Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  “It’s better to be clear about things,” Amelia replied, and smoothed her skirt with an automatic hand, as if this gesture would lessen the shame that she felt at Max’s words.

  “I need you to understand me, for you to tell me what you think, and if you think that there’s any other way out.”

  “No, Max, no, there isn’t. The truth hurts, but I prefer truth to lies. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it if you had given me hope and then... I know who I am: a married woman who has abandoned her husband and her son, her family, to run away with another man. In the eyes of the rest of the world this turns me into a disreputable woman, and I understand that your parents would never be able to accept me. I don’t ask for you to break your engagement with Ludovica, I know that your sense of honor would suffer so badly that you would never be able to forgive me for breaking your word, even if you never made mention of this to me again. Let’s leave it at this. We have shared some very special days together, but I have always known that you were going to have to leave and that I would play no role at all in your future. It is just... Well, you have given me back my desire to live. I wanted to leave work so that I could meet you and the Hertzes, I waited for the telephone to ring and for Gloria to invite me to spend some time in the country. I will always be grateful to you for these days, because, don’t you see, I thought I was dead.”

  He took her home. They walked next to one another without touching, in silence.

  “We will see each other again before I leave,” Max said.

  “Of course, I know that Gloria is preparing a farewell party for you.”

  To the relief of Martin and Gloria, Max and Amelia did not see each other alone again. Amelia did not come to Max’s farewell party, but sent a note to wish him luck.

  This brief and barren relationship with Baron von Schumann left a deep mark, one more deep mark, on Amelia. She lost the happiness that she seemed to have found at Max’s side, and her friends found her ever more taciturn and pensive.

  February 5 was the day planned for Pierre to begin his journey to Moscow. As the date approached, he grew ever more nervous. Krisov’s warning had taken root so strongly in his mind that he was almost unable to sleep, seeing himself in dreams being interrogated and tortured by his comrades. Some nights he woke up screaming, and Amelia would come to calm him down and offer him a glass of water. He held her hand like a desperate child.

  Pierre’s fears awakened Amelia’s protective instinct. She began to worry about him as if he were indeed a child. When she finished her day’s work at the cake shop she would hurry home to be with Pierre. They did not share a bed, but she looked after him affectionately. Amelia was so caring that their friends thought that they had reconciled. He, the sophisticated man of the world, allowed himself to be controlled by her and looked at her gratefully; he also got nervous when she was not at his side. A special bond grew between them during these days.

  Although Pierre had told Amelia that she would not travel with him, and insisted on his plan of having her fall ill on the day of their departure, they had both announced to all their friends that they were going to travel in Europe, and would most likely pass through Moscow. Nobody was surprised that Pierre wanted to visit his parents in Paris and to go hunting for those special editions that he later sold for so much.

  The day before his departure, Pierre looked at the care Amelia was taking with the luggage.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said in a low voice, thinking that she wouldn’t hear him.

  “I don’t think so,” Amelia said, and looked him straight in the face.

  “Yes, I will miss you, you’re a part of me, the best thing I’ve ever had in my life even though I haven’t seen it until it was too late,” Pierre said with regret.

  “You’re not going to miss me because I’m coming with you.”

  “What are you saying! You can’t, it’s impossible.”

  “Yes, I can. I don’t think you’ll be able to face up to what you are going to have to deal with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you’re scared, and with good reason. And when you scream at night even I get scared. You don’t know what you’re going to have to deal with in Moscow, and you need someone by your side.”

  “Yes, I am afraid of what might happen. They say terrible things about Comrade Yezhov.”

  “They said the same things about Comrade Yagoda.”

  “You don’t have to take any risk for me, you’ve sacrificed enough. It’s your chance to go back to Spain, to be free.”

  “You’re right, it is my chance, but I’m not going to leave you alone. I’ll accompany you, we’ll see what happens in Moscow, and if Igor Krisov told us the truth, then at least I’ll be by your side; if he was wrong, then I’ll go back to Spain as soon as possible.”

  “Amelia, I can’t ask you to do this.”

  “You’re not asking me, I’ve decided for myself. I’m just postponing my plans for a month or so. I have loved you a lot, Pierre, in spite of the pain you’ve caused me, and I cannot bear to see you in this state. I will go with you tomorrow and I hope to God that Krisov was mistaken and that we will both be able to return...”

  Professor Muiños fell silent, lost in his thoughts. His silence brought me back to the present.

  “My great-grandmother! Who’d have thought it?” I said in surprise, realizing as I did so that the phrase was becoming a bit of a cliché.

  I had spent three days going backwards and forwards all over the city with Professor Muiños; he had shown me all the places my great-grandmother had visited. He hadn’t given me any time to breathe, even.

  “Well, we’ve reached the end of this part of the story, you need to go to Moscow,” the professor said absentmindedly.

  “To Moscow?”

  “Yes, my dear boy, to Moscow. I’ve told you everything I know about Amelia Garayoa’s time in Buenos Aires, but if you want to know more then you’ll have to carry on with your investigations, and that means Moscow.”

  “I thought that you might be able to tell me the whole story.”

  The professor laughed unfeignedly, as if I had just said something funny.

  “I see that not even my good friend Professor Soler has all that much information about Amelia Garayoa. Young man, you have only just started to find out what happened to her. I’m telling you that this woman’s life was passionate and difficult, difficult above all else. I’m afraid that if you want to find out more then you will have to go to Moscow.”

  “To Moscow?”

  “Yes, I told you that your great-grandmother followed Pierre Comte to Moscow. Don’t pull faces. I have arranged for you to meet with Professor Tania Kruvkoski. She’s an important person and an independent historian, an expert on everything to do with the Cheka, the GPU, the OGPU, the NKVD, and the KGB. Professor Kruvkoski is the right person for you to see if you need to know about Amelia’s stay in Moscow. She’s one of the very few people who has been allowed to see some of the KGB archives, although with restrictions and only after having promised not to speak about certain topics. She has been allowed to look at material from the thirties and forties, all the way up to the end of the Second World War. The KGB was the skeleton on which the new state was built, so they haven’t let her see anything from any later period, anything after 1945. I called her this morning, and although she does not want to meet you she has agreed to do so because of her friendship with Professor Soler and me. I suggest that you are careful in your dealings with her; Tania Kruvkoski has a devilish temper and if you don’t win her respect than she’ll send you packing.”

  I went back to my hotel thinking about what to do. It was obvious that Professor Muiños thought that his conversations with me were done, and what’s more he had arranged for me a meeting in Moscow in two days’ time.

  I decided to call my mother, the newspaper, and Aunt Marta, in that order, to know whether I could take the flight to Moscow.

  I was tired. In less than a week I had pas
sed through Barcelona, Rome, and Buenos Aires, but if Aunt Marta gave me the go-ahead I’d find myself on my way to Moscow.

  As I had expected, my mother scolded me. I hadn’t called her for four days and she said that she had been so worried that she got a stomachache, and that it was my fault.

  The conversation with Pepe, the editor of the newspaper, was equally unflattering.

  “Guillermo, where the hell are you? One thing is getting an interview with Professor Soler, another is thinking that you’re going to get the Nobel Prize. I’ve sent you three books for urgent review and you haven’t shown any signs of life at all.”

  “Look, Pepe, don’t get upset with me. The review can wait, because I’ve got something better for the newspaper. I told you I had to go to Buenos Aires, and it’s the Book Fair here now, the one that’s the most important in Latin America alongside the one in Guadalajara in Mexico.”

  “Look at you! So you’re in Buenos Aires.”

  “Yes, and I’ll send you some articles about the Book Fair, and a few interviews with authors, and I won’t charge you expenses, but I’d like you to pay more than you do for the reviews, alright?”

  Pepe grumbled for a bit but accepted in principle, but only if I got him the first article within the hour.

  I didn’t promise anything, and called Aunt Marta, who greeted me with her habitual ill-humor.

  “Are you living it up over there?” she asked ironically.

  “Yes, yes I am. Buenos Aires takes your breath away, you really should come here for your vacation one year.”

  “Stop talking nonsense and tell me what you’re doing!”

  I summarized my investigation without going into much detail, which made her even more annoyed, so much so that when I said I was going to Moscow her response was abrupt: She hung up on me.

  I decided to take a break and think about what to do, and also to go to the Book Fair in order to send the reports I had promised. The difficult part would be getting an author to give me an interview. I had no accreditation and nobody was scheduled to see me.

  I must have a guardian angel, because when I got to the convention center where the Book Fair was being held I met a couple of young Spanish authors, who had been invited to participate in a round-table discussion on current literary developments organized by the fair. I stuck to them like a limpet, attended the discussion, and asked each of them a dozen or so questions, which was how I got my interviews done; then I ran the risk of having them think me a sponger by not leaving them alone, so I ended up meeting four Argentinian writers, an editor, a couple of literary critics, and a few journalists like me.

  When I got back to the hotel I had a “harvest” that was large enough to keep me on good terms with the newspaper and to win me some time, if indeed I eventually went to Moscow.

  I called my aunt again.

  “Do you know what time it is here?” she shouted at me.

  “No, what’s the time?”

  She didn’t tell me, she merely hung the phone up. So I decided to wake up my mother and ask her for a loan to go to Moscow myself, but she wasn’t keen to help me either, because she still blamed me for her stomachache.

  End of the road, I said to myself. I was quite upset, because the story of Amelia Garayoa was starting to become an obsession with me, not just because she was my great-grandmother, I couldn’t care less about that, but because she was turning out to be a great story.

  I let a few hours go by so as not to wake up anyone in Spain, then I called Doña Laura.

  The housekeeper made me wait for almost ten minutes and I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the old woman’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Tell me, Guillermo, where are you?”

  “In Buenos Aires, but I need to give you some bad news: I can’t carry on with the investigation.”

  “What? What’s happened? Professor Soler told me that you were being given the steps you need to follow and that you had a meeting arranged in Moscow.”

  “That’s the problem. My Aunt Marta doesn’t want to pay for my research anymore, so I won’t be able to go to Moscow. I’m sorry, I just wanted to tell you. Tomorrow or the day after I’ll go back to Spain, and if you don’t mind I’ll come around in the next few days to thank you for all the help you have given me. The truth is that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything without it.”

  Doña Laura seemed not to have heard me. She was silent, even though I thought I could hear her excited breathing over the phone line.

  “Doña Laura, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, of course. Look, Guillermo, we’d like you to continue your investigation.”

  “Yes, I’d like so too, but I don’t have any funds, so...”

  “I’ll pay for your trip.”

  “You?”

  “Well, both of us. At the beginning you were... Well, you didn’t make that much of a positive impression on us, but someone has to do what you are doing, and now we think that you’re the right man for the job. You have to continue. Give me the number of your bank account and we’ll transfer the money you need. But from now on you are working for us; that is, the story you write will not be for your Aunt Marta nor will it be read by her or any other member of your family.”

  “But... well, I don’t know what to say... I don’t think it’s right that you should pay for this investigation. No, I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

  “Don’t be silly!”

  “No, Doña Laura, I can’t accept, I’m very sorry but I just can’t.”

  “Guillermo, it was you who came to our house asking us for help to write about Amelia. It was difficult for us to make the decision, but once we made up our minds to trust you we haven’t stopped helping you, in fact... Well, as you said, you wouldn’t have found out anything without us. What you don’t know is that you have started a process that cannot now be stopped. So you should accept working for us, writing what you find out about the life of Amelia Garayoa, and then forget about her forever.”

  “But why are you so interested that I should investigate your cousin’s life? You should already know what happened...”

  “Don’t ask me questions. Answer me: Will you work for us or not?”

  I hesitated. The truth was that I did not want to give up on the investigation, but neither did I want to have to accept money from the Garayoas.

  “I don’t know, let me think.”

  “I want an answer now,” Doña Laura insisted.

  “Alright, I accept.”

  I wrote an e-mail to Aunt Marta telling her that I was going to continue the investigation with another “patron,” and, as might have been imagined, she rang me up a few minutes later in a fury.

  “Are you mad? You’ve flipped! Do you think that I’m going to let some unknown person pay you for investigating my grandmother’s life story? Guillermo, let’s put an end to this. I had an idea that turns out to be more complicated than I had imagined; come back to Madrid, tell me what you’ve found out, and I’ll think about what to do, but I can’t pay your world tour, you have to see that.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve promised some other people that I’m going to carry on with the investigation, and I’ll give them whatever I find out.”

  “But who are these people? I’m not going to let the family’s dirty linen be aired in front of devil knows who.”

  “I agree with you, but Amelia Garayoa, as well as being your grandmother, had relatives who are just as interested as you are to find out what became of her, so it won’t go out of the family.”

  My mother rang me to tell me that I was ruining her life. She had just argued with her sister about me. But I had also made a decision and had come around to thinking that working for Doña Laura and Doña Melita was the best thing, as I wouldn’t have taken a single step forward if it hadn’t been for them. Anyway, I was fed up with having to beg for every euro I needed from Aunt Marta.

  9

  I don’t know what the temperature was like in Moscow in
the spring of 1938, but it was freezing in 2009.

  I was happy to be in a city that seemed full of mysteries. As Doña Laura had, to my surprise, called me to say that she had made a deposit in my account and had reserved a room for me in the Hotel Metropol, it seemed that everything would run smoothly.

  “There’s swank for you!” I thought as I entered the Metropol. The city I had seen through the windows of my taxi did not need to envy New York, Paris, or Madrid, and I had seen more Maseratis and Jaguars in a few minutes than in my entire life. “These ex-Communists haven’t been slow to get up to date with how capitalism works!” I said to myself.

  Once I was in my room I decided to do my “homework” and call Tania Kruvkoski.

  The professor spoke English, thank goodness, and we understood each other immediately, even though I got a surprise when she said that if we wanted we could speak in Spanish. We arranged a meeting for the next morning at her house; she explained that it was not far from the Metropol, and I could easily reach it on foot.

  I spent the rest of the day being a tourist: I went to Lenin’s Mausoleum, strolled in Red Square, visited Saint Basil’s cathedral, and lost myself in the lively streets that were filled with bars and restaurants and high-end clothing boutiques.

  I had no idea about what Moscow must have been like before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but now I perceived it as the quintessence of capitalism. It was nothing like the city my mother had described to me: gray, poor, and sad. She had taken a trip to the Soviet Union back in the Communist days, and I think that if she could have seen it now, she would have flipped out.

  Professor Kruvkoski’s apartment was small but comfortable, with wooden shelves laden with books, cretonne curtains, a sofa, a couple of green velvet armchairs, and a dining table covered in papers. The professor was as I had imagined her, a hefty woman getting on in years, with her white hair tied back in a chignon at the nape of her neck. I was surprised by the almost girlish dress she had on, and the woolen shawl she wore over her shoulders.