The Obedient Assassin: A Novel (29 page)

C
alma. Calma.
No se sienta,”
the nun whispered as the needle slipped beneath the skin. A tiny bead of blood appeared, scarlet, shining like a jewel, focusing Sylvia's attention, then a dab of alcohol-soaked cotton and it was gone. Everything in the room felt distant and muted, enveloped in a haze; people came in, people left. She kept hearing the voice saying no no no no, a familiar voice, a voice she remembered. The nun was leaving, her white habit rustling softly. A voluptuous feeling came over Sylvia, a sense of floating away. Jacques was there, someplace close by. She heard his voice calling her name.

“Sylvia! Sylvia!” A hand squeezed hers. “Sylvia, it's me, Otto.”

He drifted away. People came and went. She lost track of time, the hours slipping by. Natalia Sedova sat by her bed, holding her hand, her eyes so sad, tragedy written on her face. The two women looked into each other's eyes, sharing their grief. Sylvia could no longer evade the truth. She understood what happened when she arrived at the house and she saw the bloodstain on the jute rug. She had been waiting for Jacques since four that afternoon, fretting, hoping that all of her suspicions would prove unfounded one more time. She had been frantic at seven o'clock when she took a taxi to meet Otto and Trudy for dinner. She wanted Jacques to be waiting for her at the restaurant, for there to be yet another silly misunderstanding, for yet another nightmare to end. It was her last night in Mexico, and Jacques had disappeared once again. All she had was a piece of folded paper where he'd written a name and two street numbers. Viñas, that was the name, one she wouldn't forget easily. She'd made Otto and Trudy get in a taxi with her to make the long drive through Chapultepec Park and out to Lomas to an address that didn't exist. And all the while, she had insisted Jacques would never go to Coyoacán without her. Otto wanted to call the house, but she kept saying, No, no, he won't be there. And then, on the long drive to Coyoacán in the back of a dark taxi, she began to know.

Now she was waking to an endless sorrow, retreating from a future that no longer existed, a past that was a lie, a precarious existence on a razor's edge of anxiety.

“Sylvia, you have to wake up,” Monte began to say. “They want you to wake up.”

Her younger brother Monte had come from New York to represent the family, to take charge of Sylvia. Dressed in a navy blue suit, he looked out of place with his freckles and blond hair.

The doctors had stopped her sedatives. Her lips were dry, her mouth parched. A Mexican woman helped her bathe. Another dressed her in clothes sent from New York by Ruth and Hilda—a knit sailor shirt with horizontal stripes and dark pants. Their father had sent Monte because he was angry with the sisters; Ruth and Hilda were complicit in knowing Trotsky.

As Sylvia ate a bowl of broth, she felt she was being prepared for some ritual sacrifice. Monte came in with a Mexican newspaper, which he paged through in a pompous way, sitting in the armchair. He couldn't read Spanish but was looking at the pictures.

When he finished, he folded the paper and placed the front page before her. “There was a procession,” he said, “Don't look inside. The pictures are gruesome.”

Sylvia put on her glasses and squinted as her eyes focused. She stared at the black-and-white photo of men following a hearse down the street with thousands of Mexicans lining the sidewalks. “How long has it been?” she asked, feeling a swaying lurch of disorientation.

“That's today's paper so obviously it was yesterday.”

“No, I mean how long have I been here? I've lost track of the days.”

“Three days. This is your fourth.”

Studying the photograph, she recognized Joe Hansen, Charles Cornell, and Jake Cooper walking behind the hearse—their anger and the drama were written on their faces.

“No, don't,” Monte said as she started to turn the page. “The pictures inside are grisly, autopsy kind of stuff.”

Putting the paper aside, she felt a numbing anxiety creep upon her, an impending attack of panic. “My mouth is so dry. Could I have some chipped ice?”

Monte left the room. When he returned, he avoided meeting her eyes. Moments later, Colonel Sanchez came in, wearing his uniform—a tunic, jodhpurs, and riding boots—and accompanied by a nurse and a police translator. Sylvia had a vague unpleasant memory of the Colonel interrogating her.

At first the translator confused her; she couldn't tell who was really speaking or know whom to look at.
“Muy, muy bien!”
said the Colonel, smiling and rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
“Veo que la señorita está despierta y que se sienta mucho mejor.”

“Very good,” the police officer translated. “I see the miss is awake and feel much better.”

Another effusion of speech came from the Colonel.

“We have a friend of the miss you would like to see. It would be good for the miss to get out of the bed and take a little walk. Therapeutic, yes? Not far, just here.”

The Colonel smiled broadly and held out his forearm to her as if for a dance. She looked from side to side desperately and grabbed the edges of the mattress. “Monte! What does he want? What are they doing? Please! I don't want to go.”

“Sylvia, there's nothing I can do.”

“No, I can't. I'm not strong enough.”

Protesting, she was helped down from the bed. Barefoot, she looked elfin with her damp blond hair combed behind her ears. Smiling, voluble, the Colonel led his little procession into the hallway. The nurse was on one side of Sylvia, the translator on the other, Monte bringing up the rear. “It's not far,” the translator was saying. “A little ways.”

As the Colonel opened a door to a crowded room, flashbulbs popped, blinding Sylvia. Men in suits lined the walls of the room. A stenographer sat waiting at a small table. For a hallucinatory moment, Sylvia thought Trotsky was sitting propped up in a hospital bed, his head bound in a turban of white gauze, his face obscured by a patch.

When Sylvia recognized Jacques, she lunged for the door. “No!” she screamed, her knees giving. “I don't want to see him. Don't make me do this!”

“Please take her away,” Jacques cried, burying his face in his hands. “Please spare us this.” He was alarmingly close to her, lying in a soiled bathrobe, his face battered and bruised. Sylvia wept, tears flowing down her face.

Smiling, standing at the center of the room, the Colonel began to address the assembled journalists in a stentorian tone of voice, confident his words would go directly into print. “The Colonel has invited the most celebrated members of the press,” the translator was telling Sylvia, “Mexico's leading crime reporters.”

Seeing that she was about to swoon, the nurse swabbed the inside of her wrists with alcohol. Still smiling, the Colonel approached Sylvia, speaking rapidly in Spanish.

“Miss Sylvia,” the translator said, “do you recognize this man before you?”

She glanced from side to side. The Colonel nodded rapidly at her, to encourage an answer.

“Yes, I know him.”

Again the Colonel's Spanish. Again the translation. “What is his name?”

“Jacques. Jacques Mornard.”

“He says you are the justification of his life.”

Sylvia had no idea how to respond.

“He says you are the justification of his life,” the translator declaimed, the Colonel's stentorian tone seeping into his voice.

“He used me,” she muttered, looking down at the floor.

“Please, you must speak up,” the translator insisted.

“He used me.”

“Very good! And how did he do that?”

The exchange was losing its semblance of reality. She was in a hallucination. She was in a drama, and they wanted her to perform.

“He used me to meet Trotsky,” she answered, finding it easier as she spoke.

“Did you love Jacques Mornard?”

“Yes. I was his wife. He was my husband.”

“Did you believe he loved you?”

“Yes, I was sure of his love.”

“And Jacques!” The Colonel wheeled upon him. “Did you love Sylvia?”

Sylvia couldn't bear to look at him but heard bedclothes rustling. “Yes,” he answered in a low, hoarse voice.

“Please speak up!”

“Yes, I loved her. I still do.”

“Sylvia, what are your feelings for him now?”

“He murdered Trotsky. He killed my love when he killed Trotsky.”

“But Jacques says that Trotsky seduced and betrayed him, that Trotsky was going to send him as an undercover agent to destabilize Russia.”

“Trotsky scarcely knew that Jacques existed.”

“You don't believe what Jacques says, that his ideological disillusionment was the motive of this tragedy?”

“He was working for the GPU. Why would Trotsky commission him to go to Russia? Jacques doesn't know anything about Russia. He can barely find it on a map. Trotsky would have sent a man he trusted.”

“You never suspected that Jacques Mornard was a Soviet agent?”

“There was one moment when I thought he might have been a British agent. I knew that something was wrong. But I loved him. I closed my eyes.”

“Look at him, Sylvia. Look at your lover and tell me what you see.”

Sylvia turned reluctantly.

“Sylvia, tell us what you see.”

“This is not the man I loved.”

“Jacques, listen to the truths your lover is saying. They are very hard, formidable. She has become a witness against you. You said she was the justification of your life.”

“Mon cher, Colonel!
For pity's sake, take her out of here.”

W
aiting, she listened to the rain, a gentle hush settling upon the city. The room was quiet; the morning light coming through the windows was gray, the air cool, almost liquid. Ten minutes had passed, and her patient was struggling to break the silence. She watched his black calfskin shoes move back and forth once like the blades of a windshield wiper. Cars passed on the street six floors below. It was spring and the park was green and lush. She was imagining the rain striking the trees when the light on the telephone began to blink silently as a call went through to the answering service. It was too soon for Fritz to call. He hadn't reached his office at Columbia.

“Yes?” she finally said to stir her patient.

The man sighed. “This is so difficult.”

She resisted the inclination to ask why, to be led into a conversation, to be seduced. He shifted his body, lacing his hands together over his chest. “Last night,” his voice faltered as if he were about to sing, “last night I dreamed about being in the park with the dogs.”

He was bringing her a dream. A man and woman, a path through the woods, and two dogs.

She listened closely, for the repetitions, the patterns. The family names, the biographical data, the dreams all became part of a fabric, a piece of whole cloth woven together in her mind. She could imagine putting a patient out of her mind altogether, but if she had one piece of the fabric, it all came back.

“It was a cold day, and Lil was wearing her red wool coat, the one her mother gave her. We were over on the East Side close to our apartment. It was cold but sunny, you know, a nice day. We were walking up a hill when suddenly one of the dogs ran into a thicket. Lil got upset and wanted me to chase him, but I said he would come back. We called and we called… .”

Why did he stop after telling the most concrete part of the dream when, if one waited, there was almost always more to a dream, a background of less vivid images, a context of shadows? He was still learning the process, to trust her, to trust himself.

“Dogs?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“I believe you told me you had one dog.”

“But in the dream there were two. Does that mean something, that there were two?”

“It might, but not necessarily.”

“A friend told me that dogs in dreams always represent fidelity, that that's why they're called Fido.”

“Dogs are faithful. That's how they have survived. But in a dream a dog can represent many things. It depends upon your life. It's your dream and will have a particular meaning for you. The path, for example; that could represent your analysis, the park or woods …” She let the sentence fall off. “But go on. Do you remember more about the dream?”

He shifted once more on the chaise. “No, I don't think so.”

“Then what does the dream bring to mind?”

He was afraid to free-associate, to let his mind go and follow his thoughts. For some patients it was so difficult. It had been for her. As she waited, she remembered the photograph she'd seen that morning in the newspaper. Fritz had warned her when he brought the newspaper into the kitchen. “Perhaps you want to save this till after you see your patients,” he said with a wintry smile. “Something from Mexico.”

A German émigré, a physicist, Fritz had lost his family in the war. The past came back at regular intervals for both of them, something from Mexico, something from Germany.

She walked him to the door of their apartment, helping him on with his raincoat, giving him his umbrella. She had been lucky after all. He was the husband she wanted—an intellectual, a scientist and humanist. After he left, she went into the kitchen, where she put on the kettle and looked through the paper. Every year as the twenty-third of August approached, her friends and family tried to protect and distract her—from reporters, the news, the questions. But it was only May, the seventh of May.

She found the story on the fifth page:
TROTSKY'S ASSASSIN RELEASED AFTER TWENTY YEARS IN MEXICAN PRISON
.
She knew in a vague sort of way that this was coming, that Jacques would be released after twenty years in prison, the maximum for murder in Mexico. The information was unsettling, but it was the grainy black-and-white photograph that took her breath away.

Jacques had been so handsome with his thick auburn hair and green eyes. But he was unrecognizable in the photograph. The young man she knew had been encased in a middle-age prisoner, a heavyset convict, his jaws hung with jowls, his small eyes framed by heavy black horn-rimmed glasses. He cared so much for beauty. She wondered if he could see how he had been transformed.

Her heart beating faster, Sylvia read the first paragraph—Ramón Mercader had flown to Havana and would proceed to Moscow. Then she scanned the columns of type looking for her name, hoping not to find it.

Chunks of Jacques's façade had crumbled and fallen away over the years. Reporters had called her in 1947 when his identity as a Spaniard was revealed, and again in 1956 when Khrushchev denounced Trotsky's assassination as a “vile and vulgar” crime. The political ground had shifted beneath Ramón Mercader while he was prison, changing the meaning of his crime. He had not turned himself into a Soviet hero, but rather, had become an embarrassing reminder of the past.

Sylvia's heart steadied as she came to the end of the last column of type. Jacques had never admitted to being Ramón Mercader or working for the GPU. And she had never given an interview. Her name didn't appear. She was fading from the story, referred to only as an American Communist, a New York intellectual. Soon few would remember. Her sisters might call her that day, but no one else.

She remembered falling in love in Paris, how desperate and confused she'd been. He seduced her, used and changed her in ways he couldn't know. She hated him, but slowly she understood what had happened. In the end, he had given her a mystery to solve, a puzzle to unravel.

She looked down at the blank pad in her lap, listening to her patient. He was talking about his wife and mother, his children. Most of what he said sounded inconsequential. She had to wait attentively for the patterns to emerge, for meaning. She believed she understood what he was going through, but she couldn't race ahead to a conclusion. She had to stay with her patient as he made his discoveries, allowing time for the transference to take place. Then, in this safe setting, they would relive the compelling drama of his life.

He lapsed into silence again. The hour was almost gone. Fingers laced on his chest once more, thumbs rotating slowly, he turned his head, attempting to see her face.

“This isn't what I expected.”

“No?”

“When we started, I was afraid that something was going to jump out at me, some dark secret from the past, something buried.”

“You're thinking of the anxiety attacks.”

“Yes. But now I find myself worrying that there's nothing there.”

She hesitated, aware that often it was her last words that resonated, defining what had just happened, setting the stage for what was to come.

“Nothing there?” She repeated his words. “Yes, many patients feel that way. They come, hoping to discover a key that will unlock the door of their psyche, the suppressed childhood trauma that will explain their lives. Such things do exist, events in our lives that are painful and frightening. But in most cases, neuroses are formed because as children we've misunderstood what is happening to us. We misinterpret something harmless that adults do or say.

“But you needn't worry,” she went on. “There's always
something
in the past, just not what we imagine. And there are real things to fear, terrible things, but in an anxiety attack, it's usually not what we see that brings on the panic. It's the realization that we stopped looking.”