The Time in Between: A Novel by María Dueñas, Daniel Hahn Read Free Book Online Page A

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, acouple 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