The Man Who Loved Dogs (78 page)

The young man looked at the forest, trying to process those words.

“I would like to be the Ramón I was three years ago, before the lies started,” he said, without realizing that he had begun to speak in Spanish. “I would like to enter that house tomorrow and smash the life of a renegade traitor and be sure that I’m doing it for the cause. Now I don’t know the difference between the cause and lies.”

Tom lit a cigarette and focused on the blades of grass he was moving with a stick. When he spoke, he continued to do so in French.

“Truth and lies are too relative, and in this work that you and I do, there’s no border between the two. This is a dark war and the only truth that matters is that you follow orders. It’s all the same if, to get to that moment, we climb a mountain of lies or truths.”

“That’s cynical.”

“Perhaps . . . Do you want a truth? I’ll remind you of one: the truth is that the Duck is a threat to the Soviet Union right now. We are at a point in which everything that is not with Stalin is in favor of Hitler, without any in between. What do a few lies matter if they save our great truth?”

Ramón stood up. Tom discovered that the fear and doubts had made an obvious mark on his pupil’s soul. But he was certain that Ramón had understood the essence of his situation: there was no turning back for him.

“What you told me about África, that thing about me being soft . . . Did she tell you that?”

Tom dropped the stick he was moving around in the dirt.

“África is a fanatic, a machine, not a woman. Don’t you realize that a person like that cannot love anyone? For her, everything is a fucking competition to see who says more slogans. And if that crazy woman ever thought you were soft, now she’s going to know how wrong she was . . .”

Ramón felt the effect of those words. His muscles relaxed.

“Kid, go to your hotel, eat something, try to sleep. Think only that you’re going to leave that house alive and that once you get to Moscow you’ll be a hero . . . I’ll take care of the rest. We’re going to take you to Santiago de Cuba. I wanted to get you out to Guatemala, but Caridad
wants to go with you to Santiago, because she hasn’t been back since they took her to Spain. She tells a whole story about how her father was the first one to free the black slaves.”

“Another tall tale,” Ramón said, and nearly smiled. Tom shook his head, smiling. “My grandparents were shameless exploiters and that’s how they got so rich . . . When will we see each other again?”

“I have to arrange a lot of things. I hope we’ll see each other tomorrow when you finish your work at the Duck’s house. Incidentally, do you know what you’re going to be called when you leave there? Juan Pérez González. Original, right?”

Ramón didn’t answer. Tom stood up and, in silence, they went down to where the Chrysler was parked. The adviser drove to the city center, his eyes fixed on the road. When they entered the parking lot of Shirley Court, he looked for the Buick and stopped next to it.

“I worked with you the best I could. I have taken you to the door of the most protected man on earth and I’ve shown you that it’s possible to do it. Now everything is left to you, and the rest depends on luck. That’s why I wish you all the luck in the world. We’ll see you tomorrow when you leave the house . . . Incidentally, Caridad says that the best rum in the world is in Santiago de Cuba and that her grandfather, the one who freed the slaves, was a business associate of the first Bacardis. I hope the three of us together can confirm it. The thing about the rum, of course.”

Ramón recalled the conversation he had had with his mother a few days before. He then asked himself if Tom had ordered Caridad to tell that sordid story from which, if it was true, the hate marking their lives was born.

“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” he said, and when he went to get out of the car, he felt Tom’s hand clutching his arm. The adviser leaned toward him and Ramón let himself be kissed on both cheeks, and finally he felt the man’s lips on his own. Tom released him and patted his shoulder.

Ramón Mercader had to wait twenty-eight years to get another kiss from the man who had led him to the shore of history.

Sylvia insisted that they go to the hospital. Jacques took two more painkillers and, with a damp handkerchief over his eyes, leaned his head on the pillow and begged her to leave him alone. The tiredness, the pain,
and, at last, the relief brought by the pills plunged him into sleep, and when he awoke the following morning, he didn’t know where or who he was. The hotel room, Sylvia, the typewriter on which he had placed the pages of the article, brought him back to reality and into the soul of Jacques Mornard.

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.