarchy of order in which he submitted to all my desires and I deferred to my mother’s without argument. Nor did I have any good reason to refuse: the dreams I had about celebrating that marriage were modest ones, and it made no difference to me whether it was at an altar with a priest and cassock or in a large room presided over by a Republican tricolor flag.
    So we prepared to set the date with the same parish priest who twenty-four years earlier, on June eighth, as dictated by the calendar of saints’ days, had given me the name Sira. Sabiniana, Victorina, Gaudencia, Heraclia, and Fortunata had been other possibilities that went with the saints of the day.
    “Sira, Father, just put Sira—it’s short, at least.” That was my mother’s decision, in her single motherhood. And so I was Sira.
    We would celebrate the marriage with family and a few friends. With my grandfather, who had neither his legs nor his wits, mutilated in body and spirit during the war of the Philippines, a permanent mute presence in his rocking chair next to our dining room balcony windows. With Ignacio’s mother and sisters who’d come in from thevillage. With our next-door socialist neighbors Engracia and Norberto and their three sons, as dear to us as if the same blood flowed right across the landing. With Doña Manuela, who took up the threads again to give me the gift of her final piece of work, in the form of a bridal dress. We would treat our guests to sugar-plum pastries, sweet Málagan wine and vermouth. Perhaps we would be able to hire a musician from the neighborhood to come up and play a paso doble, and some street photographer would take a dry-plate picture for us, which would adorn our home, something we did not yet have and for now would be my mother’s.
    It was then, amid this jumble of plans and preparations, that it occurred to Ignacio to prepare me to take the test to make me a civil servant like him. His brand-new post in administration had opened his eyes to a new world: that of the administration of the Republic, an area where there existed professional destinies for women that lay beyond the stove, the wash house, and drudgery; through which the female sex could beat a path, elbow to elbow with men, in the same conditions and with their sights set on the same dreams. The first women were already sitting as deputies in the parliament; the equality of the sexes in public life was proclaimed. There had been recognition of our legal status, our right to work, and universal suffrage. All the same, I would have infinitely preferred to return to sewing, but it took Ignacio just three evenings to convince me. The old world of fabrics and backstitches had been toppled and a new universe was opening its doors to us: we had to adapt to it. Ignacio himself could take charge of my preparation; he had all the study topics and more than enough experience in the art of putting himself forward and failing countless times without ever giving in to despair. As for me, I would do my share to help the little platoon that we two would make up with my mother, my grandfather, and the