María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“Very well,” I said, swallowing hard. “I’ll go with you.”

The figure of Jamila reappeared in the hallway, waving her arms exaggeratedly, trying to move me along, not to keep the demanding Frau Langenheim waiting too long.

“Perfect. I’ll let you know the day and exact time as soon as I get my invitation.”

I shook his hand and walked back across the courtyard, my heels tapping along in haste. It wasn’t until I reached the door that I turned around and saw Marcus Logan still standing at the far end, watching me, leaning on his cane. He hadn’t moved from the spot where I’d left him, and his presence had been transformed into a silhouette set against the light. His voice, however, could be heard loud and clear.

“I’m glad you’re coming. And don’t worry, I’m in no hurry to leave Morocco.”

Doubt assailed me the moment I set foot in the street. I realized that perhaps I’d been too hasty in accepting the journalist’s proposal without first consulting Rosalinda, who might have had quite different plans for her enforced guest. My second thoughts didn’t take long to disappear, however: as soon as she arrived that afternoon for a fitting, she was in a flurry of haste.

“I’ve only got half an hour,” she said, unbuttoning her silk blouse with nimble fingers. “Juan Luis is waiting for me, there are still a thousand details that need preparing for Serrano Suñer’s visit.”

I’d planned to put my question to her tactfully, choosing my words with care, but I decided to take advantage of the moment and broach the subject right away.

“Marcus Logan has asked me to go to the reception with him.”

I didn’t look at her as I spoke, pretending to concentrate on removing her outfit from the mannequin.

“You don’t say!”

I gathered from her tone that the news had come as a pleasant surprise to her.

“You think it’s all right for me to go with him?” I asked, still uncertain.

“Of course! It would be wonderful having you around. Juan Luis will have a very official role to play, so I expect to be able to spend a bit of time with the two of you. What are you going to wear?”

“I don’t know yet, I’ll have to think about it. I think I’ll make myself something with this material,” I said, pointing to a roll of raw silk leaning against the wall.

“Dios mío, you’re going to be stunning.”

“If I survive,” I muttered, my mouth full of pins.

After several weeks without too much work, the headaches and obligations were thronging around me all of a sudden, threatening to bury me at any moment. I had so many commissions to finish that I was up every day at dawn like a rooster, and it was rare for me to make it to bed before three in the morning. The doorbell didn’t stop ringing, and clients were endlessly coming in and out of the workshop. I wasn’t bothered about feeling so overwhelmed, however—I was almost grateful for it. This way I had less time to think about what the hell I was going to do at that reception, which was now just over a week away.

Having got past the obstacle of Rosalinda, the second person to hear about the unexpected invitation, inevitably, was Félix.

“My, my, you sneaky little thing, you’re so lucky! You’re making me green with envy!”

“I’d gladly swap places with you,” I said, quite truthfully. “The party doesn’t thrill me in the slightest; I know I’ll feel out of place, there with a man I barely know and surrounded by strangers, by soldiers and politicians whose fault it is that my city is under siege and I can’t go back home.”

“Come on, girl, don’t be silly. You’re going to be part of a spectacular event that’ll go down in the history of this little corner of the African map. And besides, you’ll be there with a man who’s not bad at all, really not bad at all.”

“How do you know, if you don’t know him?”

“What do you mean I don’t know him? Where do you think I took the old she-wolf for afternoon tea today?”

“The Nacional?” I asked, incredulous. “Exactly. It came out three times as expensive as the buns at La Campana, because the old tart filled herself up to the eyeballs with tea and scones, but it was worth it.”

“So you got to see him then?”

“And to talk to him. He even gave me a light.”

“You’re shameless!” I said, unable to hold back a smile. “And what did you make of him?”

“Pleasingly attractive when his wounds heal. In spite of the limp and the half of his face that’s massacred, he’s not bad looking and seems every inch the gentleman.”

“Do you think he’ll be trustworthy, Félix?” I asked with a trace of concern. Even though Logan had asked me to trust him, I still wasn’t sure I could. My neighbor responded to my question with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but you needn’t worry about that. Your new friend is just a simple journalist passing through, who’s involved in some deal with the woman who has mesmerized the high commissioner. So for his own sake, if he doesn’t want to leave this country in an even worse state than when he arrived, he’d be wise to behave himself with you.”

Félix’s perspective made me see things differently. The disastrous way my interlude with Ramiro had ended had made me distrustful and suspicious, but what was at stake with Marcus Logan wasn’t a question of personal loyalty but a straightforward exchange of interests. You give me, then I’ll give you; otherwise, no deal. Those were the rules; there was no need for me to go on obsessing about how trustworthy he was. He was the person with the greatest interest in maintaining good relations with the high commissioner, so he had no reason to let me down.

That same night Félix also told me who exactly Serrano Suñer was. I’d often heard him spoken about on the radio and I’d read his name in the newspapers, but I knew hardly anything about the person hidden behind those two names. Félix, as he so often did, supplied me with the most comprehensive information.

“As I imagine you already know, querida, Serrano is Franco’s brother-in-law, married to Zita, the younger sister of Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo. This woman is quite a bit younger, more beautiful, and less conceited than Franco’s wife, as far as I’ve been able to make out from a few photographs. They say he’s an extraordinarily brilliant guy, with an intellectual capacity a thousand times greater than the Generalísimo’s, something it would seem that Franco himself doesn’t appreciate all that much. Before the war he was a state attorney and member of parliament for Zaragoza.”

“From the right.”

“Naturally. The insurgency, however, trapped him in Madrid. He was detained because of his political affiliations, he was locked up in the Modelo Prison and finally managed to get himself transferred to a hospital. He has an ulcer or something like that. They say that then, thanks to the help of Dr. Marañón, he escaped from there dressed as a woman, with a wig, a hat, and his trousers rolled up under his coat: what a picture.”

We laughed as we imagined the scene.

“He then managed to get out of Madrid and reached Alicante. From there, disguised as an Argentine sailor, he left the Peninsula on a torpedo boat.”

“He left Spain for good?” I asked.

“No, he disembarked in France and came back into the Nationalist zone by land, with his wife and his string of little kids, I think he’s got four or five. From Irún they arranged to get themselves to Salamanca, which is where the Nationalist faction originally had their headquarters.”

“That would be easy, as a relative of Franco’s.”