The Eagle's Throne

by Carlos Fuentes

  Just look at the mess our “regime” is in. The P first, of course. Who doesn’t wonder what’s going on in the P’s head? What’s his strategy? What does he know? What doesn’t he know? What is he plotting? What is he anticipating? Who does he favor? Who does he despise? There isn’t a single soul, inside or outside the government, who isn’t asking himself this all day long, and that’s why I’m not asking you what you think of the P. Don’t answer that. Just remember that there’s no mystery there. A P has nowhere to hide.

  Don’t answer me, I repeat. You’re better off asking yourself the question in private. And be careful. You’re closer to him than anyone else in the C, and we know that a presidential C is a fruit salad. Who are you going to trust, my love, the cherry or the grape? That’s the bad thing about sharing secrets and that’s where we must proceed with the most caution. Well, at least nobody can ever make heads or tails of the system for filing documents at Los Pinos, and that old archivist— Magoo, Magón, whatever he’s called—doesn’t even know his own name, much less where documents are filed, and which ones have been destroyed as per your orders. Your grand idea—or our grand idea, if you want to be generous with your little darling—was to make all those compromising documents disappear without destroying them, in case they ever came in handy. If our partners started talking we just might or might not happen to have documents to shut them up. . . .

  But the danger’s there, my dear, so don’t ever let your guard down. You know how a P’s mind starts to work when he feels that one of his ministers is no longer useful to him. He doesn’t say, “This man is useless.” Oh no. He says, “This man betrayed me.”

  Now, let’s go over the usual suspects. Who’s your main rival? We know that—Secretary BH. Why is he feared? As far as I can tell he’s a man with no sex appeal who, as such, doesn’t have the slightest chance of becoming a charismatic candidate. Could he nevertheless ascend to the throne? He’s quite an eagle, that one. Everyone considers him a kind of pre-candidate even though his face always seems to say, “Me? I can’t imagine why!”

  For goodness’ sake, of course you and I know why: because he thinks he’s utterly beyond reproach, an idea that he’s been fed over and over again by that political vixen MR. But me, I’ve got another idea bouncing around inside my little head. How can we convince him the old bag’s fooling him by making him believe he’s the P’s favorite successor? Nobody will ever say that to him. He’d have to hit himself on the head with a brick to work it out. But those of us from the Yucatán, my darling, we’re veritable artists of invention, you know that. And that’s where you and I come in to make sure that all this funny business reflects badly on BH and his people. We want everyone to say, “The P made him candidate to get rid of an undesirable politician.”

  Luckily, there are so many power factors, so much wild ambition, my beautiful one, that you and I can indeed do a fair amount of fishing in those turbulent waters. Turbulent due to all the contradictory fishermen out there—that self-serving ex, for one, then that ex-ex-ex in Veracruz, and then that idiot that presides over Congress (let him hear!), the rookie NV, and even MR herself, who’s gotten so out of hand with all that sage advice that one day someone’s going to throw it back at her, using the very same words she uses to warn people with that Cruella De Vil face of hers: “You’re no longer convincing, dear. No matter what you do, they’ll criticize you for it. You’re boring everyone with so much advice.”

  Be careful. Don’t let her know that you despise her and much less that you pity her because she isn’t as beautiful as me, or because you prefer me to her. You have to realize, my darling, that she already despises and pities you and would be all too thrilled to find out you feel the same way.

  But back to our subject, my beloved T. Never forget, not for a second, that all human beings have both defects and virtues, and that our enemies can take advantage of both. Look at me, my lovely. Haven’t you ever noticed that I never look at my hands? Can you guess why? Because when I was a young girl I learned that if I looked down at one of my fingers men would think I was asking for a ring. Or worse—that I’d lost a ring because I was too stupid to hang on to it. And if I could lose a ring, I could lose anything—a fortune, a husband, my virginity, the lottery even!

  That’s why you always see me wearing gloves, even in the sweltering heat of Mérida. But I also wear them so that the tips of my fingers touch no skin but yours, my beautiful bonbon. From time to time you ask, my jealous darling, if there are other men in my life. My love, you don’t need to. I’m an object of desire, that’s all.

  27

  GENERAL CÍCERO ARRUZA TO GENERAL MONDRAGÓN VON BERTRAB

  My good general, things have reached the boiling point and very soon we’ll have to take action. But please, let it be a joint action, taken by two brothers bound by service like you and me, General. Look at what’s happening. Our president’s celebrated democratic politics are sinking faster than a rowboat caught in the middle of the gulf during a hurricane. Trust the people, he says, civil society will come together on its own to resolve internal strife. Give the people their freedom, he says, and they’ll form unions, cooperatives, neighborhood associations. Like fuck they will! General, loosen up on authority and you create a goddamn void. This country’s never been able to govern itself. It doesn’t have the experience. It doesn’t know how. It has always needed a strong hand, a central authority that prevents chaos and eliminates power vacuums. Just look around you: All over the country those power vacuums have been filled by sneaky local bosses who are always waiting to pounce, like tigers.

  I could be talking about a town like Sahuaripa, lost in the desert, where a big shot like Félix Elías Cabezas gains real power in Sonora and exercises it, protected by distance and ignorance, monopolizing the mines, exploiting the export of copper.

  I could be talking about a whole state like San Luis Potosí, where a local boss like Rodolfo Roque Maldonado promises Japanese investors order and security so that they can then use San Luis as a launching pad for flooding the United States with technology exports via the Free Trade Agreement. You’ll say that Herrera created the situation in San Lázaro, but the one who took all the credit (and the yens, or whatever those yellow kamikazes used for bribes) was Maldonado, boss and governor of the state. In other words, he lets people think that it was the interior secretary who established order there, but those Japs with their Fu Manchu eyes know better and say nothing. Don Roque Maldonado protects their interests.

  And as for the Tampico–Matamoros axis, General, where the drug traffic comes in like Adelita in that old song—if by sea on a warship, if by land on a military train—who runs things there? The president? You? Secretary Herrera? No, the guy in charge is the drug-traffickers’ top dog, don Silvestre Pardo, along with the local boss working for him, José de la Paz Quintero. On the Tijuana–Mexicali strip, the whole prostitution racket is controlled by Narciso “Chicho” Delgado, the big boss who poses as a whale lover but makes a living trading in monkey flesh, if you know what I mean, General.

  Shall I go on? Am I telling you anything you don’t already know? Must I tell you that we’ve lost control of both borders, the one in the north to drug cartels, prostitution, and human traffickers; the one in the south to the European revolutionary-tourist trade that inherited those ski mask things from the late (disappeared) Subcomandante Marcos in order to found the Chiapas Socialist Collective, selling junk— balaclavas, huipiles, wooden rifles, manuscripts written by Marcos, condoms with the registered trademark “The Uprising,” Zapatista hats, and miniatures of the Virgin of Guadalupe—to tourists looking for a thrill, and devoting themselves to opening “humanitarian” doors to the Guatemalan Indians fleeing the torture, death, and arson meted out by Guatemala’s elite. Why don’t those white Guatemalans take a lesson from us and promote some interracial mixing so that there isn’t a single pure Indian left? Aside from all that there’s the whole of the southeast, dominated by the sinister “Dark Hand” Vidales from T
abasco.

  For fuck’s sake, General! For fuck’s sake! Are we going to let things go on festering like this? Or are we finally going to take action, you and I, to save the nation through the purifying work of the armed forces, the last stronghold of Mexican patriotism? Are we going to sit through that endless electoral process that will drag on for almost three years? Are we going to let a couple of damn lapdogs like de la Canal or Bernal Herrera get into Los Pinos so that they can string us along even more? Or are we going to find the way, General, to replace President Lorenzo Terán, who has been badmouthed by the press and the general public as an ineffectual bureaucrat with a cushion stuck to his ass? Are we going to find the way, General, to get ourselves a president with a strong hand and a tough character, who can get this damned country in order?

  I know you don’t write letters, not even condolence cards, or Christmas cards, but give me a sign, General, my good friend, one little sign—I’m real good at reading them. . . .

  28

  DULCE DE LA GARZA TO TOMÁS MOCTEZUMA MORO

  Oh, Tomás, I wish I could cry over your grave. But I know the grave is empty. The headstone is there. Your name is there. The dates of birth and death are there:

  TOMÁS MOCTEZUMA MORO

  1973–2012

  But you’re not there. There were two coffins, one on top of the other. A box with a false bottom, with a wax model of you melting away in the top part, and nothing below. Nothing, my love, except for the little pin with the eagle and the serpent that you always wore on your lapel, which ended up in the corner of that false coffin—either because the people who buried you were careless, or because you yourself left it there as a sign of your presence, a way of saying to me, “Dulce, I was here, look for me. . . .”

  What little I have to give me hope! A forgotten pin! An empty coffin! And your wax figure melting away into a puddle of make-believe.

  “Make-believe life.” I learned that from you. That’s what you always said about politics. And yet my pain and loneliness today are so real, Tomás.

  Nobody has helped me. I exist for no one. I existed only for you because that was what you wanted, and I accepted it gratefully.

  I bribed the cemetery guard to let me open the grave. You yourself were the one who said to me, “Everything in Mexico can be bought. How can we put an end to that curse?”

  After they killed you, nobody ever saw your remains. They said that you had been completely disfigured by the bullet that entered your brain. Respect for the dead! But then why is it that your wax figure in the first coffin didn’t have a single wound? Why did your head remain intact, even when it melted? Respect for the dead!

  I had no idea who you were. And you had no idea who I was. We loved each other without knowing, without asking questions. It wasn’t a pact. We didn’t talk about it. The way we met was too mysterious. Mystery is what brought us together and mystery was to keep us together.

  I didn’t know what my body was until you taught me to love it and discover it because you loved it and discovered it, over and over again, revealing it to me. . . .

  “Your eyes change color in the daylight, and at night they become the only light. . . . Your earlobe doesn’t need an earring, just as your sweet, clean hands need no jewels. . . . Your mouth is always as fresh as a fountain . . . and your vagina is the wound that doesn’t scar so that I can hurt it as much as I want. . . . If you had no hair there, I would paint it on, Dulce María. . . . I travel up your body, touching your belly as if it were the naked field where I want to be buried. . . . Your breasts are restless, they bounce up and cry out for attention. . . . Deeper, deeper, deeper as I caress your ass, strong, hard, and generous, as if to compensate for your waist, slender as a birch tree, and I bury my face forever in your long black hair, and make you swear to me that you’ll never cut off that hair, my darling, the black cascade that brings me closer to nature, the true essence of nature that I find in the landscape of your body, the nature I can’t live without . . . and if I die, I want them to wrap my head in your hair so that I can breathe in your scent until the end of the world, my love, my woman, my bride. . . .”

  I can’t remember a time when you didn’t make me feel that I was revealing something that I’d never known I had. The right to my body.

  “Oh, the majesty of your body, Dulce.”

  That wasn’t your real body in the grave. I didn’t know who to go to. And that’s because I’m nobody, my love. The secret lover of Tomás Moctezuma Moro. Nobody. Secret. Like at the beginning. The same. My darling, imagine my shock, my desolation, when I didn’t find you in your own grave and I became mysteriously, once again, the stranger who saw you for the first time nine years ago, and whom you looked at, too, like the stranger you were to me.

  That feeling stays in my soul, my darling. We saw each other without knowing who we were. You were my nameless love, and I your anonymous bride. . . . Because we were already lovers, if not before we met, then from the moment we laid eyes on each other, at that José Luis Cuevas retrospective at the Modern Art Museum in Monterrey, both of us lost in that world of vanished figures and almost invisible colors, as if instead of painting, Cuevas “filled the air,” as you said when you walked over. How could I ever forget your first words: “Cuevas fills the air. . . .”

  I didn’t fully understand what you meant, but I knew, I knew, yes, I realized that only you appreciated what mattered: You had an eye for art and an eye for women.

  I said to myself, “I am woman,” and I smiled.

  I wasted little time in correcting myself.

  “I am a woman,” I said, and stopped smiling.

  Then I felt happy again.

  “I am the woman.”

  You stared at me boldly, with impudence, desire, tenderness, who knows what else. . . . I looked into your eyes, as black and deep as two pebbles stuck forever at the bottom of the sea, which you offered me as if I were a little girl playing on the beach.

  “I am your woman.”

  And then you laughed so I’d feel close to you.

  In your arms I became a woman. When I saw you that night at the museum, you had no name. I didn’t know what to call you.

  “Call me ‘Island.’ ”

  I laughed.

  “That’s not a name,” I said. “That’s a place.”

  “No,” you said, shaking your head of curls, so caressable. “It’s utopia.”

  I stopped laughing.

  “It’s the place that doesn’t exist.”

  Your face grew serious.

  “It’s the place that should exist.”

  You almost frightened me, you were so serious, almost angry, your teeth clenched.

  “I will turn the place that doesn’t exist into the place that should exist.”

  Utopia. I had never heard that word. But what’s so surprising about that? They were all firsts with you—words, things, ideas, sex, love. . . . Of all the people at the Modern Art Museum why did you pick out a completely inexperienced nineteen-year-old girl from a humble family, without work, anxious to learn, not very ugly but not very pretty either? What did you see in me? The perfect companion to go with you to that happy island in your imagination? Was I like an island for you? Something to discover, something to transform, something to believe in?

  Into my hands you put a Mexican novel from the twentieth century by Armando Ayala Anguiano and you said to me, “This is the best title for you, for me, and for everyone, Dulce.”

  “The Desire to Believe,” I said out loud, reading the book cover.

  The desire to believe. That was your invitation to me, my love, to have faith, and one day you said the same thing to the whole country from a platform raised so high that my hand was no longer able to reach yours.

  “We must have faith. We must give Mexico back its hope.”

  That was when I saw you in all the papers, in all the news reports on TV. In those days you were what they called the tapado, “the concealed one.” You lived in the shadows, waiting for
the sun to come out and blind you. That was when, in the most awful way, both hurt and saved by the truth, I knew that you were mine more than ever because you would never be totally mine, because I saw you in a photograph with your wife and three children, and I accepted the silence, the secret, of being nothing to you in your public life and everything to you in private.

  Tomás, my love, you know that I never complained, I understood how things had to be, I never asked anything of you, and I was more than happy; I cherished our love, more secret than ever, far from the stages, the photographs, the speeches. I cherished your confidences because I knew that you shared them with me and only me, and perhaps I never quite understood all the things you set out to achieve—I don’t know anything about politics—but you were the candidate, you wanted to make the country a little bit better, give people back their faith, their hope, their trust. Those were the words you used over and over again.

  Secret lovers. What joy. I wouldn’t change it for anything. I never calculated, I never said to myself, “I’m going to make him choose between me and his family.”

  It never occurred to me, Tomás, because I knew that being secret lovers was the best thing in the world, I knew that even if it hadn’t been for your family and politics, I would have loved you just the same—or rather, I knew that despite your family and political life, I would love you just the same. Your position and your responsibilities only made me love you more, and feel even more pleasure in knowing that you were mine, that you were the master of my body and I was the mistress of yours. I knew that just as surely as I believe in God—you and I, naked and united with no need for explanations, all as inexplicable and joyful as the feeling of your body inside mine. . . .

  And now what was once my pleasure is my pain, my agony, Tomás. I have no one to turn to. That woman María del Rosario, who was so close to you during the campaign, that woman whom you did so much for, helping her onto what you called your “bandwagon,” doesn’t answer my letters. I can see why. She has no idea who I am. I could be a liar, a cheat, a publicity seeker. . . . And when I want to go and talk to someone else, your shadow stops me and begs me to be discreet, cautious, just as if you were protecting me, Tomás, just as if you were saying, from wherever you are, “Dulce, let it be. Don’t rock the boat. I’m telling you this for your own good. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”