Read Online In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina - Free Book Online Page B

gestures and perhaps in his somewhat excessive cordiality, as if at each moment, and with each person, he were calibrating the practical importance of being agreeable. Perhaps he, Moreno Villa, never had to make too much of an effort, thus his overall apathy toward things, his inability to set his mind to one thing, his tendency to give up so easily. He had the reluctance of an heir to a limited position but one that allows him to live with no effort other than not aspiring to too much, accommodating to the soporific inertia and lethargy of the Spanish provincial middle class. He looked at Ignacio Abel’s gold watch, his shirt cuffs, the cap of his fountain pen visible in the breast pocket next to the tip of a white handkerchief with embroidered initials. He’d married well, he recalled someone saying in those Madrid circles where everything was known; he’d married an older woman, the daughter of someone influential. Here in the stillness of Moreno Villa’s room, he seemed out of place, his energy intact after so many hours at the office, a day full of phone calls and paperwork, decision after decision, executed by his construction crew at the other end of the city.
    I can easily imagine the two men talking, and listen to their calm voices as the afternoon sun slowly leaves the room and disappears behind the roofs of the city. They are not exactly friends, because neither one is particularly sociable, yet they are united by a vague familiarity, by a common air of decorum, though Ignacio Abel is younger, of course. They use the formal
usted
with each other, which is a relief to Moreno Villa now that almost everyone calls him Pepe or even Pepito, reinforcing the suspicion that he’s lost his youth without gaining respect. He keeps comparing—he can’t help it—his rumpled, stained clothing to Abel’s suit; the tense, erect posture the other maintains in the upright chair as he spreads drawings and photos on the table to his own, old man’s carelessness in the easy chair that belonged to his father; his two more or less borrowed rooms to Ignacio Abel’s apartment in a new building in the Salamanca district, this father of two children whose work gives him a solid, undeniable place in the world.
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    â€œAnd what will you do when University City is finished?”
    Ignacio Abel, disconcerted by the question, took a moment to answer.
    â€œThe truth is, I don’t think about it. I know there’s a deadline, and I want that date to come, but at the same time I don’t really believe it.”
    â€œThe political situation doesn’t seem very reassuring.”
    â€œI prefer not to think about that either. Of course there’ll be delays, I have no illusions about it, no matter how many guarantees Dr. Negrín gives me. All construction sites have delays. Nothing turns out the way it was planned. You know what you’re going to paint in that picture, but uncertainty is much greater in my work. Each time there’s a change of minister or a construction strike, everything stops, and then it’s even more difficult to get started again.”
    â€œYou have plans and models of your buildings. I don’t know how this picture will turn out, or whether I’ll paint it at all.”
    â€œThe model doesn’t serve as your guide? It’s calming to look at the fruit you have before you, the glass bowl.”
    â€œBut if you pay attention, they’re always changing. It doesn’t look the same as it did when you came in a little while ago. The old still-life painters liked to put some blemish on the fruit, or a hole with a worm looking out. They wanted people to see that youth and beauty were false or transitory and that putrefaction was at work.”
    â€œDon’t tell me that, Moreno.” Ignacio Abel smiled in his quick, formal way. “I don’t want to go to the construction site tomorrow and think I’ve spent six years