The Last Paradise

by Antonio Garrido

  “Yeah, sure, but things worked before. If a nut happened to fall down a crack, they’d damned well make sure they found it and put it back in its place. But now, if you want a Soviet to bend down and pick up a nut, one that he might well have dropped himself, on purpose, half the factory has to be mobilized to authorize it. There are bosses for everything: section bosses, chain bosses, line bosses, union bosses, machine bosses, committee bosses, duty bosses, heads, executives, managers! The few who do any actual work are illiterate peasants from the Caucasus, the Urals, and Mongolia with no initiative and no dreams . . . If it carries on like this, before long, there’ll be more bosses than workers.”

  “But I don’t get it. If the factory’s Soviet, there are more and more Soviet bosses, and things are done the way the Soviets want, why do you care so much?”

  “I just told you. They hired us to deliver a factory that works, and until it achieves the agreed production figures, the contract remains unfulfilled.”

  “You think that the suspected sabotage could be for political reasons?”

  “I’m not certain. It might be. They blame counterrevolutionary elements or attacks from disgruntled workers. But it could also be nothing more than a series of accidents due to the operatives’ lack of expertise, or just poor maintenance . . . anything. Either way, it’s my duty to find out. Pass the coffee, will you?”

  Jack was pensive, looking Hewitt in the eyes. “And what does Sergei have to do with all of this?” He filled the industrialist’s cup.

  “Sergei? Sergei’s your typical tight-lipped Russian. He is a survivor. They assigned him to me this year as a liaison officer, and since then, he’s followed me everywhere like a dog.” He gestured with his chin, indicating the entrance to the room. Jack looked and recognized Sergei’s white beard. He was reading the Pravda some distance away. “Although they’ve promoted him, that shouldn’t worry you. Bear in mind that your job will be to supervise maintenance of the production chain, which isn’t a position that will arouse his suspicion, and it’s something, I’m told, for which you have the necessary skills.”

  “You’re told?” He stopped chewing.

  Hewitt opened the New York Times with his only good hand, took a folder from the inside pages, and dumped it on Jack’s plate of bacon. “Look for yourself!”

  Jack, surprised, opened the folder and studied the report he found inside. It was a wire transmission dated three days earlier in Helsinki, sent from Dearborn. “But this is . . .”

  “Exactly. Your employee file. I requested it as soon as I was admitted to the hospital. Everything’s in there, from the day you started at Ford to the day they fired you: training, promotions, authorizations, what you ate, whom you mixed with, and how long you spent in the bathroom. It would appear that you’re a smart guy.” He winked.

  Jack breathed in. His heart was thumping. He supposed that if Hewitt had dug this deep, he might know something about Kowalski’s death. But it was unlikely he’d gotten wind of it, and Jack wanted to do business with him.

  “I see you leave nothing to chance.”

  “I sure don’t, kid. You might’ve impressed me on the SS Cliffwood, but I needed to make sure you could repair the damaged machinery. And now these reports are just what I needed, to know I’m going to pay two hundred dollars a week to the right person.”

  “Three hundred.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, three hundred. Three hundred dollars a week if you want me to take this on. Like you said, there’s a lot of money at stake, and there’s no one else who can do it. I’m traveling with my wife, and even though you won’t admit it, everything suggests it’s going to be risky.”

  Jack fell silent. He hadn’t asked for more money out of ambition. He just wanted to check whether Hewitt knew he was wanted for murder. If he did, Hewitt would be the one calling the shots and could make him work for free, if he so wished, but if he agreed to Jack’s financial terms, it would mean he had nothing on him. Hewitt stared at Jack for a while. “All right, young man. Three hundred it is!”

  Jack didn’t wait to start showing Hewitt that he took the job seriously. He hadn’t yet finished his coffee before he asked for the factory’s floor plans, a detailed inventory of the machinery, the credentials of the Soviet and American machine operators, their shift patterns, and, of course, a comprehensive list of the incidents that had taken place and the workers involved.

  “Well, blow me down! All right, I’ll try to get all that together for you.”

  “Perfect. As for my cover story . . .” Jack admitted to Hewitt that he was concerned that if his unexpected appointment wasn’t made to seem credible, it would arouse the Soviets’ suspicion.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Hewitt reassured him. “I’ll tell Sergei the truth: that I needed someone to replace McMillan, that I asked Dearborn for your file, and that you were the best man for the job. The only thing I’ll hide is the real purpose of your role. He’ll assume you’ll keep him up to date with everything you find out, but in reality you’ll tell him only what we want him to know.”

  “So, Sergei knew about the problem with McMillan?”

  “There ain’t much the Soviets don’t know. They always ask for a list of the American specialists that Ford is sending to their factory ahead of time. That’s why it makes sense to hire a replacement for McMillan.”

  “OK. In that case, there’s just the matter of my friends.”

  “I don’t understand. What do they have to do with this?”

  Jack admitted to Hewitt that he and his friends had come up against a setback trying to validate the contracts that Amtorg had granted them in the United States.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s a separate matter. I don’t see how I can help them.”

  “It’s simple. There’re just five of them: my wife, my friend Walter, Harry Daniels, his elder son, and Joe Brown. They’re all qualified, and they would help me integrate as a supervisor. Their presence at the factory would enable me to ask questions without arousing suspicion.”

  “Five, you say?” He blew out. “Honestly. I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”

  “Look, sir. It’s not like you’re hiring a bunch of good-for-nothings. As I said, they all came with signed contracts, but apparently the Soviets filled their quota and no positions will be available again for three months. All I’m asking is that you speed up the process. It won’t be hard for a man of your influence to do that.”

  “Jack, as well as being difficult, it would be expensive. I’m sorry, but if you want me to hire them, you’ll need an argument with more weight than that.”

  “Is the weight of the machine I lifted off your arm not enough?”

  Wilbur Hewitt breathed in and clenched his teeth before taking a final bite of his sausage.

  “All right, kid. But don’t tell anyone I was the one who hired them.”

  14

  Jack didn’t expect his companions to welcome him with applause and confetti, but neither did he imagine that, when he arrived at the guesthouse, even Joe Brown would refuse to speak to him. They were all in the bedroom, a funereal look on their faces. He asked what was wrong, but nobody responded. Jack approached little Danny in silence to hand him a cookie he’d taken from the buffet at the Metropol, but when the boy went to take it, his mother pushed it away. Harry Daniels lowered his head. Sue ignored him. When Jack insisted on knowing what was wrong, Walter exploded.

  “You still have the gall to show up and ask us what’s wrong? Us? Ask yourself what’s happening with you! Or even better, let Joe tell you, because until the last minute, he defended you, saying that it was impossible that you’d let us down. Or ask Harry, damn it, who went without eating, hoping that you’d finally appear. Or Sue, who went to the trouble to go find you because she was so worried that something had happened to you. Or ask me, your best friend. Ask me why I, while you were having fun at a luxury hotel, went down on my knees to beg the Commissariat to give us jobs. Jobs for
all of us, including you!”

  “Wow! I see I can’t leave you alone for a minute.” He tried to put an arm over Walter’s shoulder, but his friend pushed it away.

  “Some balls you have, Jack! Why don’t you keep your goddamned jokes for your friend Hewitt? Maybe he can stomach them.”

  Jack grasped that it wasn’t a time for sarcasm. “All right. I know I should’ve told you, but—”

  “No! It’s not all right, Jack! It’s far from all right! Our jobs are far from all right! Your passport’s far from all right! The food is far from all right! And this fucking guesthouse is far from all right! And while we bust a gut trying to change things, even if it’s just to know that we’ll still be able to sleep between these four walls tomorrow rather than freeze to death in a park, you decide to spend your time at parties, staying in suites, and abandoning the friends who helped you not so long ago.”

  “Hang on, Walter. You don’t know what happened. I—”

  “I don’t know? Damned right I don’t know! And you know why? Because although Sue asked you at the hotel, you didn’t deign to answer her.”

  “For God’s sake! Let me explain!”

  “You ain’t gonna persuade me with your hot air. Joe Brown and the Danielses know about what you did with the train tickets. They know how you took advantage of everyone. Nobody wants your explanations here. Thought you were a big shot, huh? Jack the indispensable, the man who fixes everything, but of course, only when you pay him enough. Well, guess what? I got jobs for them, free of charge. Do you hear me? Free.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Walter! I’m impressed.” Irony returned to his voice.

  “Look, Jack. I can’t even be bothered to talk to you.”

  “Oh no. Let’s talk!” he said in the same sarcastic tone. “You got jobs for everyone, huh? Gee! That’s great news! And I guess they’re well paid, right?”

  “Well paid or not, they’re jobs.”

  “How much, Walter? A hundred and eighty dollars a month? Because that’s what you promised us we’d receive, isn’t it?”

  “No.” He lowered his head. “Those wages were for specialized workers with contracts.”

  “We had contracts.”

  “Which are no longer valid. They produced them for us overnight, and they weren’t confirmed. Don’t ask me why, but they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.”

  “Oh! So the wages you promised us were just for specialized workers. And what’s Joe Brown? A farmhand? As far as I knew, until the damned depression, he was working at a Kosciusko foundry where he’d been working since before he was out of diapers. And Harry Daniels? Is Harry not specialized? Because as I understand it, in Massachusetts, he handled a lathe like he was riding a bicycle. And his son Jim? Did Jim not study at the Institute of Technology and work at Jason and Brothers Presses? I don’t know what you think, but I reckon they’re pretty specialized.”

  “It’s not like I thought it would be here. There are more and more qualified Soviets now, and the immigrants who arrive without a valid contract have to make do with—”

  “With what, Walter? A hundred and fifty? A hundred and twenty a month?”

  Walter didn’t respond. Jack looked at everyone else for an answer, but they all remained silent.

  “Fifty!” Joe Brown blurted out in the end, spitting on the floor. “Fifty dollars.”

  “What do you expect for half days? It’s better than nothing!” Walter yelled. “What did you get, Jack? What have you got for us?”

  Jack looked at them all one by one before replying. “Two hundred. Two hundred dollars a month, for each of you.”

  The transfer to Gorky by railway was much the same as the other train journeys they’d experienced: the same packed third-class cars, the same delays, the same insufferable jolting, and the same snow-covered horizon. The only difference was that Walter wasn’t traveling with them. Jack looked at the chipped wooden bench where he’d spent ten hours. Pressed shoulder to shoulder with Sue, he asked her why, in a country that glorified the equality of all citizens, they had three classes of accommodation on trains.

  “I guess it’s because these cars are from the age of the tsars,” Sue replied, trying to rationalize in the same way that Walter would have.

  Jack scratched his head. “I doubt it. If that was the case, it could easily be remedied. They could have a single price and allocate the best seats first come, first served.”

  “Oh, Jack!” She smiled. “I don’t understand politics. I bet Walter would have given you a better answer. I don’t know. Perhaps they’ve kept the higher classes for rich foreign tourists. Anyway, what do you care? The important thing is we’re about to arrive at the gateway to the Urals!” She stood up to gesture toward the impressive pair of transmission towers visible in the distance.

  Jack wiped some condensation from the glass and looked through it at the gigantic twin towers. A shiver ran down his spine. They were just over twelve miles from Gorky and their new life. And though he didn’t fear destiny, for the first time, Walter’s absence unnerved him. He still couldn’t understand why his friend had not gone with them.

  The night before they left, Walter had been defiant, declaring that he would never accept handouts from a capitalist pig. It had been no use insisting to him that Wilbur Hewitt had been hired by Stalin himself to help the Soviet Union. Sue said that Walter hadn’t grasped just how good a deal it was that Jack had managed to get from Hewitt, and that was why he had decided to stay in Moscow for a few days and find his own opportunities in Gorky through his Muscovite contact. To avoid any trouble, Walter hadn’t wanted her to stay with him. He’d given himself a time limit of one week, he told Sue. If he didn’t get results, he’d travel to Gorky and accept Hewitt’s offer.

  Just after midday, the train came to a halt in Gorky Station.

  As they alighted, the sixty-eight American immigrants heard the Intourist official responsible for guiding them to the blocks where they would be housed suggest that they load their luggage onto the carts that waited for them by the river, but nobody moved a muscle. After coming halfway around the world, they were not about to separate themselves from what little they still possessed.

  Jack rubbed himself in an attempt to retain some of the heat that seemed to be escaping through his mouth with every breath. He looked around. The avenue on which the snow buried both the roadway and the houses was almost deserted. On the station façade, the thermometer showed thirty-five degrees Celsius below zero. He put his arm around Sue, who was shivering like a puppy. No one had warned them that the last paradise would be so cold.

  Like a herd of reindeer, the American immigrants followed the Intourist official to the tram stop on line eight, where they were told that it would take them forty-five minutes to travel the seven and a half miles from the center of the city to the suburb where the factory was located. Once they were squeezed in like livestock, the driver rang the bell, and the tram dragged its two cars through Gorky’s desolate streets. As they huddled together, Jack could not imagine how the city’s freezing inhabitants could know the meaning of the word happiness.

  Gradually, the last buildings made way for a monotonous, snow-covered upland, interrupted from time to time by lampposts sunk into the snow like harpoons protruding somberly from a great white whale. After half an hour, the tram approached a gigantic complex of industrial buildings protected by dozens of wire fences. Murmurs were suddenly replaced with words of admiration when the passengers saw the impressive size of a site that, at first glance, seemed bigger than the city itself.

  Jack was impressed. The Ford factory where he’d worked in Dearborn had comprised assembly and power plants, a foundry, a bodyworkers’ shop, an engine factory, and countless warehouses and auxiliary buildings spread over a thousand acres. The Avtozavod not only housed similar installations, but behind the fences there seemed to be an army of armed guards.

  When the tram reached the final stop, signposted “Eastern District,” Jack was one of t
he first to enter the registration office that the Soviets appeared to have set up for the occasion in a timber hut. He was received by a guard with slanting eyes under a fur hat almost as large as the overcoat that covered his body. The man shivered behind a little counter upon which lay a cap similar to the one Elizabeth’s partner at the dance had been wearing. He wondered to which section of the army the cap belonged. When it was his turn and the employee asked him to identify himself, Jack placed the letter of recommendation from Amtorg and the contract that Wilbur Hewitt had provided on the counter. The man ignored the letter and concentrated on the contract, verifying that, alongside Hewitt’s signature, Sergei Loban’s appeared. He stamped the document and added Jack’s name to a registration book. When the Soviet asked him for his passport, Jack informed him that it had been requisitioned at the Finnish border.

  “The officer who retained it assured me they’d send it on to the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry in Moscow, but when I went to collect it, they told me that they’d forward it directly to this factory.”

  The guard turned his slanted eyes toward Jack. He looked at the name that appeared on the contract again and searched in his drawer. Jack noticed that it was filled with American passports.

  “Jack Beilis. Yes. Here it is.” He took it out of the drawer, compared the photograph to Jack’s face, and set it down next to the cap. “You come with family?”

  Jack remembered that he had shown his fake marriage certificate at customs. At that moment he was glad that Walter had decided to stay in Moscow; otherwise there would no doubt have been a quarrel. “Yes, I’m traveling with my wife.” He gestured to Sue to come forward. “She has a contract, too.” He showed it to the man.

  Sue smiled and gripped Jack as if he belonged to her, making a face when she had to let go to hand the guard her passport.

  “All right. Fill out questionnaire, sign, and wait outside until accommodation assigned to you,” he said.

  “And our passports, when will they be returned to us?” Jack asked.