María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“But all of that shouldn’t trouble you too much. He can still be loyal to the Germans while he’s with you, they’re two different things—one is official, one’s personal. I’m sure the people who think that way aren’t right.”

“They are right, of course they are.”

“I don’t understand.”

Quickly she cast her eyes across the half-empty terrace. The wind had stopped, the awnings barely moved. A number of waiters in white jackets and tarbooshes—the red felt Moorish hat—worked in silence shaking napkins and tablecloths into the air. Rosalinda lowered her voice to something close to a whisper—but a whisper that, though quiet, conveyed an unmistakable determination.

“They’re right in their assumptions, because, querida, I have every intention of doing whatever I can to get Juan Luis to establish friendly relations with my compatriots. I can’t bear the idea that your war should end in favor of the Nationalist army and that Germany should end up being the great ally of the Spanish people, and Great Britain, meanwhile, an enemy power. And I’m going to do it for two reasons. The first, simple sentimental patriotism: because I want the country of the man I love to be friends with my own. However, the second reason is a much more pragmatic, objective one: we English don’t trust the Nazis, and things are turning ugly. Maybe it’s a bit risky to talk about another great European war coming, but you never know. And were that to happen, I’d like your country to be on our side.”

I was about to say quite openly that our poor country wasn’t in a position to get involved in any future war, that it had more than enough misfortune with the one it was living through now. That war of ours seemed quite alien to her, however, despite the fact that her lover was significantly involved in one side of it. Eventually I chose to follow her lead, to focus on a future that might never come and not sink into the tragedy of the present. My day had already had a good dose of bitterness, and I preferred to keep it from getting any sadder.

“And how do you mean to do that?” was all I asked.

“Bueno—well—don’t believe for a moment that I’ve got powerful personal contacts in Whitehall, nothing of the kind,” she said with a little laugh. I automatically made a mental note to ask Félix what Whitehall was, but my look of concentration managed to hide my ignorance. She went on. “But you know how these things work: networks of acquaintances, people who can connect you to other people… So I thought I might try things with some friends I have here in Tangiers to begin with, Colonel Hal Durand, General Norman Beynon and his wife, Mary, all of whom have excellent contacts in the Foreign Office. At the moment they’re away spending a little time in London, but I’m planning to meet them later on, introduce them to Juan Luis, try to see if they’ll talk and get along.”

“And you think he’ll agree, he’ll let you get involved like that in his official business?”

“Of course, querida,” she said without the slightest trace of doubt, as she tossed another lock of hair away from her left eye with an airy shake of her head. “Juan Luis is a terrifically intelligent man. He knows the Germans very well, he’s lived with them for many years, and he’s afraid that the price that Spain will have to pay for all the help they’ve been receiving will turn out to be too dear. Besides, he has a high opinion of the English because, after all, we’ve rarely lost a war. He’s a soldier and such things are important to him. And above all, and this is the main reason, because Juan Luis adores me. As he tells me every day, he would go down into the fires of hell for his Rosalinda.”

By the time we got up, the tables on the terrace were already set for dinner and the evening shadows were beginning to rise along the adobe walls. Rosalinda insisted on paying for our lunch.

“I’ve finally managed to get my husband to transfer my allowance; do allow me to treat you.”

We strolled to her car and set off back toward Tetouan, barely managing to avoid going over the twelve hours I’d been allowed by Commissioner Vázquez. But the geographical direction wasn’t the only thing we reversed on that journey; we also reversed the trajectory of our conversation. If on the way there and for the rest of the day it had been Rosalinda who’d monopolized the talk, on the way back the moment had come for our roles to be reversed.

“You must think I’m dreadfully boring, always going on about myself and my business. Tell me about yourself. Cuéntame—tell me—how did it go this morning with those things you had to sort out?”

“Badly,” I said, simply.

“Badly?”

“Yes, very, very badly.”

“Lo siento—really, I’m very sorry. Something important?”

I could have answered no. Compared to her own concerns, my problems lacked some of the ingredients necessary to arouse her interest: there were no high-ranking soldiers involved, no consuls or ministers, no political interests, no affairs of state or premonitions of great European wars, nothing remotely related to the sophisticated tempests through which she moved. In the humble territory of my concerns there had been room only for a handful of private miseries that could almost be counted on the fingers of one hand: a love betrayed, a debt to pay and a hotel manager who refused to understand, the daily grind of starting up a business, a homeland drenched in blood to which I couldn’t return, and the yearning for an absent mother. I could have answered no, that my little tragedies weren’t important. I could have kept quiet about my private business, kept it hidden, shared it only with the darkness of my empty house. Yes, I could have. But I didn’t.

“To tell you the truth, it was something very important to me. I want to get my mother out of Madrid and bring her to Morocco, but to do that I need a large sum of money that I don’t have because I first have to put my savings toward meeting another urgent payment. This morning I was hoping to postpone that payment, but I wasn’t able to, so right now I fear that this thing with my mother will be impossible. And the worst is that, according to what people are saying, it’s getting harder and harder to move from one zone to another.”

“Is she alone in Madrid?” she asked with what seemed like an expression of concern.

“Yes, alone. Quite alone. She has nobody but me.”

“And your father?”

“My father—well, it’s a long story, but briefly, they’re not together.”

“I’m so very sorry, Sira, dear. It must be so hard for you knowing that she’s in the Red Zone, exposed to so many things, stuck with all those people…”

I looked at her sadly. How could I make her understand what she didn’t understand? How could I get into that beautiful blond head the tragic reality of what was happening in my country?

“Those people are her people, Rosalinda. My mother is with her people, in her house, in her neighborhood, with her neighbors. She belongs to that world, to the people of Madrid. If I want to bring her over to me in Tetouan, it’s not for fear of what might happen to her there, but because she’s all I’ve got in this life, and with each day that passes I find it harder not hearing anything from her. I haven’t heard news in a year; I haven’t the slightest idea of how she is, I don’t know how she’s supporting herself, what she’s living on, or how she’s getting through the war.”

Like a balloon being punctured, the whole sham of my fascinating past disintegrated in a second. And the strangest thing was, it didn’t bother me at all.

“But, but they told me… They told me your family was…”

I didn’t let her finish. She’d been honest with me and had told her story without deceit: it was time for me to do the same. Perhaps she wouldn’t like the version of my life that I was going to tell; maybe she would think it wasn’t terribly glamorous compared to the adventures she was used to. She might decide that from that moment on she would never again share pink gins with me or offer me rides to Tangiers in her Dodge convertible, but I couldn’t stop myself from telling her my truth in detail. After all, it was all I had.