Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

Oh, how I miss you, Pepona! Hot and sweet, faithful wife and loving mother. How safe I feel knowing that my “three Ts,” Tere, Talita, and Tutú, are with you, my darling triplets who came into the world in perfect order, lending a virginal glory to your three successive but actually simultaneous births — for does anyone even remember which of them came first? To me it always felt as if my three angels came down together from the heavens to bless our union, my Josefina, a singularly joyous marriage that goes beyond physical separation, gossip, and beatitudes. A marriage made, just like our three girls, in paradise.

Do you remember our wedding?

Do you remember the Hacienda de los Lagartos, all decked out just for our nuptials? Do you remember the garden, filled with dozens of pink flamingos? And the massive banquet of papadzules and motuleño eggs, pickled chicken, and stuffed cheese? Do you remember the heat of our passion that night, our loving surrender to each other? Do you remember how nervous your mother was in the bedroom next door to ours at the Hotel del Garrafón, listening for you either to call her for help if it hurt — ow, ow, ow! — or sing the Marseillaise if you liked it— ah, ah, ah, allons, enfants de la patrie ! How wonderful, my Pepona, that you let me storm the Bastille of your tightly locked jail, how marvelous that you loved Andino’s guillotine!

As you can see, you’re the only person with whom I can truly express my feelings and rediscover the Andino Almazán you fell for twelve years ago, married eleven years ago, and had triplets with ten years ago. But then, in what feels like a split second, I have no choice but to assume once again my other persona, that of the treasury secretary, completely consumed by the world of economics, hiding behind a mask of statistics, creating an exterior character to disguise my interior obsession, which of course is you, my voluptuous one.

When I wake in the morning, Josefina, I won’t be the person you know.

I know what they say about me:

“When Andino enters a room the temperature drops.”

“The secretary has arrived. All rise.”

“Watch out. For Secretary Almazán only two possible opinions exist: his opinion and the wrong opinion.”

My soul is dying, my darling Pepa. But I’ve assumed certain responsibilities and I must fulfill them for the president, for the country, and for myself. If the treasury didn’t have me, the ship would drift out into uncharted waters. I’m the indispensable helmsmann. I’m the one repeating the same old mantra: discipline, discipline, discipline. Avoid inflation. Raise taxes. Lower salaries. Fix prices. I’m the iceman. I may be a native of the tropical Yucatán, but I’m thought of as a miser from Monterrey. Miserly when it comes to the budget and miserly in conversation.

You see, I’ve already decided simply to say nothing, my Pepa. Every time I open my mouth to chastise Congress, all I do is scare off investors. I’m better off keeping my mouth shut. I can pass as the perfect dumb witness. I say nothing because I have nothing to say, and that, somehow, has earned me a reputation for being wise. I look upon everything with glacial objectivity, but I understand nothing. That’s fine. Someone has to play this thankless role. I’ve already had to fire three deputy secretaries who talked too much. The one who said “Poverty in Mexico is a myth.” The one who said “If Congress doesn’t approve the new tax bill we’re going to go under just like Argentina.” And the one who said “The poor possess the virtue of being discreet.”

They hired me to disinfect the system. I’m the government’s DDT. I hunt down insects.

And my life, darling, is drying up — or at least it would dry up if I didn’t have you and my three Ts, Tere, Talita and Tutú. Send me a recent photo of the four of you, will you? You keep forgetting to do that. I, my dear, don’t forget you for a minute. Your A.

P.S. In the interest of safety, I’m sending this to you via my good friend and colleague Tácito de la Canal. They say that if you want to survive in the cabinet you have to behave as though you’re dead. Tácito is the exception to this rule. Thanks to him I’m able to walk in and out of the president’s office without any problem. He’s an agile man, a man with a future — flexible when necessary, tough when the situation requires grit. Trust him. Farewell. A.A.

General, you and I are in constant and amicable communication. You know that I’ve always acknowledged your superiority and, above all else, above you and me, the superiority of the president of the republic, commander in chief of the armed forces. Well, General, with my usual frankness I must warn you that this goddamn country is getting out of control. Sure, we’re all so damn proud of the fact that in Mexico there are seventy million people under the age of twenty. A country full of kids. Have you ever heard them? Have you ever put your ear to the ground? How do you think those kids see the old mummies that govern them?

How old are you? Fifty? Fifty-two? And me, sixty-four, sixty-five? The record books are a little sketchy in the tiny village where I was born, in the state of Hidalgo — that is, if you can say that Hidalgo exists and wasn’t just an invention to separate Mexico City from dangerous rival states like Michoacán and Jalisco. Hidalgo is the Uruguay of Mexico, but poor and without any records. Anyhow, General, my point is that you and I are in our prime, as my granny would have said. But to youngsters we’re old. They want a young leader. Young like Madero, Calles, Obregón, Villa, and Zapata were when they threw themselves into the Revolution — all of them under thirty.

Keep your eyes peeled, Mr. Secretary. Where’s our fresh-faced leader? How old is that ass-kisser Tácito de la Canal? Fifty-two like you? And his opponent, Bernal Herrera, isn’t he in his early fifties, or maybe late forties? Do you think today’s kids trust them at all? Do you think those millions of kids who cruise on their motorcycles as if their Harley-Davidsons were Pancho Villa’s horse, old Siete Leguas himself, and those half-naked party animals who spend all night clubbing, and those DJs who fly from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Honolulu for twenty-five thousand dollars a pop to play CDs, and the children of serial millionaires who’ve been inheriting fortunes passed down since 1941, will trust any of us?

That’s what the elite are saying in the newspapers, General. But what about the middle-class kid who has had to watch how every six years his parents lose their car, their house, and their washing machine because they can’t keep up with the monthly payments? Or students who can’t even study because public universities are constantly paralyzed by strikes and private universities cost a fortune?

Look at them, General — they wanted to be engineers, lawyers, big shots, but look at them now — they’re driving taxis, delivering pizzas, working as ushers in movie theaters, browbeaten into making a living parking other people’s cars. They’re broken people who should have become something better, and now all they get are kicks in the ass. And all the sweet young things who only dreamed of becoming decent, middle-class housewives? They’re out there working as typists, sales girls, and waitresses — if they’re lucky. Otherwise it’s lap dancing and the brothel. And don’t even get me started on the stories of the little farm girls who find work in factories and dream that some gringo will one day want to marry them, the stupid idiots, and then the factory goes under or moves to China, where the workers make 10 percent of what Mexican workers earn, and they’re back out on the street again begging, or back in their villages eating nopalitos, with their babies bundled up in their shawls, wanting to cross the border and become gringos like so many young men and women trying to find work on the other side of the fence — even if it means drowning in a river or suffocating in some trafficker’s truck or dying of thirst in the desert or getting shot full of holes, like a sieve, by the gringo border patrol’s bullets. Tell me, General, what can those seventy million kids look forward to? Who will they look to? Think about it while there’s still time, General.