The Eagle's Throne

by Carlos Fuentes

  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.

  49

  MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA

  President Lorenzo Terán has died. It’s like losing a good father, Bernal. All my life I’ve lived with the repugnant image of my own father, who was tyrannical and corrupt. Sometimes he appears in my nightmares. I wake up, shouting at him, “Go away! Disappear! You’re worse dead
than you were alive!”

  When Franco died, Juan Goytisolo, anti-Franco always (he’s now eighty-nine and lives somewhere in the medina in Marrakech), couldn’t help giving a requiem for the stepfather who subjugated the Spanish for forty years.

  Lorenzo Terán, on the other hand, was a good patriarch. Perhaps too good. I call him “father,” but really he was our son. Your son and mine, Bernal. We made him. We persuaded him to give up his business in Coahuila and become president in the midst of our multiparty catastrophe, from which not one political group has emerged unscathed, as if they were eight spoiled, measles-ridden children locked up in a room together.

  Lorenzo Terán, on the other hand, was clean, unfettered, industrious. And as if that weren’t enough, Bernal, he was ours. Nevertheless, you and I made a decision. We were not going to manipulate him. We’d be loyal and we’d respect his position and his autonomy. We’d serve him. We’d advise him. But we wouldn’t treat him like a puppet. Were we wrong? Should we have pressured him more? Should we have been more than mere counselors and loyal servants? Did the president realize that he had you to thank for all those shows of power: the strikes, the students, the peasants? You were the one who acted. You always handed the president faits accomplis. Because Lorenzo Terán, so contentious on the campaign trail, decided to be a saint in office. He climbed up to the top of a column so that he could serve God and he chose to let society govern itself.

  You and I had to act on his behalf. That was our way of being loyal to him. We didn’t manipulate him. We respected his autonomy. But we filled the gaps for him. Since he never called us to task, we did whatever we could. You could do a lot from the interior office but not everything. I think there was a utopian lost somewhere in Lorenzo Terán’s heart. The only person he listened to—unfortunately, for us—was Seneca, and that elicited a vicious response from the gringos. It was to be expected.

  My own role was limited because I am a woman. For all that we’ve progressed, an unwritten law still holds sway in this country: A man can be forgiven all his vices. Not a woman.

  I can see you smiling, Bernal. You’re a good man. You’re generous. Only once did you reproach me for being indiscreet, when I got into that argument with Tácito de la Canal. You were right. My hormones did get the better of me. Once again, I ask you to forgive me. Not only did I break our political pact. Discretion, discretion, discretion. The bad thing about power is that it gives one a sense of impunity. The more you get used to it, the more indiscreet you become.

  I swear never to make that mistake again. That’s why I’m putting everything down in writing, so that we have a record this time of what you proposed to me yesterday at President Terán’s funeral, as we knelt side by side in the Metropolitan Cathedral.

  You’re thinking of your future, as am I. The president’s death doesn’t only move the political calendar ahead. It changes it. How quickly things change in politics! There are more cracks, winding paths, waterfalls, gulfs, narrow passes, hidden islands, bottlenecks, and gorges than in the whole length of the Amazon! When I said to Nicolás Valdivia, “You will be president of Mexico,” I was only stringing him along. I thought it would be one thing or the other. Either he would take it as an erotic dare, a sexual promise I kept putting off, a woman’s fancy: “Come to my arms, my sweet young thing. . . . Be the president of my bed. Didn’t you understand what I meant? My bed’s the real Mexican presidency, silly. . . .”

  Or he’d be spurred on by ambition. He was under no illusions. I was working for you. But politics is “what a man does so that he can hide what he is and what he doesn’t know.” And Nicolás Valdivia was clever, daring, and beautiful enough to understand this proposal. All or nothing.

  It turned out to be all. He’s going to be acting president. Don’t look at me like that, my love. I have to be able to keep a secret or two. No woman can be denied that right. Have you ever noticed how easily we get secrets out of men? From the old “If you don’t tell me, I’ll get angry” to the “Keep your secrets, I’m leaving.” Bernal, you knew about my relationship with Lorenzo Terán. He was the one who protected our poor doomed son. I wanted to thank him. We had only a few weeks of love when I went to the United States. We met in Houston. He showed me the X-rays. Bernal, I always knew the president was going to die. I didn’t know when or how, but we had to be prepared. I did it for you, my love. If the president lived through the 2024 election, Valdivia would watch our backs in Los Pinos. But if he died in office, who more malleable than Valdivia, our creation, to be acting president while we prepared for your election? That was my plan. Yes, politics is “what a man does so that he can hide what he is and what he doesn’t know.” And with Valdivia it was a win-win situation. From the office of the president to being undersecretary of the interior to being in charge today. Forgive me if I made mistakes. Let’s share our success. Congress will have to name an acting president. We have our man. Valdivia. We groomed him for this. He’ll call for elections in July of 2024 and you will once again be the people’s candidate. Who elects the president of Mexico? Seventy percent of the population claim no party affiliation. Who can possibly challenge you? Tácito has been eliminated. Andino isn’t man enough for the job. Nobody in that “cabinet of champions,” as they called it at the beginning of the century, has got what it takes.

  There are temptations: the military. There’s the mystery of Ulúa and the Old Man Under the Arches who won’t reveal it, even if he’s tortured. He’ll take that secret to his grave. Torture could kill an old man like him, and anyway, it would be a reprehensible act of cruelty. Then there’s the question of the unfortunate Miss de la Garza, who still writes love letters to the dead presidential candidate Tomás Moctezuma Moro.

  In short, Bernal, you need to find yourself a rival. López Portillo was the last president who ran uncontested, and remember how that turned out. His vanity and arrogance were all-consuming.

  Who will be your opponent in the 2024 elections, Bernal?

  That’s what should concern us, not your mad serenades of love. You’re fifty-two, Bernal, and I’m forty-nine, let’s face it.

  As the funeral prayers were being said in the cathedral, you whispered to me, “María del Rosario, we’ve put off our marriage for a quarter of a century. We know why. But now . . . think of how important it is for a presidential candidate to be married.”

  “President Terán was a bachelor. . . .”

  “But he lived like a monk, everyone knew that. He was irreproachable. But two in a row, María del Rosario, two in a row, come on— they’re going to think I’m a queer.”

  I hid my laughter behind my black veil.

  “Find another woman, then, Bernal.”

  “Marucha, you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

  Forgive me. I didn’t mean to break the rosary I had in my hand. The beads scattered noisily all over the place.

  “Let’s talk about this later.”

  “No. Now.”

  “In the communion line, then. We’ll have to whisper.”

  What did I say to you, Bernal, as we waited in the long, slow line for communion? What did I tell you? Let’s put it on record:

  “All men fear women who are able to think and act for themselves. All men fear women who are strong and able to fend for themselves. I choose to act of my own accord and not inspire fear in a husband. I’m telling you this for your own good. That’s why I never married you when we were young. Don’t ever pity me. Would you ask a man to give up his friends? His restaurants, his habits? I would never accept it. Why should I force someone else to be what I don’t want to be? Let me be my own woman. Don’t forget, I’m the daughter of a man who inspired fear, and I feel justified in behaving in the political world just as he did in the business world. I justify myself, Bernal, by saying that he had an evil energy—he didn’t just want to make money, he wanted to be money— whereas I am inspired by the common good, in a devious way, you could say. Laugh if you want, but you’d better do it silently because we�
��re in the middle of the Te Deum. Think about it, though, and remember, I have one great fault. I don’t know how to be a good wife. I don’t know how to share, to laugh, to soothe. The only thing I know how to do is scheme, but that—j’espère—I do with a certain style well worthy of my allies. I may not know how to love a man. But I do know how to respect a friend, like you. . . .”

  On our knees, side by side at the high altar, we received the body of Christ from the hands of the archbishop of Mexico, Pelayo Cardinal Munguía.

  As the service came to a close, you offered me a ride in your car. As you drove you told me that I hadn’t helped solve your problem. A man needs a first lady by his side at Los Pinos. The president has to be able to say, “I have a private life.”

  I had to laugh at that.

  “We all have the right to a private life. As long as we’re able to pay for it. If I were to marry you, no amount of money could compensate for our unhappiness.”

  “You’re the only person I can confide in outside politics, do you realize that?”

  “I feel the same about you. Let’s just leave things as they are. To be married would be a lie.”

  “Isn’t the political life a lie?”

  “Yes, and that’s why it’s so demanding.”