The Man Who Loved Dogs (61 page)

The second proof of his fate revealed itself when, upon arriving at the fortress on Avenida Viena to pick up the Rosmers, Otto Schüssler told him that Alfred was laid up with a severe attack of dysentery. Lev Davidovich insisted he should go to the hospital, since it could be an appendicitis attack under the diarrhea. Jacques didn’t think twice about it, telling Otto that he himself would take Alfred to the doctor; that way none of them would have to leave the house.

Jacques spent almost the entire night with the Rosmers. The doctors at the French clinic, following a series of tests, declared that Alfred was suffering from an especially aggressive parasite, aggravated by a lack of antibodies for tropical predators in Europeans. Montezuma’s revenge, they called it. After paying the bill and buying the medicines, Jacques returned to Coyoacán with Marguerite and Alfred, who was much improved thanks to the IV he had been given. As he usually did when he came for Sylvia, Jacques beeped the horn of his Buick twice, and from the watchtower they called out that Jacson was coming back with the Rosmers. Robbins and Schüssler opened the bulletproof door and went out
into the street to find that everything seemed to have been resolved. Between the two bodyguards, they helped Alfred enter the house, while Marguerite, her attention divided between her husband and the kind Jacques, hesitated before the open door, through which the young man could see Natalia Sedova and, behind her, the unmistakable head of the renegade, who was dressed in a bathrobe. At that moment Natalia Sedova came to the door to congratulate Marguerite on the incident’s happy resolution and to thank Mr. Jacson for being at their disposal. It was then that Natalia asked him if he wanted to come in to have coffee or eat something.

“No, thank you, madame. It’s very late and Alfred has to rest.”

“Please, Jacques,” Marguerite Rosmer insisted. “You’ve been so kind.”

“No, don’t worry, it was my duty,” he said, and immediately threw his hook into the water: “Another day, when Sylvia’s back.” Then he began to walk away, smiling, as Marguerite reiterated her gratitude and Alfred’s.

The following morning Jacques wrote to Sylvia, telling her he had found himself forced to break his promise not to visit the Trotskys’ house, sharing the details of what had happened, and declaring how anxious he was to have her back in Mexico. His brain, meanwhile, was buzzing with satisfaction, because the bulletproof doors of the fortress on Avenida Viena were now merely curtains that he could part softly with the back of his hand.

Tom and Caridad showed up one night at the end of April and unleashed the earthquake that would change Ramón Mercader’s life forever. They had called midafternoon announcing they would visit at 9:30 that night and asking him to be ready when they arrived in a dark green Chrysler. Sensing that their reappearance would have profound implications for his life, he had eaten very little and was seated on the wall of the flower bed, smoking a cigarette, thinking that he would like to have a dog—no, two would be better—with whom he could run, rolling around in the sand of some beach, caressing their fur. He became angry as he remembered that the last one he had had a relationship with had been Churro, who came from no one knew where and was part of the Republican army, when the lights of the car turning toward his cabin shined on him and moved forward until the vehicle stopped in front of him.

Tom got out, jingling the car keys in his hand, and motioned to
Ramón to follow him. Caridad got out on the other side and, after unsuccessfully trying to kiss her son, walked to the cabin. Tom opened the back and Ramón saw the trunk inside. Tom warned him it was heavy, and between the two of them they lifted the long chest and walked toward the cabin, where Caridad was holding the door open for them. As if he had already thought everything out, Tom steered them to the bedroom and they placed the trunk to the side of the closet.

Caridad was waiting for them in the living room, sitting in an armchair. It seemed to Ramón that she had gained weight in recent weeks and looked strong and energetic, as she had in the ever more distant days in which she wandered the streets of Barcelona in a confiscated Ford and demonstrated her toughness by shooting a dog. Ramón cursed the ambiguous feelings his mother generated in him. Meanwhile, Tom, sitting in front of Ramón, explained that the trunk would be there for no more than two weeks.

“The wheels are turning,” he concluded.

“Is the spy Bob Sheldon?” Ramón asked.

“Yes, and as I imagined, we can’t expect much from him. The Jewish Comrade is working on him and is confident that at least he’ll be good enough to open the door.”

The young man kept his silence. His situation bothered him.

“What’s wrong, Ramón?” Caridad asked him, leaning toward him. “When you get strange like this . . .”

“You and he already know. But don’t worry. After all . . .”

“Are you going to have a tantrum?” Tom’s tone was sarcastic. “I’m not going to repeat what you already know. You and I follow orders. It’s that simple. Everyone serves the revolution where and when the revolution decides.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

“Wait,” Tom said. “When the attack is about to happen, I’ll tell you what to do. Go by Coyoacán every once in a while and say hi to your friends. If you find out anything that could be useful, find me. If not, we’ll keep our distance.”

“It’s better like this, Ramón,” Caridad said. “Tom knows you can do it, but this is a very complicated political problem. Killing that son of a bitch will have consequences and the Soviet Union cannot afford to be implicated . . . That’s all.”

“I understand, Caridad, I understand,” he said, and stood up. “Coffee?”

From that night on, Ramón lived feeling like his insides had been emptied. He felt that, after having to put so much of himself beneath the false skin of Jacques Mornard, it had rebelled and trapped his real and neglected self. Now it was Jacques wandering the city streets, traveling in his black Buick at suicidal speeds, passing by the fortress on Avenida Viena to ask about Alfred Rosmer’s health and have trivial conversations with Robbins, Otto Schüssler, Joseph Hansen, Jake Cooper, and even with the recently arrived Bob Sheldon, whom he had invited to have a beer more than once in the noisy cantina where the toothless salesclerk had disappeared and was replaced by a young woman; it was Jacques who smiled, wrote love letters to Sylvia Ageloff and looked with interest at the shop windows of shoe stores and tailors of a city as splendid as it was besieged by misery that was, to a guy like him, invisible. Meanwhile, Ramón, a ghost, conjugated the verb “to wait” in all of its tenses and possible uses, which in Spanish can also mean to expect and to hope, and felt how life was passing by him without even deigning to look at him.

On the morning of May 1, he had gone all the way to Paseo de la Reforma, where workers and union members were marching, to see the signs and sheets asking not for the renegade’s expulsion but rather for the death of the fascist traitor, and he felt that claim didn’t include him. Disoriented, without expectations, he spent hours in bed smoking, looking at the ceiling, repeating the same piercing questions, asking himself, After everything happens, then what? This sacrifice and self-denial, for what? The glory he thought he had at arm’s reach—where had it gone to? Ramón had handed over his soul to that mission because he wanted to be the main player, and it didn’t matter to him that he had to kill, or even be killed, if he achieved his goal. He felt prepared to remain in darkness his entire life, nameless and without his own existence, but with the communist pride of knowing he had done something great for others. He wanted to be chosen by Marxist providence and at that moment he thought that he would never be anyone or anything. So, two weeks later, when Tom returned to reclaim the trunk, Ramón felt he would never play an important role in that plot.

“When will it be?”

They had placed the weapons in the Chrysler’s trunk and were sitting in the cabin’s armchairs, looking each other in the eye.

“Soon.” Tom seemed annoyed.

“Is something wrong?”

Tom smiled sadly and looked at the floor, where he was lightly tapping the tiles with the tip of his shoe.

“I’m afraid, Ramón.”

His mentor’s response surprised him. It didn’t escape his notice that Tom was calling him Ramón again as he confessed something he never expected to hear from that man’s lips. Should he believe him?

“Grigulievich and Felipe have prepared everything as best as they can, but they have no confidence in their men. Sheldon can do his job, but the others . . .”

“Who will be at the front?”

“The Jewish Comrade.”

“And he doesn’t have any confidence in himself?”

“It’s going to be an attack with many people, many shots. A Mexican-style show . . . They are men with experience in war, but an attack like this is something else.”

“So why don’t you cancel it?”

“You remember the Hotel Moscow, right? Who is going to tell Stalin that the attack will be canceled?”

Ramón leaned forward. He could hear Tom’s breathing.

“And what will you say to him if they fail? . . . Let me go with them, goddammit . . .”

Tom looked him in the eye. Ramón felt anxiety in his chest.

“It would be a solution, but it’s not possible. When they identify you, they’re going to realize that it’s not an action planned by the Mexicans but rather a conspiracy coming from elsewhere.”

“So what if someone identifies Felipe?”

“He would be a Spaniard who was with the Mexicans in the civil war. That front has already been established.”

“I’m also a Spaniard . . . And Belgian, and—”

“It can’t be, Ramón! The attack is perfect, but something unexpected could always happen: they could injure the Duck and he could survive, I don’t know. I myself told Comrade Stalin that he should consider the possibility of failure. And I also told him that if that happened, you would enter the game. But it can’t be canceled, nor can I send you . . .” Tom stood up, lit a cigarette, and looked toward the garden. “You should be happy to not have to participate in this. You know that the lives of all who
enter that house can be very difficult from that moment on. All they have to do is capture one and the rest will fall like dominoes. And they’re going to catch them, that’s certain . . . Besides, from the beginning I told you that you are my best option, but not the first. If they do things well, it’s better for everyone; that’s how we planned it. Did you see what happened on May Day, how the Trotskyists and the Communists fought in the street? Who is going to suspect us when a group of Mexican Communists execute a traitor who is even collaborating with the Americans to carry out a coup d’état in Mexico? And in any event, even if they tell the police whatever they want to, there will be no evidence that those men were mixed up with us . . .”

“I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t ask me to be happy to have worked for three years for nothing.”

Tom at last smiled. He crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and walked to the door.

“I hope you never lose that faith you have, Ramón Mercader. You can’t imagine how much you’ll need it if your turn comes to enter the scene. I assure you, it is not easy to kill a man like that son of a bitch Trotsky.”

Jacques Mornard put the water for the coffee on the stove and adjusted the belt on the boxing robe he used around the house. When he went out to the small entryway he confirmed that the morning papers had not arrived. The previous week, he had doubled the tip for the kid who brought the papers on the condition that they be left at his door before seven in the morning. He returned to the kitchen, percolated coffee, and drank a small cup. He lit a cigarette and walked to the caretaker’s office. The month of May was almost over, but the morning was cool thanks to the previous night’s rain. He walked down the gravel path and cursed as he felt his slippers becoming damp. At the door to the cabin that served as the concierge’s office, the morning caretaker was placing gardening tools in a wheelbarrow.

“Good morning, Mr. Jacson, how can I help you?” The man was smiling and making small bows.

“The paperboy, what happened to him today?”

The caretaker’s smile widened. His teeth were incredibly white and, miraculously, he wasn’t missing any.

“It’s that the papers haven’t come out yet. They’re waiting.”

“What kind of thing is it that the papers haven’t come out yet?”

“Oh,
señor
, it’s because of what happened last night.” The caretaker smiled again. “They tried to kill that bearded Trotsky. They’re saying it on the radio.”

Ramón gave a half turn and, without saying goodbye to the caretaker, returned to his cabin. If he understood correctly, the man had been talking about an attack, not an execution. He turned on the radio and searched until he found a station reporting the news. An armed commando unit had entered Leon Trotsky’s house just before dawn that morning and, despite the numerous shots fired, had not achieved their purpose of killing the exiled revolutionary. The attackers—they said that Diego Rivera, gun in hand, was among them—had managed to flee, and President Cárdenas himself had ordered an exhaustive investigation until the perpetrators of the aborted crime were found. As he digested those words—Diego Rivera was part of the attack?—and tried to predict the consequences, Ramón felt a strange mixture of anxiety and happiness coming over him. As he dressed hurriedly, he continued to listen and learned that there was talk of one wounded, of attackers dressed as soldiers and policemen, of the kidnapping of one of the renegade’s bodyguards.