The Man Who Loved Dogs

by Leonardo Padura

  The afternoon of October 1, when he saw Andrew Roberts enter, dressed in overwhelming elegance and displaying very sophisticated manners, Ramón felt a wave of envy. How many faces could that man use? Which of the stories he had told him could be true? As well as his loyalty to the cause, what visible part of him was real? Now he seemed like an actor from those Chicago mobster movies that Americans liked so much. Even his laughter fit his appearance, cinematographic and gangsterlike.

  “Lots of work?” he asked in English when he sat down next to Jacques.

  “I would say too much, Mr. Roberts. That woman always wants more.”

  “Use your Spanish fury. If you were Swedish, you’d be fucked.” And he laughed sonorously as he addressed the bartender: “The usual, Jimmy. For my friend, too.”

  “What about Caridad?” Jacques asked, hiding his surprise over the familiarity with which Roberts treated the bartender.

  “For now, forget about her. I want you to spend all your time living and thinking like Jacques Mornard.”

  “Why did it take you so long?”

  “With the war, everything got complicated. I had to look for a new passport. I couldn’t leave as a Pole.”

  “Any news from Mexico?”

  “Everything is on. I need you there in two weeks.”

  “To do something?”

  “You have to become familiar with the terrain. Ever since the Red Army entered Poland, things have been going as Comrade Stalin foresaw. I have a feeling the order is about to be given.”

  Mr. Roberts accepted his frozen vodka and, before the bartender could place the small glass before Jacques, he was already returning his, empty.

  “You’re thirsty today, Mr. Roberts,” said Jimmy, who refilled his glass and withdrew.

  “In a few days, Europe is going to turn into an inferno,” Roberts sighed.

  “Do I take Sylvia with me?”

  “For now, it’s preferable to leave her here. You have a job in Mexico at an importing company. Your Belgian friend put you in touch with Mr. Lubeck, who needs someone who speaks several languages and is able to inspire more confidence than a Mexican. It’s an easy and well-paid job . . . We’ll need Sylvia in Mexico later on, when you control the terrain.”

  “What about the American spy?”

  The bartender returned with another vodka and Roberts gave him his successful, tough-guy smile.

  “Nothing yet. But it’s better that way. If he arrived now, it would be too soon. Grigulievich is having a hell of a time with the Mexicans. Each one wants to do things his own way and do them straightaway.”

  Jacques tasted his vodka and Roberts downed his.

  “From now on, you’re Jacson for all legal matters; to Sylvia and the people you meet through her, you’re Jacques. Be careful with the way you speak. The idea is that little by little you start improving your Spanish.”

  The bartender removed his empty glass and returned it full. Roberts smiled at him. Slowly, Jacques finished his vodka.

  “You seem worried, kid,” Roberts said.

  “Sometimes I am afraid that all of this”—Jacques Mornard opened his arms, indicating the bar, the city—“is all just for fun. I’ve spent two years preparing myself for something I might never do. I left my comrades in Spain, I don’t have a single friend, I’ve turned into someone else, and it could all be in vain.”

  Mr. Roberts let him finish and stayed silent for a few moments.

  “This work is like that, kid. Lots of lines are cast, even though there’s just one fish. Each one of us is a line. One of us will have the possibility of getting the fish and the others will return empty, but they’ll have carried out their role in the water. It will be crucial for you to manage to get close to the Duck. Everything we learn about how that house works will help us a lot. But meanwhile, you’ll still be a fishing line with a hook at the end. And I assure you that you’re the one who will be closest to the fish, with the best bait. At the definitive moment, perhaps you won’t take all the glory, but you’ll have done your job in a disciplined way, silently, and although no one will ever know that you were so close to the great responsibility, the men of the future will have a better and surer world thanks to people like you.”

  “I appreciate the consolation. Lately, you talk like Caridad.”

  “It’s not a consolation or a speech, it’s the truth. So go to Mexico and get ready . . . Remember that from the first time I saw you in Barcelona I had a very strong feeling about you, and I’m not the kind who makes mistakes. That’s why we are here. Of the ones in Mexico, do you know how many know I exist? None. And they will never know. If they’re not the ones in charge of getting the Duck out of the way, no one will ever know there was a certain Roberts—no, a certain Tom . . . bah, no, it was Grigoriev; or was it Kotov? Anyway, there should have been a man who placed them before history. Who was it? . . . I am a soldier who fights in the shadows and only aspires to fulfill my duty.” Mr. Roberts took out some bills and placed a glass on top of them. “Let’s go around the corner: they’re showing the latest Marx Brothers film.”

  Jacques smiled and looked at his mentor.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Roberts, I have a dinner date with my fiancée. I hope we see each other soon. Thanks for the drink.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Jacson. Good luck with your girlfriend and your job.”

  The men shook hands and Roberts saw Jacques walk away toward the door. Then he went back to his chair and leaned with his elbows on the bar.

  “Jimmy, I think my glass is empty.”

  He signed the name “Jacques Mornard” and carefully folded the sheet. When he tried to slip it into the envelope engraved with the Hotel Montejo’s letterhead, Ramón was again certain that the makers of loose sheets of paper and the makers of correspondence envelopes should come to an agreement: either one side cuts a few millimeters off the sheets or the other adds a few to the envelopes. Nothing bothered him more than when something he wished to remain pure was unnecessarily damaged, and because of that, he used the utmost care when placing the sheet in the envelope. With his tongue, he wet the glue and closed the packet, wedging it under the lamp to get it perfect.

  He finished getting dressed and, before putting on his hat, wrote his name below the letterhead and, in the middle of the envelope, Sylvia Ageloff’s address. He went downstairs, gave the letter to the reception desk, and went out onto Paseo de la Reforma. Amid the usual noise, he walked on the sidewalk in search of the garage where he liked to park his sparkling Buick and looked distantly at the Indian woman who was selling hot tortillas on a stone dish. The sweetish smell of the corn flour stayed with him until he entered his car, shiny and black. Without looking at the city map, he headed to Coyoacán.

  It had been a week since Jacques Mornard, with a passport issued in the name of the Canadian citizen Frank Jacson (why not Jackson? Who the hell had lost that k that forced him to explain so much?), had arrived in Mexico City. Besides the various letters he wrote to Sylvia, he began to prepare the indispensable logistics of his mission and had been fine-tuning his identity. After buying the car secondhand but in perfect condition, he opened a mailbox in an office building on Calle Bucareli, giving the concierge the excuse that, while he looked for a place, he needed to receive correspondence somewhere that wasn’t a hotel. In addition, he had wandered around offices, restaurants, and businesses in the city center, practicing his Spanish with a French accent, and spent hours reading the newspapers with the greatest circulation, seeking to bring himself up-to-speed on the nuances of local politics until he had an approximate idea of the way that, when the time came and before different interlocutors, he should be able to talk about every issue. He had noticed, as usually occurs, that while the parties on the right were very clear about their purposes, the ones on the left were absorbed in the most uncontrollable controversies. Finally, he had again studied the recently purchased maps of Mexico (the ones he had handled in Paris he had ripped apart before leaving, to keep Sylvia from seei
ng them in his suitcases) and regained an image of the city, now putting a face to some of its streets, plazas, and parks.

  Despite the chronic lack of signs, he drove without making a single wrong turn until he reached the intersection of Londres and Allende, in Coyoacán. He stopped the car and locked it. Protecting himself from the sun with the dark gold-rimmed glasses he bought in New York, he observed the Casa Azul, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s property, where the Exile had lived for over two years. It was a building surrounded by high walls painted in exultant colors, and he noticed that on one of the side walls he could tell the different texture of the squares that must have been windows but were covered, out of fear, perhaps, long after the walls were built. Smoking a cigarette, he walked away in search of Calle Morelos to access Avenida Viena, which was really a stony alleyway that ran parallel to the moribund Churubusco River. Two blocks before reaching the fortress, he approached a small business and asked for a soda from a sleepy, toothless salesclerk. The house, ocher and walled, took over the block it rose from. The watch towers, soaring over the high fences, gave a privileged view of the men who, at that moment, were speaking animatedly and, at intervals, looking inside the dwelling as if they were expecting something. On the corner, they had built a wooden shack in front of which was a policeman, and he discovered two other uniformed men milling in front of the steel-sheeted gates for cars to enter. A smaller door to the right served to allow access to visitors and inhabitants. The air around it breathed secular poverty, and the image of a medieval castle surrounded by serfs’ huts came to Jacques Mornard’s mind.

  Having drunk just about half the soda, he walked toward the fortified house. He tried to fix in his mind every detail, every tree and sunken stone in the earth, of that so-called avenue. Without stopping, with his hat and his glasses on, he passed in front of the Duck’s lair. If at the Casa Azul he had noticed the signs of fear, now he had beside him a monument to anxiety. The man who had cloistered himself behind those walls was convinced that his life had been marked and should know that, when the time came, neither steel nor stones nor the guards would be able to save him, because he was condemned by history.

  As he turned the corner and discovered two more policemen at that part of the wall, he heard a metallic screeching and slowed down to look over his shoulder. The gate opened and a car—a Dodge, he noted immediately—peeked out onto the stony street. A stocky blond man was at the wheel and another man, with a hard look and a rifle raised between his legs, was in the passenger seat. From one of the towers came a voice that, in English, announced everything was clear, and the Dodge was barely on the street when the gate began to close. Jacques walked two steps toward the closest building and, violating a basic rule, turned around to watch the car pass by, through the back windows of which he saw a woman with light hair who fit the well-studied image of Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, and behind the driver, just a few feet from his hands, he sighted the graying hair, the sharp face made longer by the goatee, of the Great Traitor. The car sped up, lifting dust in the street, and made its way toward the road leading out of the city. Jacques started walking again, regaining the rhythm of a carefree man, without much interest in what surrounded him.

  Back in his Buick, on the highway heading back toward the city, Jacques Mornard tried to imagine how he would feel if he ever met that malevolent man who, so long ago, had managed to place himself so close to revolutionary glory and now survived justly detested, sentenced by the infinite betrayals he had committed due to his lust for power and his basic deceitfulness. If Jacques made it in front of him, would he be able to control himself and not throw himself at the neck of that louse who had encouraged the POUM fifth columnists and who was now shouting about supposed Soviet military weakness? Like an eruption, Ramón Mercader came out of Jacques Mornard’s pores. With all his energy, he wished at that moment for life to offer him the great chance to be the ruthless arm of the most sacred and just hate. He was willing to pay whatever price was necessary, silently, without aspiring to anything. And he felt convinced that he was ready to fulfill history’s mandate.

  Tom and Caridad were a couple from Marseille, comfortable but not rich, who had decided to get some distance from the events in Europe and await the evolution of a war that the fascists would eventually take to France. Life in Mexico was sufficiently cheap for their finances to withstand (doing some business or other with a brother of Tom’s based in New York), and while they looked for an appropriate house, they lived in the Shirley Court apartments, on Calle Sullivan, which was, coincidentally, very close to the Hotel Montejo. They spoke Spanish perfectly but were very reserved, very little given to socializing, although they loved small trips, in which they could invest several days.

  It was the beginning of November when Frank Jacson answered a call from his old friend Tom, inviting him to visit him at Shirley Court. When he arrived at the appointed time, Caridad was waiting for him in the apartment’s small entryway. Inside, seated at the dining room table, Tom was reviewing some papers when Jacson entered. The adviser was dressed very informally, with a denim jacket, a handkerchief around his neck, and hiking boots. Even the smile with which he welcomed the young man was different from the one that, a month before, had lit up the face of the man who had then called himself Mr. Roberts.

  “My friend Jacson!” He stood up and pointed at the armchairs in the living room. “How’s the city treating you?”

  Jacques settled in and observed that Caridad disappeared behind a partition where he assumed the kitchen was.

  “The coffee is disgusting.”

  “We’re already fixing that, right, ma chérie?”

  Caridad said “Of course” without leaving the kitchen, and Tom added:

  “Cuban coffee, you’ll see.”

  “Anything new?” Jacques wanted to know as he took out his cigarettes.

  “Everything’s moving forward; the siege is starting to take shape.”

  “What should I do in the meantime?”

  “Same as you’ve been doing. Get to know the city and, if possible, come to understand a little bit about how Mexicans think. Keep Sylvia in New York for a few more weeks. Tell her you have a lot of work piling up at the office, since your boss is traveling outside Mexico for a few weeks.”

  Caridad came in with the tray and small cups. It smelled like real coffee. The men took their cups and Caridad sat down to drink from hers as well. The cigarette smoke created a cloud in the room. Caridad’s silence warned Jacques that something was going on, and he didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

  “Ramón,” Tom said, and paused. “Why do you insist on disobeying me?”

  Surprised by the question and by hearing his name, Ramón searched for the possible infraction in his mind and immediately found it.

  “I wanted to get a first impression of the terrain.”

  “What the fuck kind of impression?” Tom yelled, and even Caridad was startled in her seat. “Yob tvoyu mat! You do what I tell you to do and nothing else besides what I say! Suka! It’s the second time you go beyond your limits and it will be the last time. If you try to do what you feel like again, your story is over, and in truth, kid, then you won’t want to be in any of your guises.”

  Ramón was ashamed and confused. Who could have noticed his presence in Coyoacán? The toothless salesclerk who sold him the soda? The man with the crutches sleeping on the street? Whoever it was, Tom seemed to have eyes everywhere.

  “It was a mistake,” he admitted.

  “Kid, I expect mistakes from everyone else. I’m going to have to live with all the blunders from that bunch of Mexicans we’re putting together, with those made by those imbeciles from the Comintern who think they own the revolution and are nothing more than vedettes whom we can leave with their asses hanging in the air with just one breath. But not you . . . Get it into your head for once and for fucking all that you don’t think, you just obey; you don’t act, you just execute; you don’t decide, you just fulfill. You’re going to
be my hand on that son of a bitch’s neck and my voice is going to be that of Comrade Stalin, and Stalin thinks for all of us . . . Bliat!”

  “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  The adviser looked at him long and intensely, and his face began to relax.

  “What did you think of the coffee?” he then asked, in a friendlier voice and even with a smile.

  Since that afternoon, Jacques Mornard felt as never before the viscous density of the days of passivity. It was as if he had a lottery ticket in his hands whose drawing was delayed and, with it, his future. He lacked the concentration to read anything besides newspapers, his character kept him far from cantinas and brothels, and he opted for sleeping the greatest quantity of hours possible. He even found himself hoping that they would order him to bring Sylvia; that way, at least he would have something to focus on, someone with whom he could use his Jacques Mornard brain and even experience a mediocre but sure release of his diminished sexual appetites. In Tom and Caridad’s company, he took trips to the pyramids of Teotihuacán, to Lake Xochimilco, and to the city of Puebla, which reminded him so much of some Castilian towns, with more churches than schools. A couple of times, he went out with Tom to the San Ángel area, to practice shooting a handgun and hone his skills with sharp-edged weapons. One night a week, accompanied by Caridad as well, they went out to eat together at some restaurant in the city center, where Tom eagerly devoured dishes loaded with that hot sauce capable of making Ramón and Caridad cry. They talked about the war (the Soviet army had finally launched itself into what should be a crushing expedition against Finland), about Grigulievich’s group’s advances, about the escalation of the campaign orchestrated by Vittorio Vidali, the Comintern man, against the renegade’s presence in Mexico, and about the Mexican Communist Party purges that would soon be carried out. Loyal to his role, Ramón Mercader only spoke and acted like Jacques Mornard, but the events seemed to be moving in slow motion and anxiety was taking over the repressed but burning Ramón. When he was alone, without the obligation to look like a wasteful and fun playboy, the young man spent many of his nights going to the movies where they played new Westerns and films with his beloved Marx Brothers. Groucho’s boutades, which he liked to repeat in front of the mirror, still seemed like the height of the verbal genius he’d never had and that he admired so much in those who did.