He took a long shower and, despite his lack of appetite, managed to ingest the café au lait, fresh bread smeared with butter and strawberry jam, and a strip of fried bacon. He drank coffee and got dressed. Sylvia watched him the whole time, like a little scared animal, without daring to speak. The woman stopped hesitating when she saw him take his hat.
“Dear, I—”
“I’m going to the office to see what those damned construction workers are doing.”
“What time are we meeting Jake Cooper and his wife?”
“At seven.”
“Where are you thinking of taking them? Wouldn’t you like to go to Xochimilco?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Oh, I had forgotten . . . Tomorrow we have to travel to New York.”
“But—”
“Pack our bags. In New York, I’ll go back to my usual self. I think the altitude and the food in this inferno of a country are making me sick . . .” And he got closer to Sylvia. He kissed her on the lips, just brushing them, but the woman couldn’t contain herself and embraced him.
“Dear, dear . . . I don’t like to see you like this.”
“Neither do I. That’s why we’re leaving tomorrow. Will you let go of me, please?”
She loosened her arms and Jacques Mornard stepped back. He took the typed pages and the portable typewriter. He observed Sylvia Ageloff, her scared-bird face, and remembered the carefree days in Paris, when everything seemed like a game of hunters and gazelles, of cold calculations that set off multicolored lights when they fitted in the predetermined places, while they went on giving shape to a story that, step-by-step, led him to a heroic climax. Without knowing why, he then said:
“At twelve I’ll pick you up and we’ll go eat something.”
There were eight hours left until his meeting with the condemned man. What would he do until five in the afternoon, the moment set to kill a man called Lev Davidovich Trotsky? He drove the Buick to the outskirts of the city and thought of África again and, for the first time in many months, of his daughter, Lenina, of whose life and fate he had never received any news. She must be six years old already and perhaps was still in Spain, without the least idea who her father was. What would it have been like to live with his daughter? The damned fascists and the blasted war had cut off that possibility.
He drove in the direction of the tourist complex where he had lived for several months. He looked for the path on which he had hidden the ice axe and stopped his car next to the porous rocks. He opened his trunk, took out the typewriter and the envelope in which he kept the letter written by Tom. He sat down in the shade of the tree and began to read it. He couldn’t concentrate: each word led him to lost memories, the singing of the birds bothered him, even the murmur of the nearby stream—and because of that he had to go back over the text several times until he felt that, like other lies, he could also absorb these, inject them into his blood and take them out of his brain at will. Next to him, the cigarette butts piled up and his stomach had turned into a boiling cauldron. Fortunately, the headache that had irritated him so much was gone.
He recited the letter from memory and replayed in his mind, with utmost care, the chain of actions he would have to execute that afternoon. His victim’s skull and thinning hair were the point he always reached; then he got lost in confusion. In reality, he didn’t even know if he would try to escape. He feared that his legs wouldn’t respond and that, if he managed to get to the yard, he would give himself away with his confusion. What most bothered him was not being able to clearly discern his feelings, since he was convinced that it would not be a normal fear that could paralyze him or induce him to betray himself by running. It was a new and sharper fear that grew within him, a terror over the certainty of having lost it all, not just his name and control over his own decisions but the solidity of his faith, his only support. And cursed time wasn’t moving . . .
Ramón would always remember the end of that morning and the beginning of the afternoon of August 20, 1940, those agonizing and turbid hours. The entire arsenal of psychological resources they had armed him with in Malakhovka had become jammed in his mind and the only thing that remained of his training was the hate—but no longer the central and basic hate they had instilled in him; rather, it was one that was getting all the more dispersed and difficult to control, a complete hate bigger than himself, visceral and all-consuming. Close to one o’clock he remembered that he had made plans with Sylvia. He knew that a strange anticipation had led him to arrange that meeting. If he didn’t want to go crazy, he needed to fill his time, and Sylvia could once again be useful. He stood up and beat the typing machine against the rocks, threw its fragments toward the stream and returned to the car.
Sylvia was waiting for him at the door of the hotel, in the company of Jake Cooper and the woman who had to be his wife, a young woman so blond she seemed yellow. Ramón would always think that he had never managed to exercise greater self-control than during the conversation he maintained for a few minutes with Jake, Jenny, and Sylvia. After introducing his wife, Cooper explained that he had coincidentally walked by and seen Sylvia. Ramón would remember vaguely that he had smiled, perhaps even made a joke, and confirmed the date they had that night at seven. He bid them goodbye and went with Sylvia to the Don Quijote restaurant at the Regis Hotel, where they served Spanish food. As soon as he ordered, he lit a cigarette, told the woman his head hurt, and fell silent.
Sylvia told him something relating to Cooper and his wife, talked about some people she had to visit in New York, and told him that, before leaving, she would like to say goodbye to Lev Davidovich. Jacques, who could barely taste the food (he would never be able to remember what they had served him, only that he could barely swallow), told her he would pick her up at five so that they could stop by the house in Coyoacán for a few minutes. Then he felt an urgent need to be alone. He calculated that in less than three hours he would kill a man. He took out some bills and handed them to the woman.
“You pay. I have to go get the plane tickets,” he said, and drained his glass of water. He stood up and looked at Sylvia Ageloff. At that moment Ramón noticed a warm feeling of relief running through him. He leaned over and pressed the woman’s lips with his own. She tried to take his hand, but he avoided it with a rapid gesture. Sylvia had carried out her last function and wasn’t worth anything anymore. Sylvia Ageloff belonged to the past.
At four in the afternoon, tormented by a persistent beating in his temples and sweating that came and went, he decided it was time to put an end to his agony. He left the movie theater, where he had spent almost two hours thinking and smoking, and returned to the car. He took the raincoat from the trunk, adjusted the Star at his waist, and confirmed that the other weapons were in their place. He placed the pages of the article in the outside pocket and put away the letter in the summer sportcoat he had chosen that morning. With the raincoat on the passenger seat, he drove, paying as much attention as he was able to, convinced that he had more than enough time to get to Coyoacán. When he passed in front of the small stone chapel, he was tempted to stop and enter it. It was a fleeting idea, arising from the most remote area of his unconscious, and he discarded it immediately. God had nothing to do with his story; besides, he wasn’t fortunate enough to believe in a God. He no longer believed in many things.
It was eight minutes to five when he turned down Morelos and made a half turn onto Avenida Viena before stopping the car in front of the house, pointing it again toward the Mexico highway. He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and took out the letter, wrote the date on the first page—August 20, 1940—and his signature—Jac—on the last one. He folded the papers and pressed his temples, ready to burst, and repeated twice that he was Jacques Mornard. He took a deep breath, put the letter in his pocket, dried the sweat off his forehead, and got out of the car. Charles Cornell, the guard on duty in a tower, greeted him, and he tried to smile at him while making a gesture with his hand. The Mexican policeman posted
next to the bulletproof door gave him a nod, but he didn’t deign to respond. The door’s mechanism activated and Harold Robbins, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, shook his hand. When Robbins let him pass, Ramón remembered something. He took one step back and looked out to the right side of the street. About 150 yards away, he saw a dark green Chrysler, although he couldn’t make out its occupants.
“Mr. Trotsky is expecting me,” he said to Robbins.
Jacques arranged the raincoat over his left arm again, searching for a balance between the length of the fabric and the weight of the weapons.
“I already know . . . He’s at the rabbit cages,” Robbins said, and pointed to where the Exile, his head covered with a straw hat, was tending to the animals.
“Sylvia and I are leaving for New York tomorrow.”
“Business?” Robbins asked.
“That’s right,” Jacques said, and Robbins returned to the door.
Ramón looked at the yard. He could see only the figures of the Duck and Azteca the dog. He walked toward them slowly.
“Good afternoon.”
The old man didn’t turn around. He had just placed the fresh grass in the metal basket of one of the compartments.
“I’ve brought the article,” he said, taking the typed pages from his raincoat pocket and holding them out as if they were a safe-conduct pass.
“Yes, of course . . . Let me finish,” the condemned man asked.
Jacques Mornard took a few steps toward the center of the yard. He was overcome by dizziness and thought of sitting on the iron bench. At that moment Natalia Sedova came out of the kitchen and walked over to him. At the door’s threshold, Jacques saw Joe Hansen, who waved at him and went back into the house.
“Good afternoon, Madame Natalia.”
“To what do we owe you coming around here again?”
“The article, don’t you remember?” he said, and immediately added: “Tomorrow, we’re going to New York.”
Azteca had gotten close to him and he looked at the dog as if he couldn’t see him. His stomach was in flames; he was sweating again; he feared losing his concentration.
“If you had told me before, I would’ve given you correspondence for some friends,” the woman said sadly.
“I can come back tomorrow morning.”
Natalia thought about it for a moment.
“No, don’t worry . . . So you brought the article?”
“Yes,” he said, and handed it to the woman.
“At least it’s typed. Lev Davidovich doesn’t like to read things that are handwritten,” she said, and pointed at the raincoat. “Why are you carrying that around?”
“I thought it was going to rain. Here the weather changes in just a few minutes . . .”
“In Coyoacán, it has been sunny and hot all day. You’re sweating.”
“I don’t feel very well. My lunch didn’t agree with me.”
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No, I still have food at the top of my stomach. It’s suffocating me. But I would love a little water.”
The condemned man had come closer and heard the end of the conversation.
“I’ll go get the water,” Natalia said, and returned to the house.
Jacques turned to the old man.
“It’s the altitude and the spices. They’re going to kill me.”
“You have to take care of your health, Jacson,” the Exile said, taking off his gloves. “You don’t look very well . . .”
“That’s why we’re going to New York: to see a good doctor.”
“A sick stomach can be a curse; I’m telling you because I did mine in by mistreating it for so many years.”
The renegade slapped his legs so that Azteca would come over to him. The dog stood up and put his front feet on the old man’s thighs. He patted the animal with both hands below his ears.
“Sylvia is about to arrive. She’s coming to say goodbye.”
“Little Sylvia is very confused,” the Exile said as he cleaned his glasses with the edge of the light blue shirt he was wearing.
Natalia Sedova returned with a glass of water, placed on a small plate, and Jacques thanked her and drank two sips.
“Let’s see this famous article,” the renegade said, and without further ado he walked to the dining room entrance but stopped, and Jacques almost bumped into him. He addressed his wife in Russian: “Natasha, why don’t you invite them for dinner? They’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I don’t think he’ll want to eat,” she answered, also in Russian. “Look at his face: he’s practically green.”
“He should have had some tea,” the man said, now in French, and resumed walking.
Jacques followed him to his workroom. When they passed the dining room, he saw the table set for dinner, and it seemed an incongruous image. When he entered the office, he saw that the dictaphone had been moved to the side of the desk; in its place before the renegade’s chair were a dozen books, all of them thick and dull looking. The window to the garden was open, as on the previous occasion, and he could see the plants, beaten by the sun, still strong at that hour of the afternoon. The condemned man again cleaned the lenses of his spectacles and, as if he were annoyed, held them up to the light. Finally he moved his chair and Jacques handed him the pages. The man pulled toward him the folder on the desk labeled with Cyrillic characters, perhaps to use it to lean on.
“Do those letters mean ‘Private’?” Jacques asked, without knowing why.
“Do you know Russian?” the Exile asked.
“No . . . but . . .”
“They are some notes. A kind of diary that I write when I can . . .”
“And does it say anything about me?”
The condemned man sat down and said:
“It’s possible.”
Ramón asked himself what that man could say about a man like Jacques Mornard, and he realized that he was worrying too much about something insignificant. Even though the conversation had served to definitively displace Jacques and his mind was now occupied only by Ramón, for a few seconds he had almost forgotten his mission. Nonetheless, a piercing desire to read those papers made him think of the possibility of taking them with him when he escaped: it would be like reaching the ultimate degree of perfection to appropriate the body and also the soul of his victim.
Ramón Mercader regained control when, from his position, he again saw the head, the white skin under the sparse hair that, he thought fleetingly, always seemed to need a trim at the bottom. Almost without realizing it, his mind began to work automatically, with simple reasoning, leading to just one purpose; no matter how hard he tried, for many years he could not remember having thought of anything but the mechanics designed to place him behind the seated man. He would not even remember if the beating in his temples or the shortness of breath were bothering him at that moment. Days later, he would start to recover the details and even believed he had embraced, at some moment, the dream of escaping and saving himself. Perhaps he also thought of África and her inability to love. Perhaps about the tumultuous way, in a matter of seconds, he was going to enter history. If it was not a trick of his memory, the image of a beach where two dogs and a boy were running passed through his head. In contrast, he would always remember with shocking clarity the feeling of freedom that began to run through him when he saw the renegade prepare himself to read those typed pages. He noticed how a kind of weightlessness invaded his body and his mind. No, his temples weren’t beating anymore; he wasn’t sweating anymore. Then he tried to recover the hate that that head had to provoke in him and enumerated the reasons he was there, a few inches away from it: the head of the revolution’s greatest enemy, of the most cynical danger threatening the working class; the head of a traitor, a renegade, a terrorist, a reactionary, a fascist. That head held the mind of the man who had violated all the principles of revolutionary ethics and deserved to die, with a nail in the head, like an animal at the slaughterhouse. The condemned man was reading and, once ag
ain, he was crossing out, crossing out, crossing out, with brusque and annoyed gestures. How dare he? Ramón Mercader took out the ice axe. He sensed it hot and exact in his hand. Without taking his eyes off the victim’s head, he placed the raincoat on the low shelves behind him, next to the globe, which tottered and was about to fall. Ramón noticed that his hands were again bathed in sweat, his forehead was burning, but he convinced himself that to end that torture he just needed to lift the metallic spike. He observed the exact spot where he would hit him. One blow and everything would be over. He would be free again: essentially free. Even if the bodyguards killed him, he thought, his freedom would be absolute. Why hadn’t he hit him already? Was he afraid? he asked himself. Was he expecting something to happen that would prevent him from doing it? That a guard would enter, that Natalia Sedova would come in, that the old man would turn around? But no one came, the globe didn’t fall, the ice axe didn’t slip out of his sweaty hand, and the old man didn’t turn around at that moment—but, in French, he said something definitive:
“This is garbage, Jacson,” and he crossed the page with his pencil, from right to left, from left to right.
At that moment Ramón Mercader felt that his victim had given him the order. He lifted his right arm, brought it well behind his head, squeezed the trimmed grip forcefully, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t see, at the last instant, that the condemned man, with the typed pages in his hand, turned his head and had just enough time to discover Jacques Mornard while he was bringing down the ice axe with all of his might in search of the center of his skull.
The cry of horror and pain shook the foundations of that useless fortress on Avenida Viena.
28
I don’t know at exactly what moment I started to think about that; I don’t know if I already had it in my head at the time that I met the man who loved dogs, although I suppose that it must have been afterward. What I am very sure of is that, for years, I was obsessed (it sounds a little exaggerated, but that is the word and, moreover, it is the truth) with being able to determine the exact moment at which the twentieth century would conclude and, with it, the second millennium of the Christian era. Of course, that would in turn determine the moment that would start off the twenty-first century and, also, the third millennium. In my calculations (I always counted by the age) I would be—fifty or fifty-one?—upon the awakening of the new century, according to the date on which the end of the previous one was established—in the year 1999 or in 2000? Although for many the crossroads of the centuries would only be a change of dates and diaries among other, more arduous concerns, I insisted on seeing it another way, because at some moment in the terrible preceding years, I began to expect that that leap in time, as arbitrary as any human convention, would also propitiate a radical turn in my life. Then, against the logic of the Gregorian calendar, which closes its cycles in years with zeros, I accepted, as part of a convention and like many people in the world, that December 31, 1999—soon after my fiftieth birthday—would be the last day of the century and the millennium. As the date approached, I was excited to know that computer programmers around the globe had worked for years to avoid the computer chaos that the radical alteration of numbers could produce that day, and that the French had placed an enormous clock on the Eiffel Tower counting down the days, the hours, and the minutes to the Great Leap.
The Man Who Loved Dogs Page 60