The Man Who Loved Dogs (19 page)

Ramón, angered by what he was listening to, observed Caridad, who lit a cigarette, puffed on it a few times, and threw it far away from her.

“I feel terrible. I have angina,” the woman said, and leaned over the table. “And the damn tobacco . . . I think Kotov has been clear.”

Ramón felt his ideas forming a dark medley in his mind. The list of plots, betrayals, and pettiness enumerated by Kotov was overwhelming for him, and the project of a wide antifascist front, in which he had believed and for which he had fought, seemed to undo itself beneath the weight of that information. But he still couldn’t see his place in a decentralized war, in which enemies jumped out from any corner and not just on the battlefield. The adviser stood up and looked him in the eye, forcing him to keep his head held up.

“So that you understand me better: surely you found out that a month ago they withdrew several advisers from the first group that arrived. What you surely don’t know is that right now they’re in Moscow, they’ve been tried, and many of them will be executed. Do you want me to tell you who’s next on the list?” The adviser lowered his voice and paused dramatically. “The order just came that we send Antonov-Ovseyenko, our consul here in Barcelona, back to Moscow. Antonov,” Kotov’s voice changed upon repeating the name, “a symbol in and of himself, the Bolshevik who in 1917 assured the taking of the Winter Palace . . . Do you know what it means when he and other former militants are being taken out of the game? Have you read the news about the trials that just took place in Moscow? Well, all of this means that we can’t feel pity for anyone, Ramón, not even for ourselves if we commit the slightest error. Republican Spain needs a government capable of guaranteeing military success. That is why we need to move quickly and carefully.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Ramón was afraid that he had not exactly understood what was drawing itself in his mind, and he found that he was scared by the revelations he was hearing.

“The party has to take real power, even by force if necessary,” Kotov said. “But first we have to clean house.”

Ramón dared to look for Caridad’s glassy green gaze; she was periodically taking sips from a yellowish liquid served in a cup decorated with the Marquis of Villota’s coat of arms.

“Don’t stare anymore: it’s lemon juice, for the angina . . . ,” she said, and added, “África is working with us, in case you didn’t know.” And Ramón felt a pang. He again looked up at Kotov. And took a step that brought him closer to África.

“What do I have to do?”

“You’ll find out when it’s time . . .” Kotov smiled and, after circling for a moment, returned to his chair. “What you need to know now is that if you work with us, you will never again be the Ramón Mercader that you once were. And I should also tell you that if you commit any indiscretions, if you weaken during any mission, we will be very ruthless. And you have no idea how ruthless we can be. If you’re here and have heard all of this, it’s because Caridad has assured us that you are a man who is capable of remaining silent.”

“You can trust me. I’m a Communist and a revolutionary and am willing to make any sacrifice for the cause.”

“I’m glad.” Kotov smiled again. “But I should remind you of something else . . . We’re not inviting you to participate in a social club. If you decide to enter, you’ll never be able to leave. And never means never. Is that clear? Would you really be willing to fulfill any mission, make any sacrifice, as you say, even things that other men without our convictions could consider immoral and even criminal?”

Ramón felt himself sinking in quicksand. It was as if his blood had fled his body and left him without any warmth. He thought that África had been subject to the same interrogation, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what her response had been. The ideas of the revolution, socialism, the great human utopia, for which he had fought suddenly seemed like another one of those romantic slogans pinned on the coal trucks led by mules: words. The truth, the whole truth, was enclosed in a question made by the envoy of the only victorious revolution that, to sustain its ideals, practiced a necessary lack of compassion, even with its most beloved children, and demanded the eventual rejection of any atavism. His ascent to that stratospheric level signified turning into much more than a simple follower of the revolution and the rhetoric of its mottos.

“I’m willing,” he said, and suddenly he felt superior.

As he observed the port, where a few ships were anchored, Ramón felt the days of the start of the war becoming so distant that they seemed like flashes from another incarnation, even lived in another body, but above all with another mind.

That afternoon, after taking a shower, Ramón had spoken for a while with little Luis and with a sad-eyed young woman named Lena Imbert, whom he’d gone to bed with once or twice and who had turned into Caridad’s assistant. Instead of taking the Ford that his mother offered him, he preferred to walk to the Paseo de Gracia. He needed to wrap his mind around the new condition of his life, but above all, he needed to speak with África and obtain confirmation from her of the electrifying panorama painted by Kotov. In front of the La Pedrera building, several party militiamen were on guard and Ramón’s military and political credentials were not enough to permit him entry. Since September, that child of Gaudí’s delirium had turned into the general barracks for Soviet intelligence and party leaders in Cataluña and was the city’s most protected building. Ramón managed to have one of the militiamen agree to give a note to Comrade África and he sat down to wait on one of the Paseo’s benches.

A short while later, he felt hunger pangs and went out in search of one of the port’s surviving inns. Later he went to the Church of the Merced and found the very modest building where his father, who he knew was now working as an accountant, was living following the crash of his business. His curiosity fulfilled, he realized that he didn’t feel any desire to see the man, since he couldn’t even imagine what he would talk about with that bourgeois gentleman so attached to his retrograde Catalanism and who was too soft for his liking. He left Calle Ample and headed for the start of Las Ramblas, where he had designated a meeting place with África.

The night was getting cold, his anxiety to see the young woman was tormenting him, and Ramón took refuge in his thoughts. What had been clear for him until a few months before had now turned into a cloudy darkness full of twists and turns. From the enthusiasm with which he had gone to jail, and that with which he had entered La Barceloneta to teach literacy to the sons of workers, as well as the fury with which he would
later hand himself over to the organization of the aborted Popular Olympics, he had immediately gone on to defend the Republic from the military coup. Then anarchists, POUM members, Socialists, and Communists fought together to prevent the victory of the coup. Joining a militia and almost immediately afterward the ranks of the new Republican Army were the steps that he naturally took, with all of his enthusiasm and his faith, convinced that his life only had meaning if he was able to defend with a rifle the ideas in which he believed. But after half a year of war, and before the evidence of the political meanness of the British, the Americans, and, above all, the French Socialists, it was clear that only the Soviets would maintain them and that the Republic depended on that support.

Deep in his thoughts, he was surprised by África’s arrival. Since he hadn’t expected to see her, he felt an even greater happiness upon hearing her voice and breathing in the young woman’s unalterably feminine perfume. Ramón kissed her furiously and forced her to step back so he could get a better look at her: he didn’t know if four months of military campaigns amid the stench, cries, blood, and death had influenced his perception, but before him he saw an angel in combat uniform, with her shorn hair giving her a definitively military air.

África had the keys with her to a small apartment in the Barceloneta, and they walked quickly, looking for the alleyways that would make the path to the consummation of their desire shorter. They climbed some dark steps impregnated with the smell of dampness, but when they opened the door, Ramón found a small room dominated by a double bed over which was draped a sheet smelling of soap. With his accumulated anxiety and exhausting feeling of need, Ramón made love to her with an uncontainable fullness and fury. Only when he felt satiated, while he was resting before a new attack, did he dare to start the conversation that he desired as much as the body of the woman whom he would most love in his life.

África told him that their daughter was fine, although she had not had any news of her for a few weeks. She knew that after the bloody taking of Málaga by the Nationalists, her parents had managed to go to a small town in the Alpujarras where some relatives of theirs lived. Besides, África had had so much work in the office of Pedro, the local leader of the Comintern’s advisers, that she barely had any time left to think about
herself and none at all to worry about Lenina, whom her parents would know how to care for.

“I’m working with the propaganda group,” she explained, and detailed the underground work on public opinion that was aimed at overcoming the resistance of those who were opposed to the Soviet presence in the country, starting with Largo Caballero, who with all slyness accepted the weapons but listened to the advisers’ counsel with clenched teeth. Increasingly, the Socialists, before the evidence of the party’s exponential growth and their growing prestige on the front, were calling them marionettes for Moscow’s designs and accusing them of wanting to control the Republic. The attacks by the POUM’s Trotskyists were worse, making it their duty to unmask their true reactionary essence.

“I’ve also been asked to work to get all of those people out of the way,” Ramón said, already completely convinced of the need for his new mission, and he told her about his interview with Kotov.

“You know what, Ramón?” she said. “What you’ve told me could cost you your life.”

“You also said yes to them. I know I can trust you.”

“You’re wrong. You can’t trust anyone . . .”

“Don’t get paranoid, please.”

África smiled and shook her head no.

“Comrade, the only way that everything we do will work is if we do it in silence. Get that into your head, because if you don’t, what you’re going to get is a bullet. And listen to me now, because I’m risking things with what I’m going to tell you: the Soviets want to help us win the war, but we’re the ones who have to win it, and if things don’t change, we’ll never win. You are going to be part of that change. As such, forget that you have a soul, that you love anyone, and that I even exist.”

“That last part is impossible,” he said, and tried to smile.

“Well, it’s the best thing you could do . . . Ramón, perhaps tonight will be the last time we will see each other for a long time. In a few days I have to leave Barcelona . . . ,” she said as she began to dress, and he watched her, feeling his desires freeze. “And don’t ask me, because I haven’t asked you why or where, either. I’m a soldier and I go wherever they send me.”

9

Throughout the spring of 1977, I traveled many times to that beach, and on each occasion, moved by the most innocent curiosity, I sat down under the pines awhile seeking a new encounter, surely improbable, with the owner of the Russian wolfhounds, whom, the same day on which I met him, I had named “the man who loved dogs.”

Ever since leaving Baracoa two years before, with the cure to my alcoholism completed, and which kept me radically removed from drinking for fifteen years—when the crisis started and I felt that I could again have a drink of rum or a beer and not go up Jacob’s ladder, since I was down that low—I had turned my life around in an important way. Without yet knowing very well what I wanted, and to the surprise of my friends, I had not accepted the placement that was being given me in the information services team of a national radio station, a reward for the work that I was supposed to have carried out in Baracoa, evaluated as excellent. I had begun to trawl in the underworld of the cultural and journalistic sphere, which was still packed with fallen angels who had once been celebrated or controversial writers, journalists, promoters, all defenestrated, perhaps for life, and for a variety of reasons or no reasons at all. That search ended up leading me to the very modest position of proofreader at the
Veterinaria
Cubana
magazine, as its former occupant had died a few weeks before, apparently by his own hand. That work seemed sufficiently obscure, anonymous, far from any possible passions and ambitions, and guaranteed me the two things I needed at that moment: a salary to live on, and peace and a routine to try to recompose my spirits. In due time, I thought, I would try to return to the writing that at that moment I still didn’t think was possible.