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The Great Prince Died

A Novel About the Assassination of Trotsky

The University of Chicago Press

"... one day without serenades, all right?"

Tommygun in one hand, oil can in the other, Paul Teleki leaned on the sandbagged wall and looked down at Sergeant Guillermo. He was not pleased with himself. He had meant to hold in the irritation, the touchiness that was a plague in him now, but his voice had sounded sharp.

From his chair outside the guardhouse Sergeant Guillermo waved lazily. He went on playing until the ballad of regrets was done, then placed the guitar on the ground, composed his hands in his lap and closed his eyes, face up to the sun.

Small range in Guillermo: can't sing, sleep. Paul Teleki looked across Londres at the littered lot opposite. The péon, the one they called Dios, Diosdado, something, was stretched out on the grass alongside his adobe hut, a sun taking corpse with hat over eyes.

Another of limited range. Another easy sleeper. Diosdado, whatever his name was, sometimes hoed the chunked ground between his rows of maize and beans, sometimes carried junk home from the dumps, sometimes honed his machete; otherwise he slept profoundly.

There were lives without distractions. Or abstractions.

The tower Paul Teleki stood in was a new structure. Its wood boards were unweathered, their grain lines still a fresh reddish brown. It was on the Londres side of the villa, in an angle of the high wall, placed so as to command from its twelve-foot elevation a view of both Londres and the intersecting Cortés. The sandbags Paul had been carrying were to reinforce this structure, some to line it, others to build it up, heightening the boarded sides almost to chest level. Paul leaned on these bags, his eyes directed down.

The cops and the girls were in a group below him. The girls had stopped making sounds of laughter but their lips were still open in laughing position as they returned his stare, eyes without questions but unmuted. Paul saw them foreshortened, breasts buoying chins, belly rounds abutting breasts, thin inches of legs below.

A block away, to the right, the postman was approaching. The mail pouch a disfiguring hump on his back.

Against the wall below the cops leaned, awkwardly casual, waiting, Paul knew, for him to go away. Both girls, faces still upturned, seemed to be laughing silently at him, their plumped breasts floating the joke. His fingers tightened on the gun, he turned away.

Distractions in breasts. Abstractions behind the laughing lips.

The patio he faced was almost a perfect square in shape. The house itself was made of three joined wings, one along Londres, another at right angles to it along Cortés, the third running back from Cortés parallel to the Londres front; these wings made up three sides of the square, the fourth being a high wall. The house was one story high, its railroad rooms, on all three sides, leading off from a slightly elevated walk. The turret was built over the enclosing wall, at the place where it reached Londres and made a right turn there to meet the house proper. The main entrance, a three-inch-thick planked door, was in this wall, between the house and the corner turret.

The villa's adobe facings, and its extension wall too, were a rain streaked blue, edged with dimming pink. But the original coat of paint had been entirely pink, and it came through the overlay in places, giving the blue stretches a medleyed sunset tint.

This patio was crowded. The area contained by the arms of the villa was a garden, a mass of cactus plants and bright clustered flowers, with here and there, poking up past the spiney flat paddles of the magueys, stone images of Aztec and Mayan deities. In the exact center of this garden was an orange tree, now dotted with ripe fruit; around its base, enclosing a ring of blood petaled flowers, a seat. A bare path ran from the street door to both ends of the elevated walk that jutted out from the house's interior walls; this raised deck was edged with a balustraded balcony. To one side of the street door, a set of crude wooden steps led up to the turret.

Paul Teleki started down these steps carrying his gun and oil can. What had set him off had been the whores, not the music, but seeing emergent breasts, runaway breasts, inches away, light years away, he had spoken against Guillermo's guitar. It was not the unfairness in this that bothered him but what it said about his control, his readiness to be whistled to side targets.

He liked to be as singleminded about the main jobs as a Diosdado was about his hoeing and sleeping.

His targets were beginning to dance and blur.

David Justin appeared from the innermost room, the end room on the inside wing. He stood on the walk as he buttoned his denim shirt and stuck its tails in, yawning and blinking rapidly. He was of medium height, stocky, with short sandy hair and fair skin that seemed recently sunburned. Raising his hand in greeting to Paul, he wiped his forehead, snapped the sweat off his fingers with exaggerated despair.

"You want to feel the sheets on my bed," he said in English.

"No, thanks," Paul said as he reached the ground.

"You could wade in them."

"Some other time." Paul Teleki's English was good but deliberate, the words slightly spaced, as though it still took thought to produce them. He placed his gun and oil can on the turret steps, took out his handkerchief to wipe his fingers. Two of the fingers of his left hand were missing; he carefully patted the stumps. "You didn't sleep any better?"

David Justin shook his head. "Too hot and too noisy." The guitar started up again; he listened until Guillermo's silked voice undertook the words. "Damn them and their concerts. They didn't let up all night." He looked at his wristwatch and shook his head again. "Sorry I overslept. If I could take a sleeping pill —"

"I told you, they slow down the reflexes."

David Justin walked down the five steps from the elevated ramp and stood in the path. He made a boxer's loosening motions with his shoulders, bent to touch the ground several times with his fingers. Straightening up, he rubbed his eyes.

"Then when I do doze off, the least sound wakes me up. This morning a car backfired; before my eyes were open I was on my feet, reaching." He patted the revolver in his belt and gave an embarrassed laugh. "Took me twenty seconds to find it. It was under the pillow."

"I've told you, hang your holster on the bedpost! Put the gun in it! What do you think I gave you the holster for?" Paul Teleki's anger went before the words were out: a Justin could not be blamed for the way he handled guns, it was the bulked breasts over flowing summer cottons he was fuming at still. "Give it another week. Plain silence'll wake you up, it does the worst backfiring."

"And plays the biggest guitars?" David Justin's shirt was already soaked through with sweat. He pulled its front away from his body. "That's the trouble with walls, you know, Paul: everything on the outside sounds serious. Especially the silence." He was approaching the turret steps, for the first time he noticed the machine gun. He stooped to pick it up. "You got it!"

"Emma brought it this morning." David weighed the gun as he might a baby, crouched to point it at an imaginary target in the orange tree. Paul reached for the weapon. "I don't suppose you've ever handled one of these."

"I was in the R.O.T.C. in college." Paul seemed puzzled. "That's a military training program. But I was with an artillery unit. I'm very good with a six-inch howitzer."

"This is all the howitzer we'll get." Paul put the gun back on the steps. "Maybe we'll arrange some target practice."

David Justin pointed up at the sandbagged walls of the turret. "Going up fast.... Wish I could help more — I've had to spend my watches working on the translation, I'm way behind. The press releases take too damn much time." David went to the pile of sandbags lying against the wall and lifted one experimentally. "These things are heavy."

Paul took the bag from his hands, got another from the pile, and carried both to the foot of the steps. "When things get hot you can say to the bullets in your five different languages, please go away. Maybe they'll work better than sandbags." He disliked himself intensely for venting his bad humor at the wrong, the irrelevant, target again. He indicated the turret. "Get up there, will you?"

David climbed up. He reached over and took the bags offered by Paul, as he placed them in position he looked out across Londres. "What do you know. Diosdado is finally getting a letter. The postman's over there waking him up."

"Maybe it's his invitation to the Presidential ball."

"Or a summons for moving the city dump into his yard. Or a 1911 goat tax that just caught up with him." David patted the sandbags flat. "There's a man who obviously doesn't belong to anything more specific than the human race. He never has dealings with any institution known to man. He worries me, Paul. Seriously. I've tried to talk to him, it's impossible." David leaned over to look into the street. "They're back." He seemed surprised. "Those women. Hanging around in broad daylight now."

"The cops like a nip; we give them cognac. If they like women."

"What if they liked hashish? Vacations on the Riviera? I see those two every time I'm on night duty, last night too. We don't even know who they are."

"What's the mystery?" Paul was going for more bags. "They're a couple of whores, from that yellow apartment house down on the next block."

"How do you know so much about them?"

"My learned eyes."

"If that's what they are, all the more reason to get rid of them. One word to Ortega —"

"All the less reason. Take away guitars, cognac, whores, a cop's eyes close. A cop with his eyes closed — no cop at all."

David took two more bags from Paul's hands and hoisted them into position. "I'll try to make my peace with cop physiology." He scanned the street again. "The postman's coming over, I think. Yes."

Paul immediately took a position at the door, stood there expectantly. In a moment the doorbell rang loudly.

"Señor Paul! Paul!" Guillermo called from the other side. "Special delivery!"

Paul pulled the hinged lid back from a small peephole in the door. He looked out into the sergeant's fleshy face and wide black eyes. "You can bring it in." He looked up to David. "Time to unveil the electrical wonders." He placed his finger on a buzzer set in the wall and pressed it. The door swung open.

Guillermo stepped in, staged astonishment on his face.

"Bueno, Señor Paul, Señor David." He examined the buzzer, put his finger on it delicately, with scientist's investigating touch. "Hey, this is a good thing. I like it." He shut the door and buzzed it open, repeated the operation. "Very good, yes. You make this yourselfs?" He was looking at Paul with a too wide smile.

"Where's the letter?" Paul Teleki said.

"A door is nice this way. You look in the face, you like the face, you push quick." Guillermo illustrated, opening the peephole then buzzing the door. "I like to put button on my wife, here." He patted his left buttock. "I say to her, woman, I have big hunger, bring food. I push, she jump. Ah, Señor Paul? You put the button on my wife? No little door in the head, though. I know what is in this woman's head." He pointed to the sandbags against the wall. "A whole big bunch of sandbags. To throw at me, naturally."

"The letter, Guillermo. The letter."

Guillermo offered the red and blue striped envelope. Paul took it, looked at its face, nodded. "New York." He tore it open and unfolded the inside sheet. "Same story: they want to send more guards." David had come down the steps. Paul gave him the letter, pointing to a room in the far corner of the house on the Cortés side. "He's in the study with Emma."

David Justin went off, carrying the letter.

Guillermo was now studying the turret with dramatic admiration. "You work very much with the bags."

"We look for the house with the highest walls, then we make them higher." Paul had picked up the machine gun and was wiping its barrel with his handkerchief. "Some like avocados; we like walls."

"And the turret." Guillermo took from his shirt pocket a package of Elegantes, offered one to Paul, was refused, lit one for himself and sucked in sweet smoke with an appreciative sound. "And the little door in the big door. Now the machine gun."

Paul's face clouded: "They're not to keep you out, sergeant. Only those who might get by you. While your muchachos entertain the muchachas." Again the substitute targets. He was not angry with the police, either: you cope with a physiology; but if you pretend such anger do you begin with cops and switch in the middle to the muchachas, the putas?

Guillermo had come to attention. His face was composed. "The bad ones do not get in here, señor, unless over my dead body." There was the metal of dignity somewhere in back of the soft syllables.

"They've gotten into other places. Sometimes over bodies."

Guillermo considered this information, his eyes steady on Paul. He snapped into good humor. "Nothing to worry, Paul. If we are all dead, you got enough sand in those bag to bury each and everybody!"

"Then who'll play the guitar at our funeral?"

"My wife! You put special button on her fat behind to make her to play!"

"Who's going to push that button?"

"Make it to go by himself! You think I want some damn stranger to push my woman in the behind? A man of a name I do not know, to upfeel my wife?"

Guillermo began to laugh. Against his will, face muscles fighting the concession, Paul Teleki began to laugh with him.

David Justin was back in the patio. He came down from the raised walk and headed for the door.

"I better to go back to the boys," Guillermo said, not moving. He had his eyes on a wall shelf that was crowded with bottles.

"Oh, no you don't," Paul said. "I gave you one on Saturday."

Guillermo turned to the nearing David Justin a fact finding face: "You know how high is here in Distrito Federal, Señor David? At the least, 7,500 feet: you stand up, your head bump on the moon spots. In the sun, oh, nice; very friendly and nice. Only in the nights, no sun, the boys they get cold." He wrapped his arms around his thick torso and imitated a man shivering. "Cold like on Popocatepetl. Even with the serape."

Paul Teleki made a sighing sound. He took a bottle from the shelf and handed it to the sergeant. "All right. Go sit on Popocatepetl. Take the cognac for central heating."

"Not for the taste!" Guillermo said fast. "Only for the cold! If I see one muchacho who lick the lips with this stuff, I knock his lips off! Million thanks, Señor Paul! A kindness!"

Paul buzzed the door open, Guillermo touched the buzzer with his admiring air.

"I know, I know," Paul said, "it's a nice thing, you like it, you like all our things." He took Guillermo's arm and steered him through the door. In the splashes of sun outside he caught a glimpse of tawned legs in high pumps, a smear of yellow, a patch of green in stripes, over fleshed breasts in bold rise. He shut the door quickly and turned back to David. "The Old Man read the letter?"

"He's dictating an answer now." Paul's face tightened in irony that David caught. "What do you think he'll say?"

Paul Teleki was sure what should be said: we need a lot of men here, a lot of guns. Because this pretty pastel house is an eyesore and a pestilence, it invites attack as ants invite stepping on. Out there, on the free side of the wall, the come and go as you like side, they are enemies or potential enemies, cops, postmen, Diosdados, green and yellow putas in high, taunt heels. None of this could be said to Justin, the translator. During Justin's almost four weeks here they had had this discussion several times, always leading nowhere. Justin, the trust all translator, contended that Teleki, the sullen arsenal, was a phenomenon: the whole human race the enemy? Paul would answer to this, yes, precisely so, your enemy as well as mine; David would conclude with a belittling shrug, share and share alike. Impossible to tell this translator there was one rule about walls, stay on your side and fraternize with nobody on the other side, no matter how end of the world boring it gets at three in the cold morning, no matter how the whores giggle: respect the wall; how to mention Justin's lapping with the eyes at those sluts in their French heels? Justin would raise shoulders and answer, off with the faucets in my mouth, you're the politburo in this house.

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Excerpted from The Great Prince Died by Bernard Wolfe. Copyright © 1987 Dolores Michaels Wolfe and Jordan and Miranda Wolfe. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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