“Those revisionists love playing at revolution,” África had said to him. “If we let them, the only thing they’ll achieve is that we’re left on our own and lose the war. They have Trotsky’s sign on their heads and we’re going to have to rip it away from them by fire. Without Soviet assistance, you can’t even dream of victory, so now tell me how in the hell we’re going to make a revolution? It seems like they’ve already forgotten 1934.”
In the luxurious Hispano-Suiza that she drove around, África had taken him to see the poor neighborhoods and towns close to Barcelona so that Ramón could see the chaos that Trotskyists and anarchists were bringing to the country. Outside Las Ramblas and the city’s central areas, a regrettable desolation had settled, with streets blocked by absurd barricades, paralyzed factories, buildings ransacked to the core, and churches and convents turned into charred ruins. África told him about the executions carried out by the anarchists and about how fear of expressing their opinions was growing among workers. The middle class and many business owners had been divested of their goods, and the project to create a military industry was being run by a sea of syndicalist volunteers. A scarcity of products had taken hold in stores and markets. The people were enthusiastic, that was true, but they were also hungry, and in many places bread could only be acquired through long lines and only if they had the coupons distributed by anarchists and syndicalists, who had become the owners of a city in which central and local government were distant references. Although the anarchists were confident that having entered an era of equality was enough to maintain the support of masses who’d been enslaved for centuries, África asked herself how long the enthusiasm and the faith in victory would last.
“This Republic is a brothel and we’ve got to whip it into line.”
Now, in a period of only a few months, with the return of the smell of blood and the roaring from the front where young men like his brother Pablo or his friend Jaume fell daily, Ramón found himself in a tired, more still, disenchanted city, besieged by scarcity and anxious to return to the normality broken by the war and revolutionary dreams. It was as if the people only aspired to live a regular life, sometimes even at the despicable price of surrender. The franquistas’ devastating attack on Málaga, where the rebel infantry and navy, with the support of Italian aviation and troops, had massacred those escaping from the city, had dented people’s faith. Although posters still hung from buildings, from confiscated churches and from the few vehicles that ran through Barcelona, instead of clamoring for unity in victory, they now yelled furiously for the elimination of enemies that a short while before had been considered allies, even brothers. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie, who’d been forgotten up until a few weeks before, were emerging from their caves again: in the still poorly stocked cafés of Las Ramblas fur coats were seen once again amid the proletarian overalls. In the surviving bars, by contrast, it was the anarchist militia who in their idleness drank what they found, played dominoes, smoked foul-smelling cigarettes, and rolled around with the prostitutes whom a few weeks before they had tried to convert to the proletarian revolution. The effervescence of the previous months was losing its splendor, like the faded letters of the posters that, in these same bars, written by the same men, still recalled the Great Plans: DANCE IS THE BROTHEL’S WAITING ROOM; THE TAVERN WEAKENS CHARACTER; THE BAR DEGENERATES THE SPIRIT: LET’S CLOSE THEM!
On the way to the confiscated palace of his relative the Marquis of Villota, Ramón, conscious that he smelled like the hills and gunpowder, felt pride in knowing he was faithful to his purposes and also anxious to find out what his new fate would be. The underlying reasons for Barcelona’s atmospheric change still escaped him, but from that moment he had the notion that concrete—draconian, to be precise—actions were being imposed to restore the broken faith and implant the discipline that had never existed and that the overwhelmed Republic cried for.
While the streetcar went up to the heights of La Bonanova, Ramón remembered the times he and his parents had visited the house of their wealthy and noble relative, the owner of an admirable pack of dogs with whom Ramón spent the visits. That memory seemed remote, almost foreign, as if between those easy days of the past and the difficult hours of the present, many years—perhaps many lives—had traveled through his body, and of the boy Ramón, little more remained than barely a name and fragments of nostalgia. On the high gate of the property, a cardboard sign now hung announcing the location of the headquarters of the Group of Antifascist Women, presided over by Caridad. Although the building could not hide its splendor, the garden had become full of weeds, stripped cars, and starving dogs that Ramón preferred not to look at. Without anyone stopping him, the young man crossed the garden and the palace’s porch, with its Italian marble floor stained by mud and grease and a large photo of an illuminated and serious Stalin hanging in the privileged place where, he remembered perfectly, the marquis displayed a dark still life by Zurbarán. When they informed him that Comrade Caridad was in the back garden, Ramón, who knew his way through the house, searched for the exit from the library and saw a small table under the cypress tree where Caridad and the solid and ruddy Kotov were talking, smiling.
Ramón had met the Soviet man through his mother, when he had just arrived in Barcelona with the first intelligence advisers and those sent from the Comintern. Before Ramón left for Madrid and Caridad for Albacete, they had had many meetings with Kotov. Ramón had admired the marvelous capacity for analysis of that secret agent with transparent and sharp eyes and a slight limp in his left foot that he was sometimes able to hide. Later, when the fall of Madrid seemed imminent, comments reached the young man about the almost suicidal acts of that Moscow emissary, who, following the path of the first Soviet tanks, had many times placed himself at the head of militias and internationalists, violating the Muscovite order that prohibited advisers from directly participating in the actions of war. He also knew that his mother felt devoted to that man, who was capable, according to her, of reading a five-hundred-page book in one night, of reciting almost all of Pushkin’s poetry from memory, and of expressing himself in eight different languages, including Cantonese.
As if she had just seen him that morning, Caridad offered him a seat. Meanwhile, the effusive Kotov welcomed him with a bear hug and offered him a drink of vodka that Ramón rejected. The cold March air did not seem to have any effect on the Soviet, who was dressed in only a crude wool shirt with a multicolored handkerchief tied at his neck; Caridad, by contrast, was covered in blankets.
“How did you leave things in Madrid?” Kotov wanted to know, and Ramón tried to explain to him what could be known or speculated, from a trench twenty miles from the city, about the situation of the interminable battle for the capital, although he expressed his conviction that the offensive initiated in Guadalajara would end like the one at Jarama: it would be a new victory over the fascists.
“That’s a given,” Kotov declared, as if he could predict the future, even of that unpredictable war, and took one of Caridad’s cigarettes from the table. He began to smoke without inhaling. “But now we have a more complex battle here in Barcelona,” he added, and without further ado he painted for Ramón a picture of the political tensions in the Catalan capital in which the Generalitat at last was trying to be something more than an assembly of councillors whom no one obeyed. There, in Barcelona, more than in Madrid, the path of the war could be decided, he assured him.
Listening to Kotov, Ramón recalled the question that Caridad had asked him a few days before and her insistence on the idea that there could be more important fronts in that war. According to Kotov, President Companys seemed ready to discipline his territory and had ordered the requisition of weapons in the dismantling of anarchist and syndicalist vigilante patrols that effectively controlled Barcelona. For the party, the need to neutralize the different Republican, or falsely Republican, factions had become a task of the first order and because of that they should support Companys’s plan. The problem lay in the fact
that the communist policy was constantly limited by the hostility of the conciliatory government of the Socialist Largo Caballero, who continued to demonstrate his dislike of them and, what was worse, his inability to direct the war. The panorama became clearer for Ramón when Kotov explained that a group of completely trustworthy militants was going to work for what was presented as an urgent political need: to get rid of those burdens affecting discipline and military will and catalyze the Republican efforts dedicated to unifying the forces. To reach this objective they were going to use all means, from the most aggressive propaganda to the possibility of creating such a crisis that it would lead to a change in the government and allow the replacement of Largo Caballero by a leader capable of obtaining the unity of the forces.
Ramón was beginning to make out the dimensions of the mission he’d been called on to undertake, and he listened to Kotov’s reflections about the urgency of initiating the offensive with a purge of the army, where they had to get rid of some of the leaders who were unconditionally loyal to Largo Caballero. Comrade Stalin himself had suggested that they purge the highest levels and designate more capable leaders: in the Málaga disaster, they had behaved like idiots—worse, like traitors and saboteurs. Therefore it was necessary to remove recalcitrant opponents and, at the same time, achieve the preeminence of the Communists within the Republican alliance, in the army as well as in the institutions. Only thus could they achieve necessary cohesion and begin to dream of victory.
“Kid, in this war many things are being decided for the future of the proletariat, for the whole world, and we can’t go around like wet rags. We know that Largo and his damn Socialists are organizing a miserable campaign against the Soviets, the Communists, and our political commissars. Or does it seem like a coincidence to you that they are talking more and more about how Mexico is offering the Republic disinterested assistance? Some have even accused us of having taken the reserves of Spanish gold to Moscow as payment for the weapons, when everyone knows that—besides selling the Spanish weapons that nobody would sell them—we’re protecting that treasure that could’ve fallen into the hands of the fascists, which would have been the end of the Republic. It’s very clear: at the root there is an alliance between Socialists and Trotskyists to discredit the Soviets. We even suspect that the government is negotiating a pact with the English to carve us out of the game. We would leave as we came in, lamenting the defeat of the Republic, but what about you? You would be the scapegoats and would pay with your blood. Franco is going for everything, with Hitler and Mussolini pushing him on.”
Ramón, angered by what he was listening to, observed Caridad, who lit a cigarette, puffed on it a few times, and threw it far away from her.
“I feel terrible. I have angina,” the woman said, and leaned over the table. “And the damn tobacco . . . I think Kotov has been clear.”
Ramón felt his ideas forming a dark medley in his mind. The list of plots, betrayals, and pettiness enumerated by Kotov was overwhelming for him, and the project of a wide antifascist front, in which he had believed and for which he had fought, seemed to undo itself beneath the weight of that information. But he still couldn’t see his place in a decentralized war, in which enemies jumped out from any corner and not just on the battlefield. The adviser stood up and looked him in the eye, forcing him to keep his head held up.
“So that you understand me better: surely you found out that a month ago they withdrew several advisers from the first group that arrived. What you surely don’t know is that right now they’re in Moscow, they’ve been tried, and many of them will be executed. Do you want me to tell you who’s next on the list?” The adviser lowered his voice and paused dramatically. “The order just came that we send Antonov-Ovseyenko, our consul here in Barcelona, back to Moscow. Antonov,” Kotov’s voice changed upon repeating the name, “a symbol in and of himself, the Bolshevik who in 1917 assured the taking of the Winter Palace . . . Do you know what it means when he and other former militants are being taken out of the game? Have you read the news about the trials that just took place in Moscow? Well, all of this means that we can’t feel pity for anyone, Ramón, not even for ourselves if we commit the slightest error. Republican Spain needs a government capable of guaranteeing military success. That is why we need to move quickly and carefully.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Ramón was afraid that he had not exactly understood what was drawing itself in his mind, and he found that he was scared by the revelations he was hearing.
“The party has to take real power, even by force if necessary,” Kotov said. “But first we have to clean house.”
Ramón dared to look for Caridad’s glassy green gaze; she was periodically taking sips from a yellowish liquid served in a cup decorated with the Marquis of Villota’s coat of arms.
“Don’t stare anymore: it’s lemon juice, for the angina . . . ,” she said, and added, “África is working with us, in case you didn’t know.” And Ramón felt a pang. He again looked up at Kotov. And took a step that brought him closer to África.
“What do I have to do?”
“You’ll find out when it’s time . . .” Kotov smiled and, after circling for a moment, returned to his chair. “What you need to know now is that if you work with us, you will never again be the Ramón Mercader that you once were. And I should also tell you that if you commit any indiscretions, if you weaken during any mission, we will be very ruthless. And you have no idea how ruthless we can be. If you’re here and have heard all of this, it’s because Caridad has assured us that you are a man who is capable of remaining silent.”
“You can trust me. I’m a Communist and a revolutionary and am willing to make any sacrifice for the cause.”
“I’m glad.” Kotov smiled again. “But I should remind you of something else . . . We’re not inviting you to participate in a social club. If you decide to enter, you’ll never be able to leave. And never means never. Is that clear? Would you really be willing to fulfill any mission, make any sacrifice, as you say, even things that other men without our convictions could consider immoral and even criminal?”
Ramón felt himself sinking in quicksand. It was as if his blood had fled his body and left him without any warmth. He thought that África had been subject to the same interrogation, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what her response had been. The ideas of the revolution, socialism, the great human utopia, for which he had fought suddenly seemed like another one of those romantic slogans pinned on the coal trucks led by mules: words. The truth, the whole truth, was enclosed in a question made by the envoy of the only victorious revolution that, to sustain its ideals, practiced a necessary lack of compassion, even with its most beloved children, and demanded the eventual rejection of any atavism. His ascent to that stratospheric level signified turning into much more than a simple follower of the revolution and the rhetoric of its mottos.
“I’m willing,” he said, and suddenly he felt superior.
As he observed the port, where a few ships were anchored, Ramón felt the days of the start of the war becoming so distant that they seemed like flashes from another incarnation, even lived in another body, but above all with another mind.
That afternoon, after taking a shower, Ramón had spoken for a while with little Luis and with a sad-eyed young woman named Lena Imbert, whom he’d gone to bed with once or twice and who had turned into Caridad’s assistant. Instead of taking the Ford that his mother offered him, he preferred to walk to the Paseo de Gracia. He needed to wrap his mind around the new condition of his life, but above all, he needed to speak with África and obtain confirmation from her of the electrifying panorama painted by Kotov. In front of the La Pedrera building, several party militiamen were on guard and Ramón’s military and political credentials were not enough to permit him entry. Since September, that child of Gaudí’s delirium had turned into the general barracks for Soviet intelligence and party leaders in Cataluña and was the city’s most protected building. Ramón managed to have one
of the militiamen agree to give a note to Comrade África and he sat down to wait on one of the Paseo’s benches.
A short while later, he felt hunger pangs and went out in search of one of the port’s surviving inns. Later he went to the Church of the Merced and found the very modest building where his father, who he knew was now working as an accountant, was living following the crash of his business. His curiosity fulfilled, he realized that he didn’t feel any desire to see the man, since he couldn’t even imagine what he would talk about with that bourgeois gentleman so attached to his retrograde Catalanism and who was too soft for his liking. He left Calle Ample and headed for the start of Las Ramblas, where he had designated a meeting place with África.
The night was getting cold, his anxiety to see the young woman was tormenting him, and Ramón took refuge in his thoughts. What had been clear for him until a few months before had now turned into a cloudy darkness full of twists and turns. From the enthusiasm with which he had gone to jail, and that with which he had entered La Barceloneta to teach literacy to the sons of workers, as well as the fury with which he would later hand himself over to the organization of the aborted Popular Olympics, he had immediately gone on to defend the Republic from the military coup. Then anarchists, POUM members, Socialists, and Communists fought together to prevent the victory of the coup. Joining a militia and almost immediately afterward the ranks of the new Republican Army were the steps that he naturally took, with all of his enthusiasm and his faith, convinced that his life only had meaning if he was able to defend with a rifle the ideas in which he believed. But after half a year of war, and before the evidence of the political meanness of the British, the Americans, and, above all, the French Socialists, it was clear that only the Soviets would maintain them and that the Republic depended on that support.
Deep in his thoughts, he was surprised by África’s arrival. Since he hadn’t expected to see her, he felt an even greater happiness upon hearing her voice and breathing in the young woman’s unalterably feminine perfume. Ramón kissed her furiously and forced her to step back so he could get a better look at her: he didn’t know if four months of military campaigns amid the stench, cries, blood, and death had influenced his perception, but before him he saw an angel in combat uniform, with her shorn hair giving her a definitively military air.
The Man Who Loved Dogs Page 14