“That’s it, Miquel. I’m going back to the bunkhouse, before I turn into a snowman.”
“Yes, sir, of course . . .” He was about to walk off, but seemed to change his mind. “One second, sir!” he called to Jack before he disappeared.
“Yes?”
“I heard you before . . . when you were ordering in the store, and well . . . from what I could make out, you seem to have money.”
Jack was suspicious. He’d heard about professional con men, and it seemed too much of a coincidence that this man was taking an interest in his money. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” he said, turning to go back to the bunkhouse.
“Sir, I’m sorry if I’ve bothered you. I just wanted you to know that I might be able to get hold of that rack of ribs you wanted.”
Jack stopped to look at the little man who was proposing what nobody in that remote place was supposed to be able to do. His smile seemed sincere. Jack pursed his lips and gave himself a moment to reflect.
“Tell me one thing. Is that strange hat that falls over your ear some kind of symbol of the OGPU?”
“Ha ha! The secret police?” He burst into laughter. “By Lenin’s whiskers! No, sir! This is a barretina!”
“And what does that mean?”
“If I had to tell you my life story out here, we’d freeze to death before the end of the first chapter.” He gestured unsubtly toward the canteen in the American village.
“All right. We’ll have a drink and talk about those ribs. But stop calling me sir; it makes me uneasy.”
On the third vodka, the little man moved on from small talk and began to explain how gunmen had forced him to flee his beloved Barcelona. He revealed that as a teenager, he had mixed with people with anarchistic tendencies, people with whom he fantasized about a future that was fairer for everybody. He was not yet eighteen, and every evening, when he came out of the libertarian institute he attended, he would dash off to trade union meetings or rallies to enjoy the fiery speeches on solidarity, equality, and the struggle of the working classes. At those gatherings, his heart would burn, and he would rail against the employers like the rest of the workers who surrounded him, even though his only work was helping his father sell beans from the family store on the Rambla de Catalunya. But that detail didn’t prevent him wanting to help his comrades defeat the bosses who oppressed them.
“In time, I gained some prominence in the CNT, and I was active in important strikes like the Canadiense, in which we managed to make the employers accept an eight-hour workday. But then things turned ugly. Some low-life bosses hired gunmen to murder our union comrades. They would appear from nowhere and shoot them in the back of the head. They told me I’d be next. Some people I knew decided to flee to Paris and persuaded me to go with them. There I met a Russian girl who worked for Comintern, you know, Communist International. I fell in love and came to live with her. In the end, she left me for a Soviet soldier, and I stayed here, doing more or less the same job I did in my store back home.”
Jack had to stop himself from yawning. Miquel seemed like a nice guy, but he talked too much about matters that didn’t interest Jack. “And the hat? Don’t you ever take it off?” That was all he could think to say.
“The barretina?” He smiled and removed it to show it to Jack. “It belonged to my grandfather. It always catches people’s attention, they ask me about it, and it gives me a chance to tell them about my home.”
Jack filled Miquel’s glass again, hoping he’d at least be quiet while he drank. He took advantage of the pause and asked him about the cost and provenance of the rack of ribs he’d assured him he could supply. Miquel moved closer and whispered in Jack’s ear.
“That’s my secret,” he said quietly. “If I give it away, I’m done for.” He added that he had contacts in some of the farming cooperatives that supplied the Avtozavod kitchens, but that trade of that kind was strictly forbidden. If caught, one was sent to a prison camp in Siberia. “That’s why it’s so expensive,” he added.
“How much?”
Miquel pretended to do the sums. “Two hundred rubles.”
Jack looked at him. Though he had money to burn, two hundred rubles was more than an ordinary worker’s monthly wage. He decided to try his luck. “I can offer you a hundred.”
Miquel shook his head. He took another sip of vodka, looked from side to side to make sure no one was listening, and moved in again until he was almost kissing Jack’s ear. “Make me a better offer.”
“But in the American store, they said it’d cost fifty!” Jack complained.
“Then order it there, and wait a couple of years for it to arrive. Look, Jack, the problem isn’t the cost of the pork. It’s paying the guys who have to look the other way and keep their mouths shut, and just that will cost a hundred rubles, whether it’s a rack of ribs or a chop.”
“And you pocket fifty. That doesn’t sound very Communist.”
“You don’t know my problems. If you’re not interested . . .” He finished his drink and stood up.
Jack stopped him. “Four hundred rubles. But I want the whole pig, from snout to trotters.”
17
For the next few weeks, Jack felt like a rat lost in a maze.
Every morning he donned his white overalls to go on his inspection round. He started in the turbine plant, where the power used in the foundry was generated, and from there he went on to the engine factory, where they forged the motors and gearboxes, before continuing to the press shop, where they molded the various parts of the body that, after being painted, were taken to the assembly line and mounted on a chassis to which the wheels had already been coupled. However, despite the frenetic pace of the work, Jack was barely able to complete his inspection of the four areas before the end of the week. In the Soviet Union, the workweek consisted of five working days followed by one day off, so his downtime was not always on a Sunday, but rotated. Since Joe Brown and the Danielses had different shifts, his days off never coincided with theirs, so he used his time away from work to go over the reports compiled during the week.