The press reports that Mr. Browder of the American Communist Party has come here to warn Mexican Communists against any communication with Trotsky. He says “unity at all costs” means supporting Stalin. Lombardo Toledano and many other Mexican party leaders have dined at the Riveras’ table, eaten the food of this kitchen. But Diego’s membership in their party is now revoked. They all ignore his invitations to come here and meet with Lev.

The heat is unbearable. Van goes out to a bar at night, the Golden Earring, just to get some air, he says. Lorenzo goes along, hoping to meet girls. Do you want to come too? Van asked. But probably the bar would be just another airless place.

1 June

The commander in chief of the Red Army, executed for treason. Tukhachevsky had expressed support of Trotsky’s position, and for this reason only he is dead. Lev dreads there will be a purge, thousands of officers affected. Nothing else here to report.

4 June

A telegram this morning from Lyova, as always in code. The purges in the Soviet Union are terrible. The chief of the Soviet Secret Service has resigned his post in protest of the killings, and announced his loyalty to Trotsky and the Fourth International.

Lev fears for the safety of Chief Reiss, but is cheered by news he has broken from Stalin. A congenial day in the office, despite sweltering heat. Lev had the big red worktable from his office carried outside to the courtyard. The commissar was quite a sight, working in his big straw hat and old-fashioned balbriggans. Even Van has finally stripped from gob shirts to Vee Lines, and over the course of the day his great Dutch shoulders began to glow. Tonight they are nearly the same maroon color as the desk.

This afternoon he knocked over the ink bottle and laughed about it, for a change. His sympathies are improving. He gratefully accepted help with changing the typewriter ribbon, and later with a repair of the electrical cord of the Ediphone. He complimented a small correction in a translation, saying we make a fine team. Who knows where else the pair of us might work, outside of these walls, if such a day should come.

5 June

Señora Frida’s wish this evening was to dine intimately with the Visitors. Natalya is not well and remained in bed. Van went out for the evening.

8 June

Let it be noted: Every time Sra. Frida brings out a tray of tea, the commissar lights up like the sun. He used to bear interruptions with polite tolerance. Now he glances up often to see if it’s time yet for another. Listening for the jingle of bracelets. Van agrees, Lev’s behavior is strange. Today Lev and the señora went in the automobile to Sra. Cristina’s house on an undisclosed mission, and stayed several hours, not for the first time. The lack of security is extremely worrisome. Frida, this is not an opinion.

10 June

Today while Lev was out for the afternoon, he instructed the office should be well cleaned and the table moved back indoors. Rains are expected.

Evidently the commissar didn’t expect such a thorough tidying-up. Van found a box of letters that worry him greatly. The nature of these letters may be known to Sra. Frida. The new workers need not only your husband’s murals, but also what you offer: beauty, truth, passion. True art and revolution are joined at the lips and the heart. Some letters, even more explicit, had been placed inside books he’s borrowed from Sra. Frida. He means to return these later, evidently. The letters remain in place.

Tonight Van paces like a prisoner around his cot in this tiny cupboard of a room. He sucks on licorice pastilles when he is anxious, after first laying out the evening’s ration end-to-end as Mother used to do with her cigarettes.

“Can we say anything about this, to anyone?”

“How could we?”

Van is desperate for his chief’s safety. And feels loyalty to Natalya as well; he has lived with them so many years. He wants this behavior explained. But not the explanation.

“For the sake of heaven,” he keeps saying, alternately pacing and slumping onto his cot. His broad shoulders and white V-shirt glow in the darkness of this bedroom with its closed-up windows. “I thought she looked up to him as a father. For the sake of heaven, she calls him El Viejo.”

“The old man is only five years older than Diego. Maybe she says that to disguise her feelings.”

Bricked into this tiny cell: two men wrapped in heat like a blanket, whipped into two entirely separate frenzies. At the root of each man’s distress, although from entirely separate quarters: the damages wrought by love, the cruelties of sexual attraction.

He hasn’t any notion. In a moment he will be naked, it happens every night. Innocently he lays out his body, piece by piece like a banquet. His long, flat belly like a white-flour tortilla. His beautiful feet extended beyond the wildest hopes of his little cot.

“How can they be so foolish?” he keeps asking.

“Love can be like a sickness, Van. They didn’t want it to happen.”

11 June

Four of Sra. Frida’s paintings will be included in an exhibition at the National University. Likely she is happy about it, though she has not mentioned this, or anything else of a personal nature, since the last inspection of this journal. She comes to the house almost daily to see Lev, but avoids the staff. Most especially she avoids Van.

The personal confidences of her cook, for which she has earnestly asked on several occasions, have gone unnoticed here, or at any rate passed without comment.

12 June

An unforgettable outing: strange and wondrous, but in the end, bitter humiliation. The confidences of this report have been used against their author. Fact, not opinion.

The workings of a household are like those of the world. The Russians tolerate Stalin’s tyranny, Lev says, only because they know nothing else, from centuries of isolation under the Tsar. So it may be here, as well. So it may be with a mistress whose cruelty merely contains her past. Cruelties imposed on her by a husband, or life itself.

Yet, as Lev said at his trial: our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

The authorized reporting of history, then: Sra. Frida proposed the outing as a kindness to all, “to escape this insufferable heat.” But Natalya of course is still unwell, and Diego too busy even to be told about the outing. The escapees included only herself, Lev, and his two secretaries—two pairs, like playing cards in her hand. She arranged it with more than the usual secrecy and drove the motorcar herself because César can’t keep his mouth shut, she said. And that much is true.