Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  “My parents aren’t like that! I’m sorry for what you’ve suffered, for the way life has abused you, but that stops you from seeing the reality of things. You judge everyone by the same criteria, divide the world into the good and the bad, and you can’t put yourself in anyone else’s skin. Anyone who has anything is bad in your eyes, but everything my parents have they have earned by their own efforts, their own work, they haven’t exploited anyone.”

  “I understand that you defend your family, it shows you in a good light, it really does, but things are as they are, there are exploiters and exploited in the world and I am trying to get rid of this division and have everyone treated equally, to make sure that no one has an advantage for having been born into any particular family. My mother gave birth to me by herself, with only my sister to help her. Do you know how old my sister was? Eight, she was eight years old. And my mother had to leave me that same day so that she could go and clean the house of some bourgeois family for whom my mother meant less than nothing. My father had died two months earlier from tuberculosis, leaving my mother with two daughters. We were living in a tiny room, we even had to share a mattress. My mother had to go to the spring to fill two buckets if we wanted to wash; even so, she made us wash every day, even in winter when the water was freezing. Do you know when I started to work, the same as my sister, I was eight when I went to help my mother clean. She went to a house every day and did the hardest work: She washed the floors, cleaned the windows, emptied the chamberpots... We were never able to go to school, we didn’t even have time to go to catechism class. Look at my hands, Amelia, look at them and tell me what you see. They are the hands of a cleaner. I grew up feeling envious, yes, envious of the houses where my mother went to clean, and where children of my age played peacefully and happily with dolls the likes of which I couldn’t even dream about. Once a woman gave me her daughter’s doll. She didn’t want it anymore, she’d torn off one of her arms and one of her eyes was missing, but she was a treasure for me. I looked after her and cared for her as if she were a creature made of flesh and blood, and I made sure that no one hurt her like this rich girl had hurt her. I held her at night to keep her warm, and sometimes I even gave her my little corner of mattress so she could be comfortable, even if that meant I had to sleep on the floor. Have you seen my knees? I’ve got calluses from so much cleaning; you don’t know how long I’ve spent on my knees washing floors, waxing floors, terrified that it wouldn’t be shiny enough and that the ladies of the house would scold me, or would pay me less for my work. One Christmas, at one of the houses where we went to clean, they gave my mother the head and the feet of the chicken they had just killed for their meal that evening. Not the legs, Amelia, the feet. Those little thin feet with their three hard nails on them. That, and a loaf of bread. Can you imagine the party we had? When I was thirteen, the oldest son of the family got interested in me, so I had to put up with his wandering hands, still scared that they would sack my mother and me if I fought back. My older sister had died of tuberculosis by then, like my father before her. My mother was a believer and she told me that we had to accept what God sent us, but I asked what we had done to be treated like this. I felt guilty for a very long time, I was sure that we must have done something terrible to be condemned to poverty, but in the end I decided to rebel. The priest came to see my mother to tell her that I had become proud, that when I went to confession the only thing I did was to blame him for our situation, that I needed to learn to accept with joy whatever God sent. I went from feeling envious to feeling furious. I stopped feeling envious of the ladies in their fine houses and started to hate them. Yes, to hate them. There they were, living happy and cosseted, and their only task was to find a husband who would keep them in the style to which they were accustomed, comfortable, unworried. My mother insisted to the priest that the lay sisters who did good works in the parish, who showed the poor children how to sew, should also teach me. So, when I finished cleaning, I went to learn to sew. My poor mother dreamed of my becoming a seamstress, of not having to clean anymore. Apparently, I had a certain degree of talent for sewing, unlike my sister, who had to remain content with cleaning. I put up with the lay sisters until I had learned to sew, and then I told the priest that he would never see me in church again, not in the church of that God who punished us without our having done anything. You can imagine how upset he got. My mother begged me with tears in her eyes not to try to understand God’s ways, that He knew what He was doing, but I had made a decision and was never going to change my mind. One day I met Josep; he was honest with me, and told me that he had been married, but that he and his wife had drifted apart. He taught me what Communism was, how to channel my rage in useful directions, how to fight for those who had nothing, people like me. He taught me to read as well, he gave me books, he treated me like an equal. We fell in love, Pablo was born, and here we are. I am fighting to make sure that my son is no less than yours. Why should he be? Tell me, why should he be?”

  Amelia stayed watching me in silence. She couldn’t find any answers to Lola’s questions: Why should I, Pablo Soler, be any less than her son, Javier Carranza? Why was his future assured and mine not? Amelia was a very good person, and innocent, so even though Lola’s questions tore her apart, she admitted that Lola was right, even though this meant putting distance between herself and the people she loved the most, her family.

  “When are you leaving?” Lola asked, changing the subject brusquely.

  “I don’t know, Pierre hasn’t told me. But our boat leaves Le Havre on the twenty-ninth of July, so we cannot stay much longer, unless he changes his plans.”

  “And why should he change them?”

  “I don’t know, but what’s happening here is significant, even if we don’t know the extent of the military uprising yet.”

  “It’s the best that could happen, it will be them or us, and right is on our side, so we will get rid of fascism once and for all and found a workers’ republic. We know it’s possible, they’ve done it in Russia.”

  “And what will you do to the people who aren’t Communists?”

  Lola fixed her black eyes on Amelia and seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  “They will have to accept reality. We will do away with classes: Your son Javier will be no greater than Pablo.”

  Amelia looked at me fondly. I was sitting on a chair near them, very quiet. My childhood took place in silence, with me not getting in the way, while my parents dreamed of revolution.

  Lluís Companys, the president, told General Goded to make a broadcast to the rebel troops, telling them to give up their rebellion immediately. The general, who was the rebels’ figurehead in the city, had no option other than to accept, although he did so with little enthusiasm. He was executed.

  Armed conflicts continued throughout the night, and the news, which spread like wildfire across the city, signaled the triumph of the forces loyal to the Republic. The CNT fought like tigers, and their achievements were essential during those first few days.

  On Monday, July 20, Barcelona was apparently calm again. The CNT militias patrolled the city. Catalonia’s government, the Generalitat, sent down a decree the next day that allowed for the formation of the Citizen Militias, whose aim was to fight against Fascism and defend the Republic. From this moment on, the militias were a genuine power, and the Generalitat could do nothing without their help.

  The Citizen Militias were controlled by the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, which contained representatives of all the parties and unions. Lola joined the militias, just as Josep did, but the truth must be told: She was a woman of action, whereas he was a good administrator, so he started to work with the Central Committee, organizing the work carried out by the patrols, while Lola became a militiawoman with a pistol on her belt, a member of one of the patrol squads whose aim was to keep order in the city, arrest suspects, search shops and houses looking for any sign of insurrection.

  I still remember her with her black hair comb
ed backwards, tied up in an improvised bun. I liked Lola’s black hair. When I was little and ran to be comforted in her arms, I smelled her lavender smell. That’s why I cried when she cut it off. One morning before she went out on patrol, I found her in front of the mirror, cutting off her long ponytail with scissors.

  “What are you doing!” I cried.

  “I need to be comfortable, and this is not the time to worry about hair. It gets in my way, the hairpins keep on falling out; it’ll be better like this.”

  It was hard for me to recognize her with her hair cut so unevenly, so short it didn’t even cover her ears.

  “I don’t like it, Mommy!” I said angrily.

  “Pablo, you’re not a little boy anymore, so don’t make me waste my time. Your mother is fighting for you,” she said, giving me a kiss and hugging me tight. Although in fact she was fighting for herself, for the childhood she had not been allowed to have.

  Doña Anita invited us to a farewell dinner that she had arranged for Pierre and Amelia. It was just us, because Pierre and Doña Anita thought that Lola and Amelia were the best of friends, and that we were now the nearest thing Amelia had to a family.

  Amelia seemed resigned to leaving, but she did not hide her apathy and lack of enthusiasm, even though Pierre preferred not to take the hint. He had thought up a plan for his time in South America, and Amelia was an alibi he was unwilling to renounce. But he was obviously trying to keep things bottled up, as if he were already disgusted by her.

  Amelia and Pierre arrived in Paris on July 24, and they had another meeting there with Ivan Krisov, who wanted a first-hand account of Pierre’s impressions of Spain.

  Krisov wanted Pierre to bring Amelia with him, and arranged to meet them two days later in the Café de la Paix. They would run into each other in a seemingly fortuitous meeting, and he would introduce himself as a nationalized English antiques dealer, a false identity that he had sometimes used when he went to the Rousseau Bookshop.

  On the afternoon of July 26, Pierre invited Amelia to take a walk with him around the city.

  “We’re going to Le Havre tomorrow, it will be our way of saying goodbye to Paris.”

  Amelia accepted indifferently. She didn’t care; she felt like she was an object in the hands of fate, before whose whims she had to bow down.

  They walked casually toward the Café de la Paix, where Pierre suggested they drink something. They had been there for ten minutes when Ivan Krisov appeared.

  “Monsieur Comte! How are you? I was thinking only recently that I really should come by the bookshop again.”

  “How nice to see you, Monsieur Krisov, allow me to introduce Mademoiselle Garayoa. Amelia, Monsieur Krisov is an old client of the bookshop.”

  Igor held out his hand to Amelia and could not avoid feeling an immediate sense of pity for her. Maybe it was her youth, or her beauty, or her air of helplessness, but the experienced spy was captivated by Amelia.

  “May I invite you to have a coffee with me? It is the first moment all day when I have been able to enjoy a little calm, and some company would be pleasant.”

  “Of course, Monsieur Krisov,” Pierre accepted.

  “Are you Spanish?” Krisov asked.

  “Yes,” Amelia replied.

  “I don’t know your country very well, I have only visited Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid...”

  Krisov led the conversation. Amelia was cold and distant to begin with, but the Russian overcame her defenses until at last he made her smile. They spoke in French until Amelia let it slip that she had studied English and German. Krisov switched to English and then to German, jokingly trying to find out if this young woman really knew these languages as she said she did, and he was surprised to find out that not only was she relatively skilled, but her accent was also good.

  “My father always insisted that we study English and German, and we spent some summers in Germany, at the house of one of his partners, Herr Itzhak Wassermann.”

  The Russian asked her to tell him about Herr Itzhak, and Amelia spoke at length about scenes from her childhood in Berlin, and her friend Yla.

  “Of course, Hitler’s coming to power has been a hard blow for my father’s business. They have been taking everything from the Jews. My father has been insisting that Herr Itzhak leave Germany, but he’s resisting, he says he is German. I hope that he pays attention to my father eventually, I don’t want to imagine Yla in that repressive and hateful environment being treated like a criminal.”

  “If I agree with Monsieur Comte on one thing it is that Hitler is a danger for the whole of Europe, the worst face of Fascism,” Krisov said.

  “Oh, he’s worse than Fascism, I can be sure of that,” Amelia said ingenuously.

  An hour later Pierre cut the meeting short, saying that his parents were waiting for them to have dinner.

  “I hope we will meet again,” Krisov said to Amelia as she left.

  “My dear friend, it will be difficult, we are leaving for Le Havre tomorrow, out boat is waiting to take us to Buenos Aires,” Pierre said.

  That night, after dinner, Pierre claimed to have an unavoidable meeting with some comrades.

  “My mother can help you finish packing...”

  “No, I’d rather do it myself. Will you take long?”

  “I hope not, but now that we’re leaving for Buenos Aires I want to know if I can be useful for our cause. You know that I work with the Communist International.”

  Amelia accepted Pierre’s excuse without any quibbles; she almost preferred to be alone.

  Pierre met Ivan Krisov, his controller, in front of the door of the church of Saint-Germain.

  “So, what did you think?” he asked Krisov.

  “Sad and charming,” he replied.

  “Yes, it’s not easy to be with her.”

  “Well, I envy you, my friend, she’s very pretty. She’ll be useful where you’re going, her innocence is a good disguise. But be careful, she’s no fool, and if one day she shakes off her lethargy and melancholy...”

  “Who’s going to deal with my Spanish contacts?” Pierre wanted to know, worried about the military uprising.

  “Don’t worry, they’ve got all the information about what’s happening in Moscow. Just concentrate on your job.”

  “I’m not arguing with my orders, but wouldn’t I be of more use in Spain, given the situation?”

  “My friend, I can’t tell you that. The department has decided to expand our intelligence service in South America, and that’s what we need to do.”

  “Yes, but given the circumstances, I insist that I would be more useful in Spain.”

  “You need to be where Moscow decides you shall be. We are not doing this job for our own satisfaction, but in the service of a great idea. There are things it’s better not to think about: You have your orders, obey them. That’s the golden rule. Ah, I know you have to get in touch with the Soviet Embassy, but take your time about it, everything has to seem casual. You can’t go to the embassy or call them. I won’t tell you how you have to do it, you’re a professional and will find a way.”

  “With all due respect, Comrade, I still do not understand the significance of my mission.”

  “It is significant, Comrade Comte, it is. Moscow has to have ears everywhere. Your mission is to develop agents who are well positioned, close to the bastions of power, preferably in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. People whose jobs are secure, civil servants who don’t depend on the vicissitudes of politics. You will be able to work at your ease in Buenos Aires, because the great powers don’t think that it’s an important field for their operations. But messages arrive at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs every day from all over the world, messages that uncover little secrets, conversations between the higher-ups of the countries where they are accredited, analyses of the situation. All this material can be useful sources of information for our department. Neither the United States, nor France, nor Great Britain, nor Germany have any strategic interest in the area at the momen
t, so it should be easy to move your mission forwards. Battles are won not only at the front.”

  Amelia enjoyed the first few days of the crossing. They were staying in an elegant first-class cabin and shared their evenings with a group of people that included commercial travelers, businessmen, families, and even an opera singer, the bel canto diva Carla Alessandrini, who became the center of attention for the passengers and crew right from the start of the voyage.

  It was on the third day of the journey that Amelia struck up a conversation with Carla Alessandrini. The Italian diva was a woman of about forty, large without being fat, tall, with blonde hair and intense blue eyes. She had been born in Milan to a Milanese father and a German mother, to whom she owed her transformation into a great opera star, as it was she who in the face of storms and torments, opposing the will of her husband, had fought for her daughter to make her way in the world and become the diva that she now was.

  Carla Alessandrini was traveling with her agent, who was also her husband, Vittorio Leonardi, a sly Roman who was dedicated exclusively to maximizing the income generated by his wife’s voice.

  Amelia and Carla were standing very close to one another, leaning on the railing, looking into the distance lost in thought, when Vittorio shook them out of their respective reveries.

  “The two most beautiful women on the ship! Here, silent and alone! It cannot be!”

  Carla turned to her husband with a smile, and Amelia looked with curiosity at this carefree Italian.

  “You feel so insignificant, when you look at the sea... ,” Carla said.

  “Insignificant, you? Impossible, my darling, even the sea bows down before you, we’ve been at sea for three days and haven’t seen a single wave, it’s as if we’re traveling over a lake. Isn’t that so, Signorita?” he said to Amelia.