The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura Page B

only be a maneuver to gain time. Blumkin, showing his invincible capacity for loyalty, defended his friend Radek’s position, since he also thought that if it was possible to fight from within the party, it was better than doing so outside of it. Lev Davidovich confessed that he no longer trusted the abilities of a party that was led by a man like Stalin and in which Radek was active. But Blumkin was surprised at his pessimism and reminded him that it was he, Lev Trotsky, who could not become weak.
    The young man’s departure left a void in the Exile that, weeks later, would be replaced by the malignant feeling of indignation caused by infidelities. The catalyst for the mood change had been a letter from the Pazes in which, following colder greetings than usual, the authors went right to the matter without further ado: “Don’t put too much stock in the weight of your own name,” began that paragraph with the air of an epitaph, which made the revolutionary face the evidence of his political ruin in an alarming way. “For five years, the communist press slandered you to the point that for the masses there is only a vague remembrance of you as the head of the Red Army, as the workers’ leader in October. With each passing day, your name means less, and the machinery that has been unleashed will end up devouring you after your name has been devoured.” Upon reading it for the third time, he had needed to clean his glasses, rubbing them with the edge of his Russian shirt, as if the lenses were truly responsible for the murky perception of words that sounded painful but true. When he stepped away from the window from where he had observed the garden taken over by weeds and, beyond, the oily shine of the former Propontis, he felt that not even his impermeable optimism nor his faith in the cause could remove him from the invasive feeling of solitude that seized him. How many setbacks had taken place in the span of just a few months so that Maurice and Magdeleine Paz would write him that letter poisoned with truths? How had reality come to insist on exchanging a discourse dedicated to the pride of a colossus for these reflections directed at the humiliation of a forgotten man? . . . The most insulting thing about the letter was the fact that, just one month before, during their second visit to Prinkipo, the Pazes had not dared to confess to him their apprehensions and had left promising to work for the unityof French Trotskyists, amid whom, they had again confirmed, the Exile’s prestige and ideas had remained unscathed.
    For weeks that letter floated around Lev Davidovich’s desk as a testament to what he didn’t want to wash his hands of but that he didn’t want to take care of either. Motivated by the calm brought by the approach of winter, he had focused on serious work and was immersed in the writing of his History of the Russian Revolution . At some point, Natalia Sedova had even told him to answer that letter once and for all and he had made excuses.
    Prinkipo’s winter temperatures were nothing like the ones they had experienced the year before, in Alma-Ata. Barely covered with an old coat, Lev Davidovich had gotten used to enjoying the arrival of morning in his study as he drank coffee and contemplated how the dawn’s light filtered in through a silver veil that made the sea sparkle. That day he was ready to work on his History of the Russian Revolution , when Liova entered to pull him out of his deliberations: news had arrived from Moscow. As always, the feeling that something serious could have happened to a loved one wounded the Exile. Liova, as if he couldn’t make up his mind to speak, went to sit on the other side of the table so he would be in front of Lev Davidovich, who remained silent, convinced that he was going to hear something terrible. But his son’s words overwhelmed him. They had executed Blumkin.
    Liova had to relay all of the details: there was no news about the agent because for two months