Red Tape

Jorge arrived at the embassy, a rich grand building of red brick which had once belonged to an aristocrat who was overly fond of dueling, too much so it appeared. Pistols over a lady named Penelope had proved fatal for the poor man.

"Of course!" thought Jorge. Dueling!

That such barbarism had disappeared from the aristocracy gave him some solace.

He entered with his key. He was always the first to arrive. He went to his desk and began with great joy the daily routine of typing up, filling in, signing, and stamping forms. These repetitive and boring actions were as natural to Jorge as breathing and he took such comfort in them that he forgot about things such as chaos and war.

There was a knock at the door, and Jorge begrudgingly left his tasks to answer. A tall man in cheap clothes stood there. He had a pronounced roman nose and brown eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses.

"Good morning," he said in heavily accented French.

"Good morning, how can I help you monsieur?" replied Jorge

"I would like to apply for a visa," he answered. Jorge thought he heard clumsy German tones beneath the man's speech.

"Of course, please come in,"

Now behind his desk, Jorge produced the documents in triplicate (he sometimes felt a fourth copy would be good as a backup, but was aware how that it might have seemed wasteful).

"Please fill in these forms with your details," he told the man.

"Will I get the visa then?" the man asked.

"Oh no, this is merely the first stage of the process. The Portuguese government must approve every application before a visa can be issued," Jorge answered as stiffly as the starch in his shirt collar allowed him.

"How long will that take?"

"Oh, six months, perhaps more" The man looked at Jorge as though he had said the unsayable.

"That's too long,"

"I'm sorry monsieur, but the rules are the rules,"

"But these are special circumstances surely,"

"What special circumstances are you talking about?"

"Have you not heard?"

Jorge shook his head "Heard what?"

"The Germans have invaded, the war has started," Jorge took the newspaper he had folded so carefully. Sure enough, the front page confirmed what the man had said.

Suddenly, the phones began ringing. Of course, back in Spain, Franco "El Caudillo" would want to know what was going on.

"I'm sorry, monsieur but the rules are the rules. Please fill in these forms and I will process them as soon as I have time," Jorge repeated to the man trying to keep the tremble from his voice, hoping to return to the sanctuary of paperwork and forms and the solidness of black ink on white paper, before realizing.

"When you have time!" the once quiet, respectful man turned red-faced and wide-eyed with anger. Jorge could not understand. He was simply doing his job.

"Do you know what they will do to me; do to my family, if they succeed? During the night of the long knives, they smashed the windows of our home. They wrote die Jews on the wall with a Star of David. Boys they were, boys no older than my students some of them. Mere children full of hate told to hate and like good children they obeyed. A week later I was dismissed from my job. I was deemed no longer eligible to teach. I was a corrupting influence on the young they told me."