Tell Me Who I Am by Julia Navarro
“Will Hitler stop sending the Luftwaffe to attack London? What are you saying, Max? I don’t understand you...”
“I am tired of it all, of everything I do, of seeing how useless my trust in Great Britain was, I thought that we could avoid going to war, and neither Halifax nor Chamberlain want to hear anything about it. And now what do you want me to do? Betray my country?”
“I will never ask you to do that!”
“Well, why do you want to know what’s happening in Poland? Just for curiosity, or do you want to tell Albert James so he can write one of his little articles about it?”
“I thought you wanted to stop this war...”
“I do, but I never said I wanted Germany to lose the war. Do you think I don’t care about the lives of my fellow Germans?”
“I don’t understand you, Max.”
“I see that... Let’s leave it, Amelia, I’m tired and I got my orders today. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you, I am so sorry to have been a nuisance.”
Amelia walked angrily out of the room and ran into Ludovica on her way back to the salon.
“I imagine you know where my husband is, my dear... ,” Ludovica said.
“You’ll find him in the library,” Amelia said, without even pretending to be polite.
It was hard for her to get to sleep that night. She asked herself what could have happened to Max for him to treat her that way. The Kellers had gone to the country the day before and Amelia felt oppressed by the solitude in the apartment, even though she was happy that Greta felt well enough to take the trip to see her sister in Neuruppin.
A ring of the doorbell jolted her awake. She looked at the clock. Ten o’clock in the morning. She was scared for a moment, thinking it might be the Gestapo. Then she opened the door.
“Max! But what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. I did not behave like a gentleman.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said to hide her nervousness.
“A cup of tea would be wonderful, but I don’t want to be any trouble...”
“Oh, don’t worry, it won’t take a minute!”
While Amelia served the tea, Max started to talk.
“I want to be honest with you. You know what I feel for you and... it worries me, even in moments like this when Ludovica and I are trying to save our marriage.”
Amelia was silent for a few seconds, and tried to smile when at last she did speak.
“I am pleased for you, I know that you and Ludovica had been having problems,” she murmured, surprised by Max’s unexpected confession.
“She thinks that we can still recover the feelings we had for one another in the past...”
“I am sure that it’s worth trying. I wish you all the best.”
“I am going back to Warsaw in a couple of days, and you asked me what was happening there...”
“Yes, but that was just an excuse to speak to you alone. I don’t really want to know anything about Warsaw.”
But Max seemed not to hear her and began to speak, staring into the middle distance.
“The poor Poles! You don’t know what the Einsatzgruppen are doing out there...”
“The Einsatzgruppen?”
“Special units, ‘action groups,’ with the SS in their hearts and in their heads. You know what their task was? To clean Poland of anti-German elements. Can you imagine how they have gone about it? I didn’t know this at the start, but the Einsatzgruppen went to Poland with a list of thirty thousand people considered dangerous for the Third Reich, people who have now been arrested and executed. Lawyers, doctors, members of the aristocracy, priests... Even priests!”
“And you... you... are participating in this?” Amelia asked.
“They are doing the work at the moment. They go around the villages, they group all the people together, they make them dig a pit and then they shoot them. Some people are luckier and only have their lands confiscated, or else get deported to other places. They are given a couple of minutes to get whatever they need together and leave their homes. The Jews get the worst of it, you know how Hitler hates them. I have heard about massacres in Poznan, in Błonie...”
“Is the army killing peasants?”
“No, we’re not there yet. And anyway, I’ve told you that it’s the SS and its Einsatzgruppen. Some of the Wehrmacht officers are still trying to preserve our honor.”
“But why are so many innocent people being killed? Priests, lawyers, doctors...”
“They think that if they get rid of the country’s ‘intelligentsia,’ the people who are best positioned to oppose them, then the ones who are left will not dare protest. And they are right about that. Warsaw is a living cemetery.”
“And what are you doing in Poland, Max?”
“I’m looking after our soldiers, setting up field hospitals, trying to make sure that we have enough nurses and enough medicine... I visit the troops wherever they are deployed. You have to try to make sure that the men don’t pick up venereal diseases... If you are asking me if I have blood on my hands, then the answer is no, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Will you be going back to Warsaw?”
“Yes, but not for long. The General Staff wants me to go and observe our units in Holland, Belgium, and France. Then they are going to send me to Greece. Our soldiers joined the Italian troops in Athens a few days ago.”
“I have broken up with Albert,” Amelia said suddenly.
Max was silent, looking at Amelia with pain in his face.
“I am sorry... I thought that you were happy together.”
Amelia shrugged and lit a cigarette and took a swig of tea to hide her nervousness.
“He is a good man, a loyal man, and I love him a lot but I am not in love with him. We will always be friends, whatever happens, I know that I will be able to rely on him, but I am not in love with him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I came to Berlin to see you, to be with you,” she said, looking at him directly.
Max did not know what to say. He had been attracted to her ever since they had met each other in Buenos Aires, and if he had not been engaged to Ludovica, he would surely have had a relationship with the young Spanish woman. But now he was not only married, but his wife had begged him to give their marriage another chance and he had promised that he would. He did not want to betray Ludovica, for all that he wanted to ask Amelia to come with him to Warsaw or wherever he was to be sent.
“I’m leaving in a few days...”
“I... I know, so...”
Max stood up and Amelia walked with him to the door, but she did not manage to open it. Max was embracing her with such strength... She gave herself up to him. That morning, in the Kellers’ lonely house, she became his lover.
Father Müller could not escape the nightmares that had persecuted him ever since he had returned from the asylum at Hadamar. He had withdrawn into himself and the old priest whom he helped did not know what he could do to draw him out of this hell.
His mother and his sister were likewise unable to return to him the good humor that had always been such a feature of his character. For this reason they were delighted when Amelia came to visit them that Sunday, thinking that the young Spanish woman would help distract him. The next day, Monday, Father Müller was supposed to leave for Rome. The archbishop had organized the transfer, fearing that the Gestapo might seize the young priest at any moment.
Irene told her son to go out for a walk with Amelia.
“The fresh air will do you good, it’s a beautiful day, and I am sure that Amelia would prefer to be outside, wouldn’t you, my dear?”
“Of course, I think it would do us both good.”
They walked to the zoological gardens, hardly exchanging a word as they did so. Once they were there they sat on a bench from which they could see the monkey house.
“I wanted to talk to you befo
“I’m afraid I’m not a good companion for anyone at the moment,” Father Müller said.
“We’re friends, so I was wondering if there was any way I could share your worries.”
“No one can have any idea of the horror of what I saw,” he said in despair.
“Rudolf, why don’t you let your friends help you?”
Father Müller gave a start to hear his name. Nobody called him Rudolf apart from his mother and his sister, and here was this Spanish woman refusing to treat him as a priest, and instead using his real name.
“I know how impotent you must have felt not to be able to help those poor unfortunates, but you cannot indulge in your pain forever, the best thing we can do is to think about how to stop these murders. You have done something, the archbishop has protested to the authorities. We have to stop these murders. What we need to do now is to carry on fighting, now that we know the kind of people we are up against. I’ve thought about getting in touch with Albert; he’s a journalist and he could be interested in what is happening in Hadamar, and not even Hitler will be able to carry on doing what he is doing if the British and North American press reveal that Germany is killing the mentally ill.”
The priest looked at her, convinced. Her proposals had been extremely firm and coherent.
“What you cannot do is give up. You have seen evil with your own eyes, alright, but your duty as a priest and as a human being is to face up to these criminals.”
“Do you think that you can get information about what is happening in Hadamar to your friend Albert James?”
“At the very least I will try. I have to find the right way because I cannot risk writing a letter that might fall into the hands of the Gestapo. But you could take a letter to Rome.”
“To Rome?”
“To Carla Alessandrini. She will help us, she will know how to get my letter to Albert.”
“You have solutions for everything!”
“No, I just thought of it while we were talking. And now I have something to tell you.”
She confessed that her relation with Albert James had come to an end.
“I am sorry... and I am pleased,” the priest said.
“Pleased?”
“Yes, because... well... you are married and... well... it’s not good that you were living together.”
“Do you think that matters?”
“Of course! You could never marry him, and if you had children, just think what their situation would be... Even if it hurts, it is still the best thing for you to do. And don’t imagine that I don’t feel any sympathy for Albert, he seems a good man and a courageous one, who deserves to find a good woman with whom he can share his life.”
What Amelia had not told Father Müller was that she had become Max von Schumann’s lover, and that the two of them, taking advantage of the Kellers’ absence, were seeing each other every day. While Amelia and Father Müller were in the zoological gardens, Max was telling Ludovica that he was not willing to give their marriage another chance. He had tried, and tried sincerely, but this was before beginning his relationship with Amelia. All he wanted was to be with the young Spaniard and he was not willing for anyone to stand between them, not even Ludovica.
As evening fell, Father Müller and Amelia went to Professor Schatzhauser’s house. The priest wanted to say goodbye to his friends before leaving for Rome.
When they got there, Manfred Kasten was telling everyone that something big was being planned. He said that there was a lot of activity in the General Staff, and that Hitler had seemed euphoric for the last few days.
“Who are we going to invade now?” Pastor Schmidt asked.
“I don’t think that they would invade England... The RAF is holding the Luftwaffe back,” Professor Schatzhauser said.
“You can’t imagine what London is like now,” Amelia said with regret.
“I suppose it is the same as Berlin, the same as Berlin... War is like that,” Helga Kasten replied.
It was not the first time that Manfred Kasten had said that Hitler was preparing something important; but when Amelia asked Jan and Dorothy to convey these vague rumors, Jan protested:
“Can’t you get any more information? To send a message saying that the General Staff are busy in the middle of a war is too obvious; the fact that the generals are busy is what you would expect, and if Hitler is happy, it doesn’t seem relevant.”
“Yes, but my sources think that something important is going to happen, and even if we don’t know what it is, it’s better to keep London informed.”
It was not easy for Amelia to tell Jan and Dorothy that she and Max had become lovers and that he was going to take her to Poland with him, and so she would need new orders from Major Murray.
But neither of them seemed to be surprised, and Jan limited himself to saying that she should return in a couple of days, but that he had already been in touch with London.
Murray’s orders were clear: Amelia was to travel with Baron von Schumann and get all the information from him that she could, especially relating to troop movements in the east. He also gave her a name, “Grazyna,” an address in Warsaw where she could go to take the information she gathered, and a pass-phrase that would make welcome at that address: “After the storm, the sea is calm.”
Jan gave Amelia a little camera.
“You may need it.”
“It won’t be easy for me to hide it.”
“You will have to.”
On June 2 Max and Amelia went to Warsaw. To all her friends, by this point, Amelia was Max’s lover. She had told Professor Schatzhauser herself, saying that there was no longer any sense in hiding what there was between her and Max. It was hard for the professor to conceal his disapproval. He was not sympathetic to Baroness Ludovica, and he had suffered in silence the fact that Max was married to a Nazi, but in his eyes this did not justify Max taking this strange Spanish woman as his lover.
The news caused all kinds of gossip among Max’s friends, but most of them did not approve. They were not the only ones: The Kellers were also taken aback. Amelia told them that she was going to Warsaw with the baron. She did not need to explain anything else. Herr Helmut said that she could rely on them and that their door would always be open to her. But Greta looked sullenly at her husband: She could not approve of Amelia’s stealing someone else’s husband and running away with him. No, that was not good.
3
Max and Amelia took the train to Warsaw, where Captain Hans Henke, Max’s adjutant, was waiting for them. Then they headed south, to Krakow, where Hans Frank had his residence. Frank was the Bavarian whom Hitler had appointed governor-general of Poland.
“It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” Max said, referring to Krakow.
She agreed with him when she saw it, but she was also affected by the sadness that she saw on the Poles’ faces.
They did not spend much time in Krakow, Max had to have a meeting with Hans Frank and his military advisers about the medical needs of the German army, and then they went back to Warsaw.
Amelia felt an immediate antipathy toward Hans Frank, who had set himself up in Wawel Castle and was behaving like a little king.
He liked to organize dinners over which he presided like a monarch, his guests eating off expensive porcelain and drinking from Bohemian crystal glasses.
It was at one of these events that Amelia, flanked by Max and Captain Hans Henke, was presented to Hans Frank and his wife, as they were all going to sit and eat.
The table was overdecorated for Amelia’s taste; Max sat opposite her and at her side was an SS officer. The man’s blue eyes were as cold as ice. He was blond, and tall and athletic, but in spite of his physical charms Amelia found him repulsive.
“I am Major Jürgens,” he said, holding out a hand.
“Amelia Garayoa,” she replied.
Jürgens smiled politely and nodded. Of course he had not been unaware of the arrival in Krakow of Major
“Major Schumann, did you enjoy your stay in Berlin?” he asked Max.
“Of course,” the baron replied uninterestedly.
“You’ve certainly come back with a charming companion... ,” the major said, looking at Amelia.
“Amelia, allow me to introduce Major Ulrich Jürgens. Be careful with him.”
Von Schumann’s warning made Jürgens snort with laughter.
“Come on, Major, don’t frighten the woman! The Wehrmacht aristocrats are always putting down those people who didn’t happen to be born in a castle like they were. Apropos, how is your charming wife, Baroness Ludovica?”
Max tensed and Amelia paled. Major Ulrich Jürgens’s words sounded like an insult.
An elderly woman seated at Max’s side joined in the conversation.
“Oh, you young people are always so impulsive and indiscreet! Tell me, Major Jürgens, are you married?”
“No, Countess, I am not.”
“Ah, well in that case you are not enjoying the advantages of matrimony. You should marry, you are of an age for it, don’t you think? That will stop you from taking an interest in other people’s marriages. And you, my dear, where are you from? You have an accent I can’t quite place...”
“Spanish, I’m Spanish,” Amelia replied, thankful for the woman’s interruption.
“I am the Countess Lublin.”
“And are you Polish?” Amelia asked out of curiosity.
“Yes, I am Polish, although I have lived most of my life in Paris. My husband was French, but I was widowed and decided to return to my country. I can see now that I got my timing a little wrong.” A fine irony shone through the countess’s words.
The countess led the conversation to more boring topics. She spoke to them of Paris, of a recent visit she had made to the United States where her oldest son lived, of the weather, of springtime in Krakow.