The Man Who Loved Dogs

by Leonardo Padura

  Ramón wondered whether it was a rhetorical question, but Kotov’s insistence forced him to look around and answer.

  “Yes, of course I feel it.”

  “And do you see that building over there, in front of us?”

  “Telefónica? How could I not . . .?”

  Kotov’s laughter interrupted him. The adviser lowered his face and for the first time looked directly at Ramón. His cheeks were glowing, his clear eyes covered to protect them from the intense light.

  “It’s a hive of fifth columnists who are preparing a coup d’état against the central government,” Kotov said, and Ramón had to wake up his neurons to pick up the adviser’s thread of reasoning. “Before they do that, we have to fumigate them, like cockroaches, like the enemies they are. We’re losing the war, Ramón. What the fascists did in Guernica is not a crime: it’s a warning. There will be no mercy, and it seems that not all of you understand it . . . Those anarchists think that Telefónica belongs to them because, when they rebelled against the military, they went in there and said: It’s ours. And the government is so soft that it hasn’t been able to kick them out. When Guernica was bombed, they went to the extreme of denying the president of the Republic an open line.” Kotov smiled again as if he found that story funny. “In a few days, nothing will remain of this peace.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Kotov stayed silent too long for Ramón’s curiosity.

  “The fascists keep gaining ground and that midget Franco now has the support of all the parties on the right. Meanwhile, the Republicans are passing the time knocking each other’s eyes out and everyone wants to be his own boss . . . No, there can’t be any more thinking. If those fifth columnists carry out a coup d’état, you can forget about Spain . . . We have to do something definitive, kid. I’ll be waiting for you at eight at the Plaza de la Universidad.”

  Kotov tied the kerchief at his neck and picked up his jacket. Ramón knew he shouldn’t ask anything and saw him walk away with a limp that was more noticeable than on other occasions. From the bench he contemplated, a few feet below him, at the start of Las Ramblas, several sandbags that were once barricades and the carefree or hurried people walking by, dressed as civilians or in the uniforms by which each faction tried to distinguish itself. Ramón felt superior: he was one of those in the know amid a mass of puppets.

  Fifteen minutes before eight, Ramón sat on a bench in the Plaza de la Universidad. He saw a parade down Gran Vía, on the way to Sants station, of several trucks filled with recruits from the CNT anarchists’ militia, with their banners beaten by the wind. He assumed they would go out to the front that very night and began to understand the strategy of Kotov and the advisers’ high command. Half an hour later, when anxiety was beginning to torment him, he felt his stomach growing cold. On the other side of the avenue, he saw her coming: of the millions of people on Earth, her figure was the only one he would never mistake.

  África got closer and Ramón felt himself losing what control he had imagined he possessed. He walked to the edge of the street and hugged her almost furiously.

  “But where the hell . . .?”

  “Let’s go, they’re waiting for us.”

  África’s coolness cut through Ramón’s anxiety, and he immediately sensed that something had changed. As they walked toward the market, África mentioned she had been in Valencia, where the head of government was now located, and had returned when Pedro and Orlov, the very head of the intelligence advisers, had transferred her command post to Barcelona. She had no recent news of Lenina. She assumed she was with her parents, still in the Alpujarra mountains, she said, and closed the subject to further discussion. Near the market, they entered a building and went up the stairs to the third floor. The door opened without their knocking, and in the room that must have sometimes been a living room, Ramón saw Kotov and another five men of whom he only recognized Graco. Two remained standing, while Kotov and the rest were seated on some boxes. No one said hello.

  Kotov was precise: they had been given the mission of capturing a man, not even he himself knew his name; he knew only that they were dealing with an anarchist who needed to be taken out of circulation. The man would come out about ten o’clock from a bar two blocks from there and they would recognize him because he would have a red and black scarf. “You and you”—he pointed out Ramón and a dark-haired man, thirty-something years old, who looked like he came from the south—“dressed as Mossos d’Esquadra, you’re going to arrest him and take him to a car that she”—he pointed at África—“is going to signal for you.” The other three would act as support in case something happened. Kotov insisted that everything should be done as a routine arrest; there couldn’t be any shots or drama. The ones in the car would be in charge of driving the man to his fate. Afterward, they would all scatter and wait until he or an envoy of his called them.

  The air of mystery and secrecy filled Ramón with joy. He looked at África and smiled at her, since, as he put on the Catalan police uniform, he could feel how his usefulness for the cause was growing. That mission could be the beginning of his definitive entrance into the world of the truly initiated, but working with África was an unexpected reward. He would never remember if he had felt nervous; he would only keep in his memory the feeling of responsibility that overcame him and África’s distant attitude.

  The facility with which the arrest played out, the transfer of the man to the car (when he heard him protest, Ramón knew he was Italian), and his departure ended up filling him with enthusiasm. Could everything be so easy? After walking a few blocks away, Ramón took off the jacket and threw it in the garbage can. He felt euphoric, desirous to do something else, and he regretted that Kotov’s order was immediate dispersal once the operation was carried out. To have África so close just to lose her right away . . . He looked for one of the dark alleyways that led to El Raval, desiring more adventure than the insipid Lena Imbert could provide. When he stopped to light a cigarette, he felt his blood go cold: the cold metal of the barrel of a revolver was pressed into the back of his head. For a few seconds his mind went blank, until his sense of smell came to his aid.

  “You’re going against orders,” he said, without turning around. “You’re the only soldier who smells like violets. Shall we take the tram to La Bonanova or do you still have that little room in La Barceloneta?”

  África put the gun away and started walking, forcing Ramón to follow her.

  “I wanted to see you because I felt I should be honest with you, Ramón,” she said, and he sensed a tone in her voice that alarmed him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s nothing going on anymore, Ramón. Forget about me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ramón felt himself shaking. Had he heard correctly?

  “I won’t see you again . . .”

  “But . . .”

  Ramón stopped and grabbed her by the arm almost violently. She let him but gave him a cold, piercing look. Ramón let go of her.

  “I never promised you anything. You should have never fallen in love. Love is a weight and a luxury we cannot afford. Good luck, Ramón,” she said, and without turning around she walked down the street until she was lost around the corner and in the darkness.

  Nearly petrified, Ramón was aware of the commotion affecting his muscles and his brain. What the hell was going on? Why was África doing this? Was she following party orders or was it a personal decision?

  He walked to the high part of the city, the unease following him. He felt diminished, humiliated, and in his mind signals began to cross, evidence that until that moment had been brushed away, attitudes that in a new light took on a revelatory dimension. And in that wounded wolf’s climb to his lair, Ramón promised himself that África would one day know who he was and what he was capable of.

  The explosion that the horse-faced English journalist was waiting for, and that Kotov had prophesied, finally happened. The dry wood of hate and fear, so abundan
t in Spain, needed only a match, placed precisely, to light the pyre on which, as Caridad would say so many times, the Republic had been purified.

  Thanks to the information at his disposal, the playing out of events did not surprise Ramón, although the unpredictable consequences alarmed him. On May 3 the invasion of the Telefónica building by a police contingent, led by the commissar of public order, Rodríguez Salas, bearer of the order dictated by the conseller of interior security to empty the place and hand it over to the government, caused the predictable refusal by the anarchists and their entrenchment in the building’s higher floors. As was also expected, the confrontation began immediately between the police corps belonging to the Republic and the Catalan government and the CNT anarchists and syndicalists, who were joined by the POUM Trotskyists. The accumulated tension and hardened hate exploded and Barcelona became a battlefield.

  A few days before, various contingents of anarchist militia, refusing to obey orders from the joint chiefs of staff, had abandoned the front and, with their weapons, had stationed themselves in the city. The authorities, foreseeing possible confrontations, even decided to cancel the May Day celebrations, but on May 2, some members of the Catalanist party opened fire against a group of anarchists, and the tension increased. The police’s plan to empty the Telefónica building was the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused such violence that Ramón would ask himself if the government, with the support of the Socialists and the Communists, would be capable of controlling it and emerging victorious.

  On the very morning of May 3 and against his expectations, Ramón received the order to remain in La Bonanova, no matter what happened, until one of Kotov’s men came to get him. At the first light of day, Caridad went out with Luis in her invincible Ford to place the kid with people who would take him to the other side of the Pyrenees. Ramón said goodbye to Luis with a strange presentiment. Before Luis got into the car, Ramón hugged him and asked him to always remember that he was his brother, and everything that he had done and would do in the future would be so that young people like him could enter the paradise of a world without exploiters or exploited, of justice and prosperity: a world without hate and without fear.

  When in midafternoon he learned of the incident that had started at the Telefónica and the violent fratricide that followed, Ramón understood that Caridad was taking those precautions because not even those in the party were sure they could control the situation. The anarchists and POUMists, refusing to hand over their weapons, accused the Communist Rodríguez Salas of having provoked them to bring about a confrontation. The Communists, on the other hand, accused their political rivals of rebelling against the official institutions, of thwarting the central government’s work, of generating chaos and disorder, and, directly and indirectly, of planning a coup d’état that would have been the end of the Republic. The bulk of the verbal attack centered on the POUM leaders, who were labeled traitors, instigators, and even the promoters of a planned Trotskyist-fascist coup in collaboration with the Falangists. Ramón understood that he had had the privilege of attending the start of a political game that displayed such a capacity for planning and such mastery for the exploitation of the circumstances that it didn’t cease to surprise him. But he also thought that, as never before, the fate of the Republic was dangling from a thread and it was hard to predict the winner of this round.

  Many times he was tempted to go down to La Pedrera in search of the evasive Kotov to ask him to revoke his order to remain far away. The hours of the day became interminable for him, and when at night Caridad returned to the palace of La Bonanova with a rifle placed diagonally across her shoulder, she called him down, saying that even if the Telefónica building had not been seized, that it was all merely a question of a few hours, and that the operation had been a success, since the uprising had proven the libertarians’ and Trotskyists’ crimes. Besides, she trusted that the skirmishes that were still ongoing would soon be under control, since various CNT leaders were mediating them to calm down spirits and an announcement had been made that army contingents were coming from Valencia.

  “What I don’t understand is why they have me here,” Ramón complained as Caridad lit one of her cigarettes and, between drags, swallowed pieces of sausage that she washed down with wine.

  “There are already more than enough people to kill fifth columnists and traitors. Kotov must know what he wants you for.”

  “What’s supposed to happen now?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But when we do away with the anarchists and the Trotskyists, it will be clear who’s in charge in Republican Spain. We couldn’t keep dealing with the undisciplined and the traitors or waiting for Largo Caballero to leave quietly. We’re throwing him out right now.”

  “And what are the people going to say?”

  Caridad put out her cigarette and took another one out of the pack. She took a long drink of wine to get rid of the taste of the sausage in her mouth.

  “All of Spain already knows that the POUM Trotskyists, the libertarians, and the Anarchist Federation have gone too far. They’ve rebelled against the government, and in war, we call that betrayal. There are even documents proving the links the Trotskyists have with Franco, but Caballero doesn’t want to accept them. These sons of bitches were slipping maps and even army communication codes to the fascists.”

  “Hey, hey . . . You know that half of what you’re saying is a lie.”

  “Are you sure? Even so, even if it’s a lie, we’ll make it the truth. And that’s what matters: what people believe.”

  Ramón nodded. Although it was difficult for him to accept the meanness of that, he recognized how important it was to win the war, and to do so, a purge like that was necessary. Caridad smiled and let her cigarette fall to the ground.

  “You have a lot to learn, Ramón. We’re going to set up Negrín and Indalecio Prieto’s radical Socialists with Largo’s conciliators. Rather, we’re going to serve them Largo’s head on a platter for them to tear apart between them.”

  “But neither Prieto nor Negrín loves us very much . . .”

  “They won’t have any choice but to love us. And as soon as they replace Largo and name Negrín or Prieto, we’re going to do away once and for all with the POUM. If the Socialists want to rule, they’re going to have to help us: either they govern with us or they don’t govern at all. We’re going to take the anarchists out of their way, and they’re going to have to thank us for that.”

  Ramón nodded and dared at last to ask the question eating away at him:

  “And is África involved in all of this?”

  Caridad drank two sips of wine.

  “She won’t leave Pedro’s side. So she must be very close to everything . . .”

  Ramón nodded. Jealousy or envy? Perhaps both, plus a few drops of despair.

  “And what’s my role in all of this, Caridad?”

  “In time, Kotov will tell you . . . Look, Ramón, you must learn to have patience and to know that you don’t beat your enemies while they’re standing, but when they are kneeling before you. And you beat them mercilessly, dammit!”

  The next morning, after seeing Caridad leave in the Ford, Ramón took the risk of disobeying his orders. He felt smothered in La Bonanova, where the sound of artillery fire barely reached, and went down toward the city, almost without admitting to himself that one of his hopes was to run into África. On the way into town, he avoided the streets where barricades had already been erected and from which sporadic gunfire came. Halted trams and buses cut off traffic, and there were flags unfurled everywhere announcing the political affiliation of the defenders on every corner: Communists, Socialists, anarchists, POUMists, Catalanists, syndicalists, regular troops, militia, and police, in a centrifugal kaleidoscope that convinced the young man of the necessity of the raid: no war could be won with such a chaotic and divided rear guard. The entire city was still on a war footing and the Plaza de Cataluña esplanade looked like the backyard of a barracks. The Telefónica
building, where the CNT anarchists were still entrenched, was completely surrounded and in the sights of various pieces of artillery. The besiegers, nonetheless, looked so confident that they were resting, taking advantage of the warm May morning. Avoiding the esplanade, he looked for Las Ramblas and, at the juncture with the Virreina Palace and the Hotel Continental and, further down, by El Falcón, the way was completely empty; only a hurried pedestrian occasionally risked crossing it while waving a white handkerchief. From just around the market, he observed that, on each side of the street, there were men stationed on the roofs, and he assumed that the ones on the Continental were POUM militiamen and leaders. From both sides they shot dispiritedly, and Ramón thought that the fate of the uprising was sealed: the rearguard war looked more like a reenactment than a real confrontation. He felt the temptation to slip back into Adriano’s skin and enter the POUM hangouts with it, but he understood that such indiscipline could end up being very dangerous. The ruthlessness he had sworn himself to could turn against him if someone identified him and denounced his presence in the Trotskyist precincts without his having been sent by a superior.

  Just a few days later, Ramón would know the extent to which Kotov trusted Caridad, since the woman’s predictions began to come true. The sporadic confrontations, violent at times, continued for a couple of days, accumulating a toll of dead and wounded, but they started losing intensity, as if wearing out. Various syndicalist and anarchist leaders asked their comrades to lay down their weapons, and when the bulk of the troops sent by the government finally arrived, the rebels had recognized their defeat, the city was practically pacified, and the majority of the key posts were in the hands of the men chosen by the advisers and the party. The battle was now being waged on verbal grounds, with the continuous exchange of accusations in which the communist means of propaganda, free of censorship, had the upper hand and spread the opinion that the CNT syndicalists, the anarchists, and especially the POUMists had caused an uprising that seemed so much like a coup d’état. Ramón thought that the elusive Cataluña was finally falling under the control of the Soviet advisers and the men from the Comintern, while the government was headed into a crisis and Largo Caballero was as good as dead.