The Eagle's Throne

by Carlos Fuentes

  I repeat, Mr. President, please pardon the occasionally brutal honesty with which I advise you, but that’s why you took me on: to tell you the truth. I warned you of this from the very first day. A politician can pay an intellectual, but he can never trust him. The intellectual will eventually, inevitably, disagree with the politician, and for the politician this will always be construed as a betrayal. Malicious or ingenuous, Machiavellian or utopian, the powerful man always thinks he’s right, and the person who opposes him is either a traitor, or at least dispensable.

  9

  MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA

  I realize, Bernal, that you must carry out a full security check before allowing a complete unknown like Nicolás Valdivia into the inner sanctum of the presidency. I’ve read with great care the dossier you sent me. Born December 12, 1986, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Mexican father, American mother. Both worked in El Paso, Texas, but were Mexican residents. Nicolás’s birth certificate can be found in the public records office of Ciudad Juárez. Parents killed in a car accident when Valdivia was fifteen.

  Then there’s a very large gap until Valdivia reappears in Paris, a student at the same college you and I attended. I tested him out. He’s very familiar with the subjects and the teachers there. At the Mexican embassy in France he met General Mondragón von Bertrab, at the time the military attaché to the mission. Von Bertrab used the young ENA student for writing up reports, collecting information, etc. It was the general who brought him back to Mexico, where Valdivia spent five years studying on his own in his native state of Chihuahua.

  What happened to him between the age of fifteen and twenty-two? I’ve asked our current defense secretary, von Bertrab, for information. He simply smiled. What can one really know about the life of a teenage orphan forced to earn a living all on his own?

  Von Bertrab assuaged my fears. If you need confirmation, just ask him. Nicolás was a bit of a vagabond: working on Mexican tankers and Dutch freighters that often dropped anchor at Tampico, reading a lot, studying when he could find the time, finishing off the subjects he needed for his degree. And then finally, he got himself accepted at the ENA thanks to the intervention of the general, who backed the application with all the necessary documents attesting to Valdivia’s unusual and difficult education, his hard work, his tremendous efforts. You know—a youth straight out of a story by Jack London or Ernest Hemingway. . . .

  Can you ask for a better recommendation, Bernal? Perhaps he has some mistakes buried in his past, but I must ask you once again to trust my feminine intuition. Nicolás Valdivia looks at me with the face of an angel. He tells me he loves me. And I let him love me. But I’ve also seen that other look, surreptitious, the one he has when he thinks I’m not looking. That “lean and hungry” look that Shakespeare portrayed in Julius Caesar. The look of ambition. A little devil with the face of an angel? What else could we possibly ask for if not this, dear friend, to defeat Tácito de la Canal? Let Valdivia owe us everything, and give us everything, too. My intuition tells me that he’s our ideal agent. You yourself have always told me that in politics new blood is necessary, even if it’s dangerous.

  Darling, let me be the one to take the risk and pay the price for the damage, if any. You and I are playing a game of political realism. Idealistic at times, like our president was, so disastrously on January 1. But in the end, we must be realists, because we must deal with de facto responses to our de jure behavior. The good thing about realpolitik is that you can do an about-face and still keep your basic principles intact. Nicolás Valdivia is an accident of realpolitik, yours and mine. We can get rid of him as easily as we’ve furthered his career.

  Believe it or not, I’ve gone so far as to tell him that when he makes it to the presidency I’ll be his, sexually. And I think he believed me! Or at least my proposal sparked his imagination and his desire.

  Be that as it may, we needed to get one of our own into the tarantula’s cave. If our little ant Valdivia gets stung and dies, tant pis pour lui. We’ll just replace him with someone else. For the moment, he’s our man in Los Pinos. Leave it to me, I’ll take care of duping and manipulating him as I see fit. And rest assured, if he’s smart, he’ll be a faithful servant.

  When I said to him, “You’ll be the president of Mexico,” young Valdivia didn’t even flinch. He showed no astonishment. Perhaps he thought just what you’re thinking now: What if he betrays us, what if his indiscretion or ambition gets the better of him and he reveals our plan?

  I think this boy is very intelligent. He knows how to read people’s eyes. He read mine: If you betray me, nobody will believe you. They’ll just think you’re an ambitious little operator and perhaps a very big fool. I don’t need you as a victim. I need you as an ally. A little Lucifer like you is exactly what I need.

  He’s as vain as he is astute. He believes me. We will, however, run into problems when he’s stripped of his illusions. He may react vindictively. We must make very sure that our victims have no weapons for revenge.

  10

  “LA PEPA” ALMAZÁN TO TÁCITO DE LA CANAL

  My love, my precious baldy, how could I possibly mind writing letters to you since writing letters is, in fact, all I’ve done since the day we became lovers, and I’ve been careful enough, now more than ever, my dearest love, not to mention your sacred name in writing? You know how I feel: I’d love it if one day, after many years have passed, someone were to open the old trunk that once belonged to my grandmother from the Yucatán and chance upon my bundle of love letters, which by then will no longer be the letters of an unfaithful wife but of a romantic, passionate lover, which is what I am to you, my chubby little baldy, my “better-than-nothing” as the nasty gossipmongers call you simply because they’ve never been lucky enough to know your scrumptious, delectable tongue, long and soft when you kiss me all over my body, my body as perfect as that of an alabaster Venus, as you like to say. . . . But enough of these pleasures, my anonymous lover, let’s get to the point, which is the ever-increasing chumminess between that scheming MR and your rival, Secretary BH. You’re too good sometimes, my saintly little sweetheart: Your loyalty to the P blinds you to the people who want to bring you down, calling you an unscrupulous ass-kisser. That’s exactly what that diabolical little duo is up to: They want to make you look like another amoral ass-kisser who uses his proximity to the P to rise in the ranks hoping to become P himself at the next election. Let’s not play dumb, my darling T, we’re past the third year of the “period” (and I’m not referring to my heavenly hormones), and the only thing that matters now is the succession of the P.

  This is how I see things. MR has allied herself with BH, whose strength is his alleged serenity and equanimity, his reputation as an honest man in a nation of thieves. He leaves all the dirty work to MR, who commands the P’s attention, since the P, as you already know, is a grateful man, and when they were nobodies MR was his sweetheart and taught him all the tricks of the political trade. The good and bad thing about the P is that he’s a grateful man. So find a way, my handsome, of making him more grateful to you than to anyone else. Things are getting hairy (sorry, sweetheart, that wasn’t a dig at you, my beautiful baldy), and if we really want to get what we’re after, you and I will have to find that diabolical little couple’s weak spot. We have an advantage that also happens to be a disadvantage. My admirable husband is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing makes him budge; he’s boring but safe. Now, were he to hear about some shady move on the part of our little couple, he’d go straight to the P with the information, as sure as Moses appeared on the Mount armed with the Ten Commandments.

  My husband is a genius when it comes to making people feel guilty. We all know that the P can’t bear to feel guilty. The only thing my husband needs to do, then, to make the P doubt, is reveal one of BH’s slipups. Believe me, my adorable tortilla, the best way to get the P on our side is by planting the seed of doubt in his mind. You know he’s a man who needs security, security, always more se
curity. Let’s not fool ourselves. He’s even willing to tolerate corruption as long as it’s safe— that is, predictable and reliable. Take the case of our communications secretary, Felipe Aguirre. We all know, as does the P, that for every contract he authorizes he takes a cut tastier than a rumba dancer’s ass. The P knows it and doesn’t care, he’s got that theory of his about corruption as a lubricant, which to me sounds like getting done up the ass (I suppose! ). The communications secretary is a swine. It’s well-known, accepted, understood, however you want to put it.

  But BH! Moral rectitude, honesty, and all those other things that don’t feed a man are what people (especially our ineffable Mr. P) expect from him. As such, my sexy baldy, all we need to do is catch BH or that shiftless MR in some kind of sleazy deal to thwart the latter’s ambition for power. The P already trusts you like no one else, for his own reasons. He’s always saying so: “I don’t make a move without T.” “T’s always more than enough for my needs.”

  Even here in Mérida everyone knows what they say at the P’s office. “T is my most loyal servant, I could never make a move without T, I trust T more than I trust myself, T is the son I never had. . . .”

  And so on and so forth.

  My adorable little tortilla, we must be even more astute than the eagle that climbed the thorny nopal without asking permission first. The eagle that graces the presidential chair!

  What advantages do we have? Our discretion, for starters. There’s no better training for politics than adultery. Little secrets, little secrets. Big surprises, big surprises. Nobody suspects us, nor would they ever think of connecting us in any way. I live here in the land of the pheasant and the deer, and there isn’t a soul who could possibly suspect a thing about our little romantic escapades in Cancún. Good Lord! In that hippie wig, nobody on earth would ever recognize you at the hotel, and please forgive me for saying so, my sweet handsome thing, but the last time we went to the beach a couple of young gringos invited me to go dancing with them at a disco. “Leave your father at home,” they said, “he spends the whole day napping anyway.”

  Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, my darling, but I’m telling you this to make you realize that you and I have been discreet, extremely discreet, and on that account we can’t be faulted. You, for your part, have always been a teacher of civil law at the National University, a respected congressman for the now defunct PRI, first a loyal campaigner and then a headhunter for the erstwhile candidate, now for the presidency. Unsullied by chicanery. They could accuse you—and with good reason—of being a horny lech, my darling, although that’s no sin, not even a venial one. But a thief, never. You don’t have to say anything about this, not to me, darling. I know how you live, in that tiny one-bedroom apartment in Colonia Cuauhtémoc. That sickening smell of cooking, garbage, and piss that wafts up the shaft in the stairway. Not even an elevator! And your three Sears suits, your six pairs of shoes, so ancient they’re actually from that ancient old shop El Borceguí, your two Basque berets for protecting your bald pate in January. My God! You’re an ascetic, my tortilla! What they don’t know, of course, is that baldness is a sign—secondary, they say, but a sign nonetheless—of virility, and even if you’re modest in every other aspect, your masculine gifts, my irrepressible man, are still peerless. Why, it’s as if God the Father gave you almost everything in small sizes with one exception, that Tarzan trouser snake, that Popeye prick, that chimpanzee chili that’s very much your own, my bashful one, but it also belongs to me, the woman who so adores you, and asks you to think hard because we’ve only got two more years to achieve our goal.

  I adore you, my dear T. Please tell me when I can see you again, and I repeat: Keep your hands clean and your spine straight, but above all watch it, my love, keep your eyes open, and be prepared to be a bit of a bastard. . . .

  11

  NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

  Thank you for allowing me to address you in the familiar, María del Rosario. It’s a gift, especially because it makes up for the position you’ve put me in. I know it’s the president’s decision. I know that I can thank him through you for the fact that I’m now sitting at a desk in the hallowed halls of the executive branch. But what a price you’ve made me pay! To have to deal with Tácito de la Canal all day! Everything you told me about him pales in comparison to the dismal truth. If I’m able to bear him at all it’s only because I love you and am grateful for all the help you’ve given me. Besides, I respect your reasons. My first post in the Terán administration is quite close to the president, in the office that’s the heart of the country’s highest authority, at the service of the president’s chief of staff, Tácito de la Canal.

  I must be disciplined about this and simply accept the daily company of this repugnant man. Obey him. Respect him. If this is not the best and most genuine proof of my love for you, María del Rosario, I don’t know what is, other than romantic suicide in the manner of young Werther. You tell me that I have to start somewhere, and I do hope that my tenure in this office is brief and instructive. I really am repelled by the sickening obsequiousness of Mr. de la Canal: the way he bows before the president, the way he always stands at the president’s side like a cardinal next to a king, and that servile way in which he hurries to arrange the president’s chair each time Terán stands up and sits down. Must Tácito always unfold and place the president’s napkin on his lap at mealtimes? Meanwhile, our casual, unpretentious Lorenzo Terán eats in shirtsleeves and tosses bits of meat to his dog, El Faraón. I can’t decide whether the chief of staff would rather feed the dog himself, or if he’d actually prefer to be the dog and receive those presidential scraps on all fours.

  María del Rosario, if you wished to offer me a crash course in the iniquities brought about by political servility, you couldn’t have chosen a better place or a more consummate subject. I can offer you a basic analysis already, and I’ve only been in this office a week. Tácito de la Canal is a master of deceit, daring in the shadows, humble in the light of day, generous when it suits him, but a miser by nature. Just look at how he treats his subordinates. He evinces fear and resentment because he knows that he is not a subordinate but might go back to being one.

  There’s a secretary at the office who stands out because of the strange outfits she wears to work. She’s about forty years old—and looks it—but dresses like a little girl. Not a teenager, María del Rosario, but strictly, literally, like a little girl. Curly ringlets crowned by a baby blue bow. Blue and pink taffeta dresses, white ankle socks with embroidered angels at the edges, and patent leather Mary Janes. Her only concessions to adulthood are the abundant layers of powder she piles on her face to hide her wrinkles, the bold vermilion-colored lipstick she wears, the waxed eyebrows and mascara-caked eyelashes.

  The minute I laid eyes on her I knew this woman had a secret, and the right thing, the human thing, was to respect that.

  Imagine my revulsion, my horror, when yesterday I found a Barbie doll sitting on the swivel chair of this child-secretary, who grew very flustered when she saw it and read the card stuck to the Barbie doll’s blond mane with a hairpin.

  I don’t know what the card said, but she read it, burst out crying, and tossed the doll into the trash. I wanted to know what this was all about, and Penélope, an older, stocky, and very forthright secretary, told me that Mr. de la Canal gets his kicks humiliating Doris (that’s the woman-child’s name). He sends her gifts meant for a ten-year-old girl and taunts her constantly by saying things like: “What would your mommy say? That you aren’t a very hardworking little girl. That the teacher should punish you.”

  Then Doris went into Tácito’s office and came out half an hour later, crying but trying to hide her sobs, completely disheveled, carrying the baby blue bow in her hand, adjusting her bra. . . .

  Penélope says that de la Canal simply can’t live without a female employee to abuse, and in Doris he’s found the ideal victim. Now, I always call first or knock on the door before entering Tác
ito’s office, but yesterday I couldn’t stand it any longer and I walked straight in when Doris was alone with de la Canal. There he was, clutching that overgrown child, his right hand caressing her breast, his left hand digging into her frilly panties, while he said into her ear, “Don’t tell your mommy or else she’ll punish you very badly. If you’re good to me, I’ll buy you more dolls. Respect your mother, fear her, and obey her in everything— except when it comes to the things you and I do together, little slut.”

  I swear to you, María del Rosario, Tácito de la Canal’s cruelty is even more abhorrent than his perversion. He does such infinitesimally hateful things—for example, each week he goes through all the supply closets in the office, counting out all the pencils, the sheets of letterhead, paper clips, erasers, scissors, folders, pens, et cetera. Yesterday, Penélope beat him to it and replaced all the office supplies that had gone missing.

  “I keep an exact count, sir,” she said. “If you like, we can go through it together and you’ll see nothing is missing.”

  “Did you just put them all back in time, Penélope?” the arrogant de la Canal asked.

  “I never took them, sir.”

  “Have you been snooping through my desk, Penélope?”

  “My job is to see that nothing is missing, don Tácito.”

  Do you know what I did, María del Rosario? I took Doris by the arm, dragged her to Fratina, and dressed her in black from head to toe, black tailored suit, black stockings, black stiletto heels, Chanel handbag, the works, and then I took her to her mother’s house in Colonia Satélite. The poor girl was frightened to death, and once we walked through the door I introduced her anew to her mother, a dried-up old hag who was staring aimlessly at a ball of yarn in her hands, sitting in a wheelchair with a jug of lemonade and an arsenal of pills at her side. Oh, yes, and an ugly cat on her lap.