The Eagle's Throne (23 page)

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.”

“What do you mean?”

“That lying successfully requires an enormous amount of time and attention. The successful cultivation of lies is a full-time job. Which is precisely what the political life allows for.”

“Have you still got the energy?”

“Look at yourself in the rearview mirror, Bernal. Let’s both look. Do you think we’re the same people we were twenty years ago? What does that little mirror tell you, Bernal?”

Your voice sounded so sad, my love.

“That we can’t turn back the clock.”

Chapultepec transformed into a shrine to rock music, quavering from all the benefit concerts, so noisy that some people claim to have seen the sleepless ghosts of Maximilian, Carlota, and the boy soldiers who died there rising up from the dead and wandering through the throngs of Mick Jagger fans. Mick Jagger’s here to celebrate his seventy-seventh birthday—he’s less of a rock star than a constipated old hag, like all aging hippies.

And finally Los Pinos, the presidential residence and office where all the foreign heads of state, ambassadors, and political groups have come to mourn. Who’s there to receive them? Naturally, the president of Congress, Onésimo Canabal, the president of the supreme court, Javier Wimer Zambrano, and the interior secretary, Nicolás Valdivia. The election of the acting president will not take place until the memorial ceremonies in honor of President Lorenzo Terán have concluded and the foreign politicians have gone home—although Fidel Castro says that he plans to visit Chiapas “with a very important announcement to make.”

You and I find ourselves back in the line. We’re no longer part of the government. We can only admire the composure of our Three Powers. And I search in vain for the woman, Bernal.

Because President Lorenzo Terán did have a woman at Los Pinos. An invisible woman, and she’s there peeping into the López Mateos room. Crying. With a handkerchief over her mouth. Dark-skinned. Pockmarked. As square as a safe. Loving. Grieving.

That woman is Penélope Casas.

She cries, but through her tears she gazes tenderly at Nicolás Valdivia.

She knows he will be president. And she is grateful, for he is her protector.

I watch the scene with you, Bernal, and I repeat, politics is my passion. How lucky we are, you and I, that we never married. I was able to give the darkest part of myself, the part I inherited from my father, to politics, without hurting you.

“Nicolás Valdivia, I will make you president.”

What I didn’t tell him was that I knew that President Lorenzo Terán was terminally ill.

50

XAVIER “SENECA” ZARAGOZA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

Lorenzo Terán has died. The president has died. Are you and I still alive, María del Rosario? No, no, I won’t drag you into my own Viking funeral, the burning ship whose fiery sail will not survive the night of death. No. All I’m doing, my friend, is offering an assessment, which is perhaps a funeral prayer as well.

Was Lorenzo Terán a great man? Might he have been and failed? Or was he only what he always was: a decent, well-intentioned man and
—
de mortuis nil nisi bonum—
without true intelligence? His presidency will not go down in history. Terán let things happen because that was his democratic credo. But what happened wasn’t what he wanted. Consider the situation. Power vacuums, entrenched local fiefdoms, uncontrollable palace intrigues . . . and civil society incapable of governing itself in an atmosphere of tolerance, respect, and moral initiative. You, Bernal, and I know better than anyone that the man who died was honest and decent. But I must ask you this: Can anyone effect change with words? The words that the civilized world loves—Law, Security, Democracy, Progress—seem insipid, a lie, here in Mexico, and everywhere else in Latin America, a land ravaged by pain.

And I, a man everyone calls Seneca—what can I do but propose radical utopias, given that
topos
is, in itself, so absolute in the political realm? Faced with the inherent extremity of realpolitik, I championed the equally extreme notion of idealpolitik in the hope that, somewhere between two extremes, the coin of virtue might land.
In medio stat virtu,
as they say.

With this philosophy in mind, I accepted the position that President Terán offered me, so close to the Eagle’s Throne. I knew that life could be wretched even when thoughts sailed high. I accepted my place with serenity in the belief that, even if my advice was not always taken, at least a moral echo, if only a faint one, would always resonate in the president’s ears. Yes, I am a utopian. I will die dreaming of a society governed by men of knowledge, integrity, and good taste. But since this is impossible, aren’t we better off taking this conviction to the grave, where nothing can thwart or contradict it?

I’ve sought virtue so that we might better exercise our liberty.

I’ve believed in a country that belongs to everyone, that embraces everyone, regardless of sex, race, religion, or ideology.

It’s been difficult, but I’ve tried, María del Rosario, to extend my love to the bearers of evil, thinking of them as people who are simply “sick with passion,” as the original Seneca, native of Córdoba, called them.

But most of all, I’ve followed the Stoic advice: When it comes to aggression, never allow yourself to be conquered by anything but your own soul.

María del Rosario, I want you to understand this farewell note from your friend Xavier Zaragoza, the man everyone calls Seneca. I want you to feel that my despair is also my peace. That I still have the desire. What I’ve lost is the hope. I know, now you’re going to tell me that I should have been more aware of the realities the president faced, that I should have regarded my ideals—an enlightened, fair government—as merely corrective, a call to the refuge of the interior life in stormy times. Resigned myself to the crumbs of utopia. Yes, María del Rosario, you yourself believed that my presence was useful, like the condiment that’s unnoticed if the stew is tasty, but considered indispensable the moment someone asks, “Where’s the salt?”

The salt on tables piled high with well-seasoned dishes—how many times was my counsel heeded? Why did I fool myself into thinking that my advice counted for anything? Didn’t I realize that the political weight of an intellectual could only be felt outside the power base, though even in the opposition an intellectual can scarcely exert much more than relative pressure? Within the power base his influence is not even relative. It is nil.

In other words, at one extreme you shit, at the other you eat shit. It’s as bleak as that.

As I look back on these three years I’ve spent in the antechambers of power, all I see is misery and all I feel is disgust. Yes, I’ve seen the president suffer. There were times I said to him, “Don’t think so much. That’s what I’m here for.”

But whenever I did that, someone else had already saved him from his suffering. Tácito, in the interest of evil. Herrera, in the interest of goodness. And I was always left with, “You’re right, Seneca. There was another path. Perhaps I’ll take it next time.”

And then he’d smile at me.

“You bastard, stop keeping me awake at night, will you?”

It was the inner circle of sycophants, demagogues, and schemers that was keeping him awake.

María del Rosario, this is your friend Xavier “Seneca” Zaragoza, the man the president listens—listened—to with enthusiasm but without conviction.

These imbeciles think success will make them happy. They don’t know what’s coming to them. I was isolated and discredited. It was only thanks to the president’s goodness that I kept my position. I was the gadfly. I was the one who said the things that had to be said, no matter how unpleasant.

“Nothing will ever convince me that wisdom lies in statistics, Andino.”

“When I look at you, General Arruza, I am filled with revulsion.”

“People can sleep in the same bed and dream very different dreams, Mr. Herrera.”

“Crown yourself with laurels, President León, lest a thunderbolt strike you dead.”

“Your cowardice is like a stench that you leave behind everywhere you go, Tácito.”

And you, María del Rosario, tell me this: “Seneca, don’t drink poison to quench your thirst. It’s not worth it.”

Isn’t it, my dear friend? Do you think I want to die because I’m disillusioned with the world? Do you think that the only thing left for me, an idealist without convictions, is death? Do you think I’m betraying the Stoic belief in keeping the soul’s passions at bay? Tell me, isn’t it possible that death is yet another of the soul’s passions? And since it’s our inevitable end, why not accelerate it?

No. I’ve put my convictions to the test and I know that the price of intelligence is disenchantment. Nothing can match our use of reason. I’ve been too close to the sun for too long, and since I’m nothing but a statue made of snow, I melt when the sun burns out. Oh, if you only knew the things I’ve felt since the death of my wonderful friend Lorenzo Terán. I’m like a cat: I can’t make sense of my reflection in the mirror. I try to remember my name, and I have such a hard time. I shouldn’t remember it, for I’ve lost it forever, I know. And I feel that nothing is worth the effort, nothing satisfies me. Everything has gone sour. Is that proof of moral greatness? Can a dog feel boredom? Only the idiot has no doubts. Only the idiot doesn’t suffer.

When the president died, I peered into the mirror of my soul and it trembled. My emotions were in flux. My spirit was wavering between life and death.

It was the immense unfulfillment of my love, a hollow between life and death. My love for you, María del Rosario. It was my desire to possess you, never expressed, forever silenced, a prisoner of my dreams. And I’m sure you never guessed.

In the end, it was the absolute certainty that my interior life was the only reality. The untouchable fortress of my inner self. My freedom to decide whether that should remain in the world or be left behind. It meant—it means, María del Rosario—that rational thought will never take root in Mexico. Time after time we’ve done it, and we’ll go on doing it, killing the hen that lays the golden eggs—after stealing the eggs. It means that, though he said it in 1800, Humboldt was right: “Mexico is a beggar sitting on top of a mountain of gold.”

In a detective novel, we don’t know who the criminal is until the end. But in Mexico, everyone knows who the criminal is in advance. And the victim is always the country itself. Oh, my dear friend, ignore the demagogues who promise salvation, our Mahatma Propagandis. But be careful of the comedians who are the repressors, our Robespierrots.

Listen to the desperate.

Listen to the rumors in Mexico City, where everyone knows what goes unsaid. Write it all down. Nobody will believe you.

Keep your mouth shut. They’ll find out.

Yes, my more than valued friend. If I were a politician I’d betray them all. Just as well I’m only an intellectual and know that the politicians will betray me.

Yes, my beautiful and enlightened lady, nothing has any value outside the inner life, the silent self. Don’t talk to anyone about it. They won’t understand.

I go in the knowledge that our life is in our dreams. Nothing is more real than our Utopia. There’s no other reality, you see. Only a suicidal man would dare say this. They’re not my final words. I’m not asking for them to be inscribed on my tombstone.

HERE LIES XAVIER ZARAGOZA
KNOWN TO ALL AS SENECA
1982–2020
IN MEXICO, ALL THOUGHT IS
CONTRABAND

I’ll tell you in secret that there’s no mystery after death. The dead man doesn’t know we’re alive. What it amounts to is that before birth and after death we experience our own untouchable worlds.

My farewell sentence, María del Rosario, is much simpler.

“I am leaving before the sky above Mexico City disappears forever.”

And I reproach myself for leaving with rage, without serenity. . . .

I go with rage because I allowed myself to be seduced by politics. I discovered that the art of politics is the lowest form of art.

I go with rage because I was unable to convince the president that the head of state can’t matter more than the people, or the times.

I go with rage because I was unable to stop the six-year cycle of political madness that appropriates all of Mexican history and reinvents it every six years. What madness.

I go with rage because it’s my fault that the president listened to me when I gave him good advice. It’s my fault, not his.

I go with rage because my reason and logic were unable to defeat the propaganda, which is the food of fanatics.

I go with rage because I never learned how to grow magueys.

I go with rage because where once I was provocative I’m now an irritation.

I go with rage because I preached morality from the top of a mountain made of sand.

I go with rage because I was never able to say to you,
I love you.

I go with rage because I envy only the dead.