María Dueñas - The Time in Between

The Spanish government was finally installed in Madrid, as were the diplomatic legations, having first cleaned up their premises, which till then had been covered in a dirty patina the color of war and neglect. And so, as Beigbeder familiarized himself with the obscure offices of the seat of his ministry—the old Santa Cruz Palace—Rosalinda didn’t waste a second, launching herself with equivalent enthusiasm into the double task of settling into her new home and throwing herself headfirst into the pool of social relations, the most elegant and cosmopolitan that Madrid had to offer. It was an unexpected oasis of abundance and sophistication, an island the size of a fingernail floating in the middle of a capital that had been destroyed.

Perhaps another woman would have chosen to wait until her influential partner had established his bonds with the powerful people around him. But Rosalinda was not of that ilk, and much as she adored her Juan Luis, she hadn’t the slightest intention of being transformed into a meek mistress trailing behind after his prestigious job. She’d muddled her way around the world on her own since before she’d turned twenty, and in these circumstances—albeit now with a lover whose contacts would open a thousand doors for her—she decided once again to make it happen for herself. To this end she used the strategies of approach for which she had such a gift—she made contact with old acquaintances from other times and places, and through them, and their friends, and friends of their friends, came new faces, new jobs and titles with foreign names or, if Spanish, names that were impeccably aristocratic. It wasn’t long before the first invitations arrived in her mailbox, invitations to receptions and balls, to lunches, cocktails, and hunts. Before Beigbeder was even able to raise his head from the mountains of papers accumulating in his dismal office, Rosalinda had already begun to find her way into a network of social relations whose purpose was to keep her entertained in the new setting to which her turbulent life had brought her.

Not everything was a hundred percent successful in those first months in Madrid, however. Ironically, in spite of her remarkable gift for social relations, she was unable to establish the faintest bonds of affection with her compatriots. The British ambassador, Sir Maurice Peterson, was the first to deny her a seat at his table. At his own urging, this lack of acceptance quickly extended to practically all the members of the British diplomatic corps posted in the capital. They were unable or unwilling to see Rosalinda Fox as a potential firsthand source of information coming from a member of the government, or even as a compatriot whom they ought as a matter of protocol to invite to their events and celebrations. They saw only an awkward presence who boasted the unworthy honor of sharing her life with a minister of the new pro-German regime, toward which the government of His Gracious Majesty didn’t show the slightest friendliness.

Those days weren’t all that rosy for Beigbeder either. The fact of having spent the whole war on the margins of the political intrigues meant that, as minister, he was often passed over in favor of other dignitaries of more illustrious form and weightier connections, such as Serrano Suñer, for example: the already powerful Serrano of whom everyone was so suspicious and for whom so few people seemed to feel the least bit of affection. There’s three things here for which you’ll find my patience has worn thin: / That’s subsidies, Falangists, and His Excellency’s kin! joked an old rhyme among the Madrileños. Here he comes, along the road, the Lord o’er all the others—That used to be Lord Jesus, now it’s one of Franco’s brothers , they sang mockingly in Seville.

When Serrano ended his visit to Morocco he held the high commissioner in elevated respect. But he began to be transformed into his bitterest opponent, as Spain’s relations with Germany grew closer and Hitler’s expansionist forces crept across Europe with terrifying speed. It wasn’t long before the In-law-ísimo began to play dirty, and as soon as Great Britain declared war on Germany, he knew he’d been wrong to suggest to Franco that he appoint Beigbeder to the Foreign Ministry. That ministry, he thought, should have been for himself from the very beginning, not for that nobody from Africa, however pertinent his cross-cultural gifts and however many languages he spoke. Beigbeder was not, to him, the right man for this job. He wasn’t sufficiently committed to the German cause, he defended Spain’s neutrality in the European war, and he showed no intention of submitting blindly to the pressures and demands coming out of the Ministry of Governance. And what was more, he had an English lover, that attractive young blonde he’d met in Tetouan. In three words: he wouldn’t do. Which was why, only a month after the formation of the new Council of Ministers, the owner of the most talented head and the most impressive ego in the government began spreading his tentacles over his rival’s territory like a voracious octopus, enveloping it all and appropriating at will those areas that were properly within the purview of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, without consulting its leader and without missing the smallest opportunity, on the way, to chuck in his face the fact that his personal love affair could end up costing Spain her relations with friendly countries.

Amid that tangle of politics, it wasn’t possible for anyone to be completely certain of what was really on Beigbeder’s mind. Having been persuaded by Serrano’s machinations, the Spaniards and Germans saw him as pro-British, because he seemed tepid in his affection for the Nazis and because his heart was set on a frivolous, manipulative Englishwoman. To the British, who snubbed him, he was pro-German because he belonged to a government that enthusiastically supported the Third Reich. Rosalinda, ever the idealist, thought of him as a potential catalyst for political change: a magician capable of rerouting the channel down which his government was traveling if he put his mind to it. He, meanwhile, with admirable good humor given the pitiful circumstances, saw himself as a simple shopkeeper and tried to make her see him in that way, too.

“What power do you think I have to get this government to favor an increased closeness to your country? Very little, my love, very little indeed. I’m just one more person within a cabinet in which almost everyone is in favor of Germany and of possible Spanish intervention in the European war on their side. We owe them money and favors; the thrust of our foreign policy was set before the war ended, before I was chosen for this job. Do you think I have any way of changing the course of our actions? No, dear Rosalinda, none at all. My role as a minister in this New Spain isn’t to be a strategist or a diplomatic negotiator; I’m just a grocery vendor or a merchant from the Bread Souq. My job is focused on getting loans; haggling over commercial agreements; offering olive oil, oranges, and grapes to foreign countries in exchange for wheat and gasoline. Even so, just to get that done I have to wage daily battles within the cabinet, fighting with the Falangists for them to let me work on the fringes of their autocratic ravings. I might just be able to manage to get us enough so that our people don’t die of cold and hunger this winter, but there’s nothing, nothing I can do to change the government’s stance on this war.”

That was how the months passed for Beigbeder, buried under his responsibilities, wrestling with opponents within and without, kept apart from the maneuverings of the real powers in charge, more isolated with each passing day. In order not to succumb to total frustration during those dark days, he would seek refuge in nostalgia about the Morocco he had left behind. He missed that other world so much that he always kept an open copy of the Koran on his desk at the ministry and would recite its Arabic verses aloud from time to time, to the astonishment of anyone who happened to be nearby. He so yearned for that country that he kept his official residence in the Viana Palace filled with Moroccan clothing, and as soon as he was back home in the evenings he would remove his dull grey suit and dress in a velvet djellaba. He would eat directly from the serving dishes with three fingers, in the Moorish fashion, and wouldn’t stop repeating to anyone who’d listen that we were all brothers, the Moroccans and the Spaniards. Sometimes, when he was finally alone after fighting his way through a thousand and one battles over the course of his day, listening to the squeaking of the trams that made their way down dirty streets crammed full of people, he thought he could hear the rhythm of the Moorish reed pipes, flutes, and tambourines. On the greyest mornings he even thought that mingled with the foul vapors emanating from the sewers his nose could detect the scent of orange blossoms, jasmine, and mint. Then he could see himself once again walking between the whitewashed walls of the Tetouani medina, under the light filtering through the shadow of the creepers, amid the sound of the water spouting from the fountains and the wind stirring the cane fields.