Lev seems to have his own opinion of the couple. He took an unusually long time to check on the chickens before coming in to join the visitors for tea. Natalya grew a little exasperated and sent a messenger to get him.
"Pardon, sir, but your wife is wondering why it would take forty-five minutes to feed eleven hens."
"Tell Natalya these hens are more interesting company than her guests. No, no, don't tell her that. He's a good sort, this Jacson. But he fancies himself a writer."
"What's he writing?"
"Well, that's the problem. He doesn't know. He showed me a draft. It's supposed to be some sort of analysis, Schachtman's theory of the Third Camp. But really it's a tedious mess. His thinking is very shallow, if he's thinking at all."
"Oh."
"And he'll want me to critique it."
"That's difficult."
"Difficult. Oh, my son. I have faced the GPU and the gulag. But somehow I cannot face a young man who has been very kind to my wife, and say to him, 'Well, my friend, you are a shallow thinker. And tedious.'"
"Would you like me to tell Natalya the hens are extremely hungry today?"
He sighed, rattling the grain scoop. The hens tilted their heads, watching his every move. "Look at this. In 1917 I commanded an army of five million men. Now I command eleven hens. Not even a rooster at my service."
"More often than not, Commissar, it's the roosters that give the trouble."
He chuckled.
"If you'd like a little help with passing the time here, sir, I have a question to ask you. About being commander of the Soviet. I've been wanting to ask for a long time."
"Well, then, don't wait. The doctor says my blood pressure is through the roof. What can this question be?"
"Diego told me you were meant to succeed Lenin. You were his second in command, with the people's support. You would have led the revolution to a democratic Soviet Republic."
"This is the case."
"Then why did Stalin come to power instead of you? The books say 'an unsettled transition,' that kind of thing. But Diego said it differently."
"How did he say it?"
"An accident of history. Like a coin toss, that could have gone either way."
Lev was quiet for an extremely long time. It seemed likely that Jacson and Sylvia would leave before this conversation moved forward at all. It was a bold question, possibly even rude. Van had said many times that Lev hates to talk about this, and won't.
But finally he did. "Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, this you know. He had a stroke, soon after the Thirteenth Party Conference. He was exhausted by that conference, and I was also. I had been ill many weeks and came down with pneumonia during the sessions. Natalya insisted we go to the Caucasus afterward for a rest. She was right, I might have died otherwise. The conference concluded, and I embraced my comrade and friend Vladimir before departing."
He paused, took off his gloves, and wiped his eyes.
"Natalya and I were on the train to the Caucasus. In the dining car, having a cup of tea. The porter came and handed us a telegram: Lenin was dead of a stroke. Stalin had sent the wire. 'Dear comrade Lev,' he said, or some such thing. In friendship and full solidarity he shared my grief, and gave details of a funeral. He said for various reasons, mostly for maintaining calm, the family and secretariat had decided against a large state funeral. They would hold a private burial the very next day. There was no time for me to return, of course, but Stalin assured that I should not worry. The family understood. In due time, they would want me to eulogize Lenin in a state ceremony."
"And so you went to the Caucasus."
"We proceeded to the Caucasus, for a week of rest. And before the end of it, learned that Stalin had lied. The information he sent in the wire was false. The funeral had not been immediate or small. It was a large state funeral, three days after the wire. I could have managed to return in time, had I known. I should have been the one to speak there. To calm people, because it was a frightening time. With Lenin gone so suddenly, it was chaotic. People were very uncertain about the future."
"But instead of you, Stalin spoke at the funeral."
"The newspapers said I had refused to come, declining to be disturbed from my vacation. He told that story openly. But not from the platform, of course. At the funeral he spoke of leadership and reassurance. How he accepted the mantle of the people's trust, when others had shirked it.... Everyone knew of whom he spoke."
"You had their loyalty, a few days before. Did that count for nothing?"
"They were so afraid. In that moment their keenest desire was to lean on someone who seemed unfailingly strong."
His eyes fixed on the sky, above the wall that enclosed him. No wound to his flesh could have pained Lev more than this memory. It was cruel to raise the subject, Van had been right about that.
"Sir, you couldn't have known. It was not your mistake."
"The mistake was to believe him. To accept the sympathy of a friend extended in a telegram. I was very ill of course, with a fever, Natalya reminds me of that. And the loss was disorienting, no one expected it so suddenly. But to take Stalin at his word, look what has come of this. A hundred thousand deaths. The whole revolution betrayed."
"How long did it take you to get back to Moscow?"
"Too long. That is the simple truth. Stalin moved so quickly to fill the bureaucracy with men who swore loyalty to him. These were supposed to be neutral positions, men dedicated only to the country. But loyalty to Stalin guaranteed the future of Stalin. It's hard for a nation to retrieve itself from such a change of guard."
"But people desire fair government. You say that constantly."
"They want to believe in heroes, also. And villains. Especially when very frightened. It's less taxing than the truth."
Lev scrutinized the doorway to the dining room. The visitors were leaving. He waved the grain scoop. Jacson and Sylvia waved back. Natalya stood on the patio with a raincoat pulled over her shoulders like a cape. The sky was dark with a threat of rain.
"So that was the accident of history. A false telegram on a train."
"It was no accident."
22 August
This impossible thing cannot be. Something should have stopped this.
In the morning he was in the best spirits. He transplanted four cactus plants in a new garden. He was pleased about devising a new cactus-planting technology involving a canvas hammock, chicken wire, and a counterweight. "From now on everything will go faster!" he declared, as if he had invented internal combustion.
By lunchtime he'd finished revising the next-to-last chapter of his book on Stalin. In the afternoon he dictated an article on the American mobilization. From three thirty to four it rained pitchforks, and the day remained overcast. At five he took a break to have tea with Natalya, as always, and afterward asked for help with the rabbits. Two females had given birth to litters, in the same hutch. He needed to move one family lest the mothers cause trouble with one another's young. Cannibalism is always a possibility.
Lev had one of them by her nape, the big spotted one called Minuschka, when Jacson arrived unexpectedly from the gatehouse. Lev handed over the hare with instructions on where to move her kits. Jacson also appeared to have his hands full: a folder of papers, his hat, a raincoat over his arm. He was leaving for New York shortly, he said. But had finished his first article. Please, could Lev give it an honest critique?
Lev looked back, shooting a certain feckless glance, nearly comic: Help! I would sooner face the gulag! But he said, "Of course. Come into my office."
They went in the house, he probably asked Natalya to make a cup of tea for the visitor, and then they must have proceeded to Lev's office. It's easy to picture: Lev sitting down, rooting out a clearing on his desk to set down the pages, collecting the patience to read it and make some tactful comment. The future waits. The world revolution waits, while Trotsky gives his full attention to a shallow-thinking but hopeful fellow, because nothing wondrous can come in this world unl
ess it rests on the shoulders of kindness.
He would have asked Jacson to sit down opposite him in the armchair. But instead he stood, probably a little nervous to have this great man examining his syntax and logic. Fidgeting, annoying Lev to no end. Fingering things on Lev's desk: the glass paperweight, wedding gift from Natalya. Cartridge cases in the pen tray, souvenirs of the Siqueiros raid in May. Jacson laid his raincoat on the table.
And we heard the roar. A scream or a sob but really a roar, indignation.
Joe and Melquiades scrambled down the ladder from the roof, and everyone else from everywhere. Natalya cried out from the kitchen, "Lev?" Two baby rabbits fell to the ground and squirmed in the dust. The strangest sight had appeared in the window of Lev's study: Lev standing with his arms around Jacson--he seemed to be embracing the man--and screaming. There was blood. Joe and Lorenzo and Natalya all were shouting at once. Somehow Joe got there first, on his long legs, and already had Jacson pinned to the floor, and Natalya was white as chalk, collapsed against the door. Lev was seated now at his desk, glasses off, his face and hands covered with blood. On the floor lay a strange small pickax, with its handle cut short. Not a kitchen tool. Some other thing.
"You're going to be all right, old man," Natalya said quietly. Melquiades had his rifle cocked, trained on the writhing man on the floor. Joe was kneeling on Jacson's chest, grappling to control the man's flailing arms.
Lev spoke: "Don't let Seva in. He mustn't see this."
And then Lev said to Joe, or Melquiades, "Don't kill him."
"Lev," Joe said, almost sobbing the word. He had Jacson's wrists pinned now, his own large knuckles white against the stained floor. Lorenzo eased the Colt .38 out of Lev's desk drawer. It was always kept there, with six bullets in the magazine. A .25 automatic had also been lying on the table by the Dictaphone, within easy arm's reach of where Lev had sat reading Jacson's paper. And the security alarm bell is wired under the desk. They don't come the same way again.
Melquiades didn't lower the rifle. Both guns were trained on the man on the floor, aimed at his head. Intermittently he bucked and twisted under Joe's knees.
Lev held his hands away from his face and stared at the blood. There was so much of it. His white cuffs were soaked like bandages. It dripped onto the papers, this morning's typed drafts. Very slowly he repeated, "Don't kill him." It was an impossible spectre, an impossible request.
"It's no time for mercy," Joe said, his voice strange.
Lev closed his eyes, obviously struggling for words. "There is no hope they will...tell the truth about this. Unless. You keep that man alive."
When the Green Cross ambulance came, Lev was alive but half paralyzed, his body suddenly seeming terribly thin and strange to the touch, colder on that side when lifted onto the stretcher. Reba, Alejandro, and most of the others stayed at the house with Seva. Natalya rode in the back of the ambulance. It was dark. Streetlights were on. At the hospital Lev began to speak in French, and later in Russian, just before they took him to surgery. Languages fell away, a long exile peeled from him like the layers of an onion.
The surgeons found that the blade had penetrated through Lev's skull, seven centimeters into the brain itself. He died the next day without waking again. Yesterday.
His last sentence in English had begun, "There is no hope." Natalya remarked later that those words were so strange to hear, from a man who lived decades on nothing but hope. But hope was not the issue, nor was mercy. There is no point discussing it with Natalya or Joe, but that was a clear instruction: No hope they will tell the truth, unless you keep that man alive.
He meant the newspapers. A dead assailant could become anyone, a victim himself. Another mad artist hired by Trotsky in a plot gone wrong, his final practical joke. Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.
Lev was right; the man lives, and the world will know what he was. The police have him, already they're starting down the trail that now spools backward through our memories as a terrible thread: Reba running into him in the Melchor market last week, not by chance. Driving Natalya to Veracruz, not a whim but a calculation. The gift he gave Seva that day, the little glider: a chance to get inside the house, memorize the rooms. His attachment to the Rosmers' old friend Sylvia, and then befriending the Rosmers themselves. Driving them everywhere in his elegant Buick. Even his possession of the Buick. Where did he get such money? We didn't think to ask.
In custody he admitted it proudly, right away: he is a trained agent of Stalin, in the pay of the GPU for many years. Jacson is not his only name, or his real one. How many avenues did he have to try, before finding one door ajar? The trail goes back years, even back to Paris, his stalking of Frida, waiting outside her gallery with the bouquet of flowers. So much careful work, for the chance to sink a blade into the brain of Lev Trotsky.
The New York Times, August 25, 1940
U.S. Forbids Entry of Trotsky's Body
No Specific Reason Is Cited, but Fear of
Demonstration Is Believed Cause
SOVIET CALLS HIM TRAITOR
PRESS SEES DESERVED END FOR EXILE-
ACCUSED SAYS HE HAD NO ACCOMPLICES
Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, Aug. 25--The State Department announced today that the body of Leon Trotsky would not be permitted to be brought to the United States from Mexico.
There was no reason offered, but it was assumed that the possibility was foreseen of Communist and anti-Communist demonstrations, if the body were brought here.
"In response to an inquiry from American Consul George P. Shaw in Mexico City," the announcement said, "the department has informed him that it perceives no reason for bringing Trotsky's body to the United States and that it would not be appropriate to do so."
SOVIET CHARGES PERFIDY
MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (AP)-The Soviet press, giving the Russian people their first word today of the death of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City last Wednesday night, proclaimed it the "inglorious end" of a "murderer, traitor and international spy."
It was the first mention of the attack since a brief dispatch on Thursday reported that an attempt had been made on the life of the exiled Communist leader by one of his followers.
The Communist party organ, Pravda, charged Trotsky with sabotaging the Red Army during the civil war, plotting to kill Lenin and Joseph Stalin in 1918, organizing the slaying of Sergei Kiroff and plotting to kill Maxim Gorky, and with having served in the secret service of Britain, France, Germany and Japan.
"Trotsky, having gone to the limits of human debasement, became entangled in his own net and was killed by one of his own disciples," said Pravda. "Thus, a hated man came to his inglorious end, going to his grave with the stamp of murderer and international spy on his forehead."
The Train Station Notebook, August 1940 (VB)
Today is a Saturday, the last of August. This train rocks, sliding north. It's four in the afternoon and the sun is bright on the left side of the train, beaded like a salt crust on the dirty windows, so that much is sure: the train is headed north. The last ten days are like shreds in a bag of scraps. Nothing in memory makes sense. Everything is gone, pockets full of ashes.
Lev was right to the end. The story of Jacson Mornard is so vile, the newspapers have been bound to tell it. President Cardenas has condemned Russia and the United States as well, a league of foreign powers that dishonored our country with the attack. Three hundred thousand Mexicans walked down Paseo de la Reforma in the funeral procession, after walking here from mines and oil fields, from Michoacan and Puebla. Half made the journey without shoes. A quarter of them might not be able to say the name of Lev Davidovich Trotsky. Only that he was one of the generals in their Century of Revolution, as the president says. A man cut down by outsiders who refuse to believe the people can succeed.
On which day was the funeral? The attack was on a Tuesday, his death on Wednesday, and everything else is gone. Papers, books, clothes, and every memory ever recorded in a notebook. The police
took everything from the guard house rooms, confiscated as evidence. The only hope of sorting out anything now is to put it in this little book. Starting with today, working backward: Day Last in Mexico, the train slides north; the train begins to move; the train is boarded at the Colonia Buenavista station; a packet of sandwiches and a small notebook bound with a wire coil are purchased at the new Sanborn's in the downtown station, using pesos out of the little purse from Frida.
Already the rest is a jumble. On which day was that, when Frida handed over the purse with the money and the documents for getting her crates through customs?
It was after the murder, but before the funeral. After the interrogation at the police station. They even questioned Natalya, for two hours. Everyone else they held for two days at least. Frida was ready to bite those men for making her sleep on a cot in that cold, stinking room. She was nowhere near, on the day of the murder. Joe gave the best statement, he remembers the most, even though he was on the roof when Jacson arrived, so didn't see him come into the courtyard.
No one else saw that: his nervous smile when asking the favor, one more critique of this paper he'd written. The raincoat over his arm: the weapon must have been underneath his coat. No one else saw Lev's silent glance back over his shoulder: I would rather face the gulag! His plea. A secretary's only work is to protect his commissar--Van would have done it. Any small discouragement could have sent Jacson Mornard away: Sorry, but as you know, Lev is awfully busy. He has to finish his article on the American mobilization. Maybe if you could just leave your paper, he'll have a look at it when he gets the chance. That could have happened. Lev could have been saved.
Now Miss Reed sits on the side of the bed holding Natalya's hand, whether it is Tuesday or Sunday, morning or midnight. Joe and Reba are in Lev's study packing up the papers and files. In that room only, the police left everything in place. They didn't take much from the house, either. But from the guard house: everything. It was astonishing. To be driven home from a blank brick cell at the police station, walk through the gate, and see Lev's cactuses still standing in place as if nothing had happened, the hens waiting to be fed. And then the guard house: the doors to every room standing open and nothing at all inside, only blank brick cells. The metal cots, the mattresses. The floors swept as clean as the day of moving in. The little table loaned from Lev was still there, but nothing on it, not even the typewriter. The books, gone. The trunk and boxes under the bed, gone. Clothes, tooth powders, the few photographs of Mother. And every one of the notebooks from the very beginning, from Isla Pixol. Also the box of typed pages that had grown to weigh as much as a dog, and had been that kind of faithful friend at the close of each day. The stack of pages growing fatter and more certain all the time. It doesn't matter. None of that matters.