The Man Who Loved Dogs (27 page)

Adriano had picked the Hotel Continental as one of his usual stops. Despite the scarcity devastating the city, you could still have a good coffee there and get a pack of French cigarettes. Many of the members of the POUM were staying there and in the nearby Hotel Falcón, and Adriano proved that, with due caution, his presence in those places could become habitual and not at all suspicious. In the end, the various secret agents who roamed about the building ended up being so visible that he felt he could become transparent or, at most, be taken as just another nosy parker.

Periodically, Adriano reported to Maximus, and they both reached the conclusion that the POUMists were terrified by the rise of the communist press, but its leaders didn’t have any possibilities to backtrack nor
a full understanding of the abyss they were entering. Between the hotel’s guests and visitors, with whom he managed to start occasional conversations, just one English journalist, a POUM militiaman, commented that in the coming days something serious was going to happen in Barcelona: you could read it in the tension floating in the air. The militiaman-cum-journalist, who had been evacuated from the front in Huesca, was a tall guy, very thin, with a horselike face, and bore the unhealthy coloring of an illness that was surely eating away at him. He was always in the company of his tiny wife and he was always looking around him, as if something were continuously lying in wait for him from behind a column. Adriano had introduced himself with his new nom de guerre and the Englishman said he was called George Orwell and confessed to him that he felt more fearful in a Barcelona hotel than in the frozen trenches of Huesca.

“Do you see that fat man who corners all the foreigners and explains to them that everything that’s happening here is a Trotskyist-anarchist conspiracy?” Orwell asked him, and Adriano furtively looked at the figure. “He is a Russian agent . . . It’s the first time I have seen someone professionally and publicly devoted to telling lies—with the exception of journalists and politicians, of course.”

Many years had to pass for Ramón to know who that man was. In 1937 almost no one knew Orwell. But when Ramón read some books about what had happened in Barcelona and found a photo of John Dos Passos, Ramón would have sworn that, just days before everything exploded, he had seen Orwell conversing with Dos Passos in the hotel cafeteria. In those meetings, however, Ramón and Orwell almost never spoke of politics: they tended to talk about dogs. The Englishman and his wife, Eileen, loved dogs and in England they had a borzoi. Through Orwell, Ramón learned of that breed; which, according to the journalist, were the most elegant and beautiful hounds on earth.

What Ramón liked best about his mission was feeling so camouflaged beneath his own skin that, without thinking about it too much, he was capable of reacting like the carefree and simple Adriano. He discovered that using another name, dressing a different way from what he would have considered close to his own tastes, and inventing a previous life dominated by a disillusionment with politics and a rejection of politicians were feelings that he was beginning to secretly enjoy. Thus, with each passing day he felt more like Adriano, was more like Adriano, and could
even look at Ramón with a certain distance. He happily discovered that, without África at hand, he could go without his family. Besides, despite his gregarious and partisan spirit, he didn’t have a single friend to whom he felt tied. The only compass he clung to was his responsibility, and he tried to carry it out carefully. Because of that, the day on which he handed over to Maximus the summary of the movements, places frequented by and the personal tastes of the heads of the POUM—particularly exhaustive in the case of Andreu Nin—he thought that the congratulations he received were a reward for Adriano and, only remotely, for the Ramón Mercader who had lent him his body.

Kotov looked like an abandoned statue on the bench in the Plaza de Cataluña. The spring was at its height and the warm sun bathed the city. The adviser, with his face slightly raised, was receiving the heat like a lizard slothful from the rays that were injecting him with life. He had even taken off his jacket and the printed kerchief he regularly wore around his neck, and he remained immobile for a few seconds after Ramón sat down at his side.

“What a marvelous country!” he said at last, and smiled. “I could live here for the rest of my life.”

“Despite the Spaniards?”

“Precisely because of you. Where I come from, the people are like stones. You are all flowers. My country smells like smoked herring and hops; here, it smells of olive oil and wine.”

“Your pals say we’re primitive and practically dumb.”

“Don’t pay too much attention to those lunatics. They confuse ideology with mysticism, and they are no more than walking machines—worse still, they’re fanatics. Here they make themselves look tough, but you should see them when Moscow calls for them . . .
Na khuy
. They shit themselves. Don’t look to them as an example; you don’t want to be like them. You can be so much more.”

“What did Maximus say about me?”

“He’s satisfied and you know it. But today you will stop being Adriano and go back to being Ramón, and as Ramón, you’re going to work with me, for now. Until something else is decided, Adriano doesn’t exist anymore; Maximus never existed. Is that clear?”

Ramón nodded and took off his scarf. Heat was rising from his chest.

“Take advantage, kid, breathe in this peace! Get the most out of every peaceful moment. The struggle is hard and doesn’t give us many occasions like this one. Do you see the calm? Do you feel it?”

Ramón wondered whether it was a rhetorical question, but Kotov’s insistence forced him to look around and answer.

“Yes, of course I feel it.”

“And do you see that building over there, in front of us?”

“Telefónica? How could I not . . .?”

Kotov’s laughter interrupted him. The adviser lowered his face and for the first time looked directly at Ramón. His cheeks were glowing, his clear eyes covered to protect them from the intense light.

“It’s a hive of fifth columnists who are preparing a coup d’état against the central government,” Kotov said, and Ramón had to wake up his neurons to pick up the adviser’s thread of reasoning. “Before they do that, we have to fumigate them, like cockroaches, like the enemies they are. We’re losing the war, Ramón. What the fascists did in Guernica is not a crime: it’s a warning. There will be no mercy, and it seems that not all of you understand it . . . Those anarchists think that Telefónica belongs to them because, when they rebelled against the military, they went in there and said: It’s ours. And the government is so soft that it hasn’t been able to kick them out. When Guernica was bombed, they went to the extreme of denying the president of the Republic an open line.” Kotov smiled again as if he found that story funny. “In a few days, nothing will remain of this peace.”

“What are we going to do?”

Kotov stayed silent too long for Ramón’s curiosity.

“The fascists keep gaining ground and that midget Franco now has the support of all the parties on the right. Meanwhile, the Republicans are passing the time knocking each other’s eyes out and everyone wants to be his own boss . . . No, there can’t be any more thinking. If those fifth columnists carry out a coup d’état, you can forget about Spain . . . We have to do something definitive, kid. I’ll be waiting for you at eight at the Plaza de la Universidad.”

Kotov tied the kerchief at his neck and picked up his jacket. Ramón knew he shouldn’t ask anything and saw him walk away with a limp that was more noticeable than on other occasions. From the bench he contemplated, a few feet below him, at the start of Las Ramblas, several sandbags that were once barricades and the carefree or hurried people
walking by, dressed as civilians or in the uniforms by which each faction tried to distinguish itself. Ramón felt superior: he was one of those in the know amid a mass of puppets.

Fifteen minutes before eight, Ramón sat on a bench in the Plaza de la Universidad. He saw a parade down Gran Vía, on the way to Sants station, of several trucks filled with recruits from the CNT anarchists’ militia, with their banners beaten by the wind. He assumed they would go out to the front that very night and began to understand the strategy of Kotov and the advisers’ high command. Half an hour later, when anxiety was beginning to torment him, he felt his stomach growing cold. On the other side of the avenue, he saw her coming: of the millions of people on Earth, her figure was the only one he would never mistake.

África got closer and Ramón felt himself losing what control he had imagined he possessed. He walked to the edge of the street and hugged her almost furiously.

“But where the hell . . .?”

“Let’s go, they’re waiting for us.”

África’s coolness cut through Ramón’s anxiety, and he immediately sensed that something had changed. As they walked toward the market, África mentioned she had been in Valencia, where the head of government was now located, and had returned when Pedro and Orlov, the very head of the intelligence advisers, had transferred her command post to Barcelona. She had no recent news of Lenina. She assumed she was with her parents, still in the Alpujarra mountains, she said, and closed the subject to further discussion. Near the market, they entered a building and went up the stairs to the third floor. The door opened without their knocking, and in the room that must have sometimes been a living room, Ramón saw Kotov and another five men of whom he only recognized Graco. Two remained standing, while Kotov and the rest were seated on some boxes. No one said hello.

Kotov was precise: they had been given the mission of capturing a man, not even he himself knew his name; he knew only that they were dealing with an anarchist who needed to be taken out of circulation. The man would come out about ten o’clock from a bar two blocks from there and they would recognize him because he would have a red and black scarf. “You and you”—he pointed out Ramón and a dark-haired man, thirty-something years old, who looked like he came from the south—“dressed as
Mossos d’Esquadra
, you’re going to arrest him and take him
to a car that she”—he pointed at África—“is going to signal for you.” The other three would act as support in case something happened. Kotov insisted that everything should be done as a routine arrest; there couldn’t be any shots or drama. The ones in the car would be in charge of driving the man to his fate. Afterward, they would all scatter and wait until he or an envoy of his called them.

The air of mystery and secrecy filled Ramón with joy. He looked at África and smiled at her, since, as he put on the Catalan police uniform, he could feel how his usefulness for the cause was growing. That mission could be the beginning of his definitive entrance into the world of the truly initiated, but working with África was an unexpected reward. He would never remember if he had felt nervous; he would only keep in his memory the feeling of responsibility that overcame him and África’s distant attitude.

The facility with which the arrest played out, the transfer of the man to the car (when he heard him protest, Ramón knew he was Italian), and his departure ended up filling him with enthusiasm. Could everything be so easy? After walking a few blocks away, Ramón took off the jacket and threw it in the garbage can. He felt euphoric, desirous to do something else, and he regretted that Kotov’s order was immediate dispersal once the operation was carried out. To have África so close just to lose her right away . . . He looked for one of the dark alleyways that led to El Raval, desiring more adventure than the insipid Lena Imbert could provide. When he stopped to light a cigarette, he felt his blood go cold: the cold metal of the barrel of a revolver was pressed into the back of his head. For a few seconds his mind went blank, until his sense of smell came to his aid.

“You’re going against orders,” he said, without turning around. “You’re the only soldier who smells like violets. Shall we take the tram to La Bonanova or do you still have that little room in La Barceloneta?”

África put the gun away and started walking, forcing Ramón to follow her.

“I wanted to see you because I felt I should be honest with you, Ramón,” she said, and he sensed a tone in her voice that alarmed him.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s nothing going on anymore, Ramón. Forget about me.”

“What are you talking about?” Ramón felt himself shaking. Had he heard correctly?

“I won’t see you again . . .”

“But . . .”

Ramón stopped and grabbed her by the arm almost violently. She let him but gave him a cold, piercing look. Ramón let go of her.

“I never promised you anything. You should have never fallen in love. Love is a weight and a luxury we cannot afford. Good luck, Ramón,” she said, and without turning around she walked down the street until she was lost around the corner and in the darkness.

Nearly petrified, Ramón was aware of the commotion affecting his muscles and his brain. What the hell was going on? Why was África doing this? Was she following party orders or was it a personal decision?

He walked to the high part of the city, the unease following him. He felt diminished, humiliated, and in his mind signals began to cross, evidence that until that moment had been brushed away, attitudes that in a new light took on a revelatory dimension. And in that wounded wolf’s climb to his lair, Ramón promised himself that África would one day know who he was and what he was capable of.

The explosion that the horse-faced English journalist was waiting for, and that Kotov had prophesied, finally happened. The dry wood of hate and fear, so abundant in Spain, needed only a match, placed precisely, to light the pyre on which, as Caridad would say so many times, the Republic had been purified.