Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  The woman, of aristocratic bearing, was talking to Major Jürgens and two other SS officers, and she recognized Amelia when she turned round.

  “Goodness, it’s the little Spanish girl!” Jürgens said, raising his voice and calling the attention of the woman and the two officers with her.

  Baroness Ludovica glared at Amelia and looked her up and down. Her eyes were filled with hate and contradicted the smile that played over her lips.

  “Amelia, what a surprise! I didn’t know you were in Warsaw. How lovely to see you!” the German said.

  Ludovica came up to Amelia and pretended to kiss her cheek, enjoying her nervousness.

  “Baroness... I didn’t know you were coming to Warsaw.”

  “Of course you didn’t! How could you? It’s a surprise... I want to surprise my husband, and I’m sure that you don’t know that he’s coming back tomorrow on leave. We’ll be able to enjoy some days together after a few months that have seemed like years to me... Also, I’m bringing him a present that I don’t mind you knowing about before he does: We’re going to have a son! You must admit that it’s the best present you can give a man.”

  Amelia felt her legs shaking and her face burning. The baroness’s mocking smile hurt her more than Major Jürgens’s guffaws; he made no effort to hide how much he was enjoying the scene.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything, Amelia? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” the baroness said.

  “Of course. Congratulations,” Amelia managed to say.

  “Join us, Amelia. The baroness is going to honor our table tonight with her presence,” Major Jürgens said.

  “I’m sorry... I am... I’m very tired... Some other time... ,” Amelia excused herself.

  “Of course, my dear, some other time! I am sure that Max will be happy for us to have dinner together to celebrate the news,” the baroness said.

  Amelia hurried toward the elevator, trying to control the shuddering that threatened to take over her entire body. Her room was just next to Max’s, and although the door between them had been closed ever since he went to the front, she was scared of being so close to Ludovica, who had moved into Max’s room without any qualms.

  It was not her lucky day. An hour after getting to the hotel she was pacing up and down her room when there was a knock at the door. She was scared that it might be Major Jürgens, but was shocked when she heard Grazyna’s voice.

  “For God’s sake, Amelia, open the door!”

  Grazyna’s appeared shaken, and it was difficult for her to talk.

  “They’ve taken Sister... ,” she managed to say.

  “The sister? Who do you mean?”

  “They’ve taken Sister Maria... Someone reported the missing medicine in the hospital pharmacy. They did an inventory without telling her and they’ve had a list of everything that was missing. The director called her to his office this afternoon; she said she didn’t know anything about the disappearances, but they didn’t believe her and took her away.”

  “Good Lord! And how do you know all this?”

  “When I heard that the director had summoned her I went to see the mother superior. She was very nervous, and said that she hadn’t said anything because she didn’t want to know anything about the subject, but she was worried that they would make Sister Maria talk. I haven’t gone home, that’s the first place they would go and look for me.”

  “What are we going to do?” Amelia asked worriedly.

  “I don’t know... but if Sister Maria talks... they’re going to arrest me, Amelia... I’m sure of it.”

  “And you came here! Are you mad? Most of the German officers and a good number of the SS officers are staying here.”

  “That’s why I came, I thought it was the safest place, they won’t look for me here. I have to stay here, you have to let me stay... ,” There was both order and plea in Grazyna’s tone.

  “Of course, you can stay here, but I’ve got problems too. I met Max’s wife in the lobby this afternoon, and she was with the SS major who hates me so. I don’t know... It’s not a coincidence that Ludovica should be here...”

  “It’s not important. You must go and tell Ewa, she will know how to send the alarm to the others. We were going to take more guns to the ghetto tonight...”

  “Tonight? You didn’t tell me,” Amelia complained.

  “No... we weren’t going to,” Grazyna said. “The person we got the weapons from was very nervous to see a stranger. It’s a larger delivery this time and... well, other members of the group were going to help us carry them. They were going to take the weapons directly to Piotr’s house. Ewa and I were going to take the other members of the group there. We have to stop them from being arrested.”

  “But Sister Maria doesn’t know anything about your group, she can’t give you away.”

  “But if they make her speak, then she’ll say that it was me who took the medicine. Maybe she’s already said so, and if that’s the case, then they’ll know where I live and they’ll be looking for me. And it won’t be too difficult to find out about my friends and arrest them.”

  “That’s only what you suspect might happen,” Amelia said, trying to calm her friend.

  “Don’t be so naïve! Do you think it’ll be hard for the Gestapo to make a nun talk? We’re in danger and we need to act fast, or else the group will fall. Go to Ewa’s cake shop as if you were going to buy sweets. You have to learn a phrase, and remember it exactly, because it is important: ‘I love sweet things, but sometimes they get stuck in my throat.’ You’ll remember it?”

  “Of course. And you think that Ewa will know what it means?”

  “Yes, and she’ll tell the others. Go now, there’s only half an hour until the cake shop closes.”

  “And if I don’t find Ewa?”

  “Then come back as soon as you can, it will mean that she’s been arrested.

  “But... well... what if they arrest me?”

  “You? Well, it’s possible, but I think they’d arrest us before you, you are the lover of a German officer.”

  Amelia followed Grazyna’s instructions and went quickly to Ewa’s cake shop, which was not far from the hotel. Grazyna waited for her in the hotel room.

  Amelia reached the cake shop in ten minutes. The shop was sealed off, so she asked the doorman of the neighboring building what had happened.

  “Oh, the police came a while back. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

  “But something must have happened... ,” Amelia said, trying to make herself understood in her shaky Polish.

  “Yes, I suppose so. Don’t ask questions and leave me alone.”

  The doorman turned his back on her and Amelia felt completely lost. What could she do? She made a decision; she would go to tell Piotr, certain that he would know how to warn the rest of the group. It was a risky decision, but she had no other option: The only other members of the group she knew were Piotr and Tomasz, and she didn’t know where to find Tomasz.

  She took a bus to Countess Lublin’s house. She walked quickly, looking to the left and to the right in case she saw anything suspicious, but nothing she saw seemed out of the ordinary. She walked to the back of the house and knocked gently on the service door, almost holding her breath.

  One of the countess’s maids opened the door and asked her sullenly what she wanted.

  “I’m a friend of Piotr’s and I need to see him urgently... It’s... it’s... a family matter,” Amelia begged, hoping that she would be understood.

  The maid looked her up and down before telling her to wait outside while she went to tell the countess’s chauffeur he had a visitor.

  Piotr arrived a few minutes later, accompanied by the maid. He drew himself up short when he saw Amelia, but he didn’t say anything and only took her by the arm and led her into his room.

  “Are you mad? How can you even think of coming here?”

  “They’ve arrested Sister Maria, and Ewa. Grazyna is hidden in my room. You h
ave to tell the group not to come tonight with the weapons, or else you’ll all be arrested.”

  As soon as he realized the danger they were in, Piotr seemed to grow immediately old. It was difficult for him to think about what they should do.

  “Ewa may have talked, they may all be under arrest already and may be coming for me now,” he said, after pausing for a few seconds.

  “I don’t know, but you could still try to do something... If Ewa hasn’t spoken, then you and your friends could still escape. I have to go back to Grazyna.”

  “No, don’t go. It’s easier for you to go all over town... I’ll give you an address on Castle Square, where you can find one of our men, Grzegorz. It was he who had the weapons for tonight.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll try to run away.”

  “And what if they’ve already arrested Grzegorz?”

  “Then it’s only a matter of time before they arrest us all, including you,” Piotr said, shrugging. “But you should go now.”

  Piotr opened the door and looked both ways down the alley, but didn’t see anything that caught his attention. Each wished the other luck, and then Amelia left.

  She took a bus to Castle Square. She kept looking impatiently at her watch, and prayed that she would be able to find Grzegorz.

  She got out of the bus one stop before her destination and walked fast toward the address that Piotr had given her. She climbed the steps and rang the bell anxiously. The door opened and she saw a man silhouetted in the darkness.

  “Grzegorz? You don’t know me, I’ve come from Piotr to warn you...”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence: The man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her forcibly into the house, dragging her into a large salon, which was also half dark. When Amelia’s eyes had grown accustomed to the absence of light, she was able to make out a man stretched out on the floor in a pool of blood. She hadn’t time to scream before the man who was holding her arm threw her down on the floor.

  From this new position she could see another man, seated comfortably on a sofa and surveying the scene.

  “Who are you?” the seated man said.

  Amelia was too scared to speak. The man kicked her in the face, and Amelia felt the metallic taste of blood on her lips.

  “It’s better if you talk, unless you want to end up like your friend.”

  She couldn’t talk, she was too distraught.

  “Boss,” the man who had opened the door said, “it’ll be better if we take her down to headquarters, they’ll know how to make her talk there.”

  “Your name,” the man on the sofa insisted.

  “Amelia Garayoa.”

  “You’re not Polish.”

  “I’m Spanish.”

  “Spanish?”

  The two men appeared confused.

  “What’s a Spaniard doing fighting against the German people? Aren’t our countries allies? Or are you a bloody Communist? Or a Jew?” the man insisted.

  He kicked out at her again, but this time Amelia managed to cover her face. She felt them pulling her arm and making her stand upright. There was a sticky liquid on her hands and her legs, she realized it must be Grzegorz’s blood.

  “So you’re a member of Grazyna’s little group, like this bastard. Well, now you see how our enemies end up,” the man said as he pushed her toward the door.

  They put her in a car and drove her to Aleja Szucha where the central office of the Gestapo was to be found.

  During the journey, Amelia realized that however hard the torment she was going to have to face, she would have to endure it. If she told them that Grazyna was in her hotel room then they would arrest her at once, and Amelia had only one thing in her mind: Ludovica had told her that Max would arrive the next day. If that were the case, then maybe Grazyna would be able to find a way to get close to Max and tell him what had happened. He was the only one who could save her. It was her only chance.

  They took her to a damp basement and pushed her into a cell. She saw straight away that there were bloodstains on the walls and she began to shiver. Nobody had ever treated her badly before, and she did not know if she would be able to endure being beaten.

  They kept her in the dark, without giving her anything to eat or to drink, until she lost all track of time. She thought about Pierre: The Lubyanka couldn’t have been all that different from this Nazi cell. She went back over her life, deeply regretting the path she had taken that had led her to this cell. And then she told herself that it was entirely down to her. Then she started to pray, with the same faith she had had as a child. It wasn’t that she no longer prayed, every now and then she would mutter a prayer when faced with some difficulty or other, but it was something she did almost automatically, remembering that her mother had always told her that God would be her best help whenever she needed Him. And now more than ever she needed her mother to have been right. She said all the prayers she remembered: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Apostles’ Creed, and she felt sad that she didn’t know any others.

  When the door was finally opened, it was to admit a fearsome-looking woman who pushed her up to a higher floor, where they said that she was going to be interrogated.

  Amelia felt dirty, hungry, and thirsty, and she prayed to God to give her strength to deal with what was coming.

  The jailer told her to undress, and several men came into the room. One of them was an SS captain, the other two were dressed in workers’ clothes, and they took off their jackets without even looking at her, hung them on hooks in the walls, and without saying anything tore off her clothes and started to hit her. She received the first blow in the stomach, the second in the ribs, and the third in the gut, and then at the fourth she fainted. When she came to, she felt that she was drowning. The two men were shoving her head into a bath filled with dirty water. They pushed her in and pulled her out without giving her a chance to breathe. When they got tired of this, they tied her hands together with a rope that rubbed against her skin and hung her from a hook on the ceiling. With her hands above her head, completely naked, and held up only by the rope around her wrists, Amelia felt that her bones were crunching and that every single muscle in her body was aching. She tasted her own salt tears as they rolled over her lips, and could hear, as if at a distance, her own cries of pain.

  “Well, Fräulein Garayoa,” she heard the SS officer say, who had been silent up until that moment, smoking cigarette after cigarette as he impassively watched what was being done to her. “I think that we can talk now. Alright? I want you to answer a few questions: If you do, then you won’t have to suffer anymore, at least not until after you have been sentenced. And now, tell me, where is your friend Grazyna?”

  “I don’t know,” Amelia managed to say.

  One of the torturers punched her in the gut and Amelia howled with pain.

  “Come on, come on... Let’s start this again. Where is Grazyna Kaczynski? It’s a very simple question. Answer me!” the officer shouted.

  “I don’t know, I haven’t seen her for days.”

  “So you admit that you know her, that’s good. And given that you’re such good friends, you can now tell me where she is to be found.”

  “I don’t know... I promise you. She... she works... We only see each other every now and then...”

  “Especially on the nights when there’s no moon, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about... ,” she said, while they hit her legs again, this time with a stick.

  “I’m talking about weapons... Yes, who would have said that a young lady as delicate as you appear to be would help a band of dangerous delinquents to stockpile weapons to kill Germans. Because that’s what those weapons were for, to kill Germans, right?”

  “I... I don’t know... I don’t know anything about... any weapons.”

  “Of course you do! You and your friends are part of a criminal group that helps those dirty Jews, and prepares to attack our army. Scum!”

  The captain
made a sign to one of the workmen, who hit Amelia near the temple. She lost consciousness again, and regained it only when she felt a stream of cold water on her face. The jailer had a bucket in her hand, it was she who had thrown the water and she seemed to enjoy watching Amelia suffer. Amelia realized that she could barely see anything, everything she looked at was blurry and she burst out crying with whatever force she had left.

  “I can send you back to your cell only if you tell me where your friend Grazyna Kaczynski is; if you want to suffer more, let me tell you that the worst is still to come,” the SS captain said.

  “Please, leave me alone!” Amelia begged.

  “Where is your friend?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  One of the men came up to her holding something in his hands. Amelia could barely see what it was, but then she screamed to feel two clamps grasping her nipples. Her own cries frightened her, but the men in the room looked at her in an indifferent silence. She did not know how long the clamps were on her nipples, because she fainted again. When she woke up, she was on the floor of her cell once more. She had no strength to move, and she did not want to, in case they decided to take her up to the torture chambers once again when they saw she was awake. She lay there curled into a ball and felt the cold floor through a pool of blood that came from her own wounds.

  She was afraid to move, she didn’t even want to cry in case the pain was unbearable. Her breasts ached and she wondered if she still had her nipples.

  She lost all idea of time and trembled with fear when she heard the cell door opening again. Her eyes were shut, but she could feel the presence of the guard.

  “She’s destroyed, I don’t think she’ll last that long,” the guard said to the man who was with her.

  “It doesn’t matter, the captain said we should do whatever it takes to make this bitch talk.”

  Amelia cried, thinking that if they tortured her again then she wouldn’t have the strength to keep her mouth shut.

  The captain was still in the torture chamber and looked at her tiredly, disgusted that she was making him lose his valuable time.