The Time in Between A Novel

Chapter Forty-One

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When she opened the door I didn’t say a word; I just looked at her, containing my desire to throw my arms around her. She looked at me confused, running her eyes over me. Then she tried to meet my eyes, but perhaps the voilette of my hat prevented her from seeing them.

“What can I do for you, señora?” she finally said.

She was thinner. The passage of the years was visible on her. As petite as ever, but thinner and older. I smiled. She still didn’t recognize me.

“I bring you greetings from my mother, Doña Manuela. She’s in Morocco, she’s gone back to sewing.”

She looked at me, surprised, not understanding. She was turned out with her usual care, but her hair hadn’t been dyed for a couple of months and the dark suit she was wearing had accumulated the shine of many winters.

“I’m Sira, Doña Manuela. Sirita, the daughter of Dolores, your employee.”

She looked at me again, up and down. I bent down to bring myself to her level and lifted the little piece of netting on my hat so she could see my face.

“It’s me, Doña Manuela, it’s Sira. Don’t you remember me?” I whispered.

“Holy Mother of God, Sira! My child, I’m so delighted to see you!” she said at last.

She hugged me and began to cry as I struggled not to let myself be set off, too.

“Come in, my child, come in, don’t just stand there in the doorway,” she said when she was finally able to get her emotions under control. “But how incredibly elegant you are, child, I wouldn’t have recognized you. Come in, come into the living room. Tell me, what are you doing in Madrid, how are things, how is your mother?”

She led me through to the main room and once again homesickness engulfed me. How many Feasts of the Magi had I, as a young girl, visited that room, holding my mother’s hand, how excited I’d become as I tried to guess what gift would be waiting for me there. I remembered Doña Manuela’s home on the Calle Santa Engracia as a large, opulent apartment; not as fancy as the one on Zurbano where she’d set up her workshop, but infinitely less humble than ours on the Calle de la Redondilla. On this visit, though, I discovered that my childhood recollections had infected my memory with a perception that distorted reality. The house that Doña Manuela had lived in for her whole life as a single woman was neither large nor opulent. It was just a mediocre home, poorly laid out, cold, dark, and full of somber furnishings with worn, heavy velvet curtains that barely allowed any light in; an apartment covered with water stains, in which all the pictures were faded engravings and yellowed crochet doilies filled every corner.

“Sit, child, sit. Would you like a drink? Can I make you a little coffee? It’s not really coffee, it’s roasted chicory, you know how hard it is to get hold of provisions these days, but a little bit of milk will hide the taste, though even that gets more watery every day, what can we do? I have no sugar as I’ve given my ration card to a neighbor for her children; at my age it hardly matters—”

I interrupted her, taking her hand.

“I don’t want anything, Doña Manuela, don’t worry about it. I’ve just come to see you to ask you something.”

“Tell me.”

“Are you still sewing?”

“No, child, no. Ever since we closed the workshop in thirty-five I’ve not gone back to it. I’ve done the odd little thing for a friend or out of a sense of duty, but no more than that. If my memory serves, your wedding dress was the last big thing I did, and, well, since after all . . .”

I preferred to dodge the subject she was referring to, so I didn’t let her finish.

“Would you like to come and sew with me?”

It took her a few seconds to reply, perplexed.

“Go back to work, you say? Go back to the old job, just like we used to do?”

I nodded, smiling, trying to inject a trace of optimism into her bewilderment. But she didn’t answer me right away; first she changed the direction of the conversation.

“And your mother? Why have you come to ask me instead of sewing with her?”

“I’ve told you, she’s still in Morocco. She went there during the war, I don’t know if you knew.”

“I knew, I knew,” she said softly, as though fearing that the walls would hear her and pass on the secret. “She showed up here one afternoon, just all of a sudden, unexpectedly, like you’ve done now. She told me everything was arranged for her to go to Africa, that you were there, and that somehow you’d managed to arrange for someone to get her out of Madrid. She didn’t know what to do; she was frightened. She came to ask my advice, to see what I thought of it all.”

My impeccable makeup didn’t allow her to see the distress that her words were causing: I’d never imagined that my mother would have had any hesitation between staying and going.

“I told her to go, to leave as soon as possible,” she went on. “Madrid was a hell. We all suffered so much, child, all of us. Those on the left, fighting day and night to stop the Nationalists getting in; those on the right, longing for just that, in hiding so as not to be found and taken in by the secret police. And those—like your mother and me—who weren’t of either faction, waiting for the horror to be over so that we could get on with our lives in peace. All this without a government in charge, without anyone imposing a bit of order in that chaos. So I advised her that yes, she should go, she should get out of this agony and not pass up the opportunity to be reunited with you.”

Despite feeling overwhelmed by emotion, I decided not to ask anything about that meeting, which was now so long ago. I’d gone to see my old boss with a plan for the immediate future, so I chose to steer the conversation in that direction.

“You were right to encourage her, you don’t know how grateful I am to you for that, Doña Manuela,” I said. “She’s doing terrifically well now, she’s happy and working again. I set up a workshop in Tetouan in thirty-six, just a few months after the war started. Things were calm there, and even though the Spanish women weren’t in the mood for parties and dresses, there were some foreigners for whom the war hardly mattered. So they became my clients. When my mother arrived, we went on sewing together. And now I’ve decided to come back to Madrid and start again with a new workshop.”

“And you’ve returned alone?”

“I’ve been alone a long time, Doña Manuela. If you’re asking me about Ramiro, that didn’t last long.”

“So Dolores has stayed behind there without you?” she asked, surprised. “But she left specifically to be with you . . .”

“She likes Morocco: the climate, the atmosphere, the quiet life. We had very good clients and she’s made friends, too. She preferred to stay. But I missed Madrid too much,” I lied. “So we decided that I’d come back, I’d start to work here, and once the second atelier was up and running then we’d decide what to do.”

She looked at me for a few endless seconds. Her eyelids were drooping, her face covered in wrinkles. She must have been sixty-something now, perhaps already approaching seventy. Her curved back and the calluses on her fingers showed traces of each and every one of those tough years she had spent slaving away with needles and scissors. First as a simple seamstress, then later as an employee in a workshop, then as the owner of a business, and finally as a sailor without a ship, inactive. But in no way was she done yet. Her eyes, full of life, small and dark like little black olives, reflected the sharpness of someone who still had a good head on her shoulders.

“You’re not telling me everything, child, right?” she said at last.

The sly fox, I thought admiringly. I’d forgotten how smart she was.

“No, Doña Manuela, I’m not telling you everything,” I acknowledged. “I’m not telling you everything because I can’t. But I can tell you a part of it. The thing is, in Tetouan I got to know some important people, people who are still very influential nowadays. They persuaded me to come to Madrid, to set up a studio and sew for certain high-class clients. Not for women close to the regime, but mainly for foreign ladies and for monarchist Spanish aristocrats, the ones who think Franco is usurping the king’s place.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do your friends want you to sew for these ladies?”

“I can’t tell you. But I need you to help me. I’ve brought some magnificent materials over from Morocco, and there’s a terrible shortage of fabrics here. The word has got around and my reputation has spread, but I have more clients than I’d expected and I can’t handle them all on my own.”

“But why, Sira?” she repeated slowly. “Why are you sewing for these women, what do you and your friends want from them?”

I pursed my lips resolutely shut, determined not to say a word. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. But an alien force seemed to be dragging the words up from the pit of my stomach. As though Doña Manuela were back in charge and I was no more than an adolescent apprentice, when she had every right to demand explanations from me because I’d skipped a whole morning’s work going to buy three dozen mother-of-pearl buttons in the Plaza de Pontejos. The words were spoken by my entrails, and by yesterday, not by me myself.

“I’m sewing for them in order to get information about what the Germans in Spain are doing. Then I pass the information on to the English.”

I bit my bottom lip the moment I’d spoken the final syllable, aware of how careless I’d been. I regretted having broken my promise to Hillgarth not to reveal my mission to anyone, but it had already been said and there was no going back. I thought about clarifying the situation—adding that it was the best thing for Spain to remain neutral, that we were in no state to face another war, all those things they’d been so insistent about to me. But there was no need, because before I had the chance to add anything I could see a strange gleam in Doña Manuela’s eyes and the trace of a smile on one side of her mouth.

“With the compatriots of the queen Doña Victoria Eugenie, child, whatever you need me to do. Just tell me when you want me to start.”

We went on talking all afternoon, planning out how we’d divide up the work, and at nine o’clock the next morning she was at my house. She was all too happy to take on a secondary role in the workshop. Not having to deal with the clients was almost a relief to her. We complemented each other perfectly: just as she and my mother had done for all those years, but the other way around. She took to her new position with total humility, accommodating herself to my life and rhythm, getting along with Dora and Martina, bringing to us her experience and an energy that would have been the envy of many women thirty years younger. She adapted easily to my being the one in charge, to my less conventional lines and ideas, and to taking on a thousand little tasks that so often before she would delegate to the simple sewing girls. Returning to the breach after long years of inactivity was a gift to her, and like a patch of poppies in the April rains she emerged from her dark days and was revived.

With Doña Manuela in charge of the back room, my working days became calmer. We both toiled long hours, but I was finally able to move without too much rush and enjoy a few spells of free time. I began to have more of a social life: my clients encouraged me to attend a thousand events, keen to show me off as their great discovery of the season. I accepted an invitation to a concert of German military bands at El Retiro park, a cocktail party at the Turkish embassy, a dinner at the Italian embassy, and the occasional lunch in fashionable places. Pests began to buzz around me: passing bachelors, potbellied married men with the means to keep a handful of sweethearts, attractive diplomats from the most exotic places. After a couple of drinks and a dance I was fighting them off. The last thing I needed at that moment was a man in my life.

But it wasn’t all parties and recreation, far from it. Although Doña Manuela made my day-to-day life less harried, absolute peace and quiet didn’t follow. Not long after I’d unloaded the heavy burden of working alone, a new storm cloud appeared on the horizon. The simple fact that I was walking the streets with less haste, being able to pause at a shop window and slacken the rhythm of my comings and goings, made me notice something that I hadn’t seen till then, something that Hillgarth had warned me about during that long dessert in Tangiers. I realized I was being followed. Perhaps they’d been doing it for a while and my constant rush had stopped me from taking any notice. Or maybe it was something new, which happened by chance to coincide with Doña Manuela’s entry into Chez Arish. But the fact was, a new shadow seemed to have settled over my life. A shadow that was not even constant, not even total; perhaps this was why it wasn’t easy for me to become fully aware of its proximity. I thought at first that the things I was seeing were just my imagination playing tricks on me. In autumn, Madrid was full of men with hats and raincoats with the collars up; that look was actually very common in those postwar times, and thousands of replicas filled the streets, offices, and cafés. The figure who had stopped, turning away from me, as soon as I’d stopped to cross Castellana wasn’t necessarily the same one who a couple of days later pretended to stop to give alms to a ragged blind man while I was looking at some shoes in a store. Nor was there any good reason why his raincoat should be the same one that followed me that Saturday to the entrance of the Prado Museum. Or for it to be the same as the back that I saw hiding discreetly behind a column at the Ritz grill while I was having my lunch with my client Agatha Ratinborg, a supposed European princess with highly dubious roots. It was true, there was no definitive way of confirming that all those raincoats scattered along streets and days converged in a single individual, and yet somehow my gut told me that the owner of them all was one and the same man.

The tube of patterns that I prepared that evening to leave in the hairdresser’s salon contained seven conventional messages of average length and a personal one with just two words: “Being followed.” I finished them late—it had been a long day of fittings and sewing. Doña Manuela hadn’t gone home till after eight; following her departure I’d finished up a couple of invoices that needed to be ready first thing in the morning, I’d taken a bath, and then, still wrapped in my crimson velvet dressing gown, I had a couple of apples and a glass of milk for my dinner, standing up, leaning against the kitchen sink. I was so tired that I was barely hungry; no sooner had I finished than I sat down to encode the messages, and once these were done and the day’s notes sensibly burned I began turning out the lights to go to bed. Halfway down the corridor I stopped dead. I thought at first that I’d heard a single isolated knock, then it was two, three, four. Then silence. Till they started up again. It was clear where they were coming from—someone was at the door. He or she was knocking, knuckles against the wood, rather than ringing the bell. Dry knocks, getting less and less far apart, till they’d become a nonstop pounding. I stood stock still, gripped by fear, unable to go forward or back.

But the knocking didn’t stop, and its insistence forced me to react: whoever it was had no intention of going away without seeing me. I pulled the belt of my dressing gown tight, swallowed, and made my way slowly toward the door. Very slowly, without making the slightest sound, and still terrified, I lifted the cover of the peephole.

“Come in, for God’s sake, come in, come in,” was all I was able to whisper after opening the door.

He came in quickly, nervous. Unsettled.

“That’s it, that’s it, I’m out, it’s all over.”

He didn’t even look at me; he talked like a madman, as though speaking to himself, to the air, or to nothing. I led him quickly to the living room, almost pushing him, made fearful by the idea that someone in the building might have seen him. The apartment was dark, but before I’d even turned on a light I tried to get him to sit down, to relax a little. He refused. He kept walking from one end of the room to the other, looking around wildly and repeating the same thing over and over again.

“That’s it, that’s it, everything’s finished, it’s all over.”

I turned on a small corner lamp, and without asking I poured him a generous glass of cognac.

“Here,” I said, forcing him to take the glass in his right hand. “Drink,” I commanded. He obeyed, shaking. “And now sit down, relax, and tell me what’s going on.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea why he should have shown up at my house after midnight, and even though I was sure he would have been discreet in his movements his attitude was so changed that he might no longer have cared about such things. It had been more than a year and a half since I’d seen him, since the day of his official farewell from Tetouan. I preferred not to ask him anything, not to pressure him. Quite clearly this visit wasn’t a mere courtesy, but I decided it would be best to wait for him to calm down: perhaps then he’d tell me himself what it was he wanted from me. He sat down with the glass held in his fingers; he took another drink. He was dressed in civilian clothes, in a dark suit with a white shirt and striped tie; without his peaked cap, his stripes, and the sash across his chest that I’d seen him wear on so many formal occasions and that he wouldn’t remove until the event was over. He seemed to calm down a bit and lit a cigarette. He puffed on it, staring out into the void, surrounded by the smoke and his own thoughts. I didn’t say a word; I just sat down on a nearby chair, crossed my legs, and waited. When the cigarette came to an end he leaned forward slightly to put it out in the ashtray. And from that position he raised his eyes at last and spoke.

“They’ve dismissed me. It’s going public tomorrow. The press release has already been sent to the Official State Bulletin and the press; in seven or eight hours the news will be out there on the streets. Do you know how many words they’re going to eliminate me with? Eighteen. I’ve counted them. Look.”

He drew a handwritten note out of his jacket pocket and showed it to me. It bore just a couple of lines that he recited from memory.

“ ‘Don Juan Beigbeder y Atienza leaves his role as minister for foreign affairs, with my gratitude for his services rendered.’ Eighteen if you don’t count the ‘Don’ before my name, which will probably be abbreviated. If not, it’ll be nineteen. It’ll be followed by the statement from El Caudillo, in which he thanks me for the services I’ve performed. That one’s a real joke.”

He drained the glass in a gulp and I poured him another.

“I knew I’d been walking a tightrope for months, but I didn’t expect the blow to be so sudden. Or so degrading.”

He lit another cigarette and went on talking through puffs of smoke.

“Yesterday afternoon I was with Franco in El Pardo; it was a long, relaxed meeting. At no point was he critical, nor did he make any speculations about my possible replacement. You know things have been tense lately, ever since I’ve been allowing myself to be seen openly with Ambassador Hoare. Actually I left the meeting quite satisfied, thinking that Franco was considering my ideas, that perhaps he’d finally decided to give some weight to my opinions. How could I have imagined that what he was about to do the moment I was out the door was sharpen the knife to plunge it into my back the following day. I had sought an audience with him to discuss some matters concerning his forthcoming interview with Hitler in Hendaya, knowing what a humiliation it was for me that he’d not planned for me to go with him. All the same, I wanted to talk to him, to pass on certain pieces of important information that I’d obtained through Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization—do you know who I’m talking about?”

“I’ve heard the name before, yes.”

“Although the position he occupies might appear rather unappealing, Canaris is a pleasant, charismatic man, and I have an extremely good relationship with him. We’re both part of a strange class of rather sentimental soldiers who don’t have much affection for uniforms, decorations, and barracks. In theory he’s under Hitler’s command, but he doesn’t bow to his plans and acts quite autonomously. So much so that they say he has the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, too, just as I had these past months.”

He got up from his place, took a few steps, and approached one of the balcony doors. The curtains were open.

“Best not to get too close,” I warned him firmly. “You could be seen from the street.”

He turned abruptly and crossed the room several times from end to end as he continued talking.

“I call him my friend Guillermo, like that, in Spanish; he speaks our language very well, he lived in Chile for a bit. A few days ago we met for lunch at the Casa Botín—he loves roast pork. I noted that he was more alienated than ever from the influence of Hitler, so much so that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been plotting against the Führer with the English. We talked about the absolute advisability of Spain not getting involved in the war on the side of the Axis powers, and to that end we spent the meal working on a list of provisions that Franco should ask Hitler for in exchange for agreeing to join the conflict. I’m perfectly familiar with our strategic requirements, and Canaris knows all about Germany’s weaknesses, so between the two of us we compiled a roster of demands that Spain should make as nonnegotiable conditions of its participation and that Germany would be in no position to agree to, even in the medium term. The proposal included a long list of impossible requests, from territorial possessions in French Morocco and Oran to exorbitant quantities of grains and arms, and Gibraltar being taken over exclusively by Spanish soldiers; all of it, as I say, quite impossible. Canaris also advised me that he would not recommend that we begin the reconstruction of everything that had been destroyed by the war in Spain, that it would be better to leave the railways destroyed and the highways broken up so that the Germans were aware of the pitiful state of the country and how difficult it would be for their troops to get across it.”

He sat back down and took another sip of cognac. Fortunately the alcohol was relaxing him. I, meanwhile, remained utterly unsettled, unable to understand why Beigbeder had come to seek me out at this time of night and in such a state to talk about his meetings with Franco and his contact with German soldiers, which had so little to do with me.

“I arrived at El Pardo with all this information and conveyed it to El Caudillo in detail,” he went on. “He listened very intently, held on to the document, and thanked me for my work. He was so cordial with me that he even made a personal reference to the old times we’d shared in Africa. The Generalísimo and I have known each other for many years, did you know that? Actually apart from his ineffable brother-in-law, I think I am—sorry, I was—the only member of his government not to address him as ‘sir.’ Our little Franquito in charge of the Glorious National Movement—we never would have imagined such a thing. We were never great friends, in truth; actually, I don’t think he’s ever thought very highly of me at all—he didn’t understand my lack of military enthusiasm and my desire for postings that were urban, administrative, and, if at all possible, foreign. He didn’t fascinate me particularly either, I have to be honest with you; he was always so serious, so upright and dull, so competitive and obsessed with promotions and the career ladder, a real pain in the ass of a man. We were together in Tetouan; he was already a commandant, I was still a captain. Do you want me to tell you a story? When night fell all the officers used to get together in a seedy little café on the Plaza de España to have a few glasses of tea—do you remember those little cafés?”

“I remember them perfectly,” I said. How could I erase from my memory the wrought iron chairs under the palm trees, the smell of kebabs and tea with mint, the subdued movement of djellabas and European suits around the central pavilion with its clay tiles, and the whitewashed Moorish arches.

Nostalgia caused him to smile briefly for the first time. He lit another cigarette and leaned back in the sofa. We were talking in near darkness, with the small lamp in the corner of the room providing the only light. I was still in my dressing gown: I hadn’t found a moment to excuse myself to run and change. I didn’t want to leave him alone for a single second until he was quite calm.

“One evening he didn’t show up, and we all began to speculate about his absence. We came to the conclusion that he must have a girl and decided to seek out some confirmation; you know, basically just the nonsense that young officers get up to when they have too much time on their hands and not much to do. We drew lots and it fell to me to be the one to spy on him. The next day I clarified the mystery. On leaving the citadel I followed him as far as the medina and saw him go into a house, a typical Arab home. Although I found it hard to believe, I first imagined that he was having an affair with some little Muslim girl. I made some excuse to get myself into the house—I can’t even remember what it was. And what do you think I found? Our man getting Arabic lessons, that’s what he was up to. Because the great Africanist general, Spain’s notable and unvanquished Caudillo, the savior of the nation, doesn’t speak Arabic, however much he may have tried to learn. Nor does he understand the Moroccan people, nor does he care about them in the least. But I do. I care about them a great deal. And I get along with them because they’re my brothers. I can understand them in the most elevated Arabic, in Cherja, the dialect of the Rif villages, in whatever dialect they speak. And that was extremely troublesome to Spain’s youngest commandant, the pride of the troops in Africa. And the fact that it was I who discovered him trying to amend his fault annoyed him even more. But anyway, all youthful foolishness.”

He said some words in Arabic that I didn’t understand, as though to demonstrate his mastery of the language. As though I wasn’t already aware of it. He drank again, and I filled the glass for the third time.

“Do you know what Franco said when Serrano put me forward for the ministry? ‘You’re telling me you want me to put little Juan Beigbeder in Foreign Affairs? But he’s an utter lunatic!’ I don’t know why he’s branded me a madman; perhaps because his soul is cold as ice and anyone who’s a little bit more passionate than he is seems to him utterly insane. Me crazy—I hardly think so!”

He drank again. As he talked he barely looked at me, spewing out his bitterness in a ceaseless monologue. He talked and drank, talked and smoked. With rage, and without pause, while I listened in silence, unable to understand why he was telling me all this. We’d hardly ever been alone together before; he’d never addressed more than a handful of phrases to me without Rosalinda present; almost everything he knew about me came from her mouth. And yet at this moment, a moment so important in his life and his career, at this instant that marked the end of an era, for some unknown reason he had decided to confide in me.

“Franco and Serrano say I’ve gone crazy, that I’m the victim of the pernicious influence of a woman. The goddamned nonsense I’ve had to listen to lately. And the In-law-ísimo wants to lecture me on morality; he of all people, who has six or seven legitimate kids at home while he spends his days bedding a marchioness who he then takes out to the bullfights in his convertible! And on top of that they’re considering including the crime of adultery in the penal code; the whole thing’s a joke. Of course I like women, how could I not? I haven’t shared a conjugal life with my wife for years, and I don’t have to answer to anyone for the way I feel or whom I go to bed with or whom I get up in the morning with, that’s all there is to it. I’ve had my escapades, as many as I could, to be absolutely honest with you. So? Does that make me unusual in the army or the government? No. I’m just like all the rest, but they’ve decided to pin a label on me, a frivolous playboy bewitched by an Englishwoman. That’s just how stupid they are. They wanted my head to demonstrate their loyalty to the Germans, like Herod and the Baptist. And now they’ve got it, may it do them some good. But they didn’t need to trample all over me to get it.”

“What have they done to you?” I asked.

“Spread all kinds of calumnies about me: they’ve fabricated an intolerably bad reputation for me, as a depraved womanizer capable of selling out his country for a good screw, if you’ll pardon the language. They’ve spread the story that Rosalinda has kidnapped me and forced me to betray my country, that Hoare has been bribing me, that I receive money from the Jews in Tetouan in exchange for maintaining an anti-German position. They’ve had me watched night and day—I’ve even begun to fear for my physical safety—and don’t believe for a moment that I’m imagining these things. And all this because as a minister I’ve tried to act sensibly and put forward my ideas accordingly. I’ve told them that we can’t just drop our relations with the British and the North Americans because our supplies of wheat and oil, which we need to stop this country from starving to death, depend on them; I’ve insisted that we shouldn’t let Germany interfere in our domestic matters, that we should oppose their interventionist plans, that it’s not in our interest to get embroiled in their war, not even for the colonial empire they think we might be able to gain by it. Do you think they’ve given my opinions the slightest consideration? Not a bit: not only have they not paid me the least attention, but they’ve also accused me of lunacy for thinking that we shouldn’t bow down to an army that is passing through all Europe in triumph. Do you know what one of the divine Serrano’s latest brilliant notions is, what phrase he’s been repeating lately? ‘War, with bread, or war without it!’ What do you think of that? And now it turns out that I’m the crazy one—imagine that! My resistance has cost me the position; who knows if it might end up costing me my life, too. I’ve been left with nothing, Sira. My ministerial post, my military career, and my personal relations: everything, absolutely everything, dragged through the mud. And now they’re sending me to Ronda under house arrest, and who’s to know if they haven’t planned to set up a court-martial and get rid of me one fine morning with a firing squad?”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He seemed weary. Exhausted. Old.

“I’m confused, I’m drained,” he said quietly. Then he sighed deeply. “What I wouldn’t give to go back, not to have ever abandoned my beloved Morocco. What I wouldn’t give for this whole nightmare never to have started. Rosalinda is the only person who could console me, and she’s gone. Which is why I’ve come to see you: to ask you to help me get my news to her.”

“Where is she now?”

I’d been wondering about that question for weeks, not knowing where to go to find an answer.

“Lisbon. She had to leave at short notice.”

“Why?” I asked in alarm.

“We learned that the Gestapo was after her; she had to get out of Spain.”

“And as minister you weren’t able to do anything?”

“Me do something about the Gestapo? Not me, not anyone, my dear. My relations with all the German representatives have been very tense lately: some members of our own government have taken it upon themselves to leak my thoughts against our possible intervention in the war and excessive Hispano-German friendship to the ambassador and his people. Though I probably wouldn’t have managed anything even if I’d been on good terms with them, because the Gestapo operates quite autonomously, on the fringes of the official institutions. We learned through a leak that Rosalinda was on one of their lists. Overnight she prepared her things and flew to Portugal; we sent everything else on after her. Ben Wyatt, the North American naval attaché, was the only person who came with us to the airport; he’s a great friend. No one else knows where she is. Or at least, no one should know. Now, however, I wanted to share the information with you. I’m sorry to have invaded your home at this time of night and in this state, but tomorrow they take me to Ronda and I don’t know how long I’ll have to go without being able to contact her.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, finally sensing the purpose of his strange visit.

“Find some way to arrange for these letters to get to Lisbon through the diplomatic bag of the British embassy. Get them to Alan Hillgarth, I know you’re in contact with him,” he said as he took three thick envelopes out of his inside jacket pocket. “I’ve written them over the last few weeks, but I’ve been so closely watched that I haven’t dared dispatch them via normal channels; as you’ll understand, I don’t even trust my own shadow right now. Today, with this business of their having formalized the dismissal, they seem to have let up a little and lowered their guard. Which is why I’ve been able to get here without being followed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, don’t worry,” he said, calming my fears. “I took a taxi—I didn’t want to use the official car. There weren’t any cars following us the whole way, I checked. And following me on foot would have been impossible. I stayed in the taxi till I saw the doorman bring the rubbish out; only then did I come into the house. No one saw me, you can be sure of that.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

“How could I not have known? It was Rosalinda who chose this house and kept me abreast of the developments in its preparation. She was very excited about your arrival and your agreement to join with her country’s cause.” He smiled again with his lips closed, just tensing one side of his mouth. “I really love her, Sira, you know that? I’ve really loved her so much. I don’t know if I’ll see her again, but if I don’t, tell her I’d have given my life to have had her with me on this desperately sad night. Would you mind if I poured myself another drink?”

“Of course not, no need to ask.”

I’d lost count of what number he was on, probably five or six. With the next gulp, the moment of melancholy passed. He’d relaxed and didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving.

“Rosalinda is happy in Lisbon, she’s building a life for herself there. You know what she’s like, able to adapt to anything with impressive ease.”

Rosalinda Fox—there was no one like my friend for reinventing herself and starting from scratch as many times as she needed to. What an odd couple she and Beigbeder made. How different they were, and yet how well they complemented each other.

“Go see her in Lisbon when you can, she’d so enjoy spending a few days with you. Her address is on the letters I’ve given you: don’t pass them on till you’ve copied it down.”

“I’ll try, I promise. Are you considering going to Portugal, too? What do you mean to do when all this is over?”

“When my arrest is over? How should I know, it could last years—I might never get out of it alive. The situation is very uncertain; I don’t even know what charges they’re going to bring against me. Revolt, espionage, treason against the fatherland: any outrageous thing. But if Fortune takes my part and it’s all over soon, then yes, I think I will go abroad. God knows I’m no liberal, but I’m absolutely repelled by the megalomaniac totalitarianism with which Franco has emerged from his victory, the monster that it’s engendered, and that many of us have conspired to feed. You can’t imagine how much I regret having played a part in enhancing his reputation in Morocco during the war. I don’t like this regime, not one bit. I don’t think I even like Spain; at least, I don’t like this monstrosity of Una, Grande y Libre that they’re trying to sell us. United, great and free! I’ve spent more years of my life outside this country than in it; I feel like a foreigner here, there are so many things that are strange to me.”

“You could always go back to Morocco,” I suggested. “With Rosalinda.”

“No, no,” he replied forcefully. “Morocco is over now. There’s no future for me there; after having been high commissioner I couldn’t take on a more modest post. Though it pains my heart to say it, I fear Africa is a closed chapter in my life now. Professionally, I mean, because in my heart I’ll be connected to it for as long as I live. Inshallah. May it be so.”

“And next?”

“Everything will depend on my military position; I’m in the hands of El Caudillo, Generalísimo of all the armies by the grace of God; there’s nothing to be done. As though God had anything to do with these devious matters. He might lift my arrest in a month or decide simply to execute me and put out a press release. Who’d have thought it twenty years ago—my whole life in the hands of little Franquito.”

He took his glasses off once again to rub his eyes, then refilled his glass and lit another cigarette.

“You’re very tired,” I said. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

He looked at me with the face of a little lost boy. A little lost boy who was carrying the weight of more than fifty years of existence on his back, along with the highest posting in the Spanish colonial administration and a ministerial role with a precipitous ending. He replied with crushing honesty.

“I don’t want to leave because I can’t bear the idea of going back to being alone in that big gloomy house that up till now has been my official residence.”

“Stay and sleep here if you prefer,” I offered. I knew it was reckless on my part to invite him to spend the night, but I could sense that given the state he was in, he might do something crazy if I shut the doors of my house and drove him out to wander the streets of Madrid alone.

“I fear I won’t be able to sleep a wink,” he acknowledged, with a half smile heavy with sadness, “but I would be grateful if you’d allow me to rest here awhile; I won’t be any trouble, I promise. It will be like a refuge in the midst of the storm: you can’t imagine how bitter the solitude of the banished man can be.”

“Consider yourself at home. I’ll bring you a blanket in case you want to lie down. Take off your jacket and tie—make yourself comfortable.”

He followed my instructions while I went off in search of a blanket. When I returned he was in his shirtsleeves, refilling the glass with cognac once again.

“Last one,” I said authoritatively, taking the bottle away.

I put a clean ashtray on the table and the blanket on the back of the sofa. Then I sat down next to him and gently took his arm.

“It’ll all pass, Juan Luis, give it time. Sooner or later, eventually, it’ll all pass.”

I rested my head on his shoulder and he put his hand in mine.

“From your mouth to God’s ears, Sira,” he whispered.

I left him alone with his demons and retired to bed. As I made my way back through the hallway to my bedroom I heard him talking to himself in Arabic; I didn’t understand what he was saying. It took me some time to fall asleep; it was probably past four when I managed to reconcile myself to a strange, troubling slumber. I woke to the sound of the front door closing at the other end of the hallway. I looked at the time on my alarm clock. Twenty to eight. I would never see him again.