The Time in Between: A Novel (45 page)

EL CASINO DE MADRID

___________

F
rom the moment of Marcus’s departure and my mother’s arrival, my life turned upside down. She arrived one cloudy afternoon looking emaciated, her hands empty and her soul battered. She had no luggage, just her old handbag, the dress she had on, and a fake passport attached by a safety pin to the strap of her brassiere. Her body looked like it had borne the passing of twenty years; her thinness made her eye sockets and collarbones stand out, and the first few greying hairs I remembered were now entire locks. She came into my house like a child dragged awake in the middle of the night: disoriented, confused, disconnected. As though she hadn’t fully understood that her daughter lived there, and that from that moment on, she would, too.

I’d imagined that reunion, which I’d so wished for, as a moment of unbounded joy. That’s not how it was. If I had to choose one word to describe the picture, it would be sadness. She barely spoke and didn’t display any enthusiasm for anything. She just hugged me hard and then kept hold of my hand, clinging to it as though afraid that I was about to run off somewhere. Not a laugh, not a tear, and very few words—that was all. She hardly wanted to taste the meal that Candelaria, Jamila, and I had prepared for her: chicken, omelet, tomato salad, anchovies, Moorish bread, all the things we imagined she’d gone without in
Madrid for such a long time. She didn’t have anything to say about the workshop, nor about the room where I’d put her, with a big oak bed and a cretonne quilt that I’d sewn. She didn’t ask me what had become of Ramiro, or show any curiosity about what it was that had led me to settle in Tetouan. Needless to say, she didn’t speak a word about the grim journey that had brought her to Africa, or even once mention the horrors she had left behind.

It took her some time to adjust—I never thought I’d see my mother like that. The ever-determined Dolores, who was always in control, with just the right thing to say at the right moment, had been transformed into a furtive, inhibited woman I found hard to recognize. I devoted myself to her, body and soul. I practically stopped working; there weren’t any major events coming up, and my clients wouldn’t mind waiting. Day after day I brought her breakfast in bed: buns,
churros,
toast with olive oil and sugar, anything that would help her put some weight back on. I helped her bathe and I cut her hair; I sewed her new clothes. It was hard getting her out of the house, but bit by bit our morning walk became compulsory. We went arm in arm along the Calle del Generalísimo, reached the square with the church; sometimes, if the timing worked out, I would accompany her to Mass. I took her to see picturesque corners, little nooks and crannies, made her help me choose fabrics, listen to popular songs on the radio, and decide what we were going to eat. Till slowly, step by little step, she began to return to the person she used to be.

I never asked her what went on in her head over the course of this transition, which seemed to last an eternity: I hoped she’d tell me sometime, but she never did, and I didn’t insist. Nor was I particularly curious: I guessed that her behavior was no more than an unconscious way of dealing with the uncertainty produced by relief mixed with pain and sorrow. Which was why I simply allowed her to adapt, just remaining by her side, ready to help her if she needed support, with a handkerchief in my hand to dry the tears she would never shed.

I noticed that she was getting better when she began to make little decisions for herself: today I think I’ll go to the ten o’clock Mass;
I thought I might go with Jamila to the market to buy ingredients to make a paella, what do you think? Bit by bit she stopped cowering each time she heard the crash of something falling on the floor, or the engine of a plane flying over the city. Going to Mass and the market soon became a routine, and other activities were then added to these. The most important of all was returning to her sewing. In spite of my efforts, ever since she’d arrived she hadn’t shown the slightest interest in dressmaking, as if that hadn’t been the framework of her existence for more than thirty years. I showed her the foreign fashion illustrations that I had purchased in Tangiers, I talked to her about my clients and their foibles, tried to animate her by reminding her about different outfits we’d once sewn together. Nothing. I got nowhere, as though I were speaking a language she didn’t understand. Until one morning she poked her head through the doorway into the workroom and asked, Can I give you a hand? I knew then that my mother had come back to life.

Three or four months after her arrival we managed to attain a state of peace. Now that she was back on her feet, the days became less full of frantic activity. The business was going well and allowed us to give Candelaria some money each month with enough left to keep us comfortably, so there was no longer any need to work relentlessly. We started getting along well again, even though neither of us was the woman she had once been, and we were a bit like strangers. Strong Dolores had become vulnerable, and little Sira was now an independent woman. But we accepted each other, appreciated each other, and with our roles clearly defined there was never any more tension between us.

The bustle of the first phase of my life in Tetouan seemed so distant, as though it were centuries ago. The adventures and anxieties were in the past. Staying out till the early hours and living without having to explain myself; all that had been left behind, giving way to ease. And sometimes the palest normality, too. My memories of the past, however, lived on with me still. Although the pain of Marcus’s absence began to lessen bit by bit, memories of him still clung to me, like an invisible companion whose outline only I could make out. How often I regretted
not having ventured further in my relationship with him, how often I cursed myself for having remained so strict, how much I missed him. All the same, I was glad that I hadn’t let myself get carried away by my feelings; if I had, the fact that he was far away from me would have been much more painful.

I didn’t lose touch with Félix, but with my mother’s arrival came an end to his nighttime visits and the traffic between our front doors, the outlandish lectures on culture, and his exuberant, delightful company.

My relationship with Rosalinda changed, too: the presence of her husband was much more protracted than we’d anticipated, sucking up her time and health like a leech. Fortunately, after almost seven months, Peter Fox decided to return to India. No one ever knew how the alcohol fumes had permitted a shard of lucidity to enter his thoughts, but he did make the decision of his own accord, one morning, when his wife was about ready to fall apart. All the same, his departure didn’t bring about much good, apart from providing a sense of immense relief. Naturally he was never convinced that the sensible thing to do would be to carry through the divorce and put an end to that sham of a marriage. On the contrary, he thought he would go to Calcutta to sell off his business interests and then return to settle down once and for all with his wife and son, to enjoy an early retirement with them in the peaceful, cheap Spanish Protectorate. And just so they didn’t start getting used to the good life too early, he also decided that their allowance, unchanged for years, wasn’t going to be raised by a single pound.

“In an emergency you can get your friend Beigbeder to help,” he suggested by way of farewell.

To everybody’s good fortune, he never returned to Morocco. The stress of that unwelcome cohabitation did, however, cost Rosalinda nearly half a year of convalescence. In the months that followed Peter’s departure, she remained in bed, leaving the house no more than three or four times. The high commissioner practically relocated his work to her bedroom, and the two of them used to spend long hours there, she surrounded by pillows, reading, and he doing his paperwork at a small table by the window.

The doctor’s orders to remain in bed until she returned to normal didn’t prevent her social bustle, but it did reduce it considerably. All the same, no sooner had her body begun to show signs of recovery than she made an effort to open her house up to her friends, giving little parties without leaving her bed. I was at almost all of them, and my friendship with Rosalinda remained absolutely firm. But nothing was ever the same again.

___________

O
n April 1, 1939, the end of the civil war was declared; from then on there were no more factions or currencies or uniforms dividing the country. Or at least that was what they told us. My mother and I received the news with mixed feelings, unable to predict what that peace would bring with it.

“And what’s going to happen in Madrid now, Mother? What are we going to do?”

We spoke almost in whispers, unsettled, standing on a balcony watching the bustling crowds teeming on the street. There were shouts nearby, an explosion of euphoria and unleashed nerves.

“How I wish I knew,” was her dark reply.

The news flew back and forth riotously. They said that passenger boats would be resuming their crossings of the Strait, that trains would soon be ready to reenter Madrid. The pathway toward our past was beginning to clear, and there was no longer any reason for us to remain in Africa.

“Do you want to go back?” she asked me at last.

“I don’t know.”

I really didn’t know. I was filled with nostalgia for Madrid: images of childhood and youth, tastes, smells, the names of streets, and recollections
of people. But deep down I wasn’t sure that this was weighty enough to demand a return that would mean dismantling everything I’d worked so hard to build in Tetouan, the white city that was home to my mother, my new friends, and the atelier that supported us.

“Perhaps, for the time being at least, it would be best if we stayed,” I suggested.

She didn’t reply; she just nodded, left the balcony, and returned to work, to take refuge among the threads so as not to have to think about the implications of that decision.

A new state was born; a New Spain, they called it. For some people, what arrived were peace and victory; others, however, saw the blackest of chasms opening up before them. Most foreign governments gave legitimacy to the triumph of the Nationalists, recognizing their regime without a moment’s hesitation. The structures that had been set up during the conflict began to be dismantled, and the institutions of power began to take their leave of Burgos and prepare for a return to the capital. A new administrative tapestry began to be woven, and work had begun on reconstructing everything that had been destroyed. They accelerated the process of purging undesirables, while those who’d contributed to the victory lined up to receive their piece of the pie. The wartime government continued finalizing decrees, measures, and laws for a few months: its restructuring had to wait until well into the summer. I didn’t learn of all this myself, however, until July, when word reached Morocco. Even before it had escaped the walls of the High Commission and spread into the Tetouan streets; long before the name and photograph appeared in the newspapers and everyone in Spain started wondering who that dark-haired man was, with the dark mustache and the round glasses; even before all that, I already knew whom El Caudillo had designated to sit at his right hand in the sessions of his first peacetime Council of Ministers: Don Juan Luis Beigbeder y Atienza. The new minister for foreign affairs, the only military member of the cabinet ranking lower than general.

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.