Tom got out, jingling the car keys in his hand, and motioned to Ramón to follow him. Caridad got out on the other side and, after unsuccessfully trying to kiss her son, walked to the cabin. Tom opened the back and Ramón saw the trunk inside. Tom warned him it was heavy, and between the two of them they lifted the long chest and walked toward the cabin, where Caridad was holding the door open for them. As if he had already thought everything out, Tom steered them to the bedroom and they placed the trunk to the side of the closet.
Caridad was waiting for them in the living room, sitting in an armchair. It seemed to Ramón that she had gained weight in recent weeks and looked strong and energetic, as she had in the ever more distant days in which she wandered the streets of Barcelona in a confiscated Ford and demonstrated her toughness by shooting a dog. Ramón cursed the ambiguous feelings his mother generated in him. Meanwhile, Tom, sitting in front of Ramón, explained that the trunk would be there for no more than two weeks.
“The wheels are turning,” he concluded.
“Is the spy Bob Sheldon?” Ramón asked.
“Yes, and as I imagined, we can’t expect much from him. The Jewish Comrade is working on him and is confident that at least he’ll be good enough to open the door.”
The young man kept his silence. His situation bothered him.
“What’s wrong, Ramón?” Caridad asked him, leaning toward him. “When you get strange like this . . .”
“You and he already know. But don’t worry. After all . . .”
“Are you going to have a tantrum?” Tom’s tone was sarcastic. “I’m not going to repeat what you already know. You and I follow orders. It’s that simple. Everyone serves the revolution where and when the revolution decides.”
“What do I do in the meantime?”
“Wait,” Tom said. “When the attack is about to happen, I’ll tell you what to do. Go by Coyoacán every once in a while and say hi to your friends. If you find out anything that could be useful, find me. If not, we’ll keep our distance.”
“It’s better like this, Ramón,” Caridad said. “Tom knows you can do it, but this is a very complicated political problem. Killing that son of a bitch will have consequences and the Soviet Union cannot afford to be implicated . . . That’s all.”
“I understand, Caridad, I understand,” he said, and stood up. “Coffee?”
From that night on, Ramón lived feeling like his insides had been emptied. He felt that, after having to put so much of himself beneath the false skin of Jacques Mornard, it had rebelled and trapped his real and neglected self. Now it was Jacques wandering the city streets, traveling in his black Buick at suicidal speeds, passing by the fortress on Avenida Viena to ask about Alfred Rosmer’s health and have trivial conversations with Robbins, Otto Schüssler, Joseph Hansen, Jake Cooper, and even with the recently arrived Bob Sheldon, whom he had invited to have a beer more than once in the noisy cantina where the toothless salesclerk had disappeared and was replaced by a young woman; it was Jacques who smiled, wrote love letters to Sylvia Ageloff and looked with interest at the shop windows of shoe stores and tailors of a city as splendid as it was besieged by misery that was, to a guy like him, invisible. Meanwhile, Ramón, a ghost, conjugated the verb “to wait” in all of its tenses and possible uses, which in Spanish can also mean to expect and to hope, and felt how life was passing by him without even deigning to look at him.
On the morning of May 1, he had gone all the way to Paseo de la Reforma, where workers and union members were marching, to see the signs and sheets asking not for the renegade’s expulsion but rather for the death of the fascist traitor, and he felt that claim didn’t include him. Disoriented, without expectations, he spent hours in bed smoking, looking at the ceiling, repeating the same piercing questions, asking himself, After everything happens, then what? This sacrifice and self-denial, for what? The glory he thought he had at arm’s reach—where had it gone to? Ramón had handed over his soul to that mission because he wanted to be the main player, and it didn’t matter to him that he had to kill, or even be killed, if he achieved his goal. He felt prepared to remain in darkness his entire life, nameless and without his own existence, but with the communist pride of knowing he had done something great for others. He wanted to be chosen by Marxist providence and at that moment he thought that he would never be anyone or anything. So, two weeks later, when Tom returned to reclaim the trunk, Ramón felt he would never play an important role in that plot.
“When will it be?”
They had placed the weapons in the Chrysler’s trunk and were sitting in the cabin’s armchairs, looking each other in the eye.
“Soon.” Tom seemed annoyed.
“Is something wrong?”
Tom smiled sadly and looked at the floor, where he was lightly tapping the tiles with the tip of his shoe.
“I’m afraid, Ramón.”
His mentor’s response surprised him. It didn’t escape his notice that Tom was calling him Ramón again as he confessed something he never expected to hear from that man’s lips. Should he believe him?
“Grigulievich and Felipe have prepared everything as best as they can, but they have no confidence in their men. Sheldon can do his job, but the others . . .”
“Who will be at the front?”
“The Jewish Comrade.”
“And he doesn’t have any confidence in himself?”
“It’s going to be an attack with many people, many shots. A Mexican-style show . . . They are men with experience in war, but an attack like this is something else.”
“So why don’t you cancel it?”
“You remember the Hotel Moscow, right? Who is going to tell Stalin that the attack will be canceled?”
Ramón leaned forward. He could hear Tom’s breathing.
“And what will you say to him if they fail? . . . Let me go with them, goddammit . . .”
Tom looked him in the eye. Ramón felt anxiety in his chest.
“It would be a solution, but it’s not possible. When they identify you, they’re going to realize that it’s not an action planned by the Mexicans but rather a conspiracy coming from elsewhere.”
“So what if someone identifies Felipe?”
“He would be a Spaniard who was with the Mexicans in the civil war. That front has already been established.”
“I’m also a Spaniard . . . And Belgian, and—”
“It can’t be, Ramón! The attack is perfect, but something unexpected could always happen: they could injure the Duck and he could survive, I don’t know. I myself told Comrade Stalin that he should consider the possibility of failure. And I also told him that if that happened, you would enter the game. But it can’t be canceled, nor can I send you . . .” Tom stood up, lit a cigarette, and looked toward the garden. “You should be happy to not have to participate in this. You know that the lives of all who enter that house can be very difficult from that moment on. All they have to do is capture one and the rest will fall like dominoes. And they’re going to catch them, that’s certain . . . Besides, from the beginning I told you that you are my best option, but not the first. If they do things well, it’s better for everyone; that’s how we planned it. Did you see what happened on May Day, how the Trotskyists and the Communists fought in the street? Who is going to suspect us when a group of Mexican Communists execute a traitor who is even collaborating with the Americans to carry out a coup d’état in Mexico? And in any event, even if they tell the police whatever they want to, there will be no evidence that those men were mixed up with us . . .”
“I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t ask me to be happy to have worked for three years for nothing.”
Tom at last smiled. He crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and walked to the door.
“I hope you never lose that faith you have, Ramón Mercader. You can’t imagine how much you’ll need it if your turn comes to enter the scene. I assure you, it is not easy to kill a man like that son of a bitch Trotsky.”
&nbs
p; Jacques Mornard put the water for the coffee on the stove and adjusted the belt on the boxing robe he used around the house. When he went out to the small entryway he confirmed that the morning papers had not arrived. The previous week, he had doubled the tip for the kid who brought the papers on the condition that they be left at his door before seven in the morning. He returned to the kitchen, percolated coffee, and drank a small cup. He lit a cigarette and walked to the caretaker’s office. The month of May was almost over, but the morning was cool thanks to the previous night’s rain. He walked down the gravel path and cursed as he felt his slippers becoming damp. At the door to the cabin that served as the concierge’s office, the morning caretaker was placing gardening tools in a wheelbarrow.
“Good morning, Mr. Jacson, how can I help you?” The man was smiling and making small bows.
“The paperboy, what happened to him today?”
The caretaker’s smile widened. His teeth were incredibly white and, miraculously, he wasn’t missing any.
“It’s that the papers haven’t come out yet. They’re waiting.”
“What kind of thing is it that the papers haven’t come out yet?”
“Oh, señor, it’s because of what happened last night.” The caretaker smiled again. “They tried to kill that bearded Trotsky. They’re saying it on the radio.”
Ramón gave a half turn and, without saying goodbye to the caretaker, returned to his cabin. If he understood correctly, the man had been talking about an attack, not an execution. He turned on the radio and searched until he found a station reporting the news. An armed commando unit had entered Leon Trotsky’s house just before dawn that morning and, despite the numerous shots fired, had not achieved their purpose of killing the exiled revolutionary. The attackers—they said that Diego Rivera, gun in hand, was among them—had managed to flee, and President Cárdenas himself had ordered an exhaustive investigation until the perpetrators of the aborted crime were found. As he digested those words—Diego Rivera was part of the attack?—and tried to predict the consequences, Ramón felt a strange mixture of anxiety and happiness coming over him. As he dressed hurriedly, he continued to listen and learned that there was talk of one wounded, of attackers dressed as soldiers and policemen, of the kidnapping of one of the renegade’s bodyguards.
He dialed the number of Tom’s apartment in Shirley Court and didn’t get an answer. What should he do now? Jacques Mornard took some time to reflect. Tom had put together a plan that escaped his comprehension. Had he managed to use the political differences between the renegade and fat Rivera so that the latter would take the helm of a killer commando unit, or had he simply threatened him with airing his problems with his wife? They spoke of twenty armed men, of hundreds of shots fired but no one killed. How was that possible? With a professional like Felipe inside the house, how was it possible for the Duck to still be alive? There was something murky in the attack that defied the most basic logic. In any event, he thought, the attack’s failure placed him at the front line, where he had fought so hard to get. Tom’s fears regarding the success of the operation were now powerfully highlighted, and he came to wonder whether in reality that failure did not have a purpose. But what? To enter the Duck’s house, have him at the mercy of ten rifles and not kill him—for what? Had he, Ramón, always been the one tasked with the real mission? He felt as if his head were about to explode. The evidence that he had turned into the true alternative continued to bring him remote revolutionary joy, but with it the ghost of an unexpected fear surreptitiously came to the surface at the responsibility that came with it. He drank more coffee, smoked two more cigarettes, and, when he felt ready to move, put on his hat and climbed into the Buick.
As he drove to Shirley Court, Ramón noticed that his chest was about to burst with anguish. He had never felt that oppression so clearly, and he wondered if it wasn’t angina like the kind Caridad experienced. When he asked the caretaker at the apartments if Mr. and Mrs. Roberts were in, the man explained that they had left the night before.
Ramón Mercader left the Buick in the apartment parking lot and went out toward Reforma, which was congested with pedestrians, vendors, cars, beggars, and even prostitutes with flexible schedules: a multicolored humanity surrounded by engine exhausts and the cries of newspaper boys announcing the miraculous salvation of the “bearded” Trotsky. The city seemed crazed, on the verge of exploding, and the young man felt dizzy amid the crowd and their rejoicing. Leaning against the wall, he lifted his gaze to the clear sky, wiped clean by the previous night’s rain, and was certain that his fate would be decided beneath that bright, clear sky.
23
On May 2, 1939, the Trotskys moved the beds and the worktable and put coal in the ovens. The house at number 19 Avenida Viena was now their house. Although it meant little more than changing prisons, Lev Davidovich felt that with that move he was gaining enormous freedom. Can I feel happy? Do I have the right to that human emotion? he asked himself upon sitting in his office and looking around. The yard he could see from the window was ruined and the main work hadn’t been finished yet, since, despite Natalia Sedova’s strict management and the secretaries’ Stakhanovite efforts, the funds had been exhausted. But he couldn’t live under the same roof as Rivera for one more day. Over the last two months, they hadn’t even spoken, and he regretted the way in which that friendship had ended, since he would never be able to forget that, for whatever reason, Rivera had helped him travel to Mexico, had offered his hospitality, and had contributed to his recovery after the terrible experiences at the end of his Norwegian exile.
Ever since he was very young, he had thought that the worst aggression against the human condition was humiliation, because it disarmed the individual, attacking the essence of his dignity. He, who throughout his life had suffered all the insults and slanders possible, had never felt so close to the verge of humiliation as when Natalia and Jean van Heijenoort prevented him, after his last birthday, from leaving the Casa Azul and going to yell at Rivera about the disgust he felt at his exhibitionism, his macho Mexican positions, his inconsistencies as a political clown. For a long time Lev Davidovich had known that if Rivera had welcomed him into his house, and perhaps even accepted that Rivera’s wife went to his bed, it had only been to use it as a platform for his phony radicalism, a trampoline to the newspaper pages. But when tensions had reached the boiling point, his kindness had come undone and he had shown his true face.
The tension had been aggravated by the inevitable collision between Rivera’s ambitions and Lev Davidovich’s sense of responsibility when the latter opposed the painter assuming the role of Mexican secretary of the Fourth International. But things went beyond the permissible limit when Rivera announced his break with General Cárdenas and his decision to support the right-wing presidential candidate Juan Almazán. Although the Exile knew that it was all due to his own insolence, he tried to warn the painter of how damaging his defection would be for Cárdenas’s progressive project, and the response he received had been so offensive that, that very day, he decided to end his stay at the Casa Azul. Trotsky could not give anyone political lessons, his host had told him; only a lunatic could think of organizing an International that was nothing but a vainglorious effort to become the leader of something.
If in another time he had left the Kremlin itself, why not leave the Casa Azul now? If they went somewhere less protected, his life would be in danger, but that did not matter too much to him; however, van Heijenoort reminded him that he was also putting Natalia’s life at risk. Lev Davidovich had to lower his head, although he announced his break with Rivera and his disagreement with the painter’s political about-face, not wanting to be associated with an action that directly affronted General Cárdenas, to whom he felt so committed.
At the beginning of the year, Lev Davidovich had written to Frida, who was still in New York, with the hopes that she would be able to allay the crisis, but she never responded. Meanwhile, Rivera, who now declared himself a supporter of Almazá
n, was announcing his break with Trotskyism because he considered it a harebrained ideology that played into the fascists’ strategy against the USSR.
Jean and the other secretaries intensified their search for a safe place for them to live and finally opted to rent a brick house with an ample shaded yard on the nearby Avenida Viena, a dusty street where there were only a few shacks. The house had the advantage of high walls and of being inaccessible from the back, where the Churubusco River ran. But the building had been empty for ten years, and it required a lot of work to make it inhabitable. Once they decided to move, Lev Davidovich tried to offer Diego rent for the months that the renovation of the house would take, but the painter wouldn’t even receive him, making his intention of humiliating the Exile obvious. The tension then reached such a level that van Heijenoort confessed to Lev Davidovich that he even feared Rivera could commit violence.
That domestic crisis barely allowed Lev Davidovich to follow events happening outside the Casa Azul with the care he desired. With much difficulty he had managed to concentrate on the reorganization of the American section and discuss with Josep Nadal the seriousness of Spanish events following Franco’s offensive toward Catalonia, the last of the Republican strongholds apart from Madrid. In Mexico, meanwhile, the attacks against his presence were entering a dangerous spiral, and at the same time that Hernán Laborde, the secretary of the Communist Party, demanded that the government expel him threatening a political rupture if it did not, the right tinged its protests with a dark fascist-inspired anti-Semitism. Lev Davidovich lived surrounded by the feeling that the siege was closing in, that the knives and guns were getting closer and closer to his graying head.
The renovation was turning out to be more complex than they had originally thought, as Natalia had ordered one of the walls be made higher, watchtowers to be built, the covering of all entrances with steel sheets, and the installation of an alarm system. At one point Lev Davidovich had asked if they were preparing a house or a sarcophagus.
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