Tell Me Who I Am by Julia Navarro
“We could look for someone who would come and take care of them who could cook and clean, who could look after Friedrich and Max.”
“No, Max would never allow it. He won’t let anyone else touch him. He only allows me to help him. It’s impossible, Albert; as much as the money tempts me, it’s impossible. Anyway, I swore that I would never lie to him again, that I would never work for any intelligence agency under any circumstances.”
“In that case, let me speak to him, let me make the offer, let’s see what he says.”
“No, please, please don’t do it, he’ll think that we’re conspiring behind his back. Things are not so easy between us... We love each other, but I don’t know if he will ever be able to forgive me for what I have done to him.”
“You can’t forgive yourself; he has already forgiven you. Do you think he would have taken you out of Ravensbrück if he hadn’t forgiven you?”
“I wish you were right.”
“Go and sell your napkin rings, I’ll go to see Max, I won’t tell him that we’ve talked.”
“Yes, tell him, I don’t want to lie to him ever again.”
“I’ll go and see him right now.”
Max listened to Albert without interrupting him, but Albert could feel the anger that was building up in that mutilated body.
“Do you think that Amelia’s contribution to winning the war was so little? Do you still want more? What are you trying to do, Albert? Get her back for yourself?” Max could not hide his fury.
“No, I don’t want to get Amelia back. You know that she never loved me enough and that she didn’t hesitate to leave me for you. I won’t deny that it was hard for me to get over her, that I suffered from her absence for weeks and months, but I managed to get over it, and now the love that I felt for her is only a distant memory, not even embers.”
They sat in silence and measured each other up. Albert felt the baron’s anger dying away and he waited until his breathing had calmed down.
“Let’s talk about you, Max. Do you really love her? Are you making her pay for what she did, perhaps? You are a soldier, and soldiers know that they could die or that what happened to you could happen to them. It’s not the fault of the person who pulled the trigger or planted the bomb, the fault is the people who provoked the damn war in the first place, people who don’t go to the front but send people to be killed. Don’t make Amelia pay for the war, you know that Hitler was the guilty party, Hitler and Hitler alone, although the rest of the world could have clipped his wings a little earlier than they did, just like you and your friends in the opposition wanted to happen. No, Max, you’re not in a wheelchair because Amelia was a British agent who worked with the Greek Resistance; the person responsible for your state is your Führer, Adolf Hitler, whom I hope God will not pardon for the crimes he committed.”
Silence fell again. Max thought over Albert’s words, and Albert sensed the German’s pain.
“I will go with her, that is the condition I put. Friedrich and I will go with her to Cairo.”
Albert did not know what to say. Max had suddenly agreed to allow Amelia to serve as bait to catch Fritz Winkler through his son, but he had put a condition that it would be difficult for Albert’s superiors to accept, although Albert didn’t dare to contradict Max.
“I will ask my superiors; if they accept your condition I’ll tell you.”
“If they don’t accept it, then there’s no deal. I will go with Amelia wherever she goes. And if we go to Cairo you will give us a house while we are there, and will arrange for Friedrich to go to school. As for money, talk it over with Amelia.”
At that moment Amelia came back to the house, annoyed because she had sold the napkin rings for so little that she had been able to buy only half a loaf of bread.
She looked at the two men, hoping that they would say something to her, and sensing the tension between them.
“Max will explain things. I’m going now, I may come back later, or if not, then tomorrow. Is that all you got?” he said, pointing to the half loaf.
“Yes, that’s it,” she said, trying to control her anger.
When Albert left, Max asked Amelia to sit down next to him. They spoke for a long time and she cried in acknowledging that they were desperately short of money, that Friedrich was always asking to be given something to eat, but that he only did so when he was sure that his father would not hear him, so as not to make him sad.
“If they accept my conditions, then we will go to Cairo; I know I will not be very much help, but at least I will be calm if I am by your side. Winkler is a murderer, and he will kill you if he can.”
“We will only go if that’s what you want; I will never ever do anything behind your back again, and I will never leave you.”
He stroked her hair; he felt comforted by her presence. They were two losers with no more future than to spend their lives next to each other.
Max was very grateful to Amelia for how she looked after Friedrich.
The little boy never spoke of his mother, as if to mention her by name would be an unbearable sorrow for him, and he sought in Amelia the maternal affection he needed. For her part, she looked after the child as she had been unable to look after her own son, and it was Friedrich with whom she stayed up when he was sick, whom she taught to read and write, whom she bathed and dressed, and for whom she reserved what little food they had.
Amelia and the child loved one another, and their affection had little to do with Max: It was love that came from necessity, from the absence of Ludovica, the lost mother, and of Javier, the abandoned son.
Albert explained the plan to American intelligence’s head of operations in Berlin, and they decided to accept it, given that it was the only viable and available option to get hold of Fritz Winkler.
“But talk to the Brits as well, the girl was their agent, after all, I don’t want the Americans to have to deal with the Admiralty accusing them of having stolen their agents.”
“Amelia doesn’t work for the British anymore, she’s doing this because she’s desperately in need of money. And don’t worry about them, anyway, it was Charles Turner’s idea in the first place.”
“In that case, tell him that we’ll carry out his plan and tell London. Now I need to call New York and convince them to turn over the money that you’ve promised Amelia Garayoa. A good thing that everything’s cheaper in Cairo, I’ll have to call our men to try to find a place for Amelia and this man and the kid to live.”
Three days later, when Albert went back to Max’s house, everything was ready for them in Cairo.
13
Friedrich seemed happy to be leaving Berlin, and even Max was a little more excited than usual. Only Amelia appeared indifferent.
Albert traveled with them to Cairo and helped them to move into an apartment on the banks of the Nile. Large and sunny, the apartment was in a three-story house. The neighbors had been checked out by American intelligence, and seemed to be harmless: The second floor was occupied by an old married couple and their widowed daughter and three grandchildren; the third floor was taken by a teacher who had a wife and five children. Amelia and Max took the first-floor apartment.
“You’ll be fine here, take a couple of days to rest and settle in and then we’ll get to work. Our office here tells us that there is a colony of Germans in the city; some of them arrived just after the war was over, others have come more recently, lots of them don’t even talk to their fellow countrymen. This is a safe haven for lots of the former SS officers who managed to get away, as well as for businessmen who were enthusiastic collaborators with Hitler in their day. Our plan is simple: You have to be seen, people have to know that you’ve arrived. It won’t be difficult; they won’t mistrust Max and all the doors of the city will open for him. It’s only a question of time: If Winkler is here, then he will show his face.”
“And if he’s not here?” Amelia asked.
“You asked me that back in Berlin. We’ll wait some time; if he doesn’t a
“I’d prefer it for Friedrich to stay here, he’s very small,” Amelia replied.
“It’d be good for him to be with other children.”
“I will not let you use him as bait,” Amelia said, looking him straight in the eyes.
“The thought never crossed my mind.”
“In any case, we will be the people who decide what is good for Friedrich,” she said.
Suddenly they heard a few soft knocks on the door, and Albert, smiling, went to open it. He came back into the room with a young woman following him, a small suitcase in her hand.
“This is Fatima, she’ll look after you. She can cook, and clean and iron, and she speaks a little bit of German, so she’ll be able to help you until you can get by in the language. I don’t think it will be that hard for Friedrich, and you two are polyglots, so it shouldn’t be that much of an effort for you either.”
Fatima must have been about thirty years old. She was widowed, she had no children, and her husband’s family had abandoned her.
She had worked in the house of a German couple and could get by in the language, but one fine day her employers had vanished into thin air, without even saying goodbye.
Amelia installed Fatima in a room next to the kitchen, and she seemed happy.
Amelia allowed the good spirits of Friedrich and Max to affect her as well. For the first time in a long while they had food. They had money to buy food, which was a great relief. Friedrich ate so much that Amelia worried about him, scared that he might make himself sick, he was so unaccustomed to it.
For a few days, Amelia let Fatima take her everywhere, and the woman showed her the city on the way to the market.
She enjoyed shopping in Khan el-Khalili, with its narrow and mysterious streets, where the traders offered all kinds of goods: a lamb or some precious stones or a cooking pot or some item stolen from a tomb.
One morning, still accompanied by Fatima, she took Max for a walk through the city.
Their neighbors were pleasant and helpful, and the teacher from the third floor offered to give them Arabic lessons very cheaply. He even suggested that he might take Friedrich to study at the school where he taught.
“If he’s with Egyptian children then he’ll learn the language sooner. It will be difficult to begin with, but I’ll be there to look after him.”
Albert told them that there was one café, the Café Saladin, where Germans tended to meet up.
“You should go there tomorrow afternoon. The three of you are a family that has run away from Berlin, scared of the reprisals taking place there, and desperate to forget about the horrors of the war. You will of course go back once things are better. This is what you have to say.”
The Café Saladin was run by a German who was delighted to see them and who found a place where Max could comfortably put his wheelchair; then he submitted Max and Amelia to an interrogation that appeared inoffensive.
“So, here you are, to swell the numbers of our little colony.”
Max played his role well: In fact, he was himself, a Prussian officer and aristocrat, taking refuge in Cairo after the war. He was polite, but he kept his distance from the owner of the café, who was after all someone he did not know.
They greeted the other Germans who sat down at tables nearby, but they didn’t enter into conversation with any of them.
They made it their custom to go to the Café Saladin every day. Max was the one who spoke, Amelia stayed discreetly in the background; so much so that she attracted the attention of the more expansive German women who visited the café.
One afternoon, now that they were regulars at the café, an elderly man who was smoking a cigar at a neighboring table addressed himself to Max.
“If the lady is bothered by the smoke from my cigar, I will be happy to smoke it later.”
“Are you being bothered, darling?” Max asked Amelia.
“No, not at all, don’t worry about me.”
“Thank you very much; my wife doesn’t let me smoke in the house, so I normally come here.”
“It’s a pleasant place,” Max replied.
“Have you been in Cairo long?”
“Not long,” he replied.
“My wife and I came here just before the war ended. I was already retired, so I thought that it would be a good place to stay and see how the situation developed. Did you know that next week in Nuremberg they are starting the trials of everyone who collaborated with Hitler’s government? It will be a difficult task, they can’t judge the whole German people, and who was not on the Führer’s side?”
“Yes, it will be a difficult task,” Max said, while Amelia sat silently at his side, watching Friedrich, who was playing with some other children in the café doorway.
“Forgive my indiscretion, but are you that way because of the war?” the man asked with open curiosity.
“I am Baron von Schumann, I was an officer in the Wehrmacht,” Max said, holding out his hand.
“An honor, Baron, at your service. I am Ernst Schneider, I own a currency exchange here in Cairo. It would be an honor if I could invite you and your wife and son to have dinner at my house.”
“Well...” Max thought about it. “Maybe at some point in the future.”
“I understand, it’s a little hasty to accept a stranger’s invitation. And rightly so, when one is away from one’s homeland, sometimes one is apt to forget the social conventions.”
“I had no intention of offending you,” Max apologized.
“No offense taken, none at all! I behaved incorrectly. I will tell my wife to come with me one of these afternoons so she can meet your charming wife as well, would that be a good idea? We lost both our sons in the war, and our grandsons. We are alone, and so we come here to the Café Saladin, where it seems that the heart of Germany still somehow manages to beat.”
The next afternoon, Herr Schneider came to the café with his wife, who was a pleasant motherly woman who spoke without stopping. Amelia realized that Frau Schneider could be an inexhaustible source of information. She seemed to know all of the Germans who lived in Cairo, and even though she didn’t have dealings with them all, she had an exhaustive knowledge of their lives and activities.
“Look, my dear, that man who has just come in through the door with that rather... striking woman used to be an important government official in Bavaria. He fled before the war was over. A clever man. And she, well, it’s clear that she’s not his wife, she used to sing in a Munich cabaret. He didn’t see any problem in abandoning his wife and their three children to run away with her. As you may imagine, they are not really welcome in some people’s houses, in others... Well, you know what it means to be an expatriate, and here sometimes people’s sense of social categories weakens somewhat and one treats a shopkeeper the same way one would treat a businessman.”
Amelia listened to her and memorized the names and jobs of everyone the woman pointed out to her.
Two weeks after spending a couple of afternoons with the Schneiders in the Café Saladin, Max and Amelia accepted an invitation from them to have dinner the next Saturday at their house.
“It will be a dinner among friends, it will be just like being back in Berlin, you’ll see.”
That very day, Albert told them that he could not stay in Cairo any longer and would have to go back to Berlin.
“I’ll be back in the future, but if you need to get in touch with our people, then call this number and ask to speak to Bob Robinson, he’s a good man and he’ll be dealing with this case. Everything’s running very smoothly at the moment, people are getting to know who you are, but you’re not calling too much attention to yourself, and that’s good. The report that Bob sent me about the Schneiders tells me that they were fanatical Nazis. He was an accountant for a company that
Albert’s instructions were clear: They had to have social interactions with the German community in Cairo, until Winkler realized they were there and felt confident enough to turn up and try to kill Amelia.
The Schneiders had invited four couples, so they were ten at the table, including Martin Wulff, the owner of the Café Saladin, who came to the meal with a middle-aged Egyptian woman.
The Schneiders’ house was almost a mansion. It was in a quiet suburb of the city, Heliopolis, where many of the most important Egyptians lived. They had several servants.
Amelia was surprised that they lived in such a large house, as there were only two of them.
“Don’t you feel alone in such a big house?” Amelia asked Frau Schneider.