As the
autumn sun was setting TWA announced the departure of flight 901 from Idylwild to
Lisbon and Madrid, and after an all night flight Marsha, the children and I arrived in
Madrid on a bright September morning in 1961. Frank and Frieda Harrison along with
Tom Blacka, and his wife Beryl were on the tarmac at Barajas airport to meet us. Frank
was the Chief of my section in the embassy, and Tom was my immediate boss. A local
Spanish employee from the embassy Administrative Section took our new diplomatic
passports and luggage tickets. He would clear us through customs and immigration, Tom
said. "We can go straight to your hotel."
We walked to the edge of the tarmac
where
two chauffeurs stood beside two black sedans. "Bienvenido, Seqor Estuart," the
driver said and opened the door for us. I was sailing ahead of the wind, flying into
the
sun, walking on air as we rode through the tree-lined streets of Madrid. I looked out the
car window at the sidewalk cafes, restaurants and shops. It was the most magnificent city
I had ever seen. Madrid was everything I had imagined it would be and more. I had lived
this moment so many times in my fantasies and day dreams that rather than feeling that I
was going someplace new, I felt I had come home.
The car rolled to a stop in
front of the
Wellington, an elegant, old European hotel on the tree-lined Calle Velasquez.
Tom and his
wife accompanied us to a suite to brief us on housing, servants, commissaries and
privileges. He placed a bottle of black label scotch on the table. "I know you're all
tired
after that all night flight, so I'll see you in the morning at the embassy. Welcome aboard,"
Tom said, then they left us alone.
Marsha was frightened, and that
night as we
lay in bed together I held her in my arms while she cried. "Promise me you'll quit this
job just as soon as you can, Pete," she said.
"I promise," I lied, but in the back of
my
mind I knew that I was once again on the right path.
On my first day in the embassy Tom introduced me to the staff then took me into his office
to brief me on my job.
"I'm waiting for a call from the ambassador's office to get
you in to see him. He's busy as hell this morning, but I know he wants to see you and give
you some of his thoughts," Tom said. "In the meantime I can give you a little
background."
Tom's secretary served coffee to both of us. In the first few hours of my first day in the
embassy I learned that diplomacy is a complicated business. What passes as cohesive and
monolithic under the rubric of "U.S. interests" is in reality a quagmire paradox of
conflicting, frequently mutually exclusive, goals, programs and objectives. On the one
hand U.S. interests were to assist Spain in it's economic development after years of
stagnation, and isolation from the rest of Europe. On the other hand, as economists are
fond of saying, U.S. interests were to get Spain's military up to Western European
standards, and into NATO while at the same time insuring a continued presence of the
U.S.
military on the Spanish bases. My job would not be free of problems.
"As the
quid
pro quo, for the right to put military, naval and air bases in Spain, Franco exacted
an economic aid package that includes a program under Public Law 480 of food aid for
the
poor," Tom said and sipped his coffee. "The food is distributed through the CCS Mission
to Spain and their
Spanish counterpart Caridad."
"CCS?," I asked. I was not yet familiar with all of
the
acronyms and alphabet soup jargon of the government.
"Yes, CCS, Catholic
Charity
Services, the overseas charity arm of the U.S. Catholic Church."
The phone
rang; Tom
lifted himself out of his chair to walk to it. He picked up the receiver, listened then
dropped
it in the cradle. "It may be that we'll have to wait a while to see the ambassador. Take
these files, and look through them," he said, then handed me an arm full of file folders.
"I'll
call you if we get an appointment."
I returned to my own office, but I had no more
than
put the stack of folders on my desk when the phone rang. It was the ambassador's
secretary. "The ambassador wants to see you in his office right away."
Ambassador
Robert Walker, a career Foreign Service officer, was a mild mannered,
pipe-smoking, fatherly gentleman, and both Tom and the ambassador were waiting for me
when I arrived. They were seated around a large coffee table on black leather chairs
sipping coffee. The ambassador stood up to greet me. "I just wanted to welcome you
aboard, Pete, and tell you how pleased I am to have you join the staff, "the ambassador
said.
The secretary served me a coffee.
"Thank you, sir. I'm very pleased to be
here."
"Tom tells me that you'll be looking after the food program for us."
"Yes,
sir," I
said.
"Good. I like the program, but there have been some problems. I'm not
going to
prejudice your own judgment by enumerating the defects. I'll let you draw your own
conclusions. The program is controversial in Washington. A lot of people keep asking
what
we're doing giving food to Spain. They don't realize that Spain is still a poor
country."
"Yes, sir," I said. "I got that impression when I was being briefed in Washington
before coming out."
"Actually, the food was just a bargaining chip on the table
when we
negotiated the base agreements. It was either food or a squadron of F-5 fighter planes for
the Spanish Air Force, and I preferred the food."
"I understand, sir," I said. "I
agree."
"We've taken a lot of flack in the press with allegations that the church is making
money off our food. I don't know if the charges have any basis in fact, but it's important
that we find out the truth. The access agreements are coming up for renewal and
renegotiating next year, and we have to put our chips back on the table. The negotiations
are just like a big poker game, so one of your jobs will be to find out whether the
allegations
are true or not."
"Yes, sir," I said. "I'm looking forward to the assignment."
"You
have your family with you, don't you?" the ambassador asked.
"Yes, sir. A
wife and
two children."
"Mrs. Walker and I want to have you and your wife over for
cocktails in the
next few days, but we'll give you some time to recover from the jet lag. That's all I
have." The ambassador stood up and offered his hand. "Tom, do you have
anything?"
"No, sir" Tom replied.
"Very good. Welcome aboard, Pete."
"Thank
you, sir." I left, and returned to my office to wade into the files.
By our third day in Madrid we had recovered from the jet lag, and
had
moved from the hotel into a light and airy, comfortably furnished apartment in the
Residencia Argentina, a small charming, but elegant in an understated way, residential
hotel
some five blocks away from the embassy on the Plaza Republica de Argentina. I
passed the word to the maids in the residencia that we would be looking for a piso, a flat,
to rent, and that we would need a servant, a woman to care for the children, do light
housekeeping, shop and cook. Within a week Merche, an energetic, wiry 50-year old
Basque woman appeared to apply for the position.
The only experience I had
with servants was in Mexico, where the maids were mostly simple illiterate Indian girls
from
rural villages. Merche, however, was dressed in a smart wool suit, carried gloves, and she
was quick and intelligent in conversation. She was the first of many Spaniards I would
meet
who had suffered unimaginable personal losses during Spain's civil war, but who remained
courageous, tenacious and positive in their attitude and outlook on life.
Merche
was
from Vitoria in the Basque Province of Alava. As a young girl and woman she had
studied
to become a concert pianist, but with the outbreak of the civil war she was forced to
abandon her dream. Both her mother and father had been killed by Franco's troops; her
fiancie, a hot headed Basque separatist, had fled across the border to France where he
lived as a refugee until the German occupation when he joined the underground resistance.
He was eventually shot by the Germans while on a mission with the French resistance.
Since that time Merche had kept body and soul together as a nanny and piano teacher.
Merche's solution to tragedy and hardship was to keep busy and work. We hired her
and Merche took me, Marsha and the children under her protective, street smart wing.
Merche became our all around housekeeper, nanny for the children, companion and
cook.
She loved to clean house and cook, but if in the course of the day she had a
moment to sit down and relax she knitted while reading the newspaper. She lived by the
principle that busy hands are happy hands. She knew how to prepare all kinds of simple
and
tasty peasant dishes such as,paella, pisto Manchego,and cocido Madrileqo.
She was
marvelous with the children, quick to see what had to be done, then do it; they loved
her. Within a matter of days the children were speaking their first words of Spanish.
With
Merche to baby sit for us, Marsha and I were free to launch into the swirl of diplomatic
cocktail parties and receptions, black tie dinner parties at the ambassadors residence,
dances and smaller more intimate get togethers with other embassy officers and my
Spanish
and American counterparts with whom I worked.
Almost overnight I had been
plucked
from the ranks of that army of anonymous commuters who march in lock step between
their bedrooms in suburbia to their offices in the sterile glass skyscrapers along Sixth
Avenue for fourteen hour days. Now I slept until eight in the morning, then
strolled leisurely down the Calle Serrano to the Cafe Bar Blanco where in the
fresh, still
morning air I sipped cafe con leche and ate churros while reading the
Paris edition of the
New York Herald Tribune before going to my office.
Lunches were relaxed,
two or
three hour, affairs that began with fine dry sherry and tapas, then ranged through soup,
salad, fish and meat courses, with both red and white wines, fruit and cheese, then ended
with coffee, cognac and cigars in a sidewalk cafe. In the evenings, if we had no party to
attend, we could go to the theater, a concert, any one of a number of noisy flamenco
dives,
or go taska hopping for tid-bits and snacks in the bars and cafes in the old part of Madrid
along the Calle Echegaray, the Plaza Santa Ana and the Calle de
Cuchilleros.
I was
as happy as I had ever been in my life. I was full of enthusiasm; I had a sense of direction
and purpose. I felt that I was part of something larger than myself, and I loved my work.
It
was the payoff for all of the years of study in Mexico. I was sailing ahead of the
wind, but Marsha, for reasons that I could not understand, was listless. She went through
the motions; she complied with what she saw as distasteful obligations.
