María Dueñas - The Time in Between

Rosalinda received the unexpected news with conflicting emotions. Gratitude at what the role meant to him; sadness anticipating his final departure from Morocco. Her feelings were in turmoil during those frantic days that the high commissioner spent between the Peninsula and the Protectorate, starting new dealings there, finishing off old ones here, giving a definitive farewell to the state of temporariness that had been generated by the three years of conflict, and beginning to set up the structures for the country’s new network of foreign relations.

The official announcement came on August 10, and on the following day the press revealed to the public the formation of the cabinet that was meant to fulfill the nation’s historic destiny under General Franco’s triumphant banner. To this day I still have—yellowing and practically disintegrating in my fingers—a couple of pages torn out of the newspaper ABC from that time, with the photographs and biographical profiles of the ministers. In the middle of the first page, like the sun in the universe, is Franco, self-satisfied in a circular portrait. To his left and right, occupying preferential positions in the two upper corners, Beigbeder and Serrano Suñer, heading respectively Foreign Affairs and Governance, the most powerful ministries. On the second page they set out the details of their accomplishments and praised the attributes of those recently appointed with the overblown rhetoric of the times. Beigbeder was described as a distinguished Africanist and an expert in Islam; they praised his mastery of Arabic, his solid training, his lengthy periods domiciled in Muslim cities, and his magnificent work as military attaché in Berlin. “The war has brought the name of Colonel Beigbeder to the attention of the general public,” said ABC. “He managed the Protectorate, and in Franco’s name, and always according to the wishes of El Caudillo, he secured the valuable participation of Morocco, which has been so very significant.” As for Serrano Suñer, they praised his prudence and his energy, his vast capacity for work, and his well-earned prestige. In recognition of his achievements, he was offered the Ministry of Governance, entrusted with handling all the country’s domestic matters as it entered into its new era.

The champion for the anonymous Beigbeder’s surprising entry into that government was, as we later learned, Serrano himself. On his visit to Morocco he had been impressed by the high commissioner’s rapport with the Muslim population: his warm approach, his mastery of the language and enthusiastic appreciation of their culture, his effective recruitment campaigns, and even, paradoxically, his sympathy for the population’s eagerness for independence. A hardworking, enthusiastic man this Beigbeder, a polyglot with a knack for dealing with foreigners and faithful to the cause, Franco’s brother-in-law must have thought; one who definitely won’t give us any trouble. When I first learned of his appointment, my mind flared back to the night of the reception and the end of the conversation I’d overheard from behind the sofa. I never asked Marcus whether he’d passed on what I’d told him to the high commissioner, but for Rosalinda’s sake and that of the man she loved I hoped that Serrano’s trust in him had strengthened with the passing of time.

The day after his name appeared in black and white in the papers and on the radio waves, Beigbeder moved to Burgos, bringing an end to his formal connection to his beloved Morocco forever. All Tetouan came together to bid him farewell: Moors, Christians, and Jews, indiscriminately. Representing Morocco’s political parties, Sidi Abdeljalak Torres made a heartfelt speech and presented the new minister with a document inscribed in silver naming him favorite brother of the Muslims. Visibly moved, Beigbeder responded with words filled with affection and gratitude. Rosalinda shed a few tears, but those didn’t last much longer than it took for the twin-engined airplane to take off from the Sania Ramel Aerodrome, to fly low over Tetouan by way of good-bye and disappear into the distance on its way across the Strait. She felt Juan Luis’s departure very deeply, but her haste to be reunited with him required her to get things moving as soon as possible.

In the days that followed, Beigbeder accepted the ministerial portfolio in Burgos from the hands of the deposed Count of Jordana, entered the new government, and began to receive a flood of protocol visits. Rosalinda, meanwhile, traveled to Madrid in search of a house for the new phase she was entering. And that was how the August of victory year passed, with him accepting the congratulations of ambassadors, archbishops, military attachés, mayors, and generals, while she was negotiating a new rental agreement, dismantling her lovely home in Tetouan, and organizing the transportation of her countless pieces of furniture, five Moorish servants, a dozen laying hens, and all the bags of rice, sugar, tea, and coffee that she was able to gather up in the souqs.

The house she chose was on Calle Casado del Alisal, between the Retiro park and the Prado Museum, just a step away from the church of Los Jerónimos. It was a large residence that was certainly of a standard befitting the beloved of the most unexpected of the new ministers. It was a building within the reach of anyone prepared to pay slightly under a thousand pesetas a month, a price Rosalinda considered ludicrous and for which most of Madrid’s starving citizens in the first postwar days wouldn’t have minded giving three fingers of one of their hands.

They’d planned their living arrangements as they had done in Tetouan. Each would keep his or her own residence—he, his dilapidated palace adjacent to the ministry, and she, her new mansion—though they would be together whenever they could. Before her final departure from Tetouan, in a house that was already empty, Rosalinda threw her last party: there she mixed us all up together, a few Spaniards, quite a number of Europeans, and a good handful of distinguished Arabs, for us all to say good-bye to that woman who, fragile as she was, had entered each of our lives with the strength of a gale. In spite of the uncertainty of the time, and trying hard not to let her mind dwell on the unsettling news that was arriving about the situation in Europe, my friend didn’t want to be parted sorrowfully from the Morocco in which she’d been so happy. Which was why she made us promise, between toasts, that we would come visit her in Madrid as soon as she was settled and assured us that in exchange she would return frequently to Tetouan.

I was the last person to leave that night; I didn’t want to go without saying good-bye alone to the woman who had played such a big part in that phase of my life.

“Before I go I want to give you something,” I said. I’d prepared a little Moorish silver case for her, which I’d transformed into a sewing box. “For you to remember me whenever you need to change a button and don’t have me there with you.”

She opened it, excited, delighted by the gifts, insignificant as they were. Little spools of various-colored threads, a tiny needle case and a little tube of needles, a pair of scissors that almost looked like a toy, and a small supply of mother-of-pearl, bone, and glass buttons.

“I’d rather have you there with me to keep solving these problems for me, but I love the gift,” she said, embracing me. “Like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp, every time I open the box you will come out of it.”

We laughed—we chose to face the farewell with good spirits masking our sadness; our friendship didn’t deserve a bitter ending. And with her spirits raised, forcing herself not to lose the smile on her face, she left the following day, headed for the capital by plane, while the servants and belongings clattered their way across the countryside of southern Spain under the olive-green canvas of a military vehicle. Our optimism didn’t last long, however. The day after her departure, September 3, 1939, following the German refusal to withdraw from Poland, Great Britain declared war on Germany, and Rosalinda Fox’s country entered what would come to be the Second World War, the bloodiest conflict in history.