Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

I began to think that the Old Man Under the Arches was nothing but a raving monomaniac going on and on with his litany of wrongs suffered by Mexico over the centuries.

“And the gringos, son, the gringos who’ve sucked the brains out of Mexico’s youth. They dress like gringos, dance like gringos, think like gringos — they wish they could be gringos.”

He then made an obscene gesture with his left hand as he raised his cane with his right.

“By Santa Anna’s lost leg, those gringos can come and kiss my ass! Here they landed in 1847, then again in 1914. . When will they be back?”

He readjusted his dentures, which had slipped out of place from all the excitement, and returned to the topic at hand.

“Listen, son, just so you don’t leave here disappointed, let me give you some of my legendary maxims. . ”

And he recited them. Seriously, almost as a meditation, all the while stirring the sugar in his coffee cup.

“Politics is the art of swallowing frogs without flinching.”

He didn’t laugh. All he did was bite down hard on his dentures to fix them squarely in his gums.

“In Mexican politics, even cripples can pull off a high-wire act.” He took advantage of my feigned laughter to ask the waiter for a mollete.

“Refried beans and melted cheese in a hot bread roll. Good for the digestion,” he said. “Look, the simple truth is that the presidency is a roller coaster. The expression on your face when they send you off is the expression that stays with you forever.”

He took a big bite of his mollete.

“That’s why you always see me with the same look on my face, exactly the same as my very first day in office.”

He continued, María del Rosario, with a slightly macabre smile.

“What nobody knows is that my arsenal of unpublished sayings knows no end.”

I gave him a courteously quizzical look.

And then, with a sound like a death knell from the back of his throat, he said, “Make no mistake. I’m immune to bullets and to colds.”

I fell silent after that resounding maxim, waiting for him to say something else, wondering what I was really doing there, my lovely lady, aside from simply following your instructions: “Talk to the Old Man Under the Arches. Be patient and learn from him.”

“You know what, son? Before becoming president, a man has to suffer and learn. If not, he’ll suffer and learn during his presidency, at the country’s expense.”

Could this mean that María del Rosario Galván — yes, you, my dear lady — had informed the old ex-president of her daring promise to deliver me to the Eagle’s Throne, and explained that I was in Veracruz to learn from him? If the thought crossed my mind, I didn’t say it out loud, of course.

I merely dared to point out: “Cárdenas became president at the age of thirty-six, Alemán at thirty-nine, Obregón at forty-four, Salinas at forty. . ”

“I’m not talking about age, Mr. Valdivia. I haven’t said a word about age, which is a taboo subject for this old man. I was referring to suffering and learning. I was referring to experience. All the men you mention were young, but they were experienced. Are you?”

I shook my head. “Mr. President, I admit I’m a novice. But one morning with you is enough to teach me everything I didn’t learn at the ENA in Paris.”

He shook his head very slightly, as if he were afraid that all the parts inside it might become unhinged, that the screws would come loose.

“Right,” he said, sipping his coffee. “You do know that every president finishes where the next one should start. That is, where he himself should have started. Am I being clear? The outgoing president speaks to his successor without having to use a single word. That’s the experience I’m talking about.”

“Except that the successor tends to be deaf to his predecessor.”

I thought he would warm to my graceful wit. Instead, his dark-ringed gaze grew even darker.

“Gratitude, Mr. Valdivia, gratitude and ingratitude. The former is a very rare form of political currency. The latter, everyday trash.”

Very discreetly he removed a speck from the corner of his eye.

“Just think for a moment of how many PRI presidents were loyal to their predecessors. After all, under the old PRI’s rule the man who came to occupy the Eagle’s Throne had been placed there by the throne’s previous occupant. ‘The concealed one’ became ‘the anointed one.’ A perverse consequence of the system: The new all-powerful leader had to prove, as quickly as possible, that he was not dependent on the man who appointed him. How paradoxical, Mr. Valdivia, or should I say how parafucksical. A single-party system in which the opposition always wins, because the new president has to screw his predecessor.”

“There were exceptions, though,” I said in a Cartesian spirit.

The Old Man picked out three rolls from the bread basket and left the other eight there. He didn’t have to say anything else, although with the finger of God he did invisibly trace the numbers “1940–1994” on the tablecloth.

“Now, of course, we live in a democracy,” I said with forced optimism.

“And the incumbent still has his favorites to succeed him, he’s already mulling over who will best serve the country, who will be most loyal to him, who will respect his people, and who will not. . ”

“But nowadays the president’s own candidate will not necessarily be the successor, as he was in your day. . ”

“No, but regardless of who wins the elections the ex-president will always be, lethally, the ex-president. And every ex-president, it turns out, has skeletons in his closet. Crooked brothers, insatiable lovers, incorrigible sisters, deviant children, false proxies for his business interests, lifelong friends that cannot be condemned to death, who knows what else. . What other choice does he have but to make amends for the extravagance of those closest to him by living with monastic austerity? See what they say about me? I go to bed early so as not to waste the candles.”

“You know everything.”

I flashed him my best smile. He didn’t reciprocate.

“Suffer and learn,” he sighed, and once again looked out dreamily toward the misty bulk of the San Juan de Ulúa castle, the fortress guarding the entrance to the port.

I realized that, focused as I was on the Old Man’s words and gestures, I hadn’t looked very closely at Ulúa’s grayish mass, which seemed an architecture apart, embedded in the past, weighed down by a history that couldn’t be undone.

“See that castle that used to be a prison? Can you begin to imagine the number of politicians who should be there now, purging their wrongs?”

“If you say so, sir. .”

He shrugged his shoulders, creaking slightly.

“We have two golden rules in Mexican politics. One is benign: no re-election. The other is more unforgiving: exile. The reason, however, is the same: All delinquents are recidivists, my young friend.”

He peered at me from the depths of the lines under his eyes.

“You know, it is a mistake to think that a president controls only the weak. The most urgent but most difficult task is that of controlling the powerful. I’m going to give you a rule for you to share with all the people you know who aspire to public office. Anyone who wants to be part of the cabinet should first take in a liter of vinegar through his nose. That’s the best training there is for getting close to the presidency, I promise you. . ”

The waiter approached us with the massive, steaming coffeepot. The Old Man declined. He had not offered me a third coffee, but he pushed my coffee glass toward me.

It was then that, rather inopportunely, I asked the former head of state, “And you, Mr. President, is there anyone you favor to be Lorenzo Terán’s successor?”