COMING TO CONCLUSIONS

The Autobiography of Peter Tristan Stuart

by

Gene C. McCoy

CHAPTER 13

On the evening before our departure for Valencia I checked the Peugeot out of the embassy motor pool, made a trip to the AFEX on Generalissimo to pick up some things I would need for my inspection tour of the Costa Blanca, placed them in the trunk of the car, and went home to dinner and bed early; at daybreak Carmen MacGregor and I were on our way south through Aranjuez to Valencia. Although Carmen was an American she spoke perfect Spanish, and knew Spain as well as any Spaniard; she was a pleasant and valuable travelling companion. At my request she had not informed the Caridad staff of our visit, so I was looking forward to some new impressions of the program that would not be stage managed or require a lot of protocol lunches, coffees and visits to specially prepared show places.

Even though one of my favorite painters, the Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla, romanticized Valencia with his strong, harsh lighted, airy, sun and sand beach scenes I did not like the place nearly as much as I appreciated his paintings of Valencia. Despite the wonderful paellas, and Hemingway descriptions of beads of frost forming on the cold pitchers of beer, Valencia had a North Jersey Shore, Long Branch feel about it, and just as I had compared the Jersey beaches with the California Coast where I grew up, I compared Valencia with the Costa del Sol; I was as unimpressed with Valencia as I had been with New Jersey.

Before we arrived in the city of Valencia we had stopped in some of the outlying villages and out of the box had discovered what would be a pattern of charging for the entire province and diocese of Valencia. Over the next two days we established that each village and parish within the city had a price list for all of the products available under the program, cooking oil, wheat flour, bulgur wheat, cheese, etc. The distribution centers were required to make a deposit into a bank account, the number was indicated on the price list, and thereafter they could order products from the main diocesan warehouse proportional to their deposit. It was the most blatant, extensive and sophisticated method of violating the U.S. prohibition against charging for the food that I had found.

While the staff in the other locations I had visited were happy volunteers with a sense of charitable mission, in Valencia the people seemed desultory and sullen. With the exception of one priest they all seemed more like disgruntled, underpaid workers in a failing commercial enterprize. The one exception, a funny little priest named Father Bonifacio, was the same cut of man as Father Dino Garibaldi, but without Dino's Harvard MBA business sense. Wearing old fashioned high topped shoes that were visible under his cassock , Bonifacio tramped around beside us grousing and grumbling about the charges saying they were excessive. He complained that he needed medicine and clothes for the poor in his parish, but couldn't afford them because of the payments for food. The wind was blowing and he kept pulling on the brim of his black round crowned clerical sombrero with both hands to keep it from blowing off, and one time it did blow away. Father Bonifacio was a comical sight in his high top shoes with his cassock billowing out behind him while running after his hat. The women and children waiting in the line outside the feeding station could not repress their laughter, and neither could Carmen and I.

Nevertheless, by the time we returned to our hotel at the end of our second day of inspections both Carmen and I were disappointed and discouraged. I did not know what the implications of the violation would be, or if we could even prove that the charges were being assessed for the food.

"I'm going to have a martini," I said as we walked through the hotel lobby. "I'll join you," Carmen said.

"Join me? I thought you were a member of AA?"

"No, I'm an Alanon. My obsession is with alcoholics."

"I don't think I understand," I said.

"Never mind," she said and laughed. "It's too hard to explain, but I'm not an alcoholic. Come on, I'll buy."

Carmen may not have been an alcoholic, but she could drink martinis like no one I had ever met. This was the first and only time in my life that I ever drank so much that I did not know exactly how I managed to get in bed with a woman.

I had a terrible hangover the next morning when I rolled over to look into Carmen's face. "How did this happen?" she said and smiled.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," I said. "Are you sorry?"

"The only regret I have is that I don't remember how or what happened," she said and slipped her hand around me. "Will you please refresh my memory. I have the hangover hornies."

We made love, then I left for my own room to shower and dress. When I met Carmen for breakfast she was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Over soft boiled eggs, dry toast and lots of tomato juice Carmen told me that her brother-in-law had recommended a new hotel in the village of Torredembarra.

"It's a brand new place called Albergue Los Condes de Aragon. It may not even be open yet, but according to Luis, my sister's husband, it's worth seeing."

"Where's Torredembarra?" I asked.

"Just past Taragona on the Barcelona coastal highway. It's a long day's drive from here," she said.

"Let's go," I said and pushed away from the table. "We've seen enough of Valencia."

Leaving Valencia the sky was clear and cloudless, and once on the highway we looked out over orange groves and rice paddies to a calm transparent Mediterranean Sea. However, late in the afternoon big thunderheads were forming on the horizon and by evening we drove in a torrential downpour of rain. The windshield wipers labored to clear the glass as we drove slowly, hoping as we rounded each bend in the road to come upon the landmark Roman arch which Luis, Carmen's brother-in-law, had told her to watch for. It was almost eight o'clock at night before the headlights played on a large Roman arch over the highway, and following Carmen's instructions I turned off the pavement onto a graveled road that wound back toward the sea, then zigzagged up a hill through an outcrop of rocks into the brick courtyard of the Albergue Los Condes de Aragon.

The entry doors were closed but the lights were on and inside we could see people looking out at our headlights. I stopped, and Carmen opened the door of the car. "I'll see what I can find out," she said and jumped out to run toward the hotel entry. From inside the car I watched as Carmen talked and gestured with her hands to an old man who looked more like a caretaker than he did a concierge. She waved, turned and ran back to the car to slip into the seat.

"We're in luck," she said. "The hotel is not officially open, but we can stay. I told the old man that I was escorting an important diplomat on an inspection tour of Caridad feeding programs."

"Rank has its privilege, eh?" I said

"Sometimes," she said. "Actually he had never heard of Caridad nor the feeding programs but he did recognize the name of my brother-in-law's travel agency, so money still talks."

Built on the reconstruction of what was the ruin of an old primera linea tower and fortress that had been a lookout for invading Arabs from North Africa, the Albergue Los Condes de Aragon was a jewel of tasteful, understated, elegance. Architects, craftsmen builders and interior decorators had collaborated to create a magnificent showplace with polished terracotta tile floors and beamed ceilings; Talavera tiles and tapestries blended into the ancient stone walls of the ruin made a perfect gallery for antique Catalan furnishings, original oil paintings, soft leather sofas and chairs, and North African rugs. It was obvious that expense and economy had not been a concern, and the hotel lobby was more like the salon of a luxurious country mansion or hacienda than it was a hotel lobby.

A fire was burning cheerfully in a huge fireplace, around which soft comfortable leather chairs and sofas were placed. The hotel was completely staffed, but was not scheduled to open until the next week. The only thing lacking was liquor since the absentee owners had locked up the bar when they left, but the old man caretaker said I could bring down bottles of Beefeaters and Noilly Pratt from my luggage to make our martinis. The old man joined us in a cocktail and together the three of us inaugurated the Albergue Los Condes de Aragon. We ate dinner in front of the fireplace and once again Carmen and I found our way to the same bed.

It was still raining the next morning when I left Carmen in her room while I showered and dressed. We met for breakfast in the empty dining room that looked out onto a stormy sea. "If the weather were better we could spend the weekend here," she said.

"Yes, we could except I have plans to spend the weekend with a friend who is in the consulate in Barcelona," I said and lied. I had already called Rosa Mercedes Serrano from Madrid, and she was expecting me in Barcelona on Saturday morning; in the trunk of the car I had gifts; a giant stuffed panda for Rosa's daughter, and for Rosa perfume and lingerie. I had decided that if Rosa could make it we would come back to the Los Condes hotel, and I had already consulted with the old man caretaker about a room for the two of us.

"I have plans, too," Carmen said. "I have an aunt and uncle who live in Barcelona and I'm spending the weekend with them."

I had the feeling that if I had suggested it, Carmen would have gladly changed her plans. After dropping Carmen off at her family's house I drove to Rosa's apartment where she was waiting for me on the street. I told her of the hotel, and she agreed to go with me; she had already made weekend arrangements for her daughter to stay with a friend. I gave Rosa my gifts, we had a coffee in a nearby cafe, then packed her things in the car to return to Torredembarra.

Dressed in a pair of faded Levi's, a cashmere sweater under a suede jacket with a silk Hermes scarf, and soft leather boots Rosa looked like any young affluent Spanish woman off on a country weekend. Unless someone knew her from the Club there was nothing about her appearance and dress that would identify her with the Club Marfil, and I did not think of her as such. To me she was a charming and lovely Spanish woman, and I felt fortunate to spend time with her over the weekend in such magnificent surroundings as the Albergue provided.

By the time we got back to Los Condes the weather had cleared and we changed into old clothes to walk on the beach, inspect the tide pools and climb over the rocks; at sunset we sat on our small terrace to sip San Patricio sherry.

We were still the only occupants and that night a whole covey of waiters and busboys hovered nearby our dinner table to make sure that our every need was met and anticipated. The old man caretaker had arranged for the purchase of some fresh lenguado from one of the local fishermen which we ate with a crisp green salad and fried potatoes; simple Spanish fare that tasted like nectar from the Gods.

Just as I had been on the first night I met Rosa I was completely at ease with her. Many years after that serendipity weekend I ran across a paragraph in one of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic tales that perfectly described my feelings when I was with Rosa:

I have never in any other love affair - if this can be called a love affair - had the same feeling of freedom and security. In my last adventure I had all the time been worrying to find out what my mistress really thought of me, and what part I was playing in the eyes of the world. But no such doubts or fears could possibly penetrate into our little room here. I believe that this feeling of safety and perfect freedom must be what happily married people mean when they talk about the two being one. I wonder if that understanding can possibly, in marriage, be as harmonious as when you meet as strangers; but this, I suppose, is a matter of taste.

Remembering that we had not made love in our first meeting, Rosa, either through instinct or practiced design, blended just the right amounts of coquettish flirtation with coy innocence so that when we finally came together that night it was with great and sincere passion for one another.

After breakfast we again walked on the beach then drove to Taragona where Rosa's sister, Montserat, was staying in a pension with a group of young actors who were making a movie. The pension was so cold that they all slept together to keep warm, Montserat said. They all complained that the director was cruel in that he made them wait in the cold for long periods dressed only in their bikini bathing suits while he set up the shots. Montserat said that the director just liked to look at the girls in their bathing suits. Montserat and the other young women were all very pretty and I suspected that she might have been right. We all ate lunch together in Taragona then Rosa and I drove back to Barcelona. I spent the night with Rosa Mercedes then met Carmen for Breakfast at the Avenida Palace Hotel where just a few months earlier I had stayed on my first visit to Barcelona with Andre.

That weekend with Rosa in the Albergue Los Condes de Aragon ranks in my memory as a magnificent event along with the night when I was just sixteen years old that I spent in the Geisha house outside Tokyo with a young Japanese girl. Both times were with wonderful women who made their livelihoods with their bodies and their charms, and both had given freely to me what other men paid for.

* * * * *

Carmen had been in touch with Andre Dubois by telephone from Barcelona, and by the time we got back to Madrid Andre and the Caridad management had already suspended aid to the diocese of Valencia. A few days later the ambassador received a letter from the irate Archbishop of Valencia in which he denounced the "Gestapo" investigative tactics that Carmen and I had employed in our trip to Valencia. The Archbishop invited the ambassador to Valencia to see for himself that the poor and needy were properly cared for without having to pay for their assistance.

The ambassador instructed me to draft a letter for his signature explaining to the Bishop that the press of other commitments precluded his visiting Valencia in the immediate future; however, the ambassador would be pleased to consult with the bishop in the embassy at the bishop's convenience. The ambassador took the opportunity of his letter to assure the bishop of his highest and most distinguished consideration.

After several letters and telephone conversations Marsha and the children returned to Madrid, and Carmen was transferred to Mexico. Marsha and I took a trip together to Torremolinos as a "second honeymoon," and on the way back home our Ford Station Wagon broke down in the village of Madridejos about seventy five miles from Madrid. I arranged to have the car towed to the Ford Garage in Madrid, and ordered the replacement parts from the States before I left for Tripoli in the first week of July 1962. A colleague in the embassy drove Marsha and the children to join Marge and Ralph in San Sebastian where they spent the summer that I was in North Africa.

Gene McCoy © July 1998

GO TO CHAPTER 14 OF MEMOIR

CLICK TO OPEN CHAPTER 14

BACK TO TABLE OF CONENTS

BACK TO INDEX

© 1997 g inofso@gte.net