Trotsky (36 page)

It was at their apartment a few days later that Jacson met Hank Schultz, who seems to have been the only one of Trotsky’s associates to question him about his name, which did not seem French. Jacson clarified that it was spelled without a “k” and was French-Canadian. In fact, he was thoroughly French, he eagerly explained, for although he was born in Canada and kept a residence in Montreal, he had moved to France as a boy and was educated in Paris.

Jacson came by the apartment at least a dozen times when Dorothy was there, usually staying several hours, sometimes for lunch or supper. He played with the Schultzes’ baby daughter, Ann, for whom he ex
pressed a deep fondness. He took them on trips to the zoo at Chapultepec Park and other points of interest in and around Mexico City. He brought them on a picnic to the foot of El Popo, which gave him another opportunity to boast about his mountain-climbing exploits in Europe and in Mexico.

Jacson told Hank and Dorothy that he was close to the Trotskyist circle in Paris and had made large contributions to the organization—for a while had even paid the entire cost of publishing its newspaper. This is what he also told the guards. In normal times these credentials could have been confirmed with the French comrades, but they were in flight from the German invaders, who entered Paris on June 14, a dizzying turn of events which, among other things, forced the Rosmers to terminate their voyage in New York. One of the casualties was Mark Zborowski—Trotsky’s indispensable Comrade Étienne and the NKVD’s agent “Tulip”—who was reportedly being held prisoner in a German concentration camp in France.

Jacson’s bragging tales about his business activities might also have been scrutinized, except that they were the kind that seemed indiscreet to question. To Hank and Dorothy he said his employer was a war profiteer from New York who was exporting supplies of food and raw materials to the Allies, mainly Britain. The business was illegal, he confided, and as a matter of fact, he himself was in Mexico illegally. His monthly income, he said on several occasions, was $400, on top of which he had a very generous expense account. He often remarked on the large sums of money he handled, and even carried on his person, intimating that these were bribes.

It was at Evelyn’s apartment, in the second week of June, that Jacson was introduced to Cannon and Dobbs, together with other visiting comrades from New York. Jacson proved to be a most helpful chauffeur and tour guide, on one occasion driving the visitors out to the ancient pyramids north of Mexico City. This was an especially valuable service because Trotsky’s Dodge remained in police custody since the assault. At the end of a day-long excursion to Toluca, Jacson bought Natalia a gift of sour cream and honey, which he delivered on the drive home, making a detour to the house, where Trotsky and Natalia came into the patio to greet everyone.

On the evening of June 11, Jacson drove Cannon and Dobbs to dinner at the Hotel Geneva, then afterward took them for a drink. He had a way of talking a lot while saying very little. It was difficult to pin him down on anything. He stayed away from political topics, although on the subject of the split among American Trotskyists, he made clear that his sympathies were with the Majority. In any case, not being a comrade, Jacson posed no threat to Cannon and Dobbs. He was, on the contrary, that relatively harmless creature in Marxist politics at that time: a capitalist.

Jacson’s conversations with Dorothy were a different matter entirely. He was remarkably blunt in his opinions about Sylvia and her support for the Minority position on the dialectic and the defense of the USSR. He described in great detail the arguments they had in person and by letter. On one occasion, after sharply criticizing Sylvia’s views on dialectical materialism, he expressed doubts that their “marriage” could survive. Nor was ideology the only irreconcilable difference: Jacson made disparaging remarks about Sylvia’s looks, her clothes, and her refusal to have children because, as he put it, she was a coward when it came to pain.

Jacson left Mexico City for New York on June 12, explaining that he had to go away on business. He asked one of the guards to drive him to the airport in his Buick, which he arranged to leave at the house for use by the guards while he was away. This gesture was greatly appreciated by the household, although ultimately the greater beneficiary was Jacson himself: during his absence from Mexico his automobile would continue to earn him goodwill.

M
ERCADER
-J
ACSON WENT TO
New York to receive instructions, funds, and encouragement from his NKVD handlers. He also used the time to re-engage with Sylvia, who was surprised to learn that her “husband” had visited the house in Coyoacán and met Trotsky and Natalia. Jacson told Sylvia that he had to make one final trip to Mexico before returning to take up a permanent position in New Jersey. He left New York by train on June 30, arriving in Mexico City on July 11, on which day he phoned Evelyn to say he had business to attend to in Tampico and would return in a week. When he resurfaced, he confided
to Evelyn and Dorothy that his boss had decided to form a diamond-cutting syndicate in partnership with some Dutch émigrés who had fled the Nazis with large quantities of gems.

Jacson put off reclaiming his Buick until July 29. On that day, he came by the house at 2:40 and stayed for an hour and ten minutes. Sylvia had not heard from him since July 11, when he sent a telegram upon arriving in Mexico City. She grew impatient, and then desperate, for word from him when he failed to reply to her telegrams. Finally, he sent a cable and then called to say he had been very ill in a small town near Puebla and that he hoped to return to New York before long. She wired to ask if he wanted her to come and be with him during his convalescence. This was exactly what he was counting on, though he did not immediately reply. A few days later he telephoned her. Again she asked if she should come to him, and after some hesitation, he agreed.

On July 31, Jacson stopped by the house to deliver an expensive box of chocolates to Natalia, saying it was a gift from Sylvia, who was preparing to join him in Mexico City. It was then that Leonid Eitingon, the NKVD field officer of Operation Duck, sent a coded message to his superiors: “Everything is in order.”

T
HE DAY
J
ACSON
came by the house to retrieve his Buick, he disappointed the guards when he admitted that while in New York he had not dropped in on the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party. All his free time had been taken up trying to convince Sylvia and her sisters of the correctness of the Majority view, he explained, while during the day he was tied up with business. The guards took this to Trotsky, who agreed that Jacson’s behavior was far from exemplary. On the other hand, Trotsky now had a better appreciation of what Jacson had to endure in contending with the Ageloff sisters. For, while Jacson was away, Trotsky had experienced his first gloves-off confrontation with members of the Minority.

The opposition associated with Max Shachtman and James Burnham was still called the Minority, even though its members had broken away and formed a separate Workers Party in April. A month later, Burnham stunned his comrades by announcing his resignation from the new party and his complete break with Marxism. Burnham’s astonish
ingly candid resignation letter proved to be an endless source of amusement and ammunition to Cannon and the Majority, whose suspicions all along that Burnham was a petty-bourgeois fraud had now been forcefully validated.

Burnham was gone, but he remained a favorite target of abuse in the Socialist Workers Party and also among Trotsky and his staff. This became obvious to a group of about forty Americans who crowded into the dining room of Trotsky’s home late in the afternoon of July 17 to hear him speak, an event arranged by Professor Hubert Herring in conjunction with his summer Latin America seminar. Among the participants was a group of seven visitors from Texas invited separately and led by Charles Orr and his wife. The Orrs were Trotskyists who went to Spain during the civil war; they had been arrested and imprisoned in the crackdown on the POUM in Barcelona in June 1937. Charles Orr taught sociology at the University of Texas, where he and his wife attracted a small following of young partisans for the Minority. Several of them accompanied the Orrs to Mexico City for a vacation and a chance to meet Trotsky.

The seminar began with Trotsky making brief remarks. According to Hansen, “The OM ripped into the democracies, their decay, and the sole hope of humanity being socialism.” A lively question-and-answer session ensued, and Hansen reveled in the fact that Trotsky could finally get a taste of the debates he had thus far only read about in letters from New York. Trotsky pressed the Minority guests to defend Burnham’s assessment of the USSR as the evil twin of Nazi Germany and his rejection of dialectical materialism. Hansen says that Trotsky became quite agitated, “and even the Old Lady, who can now follow English pretty good, began to argue, but in French, which nobody could understand.”

Trotsky was so inspired by the experience that the Orrs and their young friends were invited back a few days later for a formal debate with the guards. Hansen, Robins, and Otto spoke for the Majority, each taking ten minutes, while the Orrs were each given fifteen minutes to defend the Minority position. Trotsky served as chairman. The Orrs blamed the split on Cannon and his “Stalinist” methods, but Trotsky had heard it all before. Jotting notes to himself in English, he wrote: “no reason for a spleet!”—a word he spelled just as he pronounced
it—“the spleet is not accident—
inevitable.”
When Chairman Trotsky rose to speak, he thanked the Orrs for confirming him in his opinion that the Minorityites were merely an inferior version of the Russian Mensheviks.

Further evidence of the Minority’s feeblemindedness was provided by Sylvia Ageloff, who flew in from New York on August 8 and whom Jacson brought to the house later that afternoon for tea with Trotsky and Natalia. Jacson was still not healthy—although his gastrointestinal troubles were hardly a suitable topic for conversation at the dining table. Inevitably, the discussion centered on the Majority and Minority views on the war and the USSR. Jacson took Trotsky’s side, although he barely said a word and appeared to be out of his depth. Ultimately, it was of no consequence, because Ramón Mercader had already mastered the peculiar dialectic of Jacson and Sylvia.

On August 9, with the Dodge released from police custody, Trotsky and a group from the household set off on a picnic. Trotsky called these outings “walks” for a reason, yet on this occasion, according to Hansen, “he certainly didn’t act like his old dynamic self. He was scarcely interested in building the fire, hunted for nothing, tried to sleep on the ground, didn’t take so much as his usual walk, dropped to sleep immediately in the car after it was over.” He seemed greatly fatigued, behaving as though he needed the picnic for rest rather than to channel his energy.

This was a cause for concern because, on his doctor’s orders, Trotsky was getting plenty of time for relaxation these days. He was required to take an hourlong siesta after lunch, while on Sundays he was supposed to avoid work entirely and just lie in bed. “It bores him stiff,” said Hansen of Trotsky’s enforced holidays. For months he had been intending to return to work on his Stalin biography. He had written to his translator in New York on March 19, “I would be really glad if I could deliver the whole during the month of August. It is possible. And I will do every
thing to observe this new ‘deadline.’” But then came the assault and the investigation, and Trotsky was forced to defend himself against charges that he had orchestrated it himself.

Trotsky and Natalia on a picnic, winter 1939–40.

Alexander H. Buchman Papers, Hoover Institution Archives

In mid-June, after Trotsky accused the monthly
Futuro
and its publisher, Lombardo Toledano, of preparing the moral ground for the assault and thus serving as an arm of the GPU, the magazine responded by suing him for defamation. The suit was joined by sister publication
El Popular
and later by the Communist paper
La Voz de Mexico.
Trotsky and his staff immediately began to organize a counteroffensive, mobilizing Goldman in New York to secure depositions from Soviet defectors, such as ex-spy Walter Krivitsky, on the relationship of the Comintern and the GPU and on how Kremlin funds were distributed among pro-Soviet publications, even in distant lands like Mexico.

Trotsky appeared in court under extremely tight security for the preliminary hearing on July 2, a session that lasted most of the day. The experience seemed to energize him, giving him the chance to strike back at Lombardo Toledano and the other Stalinists who had been harassing him ever since he set foot in the country. Hansen described him
as “working like a steam engine” and “still the dynamo.” On the day after his court appearance, Trotsky exhorted Goldman: “It is imperative not to lose a single hour, so that I can meet my ‘accusers’ well armed with affidavits, concrete dates, general considerations, etc. I await with the greatest impatience your answer.”