Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

You and I have to be more diabolical than the devil himself. Set your sights skyward. If you want to conquer the heavens you have to look up to God. And bear in mind that you’re surrounded on all sides by the crooked and the perverse. Your P only pretends to be an idiot and hopes people will believe it. BH has allied himself with that Lucrezia Borgia of posh Las Lomas, that whore MR. Darling, open your eyes. The couple have planted that rookie NV in your office, but I never trust the so-called innocent. They’re cynics who just pretend to be saints so that they can deceive the Lord and get into heaven. You and I will just have to apply that reliable old “Herod’s Law”: Either get screwed or get fucked.

The return of our ex-leader complicates things somewhat because he plays his own game and neither you nor I have the marbles to compete with him, my sweet. Down there in Veracruz the Old Man plays mysterious with his dominoes and there’s no telling when he’s going to come around and block our double six. In other words, we’re surrounded by enemy forces. On the bright side, you don’t have to do all that much to get some good slander going. That old bag from Las Lomas says that you’d kill your own mother if it would help you seize power. Oh, my saint, I know you’d never do such a thing. Better to kill your enemy’s mother.

Just look at the mess our “regime” is in. The P first, of course. Who doesn’t wonder what’s going on in the P’s head? What’s his strategy? What does he know? What doesn’t he know? What is he plotting? What is he anticipating? Who does he favor? Who does he despise? There isn’t a single soul, inside or outside the government, who isn’t asking himself this all day long, and that’s why I’m not asking you what you think of the P. Don’t answer that. Just remember that there’s no mystery there. A P has nowhere to hide.

Don’t answer me, I repeat. You’re better off asking yourself the question in private. And be careful. You’re closer to him than anyone else in the C, and we know that a presidential C is a fruit salad. Who are you going to trust, my love, the cherry or the grape? That’s the bad thing about sharing secrets and that’s where we must proceed with the most caution. Well, at least nobody can ever make heads or tails of the system for filing documents at Los Pinos, and that old archivist— Magoo, Magón, whatever he’s called — doesn’t even know his own name, much less where documents are filed, and which ones have been destroyed as per your orders. Your grand idea — or our grand idea, if you want to be generous with your little darling — was to make all those compromising documents disappear without destroying them, in case they ever came in handy. If our partners started talking we just might or might not happen to have documents to shut them up. .

But the danger’s there, my dear, so don’t ever let your guard down. You know how a P’s mind starts to work when he feels that one of his ministers is no longer useful to him. He doesn’t say, “This man is useless.” Oh no. He says, “This man betrayed me.”

Now, let’s go over the usual suspects. Who’s your main rival? We know that — Secretary BH. Why is he feared? As far as I can tell he’s a man with no sex appeal who, as such, doesn’t have the slightest chance of becoming a charismatic candidate. Could he nevertheless ascend to the throne? He’s quite an eagle, that one. Everyone considers him a kind of pre-candidate even though his face always seems to say, “Me? I can’t imagine why!”

For goodness’ sake, of course you and I know why: because he thinks he’s utterly beyond reproach, an idea that he’s been fed over and over again by that political vixen MR. But me, I’ve got another idea bouncing around inside my little head. How can we convince him the old bag’s fooling him by making him believe he’s the P’s favorite successor? Nobody will ever say that to him. He’d have to hit himself on the head with a brick to work it out. But those of us from the Yucatán, my darling, we’re veritable artists of invention, you know that. And that’s where you and I come in to make sure that all this funny business reflects badly on BH and his people. We want everyone to say, “The P made him candidate to get rid of an undesirable politician.”

Luckily, there are so many power factors, so much wild ambition, my beautiful one, that you and I can indeed do a fair amount of fishing in those turbulent waters. Turbulent due to all the contradictory fishermen out there — that self-serving ex, for one, then that ex-ex-ex in Veracruz, and then that idiot that presides over Congress (let him hear!), the rookie NV, and even MR herself, who’s gotten so out of hand with all that sage advice that one day someone’s going to throw it back at her, using the very same words she uses to warn people with that Cruella De Vil face of hers: “You’re no longer convincing, dear. No matter what you do, they’ll criticize you for it. You’re boring everyone with so much advice.”

Be careful. Don’t let her know that you despise her and much less that you pity her because she isn’t as beautiful as me, or because you prefer me to her. You have to realize, my darling, that she already despises and pities you and would be all too thrilled to find out you feel the same way.

But back to our subject, my beloved T. Never forget, not for a second, that all human beings have both defects and virtues, and that our enemies can take advantage of both. Look at me, my lovely. Haven’t you ever noticed that I never look at my hands? Can you guess why? Because when I was a young girl I learned that if I looked down at one of my fingers men would think I was asking for a ring. Or worse — that I’d lost a ring because I was too stupid to hang on to it. And if I could lose a ring, I could lose anything — a fortune, a husband, my virginity, the lottery even!

That’s why you always see me wearing gloves, even in the sweltering heat of Mérida. But I also wear them so that the tips of my fingers touch no skin but yours, my beautiful bonbon. From time to time you ask, my jealous darling, if there are other men in my life. My love, you don’t need to. I’m an object of desire, that’s all.

My good general, things have reached the boiling point and very soon we’ll have to take action. But please, let it be a joint action, taken by two brothers bound by service like you and me, General. Look at what’s happening. Our president’s celebrated democratic politics are sinking faster than a rowboat caught in the middle of the gulf during a hurricane. Trust the people, he says, civil society will come together on its own to resolve internal strife. Give the people their freedom, he says, and they’ll form unions, cooperatives, neighborhood associations. Like fuck they will! General, loosen up on authority and you create a goddamn void. This country’s never been able to govern itself. It doesn’t have the experience. It doesn’t know how. It has always needed a strong hand, a central authority that prevents chaos and eliminates power vacuums. Just look around you: All over the country those power vacuums have been filled by sneaky local bosses who are always waiting to pounce, like tigers.

I could be talking about a town like Sahuaripa, lost in the desert, where a big shot like Félix Elías Cabezas gains real power in Sonora and exercises it, protected by distance and ignorance, monopolizing the mines, exploiting the export of copper.

I could be talking about a whole state like San Luis Potosí, where a local boss like Rodolfo Roque Maldonado promises Japanese investors order and security so that they can then use San Luis as a launching pad for flooding the United States with technology exports via the Free Trade Agreement. You’ll say that Herrera created the situation in San Lázaro, but the one who took all the credit (and the yens, or whatever those yellow kamikazes used for bribes) was Maldonado, boss and governor of the state. In other words, he lets people think that it was the interior secretary who established order there, but those Japs with their Fu Manchu eyes know better and say nothing. Don Roque Maldonado protects their interests.