Padura finishes his novel on the assasination of Trotsky

Author: Anubis Galardy 

Havana, (PL).- The 550 pages of Leonardo Padura`s most recent novel on the assasination of Trotsky in Mexico are completed. But now they are being �polished and painted�.

This was made public by the author himself in a recent meeting held in the venue of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC) (Association of Artists and Writers of Cuba), where he admitted to be obssesed with its topic and story for which he had to consult hundred of sources, to research, corroborate data, and even make use of maps.

�It is the only way to assure truth, authenticity of what is being told�, he kept.

That stage of almost infinite correcction and polished is called �carpentry of the trade� by Gabriel García Márquez. The aim is to eliminate adjectives, to look for the precise tone, the inner rhythm, the environment, the climax... in one word: to round the work.

The project is ambitious and it covers from the moment when Stalin expelled Trotsky Russia , his travels: Riga-France-Norway, until arriving to Mexico, when he became a lesser personality, and his death in that country, assasinated by Ramón Mercader del Rio .

The historical context of the epoch is closely linked with its main known and disguised events, �an enquiry on why the greatest 20th century utopia was frustrated�, precised Padura, who is still questing for elements and details to enrich his novel.

The very day of the meeting he knew that a Trotsky grandson was living in Mexico . Logically he will try to find him by all means, in order to get more information aiming to increase the tip of that iceberg, according to Hemingway.

True story and literary reality live together in his novel � El hombre que amaba a los perros �, (�The Man who Loved the Dogs�) named after a story by Raymond Chandler who is one of his pillow book authors. "Quite an equivocal story', he pointed out.

Besides the tribute paid to Chandler , the title also depitcs one feature of Trotsky personality, shared by Mercader: to love dogs.

According the plot, Mercader, who tells the story, is undercovered by the false identity of a nephew of him, supposedly authorized to narrate the facts to a Cuban student of Veterinary Sciences in Santa María del Mar, a beach east of Havana. .

At the same time the latter tells it to a writer friend. Here begins the process of fiction. The true story is that Mercader remained 20 years in Mèxico, and lived in Cuba under the name of Ramòn, or Jaime, Lòpez from 1974 to 1978. But he never told the events

His Russian greyhounds, which he used to walk to the beach, become the link for coming closer to the Cuban student. These dogs are the same ones filmed in � Los sobrevivientes� ( �The Survivors�) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (aka �Titòn�).

They are the famous borzois, thin, streamlined, strong, with their almost violet hair and very firm teeth, able to break a wolf`s leg when hunting.

Padura defends every human being`s possibility of having an utopia, and this meditation encourages his most recnt work, in which his vocation for the black novel backed up by his tetralogy: Paisaje de otoño, Máscaras, Viento de cuaresma and La neblina del ayer.

In this works, just like the others, the everybody known what, is not what really cares but the how , my most interested aspect within the black novel, he explained..

El hombre que amaba a los perros (�The man who loved the dogs�) is really complex. There are three parallel lines which finally interweave, and there are three language levels used: an Spanish resembling a Russian translation, the Spanish from Spain and the Cuban one.

What it really cares is that the novel exists, it is ready, it has its body, Padura states, as someone who is no more carrying the main weight.

Translation: Frank Martìnez Hraste (Cubarte)

http://www.cubarte-english.cult.cu/global/loader.php?&cat=actualidad&cont=showitem.php&id=6948&tabla=articulo

Source: PL