Tell Me Who I Am

  That Sunday Santiago fell in love with her, and I think she fell in love with Santiago. They were young and beautiful and elegant...

  He, who looked as if he were going to develop into a bachelor, with no formal wife, had let himself fall for a young woman who impudently expressed her political ideas: She insisted that women should gain the rights that they had thus far been denied; she said, to the horror of her mother, that she had not the least intention, when she married, of becoming a simple housewife, and that she would help her husband in all things, as well as working as a teacher, which she said was her calling.

  All these revelations and more were revealed with the wit and friendliness that came naturally to her, and, as Antonietta told me later, the more Amelia talked, the more Santiago ceased resisting.

  They began to see each other as people of that time did. He asked Don Juan’s permission to “speak” to Amelia, and her father gave it with pleasure.

  Santiago would come to the house every afternoon to see Amelia; they would go out every Sunday together, accompanied by Antonietta and myself. Amelia allowed him to take her by the hand and smiled as she leaned her head on his shoulder. Santiago bent down to look at her. She had beautiful hair, a light brown that was almost blonde, and large almond-shaped eyes. She was thin, and not very tall, but women back then were not very tall, not as tall as they are now. He was tall, at least a head taller than her. She looked like a doll standing next to him.

  Santiago succumbed to Amelia, which meant that Don Juan was saved. The Carranzas provided a guarantee for him to obtain his loan, and they went into partnership with him, as minority partners, in the new company that Don Juan intended to use to buy and import machinery from America.

  Don Juan and Santiago ended up becoming closer, because the young man was connected to Azaña’s political party and was a steadfast Republican, like my master.

  “I’m getting married! Santiago has asked me to marry him!”

  I remember as if it were yesterday Amelia going into her parents’ room.

  I had not gone with them that Sunday because I had a cold, and it had been Antonietta who had been their chaperone.

  Don Juan looked at his daughter in surprise, he had not expected Santiago to ask for her hand so soon. They had been walking out together for barely six months, and Don Juan intended to travel to New York the following week to begin visiting factories.

  Amelia hugged her mother, who seemed, by her expression, to be not entirely happy with this piece of news.

  “But what foolishness is this?” Doña Teresa said with displeasure.

  “Santiago has told me that he does not want to wait anymore, that he is of an age when he should marry, and he is certain that I am the woman for whom he has been waiting. He has asked me if I love him and if I am sure of my feelings toward him. I have said I am, and we have decided to get married as soon as possible. He will tell his parents this evening, and Carranza will call on you to ask for my hand. We could get married at the end of the year, there won’t be time to get things organized before then. I do so want to get married!”

  Amelia chattered away without pause, while her parents tried to calm her down in order to speak to her more tranquilly.

  “Come on, Amelia, you are still a girl,” Don Juan protested.

  “I am not a girl! You know that most of my friends are either married or about to be married. What’s wrong, Papa? I thought that you would be happy that I got engaged to Santiago...”

  “And I am happy, I have nothing to complain about with the Carranza family, and Santiago seems to me a fine young man, but you have only known each other for a few months and it seems a little soon to be talking about a wedding. You don’t know each other well enough yet.”

  “Your father and I were engaged for four years before we got married,” Doña Teresa said.

  “Don’t be old-fashioned, Mama... This is the twentieth century, I know that things were different back in your day, but times have changed. Women work, and go out alone into the street, and not all of them get married, even, some people decide to live their own life with whoever they want to... By the way, I am not going to take a chaperone anymore when I go out with Santiago.”

  “Amelia!”

  “Mama, it’s ridiculous! Don’t you trust me? Do you think badly of Santiago?”

  Amelia’s parents felt crushed by the runaway force of their daughter’s will. There was no way back: She had decided to get married, and she would, with or without their permission.

  They agreed that the wedding would be celebrated when Don Juan returned from America; in the meantime, Doña Teresa and Santiago’s parents would organize the details of the wedding.

  Although Amelia had always shown an interest in politics, perhaps it was a result of Santiago’s influence that during those months she seemed more worried than ever by what was happening in Spain.

  “Edurne, President Alcalá Zamora has asked Alejandro Lerroux to form another government, and they will have three ministers from the CEDA. I don’t think it is the best solution, but is there any other way?”

  Of course, she didn’t want to hear my reply. At that time Amelia spoke about everything with herself; I was the wall against which she threw her ideas, but nothing else, even though I knew how easy she was to influence. Many of the things she said were a mishmash of things she had heard from Santiago.

  At the beginning of October 1934, Santiago came to the Garayoa house in a very odd mood. Don Juan was in America, and Doña Teresa was arguing with her children about Antonietta’s desire to go out by herself.

  “The General Workers’ Party has called a general strike! Spain will be paralyzed on the fifth!” Santiago cried.

  “Good Lord! But why?” Teresa was upset by the news.

  “Madam, the left doesn’t trust the CEDA, and with good reason. Gil Robles doesn’t believe in the Republic.”

  “That’s what the left-wingers say to justify everything they do!” Doña Teresa protested. “They’re the ones who don’t believe in the Republic, they want to have a revolution like the one in Russia. Lord save us from that!”

  I and another maid were serving light refreshments as we listened to this conversation.

  It wasn’t that Santiago was a revolutionary, in fact quite the opposite, but he firmly believed in the Republic, and didn’t trust those people who reviled it and took advantage of it at the same time.

  “You wouldn’t like what happened in Germany to happen here,” Amelia said.

  “Be quiet, child! What does this Hitler have to do with our right wing. Don’t fall for the left-wingers and their propaganda, it won’t bring Spain any good,” Doña Teresa complained.

  Amelia and Santiago remained in the sitting room, while Doña Teresa and Antonietta took their leave by giving some imaginary excuse. The mistress had no desire to argue with Santiago, and it had been agreed that at this stage in proceedings the two young people could be together without a chaperone.

  “What’s going to happen, Santiago?” Amelia asked worriedly as soon as she was alone with her fiancé.

  “I don’t know, but something big is brewing.”

  “Can we still get married?”

  “Of course! Don’t be silly, nothing will get in the way of us getting married.”

  “But there are only three weeks to go until the wedding.”

  “Don’t worry...”

  “And Papa is still not back...”

  “His ship will come in a few days.”

  “I miss him so much... especially now that everything is so confused. I feel lost without him.”

  “Amelia, don’t say that! You have me! I’ll never let anything happen to you!”

  “Of course, you’re right, sorry...”

  For the next few days we were all on edge. We couldn’t imagine what might happen.

  The government responded to the call for a general strike with a declaration of martial law, and the strike was not a success, at least not everywhere. That e
vening my mother told me that the Nationalists were not going to support it, and neither were the Anarchists.

  The worst that happened was that in Catalonia the president of the Generalitat, the Catalan Parliament, Lluís Companys, proclaimed a Catalan state in the Federal Republic.

  Amelia was ever more worried about her wedding, because the Carranzas had business in Catalonia, and one of Don Manuel’s business partners was a Catalan. Doña Teresa was also affected; she was half Catalan and had relatives in Barcelona.

  “I have spoke to Aunt Montse and she is very scared. They’ve arrested a lot of people she knows, and she’s seen people fighting in the Ramblas from her balcony. She doesn’t know how many deaths there have been, but she thinks a great number. I thank the Lord that my parents don’t have to see this.”

  Doña Teresa’s parents were dead, and all she had left were her sister Montse and a good handful of aunts, cousins, and other relatives, spread out through Catalonia as well as in Madrid.

  Amelia asked me to call my brother Aitor in the Basque country to try to find out what was happening. I did so, and she impatiently snatched the telephone out of my hands.

  Aitor told us that his party had kept to the sidelines during the strike, and that the flame of revolution had really spread only in Asturias. The miners had attacked the Guardia Civil, and had taken control of the principality.

  Meanwhile, back in Madrid, the government asked generals Goded and Franco to take care of the rebellion, and these two suggested that the Moroccan Regulars would be the key to suppressing it.

  They were uncertain days, until the government quelled the rebellion. But this was just a rehearsal for what was to come...

  This was when Amelia met Lola. This girl affected her, marked her forever.

  One afternoon, in spite of Doña Teresa’s protests, Amelia decided to go out into the street. She wanted to see the impact of events with her own eyes. Her excuse was that she was going to visit her cousin Laura, who had been sick for several days.

  Doña Teresa ordered her not to go out, and my mother begged her to stay at home, and even Antonietta tried to convince her to remain. But Amelia insisted that she had a duty to visit her favorite cousin when that cousin was ill, and went out into the street in defiance of her mother, with me following her. I did not want to go, but my mother ordered me not to leave Amelia alone.

  Madrid looked like a war zone. There were soldiers everywhere. I followed her unwillingly to her cousin’s house, which was this one, the house we are in at this moment, and which was only a few blocks from Amelia’s home. We were just about to arrive when we saw a young girl running like a madwoman. She dashed in front of us as quick as a flash and hid in the doorway of the house we were heading to. We looked back, thinking that maybe someone was chasing her, but we saw nobody. But two minutes later two men came around the corner, shouting “Halt! Halt!” We stopped dead, waiting for the men to catch up with us.

  “Have you seen a girl run past here?”

  I was going to say yes, that she was hiding in the doorway, but Amelia answered first.

  “No, we haven’t seen anyone, we’re just on our way to visit a cousin of mine who is sick,” she explained.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen anyone hiding in a doorway?”

  “No, sir. If we had seen anyone we’d tell you.” Amelia replied in the voice of a prudish young lady, a voice I hadn’t heard her use before.

  The two men, who must have been policemen, seemed unsure whether to believe us, but Amelia’s appearance persuaded them. She was the very image of a bourgeois woman from a good family.

  They ran off, arguing among themselves about where the girl could have got to, while we went into Doña Laura’s house.

  The doorman was not there, and Amelia smiled in satisfaction. The man must be upstairs helping a neighbor with something, or else out on an errand.

  With firm footsteps, Amelia headed toward the back of the entrance hall and opened a door that gave onto the patio. I followed her in a fright, because I could guess who she was looking for. And so it was: There, among the rubbish bins and tools, was the girl who had run away from the police.

  “They’ve gone, don’t worry.”

  “Thank you, I don’t know why you didn’t turn me in, but thank you.”

  “Should I have? Are you a dangerous delinquent?” Amelia smiled, as if she found the situation amusing.

  “I’m not a delinquent, and as for being dangerous... I suppose I must be dangerous for them because I fight against injustice.”

  Amelia was immediately interested by this reply, and although I grabbed her arm to try to make her come along up to Doña Laura’s apartment, she ignored me.

  “Are you a revolutionary?”

  “I am... Yes, I suppose you could say I am.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I’m a seamstress.”

  “No, I mean what kind of revolutionary are you?”

  The girl looked at her with mistrust. It was clear that she didn’t know if she should reply, but in the end she was sincere with Amelia, even though she was a stranger.

  “I work with a few comrades in the strike committee, I take messages from one place to another.”

  “How brave! I’m Amelia Garayoa, how about you?”

  “Lola, Lola García.”

  “Edurne, go out to the street and have a look round, and if you see something suspicious come back and tell us.”

  I didn’t dare protest, and I went trembling toward the door that let out into the street. I thought that if the police saw me then they might suspect something and arrest the three of us.

  I calmed down when I saw that the doorman was still not there, and I barely stuck my head out of the door to look to the left and the right. I didn’t see the two men.

  “There’s no one,” I told them.

  “It doesn’t matter, I think it’s better if Lola doesn’t go out quite yet. Come with us to my cousin’s house. I’ll tell her you’re a friend of Edurne’s and that we met you on the way. They’ll give you something to eat in the kitchen while I’m with my cousin, and then when we go enough time will have passed for those men to have stopped looking for you round here. Also, my Uncle Armando is a lawyer and if the police do come looking for you then he’ll know what to do.”

  Lola accepted this offer with relief. She didn’t understand why this bourgeois woman would help her, but it was the only option she had and she took advantage of it.

  Laura was bored in bed while her sister Melita gave a piano lesson, and her mother had a visitor. As far as her father, Don Armando, Amelia’s father’s brother, was concerned, he still had not come back from his office.

  A housemaid took Lola and me to the kitchen, where we had a glass of milk and some cookies, and Amelia stayed with her cousin to tell her about this latest adventure.

  We were in the house of Don Armando and Doña Elena for two hours visiting Laura, two hours that seemed eternal because I imagined that at any moment the police could knock on the door, looking for Lola.

  When Amelia eventually decided to go home, Don Armando arrived. As he was worried about the idea of us being alone in the street, given the tumultuous situation in Madrid at the moment, he offered to accompany us home. There was little more than four blocks between the two houses, but Don Armando insisted on accompanying his niece. He was not at all surprised when Amelia said that Lola, whom she introduced as a good friend of Edurne’s, would be coming with us. I looked down at the floor so that Don Armando would not see how nervous I was.

  “Your father would be cross with me if I let you go out alone with all this chaos. What I don’t understand is how he let you go out in the first place. It’s not a time to go happily out into the street, Amelia, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Asturias has unleashed a real revolution, and here, even though the strike was a failure, the left has not resigned itself to letting things remain as they were, there are a lot of fanatics...”

 
Amelia looked at Lola out of the corner of her eye, but her face was impassive, and she looked down at the ground like I did.

  When we got home, Doña Teresa was sincerely grateful to her brother-in-law for having accompanied us.

  “I can’t do anything with this child, and ever since she’s decided to get married she seems even more thoughtless. I want her father to come home, Juan is the only person who can deal with her.”

  When Don Armando left, Teresa turned her attention to Lola.

  “Edurne, I didn’t know you had friends in Madrid,” Doña Teresa said, looking at me with curiosity.

  “They know each other from meeting when Edurne goes out on errands,” Amelia said quickly, and it was a good thing she did, because I wouldn’t have been able to lie with such ease.

  “Well, if you’re not going to offer this young woman anything, then we’d better go in to dinner, your sister Antonietta is waiting for us,” Doña Teresa concluded.

  “No, I really should be going, I’m very late already. Thank you very much, Doña Amelia, Doña Teresa... Edurne, let’s see each other soon, alright?”

  I nodded, hoping that she’d go and that we’d never see each other again, but my wishes were not going to come true, because Lola García would again cross Amelia’s path, and mine.

  2

  As if the emotions stirred up by the day before were not enough, the next morning also brought surprises with it.

  Santiago had arranged to come see Amelia, but he didn’t appear the whole day.

  Amelia was first worried and then furious, and asked her mother to call Santiago’s parents house under the pretext of speaking to his mother about some detail of the wedding.

  Doña Teresa resisted, but in the end gave in, as Amelia was threatening to go to Santiago’s house herself.

  That afternoon Amelia found out something about her future husband’s personality that she could not have imagined.