Call Me Brooklyn Page 11

  Every time that he gets to this part of the story, Ben laughs.

  The first thing she asked him was if he was Italian.

  American, Ben said, taking a sip of the coffee he had brought with him. What’s your name?

  Teresa.

  How old are you?

  Nineteen.

  Are you from Madrid?

  No, I’m from a town in Valladolid.

  On his right ring finger, Ben wore a thick gold ring.

  Are you married? she asked.

  Engaged, he answered, following the direction of her eyes.

  Is your fiancée Spanish?

  No, an American, like me.

  What’s her name?

  Lucia.

  And you?

  Ben. Benjamín in Spanish. Are you married?

  No, Teresa said smiling. But I’m going to have a child. Its father’s name is Umberto. He’s Italian.

  From the Squadron of Death?

  The girl gave a start. Ben detected a flash of panic in her eyes.

  How do you know that? Are you a spy or something?

  No, no, he said, amused, but yesterday I was at the headquarters when you were asking for information from that English officer. I also heard you talking with your Italian friend just a moment ago. I know what you are going through, that’s why I asked if I could sit with you. I’d like to help you.

  Why? You don’t even know me. How do you think you could help me, anyway?

  Lucia, my fiancée, really is a spy. But on our side. It sounds like a joke, I know, but it’s true. She works for intelligence in Barcelona. They should have more information there.

  Teresa lowered her eyes. She was about to cry but immediately composed herself.

  But no one knows anything. My friend, Alberto Fermi, the Italian who just left, says the squadron was wiped out. According to him, people are saying the whole thing might have happened because of a traitor in the unit. That’s what he told me.

  I’ve heard something like that too, but the news is vague and it would be unwise to come to any hasty conclusions. At least they’re saying there might be survivors now. Not all of them are prisoners, according to my sources, which makes it possible that your Umberto may have escaped with his life. I’m not telling you this just to make you feel better, believe me.

  I won’t take any convincing. I already know he’s alive, Teresa said.

  Ben looked at her, surprised:

  It’s possible.

  It’s not only possible. I know.

  How can you be so sure?

  I can’t explain it. I just know.

  Then you have reason to be happy.

  There’s something else, Benjamín. Something strange.

  Such as?

  I don’t even know. A premonition, I guess you’d call it.

  She had grown very pale.

  Are you all right?

  I’m dizzy. I feel very weak.

  Where do you live?

  In a hostel on Luchana Street.

  Do you want me to take you there?

  No, the last place I want to be is there. I go back at night when I don’t have any other choice. Don’t worry. This’ll pass. I’d rather be out.

  But why? In your state you should be resting.

  You don’t understand. Things there aren’t good. I feel like a pariah. They can’t stand me because I’m broke. I don’t even know how many days I owe anymore. They only put up with me because the owner is a party member and I’m pregnant, but his wife is bent on making my life impossible. She made me move into a room without windows, and you can’t fit anything in except the bed—and for that favor I have to help cook and clean. Even when there’s nothing to do, she makes things up just to put me in my place. She can’t stand to see me around there.

  Ben offered to get her a room at the boardinghouse where he was staying. She absolutely refused. But my father is as stubborn as they come; nobody refuses him. It took some convincing, but he finally got her to relent. He went with her to pick up her few belongings and set her up in a room adjacent to his. Seeing that she was so weak and her pregnancy so advanced, after a few days he took her in to be examined by a doctor friend. She was diagnosed with a severe case of gestational anemia and prescribed bed rest and a proper diet.

  In the days that followed, Ben attended to Teresa, taking care of her as if she were his younger sister. They chatted, read, and went out for walks and to see movies. The worrisome thing was that the closer it got to the delivery date, the worse my mother looked. On one of their first days together, he asked Teresa what she was thinking of calling her child, and she responded without hesitation: Gal.

  And what if it’s a girl?

  It’s a boy, she replied, without a shade of hesitation.

  How can you be so sure?

  There are things that can’t be explained. I just know. That’s it.

  It didn’t take long for the rumors to be confirmed. The Squadron of Death had been wiped out and no one knew if there were prisoners or survivors, although more and more people were saying there were both. As a military action, it had been so disastrous that it had set off an investigation to determine if anyone should be held responsible. Despite all her efforts, Lucia had found it impossible to get any reliable information about Umberto Pietri.

  Then Ben asked her where she had come up with a name like Gal.

  You might think it’s silly, but it means a lot to me, Teresa replied happily. A short time after having arrived in Madrid, I attended the funeral of a high-ranking Brigade man. The ceremony was presided over by the chief of his unit, the Polish General Joseph Galicz, alias Gal. He might have been a great warrior, but that day, at the funeral of his comrade, I saw him cry.

  Someone had put a bouquet of red carnations on the grave. General Galicz was silent for a long time, pensive, his back to everyone. Finally, he knelt down on the ground, picked up one of the carnations, and turned. I was directly behind him. Our eyes met for an instant and it was then I realized why he had taken so long to show his face. He had been crying. His eyes were still teary, but he didn’t bother to wipe them. He held my look for a few moments and then, handing me the carnation, moved on with his head held high. I noticed that on his army jacket there was a strip of cloth with the letters GAL stitched in black thread.

  Stories about that Polish general’s cruelty came to Ben’s mind. It took him a while before he asked:

  But how do you know what he’s really like?

  Teresa said that she didn’t know, and Ben told her that General Galicz was renowned for being rather bloodthirsty.

  Although it could be just talk. You know how these things are.

  I don’t know, and I don’t care. I had never seen him beforehand and I have never seen him since. What counts for me is what I saw that day.

  When her water broke, she was only eight months pregnant. They took her to the Hospital de Maudes in Cuatro Caminos. Her labor was long and complicated. Ben was asleep on a sofa in the waiting room when a midwife woke him up with a very stern look on her face. The doctor who had attended to Teresa was beside her. It was clear from the way he spoke that he thought Ben was Teresa’s husband

  Sometimes, the doctor told him, we are faced with the necessity of choosing between the life of the mother and the life of a newborn. That was not the case today.

  Nervous, Ben asked him to explain exactly what was going on.

  The child is fine, but the mother has died, the doctor said, declining to beat around the bush a moment longer. I’m very sorry.

  In those days of constant carnage, the loss of a single life didn’t have much weight. Ben made a quick assessment of the situation. He knew that no one would claim the body. Teresa had gone off on her own to join the militia; whenever Ben had asked about her family, she’d been evasive. He thought about contacting her best friend, Alberto Fermi, the Italian from the Aurora Roja who had been transferred to the Longo Brigade. He sent him a letter, but never did find out whether it had ever a
rrived. What could he expect from Fermi anyway? The only thing that mattered now was the fact that the fate of the newborn was in his hands. He didn’t have to check with Lucia; he did what she would have expected of him. Given the circumstances, there was only one thing to do. He claimed that Teresa was his lover and that the boy was his.

  They made him go into a room where there was a representative from the General Union of Workers. Ben handed him his papers and then Teresa’s. When he told the man that they hadn’t been married, the official gave him a look of complicity and said with a baleful smile:

  Because there was no bond of matrimony, you’re not obligated to recognize the child, comrade . . . your choice.

  I’m not simply declaring a birth. The mother has died. What do you want me to do, leave the child here and go?

  The man took a step back and preened his mustache.

  You must be a foreigner, with an accent that strong. Where are you from? Are you a son of the British Empire or something?

  I’m the son of your whore of a mother, you sorry motherfucker, Ben replied. How do you like my Spanish?

  The official apologized, made him sign a few registry books, and gave him copies of both the birth and death certificates. Teresa Quintana’s remains were transferred to the Fuencarral Cemetery the following day. Her suitcase was at the boardinghouse. Ben went through the contents and kept a pair of mementoes, nothing much.

  For Benjamin Ackerman, truth was a religion, and it had always been clear to him that he had no right to keep it from Teresa Quintana’s son. What he never explained is what prompted him to tell me the story of my origins precisely on the day I turned fourteen. We were in the Archive, and Lucia was with us. As you can imagine, Abe, I wasn’t at all prepared for what was to come. Perhaps there’s no way to prepare someone for such a revelation. I don’t remember his exact words, only the effect they had on me. It was an indescribable shock. My world teetered and became incomprehensible. I felt as if someone had severed the mooring lines to my reality and I was floating in space.

  My bond to them took on even greater significance when I found out the reason why they’d never had any other children: Lucia was sterile. She had told my father when he proposed, and although Ben loved children, he didn’t want to give her up. Naturally, the limits of my life went beyond what happened in the house. My world was Brooklyn and its streets. At times, when filling out papers for school, I was often surprised when I had to write down that I’d been born in Spain. Well, perhaps it wasn’t so strange after all. I had classmates from everywhere, students from distant states, even from other countries, children of Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants. Believe me, Abe, I really can’t complain—it would be unfair. Ben and Lucia gave me all the love they were capable of giving. They went out of their way to make sure I had a good education. When I finished high school, I went to Brooklyn College. Those were happy years, at least in retrospect. And now that I’m telling you this, who knows why, the figure of my grandfather David cuts a path right through my memory. He wasn’t in the library that afternoon, and what I’m saying right now doesn’t really have anything to do with him. But for some reason that still escapes me, I connect—not just now but always—that afternoon in the Archive to something which happened much later, on the day I graduated. Perhaps the connection comes from the fact that I understood then that I had to face the world on my own. The truth is that I didn’t have the slightest idea what I wanted to do with my life; but the day of my graduation when my grandfather asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I answered him resolutely that I wanted to be a writer. I don’t know what the hell made me come up with that. I spoke without thinking, but on that very night, I found myself dwelling on my reply, and realized that I had spoken the truth. But back to the story—it would be entirely impossible for me to describe how I felt. At some point, I became aware of Ben’s voice again, but as if it were very far away. I understood what he was trying to tell me, that he wanted to show me a photograph of my parents. He had held on to it all those years and the time had finally come to give it to me. I hesitated before telling him that I was afraid to look at it. I didn’t want that chasm to open beneath me, but Ben was adamant. They’re your parents, he said. Lucia took my hand and held it tight. Truth exists independent of whether you want to accept it or not. There is no use in denying it. I finally relented, half-scared, half-curious. I felt like crying, but I was incapable. After what seemed like an eternity, I reached out my hand. It was a picture of a couple. Both very young. She’s nineteen, I hear Ben say. He’s a bit older, maybe twenty, or twenty-one at most. I contemplate the image as though from an unspeakable distance.

  They both, in the photo, seem very attractive, beautiful, and full of life. He is beaming, wearing his militia uniform, and she is holding his arm. He’s a slim and dark young man, with sharp features and a straight nose, very good-looking. Maybe it’s my imagination, but they seem very much in love—particularly her. She is clearly pregnant. With me. Her eyes are large, black, a bit sorrowful; one hand rests on her belly. His foot is on the ledge of a stone fountain inscribed with the words: República Española, 1934.

  These are not my parents. That’s what I said, looking at Ben and Lucia. You are my parents. I felt very calm after having said it; tears would have been unnecessary, now. I’m sure they were feeling worse than I was. Not knowing what to do with it, I handed the photo back to Ben. It was clear that he had given it to me because he wanted me to keep it, but he didn’t dare say it. Finally, he affirmed: It’s yours. I’ve waited years for the right moment to give it to you. Please take it.

  I simply couldn’t. I was afraid to touch it again. I remained as I was, still, without saying a word.

  All right, as you wish, Ben said. To him it was like being forced to drink from the same bitter cup as I. I’ll keep it here in the Archive, as before. His sense of duty made him add: With or without the picture, your mother is Teresa Quintana; no one can change that. He put his fingertip on the surface of matte print. Above the crescent shape of his fingernail was the childlike face of the militia girl. Ben slid his finger to the right a little, and for a moment I was expecting him to add: And your father, Umberto Pietri. But he said nothing. Now the tears burned my eyes a second time, but were no more willing to emerge. My throat was very dry and gritty, as though clogged with sand.

  At the bottom of the cup was the remainder of the carajillo, a coffee and brandy concoction. Abe Lewis picked up his pack of cigarettes from the table, took one for himself, and offered me a Lucky Strike. After lighting both of them with a certain slowness, he took such a deep drag that his head disappeared for a moment, enveloped in smoke.

  I had made Ben and Lucia repeat the story of Teresa Quintana many times but about your Umberto Pietri, Abe, I never knew a thing. I don’t think I even heard his name once. All I knew is that Teresa’s compañero had vanished with the rest of the Squadron of Death. That’s it; there was no other trace of him, in Santa Quiteria or elsewhere. Not that I cared very much. I simply thought that he was dead.

  Seven

  THE DEATH NOTEBOOK

  “If you are Death, why do you weep?”

  ANNA AKHMATOVA

  January 1993

  I sat where I had seen you writing so many times, at the Captain’s Table (the command bridge of the Oakland, as Frank used to say). I swept the place with my eyes. You were right. From that spot, every angle of the room was perfectly visible. Nélida, the Puerto Rican waitress, was on the phone seated on a stool at the far end of the bar. The long spiral cord made a straight line from where she was to the opposite end. The dance floor was completely dark but for the weak glare of the building’s lobby on the other side of the revolving doors. At the far end of the bar, the poolroom looked like a giant aquarium. Boy and Orlando were playing a game. Their figures silently circled the table, submerged in a fog of neon that took on a greenish cast from the paint on the wall. Crouched behind the cash register was Raúl, Frank and Carolyn’s a
dopted son. (His parents, you told me one day, had died in a car accident when he was a child. He is thirty-five and four foot seven. Everyone calls him Raúl the Midget, which he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s an accountant, and every Wednesday he passes by the Oakland to look over his father’s books.)

  There was only one person I had never seen before, an old albino seated on a stool at the back end of the bar. He was leaning on the wall made of blocks of frosted glass while Manuel el Cubano (more on him later) whispered something in his ear. When they noticed me, everyone said hello, even Boy and Orlando who were rather far away. Manolito left the old man alone at the bar, punched in a bolero on the Wurlitzer, and then went to the bathroom. Raúl raised his right hand, a familiar gesture that meant he was buying whatever I wanted. Nélida put her hand over the receiver, blew a kiss, and walked up to the trap door behind the counter. The phone cord followed her as if she were herself plugged into the wall. She pulled on the iron ring, lifting the trap door, and went into the basement. When he saw her disappear, the old man got up and ran to the jukebox. A dreadful thundering suddenly shook the foundations of the bar, as if someone had set off an explosive device. The albino had raised the volume all the way up using a hidden button on the back of the Wurlitzer. Excited by the deafening noise, he was bent over with laughter holding onto his belly as if his intestines were about to spill out. Nélida ran up from the basement and cut off the racket with one stroke. In the sudden silence, the old man began to gesticulate spasmodically, mimicking the arm movements of an orchestra conductor, each time with less force, until he was completely still, like a wind-up toy doll that had run out of battery power. With a resigned look, Manuel el Cubano came up to him and helped him back to the same stool he’d recently vacated, keeping an eye on him now. Raúl gave me a sign that he was going into his father’s office to work.