The Obedient Assassin: A Novel (13 page)

S
ylvia slipped back into her old life—the large apartment near Columbia University she shared with her sisters, a job as a social worker at the Welfare Department—but she was a changed woman. In her mind and in her heart, she was married to Jacques Mornard, a Belgian aristocrat. She wrote him almost every day, and rushed home every evening to look for his letters and always smiled as she read, “My Darling Blonde Bird.” He was having difficulties with his visa in Brussels, where his father was once again interfering. The jobs at the French Pavilion were for French citizens only. But there was always the possibility of freelancing in the United States for one of the European papers.

After two months, Sylvia received a wire from Jacques saying that he would sail soon. Suddenly she noticed that it was spring and life would be glorious. A crossing took six days. He could be there in a week or ten days.

She began planning a dinner party for his first night in town. She would invite all of their New York friends they had seen in Paris. Clemmy would make a special dinner—a leg of lamb, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and floating island. To prepare for Jacques's arrival, Sylvia bought a new dress and had her hair cut and styled. To hurry the time along, she made a long list of chores. The apartment had to be cleaned, floors waxed, the windows washed. She bought champagne and stocked the liquor cabinet, planned outings to entertain Jacques.

When another telegram arrived from Jacques saying his ticket had been canceled, Sylvia sat down on the floor and cried into her hands. For a moment, she felt a wave of anxiety, that he might disappear again. When his letter arrived, he expressed his own disappointment.

The opening of the World's Fair came as a reminder of Jacques's absence. Spring turned to summer, long, hot weeks of waiting. On August 23, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler, confirming the worst fears of Sylvia and her friends about the Soviet Union. On September 1, Nazi troops invaded Poland.

Sylvia felt that giant doors were slowly swinging shut and Jacques would be trapped on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Then, the first week of September at eleven on a Saturday morning, Sylvia's sister Ruth answered the telephone in the apartment. “It's for you,” she said, handing Sylvia the receiver. “I think it's Jacques.”

Sylvia took the telephone receiver, her hand trembling. Something had to be terribly wrong for him to make a transatlantic call. Sylvia said hello in a small, fearful voice.

“Sylvia, it's Jacques,” he said, his voice happy.

“You sound so close—like you're just around the corner.”

“I am. I'm at the Hotel Marseilles on 103rd Street.”

“You're here? In the city?” This couldn't be right. When he arrived, she would meet him at the dock and wave to him through the streamers as he came down the gangway. When he arrived, she would have days to prepare.

“You're on 103rd Street?”

“The Hotel Marseilles. I just checked in. Shall I come there? Or why don't you come here?”

“Why didn't you let me know you were sailing?”

She felt left out, somehow cheated.

“Sylvia, I sent you a wire.”

“You did? It never arrived.”

“Well, you know a war has started. Do you want me to come there? Or would you like to come to the hotel? I have all sorts of wonderful news.”

Sylvia glanced around the apartment, which was in a state of disorder. “I'll come there.”

“Well, hurry. I can't wait to see you.”

She wanted time to think, to have her hair done. She wanted days and days of happy anticipation, but she took a quick shower, applied her makeup, and put on a white pique sundress that had a small bolero jacket. Entering Jacques's hotel, she noticed then ignored an odd impulse to ask at the front desk when Mr. Mornard had checked in. But all of her uneasiness evaporated when Jacques opened the door to his suite, his tie loosened, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. Here was Jacques, handsome and so appealing. “Finally,” he said, taking her in his arms, kissing her.

A large trunk stood in the middle of the living room. Through the bedroom door she could see suitcases lying open on the bed. “Let me look at you,” he said. “Your hair is different.”

“I had it waved, and it's grown out. Don't you like it?”

“I liked it better the way you had it in Paris, but we can always have it cut again.”

“Yes, however you like it. I'm just glad you called today or you would have missed me. We're going away for the weekend tomorrow, taking a group up to our family's lake house. Of course, you have to come.”

“Sylvia, I just arrived.”

“It's a big holiday here, Labor Day weekend. No one stays in town. You'll have fun. Walta and Manny will be there. You can relax and recover from your trip. There's no way I can get out of going.”

“Well, if you insist. Are you hungry? I thought I would have lunch sent up, a bottle of Champagne to celebrate. I have to tell you my news! You know all the difficulties I was having because of my father.”

“Yes, problems with your visa.”

“Well, Mama finally came to my rescue. She gave me ten thousand dollars and told me to buy a new passport.”

“A fake passport?”

“Wait!” He went into the bedroom and returned with a leather envelope that contained a stack of bills and a Canadian passport, which he opened to the photograph.

“It looks just like you.”

“It is, silly. That's my photograph. But look at the name.”

“Frank Jacson?” She tried a French pronunciation.

“Jackson,” he corrected

“But they left out the
k
.”

“Yes, an error, an odd spelling, but the
Jac
is just as you write it.”

“This is illegal.”

“It's only a document, a technicality.”

“Must I call you Frank?”

“In Mexico, you should probably refer to me as Frank Jacson, but, of course, I will still be your Jacques.”

“Mexico?”

“Yes, that's the other part of my news. Mother arranged for me to work for a great friend of hers. Peter Lubeck is a financier who specializes in commodities. He's opening an office in Mexico City and has hired me to be his assistant. He believes the war will create tremendous competition for raw materials from Latin America. It's a great opportunity for me. He plans to make a killing.”

“Isn't that profiteering?”

“Sylvia, don't be a goose! Someone will make money on the war. That's the way it always is. Lubeck's paying me fifty U.S. dollars per week and giving me a letter of credit. And you're going to join me in Mexico as soon as I get settled.”

“When do you leave?”

“I'm not sure. I have to wait for Lubeck, but I think I'll be here for about a month. I thought I'd rent an apartment in the Village. He's paying my expenses, but I don't want to spend a fortune on a hotel.”

“Greenwich Village?” She was surprised that he sounded so familiar with the city.

“Yes, in Paris didn't you keep saying that St.-Germain reminded you of Greenwich Village?”

“I might have. I don't recall.”

“Of course you did. Lubeck has an associate who can set me up there.”

“It's a long way from my apartment.”

“You'll stay with me. A wife's place is with her husband. And while I'm thinking of it, I want you to keep some money for me.” He had started to count out hundred-dollar bills. “Here is three thousand dollars. I want you to hold it for me.”

“Why don't you put it in the hotel safe?”

“I won't be here that long, and I want you hold it.”

“What will I do with it?”

“Whatever you wish. I trust you completely.”

J
acques stayed in New York for a month. That first weekend, he and Sylvia went to the Ageloffs' lake house in the mountains north of the city. The place had a ramshackle charm with screen porches on both floors looking out at the water. Jacques lay in his bathing trunks on the wooden dock in front of the house while the others listened to the radio and talked about the war. England had started to evacuate civilians from London, and the Nazis were invading Poland. For exercise, Jacques rowed the Ageloffs' dinghy, making the small boat jump beneath the oars.

September flew past in a blur for Sylvia. Suddenly, almost as abruptly and mysteriously as he had arrived, Jacques was leaving. Sylvia accompanied him to Grand Central Terminal, a second taxi filled with Jacques's luggage. It was a crisp October day, and he looked particularly good in sunglasses, a tweed jacket, a green-and-black striped silk tie, and charcoal-gray wool slacks. Distracted, he watched the city pass, then, as if recalling Sylvia, he covered her hand with his. “It won't be long. You'll come down in December.”

“Yes, I hope so.”

“Don't worry about money. I'll pay for everything. But try to come for a month or two.”

“I'm not sure I can get that much time away. This is a new job.”

“Can't you ask for a leave?”

“I can ask,” she said and laughed, “but that doesn't mean I'll get it.”

“Well, I wish you could just quit your job and move down with me, but we had better see how the situation works out there. I know I seem impatient, but I don't like to be without you.”

In the train station, Sylvia and Jacques followed a line of porters carrying his bags across the great echoing hallway. The crowds, the commotion, and the hurry were already pulling them apart. Jacques was intent on his tickets, on getting his luggage properly checked, and passing out tips. She followed him onto the train to his compartment. She heard the porter calling “All aboard! All aboard!” and felt the car jerk beneath her feet as Jacques kissed her goodbye. He stood on the stairs as the train began to move and she walked along the platform. He was still waving to her, smiling as the train disappeared into the dark tunnel.

T
he volcanoes soared over the mountain valley, the white, snowy peaks blazing against the pure blue sky. They were much higher than Canigou, far more imposing. A curl of smoke spiraled above the cone-shaped volcano, its companion voluptuously elongate, a woman lounging on her side. Beneath these two monsters, these thrilling deities, rose the domes and spires of the city next to an expanse of lake, a tranquil mirror reflecting the heavenly blue. The valley was shaped like an oval cup, the earth a dry pinkish color sutured with uniform lines of blue-green knots of maguey plantations.

After a long train trip from New York to Texas, Ramón had caught a Pan Am flight in Brownsville and wasn't prepared for the sudden arrival in Mexico City and the astonishing view. The mountain light was incandescent, the atmosphere radiant. He gave himself a week to settle in and find his way around, then went to work, telephoning Frida Rivera and, after a series of calls, received an invitation to dinner—
la cena
—at three-thirty in the afternoon.

As he stood deliberating over his suits and jackets, he thought of Frida. He'd seen her among Sylvia's friends in Paris, which had made him anxious with Sylvia present, to be moving in the same circles. Then Frida withdrew in a mysterious way. Something happened. He hoped she might help him in Mexico, but she was confusing, like everything in Mexico. The weather seemed to pass through several seasons in the course of the day. Early mornings were as crisp as October in Paris. A warm and soft spring commenced at eleven. By midafternoon, full summer in the south of France was blazing. And evenings could be quite cold. He finally decided to dress for summer, the hour of the
cena
, choosing a light navy blazer.

His eyes narrowed as he approached the black Ford sedan—a step down from the Citroën—waiting for him beneath the porte cochère of the Hotel Montejo. He tipped the doorman, and, after a moment to adjust his rearview mirror, pulled out onto Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico's grandest boulevard, which, modeled upon the Champs-Élysées in Paris, was almost as much park as avenue with allées of trees, cascading fountains, heroic monuments, and revolving traffic circles. He thought of Sylvia when they went for a drive that first day in Paris. She would love Mexico. She was so good at reading guides, figuring things out. Unlike Paris, Mexico City was thriving, filled with Europeans fleeing the war. Rich Americans, denied the usual pleasures of Mediterranean holidays, filled the luxury hotels where Latin orchestras played rumbas and cha-chas in bars and rooftop dinner clubs.

The twenty-minute drive to Coyoacán took him through Tacubaya and Mixcoac, old villages that had become suburbs. Coyoacán felt distinct and somehow exclusive. It still appeared to be a mountain village with cobblestone streets. The zocalo, like every zocalo in Mexico, had its church and municipal palace, but here village life had been idealized with beautiful beds of flowers. He found the address Frida had given him in a new area beyond the zocalo where wide streets laid out in a grid were named after European capitals. It being three in the afternoon, time for the midday meal, the village was all but empty and a motionless quiet prevailed.

A
chófer
waited in a pale green Studebaker sedan in front of 45 Londres. As Jacques parked, an enormous Mexican with froglike eyes came out of the house, carrying a dish covered with a pink dish towel. He was wearing a ten-gallon Stetson and a revolver in a holster that made him look larger still. The driver leapt out to open one of the back doors, taking the dish, as the Studebaker's springs gave beneath the man's weight.

After the Studebaker drove away, Ramón got out of the Ford and crossed the street, noticing raw adobe bricks stacked on top of the cobalt blue wall. A maid answered the door, admitting him to rooms filled with deep shadows and a gathering of life-size papier-mâché figures. To one side, large doors opened onto a garden, where the cobalt walls were lined with flowering plants and fruit trees. Women's voices came from what he suspected was the kitchen, then Frida appeared, a shadowy figure moving slowly through the dining room. With her long hair falling loose down her back, she looked convalescent in an embroidered blue-and-red tunic, carrying a small blue-green glass in one hand. Noticing the slight limp, he remembered the leg withered by polio, the scars on her abdomen.

When he leaned forward offering to kiss her, she shook her head and cut her eyes, indicating the presence of servants. “Was that your husband who was just leaving?”

“Oh! You saw Diego?”

“I was surprised. You said he was divorcing you.”

“Yes, but he's not divorcing Blanca, our cook. He came to get her duck mole. Lupe, his first wife, no his second, taught Blanca the recipe so he feels he has a rightful claim.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“Not very. It's his favorite dish. Did he see you?”

“I don't think so.”

“That's good.”

She winced at the stronger light as they walked out to the garden, where the air was filled with the fragrance of geraniums and orange blossoms. A large green parrot squawked in its cage at the end of the garden away from the table set for lunch beneath the frangipani tree. “So, everything changes?” he said.

“Todo! Y todo jodido!”

“That bad?”

“I love Diego but he's a sadistic pig. I get home from Paris sick as a dog. My spine is killing me. I need another surgery, and Diego announces he's divorcing me. It's the old one-two punch for little Frida. Nick, the guy I love in New York, had just told me he was getting married. Then Diego tells me I'm getting a divorce. Pow! Pow!”

She put her hand on his forearm. “You want a
copita
?
Que bruta soy yo!
I'm drinking brandy, a lot of brandy these days. But there's wine and whiskey. Or tequila. I have a special tequila you should try.”

She rang a small silver bell for the maid, and, after telling the woman what to bring, led him to chairs made of bamboo and canvas. In the sunlight, her complexion had an unhealthy yellow tinge, and her facial hair, the black mustache and eyebrow, had lost its luster.

“Why does he want a divorce? Did he find out about the man in New York?”

“Diego doesn't give a reason. He says,” she paused, wiggling four fingers in the air to make quotation marks, “that it's merely a legal convenience, the modern thing to do. That's what he told
Look
magazine.” She took a swallow from her glass. “Diego's a big dope. He's like a circus ride for all the rich bitches that come down here. Paulette, you know the little tramp's wife. What's his name? The little tramp?”

“Chaplin?”

“Yes, Paulette moved into the San Ángel Inn across the street from Diego's studio. Diego's sleeping with her and his assistant, an American girl.”

She stopped speaking when the maid returned with another brandy, a tequila, and small bowls of salted nuts on a small tray of hammered silver. Finishing the brandy in her hand, she took the one on the tray. “You might want some lime in the tequila, but try it without to see what you think. Yes, the taste is different but not as bad as that damned absinthe.”

She drank steadily through the meal, putting a spoon into the clear broth of the soup but eating nothing. The food and seasonings were strange to Jacques, the corn tortillas a crude kind of crêpe. A small plate of rice flavored with a green herb followed the soup, then a stuffed chili pepper in a tomato broth. As the pièce de résistance, the cook brought out duck covered with a thick sauce that looked like mud. “Really? Chili peppers and chocolate?” Ramón said, discreetly scraping the sauce to the side.

After the maid served coffee and flan, Ramón mentioned Trotsky. “So, this is where he lived. I'm surprised he could fit into this house.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked in a belligerent tone, beginning to slur her words. “This isn't a mansion, but it's bigger than it looks. My father built this house.”

“Of course, but Trotsky would have his entourage—secretaries and guards, all sorts of people.”

She nodded once and then again. “I think Diego found out about Trotsky while I was in Paris.”

“You and Trotsky?”

She shrugged. “I didn't have a choice. Diego, that pig, was sleeping with my sister, and that was the real kick in the gut. Cristina means more to me than anyone. She's my heart, my soul. The only way I could repay Diego was with his hero
chavitos
.”

“His what?”

She tapped her chin. “You know, little goat. Trotsky has his little beard. He's an old-fashioned guy. He couldn't just have sex, he had to fall in love with me, make a big drama so his wife catches on. Diego suspected something. He's such a cheat he always suspects. The minute I left for New York, Diego squeezed the sorry truth out of Cristina. That's what was going on when I was in Paris. That's what I couldn't tell you. There I was, Mexico's delegate to the Fourth International, a hero to all the Trotskyists!”

“When did Trotsky move out of this house?”

“While I was in Paris. Diego didn't confront Trotsky but they both knew. The old man wanted to start paying rent, but Diego refused. So Trotsky got out. He's in an old place a couple of blocks from here.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Why so much interest in Trotsky? Are you here to kill him?”

“No, of course not. Do I look like an assassin to you?”

“Someone will kill him. Every fool knows that.”

“Who says?”

“Everyone. But not me. I'm keeping my distance.” She pulled a shawl around her shoulders. They'd lost the sun in the garden, and it was immediately cold in the shade.

Leaving, Jacques asked about the papier-mâché figures he'd noticed coming in. One of them, a woman with long blond hair and red lipstick, was wearing a low-cut gown and a sparkling necklace. Another, a man, wore a badge, a gun, and boots. “Villagers here in Mexico make them. The blond girl is a rich
gringa
, maybe a whore. And he's a sheriff. Villagers make them to burn on feast days. Sometimes they're modeled on specific people.”

“They burn them in effigy?”

“Yes, they're called Judases. Diego and I collect them.”

The light was fading as Jacques got in his car. Why had she asked that question? Was he there to kill Trotsky? Did she as an artist feel compelled to say and do what was inappropriate? He started the engine, then idled along, two, three blocks and he was on the edge of the village, the houses becoming marginal, the cobblestones ending. Twilight, the melancholy time of day. A eucalyptus tree towered before him, rising above a wall like the sail of a great schooner. In the distance across the valley, the volcanoes stood, their flanks a deep somber blue against the paler sky, the snowcapped peaks turning pink in the fading sunlight.

A masonry wall ran along the street, dwarfing the Ford until he turned left onto Calle Viena, a rutted dirt track, where, looking up and back he could see a machine-gun turret and concertina wire bristling on the front wall of the compound. Two Mexican policemen stood on the street in front of a guard station, a small brick hut that had just been built. Across the street was a
milpa
, a corn patch. Somewhere close by a rooster crowed, and in the distance a donkey was braying. He turned left onto Viena and drove to the end of the wall, and the block, where a row of cypress trees marked the dry bed of a river. There was nothing beyond. This was the end of the city, the edge of Coyoacán.