“I never imagined I would see something like this,” I said to Daniel, overcome by a deep sadness. “It’s come to this?”
“Hunger rules,” he commented.
“It’s more complicated than hunger, Dany. They lost their faith and they’re escaping. It’s biblical, a biblical exodus . . .”
“This one is too Cuban. Forget about the exodus, this is called escaping, going on the lam, getting the hell out ’cause no one can stand it anymore . . .”
Almost fearfully I dared to ask him:
“So why don’t you go?”
He looked at me, and in his eyes there wasn’t a drop of the sarcasm or cynicism with which he tried to defend himself from the world, but that was no use when he tried to protect himself from himself and his truths.
“Because I’m scared. Because I don’t know if I can start over. Because I’m forty years old. I don’t know, really. And you?”
“Because I don’t want to leave.”
“Don’t fuck around; that’s no answer.”
“But it’s true: I don’t want to leave and that’s it,” I insisted, refusing to give any other reason.
“Iván, were you always this weird?”
Then I kept looking at the sea in silence. With that atmosphere and the unhealthy conversation we had had, an old feeling of blame rose to the surface that was giving me a lump in my throat and bringing tears to my eyes. Why did fear always show up? How long would it pursue me?
“The worst thing that happened to me when William disappeared,” I said, when I at last managed to speak, “was that I blocked myself in and couldn’t vent. I had to pretend with my parents, tell them there was hope, that maybe he was alive somewhere. When we all convinced ourselves that he was at the bottom of the sea, I could no longer cry for my brother . . . But the most fucked-up thing has been thinking about what a son of a bitch luck is. If William had decided to do that two or three months later, he would’ve left through the Mariel. With the expulsion papers from the university, where it said he was an antisocial faggot, they would have put him in a speedboat and he would have left without any trouble.”
“No one could even dream that what happened was going to happen. Even this right now, did you ever imagine that we were going to see something like this? People leaving and the police watching them as if it were nothing?”
“It’s as if William was marked by tragedy. Just for being a homosexual or for being my brother . . . I don’t know, but it’s not fair.”
At sunset we decided to go back. I felt too overcome by that human stampede capable of creating in my mind the closest image to my brother’s last decision and of stirring the dirty waters of a never-resolved memory—never buried, like William’s body.
Night had already fallen when we arrived at Dany’s house, where, fortunately, there was electricity that day. We drank water, mixed grain coffee, and ate some sandwiches with fish picadillo rounded out by boiled banana peels. Daniel knew that for two or three years I had been allowing myself to drink alcohol again, although only on certain occasions and in reduced quantities. So, since he knew me, he knew that at that moment I needed a drink. He opened the closet where he kept his strategic reserve and took out one of the bottles of añejo rum that Elisa, whenever she had a chance, stole from work. Seated on the chairs in the living room, with two fans on high speed, we drank almost without looking at each other, and I felt that what had happened that day had somehow prepared me for what I had thought of doing and finally did.
“I’m trying to write a book” was the way in which it occurred to me to bring up the subject, and immediately it seemed cruel to say that you’re writing to a writer who has dried up; it is like insulting his mother. I know it all too well. But I didn’t stop myself and I explained that for a while I had been trying to give shape to a story I had run into sixteen years before.
“So why didn’t you write it before?”
“I didn’t want to, I couldn’t, I didn’t even know . . . Now I think that I want to, I can, and, more or less, I know.”
So I told him the basics of my meetings in 1977 with the man who loved dogs and the details of the story that, through the strangest ways and in pieces, he had given me since then. I don’t quite know why, but before doing so I imposed a condition and asked him to please respect it: he should never speak to me about that matter if I didn’t bring it up. Now I know I did it to protect myself, as was my custom.
When I finished telling him the story, including the search for the Trotsky biography in which I had involved him, I felt, for the first time, that I was really writing a book. It was a feeling between joy and torment that I had lost many years before, but that had not left me, like a chronic illness. The terrible thing, nonetheless, was that at that moment I was also fully conscious that Ramón Mercader was causing me, more than anyone else, that inappropriate feeling that he himself rejected and that frightened me by the mere fact of feeling it: compassion.
The conversation with Daniel and the immediate effects it generated served to dust off and revise what I had already written. I perceived, as a visceral necessity of that story, the existence of another voice, another perspective, capable of complementing and contrasting what the man who loved dogs had told me. And very soon I discovered that my intention of understanding the life of Ramón Mercader implied trying to understand that of his victim as well, since that murderer would only be complete, as an executioner and a human being, if the object of his act accompanied him, the repository of his hate and the hate of the men who induced and armed him.
For years I had dedicated myself to gathering the little information existing in the country about the twisted conspiracy to kill Trotsky and about the awful, chaotic, and frustrating epoch in which the crime was committed. I recalled the joyful tension with which many of us searched for the few glasnost magazines that during those years of revelations and hopes entered the island, until they were removed from the newsstands—so we wouldn’t be ideologically contaminated by certain truths that had been buried for so many years, said the good censors. But my need to know more, at least a little more, threw me into an obstinate and subterranean search for information that would take me from one book to another (obtained with more difficulty than the previous one) and to confirm for myself that we had lived in programmed ignorance for decades, our knowledge and credulity systematically manipulated. To begin with—and a couple of conversations with Daniel and Ana reaffirmed this—very few people in the country had any idea who Trotsky had been, what the reasons for his political downfall were, the persecution he had suffered, and the death they gave him; fewer still were those who knew how the revolutionary’s execution had been organized and who had carried out the final mandate; practically no one knew, either, the extremes reached by Bolshevik cruelty in the hands of that same Trotsky in his days of maximum power; and almost no one had an exact idea of the subsequent felonies and massacres of the Stalinist era—all that barbarity justified by the struggle for a better world. And the ones who did know something kept quiet.
Thanks to books that revealed the diverse horrors archived for decades in Moscow, and the capacity for judgment that those revelations extended to the experts, I came to the conclusion that now we were getting to know or at least could learn about Mercader’s world and the ins and outs of his crime more than Mercader himself had managed to discover. Only with glasnost first, and then with the inevitable disappearance of the USSR later, and the ventilation of many details of its perverted, buried, covered up, rewritten and rewritten-again history, was a coherent and more or less real image obtained of what the dark existence of a country had been that had lasted exactly seventy-four years, as long as the life of a normal man. But all of those years, according to the evidence that I was reading—going from surprise to surprise—(and to think that Breton said to Trotsky himself that the world had lost its capacity for surprises forever), all of those years, I was saying, had been lived in vain from the moment in which the Utopia was betra
yed and, worse still, turned into the deceit of man’s best desires. The strictly theoretical and so attractive dream of possible equality had been traded for the worst authoritarian nightmare in history when it was applied to reality, understood, with good reason (more, in this case), as the only criterion of truth. Marx dixit.
So when I thought I was starting to have a more or less complete understanding of that entire cosmic disaster and what Mercader’s crime had signified in the midst of so much criminality, one dark and stormy night—as you could expect in this dark and stormy story—at the door of my house came knocking the tall, thin black man who, in 1977, had accompanied Ramón Mercader and his Russian wolfhounds when they entered my life.
25
Jacques Mornard felt a hair-raising chill go down his spine: Harold Robbins, smiling, let him in after shaking his hand. With a paper bag in one hand and dressed as if he were going out for a stroll, he crossed the fortress’s threshold without the bodyguard bothering to look at what he had in the bag. When the lead door closed, Ramón Mercader heard how History was falling prostrate at his feet.
After the attack by the Mexicans, he had returned on two occasions to the house in Coyoacán to ask about the state of its inhabitants. It was during the second visit that they confirmed that the Rosmers would leave for France from the port of Veracruz on the afternoon of May 28, and since, coincidentally, he had to travel to that city for some business by the end of the month, he proposed to Alfred Rosmer, with Robbins and Schüssler’s authorization, to be the one to take them. That way none of the bodyguards (two of them were still being held by the police) would have to leave the house, something that was especially dangerous after what had happened in the early hours of the twenty-fourth.
The police investigations had already dismissed the presumed participation of Diego Rivera in the attack, and despite the fact that they persisted in their hypothesis of a self-attack, the renegade’s insistence on pointing to the Soviet secret police as the author of the assault kept the Mexican authorities in check. With anxiety, Jacques waited for Tom’s return with his explanations and, above all, with the orders and final adjustments for his call to action.
Despite the fact that several people had spoken to him of what existed inside the walls, that afternoon Jacques Mornard was surprised to see the layout of the fortress’s central yard. His first impression was that he had entered the cloister of a monastery. To his left, close to the stone wall, were the rows of rabbit cages. The part not covered with asphalt had been taken over by plants, mainly cacti, between which one could still see the effects of the massive invasion a few days earlier. The main house, to the right, was smaller and more modest than he had imagined. Its windows were closed and the walls were pockmarked by the bullets shot a few days before. Alongside a small building that he identified as the guards’ sleeping quarters rose the tree from which, he presumed, the attacker with a machine gun fired into the yard. How was it possible for that assault to have failed?
Robbins pointed at a wooden bench while he alerted the Rosmers of his arrival. In the main watchtower, from which there was a privileged view of the street as well as the yard, Otto Schüssler and Jake Cooper were talking without worrying too much about him, and Jacques asked himself why the tower’s machine gun hadn’t neutralized the attackers. He lit a cigarette and, without making his interest too obvious, studied the structure of the house, the distance separating the renegade’s study from the exit door, the garden paths through which a man could move less exposed to gunfire from the towers. Like someone who is waiting, he walked looking for a better place to observe the whole scene and turned around when he heard a voice behind him.
“What can I do for you?”
Despite having seen him in hundreds of photos and fleetingly in a passing car, the tangible presence of the Exile, just six yards away from him, stirred Jacques Mornard’s senses. There he was, armed with a bunch of grass, the most dangerous adversary of the world revolution, the enemy for whose death he had been preparing himself for almost three years. What had begun as a confusing conversation on the side of the Sierra de Guadarrama had finally led him to the presence of a person condemned to die long ago—and he, Ramón Mercader, would be the one in charge of executing him.
“Good day, sir,” he managed to say as he tried to force his lips into a smile. “I’m Frank Jacson, Sylvia’s friend, and—”
“Yes, of course,” the old man said, nodding. “Did they alert the Rosmers?”
“Yes, Robbins . . .”
The Exile, as if he were annoyed, stopped listening to him and gave a half turn to open one of the compartments and place the fresh grass in the basket from which the rabbits would take it.
As he felt his emotions calm down, Jacques observed the nape of his enemy’s neck, unprotected and easy to break, like any neck. The man, seen up close, seemed less aged than in the photos and bore no relation to the caricatures that represented him as an old and feeble Jew. Despite his sixty years, the tensions and physical ailments, the renegade emitted firmness and, despite his multiple betrayals of the working class, dignity. His graying, pointed goatee, the wavy hair, the sharp Jewish nose, and, above all, the penetrating eyes behind the glasses emitted an electric force. It was true what many said, he looked more like an eagle than a man, Jacques thought as he remained immobile, the paper bag in his hand. What if he had brought a revolver with him?
“The grass must be fresh,” the renegade said at that moment, without turning around. “Rabbits are strong animals, but delicate at the same time. If the grass is dry, their stomachs become ill, and if it’s wet, it causes mange.”
Jacques nodded and only then did he realize that it was difficult for him to speak. The old man had started to take off the gloves with which he protected his hands and placed them on the roof of the rabbit cages.
“But they’re going to be late,” he said, and walked toward the house. When he passed, barely three feet away from him, Jacques noted the soapy smell coming from his hair, perhaps in need of a cut. If he had stretched out his arm, he could have taken him by the neck. But he felt paralyzed and breathed in relief when the man walked away from him and said, “Good, there they are.”
Marguerite Rosmer and Natalia Sedova were going out to the yard by the door that, according to what Sylvia had told him, led to the dining room and toward which the Exile walked. The women exchanged greetings with Jacques, and Natalia asked if he wanted a cup of tea, which he accepted. When Natalia turned around, Jacques stopped her while digging into the paper bag.
“Madame Trotsky . . . this is for you,” he said, and held out a box tied with a mauve ribbon that made the shape of something resembling a flower.
Natalia looked at him and smiled. She took the package and began to open it.
“Chocolates . . . But . . .”
“It’s my pleasure, Madame Trotsky.”
“Please, Jacson, you can call me Natalia.”
Jacques also smiled, nodding.
“Does Madame Natalia sound all right?”
“If you insist . . .” she accepted.
“Seva’s not here . . .? I’ve also brought something for him,” he explained, raising the bag.
“I’ll send him right away,” she said, and walked to the dining room.
The boy took a few minutes to come out, and he was wiping his mouth as he walked. Without giving him time to greet him, Jacques held out the bag. Seva ripped the paper covering the cardboard box, from which, at last, he extracted a miniature airplane.
“Since you told me you liked airplanes . . .”
Seva’s face shone with joy and Marguerite, next to him, smiled at the boy’s happiness.
“Thank you, Mr. Jacson. You didn’t have to go to the trouble.”
“It was no trouble, Seva . . . Hey, listen, where’s Azteca?”
“In the dining room. My grandfather has gotten him used to eating bread soaked in milk and now he’s giving him dinner.”
Marguerite excused herse
lf, as there were some things left to pack and it was getting late. With Seva and the recently arrived Azteca, the visitor walked around the area with the rabbit cages until he saw Alfred Rosmer exit the house and, behind him, the renegade. His nerves started to settle and the certainty that he could enter that sanctuary, carry out his mission, and exit while saying goodbye to the watchtower guards calmed him. Jacques shook Rosmer’s hand and reassured him that they had enough time to reach Veracruz by the appointed hour. Natalia then came out with a cup of tea and Jacques thanked her. The renegade watched them all but only spoke again when he sat down on the wooden bench.
“Sylvia told me you’re Belgian,” he said, focusing on Jacques.
“Yes, although I lived in France for a long time.”
“And you prefer tea to coffee?”
Jacques smiled, moving his head.
“In reality, I prefer coffee, but since I was offered tea . . .”
The renegade smiled.
“And what’s this story about you being called Jacson now? Sylvia said something, but with so many things in my head . . .”
Jacques observed that Azteca was coming back from the rabbit cages and he snapped his fingers to call him over, but the animal kept going and settled in between the legs of the old man, who mechanically started to scratch his head and behind his ears.
“I have a falsified passport in the name of Frank Jacson, a Canadian engineer. It was the only way to leave Europe after the general mobilization. I have no intention of allowing myself to be killed in a war that isn’t mine.”
The Exile nodded and he continued:
The Man Who Loved Dogs Page 51