The Man Who Loved Dogs

by Leonardo Padura

  The persistent snow of recent days covered plazas and buildings, cupolas and parks, and the Moscow River was a sinuous mirror. As soon as they began the tour, Ramón felt as if he were entering a city with the air of a feudal town with vast spaces, which caused a feeling of inconsistency between his reality and his ambitions, an impossibility of definition that would only reveal its origins to him years later when he understood that, despite its grandeur and arrogance, the Soviet capital was still a territory in conflict, the meeting point of two worlds with fluid borders there—East and West, Christianity and Orthodoxy, the European and the Byzantine—that lost their original nature and gave way to something different, definitive and essentially Muscovite. Red Square was, as he expected, the first stop, and, as they crossed it, its dimensions gave the impression of being vaster than the photographs of the parades had forged in his imagination. Although Saint Basil’s colorful onion-shaped cupolas surprised him with their colors and shapes, in reality they seemed exotic and indecipherable, as if they were speaking Russian or some other Eastern language; the red walls and towers of the Kremlin, by contrast, seemed closer, more representative of the country’s ancestral grandeur. With a special pass, they were able to avoid the line that, in those temperatures of twelve degrees below zero and between the floral offerings petrified by the cold, men, women, and children, from all parts of the USSR and the world, was made in respectful silence to spend a scarce few minutes before the mummified corpse of the founder of the Soviet state. The excitement he expected to feel upon entering that mausoleum, half Pharaonic and half Greek, escaped him, for it took him some effort to absorb, through a glass whose reflections broke the mummy’s face into poorly fitted panes, the emanations of grandeur of the man who had achieved the materialization of humanity’s most prized and elusive dream: a society of equals.

  With another authorization permit, meticulously reviewed by the guards, they walked to the Trinity Tower, through which they entered the Kremlin’s walls, against which the snow had been shoveled. While Grigoriev led Soldier 13 through the interior streets that led to the plaza in front of the cathedral, he showed him the places where alterations had been made after demolishing some old chapels from the time of the first czars and nearly stopped the tour to signal, at the closest possible range, the windows of the administrative offices from where the greatest country on earth was led.

  “Comrade Stalin works there?”

  “Part of the day,” Grigoriev responded. “And up until a few years ago, he had his apartment there.” He pointed at the old senate building, built under Catherine the Great. “Ever since his wife committed suicide, he left those rooms and always sleeps at his dacha in Kuntsevo. He likes to settle the most important matters there, since he almost always works all night. He sleeps very little and works a lot, but he’s strong as an ox.”

  When they left the walled compound, they went by the huge GUM department store, where people from all over the city came with the hope, often disappointed, of treating their stomachs to a surprise. In front of the Museum of History, they took former Nikolskaya Street, renamed October Twenty-Fifth, to go up the hill leading to the small plaza reigned over by a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, behind which rose the nation’s most feared building.

  Grigoriev pointed. “Voilà, the Lubyanka.”

  Soldier 13 knew the history of that edifice and devoted himself to contemplating it in silence. The former insurance house, ocher-colored and bleak, had twenty years before received the men—converted into apocalyptic proletarian scourges of the Earth—who had assumed the responsibility of defending the revolution, by any means necessary, when besieged by its internal and external enemies. Just by looking at the building, so dense that it appeared to be set in the ground, and flanked by a sidewalk completely devoid of people, one could feel the force of the most real ruthlessness emanating from it—a ruthlessness that, like the will of an unforgiving god, decides over life and death, without respect for procedure or indeed law. Soldier 13 knew that behind those walls his own fate was being handled, and that, in some way, he had turned into one more brick in that magnificent building that, in darkness, had done so much for the survival of the revolution. The enslaving power of the Lubyanka would soon be his power, he thought.

  “As you can see, people avoid passing by here,” Grigoriev said, and paused. “This is the plaza of fear. It’s a fear that we have cultivated with great care, a necessary fear. A lot of stories about the Lubyanka are told, almost all of them terrible. And you know what? The majority of them are true. The bourgeoisie uses fear very well, and we had to learn it and practice it. Without fear, you can’t lead or push a country into the future.”

  “The proletariat has the right to defend itself in any way,” Soldier 13 said, and Grigoriev smiled.

  “I see that they’ve stuffed you full of slogans. You can save them when you’re with me.”

  Limping slightly, Grigoriev led him to the boulevard of theaters and they entered Petrovka Street, where Soldier 13 found a pulsing life that contrasted sharply with the sidereal solitude of the Lubyanka. His mentor had told him they would look for an adequate place to eat and talk, safe from indiscretions. Before a building with a modernist air that reminded Soldier 13 of Barcelona, a man at the top of a flight of stairs that went down to a basement from the sidewalk was marching on the spot to battle the cold. Soldier 13 was certain the man was waiting for them, since he observed them determinedly as he marched: one arm moved to the rhythm, and the hand of his other arm, crossed over his chest in a strange position, moved two restless fingers up by his lapel. As they passed him, Grigoriev mumbled a “Nyet,” and they went down to the semibasement, whose skylights were on street level, and went into what Soldier 13 would be hard-pressed to qualify as a beer hall. Elbow to elbow at high tables, without any chairs around, were several clusters of men and women shouting as they drank big sips of a hop-colored liquid to which they added generous streams from the small bottles of vodka they carried in whichever of the many pockets of their coats. Without ceasing to talk and drink, they all greedily ate small fillets of smoked herring on pieces of black bread and strips of dark meat from some kind of dried fish that they beat several times against the table in order to facilitate the extraction of the fillets, which they swallowed almost without chewing. The stench of the fish, the stinking draft beer, the smoke of that unbearable Russian tobacco called mahorka, and the smell of human sweat under coats that reeked of damp sheepskin resulted in an environment that was too disagreeable, and Soldier 13, prepared to resist a wide variety of discomforts, begged Grigoriev to find somewhere else. Grigoriev smiled understandingly.

  “Yes, this requires special training. The truth is that the people chosen by the providence of history need more soap and water, right?”

  When they left, the man with two fingers on his lapel was continuing his exercises, but this time he didn’t even look at them. As they went back to the boulevard, Grigoriev finally revealed the mystery of the solitary marcher: he was a drinker looking for two companions with whom to share some glasses of yorsh, the mixture of vodka and beer that everyone was drinking in the basement.

  “Russians are great drinkers, but they’re competitive drinkers. There are two things they don’t like: beer that isn’t loaded with vodka, because it seems like a waste of time and money, and not having a point of reference regarding the quantity of drink they’re swallowing. That’s why they drink together or compete against each other. And that comrade, as you saw his two fingers, was looking for some partners for the job . . .”

  After walking for a few blocks back toward the Kremlin, they went into Manezh Plaza, and Grigoriev, holding on to his arm to stop him, asked him to look at the monumental building rising before them. On the main entrance, Soldier 13 saw a sign in Cyrillic that he was able to read: HOTEL MOSCOW. He contemplated that block of masonry, several stories high (ten, twelve—its structure made it difficult to know), with a colonnade supporting a terraced roof that projected out,
and he immediately noticed a strange lack of balance.

  “Do you see it?” Grigoriev said, and added, “It’s the first great hotel built by Soviet power. A triumph of socialist architecture.”

  Soldier 13 nodded and remained silent, as he had been taught. The building seemed monstrous, something hideous fallen from the sky and embedded by force into a plaza with whose spirit it painfully contrasted. The most unusual thing was the asymmetry of the two halves of the structure, which opened out behind the façade. One had supporting columns and the other one didn’t; the floors above the left tower had arched windows, while the one on the right tower looked strict and square; the two cornices were of different heights—in an incompatible juxtaposition of proportions and styles that produced a disconcerting effect, capable of reaffirming the first sensation of aggressive ugliness.

  “It’s horrible,” he whispered.

  “Now I’ll explain to you what happened,” Soldier 13’s guide told him and they crossed over to the hotel’s large doors, where, thanks to an ID flashed before the doorman, they were able to enter. After a careful survey by Grigoriev, they settled in at a table in the deserted bar, which smelled like a bar and only vaguely like dried fish, and where Soldier 13 discovered that, after showing another credential (Grigoriev appeared to have all the ones requested in Moscow), it was possible to drink French wine and eat slices of Norwegian salmon and braised veal.

  “Why did they make the building like that?” Soldier 13 wanted to know.

  “Calm down, kid, I’ll tell you about that later,” Grigoriev said, and drank his vodka in one gulp and refilled his glass with the small, wide-mouthed bottle that the comrade waiter had left close at hand. “Three days ago I was at a very, very secret meeting at the Kuntsevo dacha. Since it directly affects you, I’m going to tell you part of what was discussed there. You know that if what I told you in Barcelona was worth your life, and the lives of África, Caridad, and your brothers are worth what you’ve seen and learned in Malakhovka, then what I’m going to tell you now is priceless. And I’ll remind you that if there was no way back before, now your only option is to move forward and keep your mouth shut, with everyone and forever.”

  Soldier 13 listened to Grigoriev’s words and noticed a wave of satisfaction running through him. He wasn’t scared, nor did it matter to him that there was no escape except to move forward, since neither fear nor escape in any other way fitted in his mind anymore.

  “You can speak,” he said, and moved his glass of wine aside after taking a sip.

  Grigoriev preferred to take another drink of vodka before getting into things: Comrade Stalin in person had conferred on him the honor of being the one responsible for the operation against the renegade Trotsky, and had given him the order to set it in motion. At the Kuntsevo meeting, the only participants were Comrade Stalin, Vice Commissar Beria, and himself. They had begun by discussing the internal situation at the Commissariat of the Interior and Beria assured him that Yezhov would not intervene in this operation. Furthermore, he added, that that crazy midget’s days were numbered and now it was he, Beria, who was at the head of all the special operations that Yezhov, with his persecution mania, would have stopped or dismantled. But the Trotsky operation was born at that moment and Grigoriev, with the necessary discretion, would not only carry it out successfully but also do it with the propaganda effect they wanted.

  Upon hearing Beria’s last words, Comrade Stalin seemed to wake up from his lethargy and lifted a hand to request silence, Grigoriev recounted. During the conversation, he had been trying some sips from his cup of Georgian wine mixed with Lagidze, a type of lemonade that also came from Georgia; according to what Grigoriev explained to him, he drank that compound under medical authorization, since it had been proven that the mixture of those two ancestral beverages stimulated circulation and relaxed the muscles. As Comrade Beria said so well, the Leader said, the hunt for the degenerate traitor and fascist had begun. He, personally, had decided that Grigoriev would be the director in situ of the operation, but Comrade Beria should receive weekly reports from Grigoriev and, if necessary, daily reports, about which the Leader would be updated when necessary and in any case at least once every fifteen days. Grigoriev, as the official operative in charge of the mission, would have a direct superior within the commissariat, an agent who would answer only to Beria and with whom Grigoriev should discuss all logistical questions, although he wanted him to know that he had all necessary human and economic resources at his disposal, since doing away with that traitor was considered a number one priority by the Soviet state as well as a necessity for the future of international communism. The plan, which should be prepared with the utmost care, would have to meet some important conditions: the first, that it would not be possible to find any trace that would link any Soviet body to the operation; second, that the final action only be carried out when he—Stalin personally, he reiterated—gave the order; and then came other conditions—for example, that the best place to carry out the plan was Mexico and that, if possible, the executioners be Mexicans and Spaniards or, as a last resort, men from the Comintern’s secret services, although Beria, Grigoriev, and the official operative (we still haven’t decided who, Beria had whispered) had to organize various alternatives that Stalin personally had also to approve. Grigoriev would work without worrying about collateral effects such as a possible crisis with that imbecile Cárdenas’s government, because, once the moment arrived, they would make the Mexican swallow his own arrogance in the way he had acted when he had protested over the asylum granted to the renegade. Stronger democracies, such as France, Norway, and Denmark, had been brought to their knees when they tried to challenge him and he had seen himself forced to turn a few screws.

  “Then he explained to me why the moment had come for concocting a plan, but not for carrying it out. The essence of everything is the war, the start of the war and the paths it will follow,” Grigoriev said, and served himself vodka again, although he didn’t drink it. “The war is going to start at any moment.”

  “And why should I know all of this?” Soldier 13 asked, stupefied by how everything he’d just heard weighed on his shoulders.

  Grigoriev now seemed more relaxed and drank more vodka.

  “In a week we have to decide who you will be. We have more than enough Mexicans and Spaniards and we need more Frenchmen, Americans. We’re going to create several independent operative groups, and you can be sure that only four people on earth will know of your existence: Stalin, Beria, the official operative, and me.”

  “Are you thinking it will be me who carries out the mission?”

  “You’re going to be on the front line, although I still don’t know where . . . But since you’re going to work with me, I prefer that you know, starting now, what’s expected of you should that be the case . . . Experience tells me that the person who knows exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it works better.”

  Soldier 13 remained silent while Grigoriev tasted the salmon. Outside, the afternoon had given way to night and he could see a stretch of Okhotny Ryad Street, poorly lit and almost deserted.

  “Stalin said something else to me . . .” Grigoriev began, and lifted his hand to ask for another chekushka of vodka. When the waiter walked away, he looked at his student. “This mission doesn’t allow for failure. If I fail, I’ll pay for it with my balls.”

  “He said it to you just like that?”

  “Comrade Stalin tends to be a very direct man. And it can bother him very much if his orders aren’t followed well . . . So you understand me: what you saw of this hotel is a monument to the obedience he demands and expects . . . Listen closely, it can teach you a lot: when he decided that Moscow needed a new image, he picked this site to have a hotel built to host its most distinguished visitors. Based on his suggestions, he asked that two different projects be presented to him. Since he thinks that Moscow should begin to turn into the capital of proletarian architecture, he has his own ideas about it. He made them
known to Shchusev the designer and to the architects Saveliev and Stapran and tasked them with the plans, sure that they would know how to interpret what he had in mind. The architects trembled upon hearing what Stalin was asking of them, and each one, of his own accord, designed what he thought the Leader’s ideas could be. But when Shchusev presented the two projects, he couldn’t see them right away—he had other problems—and no one knows why, but the following week the plans were given back to Shchusev the designer . . . both of them authorized by Comrade Stalin. How was it possible? they asked themselves. Did he want two hotels or did he want both projects, or had he signed off on both by mistake? The only solution was to ask Comrade Stalin if he had made a mistake, but who dared to bother him during his vacation to Sochi? Besides, the general secretary was never wrong. Then Shchusev was inspired, like the genius he is: they would carry out both projects in a single building, half according to Saveliev and the other half according to Stapran . . . Thus was this freakish building born, and Shchusev, Saveliev, and Stapran managed to come out gracefully. The building is absurd, an aesthetic horror, but it exists and it conforms to Comrade Stalin’s ideas and decisions. I learned the lesson, and I hope that you are also capable of understanding it. Cheers, Soldier 13!” he said, and drank to the bottom of his glass of vodka.

  Kotov should die, Grigoriev announced. He regretted leaving Soldier 13 at that exact moment, perhaps the most beautiful one of the process of his rebirth, but he had to return to Spain to begin preparing the funeral for his other self. One is born, another dies, that’s the dialectic of life, and he explained to Soldier 13 that, before devoting himself body and soul to the new mission, he should transfer his responsibilities in Spain to other comrades. The handoff could only be done on the ground and in a time frame that was perhaps prolonged because of the state of the war: although the nationalists had gained ground, the industrial and most populous part of the country was still in Republican hands, and while they hung on to it, they could hope for victory. Upon hearing this comment, Soldier 13 felt the cunning pull of nostalgia, but he managed to contain Ramón’s desires and abstained from asking a single question. But he couldn’t deny that the mention of the war and Kotov’s imminent departure stirred his still-painful attachment to what had been until very recently his war, his homeland, and his passions. Only the consciousness that none of that belonged to him anymore or would again belong to him, at least in the same way, and the pride of knowing that he was now part of a select group, located at the heart of the struggle for socialism’s future, saved him from wavering. He lived for faith, obedience and hate: if it wasn’t an order, it didn’t exist for him. África included. África most of all.