Tell Me Who I Am by Julia Navarro
For Amelia, this was a different Paris from the city she had known traveling with her parents. This time she did not spend her days visiting her great-aunt Lily, her grandmother Margot’s sister; neither did she go to museums, as she had with her father and mother and her sister Antonietta. She would have liked to go see her great-aunt, but how to tell her that she had abandoned her family? Aunt Lily would not have understood, would surely have reproached her for her decision. Pierre seemed to be in a hurry for Amelia to meet his friends, and above all for her to take the pulse of the political activity in this fascinating city, which appeared to have revolutionaries on every corner. Even so, she still found time to take the Russian classes that she found so inspiring.
A few days after arriving in Paris, Pierre supported her bid for membership in the Communist Party, in the face of the chary reaction of certain comrades, who thought it a little hasty to welcome this little-known Spaniard into their ranks.
Jean Deuville, a poet friend and coreligionist of Pierre, was one of the people who opposed most firmly Amelia’s entry into the French Communist Party.
“We don’t know who she is,” he argued before the Paris committee, “for all that Comrade Pierre vouches for her.”
“Isn’t my guarantee enough? You will recall that it was enough to get you admitted into the Party,” Pierre counterattacked.
Perhaps because of a certain polite pressure from the Soviet Embassy, or else because Deauville did not want to compromise his friendship with Pierre, Amelia Garayoa was admitted into the French Communist Party. She, a foreigner, with no credentials other than being the lover of a man valued by the Soviets who was convinced that this Spanish woman could be extremely useful. What Amelia did not know was that, weeks earlier, Pierre’s controller had sent him the most recent orders from the head of INO operations in Moscow: Pierre was to travel to South America to support and help expand the Communist networks that were being set up there with local agents.
The head of INO operations had warned him of the occasionally explosive temperament shown by South Americans, and had insisted that he be careful in choosing his collaborators.
Since then, Pierre had not stopped thinking of his approaching mission, and how he would need a more convincing alibi than that of a bookseller in search of bibliographic rarities; that made sense in Europe, but not in that part of the world, which seemed to him both distant and unknown.
When he met Amelia, he began to think that the young woman could be of some use. Not only was she delicately beautiful and graceful, but she was also a complete innocent, pure clay in his hands, incapable of seeing beyond her own emotions.
To set up in Mexico or Argentina as two lovers fleeing an abandoned husband would lend verisimilitude to their alibi for setting themselves up abroad. And with her being Spanish, the alibi would be all the stronger.
Bear in mind that Pierre was a Soviet agent, a man who lived only for the revolution, and his blind dedication to the cause was such that the human beings who stood in his path were no more than pawns, to be used and discarded for a superior idea. Amelia was no exception.
Ever since he decided to include her as part of his South American plan, Pierre had been careful not to make any mistakes with Amelia, to whom he had appeared as a seducer fallen into love’s clutches.
To reinforce Amelia’s dependence on him, Pierre made her go with him to all the meetings of his friends where it was likely that he would meet one of his former lovers, with whom he would exchange significant glances in order to make the Spanish woman uncertain.
This was why Amelia had been caught up in a whirlpool of political meetings from her first day in Paris, interspersed with meals with Pierre’s friends, some of whom commented behind his back that they could not understand why a man of his convictions and value had surrendered himself to such a beautiful yet insubstantial and naïve creature.
All people were talking about in those days was Léon Blum, and the consequences of the dissolution of the Action Française, whose militants had attacked Blum in February 1936 as he followed Bainville’s funeral cortège.
It was during a dinner at La Coupole, in celebration of Pierre’s birthday, that Amelia first met Albert James.
Albert James was an American newspaperman, of Irish descent, who was freelancing for various North American newspapers and magazines. Tall, with chestnut hair and green eyes, he was good-looking and very successful with women. He liked to behave like a bon vivant, he was a virulent anti-Fascist, but he had not fallen for Marxism. He was a friend not of Pierre’s but of Jean Deuville’s, so he came to their group to say hello, attracted by Amelia above all.
He drank a glass of champagne with their little group and managed to get next to Amelia, whom he noticed appeared out of place.
“What’s a young girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked without preambles, taking advantage that Pierre was greeting another friend who had come to join the group.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“Well, it’s clear that this is not your normal milieu, I imagine you sitting in a window, embroidering, waiting for your handsome prince to come and rescue you.”
Amelia laughed at Albert James’s notion; she found him friendly at first sight.
“I am not a princess, so it would be hard for me to have the time to wait, embroidering, for a prince to come along.”
“French?”
“No, Spanish.”
“But your French is perfect.”
“My grandmother is French, from the south, and we always spoke in French; we spent our summers in Biarritz.”
“You sound nostalgic.”
“Nostalgic?”
“Yes, as if you were very old and remembering bygone times.”
“Don’t let Albert reel you in,” Jean Deuville interrupted. “He may be an American, but his father was Irish, and he’s learned the art of seduction from us French; as normally happens, the pupil is better than his master.”
“Oh, but we weren’t talking of anything in particular!” Amelia excused herself.
“Also, although it doesn’t seem that way, Pierre is jealous, and I would not like to have to be the second at a duel between good friends,” Deuville joked.
Amelia blushed. She was not accustomed to these relaxed jokes. It was difficult for her to play the role of the lover that she had taken on among these apparently unprejudiced men and women who nevertheless scrutinized her and murmured behind her back.
“Are you Pierre’s fiancée?” Albert James asked with interest.
“More than his fiancée, she’s the woman who has stolen his heart. They live together,” Jean Deuville said, so as not to leave the American any room for doubt that he should not try to go any further with Amelia.
She felt uncomfortable. She did not see why Jean had needed to be so explicit in positioning her in a situation in which she felt clearly inferior.
“I see, so you are a liberated woman, something that surprises me, as you’re Spanish, although they’ve told me that things have changed in Spain, and thanks to the government of the Left, women have started to have a significant role in all areas of society. Are you a revolutionary as well?” Albert James asked ironically.
“Don’t tease me,” Amelia said, breathing a sigh of relief to see Pierre approaching.
“What are you telling these two scoundrels?” Pierre asked, pointing at Albert and Jean. “By the way, that was a very good article in the New York Times about the danger of Nazism in Europe. I read it when I got back from Spain, and I must say I am frankly surprised at your perspicacity. You say that you are sure that Hitler will not stay happily inside his frontiers, that he will want to expand, and you suggest that his first little mouthful will be Austria, and that Mussolini will do nothing to stop him, not just because he’s a Fascist too, but because he knows that he is bound to lose anything he stakes against Germany.”
“Yes, I think so. I spent a month traveling around Germany, Austria, and Ital
“It’s not that we should fight against Nazism because they persecute the Jews, but because they’re a blot on the whole of humankind,” Pierre replied.
“But you cannot avoid what’s happening to the Jews.”
“I am a Communist and my only aim is revolution, to free all men from the capitalist yoke that holds them down without allowing them to be free. I don’t care if they’re Jews or Buddhists. Any religion is a cancer. You should know that.”
“You have to have an idea of God not to believe in Him,” Albert shrugged.
“If you believe in God you will never be a free man, you’ll let your life be ruled by superstition.”
“And if only I became a Communist... Do you think I’d be freer? Wouldn’t I have to listen to what Moscow wanted? In the end, what Moscow wants to do is to save mankind from capitalism, and lots of you end up making Communism your religion. Your faith is greater than that of our parents when they recited the Bible. I don’t know if you’ll be so keen on my next report on the Soviet Union; I’m hoping to go very soon. You know that the Soviet Minister of Culture has organized a tour for European and American writers and journalists to see the achievements of the revolution; you know me, my problem is that I analyze and criticize everything that I see.”
“That’s why nobody likes you.” Pierre’s reply showed just how much Albert was annoying him.
“I’ve never believed that journalists should be likeable, quite the contrary.”
“Well, you’re doing a good job.”
“Boys, boys, boys!” Jean Deuville interrupted. “Look how upset you get over nothing. Don’t pay them any attention, Amelia, they’re like that, as soon as they meet they argue and there’s no one who can stop them. They carry the seeds of argument around with them. But it’s your birthday, Pierre, so let’s celebrate. That’s why we’re here, right?”
Albert took his leave, abandoning Pierre to his bad mood and Amelia to her surprise. She had listened to the argument in silence, without daring to speak. The two men seemed to be fighting some duel that they had begun a long time ago.
“He’s a poor devil, just like the rest of the Americans, he cannot abandon capitalism,” Pierre pronounced.
“Don’t be unfair. Albert is a good person, he just hasn’t had his road to Damascus moment yet; it’s our fault, we haven’t been able to convince him to sign up for our cause, although he’s not against us either. But in one thing he is very close to us, he hates the Fascists,” Jean Deuville replied.
“I don’t trust him. He has a lot of friends who are Trotskyites.”
“And who in Paris doesn’t know a Trotskyite?” Jean Deauville said. “Let’s not be paranoid.”
“Look who’s defending the American!”
“I’m defending him from your arbitrariness. The pair of you are unbearable whenever you try to be right.”
“Don’t compare me with him!”
There was something ferocious in Pierre’s tone, and Jean did not reply. He knew that if he carried on speaking then they would end up having an argument, and they had already had one a few weeks ago about Amelia, which was why Jean wanted sincerely to show that he meant no offense.
“Come on Amelia, there’s nothing that a glass of champagne won’t cure,” Pierre said, taking Amelia by the arm and leading her to the table where the rest of the group was seated.
Pierre was cautiously organizing the trip to South America that Moscow had ordered him to make. Their first stop would be in Buenos Aires, where the Communist Party seemed to have great prestige among the cultural strata of the Argentinian capital. From a strategic point of view, this was not a vital area for Soviet interests, but the head of the INO wanted to have eyes and ears everywhere. During his Moscow training, Pierre’s INO instructors had made much of the fact that it was important to know how to listen to and gather all kinds of information, however insubstantial they might seem; it happens that vital information is sometimes gathered thousands of kilometers from where it might have an effect. They had also drummed into him the importance of having agents who moved within the most influential spheres of the country of operation. It was not useful at all for them to have enthusiastic activists who worked a long way from the centers of power.
Moscow had a “resident” in Buenos Aires, but they lacked well-positioned agents capable of transferring them information of interest.
Amelia did not want to leave Paris, and insisted to Pierre that they wait a little longer, that she was not yet mentally ready to leave her child so far away. It was not that she was intending to return to Spain, but when she thought about Buenos Aires the distance seemed to her unbearable.
Extremely patiently and with great caution, Pierre tried to convince her that it was better to begin a new life in a place where nobody knew them.
“We need to know if our love is truly valuable. I want us to be alone, where no one recognizes us, just you and me. I am sure that no one and nothing will manage to separate us, but we have to put our love to the test, without any interference, without any family, without any friends.”
She asked for more time, time to get used to the idea that the best thing was to start a new life on the other side of the ocean. Pierre did not want to force her, afraid that she would decide in distress to return to Spain.
At times he despaired of Amelia’s attitude, because she could swing from euphoria to despair in seconds. He regularly found her weeping, lamenting that she was such a bad mother and that she had abandoned her son. At other times she seemed happy and carefree, she would encourage him to come out for a while and have fun, and they would get lost in the corners of Paris like lovers.
His mother, Olga, did not make things easier, convinced that she had lost her son because of this Spanish woman.
“You’re going to throw your life away for this woman! She doesn’t deserve it! What will we do with the bookshop if you don’t return? You father is suffering, even though he doesn’t tell you,” she reproached her son.
In fact, Guy Comte accepted Pierre’s decision to go live in South America with resignation. He trusted his son implicitly, and was convinced that if Pierre had made a decision, then it was the right one. In his heart of hearts, however, he asked himself how it was possible for his son to sacrifice so much for a woman like Amelia, whom he found beautiful but bland.
On June 4, 1936, Léon Blum became the premier of a Popular Front government. Don Manuel Azaña had already become the president of the Spanish Republic after a vote in which the Right abstained. Indalecio Prieto could not accept the government because of the veto applied by the bloc supporting Largo Caballero in the PSOE.
Amelia followed the news from Spain with anxiety, and knew that the situation was much more uneasy than it had been when she had left.
Pierre’s friends said that anything could happen in Spain, as long as the right wing did not step back from its policies of terror and provocation.
Pierre had intended to leave for Buenos Aires at the end of July. They would travel in a luxurious first-class cabin on a liner that was leaving from Le Havre.
“It will be our honeymoon,” he assured her as he tried to overcome her last resistance.
At the beginning of July, Pierre met with his controller in Paris. Igor Krisov looked like something he was not: an affable British Jew of Russian origin, dedicated to antiques.
In reality, Igor Krisov ran agents in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Holland.
Kristov came to the Café de la Paix and looked for Pierre. Pierre was reading a newspaper in an inattentive way and drinking coffee. He sat down at the table next to Pierre’s and ordered a cup of tea.
“I see you got my message.”
“Yes,” Pierre replied.
“Well, Comrade, I have instructions for you. Moscow wants you to go to Spain before you head off.”
“To Spain, again?”
“Yes, the situation there is getting worse by the day, and we want you to speak with some people. This envelope contains the instructions. We really would like for it to be you to undertake this mission: It’s only for a few days.”
“I have a problem. You know that I have a ‘cover,’ a Spanish woman; she’s not very convinced about the journey we’re going to make. If I leave her alone for a few days, she might get cold feet...”
“I thought you were more persuasive with the ladies,” Krisov replied ironically.
“She’s just a kid. I’ve spent a lot of effort and patience on her. I think that she’ll end up being a good agent, ‘blind’ but useful.”
“Don’t make the mistake of telling her what you really do,” Krisov warned him.
“That’s why I said she’d be a ‘blind’ agent; she’ll work for us without knowing what she’s really doing. She’s an inveterate romantic and she’s convinced that my only desire is to spread Communism throughout the world.”
“Isn’t it, Comrade?”
Krisov’s ironic gaze upset Pierre.
“Of course it is, Comrade.”
“We’ve approved your use of the Garayoa woman. Given her characteristics, we believe, as do you, that she could prove useful, but don’t confide in her.”
“I won’t, Comrade.”
“Well, we’ll see each other when we return from Spain.”
On July 10, Pierre and Amelia arrived in Barcelona; they stayed once again at Doña Anita’s house. It was helpful for Pierre’s peace of mind to be able to count on the widow’s hospitality, as she looked after Amelia while he was at his meetings. He had first thought to leave Amelia in Paris with his parents, but he abandoned the idea, as he realized that his father would not be able to do anything if Olga and Amelia came face to face. Also, Pierre was starting to worry, because with every day that passed Amelia seemed to regret the step she had taken, and this meant that he could not let her out of his sight.