The Man Who Loved Dogs

by Leonardo Padura

  Ramón folded the raincoat over his arm when he got close to his car. During that whole morning, he had barely thought of Jacques Mornard, and that memory lapse worried him. To cross all of the barriers to enter the fortress in Coyoacán and to be ready at the instant in which he would extract the ice axe, he needed the Belgian man’s entire presence, his clumsy comments, his shyness, his insipid smile. Because Jacques was the only one capable of leading Ramón to the most grandiose moment of his life.

  When they met in Moscow, almost thirty years later, and talked about what had occurred in those days as well as what happened later, Ramón asked his mentor if he had conceived of that perfect concatenation of events or if coincidence had worked in his favor. The man assured him, with the greatest seriousness, that he had planned it all, but that the devil had been collaborating with them. Each detail sketched out two, three years before had been shaped and would fit in such a perfect way that no man, only an infernal plan, could have made it thus, because in the end the events happened as if that ice axe, Ramón’s arm, and Trotsky’s life had been pulling at each other like magnets . . .

  On Tuesday, August 13, Sylvia at last decided to face the difficult moment of going to Coyoacán and communicating to Lev Davidovich some important messages that she had received during her stay in New York. Two hours later the woman left the house with a smile on her lips. Jacques, who was waiting for her in the street, had spoken to almost all of the bodyguards in turn, showing a loquacity that only a few days later would seem significant to those men for whom Frank Jacson was an innocuous presence. He had even made plans with Jake Cooper to have dinner the following Tuesday when Cooper’s wife, Jenny, would be arriving from the United States. Jacson was treating, of course, and he would take care of picking a restaurant that would be to Jenny’s liking.

  Sylvia had reason to feel happy, although her relations with the renegade were going through a period of crisis caused by her attraction to the new political group that Burnham and Shachtman, Lev Davidovich’s former comrades, had formed in the United States. Nonetheless, the old man, so sensitive to splits—more so at a time when he needed all of his sympathizers—did not seem put out with her and, after hearing that Sylvia had spoken with Shachtman in New York, had asked her to come back in two days, with her boyfriend, for tea, since he wanted to apologize for not having attended to them during the previous visit.

  “I think you made a good impression,” she said as they left rocky Avenida Viena and turned onto Morelos.

  “Do you want me to tell you something?” Jacques smiled. “I thought that the old man was a proud and arrogant guy. But ever since I met him, I think he is a great person. And the truth is, I don’t know how it occurred to you to ally yourself with Burnham and Shachtman.”

  “You don’t understand these things, dear. Politics is complicated . . .”

  “But loyalties are very easy, Sylvia,” he said, and pressed on the accelerator. “And, please don’t tell me what I understand and what I don’t understand.”

  The following morning Jacques went over to Shirley Court, where Tom and Caridad were staying. His mother received him with a kiss and offered him recently made coffee, which he refused. He felt jittery and only wanted to consult his mentor about the strategy they would follow the next day. When Tom came out of the bathroom wrapped in a robe, the three sat down in the armchairs of the small living room. Seeing how Tom and Caridad were drinking their coffee, Ramón perceived that some distance was opening between them, invisible but to him very tangible: it was the distance between the first and the second lines of command.

  “You’re going to cause an argument about that matter of Burnham and Shachtman,” Tom said when he finished listening to his pupil. “You’ll take the Duck’s side against Sylvia. What he most wants to hear is that those dissidents are traitors, and you’re going to give him the pleasure. At some moment, tell him that you want to write about that split and about what is happening in France with the Nazi occupation.”

  “He knows that Jacson isn’t interested in politics.”

  “But he is so interested in it that he will open the doors of his house to you again. Besides, he is so alone that if you write something in his favor, he’ll receive you again. And that will be our moment. You have to be careful, but at the same time you’ll seem resolved.”

  “Sylvia could view it all as strange . . .”

  “That imbecile doesn’t see anything,” Tom assured him. “If everything goes well, in two or three days you’ll go back to Coyoacán with your article . . .”

  Caridad was following the dialogue in silence, but her attention was focused on Ramón. It was obvious that Tom’s enthusiasm and certainty clashed with her son’s patent lukewarmth.

  “I’m going to get dressed,” Tom said. “I want you to practice with the Star revolver that you’re going to take the day of the party.”

  Caridad served herself more coffee and Ramón decided to have a cup. Then the woman leaned forward and, as she poured his coffee, whispered, “I want to talk to you. Tonight. At the Hotel Gillow at eight.”

  He looked at her, but Caridad’s eyes were fixed on serving coffee and handing him his cup.

  Tom was able to prove that the abilities of Soldier 13 remained intact. In the small forest in the San Angel area where they had their practice, the young man fired at difficult targets and made three out of every four shots, despite the tension he was feeling. Tom talked nonstop about what would happen once the attack was carried out. The easiest escape would be through Cuba, where Ramón could lose himself among the thousands of Spaniards milling about Havana and Santiago. On the island, a pair of agents would be waiting for him with money and connections to guarantee his needs and protection. Perhaps he and above all Caridad, who adored the country where she had been born, would also drop in there and the three would cross the Atlantic together. Tom’s certainty, and the fact that his prognostics and plans tended to come true with surprising regularity, pushed aside Ramón’s doubts and fears until he was nearly convinced that escape was certainly possible.

  The Hotel Gillow, in the area near the Zócalo, was a colonial building that had originally been built to house the nuns destined to serve the neighboring church of La Profesa. At midday, many of the workers from government offices tended to have lunch in the restaurant. In the evenings, in contrast, it was a place where successful hustlers and high-class prostitutes filled their stomachs before going out to face the night. It had a large hall, discreet lighting, and many tables covered with checked tablecloths. As soon as he entered the place, Ramón recalled that afternoon of rejoicing and victory when, with África at his side, he had entered an old café in Madrid to meet with Caridad. Now he could make out his mother, who was huddled at a table, smoking with her head down. Ramón moved his chair and it was as if Caridad were waking from a nap.

  “Thank goodness you came. I told Kotov I was going to the movies, so we don’t have too much time and there’s a lot to discuss . . . Call the waiter over.”

  When the waiter approached, Caridad ordered a bottle of cognac, two glasses, and two bottles of Tehuacán sparkling water, and requested that they be left alone.

  “And to eat?” The waiter was puzzled.

  “We should be left alone . . . ,” the woman repeated, and looked at him intensely.

  Ramón waited in silence for the waiter to bring their order and leave.

  “To what do we owe so much mystery?”

  “You’re on the verge of doing something very big and very dangerous. Although you don’t care what I think, I feel responsible for what you’re going to do and what happens to you, and I want to tell you some things.”

  Caridad poured two glasses of sparkling water and another two with cognac. She raised her glass a bit, smelled the liquor for a few seconds, then drank it in one long swallow.

  “At least drink.” She pushed the cognac to Ramón. “It will do you good.”

  Ramón looked at the glass but didn’t touch it.


  “I’m going to start at the end,” she said as she lit a cigarette. “If they put you in jail, I will move heaven and earth to get you out. Even if I have to blow up the fucking jail. You can count on that. The only thing I ask you in return is for you not to fail when you have the old man in front of you and that, if they catch you, never say why you did it or who ordered it. If you fall apart, then I will not be able to help you, and neither will Kotov, because his life and I think mine depend on your silence.”

  “That’s what matters to you? That I could complicate things for you?” Ramón enjoyed the possibility of hurting her.

  “I’m not going to deny that matters to me, but believe me, it’s not the most important thing. What you have the possibility to do can change the world, and that’s what matters.” Caridad took another sip. “And this shitty world needs a lot of changes. You know that.” She observed Ramón’s untouched glass for a few seconds. “Your life depends on your silence. Look what happened to that Sheldon . . .”

  “The Mexicans killed him,” Ramón said.

  “That’s what Kotov says . . . And we have no choice but to believe him.”

  “I believe him, Caridad.”

  “I’m happy for you,” she said, and poured more cognac into her glass but didn’t drink it. “Listen closely to what I’m going to tell you. Perhaps later you will understand why we’re in this restaurant, counting the hours left until we kill a man.”

  At some point in the conversation, Ramón drank his glass of cognac in one shot and, without having any idea when he refilled it, again drank, in short sips, as he felt his insides turning. What he least expected was to hear that story of the humiliations and degradations that Caridad had been subjected to by her privileged and bourgeois husband, Pau Mercader. Although Ramón already knew pieces of the story, this time his mother went into the most shocking details, and spoke to him of the visits to brothels where her husband forced her to watch; the way he had induced her to try drugs in order to later throw her into bed, where a young man was paid to penetrate her while her husband penetrated the young man; the beatings he gave her when she refused to have anal sex; the threats, finally carried out, to separate her from her children and civilized life, confining her to an asylum where they nearly drove her mad and where, in order to not die of thirst, several times she had to drink her own urine. Those were the experiences that she had to go through in her sanctified bourgeois marriage, and hate was the seed that was planted in the center of her soul, that was barely relieved when she could direct that hate against those who maintained a miserable morality that allowed an abject and sick being like Pau Mercader to be considered a respectable man. Since then, Caridad had taken revenge with the weapons she had at hand and, more than once, upon returning to Barcelona after the electoral triumph of the Republican left, spent nights awake in front of the dark apartment on the Calle Ample where her husband then lived. The idea of going up the stairs and blowing his brains out with six shots from the Browning she always had at her waist turned into an obsession, and if she didn’t do it, it was not out of fear or compassion, it was because she understood that knowing he was poor and the employee of other men who could humiliate and exploit him was the greatest punishment that Pau Mercader could receive, and it would be better the longer it lasted.

  As he listened to her, Ramón felt how the human and political superiority he had felt over his mother for some time began to disappear. He remembered the poisoning episode in the restaurant in Toulouse and the suicide attempt from which he and his brother Jorge saved her. His mother was a destroyed being full of hate who was beginning to put herself together like a puzzle with pieces to spare.

  “If I am a Communist with defects, Ramón, it’s because of all of that,” Caridad continued after serving her son a third drink and pouring a fourth one for herself. “My hate will never allow me to work to build the new society. But it’s the best weapon to destroy that other society, and that is why I’ve turned all of you, my children, into what you are: the children of hate. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in two days, when you are in front of the man you have to kill, remember that he is my enemy as well as yours. That everything he says about equality and the proletariat is all lies and that the only thing he wants is power. Power to degrade people, to control them, to make them grovel and feel fear, to fuck them up the ass, which is what those who enjoy power most take pleasure in. When you kill that son of a bitch, think that your arm is also mine, that I will be there, supporting you, and that we are strong because hate is invincible. Have that drink, dammit! Take the world by the balls and bring it to its knees. And get this into your head: Don’t have compassion, because no one will have it for you. And when you’re fucked, don’t allow compassion; let no one pity you! You are stronger, you are invincible, you are my son, collons!”

  26

  In the early hours of May 29, while the gunshots whistled over his head, Lev Davidovich had a revelation: Death could not touch him because Natalia would protect him.

  Just at that moment of enlightenment, he had heard Seva’s voice and, with an unknown fear that didn’t include the possibility of losing his own life, he had yelled: “Under the bed, Seva!” while Natalia pinned him down, pressing him against the corner of the room. The gunshots that had been meant to kill him and had filled the night with sparkling lights came from Seva’s room, from the door to the study and through the bathroom window. From his corner, he could see the flight of an incendiary bomb going toward his grandson’s room, but he had not tried to move, since above them, bursts of machine-gun fire made the stuffing of the mattress fly out. On the wall, almost at his back, the condemned man had felt the impact of the lead in search of his body. Finally, they heard voices, car engines, silence between gunshots. At that moment he had almost forgotten his previous conviction, since he was thinking: They’re going to come in; now they’re going to kill us both. Since he knew he would have no alternative, he closed his eyes, squeezed his legs shut, and waited. How long? Two, three minutes? he would ask himself later, since they were the longest ones of his life. His greatest concern had been Seva’s fate and, above all, Natalia’s, who was going to die because of him.

  Lev Davidovich only recovered his senses when Seva’s voice broke the silence. As soon as he confirmed that Natalia was not wounded, he ran to his grandson’s room, where he didn’t find him, but he saw bloodstains on the floor and his heart stopped. Robbins, who had entered the house to remove the incendiary bomb and prevent the fire from spreading to the work study, asked the Exile if he was wounded and calmed him down with the news that Seva was outside with the Rosmers. In the yard, as the bodyguards who had gone out after the assailants came back, the house’s inhabitants had started to get an idea of what had happened. There had been between ten and fifteen men dressed as soldiers and policemen, and they had begun this attack by neutralizing the agents watching the outside, then they cut the cables of the alarms connected to the powerful lights inside and outside the house, ripped out the telephone lines, and cut the electric circuits that communicated with the police in Coyoacán. When the group had invaded the garden, one of them, armed with a machine gun, had climbed up a tree, where he took position and shot a burst at the area where the secretary slept. The rest of the assailants had gone toward the house, firing against the windows and closed doors. The bulletproof shutters diverted some of the bullets, whose marks were visible. The policeman and the bodyguards who had been closest to the assailants confirmed that several of them seemed to be rather drunk, but without a doubt they knew what they were doing and how to do it: so many bullets in one bed could not be a coincidence.

  To Lev Davidovich it would always seem significant that the assailants had not attacked any of the bodyguards, whom they only pointed guns at. They had only directed fire against his room while they threw incendiary bombs (and even an explosive one that fortunately did not burst), which demonstrated that he and his papers had been their only objective. But why hadn’t tho
se ten or twelve assailants, who knew how to use weapons and had as their goal the death of one man, who controlled the situation inside and outside the house, gone in to see if they’d fulfilled their mission before giving the order to withdraw? It seemed incongruous to him that there should have been more than two hundred shots, sixty-three of them at his bed, with only Seva’s superficial wound, and that had been caused by a bullet that ricocheted. Perhaps everything had failed because it had been botched, because of drunkenness or fear? Or was there behind that spectacle something darker that could still not be explained? He asked himself and would continue to ask himself, since a malignant essence, whose perfume he knew, was floating in that strange attack.

  To escape, the assailants had opened the gates and gotten in the house’s two cars, which always had the keys inside, in case of an emergency. In the middle of the confusion, Otto Schüssler, one of the secretaries, returned from the street commenting that the assailants had taken with them young Bob Sheldon, one of the new bodyguards. They had all formulated the same question: Had they kidnapped Sheldon or had he left with them? One of the Mexican policemen would later assure them that the young man was driving one of the cars (they abandoned the Ford a few blocks later, when it got stuck in the river’s mud, and the Dodge showed up in Colonia Roma), but Lev Davidovich thought that, in the darkness, frightened as he was, it would be difficult for the policeman to recognize someone in a car going at top speed.