“In time, I gained some prominence in the CNT, and I was active in important strikes like the Canadiense, in which we managed to make the employers accept an eight-hour workday. But then things turned ugly. Some low-life bosses hired gunmen to murder our union comrades. They would appear from nowhere and shoot them in the back of the head. They told me I’d be next. Some people I knew decided to flee to Paris and persuaded me to go with them. There I met a Russian girl who worked for Comintern, you know, Communist International. I fell in love and came to live with her. In the end, she left me for a Soviet soldier, and I stayed here, doing more or less the same job I did in my store back home.”
Jack had to stop himself from yawning. Miquel seemed like a nice guy, but he talked too much about matters that didn’t interest Jack. “And the hat? Don’t you ever take it off?” That was all he could think to say.
“The barretina?” He smiled and removed it to show it to Jack. “It belonged to my grandfather. It always catches people’s attention, they ask me about it, and it gives me a chance to tell them about my home.”
Jack filled Miquel’s glass again, hoping he’d at least be quiet while he drank. He took advantage of the pause and asked him about the cost and provenance of the rack of ribs he’d assured him he could supply. Miquel moved closer and whispered in Jack’s ear.
“That’s my secret,” he said quietly. “If I give it away, I’m done for.” He added that he had contacts in some of the farming cooperatives that supplied the Avtozavod kitchens, but that trade of that kind was strictly forbidden. If caught, one was sent to a prison camp in Siberia. “That’s why it’s so expensive,” he added.
“How much?”
Miquel pretended to do the sums. “Two hundred rubles.”
Jack looked at him. Though he had money to burn, two hundred rubles was more than an ordinary worker’s monthly wage. He decided to try his luck. “I can offer you a hundred.”
Miquel shook his head. He took another sip of vodka, looked from side to side to make sure no one was listening, and moved in again until he was almost kissing Jack’s ear. “Make me a better offer.”
“But in the American store, they said it’d cost fifty!” Jack complained.
“Then order it there, and wait a couple of years for it to arrive. Look, Jack, the problem isn’t the cost of the pork. It’s paying the guys who have to look the other way and keep their mouths shut, and just that will cost a hundred rubles, whether it’s a rack of ribs or a chop.”
“And you pocket fifty. That doesn’t sound very Communist.”
“You don’t know my problems. If you’re not interested . . .” He finished his drink and stood up.
Jack stopped him. “Four hundred rubles. But I want the whole pig, from snout to trotters.”
17
For the next few weeks, Jack felt like a rat lost in a maze.
Every morning he donned his white overalls to go on his inspection round. He started in the turbine plant, where the power used in the foundry was generated, and from there he went on to the engine factory, where they forged the motors and gearboxes, before continuing to the press shop, where they molded the various parts of the body that, after being painted, were taken to the assembly line and mounted on a chassis to which the wheels had already been coupled. However, despite the frenetic pace of the work, Jack was barely able to complete his inspection of the four areas before the end of the week. In the Soviet Union, the workweek consisted of five working days followed by one day off, so his downtime was not always on a Sunday, but rotated. Since Joe Brown and the Danielses had different shifts, his days off never coincided with theirs, so he used his time away from work to go over the reports compiled during the week.
He felt he was making little progress.
Most of his reports pointed toward the conclusion that the factory’s problems arose from the introduction of an industrial process in a country with a language and culture stuck in the Middle Ages. The absurd situations—like the fact that some extremely expensive presses imported from the United States were taken to be filler and used as reinforcement in the construction of a railway station, or that an entire set of punches had succumbed to rust because, not knowing how to work them, the Russians had simply left them outdoors—were an everyday occurrence. In his research, he’d learned that Ford had experienced similar difficulties when setting up its subsidiary in Berlin in 1926. However, the German character—organized, methodical, disciplined—along with a state of technological development similar to the Americans’, had ultimately led to success.
It was in stark contrast to what, in Jack’s view, was happening in Gorky, and not because the Soviets were less hardworking than the Germans. The problem was that, while the Germans had met the challenge like an army of bees, the Russians seemed to be doing it like a herd of goats.
He poked the brazier he’d bought to ward off the cold and continued to examine his papers.
If the reports were anything to go by, everything seemed to stem from the stubbornness of Stalin himself; after disregarding the advice of the experts, he had ordered a carbon copy of Ford’s gigantic complex in Dearborn, including factories, sewerage, schools, hospitals, social facilities, and accommodation, all to be built in one go, and on a site with very little preexisting infrastructure. What was more, the rushed opening, pushed through to mark the end of the five-year plan, meant that the construction of the Avtozavod was far from complete.
A simple figure confirmed his analysis: not a single Russian automobile had yet come off the Soviet production lines. The small number of units produced was from the stock of seventy-five thousand broken-down Model A Fords that Stalin had purchased in order to cannibalize them.
The other big problem was that 90 percent of the thirty thousand workers at the industrial complex were farmers and herders with no comparable experience. On several occasions, during his inspection rounds, Jack had caught workers lighting fires on the floor to cook food, or wearing bearskin while they handled machinery in which baggy clothing could easily get trapped, or leaving their stations to relieve themselves on the nearest piece of open ground, rather than use the latrines. Trying to make the workers from the steppes follow the rules on safety, cleanliness, and discipline was a thorny business, and it was no surprise that so many accidents happened. However, there were incidents that were difficult to classify as accidents.
Every night, Jack set aside the files related to errors or negligence, and focused on the more mysterious incidents that could have been caused by sabotage. The most curious thing to him was that they’d all taken place in the press shop.
The first incident was caused by a broken chain belt on the chassis line. In the maintenance reports, it was stated that the belt had been replaced by a qualified operative before the accident, so its deterioration was surprising. Though nobody was harmed, production was interrupted for two days. But the strange thing was not so much that a new belt had broken, but that it happened to be the only type of belt for which there was no replacement in the entire factory.
The second incident was a broken hook on one of the cranes used to move engines. The motor that was swinging in the air when it happened fell to the ground from a height of ten feet, crushing two workers. Jack was sad for the two men who died and their families. He knew those cranes, and knew that the case-hardened hooks with which they were equipped wouldn’t break under the weight of a steamroller. Also, the maintenance checks, according to the records in his possession, were satisfactory.
The final incident involved an acetylene canister that had exploded. Most events of this nature occurred when novices without welding experience left oxygen canisters open and lit a match, but that night, the person handling the equipment happened to be an operative with ten years’ experience in metalwork and mining. The woman died two days later from third-degree burns. Though Jack had no proof, the terrible way she died and her expertise made Jack include the file among the potential cases of sabotage.
Unfortun
ately, due to the slovenly Soviet bureaucracy, Jack found that there was little more he could do than read his reports. Wilbur Hewitt couldn’t provide all the information he needed, nor could Jack go around questioning those involved without arousing suspicion. This meant that there were days when all he could do was put the investigation on ice and devote his efforts to repairing the machines and solving more everyday problems.
Among these, the one that worried him most was Sue.
Because Walter’s fiancée worked in a cleaning gang, Jack and Sue rarely saw each other. However, the biggest problem for Jack was that they were still ostensibly married. Jack had confirmed that, as long as he was registered as married, he couldn’t request a single room. He coveted one, but if he admitted that the marriage certificate was false, he risked being uncovered and deported. That was why he’d persuaded Joe Brown that his marriage was a mess and that he needed the peace and quiet of a single room to reflect on things at night while the divorce was being processed. Joe Brown was especially understanding when Jack offered the amount of thirty rubles a month in exchange for the loan of his room. The Soviet regulations specifically forbade subletting, but fortunately, within the American village, some things still functioned as if they were in the United States. Joe Brown was happy to use half of Jack’s fee to fund a shared room with another factory colleague. From that moment on, Jack was able to sleep alone in a bedroom only a little bigger than a wardrobe that stank of horse dung.
When he asked the bunkhouse receptionist about the smell, she explained that, when the buildings were constructed, they filled the cavities between the wooden partition walls with a mixture of straw and excrement. Despite the smell, she said, it provided excellent insulation.
Once the issue of his accommodation had been resolved, all Jack had to do was wait for Walter’s arrival. The last they heard, he was still in Moscow, where he’d apparently found a role as an assistant to the OGPU.
Other than that, Jack had spent his free time planning his future. Since his arrival at the Avtozavod two months earlier, he’d managed to save two thousand dollars, of which he’d used two hundred to cover the three months’ rent on his new room that he’d paid in advance, as well as to purchase a couple of used overcoats and a rudimentary stove to help him through the harsh winter.
He felt satisfied. If he carried on like this, in a year he’d amass a fortune of twelve thousand dollars, or roughly 360,000 tax-free rubles if he exchanged them on the black market. With those prospects, all he had to do was choose a European country to move to and spend his mountain of money.
And until that day came, he’d make sure he ate well.
Though he was entitled to the better meal tickets, he’d found that the portions that they served in the Avtozavod canteens were diminishing not only in size but also in variety, until all that was available were pots of balanda, a vegetable soup that consisted mostly of salty water; pies containing a ground meat, the origin of which nobody dared guess; and omelets made from powdered eggs. Jack didn’t know which of these dishes it was that gave him diarrhea, so he decided to play it safe, avoid them all, and pay astronomical prices for the cooked sausages and chops that Miquel was able to supply at the end of each shift.
What bothered him most was having to hide in order to eat. He ate surreptitiously, praying that his neighbors wouldn’t smell the food when he heated it on the stove in his room. Fortunately, the stink from the partition walls seemed to cover up the aroma. He did it so that his companions wouldn’t be envious, because slowly, day by day, they were losing weight, while he remained strong.
It seemed inevitable that the famine would finally reach the Avtozavod, where thousands of souls waited patiently to be consumed.
Soon Jack would reach the end of his third month as a supervisor in Gorky, and everything continued more or less in the same way. Everything except the message that had been slid under his door that night. It was in Sue’s handwriting. The note announced that Walter would arrive the next day.
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t afraid of working under the scrutiny of thousands of watchful eyes, or acquiring food illegally, or trusting a black-market dealer to exchange his dollars for rubles. None of that scared him. But his heart skipped a beat when he thought about looking Walter in the eye as if nothing had happened.
When Walter arrived the next day, Jack found his friend looking very unwell. He didn’t know whether Sue had told him anything about the dalliance they’d had on the night of the party, but he did know that his friend’s face had become even more gaunt and pensive. Jack avoided any mention of Sue and focused on finding out about Walter’s employment while they drank tea together in the canteen. “Three months! We’ve barely heard from you. We tried to contact your friend but couldn’t locate him. You had us worried,” said Jack, unable to hold his friend’s gaze.
Walter downed the cup of tea in one gulp, as if it were the first he’d had all week. Jack asked him if he wanted to share the last piece of cake that was on the counter. His friend nodded. “I should’ve called you, but communications with Gorky are difficult, and I only speak a few words of Russian. I wrote to you both. I spent a couple of weeks in Moscow, going here, there, and everywhere with Dmitri.” He gobbled his piece of cake in one mouthful, so Jack could only just make out what he was saying. “He was trying to find work for me at the Comintern, as a liaison with the Communist Party USA, but all the positions were taken.”
“So why didn’t you come to Gorky?”
“Because I’m stubborn. You know me. Dmitri assured me it was just a matter of weeks before a vacancy came up. I had a pretty rough time, Jack,” he concluded.
“God, Walter, believe me when I say I’m sorry. If I’d known . . .”
“No. Don’t apologize. It was my own fault. I don’t know why I felt intimidated by what you did in Moscow, when you found better jobs for everyone than I did. My stupid pride . . . I was a fool to think you were trying to make my life miserable.”
Jack felt his stomach tighten when he remembered his night with Sue. He finished off his tea in an attempt to undo the knot. He waited for it to ease before continuing. “So, what’s your situation now? I’m sure I could still speak to Wilbur Hewitt and—”
“That won’t be necessary. In the end, Dmitri managed to get the People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry to reconsider the offer that I’d turned down. It was difficult—the Soviets are very strict when it comes to labor matters—but in the end, we managed to make arrangements, and I’m going to work as an administrative liaison between the Soviets and the Americans. A pencil pusher’s job, but a job all the same.”
“Even so, if it’s for the regular salary, we could try to negotiate another role.”
“No. Really, Jack. Maybe later. Fifty rubles here and there isn’t gonna change my life, and I’ve already begged for too many favors to go asking to switch jobs now. I’m just grateful to you for taking care of Sue. I heard you’ve applied for a divorce, and paid for a room so she could be by herself. You’re a true friend.”
“Oh, well, it was nothing.” Jack was glad he’d found the courage to go to the Zapis Aktov Grazhdanskogo Sostoyaniya, the Russian registry office, to file for a divorce. “So, I guess now everything can get back to how it was.”
He hadn’t finished the sentence when Sue appeared from nowhere. Jack, surprised, felt as if she were staring at him like a stalking feline. Walter looked at both of them, in silence.
“I hope so, Jack. I hope so.”
With the arrival of spring, life at the factory took a turn for the worse. The Soviet high command had ordered that the Avtozavod be running at full capacity by the summer, which had led to an increase in workload that had not been matched by an increase in rations. The infirmaries were gradually becoming swamped with legions of increasingly emaciated workers who were given a restorative, along with a warning, before being sent back to their posts. Harry Daniels had been one of the latest operatives to need medical attention, but what ailed
him couldn’t be treated with pills. What he needed, his wife said, was a good plate of stewed vegetables, and that was what she asked Jack for after knocking on his door.
When he heard her request, he didn’t know what to say.
“For the love of God, Jack,” she insisted. “My Harry barely has the strength to breathe. In the morning, he throws up God knows what, because all he has for dinner is the colored water they give him at the factory. He has a cup of tea for breakfast and refuses to eat more than his cookie so that I won’t go without. Please, I beg you. In Boston, I saw my brother starve to death, so I know what I’m talking about.”
“But, Mrs. Daniels, you know as well as I do that the company store’s practically out of stock. I can’t—”
“Son,” she cut in, “I’d know the smell that comes out of your room anywhere. And look at you. You might not have fat to burn, but you’re strong as an ox. You know how to get food, and you must be able to spare some. Listen,” she said, her eyes beginning to well up, “we send everything we have to my mother, who’s sick in Detroit, but even so, we’ve saved two hundred rubles. It’s all we have. Here. Take it.” She held out the money in a crumpled ball.
Jack took a deep breath, trying to stifle his shame. He refused to take the notes and offered a handkerchief to the woman to dry her eyes. Money was not the issue. The problem was that if he helped Mrs. Daniels, word would spread that he could get food, and then everyone in the village would be begging him for the same thing. He pursed his lips and bemoaned the day he’d had the idea to treat everyone he knew to a hog roast.
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