New York becomes the dangerous hinge in Clara Stauffer’s proposed journey from Madrid to Buenos Aires. The city itself is only a transit point, but its presence in the itinerary forces the people around Clara to weigh exposure, false identities, and the risks of crossing borders under surveillance.

A Transit Point in Clara’s Itinerary

Near Christmas, Clara explains that Madrid’s flights to Argentina are full. The only available route that will get her to an important meeting in time is a Pan American flight departing from Lisbon, with a connection in New York. She says the transfer is unavoidable if she is to arrive on schedule. The journey therefore turns on a logistical constraint: New York is not her destination, but it is the necessary passage between Lisbon and Argentina.

Identity and the Risk of Recognition

The proposed transit unsettles Manuel Arroyo Benítez, who is posing as Adrián Gallardo Ortega. At the mention of New York, he reacts as though he were the real Adrián and says he cannot set foot there. Clara distinguishes between him and the identity he is using: José Pacheco Hernández, she points out, would have no such problem. His correction does not restore his composure. The exchange reveals how thoroughly his assumed identity has shaped his reflexes—and how a single place name can make the danger of recognition immediate.

Clara, meanwhile, has decided to travel under her own name rather than risk being identified as someone using false papers. She says Pan American has assured her that passengers in transit will remain in a room they cannot leave until boarding their next flight, and that the transit area is legally no man’s land. Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has raised no objection, and she has been assured that officials will watch over her. These protections do not erase her concern: a lone woman with a Spanish passport and German surnames, traveling from Madrid through Lisbon and New York, might attract attention. Traveling with a companion, she argues, will make both of them less conspicuous.

The Journey’s Consequences

Clara’s invitation makes the New York connection more than a detail of the route. It creates a practical reason for Manuel to accompany her, while confronting him with a destination he believes he cannot enter. Their differing identities shape the same journey in opposite ways: Clara chooses her authentic name as a safeguard, whereas Manuel depends on an assumed one. The scene leaves the proposed passage to New York poised between cover and exposure, showing how exile and clandestine travel turn ordinary transit arrangements into tests of identity and safety.

New York in the Wider Geography of Exile

Elsewhere in the novel, New York appears in Manuel’s startled response to Clara’s plan, while the book’s wider migration history gives such routes a longer political context. After the Argentine dictatorship’s terror began on 24 March 1976, thousands sought ways to leave the country; Mexico received the most exiles, and Spain became another major destination. The later return of Spanish Republicans who had made lives in Argentina, now displaced again and arriving in Spain as foreigners, underscores the novel’s recurring geography of forced movement. Against that history, New York’s role as a connection point belongs to a world in which passage is never merely passage: the route can determine who may travel safely, under what name, and toward which uncertain refuge.