María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“Done,” was all she said when it ended. We bade farewell to the director, thanking him for his help, and went back out past the intense scrutiny of the hawkeyed secretary.

“What did he want?” I asked anxiously as soon as we were out of the office.

“A bit of… I don’t know how you say it in Spanish. When someone says they’ll do something for you only if you do something in exchange.”

“Chantaje—blackmail,” I said.

“ Chantaje ,” she repeated.

“What form of blackmail?”

“A personal interview with Juan Luis and a few weeks of preferential access to official life in Tetouan. In exchange he would commit to putting us in contact with the person we need in Madrid.”

I swallowed before formulating my question. I was afraid she’d say that only over her dead body would anyone impose such extortionate conditions on the highest dignitary in the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, much less an opportunistic journalist she didn’t know. All in exchange for a favor for a simple dressmaker.

“And what did you tell him?” I finally dared ask.

She shrugged, a gesture of resignation.

“To send me a cable with the date of his arrival in Tangiers.”

Marcus Logan turned up dragging one leg, almost deaf in one ear and with his arm in a sling. All his injuries were on the same side of his body, the left-hand side, the one that had been closest to the exploding shell that had knocked him over and nearly killed him while he was covering the attacks of the Nationalist artillery on Madrid for his agency. Rosalinda had arranged for an official car to meet him at the port of Tangiers and bring him directly to the Hotel Nacional in Tetouan.

I had waited for them seated on one of the wicker chairs in the hotel’s covered courtyard, surrounded by flowerpots and tiles with Arab decorations. The walls were covered in trellises bearing climbing creepers, and large Moorish lanterns hung from the ceiling. The murmur of other people’s conversations and the burbling of the water in a little fountain kept me company as I waited.

The last bit of afternoon sun was filtering through the skylight when Rosalinda arrived; the journalist followed ten minutes later. Over the previous days I’d assembled in my mind an image of an impulsive, brusque man, someone sour, with enough nerve to try to intimidate anyone he came across in order to get what he wanted. But I was wrong, just as we are almost always wrong when we construct preconceptions on the fragile basis of a single act or a handful of words. I knew I was wrong the moment the blackmailing journalist came through the archway of the courtyard with his tie loose and his light linen suit full of creases.

He recognized us at once; he only had to sweep the room with his gaze to be sure that we were the only pair of young women sitting alone—a blonde who looked obviously foreign and a dark one with the classic look of a Spaniard. We readied ourselves to receive him without getting up, braced to defend ourselves against this most inconvenient of visitors. But the Marcus Logan who appeared on that early African evening could have awakened any feeling in us but fear. He was tall and seemed to be somewhere between thirty and forty. His brown hair was unkempt, and as he approached limping, supported by a bamboo walking stick, we saw that the left side of his face was covered with the fading marks of cuts and bruises. Even though it was possible to get a sense of the man he must have been before the incident that almost cost him his life, at that moment he was little more than a pained body. No sooner had he greeted us with all the courtesy his pitiful state would allow than he slumped into a chair, trying unsuccessfully to disguise the discomfort and fatigue that were building up in his body, punished by the long journey.

“Mrs. Fox and Miss Quiroga, I suppose,” were his first words, which he spoke in English.

“Yes, we are indeed,” said Rosalinda. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Logan. And now, if you don’t mind, I think we should proceed in Spanish; I’m afraid my friend won’t be able to join us otherwise.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” he said, addressing me in excellent Spanish.

He didn’t look like an unscrupulous extortionist, just a professional who tried to get by as best he could and who grabbed opportunities that presented themselves to him. Like Rosalinda, like me. Like everyone in those days. Before going right into the matter that had brought him to Morocco and seeking confirmation from Rosalinda, he chose to show us his credentials. He worked for a British news agency, he had been accredited to cover the Spanish war on both sides, and although he was based in the capital he’d spent his days constantly on the move. Until the unexpected had happened. They admitted him to a hospital in Madrid, performed emergency surgery, and when they could they evacuated him to London. He’d spent several weeks in the Royal London Hospital, bearing his pain and his treatments—bedbound, immobilized, longing to return to active life.

When news reached him that someone related to the Spanish High Commission in Morocco needed some information he could provide, he saw the clouds part. He knew he wasn’t in a physical state to return to his constant comings-and-goings across the Peninsula, but a visit to the Protectorate might allow him to progress with his convalescence while also partially reviving his professional spirit. Before he’d been given permission to travel he’d had to fight with his doctors, his superiors, and everyone else who approached his bed to try to convince him not to move; the frustration combined with his physical state had driven him to the verge of pulling the trigger. So he apologized to Rosalinda for his brusqueness during their telephone call, he crossed and uncrossed his legs painfully several times, and then he finally got down to more pressing concerns.

“I haven’t eaten anything since this morning; would it be all right if I invited you for dinner and we talked then?”

We accepted; truth was, I’d have accepted anything to be able to talk to him. I could have eaten in a latrine or rolled in the mud with pigs; I’d have chewed on cockroaches and drunk rat poison to wash them down, anything to get the information I’d spent so many days waiting for. Logan gracefully called over one of the Arab waiters bustling around the courtyard serving drinks and collecting glasses and asked him for a table in the hotel restaurant.

“Just a moment, please, sir.” The waiter went off to speak to someone and moments later we were approached by the Spanish maître d’, unctuous and reverential. “Right away, sir, right away, do please come with me, ladies, come with me, sir. Not a minute’s wait for Mrs. Fox and her friends, naturally.”

Logan gestured us ahead of him into the dining room, while the maître d’ indicated a showy central table, a conspicuous bullring that would ensure that no one would be left without a prime view of Beigbeder’s beloved Englishwoman. The journalist politely turned that table down and pointed toward another more isolated table at the back. All the tables were impeccably set with spotless tablecloths, water and wineglasses, and white napkins folded on the porcelain plates. It was still early, though, and there were only a dozen or so people spread around the room.

We chose from the menu and were served some sherry to occupy us while we waited. It was Rosalinda who took on the role of hostess and got the conversation started. The earlier meeting in the courtyard had been mere formality, but it had helped to ease tension. The journalist had introduced himself and told us how he’d ended up in the condition he was in; we, meanwhile, had relaxed on discovering that he wasn’t threatening and had made a few trivial comments about life in Spanish Morocco. All three of us knew, however, that this wasn’t just a polite meeting for making new friends, chatting about infirmities, and drawing picturesque images of North Africa. What had brought us together that night was a negotiation, all cut and dried, in which two separate sides were implicated: two sides who had made their demands and their conditions perfectly clear. The time had come to lay everything on the table and find out how far each one could get.