Tell Me Who I Am by Julia Navarro
But behind the grandmotherly façade was an energetic woman who was not ready to give me any more of her precious time than was necessary; she already had files prepared on Pierre Comte and Amelia.
“My colleagues, Professor Soler and Professor Muiños, have asked me to explain to you what happened to Pierre Comte and Amelia Garayoa when they arrived in Moscow in February 1938. Well, I don’t know if you want to take notes...”
“I would prefer to record the conversation, as your Spanish is so excellent,” I replied, trying to flatter her.
“Do what you want. I don’t have much time. I’ll give you the morning, but not a minute more,” she warned me.
I nodded and started the MiniDisc recorder.
“As you will know, Comrade Stalin’s perversity knew no limits. Nobody was safe, everyone was a suspect, and purges were taking place on a daily basis. Little by little he had removed the men who fought in the front lines of the revolution, lifelong Bolsheviks who were accused of treason. Nobody’s head was safe on his shoulders. Stalin used men without scruples for his criminal policies, people who were prepared to commit the worst atrocities simply in order to serve him, thinking that this would be the way for them to keep their own lives, but many of whom ended badly as well, since Stalin felt gratitude toward no one and recognized nobody’s service.”
“By your age... Well... I thought that you were a revolutionary in your youth.”
“I am a survivor. When you live under a reign of terror, the only thing you want to do is to survive one day further, and you put your head down: You hear nothing, see nothing, almost feel nothing, terrified that you are going to be noticed. Terror destroys human beings, and your worst instincts come to the fore. But this is not about me, it’s about Comte and Garayoa.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry for interrupting, I just thought that you were a Communist.”
The professor shrugged and looked at me sourly, so I decided to shut up.
“My family fought in the October Revolution, but that didn’t guarantee us anything; my father and some of my cousins and uncles all died in the gulags because they dared to say out loud what was obvious: The system wasn’t working. It wasn’t that they didn’t think that Communism had the answers for building a better world, but they thought that the people running the country weren’t doing it right. Stalin starved thousands of peasants... But this is history, a history that isn’t the one you’ve come here to discover. I’ve told you that people adapt to circumstances in order to survive, and that my family put their heads down and shut up. Can we continue?”
“Yes, yes, sorry.”
Amelia and Pierre stayed at the house of Pierre’s Aunt Irina, his mother’s sister. She was married to a civil servant in the Foreign Ministry, Georgi, a man with no important job and no responsibilities. They had a son, Mikhail, a journalist, younger than Pierre and married to Anushka, a real beauty who worked in the theater. The house had two bedrooms and a little salon, which became Pierre and Amelia’s room.
The day after his arrival, Pierre went to the offices of the NKVD in Dzerzhinsky Square, the building sadly known as the Lubyanka...
Pierre was not received by anyone high up in the NKVD. А low-ranking functionary told him that he was now at the NKVD’s disposal and that they would assign him duties in due course. In the meantime he should write in detail about Krisov’s network, the network he had been a part of, giving names and details about all the “blind” agents who had collaborated with the NKVD in Europe.
Pierre protested. If he was in Moscow, he said, it was to organize the congress of world intellectuals. The functionary didn’t mince his words: Either Pierre fulfilled his orders or he would be considered a traitor.
Pierre did not dare argue further and grudgingly accepted the man’s instructions.
“You will work in the Identification and Archive Department with Comrade Vasiliev.”
Pierre remembered that Igor Krisov had told him about a friend who had been disgraced, Ivan Vasiliev, and he wondered if this might not be the same person.
Ivan Vasiliev was thirty-five years old at that time. He was tall, thin, and very strong, and had worked for the Foreign Department of the NKVD since its creation.
The Identification and Archive Department was in one of the basements of the Lubyanka, and it was accessible only via a set of stairs on which it was not unusual to meet prisoners descending with their heads bowed, aware that it was unusual for anyone to come out of that place alive.
Vasiliev pointed out to Pierre the desk where he was to work, lit by a powerful bulb. There was scarcely room to move because giant filing cabinets covered every inch of the wall.
“Were you a friend of Igor Krisov’s?” Pierre asked as soon as he sat down.
Ivan Vasiliev looked sternly at him, reproaching him in silence for having uttered that name. Then he swallowed and seemed to be choosing his words with care.
“I know that you were one of Comrade Krisov’s agents, and that he was a traitor of the worst kind.”
Pierre started to hear this answer and was about to say something, but Vasiliev’s eyes indicated that he should keep quiet.
Vasiliev dove into his papers, only emerging every now and then to go to other tables where men like him were working in silence. On one of these occasions he passed by Pierre’s desk and slipped him a piece of paper. Pierre was surprised and unfolded it.
“Don’t be stupid and don’t ask questions that might betray us both. Tear up this note. When I can I will talk to you.”
When Pierre got back to his Aunt Irina’s house late that afternoon, Irina was waiting for him impatiently.
“What happened? Why didn’t you call to say you were alright?” she reproached him in French, a language that she also used with Pierre’s aunt and uncle.
Pierre told Amelia and his aunt and uncle every vivid detail of that day, sparing nothing of his sense of distress and disappointment. This was not the “homeland” for which he had been giving his all. Aunt Irina asked him to speak more quietly.
“Don’t speak so loud and be more careful, or else we’ll all end up in the Lubyanka!” she scolded him.
“But why? Can’t we speak freely?” Amelia asked ingenuously.
“No, we can’t,” Uncle Georgi said.
Suddenly Pierre and Amelia came face to face with the fact that the myth they had sacrificed so much for was in fact a pitiless monster that could devour them without anyone being able to move a finger to stop it.
“So you’ve come here under false pretenses,” Uncle Georgi said.
“It’s clear from what you’re saying,” Aunt Irina said.
“Krisov warned you,” Amelia said.
“Who is Krisov?” Aunt Irina wanted to know.
“A man I worked for... ,” Pierre replied.
“His controller,” Amelia said.
“This isn’t the right time to say I told you so, but... well... Maybe it’s not the best job, to be a spy.” Aunt Irina did not want to hide her disgust for her nephew’s work. “Dedicating yourself to snooping on other people and denouncing them...”
“I have never denounced anyone!” Pierre protested. “My only task has been to gather information that could be useful to the Soviet Union and to the revolution.”
“Pierre’s done nothing wrong,” Amelia defended him.
“Spying is something naughty children do!” Aunt Irina insisted.
“Come on, woman, don’t get upset, your nephew is one of the many innocents who believed in the revolution; we believed in it as well and gave the very best of ourselves,” Uncle Georgi interrupted.
“Of course we did, but Stalin is...”
“Shut up! Now you’re not being careful, you know that the walls have ears. Do you want us all to get arrested?” Uncle Georgi said.
Aunt Irina fell silent and knotted her fingers together to try to hide her tension. She would have liked not to have had to look after her nephew, but Olga was her only sister, and also her only h
A little while later Mikhail arrived and joined the conversation. Pierre’s comments upset the young man.
“You’re exaggerating!” Mikhail protested, in Russian. “Of course there are problems! We’re building a new regime, a Russia without serfs, where only free men live, and we have to learn to be responsible for ourselves. Of course mistakes are sometimes made, but the important thing is the path we have chosen and where it will lead us. Did we live better under the czars? No, and you know that for a fact.”
“I lived better under the old czar,” Irina affirmed, looking boldly at her son. “Look around you, and you only see hunger. People are dying of hunger, can’t you see it? Not even you, who support the regime, not even you have more than the poorest people in this country. Yes, son, yes, I lived better under the old czar.”
“But you’re not an average Russian, you are a privileged bourgeois. Look around you, mother, and you’ll see that we all have the same opportunities, we’re all equal now.”
“People are dying of hunger and sent to prison for protesting. Stalin is worse than the czar ever was,” Irina replied.
“If you weren’t my mother... !”
“You’d denounce me? Stalin has rotted the Russian soul so much that you wouldn’t be the first son to denounce his parents. Even though Stalin is not the only guilty party, he alone is the favored disciple of Lenin, whom you hold up as a god. With him, human dignity stopped making sense, he turned it into worthless paper money.”
“Enough, Irina! I don’t want this argument to take place under my roof. And you, my son... you’ll see one day that the reality is a little different from how you imagine it in your hopes and dreams. I was a Bolshevik, I fought for the revolution, but now I don’t recognize it anymore. I don’t say anything because I want to live and I don’t want to put you in any danger, but I am a coward.”
“Father!”
“Yes, my son, I am a coward. I fought for the revolution, I was almost killed and I was not scared. But now I tremble that they might take me to the Lubyanka to confess some nonexistent crime, just as they have done to some of my friends, or that they might send me to one of those work camps in Siberia from which nobody ever returns.”
“I believe in the revolution,” Mikhail replied.
“And I fought for the revolution, but this is not it. This is a nightmare unleashed by Stalin.”
“Stalin watches out for the revolution, makes sure that no one goes against its aims!” Mikhail shouted.
They fell silent, exhausted, without looking at one another. Amelia and Pierre felt overwhelmed by what they had just heard.
Irina took Amelia’s hand to try to cheer her up.
“Don’t be afraid, these are family arguments, but Mikhail loves us and would never move a finger against us.”
They stopped talking when they heard a key in the lock. Anushka was back from work, and even though she and Mikhail were married, neither Irina nor Georgi spoke freely in front of her.
“Uf! I can see you’ve just had another row,” she said as she came in.
“My parents are too critical of the revolution,” Mikhail said.
“They are old, and they don’t understand that the revolution is only kept on track by freeing itself of its enemies.”
Amelia said nothing, but she was not sure that Anushka was right.
That night, when everyone else was asleep, Amelia spoke to Pierre. They were sharing a mattress on the floor.
“We have to get out of here,” she whispered.
“Out of my uncle’s house?”
“Out of the Soviet Union. We’re in danger.”
“It’s impossible. They won’t let me leave, or you either.”
“We’ll think of something, but we have to go. I feel like I’m drowning. I’m scared.”
Pierre held her hand, he was even more scared.
Aunt Irina started to give Amelia Russian lessons. They had been surprised to find that the young Spaniard had quite a good grasp of the language already.
“I don’t have much to teach you, you speak very well,” Aunt Irina said.
“Pierre has been a good teacher,” the young woman replied.
She was a good student because of her skill with languages, but also because the lessons helped take her mind off the situation.
Pierre’s aunt was a pleasant woman who looked after her family and who had looked after the house ever since a delicate heart operation six months before.
At the beginning of March, Uncle Georgi told Amelia that he had a job for her.
“We have a department at the ministry that receives newspapers and magazines from all over the world in order to assess how they discuss the Soviet Union. The relevant articles are read and classified, and the ones it is worth Molotov’s while to read are translated into Russian.”
“But I can’t translate into Russian,” Amelia protested.
“You don’t have to translate anything, all you need to do is read the German, French, and Spanish papers, and if there’s anything worth the effort, you give it to the head of the department and he’ll send it off to be translated, although you could do that as well. It’s a job just like any other; you can’t stay at home, it wouldn’t be good.”
“But I’m a foreigner...”
“Yes, a Spaniard, and a member of the French Communist Party. An international revolutionary,” Uncle Georgi replied ironically.
Amelia didn’t dare refuse, and Pierre encouraged her to take the job.
“It’s better if you work, if you don’t do anything it’s suspicious, they could accuse you of counterrevolutionary activity.”
This was how Amelia started to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs every morning along with Uncle Georgi, and didn’t get home until mid-afternoon. She had a bad time to begin with because, even though she spoke good Russian, her fellow workers looked at her without much confidence. The head of the department explained to her that she couldn’t discuss the content of articles published in the foreign press with anyone, and if there was any criticism of the Soviet Union then she should take it to him personally.
On March 13, Uncle Georgi came home in extreme agitation.
“Hitler has annexed Austria!” he said.
“I know, I know,” Mikhail replied. “That man is a danger and someone needs to stop him.”
“Will it be us?” Anushka wanted to know.
“It might be,” Uncle Georgi confirmed, “although for the time being our policy is to observe without interference.”
That night, Pierre was able to whisper to Amelia that he had spoken to Ivan Vasiliev.
“It was on the way out of the office, he ran into me on purpose and we walked a while together.”
“Why didn’t you say anything at supper?”
“Because I don’t trust Mikhail. He’s my cousin, but even so I don’t trust him, he’s a fanatic and Anushka isn’t much better. They’re party members and tight with their bosses.”
“And what did Ivan Vasiliev say to you?”
“He advised me to be cautious. Apparently they are observing me at the moment and want to give me some kind of test because they don’t trust me, because I was one of Krisov’s agents. Vasiliev thinks they’ll have me in the department for a couple of months and then they’ll decide what to do with me, the best thing, he says, is if they forget about me.”
“And when do you think they’ll let you go back to Buenos Aires?”
Pierre fell silent and gripped Amelia’s hand before answering.
“I don’t know, he says maybe never.”
“But your parents might need you!”
“They know I’ve got family here, Aunt Irina, Uncle Georgi... If my parents protest then they could take action against my aunt and uncle, so the powers-that-be are probably expecting them to say nothing.”
“Pierre, you’re a French citizen, let??
“They won’t even let us get close; according to Vasiliev, they’re following me.”
“But you haven’t done anything wrong... What else did Vasiliev say to you?”
“That they might interrogate me and that I should be ready for it; there are people who don’t survive interrogation.”
“No, Pierre, they can’t do anything to you, they can’t torture a French citizen. As for me... I’m Spanish. They can’t keep us here against our will. I want us to go. You’ve come as they asked you, if you’d done anything against the Soviet Union then we wouldn’t be here, so they’ve got no cause to mistrust you. It’s they who deceived you with this story about the congress of intellectuals in June.”
“Don’t talk so loudly, or Mikhail and Anushka will hear us,” Pierre asked.
“You shouldn’t be afraid of them.”
“But I am afraid of them, and you should be afraid too. Don’t think that Anushka is your friend, she’s only trying to get information out of you.”
Ivan Vasiliev was right. One afternoon, when Pierre was getting ready to leave work, two men came up to him.
“Come with us, Comrade,” one of the two men ordered him.
“Where to?” Pierre asked, trembling.
“We’ll ask the questions, you just obey.”
Pierre was in the cells at the Lubyanka for three days and three nights without anyone telling him why he was there. Then, on the fourth day, two men took him up to an interrogation room where a short but tough-looking man, with sparse hair and an icy gaze, was waiting for him.
The man pointed him to a chair and went on reading some papers that were on the table in front of him. These few minutes of silence seemed eternal to Pierre.