by Maria Duenas
My meetings with my father opened my eyes to a side of reality that I hitherto hadn’t known. It was thanks to him that I learned that even though the newspapers never reported it, the country was going through a constant governmental crisis, in which rumors of dismissals and resignations, ministerial changeovers, rivalries, and conspiracies multiplied like the loaves and fishes. Beigbeder’s fall, fourteen months after being sworn in in Burgos, had certainly been the most dramatic, but it was by no means the only one.
As Spain set slowly about its reconstruction, the various families that had contributed to winning the war, far from living together in harmony, began to squabble like cats and dogs. The army in confrontation with the Falange, the Falange at daggers with the monarchists, the monarchists furious because Franco wouldn’t commit to restoration, and he himself, in El Pardo, never expressing his position clearly, remaining distant, signing sentences with a firm hand and never coming down in anyone’s favor; Serrano Suñer above everyone, and everyone in turn against Serrano; some plotting on the side of the Axis, others for the Allies, each placing their bets blindly with no idea which side would eventually, as Candelaria had put it, driving the herd home.
In those days the British and the Germans were keeping up their constant tug-of-war both across the world and in the streets of the Spanish capital. Unfortunately for the cause in which fortune had positioned me, the Germans seemed to have a much more powerful and effective propaganda machine. As Hillgarth had told me in Tangiers, these efforts were managed from the embassy itself, with more than generous economic resources and a formidable team led by the famous Lazar, who was also able to count on the indulgence of the regime. I knew firsthand that his social activities never stopped: his dinners and parties were mentioned constantly in my workshop by the Germans and certain of the Spaniards, and every night one of my creations would make an appearance in his drawing rooms. Campaigns to promote Germany’s reputation appeared with increasing frequency in the press, too. They used showy advertisements that displayed gas engines and fabric dyes with equal enthusiasm. The propaganda was incessant, merging ideas and products, persuading readers that the German ideology was capable of making advances that were unattainable to the world’s other countries. The apparently commercial pretext of the advertisements didn’t hide the real message: Germany was ready to dominate the planet, and they wanted to make this known to their good friends in Spain. And just so that there should be no doubt, they would often include in their propaganda some visually striking drawings, large lettering, and attractive maps of Europe in which Germany and the Iberian Peninsula were connected by means of bold arrows, while Great Britain appeared to have been swallowed up into the center of the earth.
In the pharmacies, cafés, and barbershops people passed around satirical magazines and books of crosswords that were gifts from the Germans; the jokes and stories were mixed up with accounts of victorious military operations, and the correct solution to all the puzzles was always politically inclined, and in favor of the Nazi cause. And there were also informational leaflets for professionals, adventure stories for young people and children, and even the parish newsletters of hundreds of churches. People also said that the streets were full of Spanish moles who’d been brought in by the Germans to disseminate propaganda directly to the people at tram stops and on lines in shops and cinemas. The messages were sometimes reasonably believable, at other times utter nonsense. There were malicious rumors flying back and forth that always spoke unfavorably of the British and those who supported them. That they were stealing the Spaniards’ olive oil and taking it in diplomatic cars to Gibraltar. That the flour donated by the American Red Cross was so bad that it was making the Spanish people sick. That there was no fish to be had in the markets because our fishermen had been detained by ships from the British navy. That the quality of the bread was so terrible because His Majesty’s subjects were sinking the Argentine ships that were carrying the wheat. That the Americans, in collaboration with the Russians, were putting finishing touches on their plans for an imminent invasion of the Peninsula.
The British, meanwhile, didn’t fail to respond. Their reaction consisted mainly of finding every possible way to blame the Spanish regime for all the people’s calamities, in particular striking them where it hurt most: the scarcity of food; the ravenous hunger that led people to make themselves sick eating filth from the trash; whole families running along desperately behind charity trucks; mothers having to manage, God only knows how, to make fritters without oil, omelets without eggs, sweets without sugar, and a strange sausage without a shred of pork and tasting suspiciously of cod. In order to strengthen the Spaniards’ sympathy for the Allies’ cause, the English sharpened their wits, too. The embassy’s press office in Madrid drafted a homemade publication that the civil servants themselves worked diligently to hand out on the streets close to the legation, with the young press officer, Tom Burns, leading the way. The British Institute had been started up not long before, headed by one Walter Starkie, an Irish Catholic whom some people nicknamed Don Gitano. It had been opened, apparently, without any authorization from the Spanish authorities but with the genuine—albeit already weakened—support of Beigbeder, in the final throes of his time as a minister. It gave every appearance of being a cultural center that taught English and organized conferences, salons, and various other events, some of them more social than purely intellectual. But apparently it was at its core an undercover British propaganda operation that was much more sophisticated than the German one.
And so winter passed in this way, tense and full of hard work for almost everyone, countries and people alike. Then suddenly, without my even being aware of it, spring was upon us. With it came a new invitation from my father: the Zarzuela Hippodrome, the racecourse, was opening its doors—why didn’t I go along with him?
When I was just a young apprentice at Doña Manuela’s, we used to hear constant references to the Hippodrome, which our clients frequented. I don’t suppose many of the ladies were interested in the racing itself, but just like the horses, they too were in competition. If not for speed, for elegance. In those days the old Hippodrome had been located at the end of the Paseo de la Castellana, and it was a social meeting place for the haute bourgeoisie, the aristocracy, and even royalty, with Alfonso XIII often to be seen in the royal box. Shortly before the war, work began on a new, more modern facility, but the conflict brought the project to an abrupt stop. After two years of peace, it was now—albeit still only half finished—opening its doors on the El Pardo hill.
For weeks, the opening was announced in the headlines and spread by word of mouth. My father came to fetch me in his car; he enjoyed driving. On the journey he explained to me just how the Hippodrome had been built with its innovative wavy roof and spoke about the enthusiasm of thousands of Madrileños to get back to the old races. I in turn described my recollections of the riding club in Tetouan, the imposing bearing of the caliph crossing the Plaza de España on horseback on Fridays, going from his palace to the mosque. We went on talking at such length that he didn’t have time to warn me that we would be meeting anyone else that afternoon. It wasn’t till we arrived at our seats that I realized that by attending that apparently innocent event, I’d just stepped of my own free will directly into the very jaws of the wolf.
Chapter Forty-Seven
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The crowd attending the races was immense: a mass of people thronging around the ticket desks and in long lines to place their bets. The stands and the area closest to the track were filled to bursting with nervous, noisy groups of spectators. The privileged few who occupied the reserved boxes floated about in an altogether different dimension: untroubled, removed from the shouting, sitting in proper chairs rather than on cement steps, and being attended to by waiters in spotless jackets ready to provide diligent service.
As we entered the box, I could feel, deep down, something like the bite of an iron jaw. It only took me a couple of seconds to recognize the a
bsurdity of my situation there, with only a handful of Spaniards mixed in with a large number of English men and women, glasses in hand and armed with binoculars, smoking, drinking, and chatting in their language while they waited for the galloping to begin. And lest there was any doubt about their cause or their origins, a large British flag had been draped over the handrail.
I wanted the earth to swallow me up, but my time hadn’t come quite yet: my capacity for astonishment had not yet peaked. For that to happen, all I needed to do was take a few steps back and look over to my left. In the neighboring box, still nearly empty, three vertical banners fluttered in the wind: on the red background of each one was a white circle with a black swastika in the middle. The Germans’ box, separated from ours by a low fence barely more than three feet high, awaited the arrival of its occupants. For now the only people in it were a couple of soldiers guarding the entrance and a handful of waiters setting up, but given the time and the haste with which they were making their preparations, I had no doubt at all that the Germans wouldn’t be long in arriving.
Before I was able to calm myself down sufficiently to decide the quickest way to escape from this nightmare, Gonzalo explained to me in a whisper who all those subjects of His Gracious Majesty were.
“I forgot to tell you we’d be meeting some old friends I’ve not seen in a while, English engineers from the Río Tinto mines. They’ve come over with some of their compatriots from Gibraltar, and I imagine there will be some embassy people coming, too. They’re all very excited about the reopening of the Hippodrome; you know they’re crazy about horses.”
I didn’t know, nor did I care: at that moment I had other urgent matters to deal with besides these people’s hobbies. How to fly from them like the plague, for example. Hillgarth’s words in the American legation in Tangiers were still echoing in my ears—absolutely no contact with the English. And still less, he should have said, right under the noses of the Germans. When my father’s friends became aware of our arrival, they started up with their greetings for “Gonzalo, old boy” and for his unexpected young companion. I returned the greetings with very few words, trying to mask my nerves behind a smile as weak as it was false, while at the same time secretly weighing up just how risky my situation was. As I clasped the hands that the anonymous faces held out to me, my eyes scanned my surroundings, looking for somewhere I might disappear without showing my father up. But it wasn’t going to be easy. Not at all. To the left was the Germans’ stand with its ostentatious banners; the right-hand side was occupied by a handful of individuals with generous bellies and thick gold rings, smoking cigars the size of torpedoes in the company of women with bleach-blond hair and lips as red as poppies, for whom I would never have sewn so much as a handkerchief in my workshop. I looked away from them all: the black marketeers and their gorgeous darlings didn’t interest me in the least.
As I was blocked to my left and right, and with a handrail in front suspended over the void, the only solution was to escape the way we’d come, though I knew that would be extremely rash. There was only one means of access to those boxes, I’d learned on my arrival: a sort of brick-paved passageway only nine feet wide. If I decided to return that way, I ran a good risk of running straight into the Germans. And among them no doubt I’d bump into the thing that scared me the most: German clients whose careless mouths had often dropped tasty pieces of information that I’d gathered, with my most false of smiles, and passed on to the Secret Intelligence Service of their enemy country; ladies I’d have to stop to say hello to, and who without any doubt would wonder suspiciously what their Moroccan couturière was doing running from a box filled with Englishmen like a soul with the devil in pursuit.
Not knowing what to do, I left Gonzalo still greeting his friends and sat down in the corner best protected from the stand, with my shoulders hunched, the lapels of my jacket raised, and my head slightly bowed, trying—or so I was fooling myself—to pass unnoticed in an open space where I knew all too well it was impossible to hide.
“Are you feeling all right? You look pale,” said my father, holding out a fruit cup.
“I think I’m just a bit queasy, it’ll pass soon enough,” I lied.
If there was anything darker than black on the spectrum of colors, my soul would have been about to turn that shade the moment the German box began to buzz with movement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw more soldiers coming in; behind them their solid-looking superior, giving orders, pointing this way and that, throwing glances filled with contempt toward the English box. They were followed by various officers in shiny boots, peaked caps, and the inevitable swastika on their arms. They didn’t even deign to look over toward us: they just remained haughty and distant, their ramrod posture demonstrating an obvious contempt for the occupants of the neighboring box. A few other men in civilian clothes followed, and I noticed with a shudder that some of the faces were familiar to me. They had probably all—soldiers and civilians—dovetailed that event with a preceding one, which was why they’d arrived practically all together, already in their little clusters, and just in time to see the first race. At the moment there were only men; unless I was very much mistaken their wives wouldn’t be far behind.
With each passing second the atmosphere became livelier, and my anxiety along with it. The British group had fed themselves, the field glasses were being passed from hand to hand, and the conversation flowed just as easily on the subjects of turf, paddock, and jockeys as it did on the invasion of Yugoslavia, the dreadful bombings of London, or Churchill’s latest radio broadcast. And it was then that I saw him. I saw him and he saw me. And I caught my breath. Captain Alan Hillgarth had just entered the box with an elegant blond woman on his arm: his wife, most probably. His eyes lighted on me for just a fraction of a second and then, hiding a minute expression of alarm and distress that no one noticed but I, he looked swiftly over to the German box, where an endless trickle of people were still arriving.
I avoided him, getting up so as not to have to face him, convinced that I’d come to the end, that there was no earthly way of getting out of that mousetrap. I couldn’t have foreseen a more pathetic denouement to my brief career as a collaborator with British intelligence: I was about to be unmasked in public, in front of my clients, my boss, and my own father. I grabbed hold of the handrail, squeezing tight, and wished with all my heart that this day had never come: that I’d never left Morocco, absolutely never accepted the ludicrous proposal that I’d received from an unwise, ridiculously clumsy conspirator. The gun went off for the first race, the horses began their feverish gallop, and the enthusiastic cries of the crowds tore through the air. My gaze seemed to be fixed on the track, but my thoughts were trotting along far from the horses’ hooves. I sensed that the Germans must have been filling up their box and guessed at Hillgarth’s unease as he tried to find some way to handle the setback that we were just about to face. And then, like a flash, the solution appeared before my eyes when I noticed a couple of Red Cross stretcher bearers leaning lazily against a wall in anticipation of a mishap. If I couldn’t leave that poisoned box myself, someone would have to remove me.
The justification might have been the excitement of the moment, or tiredness that had been building up for months, perhaps nerves or stress. None of these was the real reason, however. The only thing that brought me to that unexpected reaction was my survival instinct. I chose the most suitable place, the right-hand side of the stand, the side farthest from the Germans. And I calculated the perfect moment: a few seconds after the first race had come to an end, when hubbub filled the stands and shouts of enthusiasm mingled with noisy expressions of disappointment. At that exact moment, I collapsed. With a premeditated movement I turned my head and made sure my hair would cover my face once I was on the ground, in case any curious glances from the adjacent box might make it through the pairs of legs that surrounded me. I remained still, my eyes closed and my body limp; my hearing was still alert, however, taking in each and every one of the voices aroun
d me. Faint, air, Gonzalo, quick, pulse, water, more air, quick, quick, they’re coming, first-aid box, and various other words in English that I didn’t understand. The stretcher bearers only took a couple of minutes to arrive. They lifted me from the ground onto the canvas and covered me with a blanket right up to my neck. One, two, three, up, and I felt myself being lifted.
“I’ll go with you,” I heard Hillgarth say. “If we need to, we can call the doctor from the embassy.”
“Thank you, Alan,” replied my father. “I don’t think it’ll be anything serious, she’s just fainted. Let’s take her to the infirmary, then we’ll see.”
The stretcher bearers made their way quickly down the access tunnel, carrying me between them; behind, rushing to keep the pace, followed my father, Alan Hillgarth, and a couple of other Englishmen I wasn’t able to identify, colleagues or deputies of the naval attaché’s. I had tried to get my hair at least partly covering my face again once I was on the stretcher, but I needn’t have bothered; before they carried me out of the box I recognized Hillgarth’s firm hand pulling the blanket up to my forehead. I couldn’t see anymore, but I could hear everything that happened next quite clearly.
Over the first few yards of the exit corridor we didn’t meet anyone, but about halfway down the situation changed. And with it, my grimmest premonitions were confirmed. First I heard more footsteps and men’s voices speaking quickly in German. Schnell, schnell, sie haben bereits begonnen. They were approaching us from the opposite direction, almost running. I could tell by the firmness of their step that they were soldiers; the certainty and forcefulness of their tone led me to conclude that they were officers. I imagine that the sight of the enemy naval attaché escorting a stretcher with a body covered by a blanket must have caused them a certain alarm, but they didn’t stop; they just exchanged a few brusque greetings and continued vigorously along their way to the box adjacent to the one we’d just left. The tapping of heels and the women’s voices reached my ears just a few seconds later. I heard them approach—also with firm steps—solid and dominating. Inhibited by such a display of determination, the stretcher bearers moved over to one side, pausing a moment to let them by; they almost touched us as they passed. I held my breath and noticed that my heart was pounding hard; then I heard them move away. I didn’t recognize any of the voices in particular, nor could I have said how many of them there were, but I calculated at least half a dozen. Six German women, perhaps seven, perhaps more; maybe several of them were clients of mine, the ones who selected the most elegant fabrics and who paid me both in banknotes and in freshly baked news.