My heart gave a leap. Edurne? Edurne the daughter of the nurse, of Amaya? I said to myself that it was impossible to have so much luck.
The old woman they had called Edurne raised her tired eyes to meet mine, and I read a certain amount of fear in them. I saw that she was uncomfortable. She looked deathly, like a person who was not only old, but unwell to boot.
“You are the daughter of the nurse, of Amaya?” I asked her, keen to hear what she would say.
“Yes,” she muttered.
“I am pleased to meet you,” I said sincerely.
“I know that it will be a great effort for Edurne to talk to you. Her memory is good, as if all these things happened yesterday, but... She is ill... We’re so old that we spring leaks everywhere. So listen to her and don’t tire her out too much,” Doña Laura ordered me.
“Can I ask questions?”
“Of course, but don’t waste time with questions, the important thing is what Edurne has to tell you,” Doña Laura said again. “And now, please go to the library, it will be quieter there for you to speak.”
I nodded. Edurne looked at the old women and they gave her a barely perceptible sign, as if encouraging her to speak to me.
The old woman walked with difficulty, leaning on a stick; I followed her step by step into the library.
Edurne started to unwrap her memories...
SANTIAGO
1
When we got to Madrid, Doña Teresa, the mistress, said that from now on I should look after her two daughters, Doña Amelia and Doña Antonietta.
My work consisted in looking after the children’s clothes, keeping their room clean, helping them to get dressed, accompanying them on visits... My mother taught me how to do all these things. I had a bad time to start with, in spite of the immense piece of luck that I was sharing a roof with her.
The mistress put another bed in my mother’s room. The house was big, but we were the only ones to live with the family, the other servants slept in the attics. I suppose this was our privilege because my mother, who had been the girls’ wet nurse, always had to be close to them to feed them. Then, after they were weaned, she kept her room and did all kinds of work for them. She cleaned and helped in the kitchen; she did whatever they asked her to.
My mother wanted me to learn how to become a ladies’ maid, to leave me well set up in the house, and for her to be able to go back to the village to be with her parents for their final years.
I had never seen a house like this, with so many bedrooms and drawing rooms, and so many valuable objects. I was afraid of breaking something, and would walk with my skirts and my apron lifted up so as not to brush against the furniture as I walked past.
Because I already knew Doña Amelia, the work wasn’t as hard as it might have been. Although the situation had changed: When she was at the farm she was just another one of us, and here I didn’t dare call her by her name, for all that she insisted I not call her “Doña.”
What she liked was for us to talk in Basque. She wanted to annoy her sister, although she said to me it was so she wouldn’t forget the language. Don Juan, the master, didn’t want to hear us speaking Basque, and he would tell her off; he said it was the language of peasants, but she didn’t obey him.
In the mornings I used to take Doña Antonietta to school. Doña Amelia had classes at home because she was still convalescing. In the afternoons, when Doña Antonietta came back, they let me sit in the corner of the schoolroom while a teacher who helped them with their homework made them speak in French and play the piano. I liked to listen to the lessons because it helped me learn. When she got better, Doña Amelia began to study to be a teacher, like her cousin Laura.
Nineteen thirty-four was not a good year. The master’s business started to go badly. Herr Itzhak Wassermann, his partner in Germany, was suffering from Hitler’s attacks against the Jews, which were carried out by the SA, the Nazi paramilitary group. Business got even worse, and he had awoken on several occasions to find his shop windows broken by these devils. It got more and more difficult to travel to Germany, especially for people like the master, who hated Hitler and didn’t mind saying so out loud. The master started to lose weight, and the mistress worried about him more every day.
“I think that Papa is ruined,” Doña Amelia said to me one day.
“Why do you say that?” I asked in a fright, thinking that if the master was ruined then I would have to go back to the farm.
“He owes money in Germany, and things aren’t going very well there. My mother says it’s the fault of the left-wingers...”
The mistress was a very Catholic woman, a monarchist, keen on order, and she was scared by the disturbances stirred up by certain left-wing parties. She was a good person and treated all the people who lived in the house well, but she found it impossible to understand that people were in great need, and that the right-wing ruling parties were incapable of facing up to the problems of Spain at that time. She did good works, but she did not know what social justice was, and that was what the workers and peasants were demanding.
“And what will my mother and I do?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing, you’ll stay with us. I don’t want you to go.”
Amelia sent letters to Aitor. Whenever he wrote to my mother and me, my brother would always include a sealed envelope with a letter for Amelia. She would write back to him in the same way, giving us a sealed letter that we in turn would put into our next letter.
I knew that my brother was in love with Amelia, although he would never dare to tell her so, and I also knew that she was by no means indifferent to Aitor.
One Monday afternoon, the master came back earlier than usual and locked himself in his office with Doña Teresa. There they talked until after nightfall, without allowing their daughters to interrupt them. That night Amelia and Antonietta had supper alone in the schoolroom, asking themselves what was going on.
The next morning, the mistress called together all the servants and told us to clean the house from top to bottom. The family was going to host a dinner party that weekend, with important guests, and they wanted the house to shine.
The girls were very excited. They went out shopping with their mother and came back laden down with parcels. They were going to have new clothes.
That Saturday the mistress seemed nervous. She wanted everything to be perfect and although she was normally so friendly, she got angry if things weren’t to her taste.
A hairdresser came to the house to prepare the mistress and her daughters, and I got them ready in the afternoon.
Amelia had a red dress and Antonietta had a blue one. They looked lovely.
“It’s been so long since we’ve had guests!” Amelia exclaimed while the hairdresser twisted her hair into ringlets and held them together at her neck with a comb.
“Don’t exaggerate, we have visits every week,” Antonietta replied.
“Yes, but that’s to have tea, not to have supper.”
“Well, they didn’t used to let us join in because we were too little. Mama says some friends of Papa are coming with their children.”
“And we don’t know them! Papa’s new friends... How exciting!”
“I don’t understand how you can enjoy meeting new people. It will be boring, and Mama will be keeping an eye on us to make sure that we behave properly. The dinner is very important for Papa, he needs new partners in his business...”
“I love meeting new people! Maybe there will be some nice-looking young man in the group... Maybe you’ll get an admirer, Antonietta.”
“Or maybe you will, you’re older than I am, so you have to get married first. If you don’t hurry up you’ll get stuck on the shelf.”
“I will marry when I want and who I want!”
“Yes, but do it soon.”
Neither of them suspected what would happen that night.
The guests arrived at eight o’clock. Three married couples with their children. A total of fourteen people were seated ar
ound the oval table, exquisitely decorated with flowers and silver candelabras.
The García family, with their son Hermenegildo. The López-Agudo family, Francisco and Carmen, with their daughters Elena and Pilar. And the Carranza family, Manuel and Blanca, with their son Santiago.
Antonietta was the first to notice Santiago. He was the most handsome of all the guests. Tall and thin, with light brown, almost blond hair, and green eyes. And very elegantly dressed: It was impossible not to notice him. I also looked at him, secretly, from where I was hidden behind the curtains.
He must have been about thirty years old, and he seemed very sure of himself.
The other unmarried female guests buzzed around him. I knew Amelia well and knew what her tactics would be to get herself noticed.
She was very friendly when she greeted her father’s guests and stood next to her mother listening to the ladies talk as if she were interested in what they were saying. She was the only young woman present who seemed immune to Santiago’s magnetism, and she did not even look at him.
Doña Antonietta, along with Doña Elena and Doña Pilar López-Agudo, tried to capture Santiago’s attention: He had become the hub of the conversation among the younger guests. Not just because he was the oldest among them, but also because he was friendly. I couldn’t hear what he was saying from where I was hidden, but he had the women under his spell.
The maids served the aperitifs and I was sent to the kitchen to help my mother and the cooks, but as soon as I could I went back to my hiding place where I could watch the party, which filled my senses with the scent of perfume and cigarettes coming from the ladies and the gentlemen.
I wondered what Amelia’s next step would be in attracting Santiago’s attention. He had realized that the only young woman who was not taking part in the general conversation was the oldest daughter of his host, and he started to throw sidelong glances at her.
The mistress had put name-cards at the place settings, and Amelia was sitting next to Santiago.
She was so pretty... She began by paying no attention to Santiago, but spoke instead with young Hermenegildo, who had been seated to her left.
It was not until halfway through the meal that Santiago could no longer support Amelia’s manifest indifference, and struck up a conversation with her in which she participated with a certain degree of reluctance.
When the meal was over, it was clear that Amelia had achieved her objective: She had Santiago on a string.
Once the guests had left, the master and mistress stayed in the drawing room with their daughters to discuss how the evening had gone.
Doña Teresa was exhausted, so great was the tension that had built up over the course of the week, as she strove to make sure that everything was perfect. My mother said that she had never seen her so nervous, and this was strange because Doña Teresa was accustomed to having guests.
Don Juan appeared more relaxed; the evening had served its purpose, we discovered later; he was trying to go into partnership with Carranza to save his business. But the person who saved the family fortunes was, in fact, Amelia.
I heard what they said, for all that Doña Teresa told them to keep their voices down.
“If Manuel Carranza is interested in the business, and it seems he is, then we’re saved...”
“But Papa, are things so bad?” Amelia asked.
“Yes, dear, you are both old enough and should be allowed to know the truth. The business in Germany is going very badly, and I’m worried about my good friend and colleague Herr Itzhak. The warehouse where we store all our goods for export to Spain, all the machinery, has been sealed by the Nazis, and I can’t get to it. All our money was there, invested in the machinery. They’ve also appropriated our bank accounts. Herr Helmut Keller, our employee, is very worried. He’s under suspicion anyway for having worked with a Jew, but he’s a brave man and he tells me it would be best to wait; he tells me that he’ll try to save what he can from the business. I’ve given him all the money I could find, which isn’t much given the circumstances but I can’t leave him abandoned to his fate...”
“And Herr Itzhak, and Yla?” Amelia asked in alarm.
“I am trying to bring them out here, but they are resisting; they don’t want to leave their house. I have been in touch with Sephardi House, an organization that exists to create connections within the community of Sephardic Jews.”
“But Herr Itzhak isn’t Sephardic,” Doña Teresa exclaimed.
“I know, but I’ve asked their advice, there are lots of important Spaniards who support them,” Don Juan replied...
“Lots? I wish you were right,” Doña Teresa protested in a tense voice.
“I’ve also been in touch with a group called ‘Ezra,’ which means ‘Help’; they are dedicated to helping Jews, especially the ones who are trying to escape from Germany.”
“Can you do anything, Papa?” Amelia asked sadly.
“It doesn’t depend on your father,” the mistress corrected her daughter.
“Manuel Azaña is sympathetic toward the Jews,” Don Juan replied. “But it looks like the world is going mad... Hitler has declared that his party, the Nazi Party, is the only one that can actually get things done in Germany. And Germany has left the World Peace Conference. This madman is getting ready for war, I’m sure of it...”
“War? With whom?” Amelia asked.
But Don Juan could not reply, as Doña Teresa asked in her turn:
“And what’s going to happen here? I’m scared, Juan... The left-wingers want to have a revolution...”
“And the Right is against the Republican regime, and does whatever it can to make sure the Republic fails,” Don Juan replied in annoyance.
Their marriage had political differences, because Doña Teresa came from a family of monarchists, and Don Juan was a steadfast Republican. Of course, back then women didn’t let their politics go very far, and in general the master of the house’s opinion was the one that held sway.
“And what are you going to do with Carranza?”
Antonietta’s question surprised her parents. Antonietta was the younger daughter, fairly quiet and thoughtful, very different from her sister Amelia.
“I’m going to try to buy machinery from North America. It will be more expensive, because of the ocean, but what with the situation in Germany I don’t think we have a choice. I have given a very detailed study to Carranza and he is interested. Now my problem is to get a loan so that I can officially create a limited company... I think he will be able to help me. He’s well connected.”
“With whom?” Amelia asked.
“Bankers and politicians.”
“Right-wing politicians?” she insisted.
“Yes, but he also has quite a lot of connections with Lerroux’s Radical Party.”
“That’s why this meal was so important, wasn’t it, Papa?” Amelia continued. “You wanted to make a good impression, and you wanted him to see the house looking beautiful, and your family... Mama is so beautiful and elegant...”
“Come now Amelia, don’t say such things!” Doña Teresa said.
“But it’s the truth, anybody who knows you realizes that you are a real lady. Carranza’s wife is not as elegant as you,” Amelia insisted.
“Doña Carranza belongs to an excellent family. Tonight we discovered that we have friends in common,” Doña Teresa announced.
“His son Santiago is more difficult to convince,” Don Juan muttered.
“Santiago? Why do you need to convince him?”
“He works with his father, and his father listens to him a lot. Apparently Santiago is a good economist, very sensible, and advises his father well. He has doubts about whether the business is viable; he says that it’s an investment that is much too large, and that he’d prefer to keep on buying machinery in Belgium, France, England, even in Germany. He says it’s safer,” Don Juan explained.
I couldn’t see her face, but it was not hard for me to imagine that at that moment Amelia was
making a decision: She would be the person to overcome Santiago’s resistance in order to save her family from its economic problems. Amelia was very keen on novels, and saw herself as the heroine of every novel that she read, and her parents were, without realizing it, giving her a chance to act this role.
Two weeks later, the Carranza family invited Don Juan and his family for Sunday lunch in a house that they owned on the outskirts of the city.
This time Don Juan did not hide his nervousness, because Manuel Carranza was starting to show signs of uncertainty about the idea of going into partnership to bring machinery from America. The political situation was getting worse as well, Spain appeared to be ungovernable.
Amelia had spent several days thinking how to dress for the occasion. This Sunday lunch was a great occasion to pull a little on the string that she had fastened round Santiago’s neck, because she was sure that the Carranzas’ invitation derived at least in part from the interest that she had awoken in Santiago. Don Juan had said that in spite of Santiago’s reservations about the project it had been his idea to invite Don Juan to spend Sunday with them, insisting that he be accompanied by his enchanting family.
I know, because Amelia told me so, that this was a key day in what she called her “program of salvation.”
No one else was invited to the lunch apart from the Garayoa family, that is, Don Juan and Doña Teresa, Amelia, and Antonietta, and right from the start Santiago showed his interest in Amelia.
She used all her ruses: indifference, friendliness, smiles... everything! She was a great seductress.
Tell Me Who I Am Page 5
