Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  Santiago’s mother informed Amelia’s mother that her son was not at home, that he had not been home for lunch, neither had he telephoned, and she did not know if he would be there for supper. Doña Teresa was surprised that Santiago’s mother was not alarmed, but she said that her son often disappeared without saying where he was going.

  “It’s not that he’s going somewhere he shouldn’t, quite the opposite, it’s always for his work; you know that my husband has charged him with making the purchases for the company, and Santiago has traveled to France, Germany, Barcelona... wherever he has needed to go. Santiago always goes without saying anything, I was scared to begin with, but now I know that there’s nothing wrong,” Doña Blanca explained.

  “But you must realize that he’s going because he takes a suitcase,” Doña Teresa said, a little scandalized.

  “My son never takes a suitcase.”

  “But how is that possible? These journeys are so long... so many days... ,” Doña Teresa exclaimed.

  “Santiago says he takes his baggage in his wallet.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, he gets on the train and when he gets wherever he’s going he buys what he needs, he’s always done it like that. I’m telling you, I used to be worried, and his father would scold him, but we’ve gotten used to it. Calm yourself, Amelia, please, Santiago will be back in time for the wedding. He’s so much in love!”

  Doña Teresa, without hiding the fact that Santiago’s behavior was very strange to her, told her daughter about the conversation she had had with Doña Blanca. But far from calming down, Amelia became even more nervous.

  “That’s such a stupid excuse! How are we meant to believe that he heads off on trips with no suitcase and without telling his parents? And what about me? Why didn’t he say anything about this to me? I’m his fiancée! Mama, I think Santiago’s had a change of heart... He doesn’t want to marry me anymore. Ay, Lord! What are we going to do?”

  Amelia burst into tears, and neither Doña Teresa nor Antonietta were able to console her. I observed them from where I was hidden behind the door to the room, until my mother found me and took me to the kitchen.

  That night Amelia did not sleep, or at least her light was on until dawn was already breaking. The next day she woke me up at seven; she wanted me to get dressed quickly in order to go to the Carranzas’ house to deliver a letter. She had been writing it all through the night.

  “When Santiago gets back from his trip, if he really is on a trip and isn’t betraying me, then he’ll know that he can’t do these things to me. And if he wants to leave me, then I would rather be the one to take the first step, I’d be terribly embarrassed if our friends were to find out that he had left me. Go straight away before my mother wakes up. She’ll be cross when I tell her that I’ve sent a letter to Santiago announcing the end of our engagement. But I will not allow myself to be humiliated.”

  I got dressed hurriedly, and hardly had time to get washed, being urged on all the time by Amelia. When I reached the Carranzas’ house the door to the street was closed, and I had to wait for the doorman to open it at eight. He thought it was strange that anyone should want to go up to the Carranzas’ home so early, but as I was dressed in my maid’s outfit he let me go up.

  Another housemaid, as tired as I was, opened the door. I gave her the envelope and told her to deliver it to Santiago, but she told me that Santiago had gone off on a trip, that Don Manuel was having breakfast, and that Doña Blanca was resting.

  When I returned home, Amelia was waiting for me with a new task: I had to return to the Carranzas’ house with a packet containing all of Santiago’s letters, the love letters they had exchanged, along with the engagement ring. She ordered me to give the ring to Doña Blanca personally.

  I started to tremble when I thought about what Doña Teresa would say when she found out, and before going out I went to find my mother to tell her what was happening. My mother, showing her good judgment, told me to wait until she had spoken to Doña Teresa and Doña Amelia herself. As Doña Teresa had not yet come down from her room, my mother went to look for Amelia.

  “I know that I am not in a position to say anything, but don’t you think you should think a little bit more about what you are about to do? Just suppose that Santiago has an explanation for what has happened and that you’re breaking off the engagement without giving him a hearing... I think you are being a little hasty...”

  “But Amaya, you should be on my side!”

  “I am on your side, how could I not be? But I don’t think that Santiago wants to break your engagement, he must have an explanation beyond what his mother has given you. Wait for him to come back, wait to hear what he has to say...”

  “But what he’s done to me is unforgivable! How can I trust him? No, no, no. I want your daughter Edurne to go and give him his letters and his ring and to make it clear that everything is finished between us. And this afternoon I will go and take tea with my friend Victoria, where there will be lots more of my friends as well, and it will be me who decides to announce that I have chosen to break off my engagement with Santiago because I am no longer sure how I feel toward him. I won’t let him be the one to break things off and humiliate me...”

  “Amelia, please, think about it! Speak to your mother, she’ll be able to give you better advice than I can...”

  “What’s going on here?” Doña Teresa came into Amelia’s room, alerted by the hysterical edge to her daughter’s voice.

  “Mama, I am going to end things with Santiago!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Doña Teresa, I... I am sorry that I have come to talk with Doña Amelia about this family affair, but it was because she was going to send my Edurne to take the engagement ring back to the Carranzas...”

  “The ring! But Amelia, what are you going to do? Calm down, don’t do anything you may regret later.”

  “That’s what I told her,” my mother added.

  “No! I am going to break things off with Santiago, it’s what he wants. I am not going to let him make me look ridiculous.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Amelia, at least wait for your father to come home!”

  “No, because by the time Papa comes home, I will already be the laughingstock of all Madrid. I will go and take tea with my friend Victoria this afternoon, and I will tell her and all my friends that I have broken things off with Santiago. And you, Amaya, tell Edurne that she should go the Carranzas’ house straight away. And that if she will not go, then I will.”

  Antonietta also came into Amelia’s room, brought there by the sound of voices, and she added her pleas to those of her mother and me to try to make Amelia change her mind. It was Antonietta who came up with a possible solution: Doña Teresa should call Doña Blanca again to communicate to her Amelia’s distress and her decision to break things off with Santiago if he did not return immediately to explain his actions.

  More nervous than pleased by this suggestion, Doña Teresa rang Doña Blanca. She promised that she would call her husband straight away and make him try to find her son, wherever he might be, something, she swore, that she herself did not know; but she also asked that Amelia show a little patience, and above all that she trust Santiago.

  Amelia accepted this compromise reluctantly, but even so she went to take tea with Victoria that afternoon, along with several other friends their age. There, in an atmosphere of laughter and secrets, she let it slip that she was not entirely sure that she had not been a little hasty in rushing into an engagement with Santiago, and she said that she was doubtful about whether to get married. They spent the whole afternoon analyzing the pros and cons of matrimony. Amelia felt satisfied when she left Victoria’s house: If Santiago did break up with her, she could always say that it was really she who had wanted to break things off with him.

  Little could we imagine that this storm in a teacup would eventually turn into a real tempest that would sweep up everyone who came into its path. When Santiago, who was in Antwe
rp, called his father a few days later to discuss some details of the business trip, his father immediately urged him to come back to Madrid as soon as possible, because Amelia had taken his disappearance badly and was threatening to break off the engagement. Santiago came back at once. I still remember how frantic he was when he got back to Amelia’s house.

  She met him in the drawing room, flanked by her mother and sister.

  “Amelia... I am sorry for upsetting you, but I can’t believe that my absence on business could lead you to want to break our engagement.”

  “Yes, I am upset. It was truly inconsiderate of you to leave without saying anything to me. Your mother has said that this is something usual on your part, but you must understand that this behavior is more than strange on the very eve of your wedding. I don’t want you to feel obliged by the promise you have made, so I am freeing you from your engagement.”

  Santiago looked her up and down, uncomfortable. Amelia had recited a paragraph that she had been rehearsing in her mind ever since Santiago had telephoned to announce his visit. The presence of Doña Teresa and Antonietta, both of them very nervous, did nothing to help the pair be sincere with each other.

  “If you truly want to break off our engagement, I have no other option than to accept it, but I call on God as my witness that my feelings toward you have not changed, and that I want nothing more than... than for you to forgive me, if I have offended you in any way.”

  Doña Teresa sighed in relief, and Antonietta gave a nervous giggle. Amelia did not know what to do: On the one hand, she still wanted to play the role of the offended woman, a role she had started to enjoy, and on the other hand she wanted to put everything behind her and marry Santiago. It was Antonietta who permitted the lovers to sort things out.

  “I think that they should have a chance to talk alone, don’t you, Mama?”

  “Yes... yes... If you are still willing to marry Amelia, all I need to say is that you still have our blessing...”

  When they had been left alone they spent a few minutes without saying anything, merely casting sidelong glances at each other, without knowing how to begin. Then Amelia burst out laughing, which disconcerted Santiago somewhat. Two minutes later they were chatting as if nothing had happened.

  Both families breathed a sigh of relief. They had feared the worst, a scandal mere weeks before the wedding, when the banns had been read and the first presents had arrived at the Garayoas’ house, and the reception, which was to take place at the Ritz, had been reserved and paid for by the two families.

  With the excuse of Don Juan’s return from America, the two families met at the Garayoas’ house; they could see that Santiago and Amelia seemed as much in love with each other as before. Or even more so, if such a thing were possible.

  Don Juan had been impressed by what he had seen in America. He had admired the efforts of the citizens to escape from the Great Depression, and compared American society with that of Spain. They spoke a great deal about politics at the dinner, even though Doña Teresa had forbidden it as a subject of conversation.

  “The Americans are very clear about what they want and how everyone should pull together to get out of the crisis, and they are getting out of it: The collapse of ’29 will soon look like nothing more than a bad dream.”

  “My dear friend, we spend a lot of time getting in each other’s way here, these two years of the Socialist Azañist government is a good example,” said Don Manuel.

  “I don’t understand what the trouble is with Manuel Azaña,” Don Juan replied. “He’s a politician who knows where we need to get to, who thinks that the state needs to be strong in order to allow the necessary democratic reforms to be made.”

  “But you see where his politics have taken us. I don’t think that it was a success for him to give Catalonia autonomy in ’32, and of course the Basques, the PNV, are moving in the same direction. It’s a good thing that Catalan autonomy has been put on hold after the October revolution.”

  “Papa, you have to respect people’s opinions; they have a very strong sense of national identity in Catalonia. The best thing is to do what Azaña has always tried to do, which is to channel these sentiments. Manuel Azaña has always been in favor of a united Spain, but we have to find a way that we can all feel comfortable here.”

  Santiago was trying to be conciliatory to prevent his father from getting annoyed because of politics.

  “All? What do you mean, all?” Don Manuel said in irritation. “Spain has a shared culture and above all a shared history, but all this nonsense about autonomy means that it will stop being so, mark my words.”

  Doña Teresa and Doña Blanca tried to introduce other topics so that their husbands would stop talking about politics.

  “I think that they are going to produce Blood Wedding in Madrid again,” Doña Blanca said in a sickly voice. “García Lorca is very daring, but he is a great dramatist.”

  However, both women failed in their attempt to move the conversation into other areas. Neither Don Juan nor Don Manuel were willing to stop talking about the things that worried them.

  “But you would agree with me that the victory of the Right in ’33 hasn’t calmed things down at all in Spain. They’re undoing all that the previous governments did,” Don Juan interrupted.

  “Don’t tell me that you think it’s fair to expropriate someone’s lands simply because they happen to be a member of the nobility...”

  “Not anybody’s lands, no. You know that the government in ’31 wanted to put an end to feudalism,” Don Juan replied.

  “And what about your beloved Azaña’s military reforms? If he’s not careful we’ll end up with no army. He’s got rid of more than sixty-five hundred officers and talks a lot about reforming the army while reducing the defense budget,” Don Manuel replied.

  “They’ve also done some positive things, the religious and education reforms, for example... ,” Santiago interjected.

  “But what are you saying, Santiago! Good Lord, anyone who didn’t know you would think you were one of those Socialist revolutionaries!”

  “Papa, it’s not about being a revolutionary, just about looking at the world around us. When I travel around Europe it makes me sad to see how backward we are by comparison...”

  “And that’s why they interfere with the poor priests and nuns who help out in our society, entirely disinterestedly. You, you think you’re a democrat, will you claim that it’s democratic to forbid religious orders from teaching children? And kicking a cardinal out of Spain because they don’t like what he says? Is that democratic?”

  “Papa, Cardinal Segura is someone you need to watch out for, I think we all feel better now that he’s no longer in Spain.”

  “Yes, yes, all of these left-wing excesses are what have made your hated right wing make great steps forward,” Don Manuel said angrily.

  “And I think there is cause to be worried by what’s happening with the right wing in general, not just in Spain. Look at Germany, this Hitler is a madman. I’m not surprised that people on the Left are very worried,” Don Juan replied. “I myself am an indirect victim of Hitler’s fanaticism. His anti-Jewish policies have suppressed the legal and civil rights of the Jews, and made their economic activity impossible. I am victim of this policy because my partner Herr Itzhak Wassermann is a Jew. We have lost all our business. You know that they’ve broken the windows in our warehouse more than four times?”

  “What Hitler wants to do is throw the Jews out of Germany,” Santiago said.

  “Yes, but the German Jews are as German as the rest of them, you can’t stop them from being what they are,” Doña Teresa added.

  “Don’t be naïve, woman. Hitler is capable of anything,” Don Juan said. “And poor Helmut, our employee, has to take care just because he used to work with a Jew.”

  “Yes, what’s happening there is terrible, but what’s happening here has nothing to do with Germany, my dear friend. I am sorry about what has happened, but there’s no comparison,
none at all... What we should be worried about are the threats from some Socialists who talk about putting an end to bourgeois society. Even moderates like Prieto have spoken about revolution.”

  “Well, it is a way to try to stop the most controversial right-wing plans. They cannot undo everything that came before them. Prieto is giving them a warning to make them think a little before acting,” Santiago said.

  “Son, don’t you realize that what happened in Asturias was an attempted revolution that could provoke a real catastrophe, if the same thing happened across Spain?”

  “Our problem,” Santiago continued, “is that the forces of the Right and of the Left are mistreating the Republic. Neither side believes in her, nor has tried to settle down in her.”

  Santiago had a different view of politics. Perhaps because he spent a lot of time traveling outside of Spain. He was not right-wing, and although he sympathized with the left wing, he did not refrain from criticizing them. He was an Azañist, he was a fervent admirer of Manuel Azaña.

  The wedding took place on December 18. It was very cold and it was raining, but Amelia was radiant in her dress of white silk and taffeta.

  At five in the afternoon, on the dot, in the church of San Ginés, Amelia and Santiago were married. Theirs was one of those wedding that is reported in the society pages of the Madrid press, and people came from far and wide to attend, as Manuel Carranza and Juan Garayoa each had, because of their business dealings, colleagues, and contacts in cities all over Spain.

  Doña Teresa was more nervous than Amelia, and Melita and Laura were as nervous as she was; along with Antonietta, they were the bridesmaids.

  Three priests, friends of the family, conducted the ceremony. And later, during the reception at the Ritz, Amelia and Santiago danced the first dance.

  It was a beautiful wedding, yes... Amelia always said that it was the wedding she had dreamed of, that she could not have imagined it any different from how it was.