Eitingon picked up an oyster from the bed of ice and slid it into his mouth, closing his eyes to taste the cold ocean waves and appreciate the exquisite texture. He gave his head the slightest shake, then took a swallow of the Sancerre to wash away the faint metallic taste of the oyster. “These Portugaises are very good. Should we have another dozen?”
“Yes, but I wish we’d ordered a different wine.”
“Yes, this is modest. We’ll drink the Pétrus with the civet de lapin.”
The restaurant was Eitingon’s discovery, a storefront with a zinc bar and paper tablecloths, a proprietor chef who wore a white toque and shouted at his daughter when she didn’t serve the plates fast enough.
“Here, suffer the last of this,” Eitingon said, filling Ramón’s glass. He wanted to loosen Ramón’s tongue, to find out what he was thinking. He took another swallow of wine, remembering the old stone farmhouse outside Toulouse, a ruin with the vines and arbor. Records playing on a wind-up gramophone, they had eaten at a table beneath an oak tree. Caridad was such a beauty. He assumed she was a wealthy Spanish bohemian, looking for a new life with her children in France.
“You know about Pablo,” said Ramón.
Eitingon studied Ramón’s face.
“He didn’t deserve such a death. I don’t understand how she let that happen.”
Eitingon looked down at his wineglass, which he turned slightly on the table. “What could she do? She wasn’t there. Pablo left a corpse on the street.”
“A father,” he hesitated, biting his bottom lip. “A father would have saved his son.”
“Perhaps. You can’t be sure. Caridad knew she was being watched, that her loyalty was being tested.”
“And she passed the test.”
“And this is her reward. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t help her. But I could give her this assignment.”
Eitingon glanced away, then took a deep breath and exhaled. He had a vivid memory of Ramón in Toulouse. A week or so after Caridad had driven him from the house with her histrionics, he had gone back to see if there was anything he could do. The other children had somehow drifted away, but Ramón, at his mother’s side, attempting to attend to her, had that shell-shocked look, that haunted gaze of soldiers who had been in battle.
“Caridad isn’t an easy person,” he said.
Ramón laughed.
“How old were you when we met in Toulouse?”
“Ten, more or less.”
“What do you remember?”
“Everything, I suppose.”
“Do you blame me for what happened?”
Ramón blinked. “No, should I?”
“She was angry at me. She would have said things. I know I made mistakes. I didn’t understand how sheltered her life had been. I thought she was another sort of woman, had had a more worldly life. And then …” He hesitated. What had happened had been so appalling he couldn’t imagine what that time had been for Ramón, an ambulance coming to the house, neighbors standing at the gate.
Eitingon gave his wineglass another turn. “I think religion was the problem for Caridad.”
“Religion? She’s an intellectual, an atheist.”
“Not then. She kept talking about the church. That’s what she kept saying, that she was lost because she had abandoned the church. She’s a complicated person. Ramón, all of this Marxist theory, dialectical materialism is mumbo jumbo to me.”
“Yes, to me as well. On the front, anytime a group of soldiers got together, they would argue about who was a Stalinist and who was a Trotskyist. And, of the two, who was the true Marxist. And then there were all of the arguments about all of the socialist organizations in Catalonia and which of them were Trotskyist.”
“And what did you make of it?”
“I didn’t listen to the arguments that much. As far as I’m concerned Lenin was the father of the revolution.”
“And Trotsky?”
“Perhaps he was the spoiled son who made trouble when Lenin chose Stalin to be his successor.”
Eitingon shrugged. “For Caridad, Marx and the Manifesto is like Holy Scripture. You know she wanted to become a nun?”
“Yes, but her parents made her marry Papa because he was rich.”
The sounds of pots clattering came from the kitchen.
“Ramón, I did some things wrong, but I hope you don’t blame me.”
“No, I was sorry when you left. Particularly after Thorez came.” Ramón shuddered with distaste. “He was cold and distant.”
“I don’t imagine Maurice Thorez was much fun, but I suppose that’s what she needed.”
“You mean all that theory. I guess I’m not smart enough for it.”
“You’re smart enough. Theory just doesn’t interest you.”
Eitingon urged Ramón to take the last oyster, then pushed the tray of ice and shells aside. “We need to talk about your assignment.”
“Yes, I don’t really understand what I’ll be doing.”
“The beginning is the most difficult. We have to study the situation and wait for the right opening. You need to start thinking about your cover.”
“I thought you would assign me a new identity.”
“It’s much better if you create your own, something you’re comfortable with, something you like.”
“How do I do that?”
“Stay as close to the truth as you can. If you invent too much, then you forget and get confused. For example, you have Caridad in your life. So whoever you become might have a mother who interferes, who smokes too much, perhaps she knits. At the core, that will have truth for you. You can be who you want, just as long as your story fits together. It has to be sturdy enough to hold up under pressure. You must remember it in your sleep and be able to cling to it should you be tortured. But let’s not dwell upon the negative.”
He poured more wine in their glasses. “How good is your English? Could you pass for an Australian or American?”
“Not with my accent.”
“You can’t be Spanish. That would wave red flags.”
“I could be South American, from Argentina or Chile.”
Eitingon put the wine bottle down in the center of the table and looked fixedly at Ramón. “No, if they hear Spanish they’ll suspect you’re from Spain. You must blot Spain from your memory and the Castilian language from your identity. You’ve never been to Spain. You don’t know a word of the language. Your mother tongue is French.”
“So, I’m from France.”
Eitingon thought for a moment. “But if you’re from here, where is family? Friends? What schools did you attend? No, you can’t be a Frenchman,” he reasoned. “It might work in New York or Moscow, but it obviously won’t work in Paris. You must come from another French-speaking country.”
“Morocco? Algiers?”
“Do you feel like a Moroccan? An Algerian?”
Ramón’s spine stiffened. “No, please! I’d rather not.”
“I didn’t think so. How about Belgium! That’s the ticket! It’s just north of France, the way Spain is just south. You can be Belgian. That will explain your lack of family in Paris and any little discrepancies in your accent.”
Ramón looked into the distance, imagining the implications of his new nationality. “And what about Trotsky?”
Eitingon waited.
“I suppose I must learn all about Trotsky if I’m going to be one of his adherents.”
“No, no, no. You’re not going to be one of them. That world is too small. You’re not going to be like them, but acceptable to them as someone quite different. In fact, you should be from a world they don’t know.”
They finished a second round of oysters and watched with interest as the owner’s daughter presented the bottle of Pétrus. Eitingon tasted it, blinked both eyes, then handed his glass to Ramón. “Yes,” Ramón concurred. “It’s excellent.”
The stew arrived on a large white platter, in a rich and fragrant sauce containing small translucent onions, slices of carrots, and a sprinkling of parsley. “This rabbit tastes as if it lived on wild thyme,” said Ramón after they started eating.
“Yes, it probably did. Remember the rabbits in Toulouse?”
“How could I forget?”
“What about your name? You might want to keep your initials. It’s much easier with monograms and such. Something with an R? Robert?”
“My first name is Jaime—Jaume in Catalan.”
“Well, then, something with a J.”
“Jacques is a name I’ve always liked. I had a little friend named Jacques when we lived in Toulouse.”
“Jacques suits you very well, but you should get rid of those steel-rim glasses. They make you look like a soldier or a German factory worker.”
“You know what I would like to be,” said Ramón. “I’ve always wanted to be an aristocrat.”
Eitingon, knife and fork poised in midair, smiled at the young man, pleased that he wasn’t an ideologue like his mother. “An aristocrat? Now that’s antithetical.”
“Antithetical to what?”
“To Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism for that matter.”
“But there are natural aristocrats, people who are superior, who are simply born that way?”
“My dear Ramón, that’s exactly what aristocrats tell us, that they are our betters because of the blood running through their veins. Because of their pedigree.”
“But you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I suppose so—that some people are exceptional, naturally superior.” He cut a piece of the rabbit, pushing it through the sauce. “If that’s what you want, posing as an aristocrat has a certain genius. Nothing would be more foreign to Trotskyists. You could be an aristocrat estranged from your family in Belgium, a black sheep on his own in Paris.”
“Yes, and of course I like good food and wine.”