Louise had been his first. She literally took him in hand for the next three years. Marianna had been the next, and stayed with him for several years. By then it was 1935 and Adolfo reluctantly sent Marianna to America; Germany under Hitler was no place for a Jewess.
His wealthy parents, a German father and a Spanish mother, also left for America; they had looked to the future with the "Austrian maniac" running the country and decided Germany wouldn't be a safe place for anyone who disagreed with the Nazi party's views. They were convinced Germany would soon be at war.
Adolfo stayed. Not because he agreed with Hitler's rantings; it was simply that he saw the prospect of a Europe in turmoil as exciting. He expected the war that was inevitable would provide many opportunities for a young man with a cool head.
When war came, he was posted to France as a junior officer. Promotions followed quickly, which gave him opportunities to find the kind of woman he needed. He found Lessandra or, rather, she—on the hunt for an officer with influence- found him and in return for the attention he craved, he got her two brothers out of the country, to America.
Then, in early 1945, he and three other officers were ordered to drive four couriers and their diplomatic boxes to Switzerland. Exactly where Adolfo wanted to go. The couriers always stayed overnight in inns or hotels, while the officers had been ordered to remain in the cars with the diplomatic boxes. Although this had rankled, it meant they escaped the bombs that destroyed the hotel and killed the couriers.
Still following their orders, the four left for their rendezvous point by separate routes. Adolfo's route was blocked by debris from a bombed house. He got out of his vehicle to clear the way, and came face to face with a girl holding a baby. Bombs were still falling so he shouted for her to put the baby down and help him. She was stronger than she looked; between them they cleared a path for the car and when he got behind the wheel, she jumped into the back seat where she'd put the baby. Adolfo gave them no more than a glance before he started the motor and drove for the Swiss border.
There was no-one to meet him at the Schaffhausen rendezvous so he went on to his ski lodge in Winterthur and it was there, eventually, that he and his fellow officers reunited. Germany was defeated; there was nothing to go back to; they opened the diplomatic boxes ... and become millionaires. Diamonds and other precious stones, but mostly diamonds, were all that the boxes contained. They divided up the loot and went their separate ways. The war was over but Europe was still in chaos so Adolfo's first decision was to remain in Switzerland for a few years making plans and establishing a network of business acquaintances. Then he got rid of the name Adolf Hausmann, and established a new identity. His mother was Spanish, with no living relatives in Spain so he took her name and changed Adolf Johann Franz Hausmann to Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez.
He bought a villa in Spain, added a wing to it, and insisted on modifications that caused the builders to look sideways at him. However, he was el Patron, the man with the money, so who were they to comment.
The search for the villa, and other business meant he was often absent from Winterthur, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. When he returned to Switzerland after these trips, he was taken care of by the small staff that had remained in Winterthur from before the war: a housekeeper/cook, a maid of all work and a man of all work, and this staff took care of the girl and the baby.
The housekeeper. Senora Bianca, had judged Sophie to be no less than fifteen and probably no more than seventeen; the baby, she said, was at least one year old. After naming them Sophie and Luisa Maria, Adolfo took very little notice of them; he wasn't interested in children. He was soon joined by Lessandra, his paramour, whom he'd had to leave behind when he was ordered to escort the couriers. Lessie was in her forties and, in spite of all the hardships she'd endured during the war, was a good looking woman without any grey in her hair or sag to her body. Her arrival completed the Winterthur household but not everyone would go with him from there to Spain.
When it came time to move, his household would go with him, as would Lessie and Sophie. Luisa Maria, he decided, would be dropped off at an orphanage along the way.
A few years later, the Winterthur lodge was closed and Don Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez took his household, Lessie and Sophie and Luisa Maria went with him. He was never sure when it happened but at some point very early on in Luisa's life, Adolfo's feelings for the little girl became those of a doting father. Perhaps it was when her chubby fingers held his face and her rosebud mouth planted baby kisses on his cheeks. Perhaps it was when her little hand held his so trustingly. Whenever it happened, whatever caused it, it was clear to his household that the little girl held the Patron in the palm of her little hand.
But she was never allowed to call his Papa, or father. From the time she was talking intelligibly, Luisa called him mi Patron, never Papa. Others would call him Patron, or refer to him as el Patron, but for Luisa he was mi Patron, whom she adored, and she was Don Adolfo Juan Franco del Basquez's adored daughter.
Sophie's introduction to serving Adolfo
Of that long ago day when she had staggered, dazed and bleeding, from the wreckage of a bombed house, Sophie remembered very little. She'd seen a movement, found a crying child in a bundled up blanket, and was holding it when a tall, broad shouldered man in uniform appeared.
He'd spoken to her but she was shell shocked and deafened by the noise of the bombardment. He hadn't wasted time trying to speak to her; he gestured at the baby and at the ground, then at herself and the debris blocking the road.
When the road was clear, she jumped into the back of the car where she'd placed the baby. After a quick look, the officer shrugged and then drove them all away from a nightmare of explosions and devastation. In the days that followed, her hearing returned but not her speech.
The man drove all through the night, changing vehicles twice. Before they drove across the border into Switzerland, he changed his clothes.
The house they were welcomed into was obviously the man's house because there were servants who bowed and welcomed him, their soft, deferential voices speaking Spanish. The man, who'd been speaking fluent German now spoke fluent Spanish. She never heard him speak German again. Don Adolfo, as his servants called him, hardly spoke to her at all but the servants were patient with her, speaking slowly and clearly, until she learned the new language.
A few years later, when he announced they would be moving to Spain, two grim-faced, taciturn young men had joined the household. They kept apart from the servants, becoming shadows of the man they called Patron. Always alert, always watchful, they went everywhere the Patron went. Although the war was over, Europe was ravaged and ruined in many places. People were slowly rebuilding their lives but there were those who would never return to the peaceful, ordered, law-abiding way of life the war had taken from them. It was these people the Patron dealt with, and it was from these people his Shadows protected him.
In Winterthur, Sophie had always made herself useful but Adolfo never made her status clear, neither to her nor to the rest of his household. She wasn't quite servant, not quite guest. But once in Spain, Sophie was given a uniform and told an account would be kept of her wages; a uniform and wages settled the matter of her status: she was a servant.
Luisa Maria, however, was accepted as Adolfo's daughter and installed in a suite with a maid and a niñera to take care of her day and night.
The years went by until one morning she was told Don Alfonso waited for her in his study. She went nervously but not afraid; she had always done as she was told, had always done her work well, and had done nothing to give offence. He waved her forward with the Malacca cane he'd taken to carrying since arriving in Spain. He didn't need it for support; he just enjoyed the way it tapped on the tiled floors. It was a warning to the servants that he was approaching, but only sometimes. Sometimes it didn't tap on the floor and an idle servant was surprised by a swift whack or poke by the silently approaching Patron.
"Lessie is leaving," he said. "You have three days to learn what she does for me. Do you understand?"
She nodded; she understood what he said and she understood that learning what Lessie did for him meant watching what Lessie did for him. She was dismissed and she hurried to find Lessie.
Everyone in the villa, with the exception of the young Luisa Maria, knew or had a very good idea of what Lessie did for the Patron. There were no closed doors in the villa, nor had there been in the lodge in Winterthur, except when the Patron closed them. At the first offence of closing a door that the Patron hadn't closed, the one responsible was spanked. Sophie had been astonished. Such a punishment a child might expect or so she thought, until she and all the other servants were called to watch a spanking administered by one of the Patron's men. It was unpleasant to watch, and it must have been painful in the extreme to experience.
The Patron always closed doors when his business associates came to the villa but while he might close a door when Lessie was with him, he often didn't. Whether his servants saw or not, didn't bother el Patron, unless they stared. That was rude, and wasn't tolerated. So passing servants, even before they quickly averted their eyes, knew what Lessie was doing for the Patron.
Nudity didn't bother him, whether it was his own or a servant's provided there was no flaunting of one's nakedness; a deliberate or unmannerly display, especially to those who would rather not see, was not tolerated. Modesty, servants were told, was served by being dressed before they left their bedrooms to begin their working day. So it wasn't feelings of modesty that prompted him to have two lavatories for his servants, one for the women and one for the men. It was at Senora Bianca's request. Men, she told Don Adolfo, left their whiskers in the sink after they'd shaved, they dripped on the floor after they'd urinated, they didn't hang their towels neatly so they dried, they didn't—
Don Adolfo stopped her at that point because it seemed she could go on and on, and granted her request.
Nothing was to be hidden from him, and everyone who came to serve him was told that beneath his roof everything and everyone belonged to him everything, which meant everything and everyone was under his protection. Only by accepting that they belonged to him could they be protected. If they understood that and accepted it, they could stay and be clothed and fed and sheltered, and given a wage. If they demurred in the slightest way, even by an expression on their face or a look in their eyes, Don Adolfo refused to employ them.
Open doors and peepholes gave him unrestricted views into rooms and bedrooms. He could check and inspect, watch and listen at any time of the day or night. No-one that he protected would be subjected to the bullying, the beatings and the sexual abuses that he'd been subjected to at the boarding school his father had sent him to. No-one there had checked to make sure the young boy wasn't being bullied; no-one noticed the bruises on his body, no-one listened to him sobbing at night. He had been used in degrading ways, subjected to torture of the mind and body, and by schoolboys! While teachers didn't notice or didn't care, and did nothing!
Such things Don Adolfo Juan Franco del Bazquez swore would never happen under his roof, not to his servants and especially not to children.
Everything and everyone under my roof belongs to me. Sophie had heard it said often enough but now realised exactly what it meant. She went straight to Lessie's room, and Lessie knew why she was there.
"You're here," the older woman said with a sigh, "which means you're going to do what he wants. You know you have a choice?"
