The Man Who Loved Dogs (88 page)

“What were you expecting, kid? The true history of the conquest of New Spain?” Leonid sucked on his cigar and found it had gone out. “Haven’t Franco’s men done the same thing, but less gracefully and more shamelessly? . . . Here all Khrushchev’s thaw did was move around a little bit of leftover snow. Neither the Spanish Communists nor the Soviet government were in a position to get to the bottom of things, nor did they want to, because, even when it’s frozen, that dark thing hiding underneath is all shit. It’s like the petrified mammoth shit they found a little while ago in Siberia, thousand-year-old shit, but shit nonetheless.”

Long before Eitingon put it into paleontological terms, Ramón had understood that the order had been given that the shit, no matter how old, could not and should not come to the surface. He knew it the morning he arrived at the Academy of History and the kind archivist who had helped him was not at her post. She was out sick, the substitute commented to him, and then took his slip and returned five minutes later with the information that the files requested by Comrade Pavlovich López had been transferred to a closed section and could only be accessed
by those with an authorization from the Kremlin office in charge of the History and Social Research Institutes. Ramón was not even surprised that when the first volumes of
War and Revolution in Spain, 1936–1939
were published, bearing the logo of the Progreso publishing house, his new name did not appear among the members of the research committee, presided over by Dolores Ibárruri and made up of her most loyal squires.

“How did you feel?” Eitingon wanted to know.

“Frustrated, but what the hell, I’m already used to it.”

“Yes . . . Now, just remember that rewriting history and putting it wherever is most convenient to those in power was not something Stalin invented, although he used it, in his rough and contemptuous way, to the utmost. And talking about ‘revolution’ in Spain, when that was the first thing that was impeded, and without going into the Republican alliance’s cruelties . . . well, that’s really making a bitch of history. That’s why it’s better to have a muzzle on historical controversy . . .”

Eitingon made an effort and managed to light his cigar again. Ramón looked at his: it was still burning evenly and happily.

“Things have been going on at the Casa de España lately.”

Although many refugees had managed to return to Spain starting in 1956, the ones who still remained fought to gain power. La Pasionaria, who had the loyal Juan Modesto as her deputy, felt that in recent years her absolute preeminence had come under question: Enrique Líster, who carried the record of his legendary participation in the civil war, the Great Patriotic War and in the Yugoslav guerrillas behind him, and Santiago Carrillo were becoming more notably opposed to the famous Stalinist militant’s power. “It’s the same song over and over,” Luis had said to him when the break was becoming visible. “The day we stop fighting amongst ourselves, we’ll have ceased to be Spaniards.”

“It’s not that you are or are not Spaniards, kid, it’s that you’re politicians,” Lionia said, this time in Spanish. “Franco’s end is on the horizon, and the time for the harvest is near. You have to be ready in case there’s a new division of power. You have to improve your image, keep up with the times!”

They both knew that the waters of the Casa de España, before whose walls they stood at that moment, had become very murky in recent months. Due to the Soviet intervention in Prague, some of the leaders of the Spanish Communist Party had dared to express doubts regarding the pertinence of the invasion, which caused a schism in the party’s
leadership. To Eitingon, that attitude responded to the need to distance itself from the darker side of Soviet influence and put on a more seemingly democratic face; to Ramón, it was just a propitious although dangerous opportunity to gain some power within the colony, but above all, in a future Spain. The most daring refugees, incited by Santiago Carrillo and Ignacio Gallegos, had even decided to dig around in the Casa’s archives and in the personal records of each one of the Spaniards settled in the USSR. That proposal had been like bringing a flame to dynamite. If certain documents zealously guarded on the second level of the Zhdanov Street building were circulated, many of the plots and cruel maneuvers would come to light in which many of the refugees, turned into informants and betrayers of many others, were involved. And so comrades of so many years moved this time by the fear of being discovered, again divided into bands to launch a war that went from words to blows and the breaking of chairs. From the lower level of the former bank building, Ramón showed Lionia the third-floor window from which one of his compatriots was thrown.

“They say he fell there, in the middle of the street. Everyone thought he had been killed, because he wasn’t moving, but suddenly he stood up, spit, scratched his head, and went back upstairs to continue handing out blows.”

“And then they say
we’re
savages.” Eitingon smiled as they resumed their walk. They made a stop at the Sardinka beer hall, where Spanish refugees tended to satiate their alcoholic thirst, because of the wise prohibition of serving any of that flammable substance within the confines of the Casa.

The war of blows between the Spanish Communists ended with the arrival of the militia, who emptied the place, Ramón went on. At the same time, the reasons for its foreseeable continuation disappeared that same night, when a KGB unit took away the files full of the fratricidal revelations for safekeeping.

An hour later, when they came out at Dzerzhinsky Square, Ramón looked at the statue of the founder of the Cheka out of the corner of his eye and at the most feared building in the Soviet Union, behind the bronze man.

“Did I tell you I was also down there?” Leonid said, again in French, pointing at the Lubyanka’s basement with his nose. “I don’t know how long, but it was the worst time of my life . . .
Yob tvoyu mat!”
he exclaimed
with an anger from deep inside, and Ramón didn’t know if he was cursing the building or the bronze idol.

“Ever since I got to Moscow, it has always seemed odd to me that that statue survived the reforms.”

“They had enough work with the statues and busts of Stalin. There were millions throughout the country. In Georgia, where Stalin was bloodier, since it was where they knew him best, there were mobs when they tried to take down the largest ones. The people were already so used to living under Stalin, to playing by his rules, that they were afraid that somebody could think they had approved of the demolition of those statues! Do you realize what fear can do when it turns into a way of life? To fill the millions of holes left by the removed statues of Stalin, they had to produce hundreds of statues and busts of Lenin.”

They crossed the square, and when they got to Kirov Street, Eitingon entered a liquor store and came out with two bottles of vodka. On Petrovsky Boulevard, they looked for an empty bench. Before sitting down, Leonid slapped his limping leg three times while he called it
suka
and took his first drink. He put two fingers to the base of his neck, asking for company, but Ramón rejected the invitation. The sun was starting to set and the afternoon was becoming cool. When he saw Eitingon lounging comfortably, he wondered if a drink wouldn’t do him some good, although he preferred to wait.

“What happened with the Casa de España files and the power disputes among the Spaniards reminded me of something that you surely don’t know,” Eitingon said, and had a second drink. “When Stalin died, a lot of things happened in very little time. Beria, Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Malenkov went right into action and practically the first thing they did was send a special group from the Ministry of the Interior to gather all of Stalin’s belongings and files that were in the Kuntsevo dacha and in his offices at the Kremlin. Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter, had the pass taken away from her with which she could enter her father’s offices, and until last year, when she finally managed to flee from the Soviet Union, she always said that Khrushchev and Beria had stolen Stalin’s treasures.”

“What treasures was she talking about?”

“There were no treasures. What need for money or jewels does a man have who is the lord and master of an enormous country and all it contains? And when I say everything, it’s
everything:
the mountains, the lakes, the snow, the airplanes, the petroleum, even its people—the life of
its people . . . It’s true that there were many silver objects, especially busts and plaques he had been given, but all of those were sent to a foundation. The furniture, the china, the rugs, and those things were distributed to different places. It was decided that the History Institute’s Section for the Family conserve his marshal’s uniform and some samples of the gifts workers gave him every day. But the majority of his clothing wasn’t worth anything, some was fairly worn-out, and what didn’t get thrown out was donated to centers for handicapped veterans.”

“So there was no money?”

“There was. Those in charge of the operation were overwhelmed by the amount of envelopes with bills that were everywhere. Stalin earned a salary for each one of his ten posts, but as he didn’t have to buy anything, not even to give gifts or host parties . . . But that money didn’t make anyone rich, and what my companions were looking for were documents. Those seeking power, without telling each other, were afraid that a testament like Lenin’s would appear, which would complicate things for some of them and benefit others. That was why they decided, like knights, to take all of Stalin’s papers out and burn them so that none of them would have the advantage or disadvantage of having been selected or rejected by Stalin.”

“And how do you know all of this?”

Leonid took another swig and Ramón held out his hand to take the bottle. He needed a drink.

“When I recovered a little, after getting out of jail, I began to work with Beria. They made me part of that team and I was one of the ones who, after the burning of the papers, found, in a drawer of a table in the office of the Kremlin, some letters that had been hidden under newspaper. There were five—just five letters—and it appears that Stalin read them from time to time. One was the one dictated by Lenin on March 5, 1923—I can’t forget the date—in which he demanded an apology from Stalin for having insulted his wife, Krupskaya. Another one was from Bukharin, written shortly before he was executed, in which he told Stalin how much he loved him . . . And there was one, very short, written by Marshal Tito, dated 1950, I believe, but I remember perfectly well what it said: ‘Stalin, stop sending assassins to liquidate me. We’ve already caught five. If you don’t stop, I personally will send a man to Moscow and there will be no need to send another’ . . .”

“So did anyone ever find out that Stalin’s papers had disappeared?”

“Nothing has ever been said officially, of course. But besides the personal documents, there were what were called ‘special files,’ a supersecret record where laminated documents were kept and which could only be viewed if Stalin himself authorized it. These were kept and I imagine that within them there must be some reports that are too uncomfortable, because nobody yet knows where they are, if they still exist. Hopefully, one day they will be able to be read, because on that day we’re going to discover that the earth is not round . . .”

“For example?”

“Stalin’s pacts with Hitler and later with Roosevelt and Churchill. Or do you think that the partition of Europe was done just like that, à la ‘I got here first and this is mine’–style? How can you explain that the Communists didn’t come to power in Italy or Greece when they were the strongest party after the war? Or the Poles—do you think that the Poles are Communists and love us like brothers?”

Eitingon lifted the bottle, but something stopped him. He was serious, silent, until he said:

“Do you think they’ll ever knock down Lenin’s statues as well?”

Ramón looked at the river, where the sun was setting, and asked:

“Was our thing in those files?”

Eitingon at last took his drink and rolled down a little bit more on the bench. Suddenly he seemed relaxed.

“No, our thing never appeared. First of all, because almost nothing was written, and what was written went directly to Stalin’s personal files. Beria told me that, at regular intervals, the Undefeated Leader sat down in front of the stove to burn what he had in Kuntsevo and turned the papers he thought should never be read into smoke. That’s what I call having a good sense of history. We, like many other parts of history, went to the clouds, Ramón, sent there by our dear Comrade Stalin.”

Ramón suspected that he could be exceeding the limits of what was allowed when he accepted the invitation. His game of “How far can I go?” seemed similar to the one the Czechoslovaks had played throughout the first month of that year of 1968, and he presumed that, if he reached the limit, perhaps then his defenses might be invaded with infantry, tanks, and planes willing to reestablish order. But he decided to try their tempers once again.

In his conversations with Leonid Eitingon over the last two months, Ramón had received so many confirmations and revelations about his fate and of the fates of so many millions of believers that he had become addicted to those dialogues, which shed light on the actions of his life, on the very idea for which he had fought, killed, endured prison and torture, to end up living an amorphous, disappointed, aimless life. Both knew uncomfortable pieces of the past and they comforted themselves with those painful plunges into the dark depths through which their lost souls wandered. Eitingon, from the vantage point of his cynicism and with the penetrating influence he had always exercised over his pupil, had forced him to see himself from other angles and, above all, to notice the shadowy side of the utopia for which Ramón had gone, pure and full of fervor (Leonid
dixit
), to the sacrificial altar. He discovered or confirmed that, among the many who were defrauded, he had a certain right of priority, like in the lines at the stores: his act stood out in that infinite circus ring where the whips have so often cracked and the clowns so often danced with their frozen smiles.