The Eagle's Throne (22 page)

46

NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO JESÚS RICARDO MAGÓN

My love, this letter goes out without a signature but you know who it’s for and who it comes from . . . what a lovely verb, “to come.” It can be conjugated in every imaginable form. . . . I’m leaving Veracruz today and I’ll be waiting for you at the Hotel Mocambo. Don’t let it faze you. It’s a kind of Marienbad-on-the-Gulf. A hotel with a hundred years of solitude behind it, inhabited by the ghosts of its golden days circa 1940. Picture it. Eight decades ago. It’s like a white labyrinth, délabré. You go in and out without knowing where you’re going. Just getting to your bedroom is a delicious adventure—or it will be if you’re there waiting for me. I’ve reserved separate rooms, but I can hardly bear the time and distance that keep me from your cinnamon body, like a living tropical statue, replete with jungles and flowers, blackness and sun, secret places and wide open fields. . . .

I don’t think I need to remind you that I love women with equal intensity because in women I see and desire the one thing I’m not. But I also love you, without denying my heterosexual nature, because I see myself in you. In women I see the other and I find that equally alluring. In you I see myself and my passion is enhanced by melancholy. Yes, we’re men, we’re young, but I’ll grow old before you and in that sense, I know that when I make love to you I’m giving you what’s left of my youth. I entrust you with my youth. I love you just as Saint John of the Cross said one should love, unrestrainedly repeating the word “beauty.”

Let us, through this exercise of love I have professed, arrive at seeing one another in your beauty, where, being one and the same in beauty, we see the both of us in your beauty, possessing your singular beauty; such that, looking at one another, each of us may see in the other his own beauty, since one and the other are both your beauty, and I am engulfed by your beauty, and in that way, I will see you in your beauty, and you will see me in your beauty, and then I will appear as you in your beauty, and you will appear as me in your beauty, and my beauty will be your beauty and your beauty will be my beauty; and that way I will be you in your beauty, and you will be me in your beauty; because your beauty will be my beauty, and that is how you and I will see one another in your beauty. . . .

You are not Narcissus’ mirror. You are the pool in which the two of us swim naked. You seal my wound. You are my delicate wound. I have loved only one man in my life, and it is You.

P.S. Don’t even think of going into the water at Mocambo. There are sharks off the coast and the nets a few meters from the shore often have holes in them. They could give you quite a scare! Remember, the good thing about sharks is that they never stay still. If a shark stops moving, he sinks to the bottom and dies there. Do you think the shark dreams while moving around like that? Ah, what a question, my love. And don’t walk along the beach. There isn’t any sand. Just mud. Wait for me with clean feet. And throw this letter to the sharks. If they eat it, perhaps they’ll learn something. They’ll learn to love. Did you know that sharks only fuck once in their sad lives?

47

XAVIER “SENECA” ZARAGOZA TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN

It is with great pain, Mr. President, that I review the course of our relationship, for as I do so I realize that all along I’ve been the gadfly that criticizes your inactivity. A king sitting on a throne, motionless, believing he was ensuring the kingdom’s peace. If you moved your head to the left, it meant war and death. If you moved it to the right, it meant freedom and well-being, desired but utopian.

And now, as I’ve just seen you, as you’ve allowed me to see you, lying in your bed, emaciated, my friend, now only my friend, good and honest man that you are, a president inspired by his love for his country . . . Now that I see you in the throes of death, now I truly understand that a president is neither born nor bred. He’s the product of a national illusion—or perhaps a collective hallucination. Once, I said to you, “Less glory, sir, and more freedom.”

How terrible and cruel politics is: Once you disappear, it’s only a matter of days before your glory and our freedom are lost forever. Mr. President, you’ve left the question of your succession unresolved. How can we make sure the next president is someone like you, a politician who is a decent man like Bernal Herrera, and not a snake like Tácito de la Canal?

How empty and melancholy, my beloved president and friend, my earliest advice to you sounds today: “Take advantage of the grace period at the beginning of the presidency. Honeymoons are brief. And democratic bonds get devalued from one day to the next.”

“The first rule for the exercise of power, Mr. President, is to disregard the immensity of your position.”

“The presidency is like the solar system. You are the sun, and your ministers are the satellites. But you are not God, nor are they angels.”

“The art of politics,” I told you then, “is not the art of the possible. It is the graffiti of the unpredictable. It is the scribble of chance.”

My poor president! Badgered for three years by Herrera’s pragmatism, Tácito’s fawning, and Seneca’s idealism! What would I say to you if this were your first day on the Eagle’s Throne? I’d remind you of the best aspects of our traditional benevolent dictatorship, so that you could endorse them or avoid them as you saw fit: “You don’t have to fear the president who’s passive, rather the president who’s unstoppably active.”

With you the opposite has always been true. Your passivity sparked more doubts than your action. And now, perhaps, you feel the supreme temptation of power. To be a leader who summons the energy of the nation and subjects us all to the voluptuous passivity of total obedience.

That is the easiest thing.

The most comfortable thing.

But it’s also the most dangerous. And you avoided that danger, my beloved, cherished president.

One day you said to me, “They think they’re fooling me by giving me those endless reports to read. They think I’m lethargic—as if I’ve been bitten by a tsetse fly. Wrong. I read at night, and I know everything. I’ve fooled them. I can sleep well at night.”

Yes, but the passive image you projected might be misinterpreted now. People might begin to demand a hyperactive president because authority can change its face from one day to the next (think about the past presidential successions, from Madero to Fox). The public feeds off paradox and adores contrast and contradiction.

Thank you, my dear friend, President Lorenzo Terán, for allowing me into your bedroom, where you’re bedridden, surrounded by nurses, doctors, intravenous tubes, sedatives. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to see your life complete.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again. I know that you haven’t allowed anyone other than your faithful mosquito Seneca to enter this room where power is approaching its end.

Goodbye, Mr. President. . . .

48

CONGRESSWOMAN PAULINA TARDEGARDA TO CONGRESSMAN ONÉSIMO CANABAL

This letter will be delivered to you by Jesús Ricardo Magón, a young aide to the new interior secretary, Nicolás Valdivia. I’m laughing. I can see you now, red as a beet at the idea of me divulging secrets to a government employee, no matter how lowly. You and I, Onésimo, with our determination and political wiles, can pull our Congress back into shape and put a few obstacles in the government’s way. . . . You and I, Onésimo, have all the gray matter we need to exploit the diffused power of our party-ocracy and make life hell for Lorenzo Terán. . . .

You asked for discretion. I’ll give you discretion, Onésimo, together with a present. The medium is the message, they said fifty years ago, and so if Valdivia’s little helper Magón is the medium, then he’s also the message.

This is it. The coast is clear for us to take action. I’ll get straight to the point. Cícero Arruza’s reading of the country’s domestic situation is all wrong. Arruza is a relic left over from another era, his day is over. He believes brute force is the only answer to problems, and that brute force can only be delivered by the army. This is his rather extravagant fantasy: He wants to unite all the governors and local bosses and then stage a military coup so that he can fill what he calls the “power vacuum ” (where would he have learned that?) created by President Lorenzo Terán’s passivity.

I’ve spoken to the leaders of each one of those local power bases, and I tell you, they’re delighted by the president’s passivity. Delighted because it’s in their interests. How could they not be happy about the absence of a central authority? Now they can do exactly what they want. You tell me if Cabezas in Sonora isn’t happy to govern his state with no interference whatsoever from the government. Or look at “Chicho” Delgado in Tijuana, making deals with the coyotes who smuggle illegals across the border and the U.S. immigration patrol that won’t let them through—until Governor Delgado extorts one and pays off the other. It is shameful, my dear Onésimo, an outrage that the forces of law and order in the United States have become so corrupt. I’m blushing. Haven’t I always said that the gringos know how to multiply any Mexican vice by the thousand and hide it by the million?

You will allow me a little joke every now and then, Congressman, won’t you? You who treat me like a nun. . . . I’m being serious again now. You tell me if Roque Maldonado in San Luis Potosí is unhappy about the fact that he deals directly with his Japanese investors; closes deals in El Gargaleote, that mysterious Potosí refuge that once belonged to the legendary strongman Gonzalo N. Santos; and possesses a fortune that the hardworking revolutionary Santos could never have dreamed of, since Maldonado takes a hefty commission with no interference from central government.

You tell me if the
capo di tutti capi
Silvestre Pardo wants some meddlesome government making waves in his Narcomex empire. Need I say more? There isn’t one governor, local boss, or drug trafficker who wants a military government with Cícero Arruza at the top, making off with the lion’s share when it comes to so-called profit distribution. Our general is either blind, crazy, or a complete imbecile. His calculations have failed him miserably. He’s going to find himself all alone in this coup.

Now do you see why it’s important for the government to know, and why the little heartthrob Jesús Ricardo Magón, with his irresistible angel face, should be the emissary?

I laugh, Onésimo, but look at me. The only one who escapes us is the sly, ambitious strongman of Tabasco, Humberto Vidales, “Dark Hand.” He’s always had his eye on the Eagle’s Throne, but since it’s always been just beyond his grasp (to be a soap opera villain, you have to know how to be discreet; you can’t go around curling your mouth, raising your eyebrows, and sniffing, wearing Cruz Diablo’s cape). He’s convinced that sooner or later one of his Nine Evil Sons, as he so lovingly refers to them, will sit on the throne and reclaim his God-given right—or so he thinks—to the presidency.

As for the candidate we’re supporting, Onésimo, let’s keep telling him to stay calm and that the only thing he needs to worry about (just a bit) is that sinister man from Tabasco. As far as the other local bosses are concerned, if we keep out of their affairs, they’ll go along with what
we
want—which is to not rock the boat and to leave their businesses intact.

And who are
we,
my distinguished friend? What do we want? What we want is to be the decisive factor in the presidential succession of 2024. Do a head count, Onésimo. Contrary to what one might believe, Arruza is irrelevant for the reasons I’ve already explained, the best possible outcome of the mission you saw fit to entrust me with.

César León has no immediate chance of re-election. That would mean changing the constitution and God knows how long that could take. Anyway, you and I can make sure things are prolonged indefinitely.

Listen: Congress has three missions. One, to pass laws. Two, to prevent laws from being passed. But the most important mission is to make sure that issues get delayed indefinitely, that nothing ever gets resolved, that the agenda remains full of unfinished business. . . . If not, my dear friend, what are you and I doing here? What’s the point of this operation if we don’t use our ability to put everything off for as long as we can?

“Be careful,” you said, “you don’t want to end up the founding member of the Ides of March Society.”

How well-educated you turned out to be, Onésimo. No wonder you were agriculture secretary under César León. You and I should found the Greek Calends Society. . . .

Let me continue. Andino Almazán, very simply, doesn’t pass muster with the people. Apart from López Portillo, no treasury secretary has ever become president. He really is the villain in this little soap opera, spending six years saying no to everyone who asks him for money. It seems his profession is to be hated, and what the voters want is to love, even if only for a little while before disillusion sets in.

We are left, then, with two serious candidates. Bernal Herrera and Tácito de la Canal.

Don’t be alarmed if I say Tácito must be eliminated.

Nicolás Valdivia sent me, via young Magón, copies of the documents that prove Tácito’s criminal conduct in the MEXEN negotiations. How such a crafty operator allowed an archivist to file such incriminating papers, I have no idea. Magón, who is the son of the archivist, says that his father never lets a single paper disappear. That may be true. But still, why did Tácito let the documents get to the archive instead of sending them straight to the paper shredder? The only thing that occurs to me is that perhaps this is part of the muddy terrain of pride associated with power
—
hubris, Onésimo (a word I’ve already explained to you twice and which I’m not going to explain again). Hubris was what made President Nixon, for instance, zealously save all the tapes that proved him to be a revolting criminal and that ultimately got him expelled from the White House. . . . At every level you’ll find them, Onésimo—governors who save videos of their murders, military commanders who have their shootings filmed, torturers who adore replaying their atrocities on-screen. . . . Is Tácito any different? I don’t think so. Nixon, to return to our best example, had an archive labeled “The White House Files,” which contained a full record of all his unethical deeds and crimes, but which was ready to be removed from the White House if he lost the election.

There’s definitely something fishy going on with Tácito. His signature is on the documents. But signatures are easily forged. What I’m asking myself now is this: Who handed those papers over to Cástulo Magón, the archivist? I don’t think it was de la Canal. If we can find out who said to him, “Don Cástulo, don’t forget to file this . . .” then our mystery will be solved.

I repeat. Eliminate Tácito. María del Rosario has all the original documents and she’s already shared the secret with her darling Nicolás Valdivia, whom she’s pulled up to the top, and of course she’s also shared it with Bernal Herrera, her ex-lover and the other candidate for the Eagle’s Throne.

Nicolás Valdivia, I repeat, sent me (via young Magón) copies of the documents that prove Tácito’s criminal conduct in the MEXEN case. Again, how could such a sly dog have overlooked the fact that the archivist was holding on to such incriminating evidence? I can’t figure it out. But I now see why President Terán did everything he could to accelerate Tácito’s resignation.

And Herrera’s, too. Herrera emerges, then, as the favorite. Magón told me the president himself killed the story that Tácito had cooked up against María del Rosario and Herrera, making it very clear, in the process, that Herrera was his chosen one.

This is the best picture we have of things as they stand now. Very well, Onésimo, the real picture encompasses all these possibilities, with one small exception: The invisible issue here will not be the presidential candidate issue, as we’ve all been led to believe, but the issue of the acting president in the event of the resignation or absence of the president in office.

I can just see your face. Cover up your astonishment. And don’t think César León’s scheming or Cícero Arruza’s threats can prompt the president to resign. There’s something bigger going on here. Something very big. Young Magón told me that Valdivia told him that the president’s trusted adviser Seneca saw Terán in a state of acute physical debilitation.

How does Valdivia know this? Because Seneca told María del Rosario, whom he’s secretly in love with, and our little Eva Perón told her protégé Valdivia. There it is, Onésimo. Everyone’s spying on everyone else, stealing documents from one another, and maybe even spying on themselves when nobody’s looking. . . .

Which confirms the notion that in politics secrets are open and only the loudest voices tell secrets. Work out the mystery that’s there in what you know, Onésimo, and forget the secrets: They’re empty vessels. Distractions. Better to think—and think hard—about what you know.

That’s where the mystery is.