The Man Who Loved Dogs Read online

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  “Yes, tell him yes.”

  For the rest of his days, Ramón Mercader would remember that, just a few seconds before pronouncing the words destined to change his life, he had discovered the unhealthy density that accompanies silence in the middle of war. For weeks he had lived amid the din of the bombs, the shots and the engines, the shouted orders and the cries of pain, and it all accumulated in his consciousness like the sounds of life; the sudden leaden fall of that heavy silence, capable of causing a helplessness too much like fear, turned into a troubling presence when he understood that, after that precarious silence, the explosion of death could suddenly take him away.

  In the years of imprisonment, of doubts and alienation, to which those four words would lead him, many times Ramón persisted in challenging himself to imagine what would have happened with his life had he said no. He would insist on re-creating a parallel existence, an essentially novelistic journey in which he had never ceased to be called Ramón, to be Ramón, to act like Ramón, perhaps far from his country and his memories, like so many men of his generation, but always being Ramón Mercader del Río in body and, above all, in soul.

  Caridad had arrived a few hours before, in the company of little Luis. They had traveled from Barcelona, through Valencia, driving the powerful Ford that was confiscated from some executed aristocrats and which the Catalan communist leaders usually used to get around. The safe conducts, adorned with signatures capable of opening all Republican military controls, had allowed them to reach the side of that rugged mountain of the Sierra de Guadarrama. The temperature, several degrees below zero, had forced them to stay inside the car, covered with blankets and breathing in air polluted by Caridad’s cigarettes, which took Luis to the edge of nausea. When Ramón was at last able to make it down to the safety of the mountainside, bothered by what he considered to be one of his mother’s many customary interferences in his life, his brother Luis was sleeping in the backseat and Caridad, a cigarette in hand, was pacing around the car, kicking rocks and cursing the cold that made her exhale condensed clouds. As soon as she noticed him, the woman enveloped him with her green stare, colder than a night in the sierra, and Ramón remembered that ever since the day they had met again, over a year ago already, his mother had not given him one of those wet kisses that, when he was a child, she used to deposit at the corner of his mouth so that the sweet taste of saliva, with its lingering taste of aniseed, would drip down his taste buds and cause the overwhelming need to keep it in his mouth for longer than the process of his own secretions would allow.

  They had not seen each other for several months, ever since Caridad, convalescing from the wounds she received in Albacete, was commissioned by the party to travel to Mexico to gather material support and moral solidarity for the Republican cause. In that time, the woman had changed. It wasn’t that the movement of her left arm was still limited by the lacerations caused by shelling; nor was it because of the recent news of the death of her son Pablo, an adolescent who she herself had forced to go to the front in Madrid, where he’d been crushed by the crawler tracks of an Italian tank. Ramón attributed it to something more visceral that he would discover that night.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for six hours. The sun is about to come out and I can’t go much longer without some coffee” was how the woman greeted him, focused on crushing a cigarette under her military boot as she looked at the small, shaggy dog accompanying Ramón.

  Cannons roared in the distance and the sound of fighter plane engines was an all-encompassing rumble that descended from the starless sky. Would it snow? Ramón wondered.

  “I couldn’t drop my rifle and come running,” he said. “How are you? How’s Luisito?”

  “Anxious to see you; that’s why I brought him. I’m fine. Where did that dog come from?”

  Ramón smiled and looked at the animal, who was sniffing around the Ford’s wheels.

  “He lives with us in the battalion . . . He’s really taken to me. He’s handsome, right?” And he bent down. “Churro!” he whispered, and the animal approached him, wagging his tail. Ramón stroked his ears as he picked burrs off of him. He looked up. “Why did you come?”

  Caridad looked into his eyes for longer than the young man could bear without averting his gaze, and Ramón stood up.

  “They’ve sent me to ask you something . . .”

  “I can’t believe it . . . You’ve come all the way here to ask me a question?” Ramón tried to sound sarcastic.

  “Well, yes. The only question that matters: What would you be willing to do to defeat fascism, and for socialism? . . . Don’t look at me like that; I’m not kidding. We need to hear you say it.”

  Ramón smiled joylessly. Why was she asking him this?

  “You’re acting like a recruiting officer . . . You and who else need it? Is this a party thing?”

  “Answer and then I’ll explain.” Caridad remained serious.

  “I don’t know, Caridad. Isn’t that what I’m doing now? Risking my life, working for the party . . . Keeping those fascist sons of bitches from entering Madrid.”

  “It’s not enough,” she said.

  “What do you mean it’s not enough? Don’t make things any harder for me . . .”

  “Fighting is easy. So is dying . . . Thousands of people do it . . . Your brother Pablo . . . But would you be willing to give up everything? And when I say everything, I mean everything. Any dreams of your own, any scruples, being yourself . . .”

  “I don’t understand, Caridad,” Ramón said, completely sincere as a sense of alarm grew in his chest. “Are you serious? Can’t you be any clearer? I can’t spend all night here, either,” and he pointed toward the mountain from which he had come.

  “I think I’m already speaking very clearly,” she said, and took out another cigarette. At the moment in which she lit the match, the sky was illuminated by the flash of an explosion and the back door of the car opened. Young Luis, covered by a blanket, ran toward Ramón, slipping on the frozen ground, and they held each other in an embrace.

  “Wow, Luisito, you’ve become a man.”

  Luis sniveled without letting go of his brother.

  “And you’re so thin, man. I can feel your bones.”

  “It’s the fucking war.”

  “And is that your dog? What’s his name?”

  “It’s Churro . . . He’s not mine, but it’s as if he were. He showed up one day . . .” Luis whistled and the animal came to his feet. “He’s a quick learner and he’s so good . . . Do you want to take him?” Ramón caressed his younger brother’s messy hair and cleaned his eyes with his thumbs.

  Luis looked at his mother, undecided.

  “We can’t have dogs now,” she confirmed, smoking avidly. “Sometimes we don’t even have enough to eat ourselves.”

  “Churro eats anything, almost nothing,” Ramón said, and instinctively lifted his shoulders to protect himself when a cannon rumbled in the distance. “A whole family could eat with what you spend on tobacco.”

  “My cigarettes are not your problem . . . Luis, run along with the dog, I need to speak with Ramón,” Caridad ordered, and walked toward an oak tree whose leaves had managed to resist the aggressive winter in the sierra.

  Under the tree, Ramón smiled while he watched Luis frolicking with little Churro.

  “Are you going to tell me why you came? Who sent you?”

  “Kotov. He wants to make you an important proposition,” she said and again fixed him under the green glass of her gaze.

  “Kotov is in Barcelona?”

  “At the moment. He wants to know if you’re willing to work with him.”

  “In the army?”

  “No, on more important matters.”

  “More important than the war?”

  “Much more. This war can be won or it can be lost, but . . .”

  “What the hell are you saying? We can’t lose, Caridad. With what the Soviets are sending us and the people from the Internationa
l Brigades, we’re going to fuck those fascists one by one . . .”

  “That would be great, but tell me . . . Do you think we can win a war with the Trotskyists making signals to the fascists in the trenches next to them and with the anarchists taking combat orders to a vote? . . . Kotov wants you to work on truly important things.”

  “Important like what?”

  An explosion shook the mountain, too close to where the three of them were. Instinct pushed Ramón to protect Caridad with his own body and they rolled around on the frozen ground.

  “I’m going to go crazy. Don’t those bastards sleep?” he said, on his knees, as he shook the dust off one of the sleeves of Caridad’s cloak.

  She stopped his hand and leaned over to pick up the smoking cigarette. Ramón helped her to stand up.

  “Kotov thinks you’re a good Communist and that you could be useful in the rear guard.”

  “Every day there are more Communists in Spain. Ever since the Soviets and their weapons arrived, the people have a different opinion of us.”

  “Don’t believe that, Ramón. People are afraid of us; a lot of them don’t like us. This is a country of imbeciles, hypocritical bigots, and born fascists.”

  Ramón watched as his mother exhaled cigarette smoke almost furiously.

  “What does Kotov want me for?”

  “I’ve already told you: something more important than firing a rifle in a trench full of water and shit.”

  “I can’t imagine what he could want from me . . . The fascists are moving forward, and if they take Madrid . . .” Ramón shook his head, when he felt a slight pressure in his chest. “Shit, Caridad, if I didn’t know you, I would say that you talked to Kotov to get me away from the front. After what happened to Pablo—”

  “But you do know me,” she cut him off. “Wars are won in many ways; you should know that . . . Ramón, I want to be far away from here before the sun rises. I need an answer.”

  Did he know her? Ramón looked at her and asked himself what was left of the refined and worldly woman with whom he, his brothers, and his father used to walk on Sunday afternoons through the Plaza de Cataluña in search of fashionable restaurants or the elegant Italian ice cream shop that had recently opened on the Paseo de Gracia: there was nothing left of that woman, he thought. Caridad was now an androgynous being who reeked of deeply embedded nicotine and sweat, talked like a political commissar, and only thought about the party’s missions, about the party’s politics, about the party’s struggles. Lost in his thoughts, the young man did not notice that, after the mortar explosion that had thrown them to the ground, a heavy silence had settled over the sierra as if the world, overcome by exhaustion and pain, had gone to sleep. Ramón, who had spent so much time submerged in the sounds of war, seemed to have lost the ability to listen to silence, and into his mind, already disturbed by the possibility of a return, floated a memory of the seething Barcelona that he had left a few months earlier, and the tempting image of the young woman who’d given his life a deep sense of meaning.

  “Have you seen África? Do you know if she’s still working with the Soviets?” he asked, shamed by the persistence of a hormonal weakness that he could not shake off.

  “You’re all talk, Ramón! You’re just as soft as your father,” Caridad said, taking aim at his vulnerable side. Ramón felt that he could hate his mother, but he had to admit she was right: África was an addiction pursuing him.

  “I asked you if she was still in Barcelona.”

  “Yes, yes . . . She’s going around with the advisers. I saw her at La Pedrera a few days ago.”

  Ramón noticed that Caridad’s cigarettes were French, very perfumed, so different from the stinky cigarettes that his battalion mates gave him.

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  “Keep them . . .” She handed him the pack. “Ramón, would you be able to give up that woman?”

  He had felt that a question like that was coming and that it would be the most difficult one to answer.

  “What is it that Kotov wants?” he persisted, evading the response.

  “I’ve already told you: that you give up everything that we’ve been told for centuries is important, only to enslave us.”

  Ramón felt like he was listening to África. It was as if Caridad’s words spilled forth from the same Kremlin tower, from the same pages of Das Kapital from which África’s came. And it was only then that he became conscious of the silence that had been surrounding them for several minutes. Caridad was África, África was Caridad, and the sacrifice of his entire past was demanded of him now as a duty, while that painful and fragile silence rested on his consciousness, feeding the fear that in the next minute his body could be broken by the mortar, the bullet, or the grenade lying in wait and destined to destroy his existence. Ramón understood that he feared the silence more than the perverse rumblings of the war, and he wished to be far from the place. Without knowing that his life hung on those few words, it was then that he said:

  “Yes, tell him yes.”

  Caridad smiled. She took her son’s face and, with treacherous precision, planted a long kiss on the corner of his mouth. Ramón felt the woman’s saliva mix with his, but he couldn’t find the taste of aniseed now, not even of the gin that she’d drunk the last time she kissed him; he only received the sickening sweetness of tobacco and the fermented acidity of her heartburn.

  “In a few days, you’ll be called to Barcelona. We’ll be waiting for you. Your life is going to change, Ramón. A lot,” she said, and shook the dirt off of herself. “I’m leaving now. The sun is rising.”

  As if it were nothing, Ramón spit, turning his head, and lit a cigarette. He walked behind Caridad toward the car, from which Luis emerged with Churro in his arms.

  “Let go of the dog and say goodbye to Ramón.”

  Luis obeyed her and again hugged his brother.

  “We’ll see each other soon in Barcelona. I’ll take you to sign up for the Youth Brigades. You’ve already turned fourteen, right?”

  Luis smiled.

  “And will you sign me up for the army? All the Communists have gone to the People’s Army . . .”

  “Don’t rush, Luisillo.” Ramón smiled and hugged him tight. Over the kid’s head he noticed Caridad’s gaze, lost once again. He avoided the unease caused by his mother’s eyes and, in the day’s first light, made out El Escorial’s stony and hostile silhouette.

  “Look, Luisito, El Escorial. I’m on the other side, up that slope.”

  “And is it always this cold?”

  “Cold enough to freeze your skin off.”

  “We’re leaving. Get in, Luis,” Caridad interrupted her sons, and Luis, after saying goodbye to Ramón with the militiamen’s salute, went around the car to get in the passenger seat.

  “If you see África, tell her I’ll be there soon,” Ramón almost whispered.

  Caridad opened the car door but stopped and closed it again.

  “Ramón, it goes without saying that this conversation should remain a secret. From this moment on, get it into your head that being willing to give up everything is not a slogan, it’s a way of life.” The young man saw his mother open her military cloak and take out a gleaming Browning. Caridad took a few steps and, without looking at her son, asked, “Are you sure you can do it?”

  “Yes,” Ramón said just as a bomb explosion illuminated the distant mountainside, and as Caridad, with weapon in hand, placed Churro in her sights and, not giving her son any time to react, shot him in the head. The animal rolled, pushed by the force of the bullet, and its corpse began to freeze in the cold dawn of the Sierra de Guadarrama.

  Winters in Sant Feliu de Guíxols had always been misty, prone to storms that came down from the Pyrenees. Summers, by contrast, are a gift of nature. The rock that rises from the sea forms a mountain that opens up there in a cove of coarse sand, and the water tends to be clearer than anywhere else on the coast of Empordà. In the 1920s, only fishermen and some faithless hermits lived in
Sant Feliu, the first fugitives from urban life and modernity. But in summer Barcelona’s wealthy families, the owners of beach houses and mountain cabins, appeared. The Mercader clan was one of the fortunate ones, thanks to the textile business that had received a second wind during the Great War.

  His father’s family, related to the local nobility, had accumulated wealth through several generations; like good Catalans, they had been devoted to commerce and industry; Caridad’s family were the owners of a castle in San Miguel de Aras, near Santander, and were colonists who returned from Cuba before the disaster of 1898; they had returned with their fortune in ruins, since part of it had been lost with the blacks they had to free when the end of slavery was declared on the island. Although Pau, Ramón’s father, was several years older than Caridad, in the boy’s eyes they were an enviable couple who shared a passion for horses, like good aristocrats, and just to see them take their horses out to trot, one knew they were excellent riders, she the more talented one.

  That summer of 1922 was the first and only one in which the family enjoyed an entire month of sun, beach, and freedom in that cove that their memory would store as the epitome of happiness. Just two years later, when his life began its own winding path, Ramón would learn that his always budget-minded father’s decision to exchange the summer visit to the stone castle of San Miguel for the privacy of the rented house on the Empordà coast was rooted not in his children’s possible enjoyment but rather in the attempt to bring about the repair of something that was already beginning to be unsalvageable: his relationship with his wife.

  It was in Sant Feliu de Guíxols that summer that his parents clung to the vestiges of their married life, and it must have been there that they conceived Luis, born in the spring of the following year. A long time later, Ramón would find out that that act of love must have been like the remains of the wave that breaks on the shore to immediately retreat into unreachable depths. Because something unstoppable had begun to grow inside of Caridad before she had conceived his younger brother: hate, a destructive hate that would always pursue her and that not only would give meaning to her own life but would also change the lives of every one of her sons to the point of devastation.