The Man Who Loved Dogs (42 page)

Lev Davidovich did not dare to reveal to Natalia, and less still to Liova, that pessimism was beginning to defeat him when he understood the limited reach of the counterproceeding for which they had worked so hard. Neither the trade union organizations nor the progressive intellectuals, controlled by Moscow’s propaganda and money, had agreed to participate, and only national committees made up of professed anti-Communists and anti-Stalinists dared to offer their support, while men such as Romain Rolland proclaimed Stalin’s integrity, certified the GPU’s humanitarian methods to get confessions, and even denied that there was any intellectual repression in the USSR.

But Lev Davidovich knew that, even in those conditions, he should wage the battle. During the recent meeting of the Central Committee, with the bodies of the most recently executed still warm, the dark Nikolai Yezhov, turned into the dazzling star of the repression, had accused Bukharin and Rykov of training terrorist groups destined to assassinate the Great Leader, for whom they felt “a perverse hate.” Anastas Mikoyan, another one of the red czar’s hunting dogs, made a speech full of cruel comments about the two old Bolsheviks in which he claimed that the much trumpeted closeness between Bukharin and Lenin had never existed. At the end of the session—which, it was reported, Stalin had followed in silence and with his face in consternation over those “revelations”—Bukharin and Rykov were arrested and led to the Lubyanka’s chambers of horror, and it was decided to create a commission of thirty-six militants, including all of the members of the Politburo, with the mission of dictating a partisan verdict against the accused. Among the members of
the commission, Lev Davidovich painfully discovered the names of Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova, Lenin’s widow and sister. The two women, whom Stalin had begun to attack and marginalize even during the leader’s life, had seen Vladimir Ilyich talk and speak with Bukharin countless times and now accepted Mikoyan’s lies, developed by Stalin, in silence. That sordid move allowed Lev Davidovich to see something that had escaped him in previous trials: Stalin had also resolved to turn the few figures of the past that were still with him not just into submissive extras to his lies but into direct accomplices of his criminal fury; whoever was not a victim would be an accomplice and, moreover, would be a henchman. Terror and repression had been established as the policy of a government that adopted persecution and lies as resources of the state and as a lifestyle for all of society. Is that how a “better” society was made? he would ask himself, although he already knew the answer.

When John Dewey arrived in Mexico, under infinite political pressure, he asked for information on the case, which he had yet to read, and refused to meet with Trotsky. He reminded the press that, ideologically, he did not share the accused’s theories and, as president of the commission, would only limit himself to offering some conclusions on the basis of the proof and testimonies presented, and that the only value of those results would be of a moral nature.

On March 10, the Casa Azul looked like a military camp. Inside the building, the harmony of objects and colors had disappeared when the potted plants, wood-grained furniture, and works of art were removed to make space for the members of the jury, journalists, and bodyguards. Outside the mansion, barricades had been erected and dozens of policemen spread out. The morning of the opening, already awaiting the arrival of Dewey and the members of the jury, Diego Rivera observed the yard and, smiling, spoke to his guest about the sacrifices that had to be made for permanent revolution.

Dewey demonstrated an energy that belied his seventy-eight years. As soon as he entered the house, after greeting Diego and Lev Davidovich, he asked to begin. His role and that of the members of the jury, he said, would consist of listening to any testimony that Mr. Trotsky had to offer them, interrogating him, and later offering some conclusions. The pertinence of those sessions, in his opinion, was based on the fact that
Mr. Trotsky had been sentenced without the opportunity of making himself heard, which constituted a reason for serious concern to the commission and to the entire world.

That moment initiated perhaps the most intense and absurd week in the life of Lev Davidovich. He could not remember ever having been subjected to the physical and intellectual effort required to contend for hours and hours with the sick logic of the accusations fashioned in Moscow. As the entire counterproceeding was held in English, he constantly feared not being as precise or explicit as he needed and desired to be. At night he barely slept two or three hours, and only when his body overpowered his mind; his stomach, affected by the tension and liters of coffee he drank, had turned into a fiery stone embedded in his abdomen; while his blood pressure, already disturbed by the altitude, had produced a buzzing in his ears and a bothersome pain at the base of his skull. At the end of the sixth day, he was under the impression of being in a strange place, among unknown people talking about incomprehensible matters, and he thought he would pass out, but he knew that speaking before those people was his only alternative, perhaps the last occasion to fight in public for his name and his history, for his ideas and for the mortal remains of a revolution betrayed.

When the time came for his statement, on April 17, the members of the commission saw before them an exhausted man who had to ask Dewey’s permission to remain seated. Nonetheless, when he began his speech, the vehemence of old times returned and those gathered at the Casa Azul saw some of the sparks of the Trotsky who had moved the masses in 1905 and 1917, of the passion that had earned him the devotion of so many men and the eternal hatred of others, from Plekhanov to Stalin. His first conclusion was that, according to the present Soviet government, all of the members of the Politburo that brought triumph to the revolution and accompanied Lenin in the most difficult days of war and hunger and had founded the state—men who had suffered jail, exile, endless repression—in reality had always been traitors to their ideals and, further still, agents at the service of foreign powers who wanted to destroy what they themselves had built. Wasn’t it a paradox that the October leaders, all of them, had ended up being traitors? Or was there perhaps only one traitor and his name was Stalin? He wouldn’t waste time to demonstrate the falseness, let alone the absurdity, of the acts attributed to him, he said, but he pointed out that the governments of Turkey, France, and Norway had corroborated
that he had not engaged in any anti-Soviet activities in their territories, since he had remained removed and even confined under police watch. Forgetting his physical weaknesses, he stood up. The ideas bursting within him acted as an impulse that moved him and gave him the strength to go on to the end. His life experience, he reminded them, in which neither triumphs nor failures were scarce, had not destroyed his faith in the future of humanity; on the contrary, they had given him indestructible conviction. He still possessed the faith in reason, in truth, and in human solidarity that at the age of eighteen he brought with him to the neighborhoods of the provincial city of Nikolayev; it had become more mature but no less ardent, and no one nor anything could ever kill it.

His breathing agitated and his head hurting, he took his seat again. His eyes met those of the old American professor and, for a few thick seconds, held his gaze. The silence was dramatic. Before Lev Davidovich’s plea, Dewey had promised to offer some provisional conclusions, but now he froze as if petrified. A sob from Natalia Sedova broke the spell. Finally, Dewey lowered his gaze and looked at his notes and whispered that the session was closed until they reached their conclusions. And he added: anything he might have said would have been an unforgivable anticlimax.

The session barely closed, Lev Davidovich, on Natalia’s orders, decamped to a country house in the beautiful city of Taxco. Although he had asked the secretaries to take the hunting rifles, his fatigue was such that he could only go for a few walks around the city and, almost at the end of his stay, go on an excursion to the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Teotihuacán. Fortunately, the headaches, the high blood pressure, and the insomnia began to recede, but Natalia’s strict vigilance kept him in a reclusion that included the blocking of his correspondence.

When they returned to Coyoacán, Lev Davidovich was surprised by a feeling he hadn’t experienced since his days in Prinkipo: he was returning to a place he desired to be. For a man who had lived his entire existence in constant motion, the traditional notion of home had been substituted by the necessity for a place that was propitious for working, and the Casa Azul, with its charms and exotic atmosphere, exercised a beneficent magnetism, to which was added (though Lev Davidovich would never admit to it in his writings) the attractive flitting of the Kahlo sisters, whose
attentions had awoken instincts that the years of struggle and isolation had put to sleep. The enjoyment of Cristina’s beauty and Frida’s mysterious charm, the aroma of youth that emanated from both of them and the conversations in which he tended to let compliments slip out that were sometimes awkward and banal, gradually turned into a kind of adolescent game that made his confinement unpredictable and turned the kitchen, the hallways and the yard of the house into places for smiling encounters, while he felt the gaiety also turning back his encroaching old age.

While waiting for Dewey’s conclusions, Lev Davidovich continued to submit evidence that refuted the charge that he had participated in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. He regretted that many of those documents had not reached him weeks earlier, and the idea that Liova had been indolent about sending them set him at the edge of fury. Resolved to punish that unforgivable inefficiency, he delegated his correspondence with Liova to his secretaries, knowing that the young man would immediately get the signal he was transmitting with his silence.

One night at the end of March after dinner, Natalia, Jean van Heijenoort, and Lev Davidovich, along with the residents of the Casa Azul, prolonged one of the pleasant evenings in which the Exile was frequently asked to narrate the most remarkable memories of his life. Since he felt encouraged, he launched into a story about his relationship with Marshal Tukhachevsky, the young and elegant officer who in the days of the civil war, thanks to his capacity as a strategist, was nicknamed “the Russian Bonaparte.” Natalia, who knew those episodes and understood very little English, was the first to retire, and Rivera, who was already storing an impressive quantity of whiskey in his blood, immediately followed her. Frida, overcome by tiredness, was next, and then van Heijenoort discreetly disappeared.

Cristina’s smile, the wine in his system, and the tensions accumulated over several weeks of proximity caused the foreseeable explosion. More than once, at dinners and in outings, Lev Davidovich had slid a hand across Cristina’s legs or arms, only as an affectionate gesture, and she, while flirtatious, had delicately, always with a smile, prevented any advance, yet without completely dissuading him, suggesting perhaps that these flirts and smiles were part of a ritual of approach, so that at last the man made a pass that night. Then, to his surprise, she stopped him and
asked that he not confuse admiration and affection with other feelings. Without understanding the reaction of a woman who had seemed to accept his overtures until that moment, Lev Davidovich was struck dumb, his desires frozen.

Annoyed by the failure, ashamed at having given in to an impulse that put his relationship with the owners of the house and, worse still, the stability of his marriage in danger, the man implored his reason to conquer the hormonal rush that had overtaken him. He forced himself to consider whether his intentions with the young woman had not been more than a fleeting intoxication caused by the magnetism of her smooth skin. It was all just an absurd manifestation of a midlife crisis, he told himself.

When Frida found out about what had happened, she assumed the role of confidante and offered the paltry consolation of setting him straight about her sister’s sexual fecklessness; Cristina was so fond of arousing males, and even of the most sordid deception: she had exceeded all limits when she went to bed with Diego himself, something that Frida had accepted, although she would never forgive either her husband or her sister. The painter’s tenderness and understanding, peppered with coquettishness, led Lev Davidovich to ask himself whether he hadn’t miscalculated his possibilities, and he began to redirect his intentions, which soon acquired an overwhelming vehemence, capable of altering his waking and sleeping hours with the image of the woman who had confided such intimate revelations to him.

Wrapped in the dense spiderweb of desire, Lev Davidovich had to rely on all of his discipline to concentrate on his work. Frida’s presence and the very atmosphere of the Casa Azul led him to inertia and digressions when so many political commitments and economic problems called on him. Perhaps the fact of having postponed the drafting of Lenin’s biography in order to devote himself to Stalin’s, for which he had already received an advance, also affected the rhythm of his work. Researching in the archives and searching his memory for everything related to that dark being was a thankless task, and although he intended to turn the book into a grenade against the Grave Digger, at root he felt that he was degrading himself by dedicating his intelligence and his time to it.

A strange and confusing event that occurred in Barcelona on May 3 managed to focus his attention on what was happening in Spain. For several months the civil war had turned into a field for political
confrontation between the groups fighting for the Republic, and Lev Davidovich noticed Moscow’s hand behind the accusations and debates between the factions. It could not be a coincidence, he would write, that shortly after the initiation of the Moscow purges and the announcement of military support for the Republic, in the form of Soviet weapons and advisers, a campaign was unleashed against the real and supposed Spanish Trotskyists, who were besieged with the same viciousness and in almost the same words with which the Bolsheviks in the USSR had been accused. His old friend Andreu Nin, from whom he had distanced himself over tactical differences, was one of the first to be thrown out of the governmental apparatus, while his party, the POUM, was turned into the target of propaganda attacks more scathing than those made against the fascist soldiers.