The latest information from Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam. Russia’s ‘friends’, with China up to its eyeballs in a quagmire of blood and shit.
An unstable equilibrium. ‘Peace’ wouldn’t last long.
The latest information on Tito, on the Italians who were abandoning Istria and Dalmatia, on that scandal, the ‘Montesi case’.
Information on Guatemala, once again the exclusive property of the United Fruit Company after the coup in which the CIA had toppled an ‘inconvenient’ government.
Latin America, the Americans’ backyard, a thin stratum of land over seething magma. That was the new front, Serov would bet on it.
Dispatches from France and Switzerland.
Report on ‘Vladimir’ and ‘Estragon’. Based in Paris, the Latin Quarter. They socialised with artists, pseudo-revolutionaries, compulsive liars, self-styled ‘prophets’ of even more self-styled movements. A Romanian by the name of Isidore Isou. Utter nonsense. Azzoni and Mariani were wallowing in it all. There wasn’t a single telephoto image that didn’t show Mariani laughing, teeth on full view, cheekbones and eyebrows practically touching. Azzoni looked into the lens.
They would continue to use them. Clowns understand other clowns, and the world was now one great big circus parade.
Latest information on everybody and everything.
What a frenetic year. A year that had changed the face of the world.
The birth of the KGB. The Berlin Conference. The rearmament of Germany and its membership of NATO. The defeat of the French in Indochina and the division of Vietnam. Tito. The ruin of McCarthy. Tito and Cary Grant. Nuclear experiments in the deserts and the middle of the oceans. The end of the ‘postwar period’.
The birth of monsters throughout the Soviet Union: two-headed lambs, calves without legs, a goat with only one eye. Inauspicious events loomed.
Just for a change.
General Serov rose to his feet, cracked the joints of his neck and shoulders, and walked the short distance that separated him from the window. He looked through the pane and once more, as he did every day, he felt part of a big clockwork machine.
Part of history.
X Mexico City, some time later
‘You really don’t know the story of that bastard Rasputin? Ok, if you’ve never been to Moscow I can see you might not know it, compadres. You’ve got to know that when the conspirators went to get him, in the depths of the night, at his house, Rasputin, who was a pretty big bloke, tall and fuerte, managed to escape by throwing himself into the river from a window. But it was invierno and the water was freezing, so the fucker died of exposure after a few strokes. His corpse was recovered and carried to the shore, as stiff as a stockfish. Everyone was amazed that his dick was todavía hard. The maid, who had served him for many years and who had also been his lover, had a real veneration for his cock. You know what Russian peasants are like, simple and superstitious. And she thought she could save the symbol of his manly vigour and his potency. So she cut off his knob. And apparently it was enormous, más que treinta centimetros! And she ran off with it. De aquel moment no one knows lo que pasò, what happened to the member. There are legends, certainly, strange stories, about the relic, but it seems that it passed from hand to hand, that it was sold for a fortune, that the White Russians were looking high and low for it, to turn it into a banner for the counter-revolution. And the Bolsheviks were after it as well, to burn it, and scatter the ashes to the viento. Moral of the story, now we know donde está Rasputin’s cock. In the Museum of Natural History in Moscow. If you look in the case of the stuffed monk seal, down at the bottom, you’ll see the seal pups, with their characteristic hood. Except that one of them isn’t a seal pup.’
León Mantovani stared at the two people sitting at the other end of the table. They looked perplexed. But he was used to it, his stories often had that effect. They had shown up there looking for him. They had known that the bar was for sale, and they planned to take it over. Two Italians. A boy and a guy who might have been more or less the same age as himself. Father and son.
He had introduced himself. ‘Leonardo Mantovani, pleased to meet you. Pero everyone here calls me León, have done since I got here, in ’39, after the derrota de España.’
He had looked at them carefully. He guessed they might have an interesting story to tell. How many had he met in his life? Mexico was the refugium peccatorum, the new and ancient land where the persecuted and the rejected arrived in search of their fortunes. The land of the century’s first revolution, the one led by Villa and Zapata, the one you couldn’t work out whether it had been won or lost somewhere along the way, between the biggest capital in the world and the desert.
The older of the two had talked about another revolution. Yugoslavia, the Balkans. Another planet. The younger one had talked about a failed revolution. At home, in Italy.
León had talked about Rasputin’s cock.
‘You know, Stalin once told me that you should never say more than is strictly necessary. Mejor, as they say in the north American courts, anything you say can be used in evidence against you. Pero in these parts there’s an unwritten rule: everyone who passes through here has a story to tell. Sometimes it’s true, other times it’s pure fantasy. Doesn’t make much difference, if it’s a good story. And since, from what people say, I’m the best storyteller around, every now and again someone tries to challenge me. But no one has managed to beat me yet!’
‘You know Cary Grant, the American actor?’ asked the younger man.
His father touched his shoulder. ‘Leave it.’
‘You really knew Stalin?’
‘Angel, esta cerveza está caliente. The first time was in ’22, when the Party sent me on a mission to Moscow, with a half-empty suitcase and a letter from Gramsci in my pocket. I’ve never been back to Italy since. On the other hand I’ve collected convictions all around the world. In Moscow I met Lenin, then Trotsky and Stalin, Bukharin and Molotov: cold, compadres, you can’t even imagine how cold it is in Moscow in invierno. I never managed to shake off that cold, there was no wood for the stoves, there was no oil, nada de nada. The coldest revolution I can remember! And you couldn’t complain, because what kept you warm was the revolutionary spark. Spasibo and off you go!’
‘How long did you stay in Russia?’ asked the boy.
‘A few years. I did a relay to Paris. Back and forth. I brought Togliatti’s orders to the exiled comrades in France. It was dangerous, specially after ’33, when you had to travel through Poland and Czechoslovakia to get to Switzerland. Nazi spies everywhere, and in Paris you had infiltrators from the fascist secret police, hijos de una gran puta madre, who were after your blood. But I always managed to get round them, because I disguised myself, I did, always wearing different clothes, once even a false beard. I stiffed an agent in the bogs at the Gare du Nord. I shot him in the frente. And because he got me covered in blood, I left the station completely nude. I got pneumonia, but at least I sent that fucker to the grave!’
Laughter and swigs of beer.
From the adjacent room, where the old men were playing dominoes, the lawyer’s exotic accent still rang out. A lot of high-flown words which must have sounded incomprehensible to the two Italians who had arrived only recently.