Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  “He doesn’t have to. It was I who abandoned him, and who went off with another man, leaving him with a baby only a couple of months old. I wish that I will be able to forgive myself one day!”

  “If you want to, I can call Don Manuel and Doña Blanca and ask them to let you see Javier... ,” Don Armando suggested.

  “You don’t need to humiliate yourself, Uncle. You know they won’t let me see my son. I trusted that Águeda...”

  “I’ll come with you to your in-laws’ house. We can wait until they take the child for a walk, and at the very least you’ll be able to see him from a distance,” Laura suggested.

  “It’s a good idea, at least I’ll be able to see him from a distance. I’ll delay traveling for one day more, I hope that... well, I hope that Albert isn’t upset at the delay.”

  Doña Elena ordered me to go with the two cousins. She didn’t want Amelia and Laura to go alone, she was afraid of what might happen. We turned up in the morning at Santiago’s parents’ house and did not have to wait long, because at round about eleven we saw Doña Blanca leaving the house, holding Javier by the hand. The child had grown a great deal and looked happy with his grandmother.

  Laura was holding Amelia’s hand, but could not stop her from pulling herself free and running toward her son.

  “Javier! Javier! It’s your mother!” Amelia cried out.

  Doña Blanca stopped dead and blushed bright red, from anger I think.

  “How dare you!” she shouted at Amelia. “How dare you show yourself here! Go away! Go away!”

  But Amelia had grasped Javier in her arms and held him tight, covering him with kisses.

  “My little boy! How beautiful you are! How much you’ve grown! I love you so much, Javier! Mother loves you so much!”

  Javier was scared and started to cry. Doña Blanca wanted to take the child, but Amelia would not let him go. Laura and I did not know what to do.

  “Please, Doña Blanca, have mercy!” Laura begged. “Put yourself in her position, she is the child’s mother and she has a right to see him.”

  “She’s a slut! If she had loved her child, then she would not have abandoned him and her husband to run off with another man. Let him go, you slut!” Doña Blanca shouted, and pulled Javier’s arm.

  “Doña Blanca, you are a mother, let Amelia at least kiss her son!” Laura insisted.

  “If she doesn’t let him go then I will shout even more loudly, I will call for a policeman and I will have you arrested. Didn’t she run off with a Communist? You’re all Communists and you should be in prison. All the reds are whores... Do you think I don’t know how your father got out of Ocaña prison? That one there sleeps with anything in trousers,” she shouted, pointing at Amelia.

  Laura had turned as red as a tomato, and did something totally unexpected. She grabbed hold of Doña Blanca’s arm and twisted it, separating her from Amelia and Javier. Then she pushed her against a wall and, paying no attention to Doña Blanca’s cries of pain, stamped on her.

  “Shut up, you witch! You’re the slut. Don’t insult my cousin again, don’t do it or I’ll... I swear that you’ll regret it. My father is alive thanks to Amelia, because you Nationalists are a bunch of disgusting... You’re scum... You and yours aren’t worthy to crawl at our feet. As far as whores are concerned, the Nationalists have made whores out of many decent women, just go to Gran Vía and you’ll see mothers forced to sell themselves just to get food for their children. Is this the prosperity Franco promised? Of course, you have everything you want, you won the war... and they were about to kill your son, because Santiago, thank the Lord, was not a Fascist.”

  Doña Blanca got free of Laura by giving her a good push. Amelia was trying to calm Javier, who was crying and scared because his grandmother was being treated in this way by two women who were strangers to him.

  “Whether you want to accept it or not, Javier is my son and you can’t lie to him and tell him he has a different mother. I may be the worst mother in the world and I may not deserve to have Javier, but he is my son and you will not snatch him away from me,” Amelia said, staring her mother-in-law in the eyes.

  “When Santiago finds out what you’ve done... All you reds are sluts, sluts! Leave us alone, you’ve done enough damage!”

  Amelia put Javier down and gave him one last kiss.

  “My son,” she said, “I love you so much, and whatever they say you must never forget that I am your mother.”

  Once back in Doña Blanca’s arms, the child began to calm down. Doña Blanca went back to her house, walking as fast as she could.

  We walked home, worried about what might happen next. Knowing Santiago, it was clear that he would not just stand by and do nothing once he found out from his mother what had happened.

  Don Armando tried to calm Amelia and Laura, he told them that he would not let Santiago do anything. But Doña Elena was not so sure, and so we spent the rest of the morning and a part of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. And it did. Of course it did. It was half past nine and we were having supper when the bell began to ring insistently.

  Doña Elena sent me to open the door, and I did so trembling, because I was sure that it would be Santiago.

  I opened the door and it was him. His face was twisted with anger and it was clear that he was making a great effort to control himself. His father was with him.

  “Announce us,” he said without any preamble.

  I went into the dining room and, stammering, announced Don Santiago. Don Armando told us not to move from where we were; he would speak with Santiago. We were very quiet and said nothing, wondering what would happen.

  “Good evening, Santiago, Don Manuel... How can I help you?”

  “I want your niece to stay away from my family once and for all. She has no right to frighten my son. I want you to know that I will not tolerate my mother being treated as she was treated today by your daughter Laura.” It was hard for Santiago to control his rage.

  “If anyone lays a finger on my wife or my grandson, then he will go to prison. I will move heaven and earth to make sure that happens,” Don Manuel said.

  “I don’t have any doubt at all that you could make it happen, but no one has attacked Doña Blanca. As far as I understand it, from what Laura said, she helped Amelia to be able to be free to hold her son in her arms. She was not disrespectful to Doña Blanca, but Doña Blanca was disrespectful to us, not just to Amelia and Laura, but to my entire family.”

  “My wife is a lady and always behaves in a ladylike fashion, something that cannot be said of your niece,” Don Manuel said.

  “Please, father, that’s not necessary!” Santiago said, angry at his father’s comment.

  “If you are here to insult us, then it is better if you leave straight away. I will not have you say a word against Amelia. What has happened has happened. And you, Santiago, you have no right to stop her from seeing her son, and to confuse Javier by telling him that Águeda is his mother, that is cruel, you will have to tell him the truth some day, and do you think that Javier will forgive you for lying to him? That he will forgive you for denying his mother the right to see him?”

  “I have not come here to discuss my decisions with you, but to inform you that I will not permit another scene like the one that took place today. My son is growing, he is happy, he has a family, and I am not the one who left him motherless.”

  “Don Armando,” Don Manuel interrupted. “Let me warn you that I will do whatever it takes to ruin you. You will lose your job and they will re-examine your case and maybe send you back to prison. Everyone knows how you managed to be released, there are rotten apples everywhere, and the one who managed to swap Amelia’s favors for your pardon was just another unimportant rotten apple.”

  “How dare you insult her! Yes, I am free thanks to her, thanks to the money that she had to pay to that corrupt man who swaps lives for money, but that’s the kind of people you Nationalists are. Don’t you dare say a single word to insult Amelia!
”

  “Father, you shouldn’t have said that!” Santiago said.

  “Ah! Do you really not know? I can’t believe you don’t know, when the whole of Madrid knows! Ask your niece how she paid, what she gave as well as money, to get you released from Ocaña,” Don Manuel insisted.

  At this moment Amelia appeared on the threshold of the room and then put herself between Don Armando and Santiago and his father.

  “You can insult me as much as you want. I won’t deny you that right after all I’ve done, but it is you, Santiago, who should leave my family in peace. They have done nothing to you. As for Javier... he is my son, however much that upsets you, and that is not something you can change. I cannot turn back time, but I assure you that if I could then I would not have done what I did, that I am filled with remorse and will never forgive myself as long as I live, but I cannot change what I have done.”

  “Amelia, please, go inside, let me handle this. They have no right to insult you, I will not tolerate these insinuations.”

  “No, Uncle, it is me who has to tell them not to insult and threaten you. Don Manuel, I always took you for a gentleman, who would be incapable of the low act that you have just perpetrated by saying what you have just said. I am not an indecent person for saving my uncle from execution. It was not enough for your friends the Nationalists to win the war, they have to take their revenge on everyone on the Republican side who fought against them. Of course, Santiago, that was your side, although never that of your father. Will Franco be the stronger for shooting thousands of people who fought against him? No, no he won’t; people will fear him and hate him, but it will not make him stronger.”

  “Stay away from my son,” Santiago said, looking at her with fury.

  “No, I will not stay away from Javier; I will try a thousand times, as often as necessary, to see him, to be with him, even if only for a few minutes, to remind him that I am his mother, to tell him that in spite of what I did I still love him with all my soul. And I will pray every day to ask forgiveness from God, and also that Javier will forgive me himself one day.”

  “I insist on what I said: I will not allow any member of this family to come close to my own. I want that to be clear, and also that there will be consequences if it does not happen,” Don Manuel said.

  Santiago took his father by the arm and ushered him out of the house without saying goodbye.

  We all went out into the hall. Don Armando looked at Amelia with tears in his eyes.

  “What did you do to get me out of Ocaña?” he asked, scared of what the answer might be.

  “Nothing that dishonors me. I paid the price that Agapito, that bastard intermediary, demanded. And the fault is committed not by the person who pays the price, but by the one who asks it.”

  “Amelia, for God’s sake, I want to know what you did!” Don Armando insisted.

  “Uncle, please! I did what I was asked out of a sense of duty toward you, whom I love so much. I don’t regret it, I would do anything to save a life. The price that is asked for a life is never too high, especially not for the life of someone you love.”

  Don Armando was in despair. Doña Elena embraced him, trying to make him feel all the love that she could.

  “Amelia has been very good to us, don’t shame her by insisting, by asking again and again,” she begged her husband. “We will always have her to thank for the fact that you are still alive.”

  “But not at any price!”

  “Don’t say that! I don’t know what Amelia did apart from give money to that scoundrel, but I swear that I would have done anything they asked to save you.”

  Amelia asked the family to gather in the salon.

  “What Santiago’s father suggested... It is true, nobody knew about it apart from Laura, or at least that is what I thought, but it is obvious that the bastard who served as intermediary, Agapito, has told everyone that I gave myself to him in exchange for your pardon. I would have preferred that neither you nor anyone else in the family had found out, and I swear to you, Uncle, that I have already forgotten all about it.”

  “My God, Amelia! My God! How your father would have suffered to have known about a thing like that! I... I don’t deserve to live in exchange for such a sacrifice... I can never repay you...”

  “For goodness’ sake, Uncle, don’t say such things! You don’t owe me anything, nothing at all, there are no debts between people who love each other. And let me tell you again that I don’t regret what I did, I have not had a bad conscience about this for even a single day, and if I feel anything for this Agapito it is hatred, and a desire that he catch syphilis and die. But I don’t feel dirty myself, I don’t regret anything. I know that you would have given your life to save mine, and all I did was give a couple of minutes of my life to some heartless brute.”

  None of us could sleep that night. I heard Amelia talking with Laura and Antonietta all through the night. Doña Elena got up to make a calming drink for Don Armando, and Jesús and Pablo spent the night murmuring in low voices. We were all upset.

  Amelia left the next day and did not come back for a while.

  Edurne fell silent and closed her eyes. It was clear that she was suffering. I was upset on her behalf that Doña Laura had made her remember this. I don’t know why, but I took her hand and bent over her.

  “Thank you, I don’t know how I can thank you, I wouldn’t be able to put my great-grandmother’s life together without you.”

  “And why do you have to put it together? If you hadn’t appeared in this house, then everything would have stayed the same and we would have died peacefully, without looking at the past.”

  “I’m sorry, Edurne, I truly am.”

  “Will I have to speak to you again?”

  “I will try not to bother you again, I promise.”

  I wanted to say goodbye to the two old women, but the housekeeper said that they had gone out. I didn’t believe her, but I accepted the excuse. Not only were they paying me, but I would never have taken even the slightest step toward Amelia without their help. They had the right not to see me.

  I left the house with a strange sensation overwhelming me, a kind of unease. I didn’t know why, I think that Edurne’s story must have affected me. I didn’t like Don Manuel at all; it was annoying to think that even though it was a distant relationship, we were still related: He was my great-great-grandfather; we were family.

  I went to my apartment to write down what I had found out over the last few weeks. There was so much material that I decided to transcribe the tapes and get my notes in order before diving into them.

  I worked for the rest of the day, and a good part of the night as well. I wanted to go to Rome as soon as possible to talk with Francesca Venezziani. Before I left I called Pepe to see how things were at the online newspaper. They had fired me, but maybe they would feel compassion and let me back in.

  “No, Guillermo, no! The boss doesn’t want to know about you. He says you’re completely disorganized, and he’s right. I am sick of sticking up for you, so you’d better go out and make your own way in the world.”

  I didn’t want to get worried about this, but my mother was right: When my investigation into Amelia was finished, and once the story was written, maybe I wouldn’t find another job. I said to myself that there was no going back and decided to make Julius Caesar’s phrase from the Gallic War my motto: “We will talk about the bridge once we reach the river.” Only later on would I worry about myself and my future.

  10

  I stayed once again at the Hotel d’Inghilterra, right next to the Spanish Steps, a stone’s throw from Francesca’s loft.

  I was sure that she would invite me to have dinner with her, as indeed she did, so I bought a bottle of Chianti and arrived punctually at her home.

  “Ciao, caro, come vai!” she said in greeting.

  “Well enough, now,” I said with a smile.

  I scolded her gently for not having told me that Carla Alessandrini had been politically act
ive.

  “I told you that Carla was a singular woman,” she said as her excuse.

  “Singular isn’t the half of it. She helped a Jewish girl to escape from Berlin and crossed half of Europe with her, and was in touch with the partisans, so she did a lot more than just warble her music.”

  “Yes, it’s all true, Carla was an extraordinary woman.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t tell me anything about her political activity.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Well, let me make it clear: I want to know everything, absolutely everything about Carla Alessandrini, and I don’t care if that’s politics or gardening, everything means everything.”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you everything straight away.”

  “No, why?” I asked, a little angrily.

  “Because Professor Soler told me that you had to investigate things step by step, that you had to find a thread to follow and follow it, and find everything out in its order. I don’t know what the order is, but every time Carla appears, please feel free to come to me.”

  “That’s a good one! I’m a little sick of being sent here and there like a puppet.”

  Francesca shrugged, making it clear that this had nothing to do with her.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what la gran Carla did in September 1940, when my great-grandmother came to see her in Rome, and I want you to tell me if you’ve already told anyone about this, because there’s not a word about it in your book.”

  “And why should I have written about things that have nothing to do with her art?”

  “You’re her biographer.”

  “I’m something else as well, the guardian of her memory. I will tell you a secret: I am writing another book about Carla, but it will take me some time, I don’t know much about what she did during the Second World War. Shall we start?”