Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  The man introduced himself as Luigi Masseti, the owner of a number of buildings and shops in town, and offered to help them find the right place.

  “I have just the thing for you. It’s in the basement of an old building in a very good location, in the Calle Piedras. Even though it’s in the basement it has very good light because it has a large window onto the street. The problem is that it is not really a family house, and not really a shop, but it would be perfect for a couple and a small business selling books. Why not come to my office tomorrow and I’ll get one of my employees to show it to you?”

  Pierre accepted gratefully. For her part, Amelia was surrounded by a fair number of gallants. It was now well known, because Pierre had made it so, that they had run away from their respective families, that she had abandoned her husband and son and he had left a promising business because of their passionate romance. Some of these men thought that the Spanish woman would be easy prey for their amorous attentions and tried to take liberties that surprised and hurt Amelia in equal measure.

  Carla Alessandrini, when she realized what was happening, had words on a couple of occasions, making it clear that anyone who upset her friend was offending her.

  Pierre preferred to ignore the situation, because his aim was to make as many contacts as possible in the closed and highly refined world of Buenos Aires high society. And the people here were the crème de la crème. He couldn’t have had a greater stroke of luck.

  Carla introduced them to a couple who seemed to be old friends of hers.

  “Amelia, I want you to meet Martin and Gloria Hertz. They’re the best friends I have in Buenos Aires.”

  Martin Hertz was a German Jew who had arrived three years previously, looking for a place where he could escape the Nazi pressure. He was a throat specialist, and had met Carla years ago in Berlin, when the diva had a problem with her voice two days before appearing at the Opera. Martin took care of her and made it possible for her to get up on stage and perform brilliantly once again. Ever since then, Carla had been unconditional in her support of this young German doctor; for his part, soon after his arrival in the city, he had fallen in love with Gloria Fernández, a young porteña woman of Spanish origin, and had married her.

  Amelia was immediately attracted to the Hertzes. Martin’s face was so cheery that it inspired confidence from the first, and Gloria exuded friendliness and strength of personality.

  “You have to come to my art gallery,” Gloria invited them. “I’m exhibiting a young Mexican painter at the moment, and I predict great things for him. I want my gallery to be a reference point for new painting, a place where young people have a chance to exhibit.”

  Pierre immediately agreed to visit the Hertzes’ gallery. And he reminded himself once again of how useful a key Amelia was to Buenos Aires high society.

  “My best friend is German, from Berlin,” Amelia said, “although I do not know if she’s in New York at the moment. I hope so! Yla is Jewish, and her father Herr Itzhak Wassermann is a business partner of my father’s, but the Nazis have intruded to such an extent that their business has gone to pot. My father spent a long time trying to convince Herr Itzhak to leave Germany, and... well, before I came here, he told me that they were thinking of immigrating to New York.”

  “The Nazis don’t leave us many options, they are stealing from us, stripping us of our possessions, and the SS are spitefully coming after us all the time. First they took some of our rights as citizens away from us, and then the Nuremburg Laws turned us into outcasts. I left in ’34, because I knew that even if the Jewish communities want to believe otherwise, the Nazis are not just some flash in the pan. In March of 1933 I was a witness to that shameful and terrible act, the public book-burning, books written by Jews, books that belong to the whole of humanity... That was what made me decide to leave, because I knew that they would keep on persecuting us, which they have. My parents did not want to come with me, I have an older brother, who is married with two children, who also did not want to come. I pray for them daily, and my blood boils when I imagine them being bullied by their neighbors.”

  “Come, Martin, we’re at a party... ,” Gloria said, trying to change her husband’s mood.

  “I’m sorry, it was my fault... I shouldn’t have...”

  “Don’t say that! I am happy to know that you are a sensitive person who can feel for the situation that others are in,” Martin replied, “but Gloria is right, we cannot get upset here, at Carla’s party, she wants us to have a good time.”

  On the way back to the hotel, Pierre was extremely kind and solicitous with Amelia. Anyone seeing them would have thought that this man was madly in love with the fragile young woman who walked at his side.

  One week later, Amelia and Pierre moved into the basement that they had rented from Luigi Masseti. Pierre thought it was perfect: The way in was via a huge front door giving out onto the street. Then a short hall led into a fifty-square-meter salon, which was lit by a huge window looking out on the street. At the other end of the salon were two bedrooms, a little kitchen, and a bathroom, and this was the space that would be their home. The windows in this part of the house gave onto a shared patio.

  Amelia cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. Pierre showed his skills as a carpenter by buying wood and making bookcases for all the walls of the salon. As far as the rest of the apartment was concerned, they spent very little on decoration, they bought only what was truly necessary.

  “Let’s see how things go, we’ll get the sort of furniture you deserve in the future,” Pierre said to Amelia.

  Things did not go badly for them. Buenos Aires was a cosmopolitan city that opened itself up to the Europeans who came to it seeking refuge. And Pierre was French, and Amelia was a delicate and beautiful woman, so they had no problems in gradually making all the doors of the city open to them. The only thing that truly surprised Amelia was that Pierre insisted on cultivating his relationship with Michelangelo Bagliodi, the husband of the Italian ambassador’s secretary. Pierre and Bagliodi seemed to have hit it off, and it was not unusual for them to have lunch together, or for the four of them to spend Sunday in Pierre and Amelia’s house.

  If Martin and Gloria Hertz were their gateway to the city’s intellectual sphere, then Bagliodi, via Paola his wife, made sure that they were invited to several of the events organized by the Italian Embassy, events where Pierre rubbed shoulders with ambassadors and diplomats from several other countries.

  Amelia seemed to adapt well to her new situation, and was not at all unhappy, although she was always worried about the civil war in Spain. The worst for her was Carla Alessandrini’s departure. The diva had finished her engagement in Buenos Aires and had to return to Europe, where she would start the season in September at Milan’s La Scala with Aida, a difficult and ambitious opera. Before she left she met up once again with Amelia to have a tête-à-tête in the Café Tortoni, which had become the favorite haunt of both of them. They loved to share confidences there, at the oak and green marble tables.

  “I will miss you, cara Amelia... Why are you not coming back to Europe? If you want I could help you...”

  “And what would I do? No, Carla, I made a decision that I have at times regretted, but now it is too late for me to turn back. My husband will never forgive me, and as far as my family is concerned... I have hurt them a great deal, what would they do with me if I came back? I only pray that Franco loses the war, and that peace returns. I’m scared for them, even though Madrid is still holding out...”

  “But what about your son? Don’t you realize that if you don’t go back then you will lose him... He’s still small, but one day he’ll want to know what happened to his mother, and what will they be able to tell him? Amelia, I can take you back to Europe...”

  But Amelia seemed now to reaffirm the decision that she had regretted so often. Also, at that time she would not have dared to confront Pierre. She shuddered to think of his reaction if she were to tell him that she was abandoning h
im.

  “I have lost my son and I know that I will never forgive myself. I am the world’s worst mother, maybe he’ll even be better off for my absence,” Amelia said, unable to contain her tears.

  “Come now, don’t cry, everything has a solution; all you have to do is want it. You have my address and the address of Vittorio’s office, and you can always send me a message, or else they will know where I am and how to find me. If you need me don’t hesitate to write, I will do everything in my power to help you.”

  Pierre worked hard, but sometimes he too was overtaken by melancholy. By October he had regular contact with his controller, the secretary to the Soviet ambassador, to whom he would pass the information that he had picked up in his intellectual circles, and also from among the tradesmen and the city’s upper classes. His reports were detailed and left nothing out, however insignificant something might seem.

  And he would submit Amelia to intense interrogation every time she went out with her new friends to take tea, or if she spoke to some important person at a cocktail party, or at a reading or a wedding dinner.

  He was a disciplined agent with a mission to fulfill, but he believed that his true place was not in Buenos Aires, where he had “placed” an agent in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just as he had been ordered to do, within the first six months of his being there. Miguel López was an employee at the ministry, leaning communist in his opinions but not affiliated with any party. He disapproved of Buenos Aires high society and regretted the poverty-stricken state in which many of his compatriots outside of the capital found themselves. Even in the capital, there were those who could only stand on the sidelines and observe the city’s glamour.

  Miguel López had gotten his office job thanks to one of his uncles, who worked for the ministry as a porter. He was an affable type who had spoken out one day in his young nephew’s favor, praising his knowledge of typing and shorthand and even basic accounting. Also, Miguel had a gift for languages, because he had taught himself French without any formal course of study. This must have been a convincing pitch, because Miguel López was given a job as an office boy and, because he was smart and discreet, he was made the secretary to the head of communications. He spent his free time studying law; his dream was to become a lawyer, which also added to the positive opinion his employers had of him.

  Amelia felt friendly toward Miguel López, and was surprised to find the friendship growing between him and her husband. For her the friendship was a blessing; he kept her up to date with the news from Spain, for it was he who dealt with the coded messages that came from the Argentinian ambassador in Madrid.

  One night, when Miguel came to dinner with Amelia and Pierre, he told them that the situation was getting more serious by the minute.

  “It seems,” he said, “that the Fascists’ rearguard are committing all kinds of atrocities, shooting the leftist militants and showing no mercy to the Republican leaders. But the most important thing is that the workers have organized a functional resistance to the Fascists, and there are popular militias as well as the Republican Army. The Abraham Lincoln Battalion is now taking part in the struggle, and people are arriving from all over the world to join the International Brigades. Of course,” he added, “the trip taken to Mexico by the women’s antifascist delegation has started to bear fruit. From a propaganda point of view things could not be better, most newspapers are attacking the rebels and have sided with Azaña’s government. And we’re here and unable to do anything! I feel so ashamed of our politicians!”

  López felt a strong satisfaction in having transformed himself into a Soviet agent, and dreamed of the moment when they would call him to the “workers’ homeland” in recognition of his services, and let him stay there forever.

  Pierre had explained to him that he should not draw attention to himself, that he should trust nobody, and that he should above all continue in his dull state job.

  Even though Miguel López had told Pierre that one of his female work colleagues seemed to feel the same hatred of the regime that he did, and had even made negative comments about Fascism, Pierre forbade Miguel from confiding in her.

  But although Miguel was a great achievement, Pierre needed another agent in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or even in the office of the president himself, because this was what his controller had asked for.

  However, as luck seemed to have been on his side ever since their arrival in Buenos Aires, Amelia told him one afternoon that she had been to Gloria’s gallery and had been introduced there to a friend of Gloria’s who was going through a rough patch.

  “You can’t imagine what the poor girl has to go through, working in Government House and being such a strong anti-Fascist. According to Gloria, Natalia is a Communist.”

  Pierre didn’t seem very interested, but he insisted on inviting Martin and Gloria Hertz to have dinner with them a few days later, and brought up what Amelia had said.

  “Oh yes, poor Natalia! It’s very difficult for her to work in Government House. She’s not got a very important job, she doesn’t work directly with the president; she’s in the Translation Department. She spends her day translating letters and documents and all kinds of stuff from English. And if the president needs an interpreter, then of course they use her. Natalia speaks perfect English: Her father was a diplomat, and she lived in England, and then in the United States, and later in Norway and Germany. She was five when her father was sent to England, and stayed there till she was nine; her father’s next posting was to Washington, so English holds no secrets for her.”

  Pierre displayed a sympathy for Natalia that seemed sincere, and he suggested they invite her the next time they came round.

  It was a month later, and by chance, that Pierre met Natalia Alvear at the launch of an exhibition in Gloria’s gallery.

  Natalia was around fifty years old, of average height, elegant and with chestnut-brown hair, but by no means a great beauty. She was single and bored, and spent time in intellectual and artistic environments, where she met a lot of people of the Left. Her work in Government House was boring, and her lack of prospects for her personal life made her bitter.

  From the first moment he saw her Pierre realized that he might be able to turn her into an agent, and that this might be what could give his life its ultimate meaning. But he decided to go slowly until he was sure that this single woman was able to take on such a responsibility.

  Two days later, he passed by the front of Government House and arranged to bump into her just at the time that she had said she normally went out to eat lunch.

  “Natalia, dear! What a surprise!”

  “Yes it is, Señor Comte...”

  “You don’t have to call me Señor Comte, I think we can use each other’s first names, don’t you? I was coming from a client nearby, and I was looking for somewhere to have a light lunch in the area: I’ve got another meeting nearby in a bit. And what about you, where are you going?”

  “The same as you, to have lunch.”

  “If you don’t think it’s too forward of me, I would be happy to invite you to join me.”

  “Oh no! I couldn’t accept.”

  “Do you have another engagement?”

  “No, no, it’s not that, but I think that I shouldn’t.”

  “Isn’t it the custom in Buenos Aires for two people who know each other to have lunch together?” Pierre asked innocently.

  “Well, if they are friends, then I suppose so.”

  “You are Gloria’s friend, the Hertzes are some of our closest friends, so I don’t see the problem... Come on, please let me invite you to lunch. Amelia will be cross if I tell her I’d met you and wasn’t polite enough to invite you to lunch.”

  They went into a nearby restaurant, and Pierre deployed all of the savoir faire that marked him out as a man of the world. He made her laugh, and even flirted a little with her to make her think that she was desirable.

  Natalia was too lonely and tired of her gray little life to resist a man l
ike Pierre.

  This was not the only occasion when he organized a meeting and she allowed herself to be invited to lunch. Little by little a relationship sprung up between them that, to the eyes of an innocent bystander, would have seemed nothing more than a simple platonic affair between two people whose sense of duty would not allow them to take matters any further.

  Pierre hid himself behind the fact of Amelia, who had abandoned her husband and son for him. Natalia admired him all the more for this, although she secretly could not avoid hoping that Pierre would decide to be disloyal.

  Pierre confessed to Natalia that he was a Communist and that only she could understand the importance of his cause.

  Without her realizing it, he convinced her little by little that she could not simply stand by with her arms folded while the Fascists went on with their work, and one day he asked her to give him any information that could be useful for the “cause,” which he would then pass on to the relevant authorities.

  Natalia was doubtful to begin with, but Pierre took one more step and one afternoon they became lovers.

  “Lord, what have we done!” Natalia lamented.

  “It was meant to happen,” he consoled her.

  “But what about Amelia?”

  “I don’t want to talk about her, allow me to enjoy this moment, this is the happiest I have been in a long time.”

  “But what happened is wrong!”

  “Could we have avoided it? Tell me, Natalia, haven’t we tried to avoid this moment for as long as we could? Don’t tell me you regret it, for I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

  She did not regret it, and was only worried about the future, if there could be a future for the two of them.

  “Let’s live for today, Natalia, that’s what we’ve got; as for the future... Who knows what may happen? It is not the ties of the flesh that bring us together, but the ties of an idea, a great and liberating idea for the whole of humanity. This sacred idea is more important than anything else. What happens to us does not matter, we will always be together because we share a cause.”