by Maria Duenas
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.
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 w
ith 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 ligh
t filtering through the shadow of the creepers, amid the sound of the water spouting from the fountains and the wind stirring the cane fields.
He clung to nostalgia as a shipwrecked man clings to a piece of timber in the middle of a stormy ocean, but like the shadow of a scythe the acid tongue of Serrano was never far away, ready to rip him out of his dream.
“For God’s sake, Beigbeder, stop with this business of us Spaniards all being Moors, once and for all. Do I happen to look like a Moor? Does El Caudillo look like a Moor? So stop repeating this shit, I’ve had it up to here, the same damn song all day long.”
Those were difficult days for both of them. In spite of Rosalinda’s tenacious efforts to ingratiate herself with British ambassador Peterson, things didn’t right themselves in the months that followed. The only gesture she received from her compatriots toward the end of that victory year was an invitation to join the other mothers in singing carols with their children around the embassy piano. She would have to wait till May 1940 for things to turn around, when Churchill was named prime minister and decided abruptly to replace his diplomatic representative in Spain. And from then on, the situation changed radically, for everyone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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Sir Samuel Hoare arrived in Madrid at the end of May 1940, boasting the pompous title of Extraordinary Ambassador on Special Mission. He’d never before set foot on Spanish soil and didn’t speak a word of our language. Nor did he show the slightest sympathy for Franco or his regime, but Churchill placed every confidence in him and had urged him to accept the posting since Spain was a key player in the future of the European war and he wanted a strong man as his standard-bearer. It was fundamental to British interests that the Spanish government should maintain a neutral position, respecting a Gibraltar free from invasion and preventing the Atlantic ports from falling into German hands. In order to secure a minimum of cooperation, they’d used foreign trade to put pressure on a hungry Spain, restricting the supply of oil and squeezing them till they choked. As the German troops advanced across Europe, however, that ceased to be enough: the British needed to become involved in Madrid in a more active, more operational way. And with that goal in mind this small, rather worn-out-looking man, seemingly so unimpressive, landed in the capital: Sir Sam to his close colleagues, Don Samuel to the few friends he would end up making in Spain.