Imma

Imma is Lola’s companion on the road and the indispensable planner behind Lola’s effort to take the poet out of the Mondragón asylum. Her part in the story is defined by practical resourcefulness and abrupt disappearance: she helps secure a visit and imagines a future route to France, but when their money runs out she sets off alone, leaving Lola to wait. Much later, Amalfitano sees her in a park, where a silent exchange with a boy precedes her departure through the north gate. The narrative never explains where she has been or why she leaves.

Identity and Introduction

Imma travels with Lola through northern Spain and joins her in trying to visit the poet, who is confined in the asylum. In San Sebastián, the women stay briefly with Edurne, a former ETA commando who has left armed struggle and works as a street educator. Imma appears as the more self-possessed of the pair: while Edurne laughs at her account of working with people living on the street, neither Lola nor Edurne’s anxious husband joins in. The story offers no fuller biography, but establishes Imma as a woman who can move between strangers, lodging houses, and roads while remaining difficult to read.

Her resourcefulness becomes concrete when the women make a third attempt to see the poet. Imma claims to be a reporter from a Barcelona newspaper, while Lola presents herself as a poet; this time they are admitted. Imma’s invented professional identity is not an end in itself but a means of crossing the asylum’s threshold. Once inside, she stands beside Lola and the poet on a bench, gives him a cigarette, and later reads one of his poems when asked. Her actions make her a participant in the visit rather than merely Lola’s escort.

The Escape Plan

Lola tells the poet that she and Imma have come to help him escape. The proposal is Imma’s plan, and Lola presents it as worked out in detail: the three will cross the mountains into France, reach Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and take a train to Paris. There, Lola and Imma will find work cleaning or caring for children in wealthy neighborhoods while the poet writes. After several months, Lola expects to become pregnant; at six months, the group will return to Spain by way of La Jonquera or Portbou rather than Irun. The plan gives the poet a concrete route out of institutional confinement, but it also depends on the women’s ability to earn money and sustain a precarious life abroad.

Imma’s role is especially visible in the visit’s small gestures. While Lola explains the proposed future, Imma stands with a book and reads; later, at the poet’s request, she reads a poem about a labyrinth, Ariadne, and a young Spaniard living in a Paris garret. Her reading briefly turns the imagined escape into an act of shared attention. Yet the plan remains a proposal: the poet does not leave the asylum, and the narrative gives no indication that the escape is attempted.

Departure and Lola’s Isolation

After the women return the next day, the poet is said to be on bedrest, and the same obstacle recurs over the following days. Their money runs out. Imma decides to travel south to Madrid, where she has a brother who has prospered under democracy and from whom she intends to ask for a loan. Lola is too exhausted to travel, so they agree that she will remain at the boardinghouse and that Imma will return in a week. The division is presented as practical, but it separates the companions at the very point when their plan requires money and coordination.

Imma does not return after a week. Lola imagines her crossing a landscape of fast-moving trucks, still moving steadily and without looking back; this is Lola’s conjecture, not an account of Imma’s actual journey. On the ninth day, the boardinghouse owner evicts Lola. She sleeps at the station, in an abandoned warehouse, outdoors, and eventually in an empty cemetery niche, while continuing to visit the asylum’s perimeter. Imma’s unexplained absence therefore has a direct consequence: the waiting arrangement collapses, and Lola is left without the companion who had devised their escape plan.

Reappearance and Narrative Significance

Five years pass without news of Lola for Amalfitano. At a playground, he sees a woman leaning against the fence and thinks she resembles Imma. She strokes the hedge beside the play area and carries a large plastic bag. Amalfitano watches as a dark-haired boy notices her and waves; Imma silently waves back, then walks out through the park’s north gate onto a busy street. The scene supplies no reunion, conversation, or explanation. It offers only a gesture of recognition between Imma and the boy, followed by her departure.

That brief appearance preserves the ambiguity surrounding her. Imma is repeatedly associated with thresholds and onward movement: she helps gain entry to the asylum, plans a crossing into France, leaves for Madrid, and finally exits the park without speaking to Amalfitano. The narrative gives her practical agency but withholds the destination and outcome of her journeys. Her absence is not resolved so much as carried forward, making her a figure whose decisive actions are visible while her life beyond them remains largely unknown.