The Eagle's Throne

by Carlos Fuentes

  “Take your places at the desks,” I ordered them. “Sit down and start working. Don’t you get it? The people who used to work here aren’t coming back.”

  When the umpteenth Zapatista uprising broke out, this time in Guerrero, I ordered the troops to paint crosses on two out of every three doors in Chilpancingo, with a sign reading, “Here died everyone who opposed General Cícero Arruza and the government.”

  Did you know all this already, General? Maybe yes, maybe no. It doesn’t matter. Now that the alcohol’s loosened my tongue, I want to make it real clear who you’re dealing with, I want you to know I’m not trying to fool you. You can count on me for laundry operations like the one in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, and you can keep your white gloves on— I won’t let anyone get them dirty. [Long silence, followed by a mariachi yelp.] Aee-aee-aee, this is Cícero Arruza here, one hell of a general who knows how to give his enemies a nugget of shit and pass it off as a hard candy. Enemies, me? You’ve got to be fucking kidding. Erase that, Mauser, General Bonbon’s a decent man, we don’t want to offend him. . . . Mauser, you’ve got to learn to tell the difference between vulgar louts like you and me, and queers like General Bonbon.

  “Forgive your enemies,” the Bishop of Huamantla once said to me.

  “I can’t,” I told him, dead serious. “I haven’t got any left. I’ve killed them all.”

  Have you ever seen my photos of the men I’ve shot? There’s one that I keep above my bed. It’s famous. A rebel ringleader just before getting it. He’s got his cowboy hat on. Cigarette dangling from his lips. One leg in front of the other. Thumbs tucked into his belt loops. And smiling from ear to ear. Waiting for the grim reaper with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. That’s how I want to die, General, now that I’m five sheets to the wind I’m telling you because you’re like my brother, my soul brother and my comrade-in-arms, that’s how Cícero Arruza wants to die, laughing his head off in front of a firing squad of traitors and sons of bitches. [Another long pause in the recording.] Oh, General, I’ve never had a shred of luck in life—when’s it going to get better? That depends on you. You give the order and I’ll carry it out. Easy as anything. The police take the blame for the crimes—that way we keep the army in the clear. I swear to you, I know how to carry out orders to the limit. Not for nothing people say I’ve got the face of a man with no friends. I’ve got no friends! Not even you, General. I obey you. You’re my superior. But you’re not my friend. That wouldn’t be good for you. I assure you. Being my friend would be hazardous to your health. On the other hand, you can count on me for loyalty and solid knowledge of the territory I’m heading to. I know I have the support of people who count. Governors and local strongmen who exercise the power that our democratic president refuses to exercise because he thinks society is capable of governing itself. Yeah, right. Hell will freeze over first. Mexicans only understand brute force. Cabezas in Sonora. Quintero in Tamaulipas. Delgado in Baja California. Maldonado in San Luis. They’re all sick of the dumbass democratic government and are ready to join forces with us. . . . I can’t speak for the big man in Tabasco because you can never tell how that one’s going to react. One day he promises his full support and then the next day he goes back on his word. Just so you can see I’m not hiding things from you, General. And as for all those other candidates jockeying for the succession, they’ll be scared shitless when they see that the hard core, guys with the military leading them on, have beaten them at their own game and are ready to take control in the interest of national security. I’ve already got ex-President César León’s public funeral all set up. No, no, I’m not going to kill him; you don’t announce crimes, you commit them. For the scheming César León I’m going to organize a funeral procession that will go past his window at noon. To see if he gets the hint, you know. As for Bernal Herrera, we can just let him be. He’s like President Terán’s double, and nobody wants a second act in this play. As for Tácito de la Canal, we’ve got no choice but to eliminate him. That bald bastard knows too many secrets that could damage too many people. The new kid at the interior office, Valdivia, is wet behind the ears. I doubt if he’s got any underarm hair yet. I’ll fix him. Right on, man! And as for that gossip María del Rosario Galván, I’ve got a little surprise in store for her. They say she likes a fuck, don’t they? Well, she’s really going to have her fun when twenty of my men break into her house, destroy everything, and then fuck her, all of them. Let’s see, who’ve I left out, General? Ah yes, the treasury secretary. He’s going to be our candidate for interim president, and I really mean interim because he won’t last more than two days on the Eagle’s Throne before he turns it all over to the armed forces—I mean the junta, General, presided over by you, with my patriotic support to reestablish order, restore people’s sense of security, reinstate the death penalty. And we’ll chop off the thief ’s hands, the rapist’s penis, the attacker’s legs, and the kidnapper’s eyes if we have to because that’s priority number one in this country—safety and crime, and that’s what drives our patriotism, the safety of our people, not personal ambition, and that’s why we’ll get unanimous support. The days of impunity are over. No more robberies. No more kidnappings. No more murder—except for the ones you and I consider necessary. Order, order, order, order. My wish . . . is for . . . natural death . . . to no longer exist. [Fading voice, garbled words.] General, only stupid people play it safe . . . ooh, I know I’m a full-blooded Mexican because, I’m telling you, for me every night is Independence Day. [Loud burp.] And don’t think any less of me because I’ve been straight with you. And answer me quickly, will you? We have to move now. We’ve been down a long road together, General. Answer me. You always just sit there listening and you never say a damn thing. I understand your silence to mean alliance and agreement. Shh, no flies are going to get into my mouth . . . just tequila, pal. . . . Forgive me, General. Don’t make me think you’re having second thoughts about our plan. Don’t make me feel like a prickly old nopal that’s ignored unless it’s got fruit. . . . And you know something? Have you ever killed a man? After the first one, the rest are easy. . . .

  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?