Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  She couldn’t stay sitting and weeping until she had no more tears, she could not allow the pain and grief to carry her away. She had to take charge of Vittorio, and she had to decide what to do next.

  Would the SS come to her house? Should she go with Vittorio to recover Carla’s body? She didn’t know what to do. But Father Müller’s arrival was a small relief.

  “I am so sorry,” the priest said as he embraced Vittorio, who had not stopped crying and who was starting to shake.

  “What should we do?” she asked him in a whisper.

  “I don’t know, I’ll ask. The family has the right to the body. But they didn’t even tell you that they judged her and condemned her to death.”

  “Judged her? There is no justice here, the SS don’t know what justice is, they only murder. They murdered Carla.”

  “I don’t know how they could do it on Christmas Eve!” Father Müller said.

  “Do you think that Christmas Eve means anything to them? Don’t be naïve, Rudolf, the Nazis don’t believe in anything, you know that. They have no mercy, no compassion. They are not human.”

  “Don’t say that, Amelia!”

  “Do you think they are?” she said, grimly.

  Very few of Carla’s friends rang to offer their condolences, and far fewer dared to turn up to Vittorio’s house to offer him comfort. They were all afraid of marking themselves out as friends of a woman who had been hanged for high treason.

  All those who months before would have begged for the diva just to look at them now stayed at home, trembling and hoping that the SS would not connect them to her. If they had dared to hang the most beloved woman in all of Italy, what else would they be capable of!

  Vittorio was ruined, incapable of making decisions, so Amelia and Father Müller needed to call Carla’s lawyer to find out what they should do. The man was not keen to give any advice, but Amelia insisted.

  “You should have told Don Vittorio that there had been a trial, and what... what was going to happen.”

  “I promise you that I did not know. Don Vittorio Leonardi knows that I have done my duty as his lawyer, I did not stop trying to find out about Carla Alessandrini’s situation. But do you think that the SS follow legal procedure? They didn’t let me see her the whole time that she was in prison. They refused to tell me the charges on which she was being detained. I... I found out what had happened from the radio, and I am in shock.”

  “Well, go to the prison and take charge of getting Carla’s body so that we can give it a Christian burial.”

  “Me? I... I don’t think that’s a good idea. It should be her husband, Don Vittorio Leonardi, who goes to pick up the body.”

  “You are being paid a sizeable retainer to deal with family affairs.”

  The lawyer said nothing. He wanted to get away from Carla and from Vittorio, and from anything that might connect him to them. He forgot that he had been a recently credentialed lawyer when he had met Carla in the office of a much more important lawyer where he worked as a clerk, and that she had thought him amusing and had employed him then and there to handle all of her business affairs. In a second he thrust away from his heart all those years shared with the diva and her husband, all those parties where he had rubbed shoulders with Italian high society, all those arrogant principesas, some of whom had become his clients, all the business opportunities that would not have come his way had it not been for the diva.

  Yes, he had grown rich thanks to Carla Alessandrini, she had taken him from nothing and turned him into an important lawyer; but now she was dead, they had hanged her for high treason, and he thought that his loyalties now lay with himself and his family. What would it help anyone if they hanged him too?

  “We will wait for you, don’t be long,” Amelia ordered him, trying to put a firmness into her voice that she did not in fact feel.

  “I will come by the house one of these days to give Vittorio my condolences; as for the will, well, he knows what to do.”

  “He won’t come,” Amelia told Father Müller.

  “I will go,” the priest offered.

  “You? In what capacity?”

  “As Carla’s confessor, as a family representative, as a priest who wants to give her a Christian burial.”

  “Be careful, Rudolf.”

  He shrugged. It is not that he was not scared; he was, but he felt that his office obliged him to face up to evil, and Nazism seemed to him to be the personification of evil; so he decided to follow his conscience even though it might cost him his life.

  Vittorio insisted that the family chauffeur drive him, and he accepted.

  Father Müller came back at midday with Carla’s body. He did not explain how much he had needed to humiliate himself in order to get it, and he brought it up to the house in his own arms.

  Vittorio fainted when he saw the bulky object wrapped in coarse hessian cloth, knowing that it was his wife’s corpse. Amelia did not allow him to see it, and with the help of Pasqualina, Carla’s dresser, who was one of the very few people who had come to show her grief, she prepared her friend’s body for Christian burial.

  They dressed her in one of her best dresses, and wrapped her in the mink stole that she had loved so much. When they put her into the coffin, they would not let anyone see her. They did not want people to remember a hanged woman’s face, but the face of the Carla they had known in her lifetime. They wouldn’t even let Vittorio see it.

  They would have to wait until December 26 to bury her, for it was not possible on Christmas Day.

  As evening fell, Father Müller went back to the Vatican.

  “I don’t think you should go to San Clemente this evening. Marchetti will have heard the news and he will not come.”

  “Of course he will come, and I need to talk to him.”

  “Why? We can’t do anything for Carla now.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  The priest looked at Amelia with a worried expression, wondering what she might be planning.

  “She’s dead, we can only pray for her.”

  “You pray, I will not.”

  “You haven’t cried yet.”

  “Do you really think so? You haven’t seen my tears, but I have not stopped crying.”

  “Amelia, we will stand vigil for Carla, we will pray for her, and we will give her a decent burial. It’s the only thing we can do, the only thing that Vittorio wants us to do, Then, you should go home, you are not safe here. Max is right, Colonel Jürgens is capable of anything.”

  “You know something? I think he ordered her to be hanged just to hurt me, to show me how powerful he is. I will live with this guilt for the rest of my life.”

  “What are you saying! Carla was arrested a long time before you came to Rome. We all know what the SS do to their prisoners. They wanted to teach people a lesson, they wanted the Italians to know that no one is immune, not even their most beloved symbols. Her murder has nothing to do with you.”

  “Well, I think it does, it’s Colonel Jürgens’s way of hurting me.”

  “He would have killed her even if you did not exist. Carla was a legend, and the SS wanted to teach the Italians a lesson.”

  But Amelia was convinced that Carla’s murder was directly connected to the ignoble desires that Jürgens felt for her. Because of this she decided, as they washed Carla’s body, on a plan that she would carry out to its bitter end.

  Dr. Ferratti, Father Müller’s friend, came to the house at Amelia’s insistence to give Vittorio something that would help him sleep.

  “I want to sit up with her all night, I don’t want her to be alone,” Vittorio said between sobs.

  “She will not be alone, I will be there with her,” Amelia assured her, “but you have to sleep, you need to sleep.”

  Amelia convinced him to stay up with his wife until around midnight, and then she would relieve him until dawn.

  “I want to go to Mass, Vittorio; I need to pray; when I come back from Midnight Mass then you will go to bed, promise
me.”

  Dr. Ferratti gave Amelia a sleeping pill for Vittorio.

  “I will come and see you tomorrow,” the doctor promised, upset by the tragedy that had struck this house.

  The few friends who had come left the house. It was Christmas Eve and in spite of the pain they felt for the loss of Carla, they had families, children whom they had to look after and make feel happy on a night like this.

  Vittorio and Amelia stayed behind, with Carla’s dresser as their only companion. She was a widow with only one daughter, who had married a teacher in Florence a long time ago; she had all the time in the world to mourn the diva, with whom she had forged a sincere friendship.

  They had put the coffin in the middle of the large room where Carla had in days gone by organized her finest parties.

  At eleven o’clock, Amelia said goodbye to Vittorio and Pasqualina, the dresser.

  “Look after Don Vittorio, I’ll come back once the Mass is over. And if you want, Pasqualina, you can stay here to sleep, it’s late for you to go home.”

  “I would like to sit up with the mistress.”

  “Of course, please stay.”

  When she walked out of the door she felt a chill. She walked slowly, trying not to draw the attention of the few people whose paths she crossed, and who, like her, carried missals in their hands and were on the way to some church or other to celebrate Midnight Mass.

  She reached San Clemente at the stroke of midnight, when the bells were just falling silent, having summoned the faithful.

  She sat in the back row of the church, her body tense, trying to spy Mateo Marchetti. Father Müller had told her nothing more than that the singing teacher would be in the church. She waited for him to approach her, or for someone to give some kind of a sign. She followed the progress of the Mass like a robot. She prayed without paying attention to what she said, looking all over the church for Marchetti.

  She looked at the congregation, trying to imagine which of them could be with the partisan, but they all seemed to be peaceful families, celebrating Christmas Eve together. The Mass ended and the faithful began to file out of the church. She was wondering what she should do when she felt someone nudge her arm. A woman had stood next to her and, without saying a word, indicated that Amelia should follow her. They walked out of the church, side by side, as if they knew each other, and Amelia followed her a long way without daring to say anything. Then the woman stopped outside a door, which she opened quickly. They went up to the first floor in absolute silence.

  Mateo Marchetti looked much older, but his eyes still shone with the same intensity that they had in Carla’s house. He was seated in the shadows, with three men who appeared to be on guard standing around him.

  “Why did you want to see me?” he asked directly.

  “I wanted you to help me save Carla.”

  “That was impossible. She was condemned from the very first day she was arrested.”

  “Was it you who put her in harm’s way?”

  “You knew her, do you think that she was capable of standing on the sidelines while all this happened? She wanted to have a role to play and she was given one, the most difficult and dangerous role of her life. She was very brave and saved the lives of a lot of people. Her last mission was difficult. It was not very likely that it would succeed. She knew what might happen.”

  “It was insane to send her to Switzerland with that man, Il Duce’s employee.”

  “She wasn’t really taking that man, she was serving as bait.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Amelia felt all her muscles tense.

  “The Allies needed the information that this man could give her, so we set up a decoy operation. She knew that the SS was watching her, especially Colonel Jürgens, who seemed to be obsessed with her. We organized it so that Carla traveled with a man who looked a lot like Il Duce’s steward, while we got the real man out of the country by another route.”

  “You sent her right into the lions’ den!”

  “Carla agreed to do it. She laughed at the shock that Jürgens would get to discover that the man she was bringing with her was nothing but a poor shoemaker. A Communist, yes, but not the man they were looking for. Jürgens was enraged when he found out he’d been tricked, and well... you know the rest.”

  “Everyone thought that Carla was traveling with Il Duce’s steward.”

  “Yes, the SS spread that story, and as you can imagine, we weren’t going to deny it.”

  “You used her,” Amelia said.

  “No, don’t think that. Carla never did anything she didn’t want to do. She helped us, yes, like she helped that priest, Father Müller, and worked in collaboration with him and with us. In short, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Yes, there is something that can be done.” Amelia’s voice piqued Marchetti’s curiosity.

  “Tell me.”

  “I am going to kill Colonel Jürgens and I want you to help me.”

  The singing teacher said nothing, and looked straight at Amelia. He could never have imagined that he would hear such words from this thin and fragile-looking girl.

  “And how are you going to kill him?”

  “He... he wants... he wants to...”

  “. . . he wants to sleep with you,” Marchetti said, having arrived at this conclusion from Amelia’s blushes.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t think that he will mistrust you, especially now that he’s just hanged your friend? Jürgens might want you very badly, but he is a cold-blooded and intelligent man. He will suspect something is wrong if you suddenly fall into his arms.”

  “But he won’t say no. He will mistrust me, he will think that I’m planning something, even that I’m planning to kill him, but he won’t say no. I need a pistol, that’s all that I need from you.”

  “A pistol? The first thing he’ll do will be to look in your bag.”

  “I want a pistol that I can hide in my underclothes.”

  “He will kill you. It’s impossible that he will not realize what’s happening.”

  “Yes, it’s likely, but I might be lucky and kill him first.”

  “What does it matter if he dies?”

  “He deserves to die, he’s a murderer.”

  “Do you know how many murderers there are like him out there?”

  “If it doesn’t work, it will be my fault; if it does work then the Resistance will be able to say that this is what happens to people who kill innocents.”

  “Even if you manage to do it, they will arrest you. You will not be able to escape.”

  “I have a plan.”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “I prefer not to. All I ask is a pistol, nothing else.”

  “This will not turn out well.”

  Amelia shrugged. She had decided to risk her life to end Jürgens’s. It was an account that she needed to settle; she owed it to Grazyna, to Justyna, to Tomasz, to Ewa, to Piotr, to all her Polish friends, to Carla... and she owed it to herself.

  “Go to confession in San Clemente in three days’ time. And now leave. Forget about this house and forget that you have seen me.”

  Marchetti made a sign to one of the men who was watching the street from the window.

  “There’s no one out there, boss.”

  Trembling with fear, Amelia faced up to the darkness of the night and, walking pressed to the wall and stopping every time she heard a noise, she made it to Vittorio’s house.

  “I was worried about you! It’s two o’clock in the morning. I thought you had been arrested.”

  “I got lost. I stayed behind after the mass to pray.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Amelia! I know that they lock the church after the Midnight Mass.”

  “I’m not lying to you, Vittorio, trust me. And now let me take over. I’ll sit up with Carla.”

  “No, I can’t leave you here alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. You need to rest, tomorrow will be a long day.”

  �
�It’s Christmas Day.”

  Amelia sent Pasqualina to get some water, and insisted that Vittorio take the pill that Dr. Ferratti had given her.

  “It will help you rest.”

  “I don’t want Carla to be alone,” he insisted.

  “I will be with her, I promise.”

  Then she sent Pasqualina away and remained in the salon alone. And that is when she started to cry.

  They buried Carla on the afternoon of December 26. Barely twenty people came to the burial. If Carla had died of natural causes, before the war had broken out, the whole of Italy would have come out into the streets to cry. But she had been hanged for high treason.

  “She would have preferred to have been buried in Milan. We have a mausoleum there.”

  “One day, when this war is over, you will take her there. For the time being, let her rest in peace here,” Father Müller said.

  Meanwhile, Max was still in Milan. He called Amelia and asked her to return to Spain.

  “I am sorry about Carla and I know what she meant to you; but please, don’t stay in Rome. We know what we can expect from that damned Jürgens.”

  “I will wait for you, Max.”

  “It’s just that... I’m sorry, Amelia, but once I’ve finished inspecting the troops here, I have to go to Greece, they told me this morning.”

  “To Greece?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  “Do you really want to come with me?”

  “I don’t feel like going to Spain.”

  “You could go to see your family and then come to see me in Athens.”

  “No, I want to come with you.”

  “You are in danger, Amelia. I have spoken with some friends, and they all say that Jürgens is obsessed with you.”

  “I won’t do anything that will put me in danger.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Of course she did not intend to keep her promise. She had not told Max that she had been invited to a New Year’s ball. The invitation had arrived on the same day that they hanged Carla, and Amelia had not even glanced at it. It was from Guido and Cecilia Gallotti, Vittorio’s friends who had been so close to Il Duce’s son-in-law, and who had been so nice to her when Carla invited her to Rome for the first time. They had even been an excellent source of information; she could still remember the reports that she had been able to send to London thanks to the couple’s lack of discretion.