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Quick bursts of conflicting thoughts rushed through my mind: some of them advised me to refuse, insisting that this was a pointless extravagance; others reminded me of the old saying I’d so often heard from my mother’s lips, about how being well bred is about knowing how to be thankful.
draggable
parvenu /ˈpärvəˌn(y)o͞o / ‹often derogatory› I. noun a person of obscure origin who has gained wealth, influence, or celebrity • the political inexperience of a parvenu • [as modifier] he concealed the details of his parvenu lifestyle. – origin early 19th cent.: from French, literally ‘arrived,’ past participle of parvenir, from Latin pervenire ‘come to, reach.’
“But what are you thinking of, girl?” yelled Candelaria. “It’s after six thirty and you’re still soaking like a chickpea; honey, you won’t have enough time! When were you thinking about getting yourself together?”
“You just watch yourself, scribbler, this girl’s already got a lot of misfortunes on her back. So if you make a move on her with your moneyed outsider’s ways, I’m just going to have to come down on you like a ton of bricks, because if you start getting too cocky and harm a single hair of her head, my cousin and I will get someone to do a little number on you before you know what’s what, and one of these fine nights you’ll find yourself taking a blade in one of the streets in the Morería and getting the good side of your face slashed till it’s left like the hide of a piglet, all marked up for
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“Good evening, Don Claudio.” I tried hard to sound natural; I don’t know whether I succeeded. “Good to see you.” “Sure about that?” he asked with an ironic smile.
was worried about Rosalinda’s absence; it was very strange that she hadn’t been seen once. The
interlocutor /ˌin(t)ərˈläkyədər/ I. noun ‹formal› a person who takes part in a dialogue or conversation. II. derivatives interlocution /ˌin(t)ərˌlōˈkyo͞oSH(ə)n / noun – origin early 16th cent.: modern Latin, from Latin interlocut- ‘interrupted (by speech),’ from the verb interloqui, from inter- ‘between’ + loqui ‘speak.’
I learned that the German was Johannes Bernhardt, that Serrano was using Franco as an excuse to put more pressure on him and avoid acceding to certain conditions. And even though I was missing information that would have allowed me to understand the whole situation, I could tell that the two men were both concerned that the matter they were discussing should turn out well.
“Will you talk to Colonel Beigbeder about this, or would you rather I told him about it myself?” Serrano didn’t reply right away. First I heard him light a cigarette. His umpteenth one. “Do you really think it’s absolutely essential to do that?” he asked after breathing out his first drag of smoke. “The installations will be located in the Spanish Protectorate, so I suppose he ought to know something about it.” “Leave it to me, then. El Caudillo will inform him directly. And as to the terms of the agreement, best not to let any details out. That can be kept between us,” he added as the German
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bovine tuberculosis,
Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) is a slow-growing (16- to 20-hour generation time) aerobic bacterium and the causative agent of tuberculosis in cattle (known as bovine TB). It is related to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium which causes tuberculosis in humans. M. bovis can jump the species barrier and cause tuberculosis-like infection in humans and other mammals.[2
reticent /ˈredəsənt/ I. adjective not revealing one's thoughts or feelings readily • she was extremely reticent about her personal affairs. II. derivatives 1. reticence /ˈredəsəns / noun 2. reticently /ˈredəs(ə)n(t)lē / adverb – origin mid 19th cent.: from Latin reticent- ‘remaining silent,’ from the verb reticere, from re- (expressing intensive force) + tacere ‘be silent.’
from his wife’s friends to the most humble of their servants, took no more than a few days to work out what sort of creature Peter Fox was. Egotistical, irrational, capricious, alcoholic, arrogant, and tyrannical: it was impossible to find fewer positive attributes in a single person.
There was a complicity, there were glances, and glancing touches, veiled comments, admiration, and desire. There was closeness, there was tenderness. But I forced myself to hold back my feelings; I refused to go any further, and he accepted it. Restraining myself took a huge effort on my part: doubt, uncertainty, nights lying awake.
“Your mother is on her way. Last night she boarded a British merchant vessel at Alicante headed for Oran. She arrives in Gibraltar in three days. Rosalinda will make sure she can come across the Strait without any trouble; she’ll tell you herself how the crossing will happen.”
From 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 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
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.
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 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.
On 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The In-law-ísimo’s power was at its most dazzling peak. The whole country was in his hands—the Falange, the press, the police—and he enjoyed unlimited personal access to El Caudillo, for whom many people suspected he felt a certain contempt as his intellectual inferior.
The only one of the three dignitaries with whom the ambassador was able to get along was Beigbeder.
Hoare became aware of just how extensive the Germans’ influence in Spanish affairs was, their considerable reach into almost every aspect of public life. Businessmen, executives, salesmen, movie producers—people involved in a range of activities with excellent contacts in the administration and power structures—were working as agents in the service of the Nazis.
And as the former high commissioner’s star plummeted like a stone in water, Franco and Serrano, Serrano and Franco, two men with absolutely no knowledge of international politics, neither of whom had barely seen anything of the world, sat down to drink hot chocolate with fried bread in El Pardo and sketched out a new global order on the teatime tablecloth with the shocking audacity that
can only come from ignorance and overweening pride.
obscurantism /əbˈskyo͝orənˌtizəm äbˈskyo͝orənˌtizəm ˌäbskyəˈranˌtizəm/ I. noun the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known. II. derivatives 1. obscurant /ˈäbskyərənt / noun, adjective 2. obscurantist /əbˈskyo͝orəntəst äbˈskyo͝orəntəst ˌäbskyəˈrantəst / noun, adjective – origin mid 19th cent.: from earlier obscurant, denoting a person who obscures something, via German from Latin obscurant- ‘making dark,’ from the verb obscurare.
Which was why he decided simply to throw himself into a decision, boldly. The time had come for the discreet friendship he’d maintained with Hoare to come out into the daylight and be made public, to transcend the boundaries of private sanctuaries, offices, and halls where it had remained till now.
during those months Rosalinda kept me up to date with a string of long letters that I received in Tetouan like a godsend. In spite of her lively social life, illness still forced her to spend many hours in bed, hours she dedicated to writing letters and reading what her friends sent her. And in that way we established a habit that kept us connected to each other, an invisible thread binding us across space and time.
On top of that were a couple of glasses, a cocktail shaker, a pack of Turkish cigarettes, and an ashtray. In one corner, balancing on a big stack of wooden crates, a portable gramophone played Billie Holiday singing “Summertime.”
I’d felt her absence keenly—those unexpected arrivals, her way of seeing things from a completely different perspective from the rest of the world.
Her witty remarks, her little eccentricities, her riotous chatter.
“We’re trying to set up a network of underground collaborators in Madrid linked to the British secret services. Collaborators with no connection to political life, to the diplomatic service or the military. People who aren’t known, who under the appearance of a normal life can find out about things and then pass them on to the SOE.”
“The Special Operations Executive. A new organization within the secret services that has just been created by Churchill, for matters relating to the war, and on the fringes of what the regular agents are doing. They’re signing people up all over Europe. It’s like an espionage service, but not a very orthodox one. Not a very conventional one.”
“The SIS is the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, the Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 6; the sixth section of Military Intelligence, an agency dedicated to the secret services’ operations outside Great Britain. Espionage activities in non-British territories, to be quite clear.
“We thought that you could set up an atelier in Madrid and sew for the wives of the high-ranking Nazis.”
“The scarcity of fabric, the severe scarcity of fabric. Neither Spain nor France is producing materials for this sort of sewing; those factories that haven’t closed down are focusing on fulfilling the basic needs of the population or developing materials destined for the war.
Same thing in the USA. Wh6 skirts were shorter and less material was used.
We have to get involved, Sira. We have to help. You, me, all of us, each in whatever way we can. We
have to contribute our grain of sand to make sure this madness doesn’t go any further.”
“No, querida, a real one. He’s still got very good friends in Morocco. You could be a Moroccan citizen within a few hours. With of course a different name.”
