Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

Of course there are no such messages. At the most, the distinguished gentleman will exchange a few words with one of the ubiquitous lottery-ticket sellers stationed at the entrances to all the most fashionable lunch spots. “Like a queen of hearts, my country, on a metal floor, you live for the day, by chance, like the lottery.” Learn López Velarde’s poem by heart, Jesús Ricardo: We Mexicans don’t have a more “impeccable and glittering” guide.

I say there are no messages today, but there weren’t really any before, either. Cell phone calls were an act staged to show off one’s power. And I tell you all this very honestly because I, like you, harbor no illusions about our political class. Plus ça change, oui. . just like you, I’m sick and tired of the fact that even the street cleaners call me counselor. I’m sick to death of all these Mexican counselors running around everywhere. Would you believe that there are people who come to our office and address Penélope, the secretary there, as counselor out of that false respect, that fawning, exaggerated courtesy? Like you, I wish they would all just vanish and become like the counselor Vidriera in the story by Cervantes, not so that I could see through them, but so that I could do to them what the illustrious character who thought he was made of glass feared being done to him: smash them into a thousand pieces.

And so, knowing you, knowing your ideals and sharing so many of them with you, why am I now inviting you to work with me in the president’s office, in the very heart of the artichoke?

I don’t dare tell you this again in person because when I first mentioned it a few weeks ago, you attacked me so savagely, you pounced on me, put me in a headlock, and I felt your young brute strength, and smelled your male sweat, and I was afraid of you, Jesús Ricardo. I don’t know if telling you this flatters you or alarms you. It doesn’t matter. I smelled your youthful sweat. I was blinded by your long rebellious, adolescent mane of hair.

I said to you, “How long do you think your youth will last? Don’t you know that an old man with long hair only inspires laughter or pity? Haven’t you ever seen those ancient hippies dragging their scraggly defiance through the middle-class neighborhoods they’ve ended up in, looking for a 1960s San Francisco that doesn’t exist, tangled up in their multicolored bead necklaces and shuffling in their old sandals over to the supermarket?”

In Ecclesiastes, the Bible should have added that not only is there a time to live and a time to die, but also there is a time to be a rebel and a time to be a conservative. . Have you ever read My Last Sigh, Luis Buñuel’s autobiography? I highly recommend it. In that book, the magnificent artist of film — among the world’s greats — recognizes his anarchist tendencies just as you do, only he regards them as marvelous ideas that are impossible in the practical sense. Blow up the Louvre! In theory, splendid. In practice, stupid.

You still believe rebellious ideas and practice are inseparable. That ideas are meaningless unless we turn them into reality. Let’s be realists, let’s ask the impossible, the rebels said in Paris in May 1968 before they all became businessmen, professionals, and government ministers. .

You frighten me, Jesús Ricardo. The truly consistent anarchist invariably and inevitably becomes a terrorist. I suggest that you go back and reread all those theories you’ve thrown at me during our “Socratic” afternoons up on that rooftop of yours that looks out over the ugliest city in the world, the city of sand, the dusty capital of Mexico, the biggest garbage dump in the world, that desolate gray panorama: gray air, gray concrete, gray people. . The kingdom of the scavenger. The capital of underdevelopment.

Your ideals are noble. Your hero is Bakunin, a Russian aristocrat, after all, who expected, every time he entered his house, to be surprised. . From your rooftop, surrounded by pigeons, you firmly believe that the perfect society is one with no government, no laws, no punishment.

“What will it have, then?” I ask you, with genuine concern and interest.

“Managers, obligations, and corrections,” you respond cleverly.

“And how will that society, without any visible power structure, place limits on itself? How will that society manage itself, fulfill its obligations, correct itself?” I ask you in a tone of voice that you can’t mistake for anything other than affectionate.

“By abolishing property,” you spit out at me, like a newspaper editorial, a slogan, a banner, a slap in the face.

“All that is superfluous belongs by right to the people who have nothing,” I say, and I’m not trying to show off — perhaps you like this about me, that I’m direct, that all I want is to be honest with you. .

“Exactly, Nicolás. If you distribute wealth equitably and give each person his due, then we’ll have equality and peace.”

I look into your intense, provocative eyes. I doubt that peace is what you’re after. Maybe equality. But not peace.

“Who would do the managing?” I repeat.

“Everyone. Each person would govern himself. An unalienated collective.”

“Is that possible in a society born out of violence and crime?” challenges Nicolás Valdivia, your devil’s advocate.

“It isn’t a crime if it leads to the creation of a society without crime, a republic of equals.”

How could I pass up the opportunity to dazzle you with a great quote?

“ ‘Ruthlessly slash the throats of tyrants, patricians, millionaires, all the amoral people who could oppose our common happiness.’ ”

“You’re a walking quotation book, Nicolás!” you exclaim with remarkably good humor.

“It’s just part of my rooftop Socratic method, my young friend.” How nice of you to offer me a smile.

“OK, thank you for citing my hero, Gracchus Babeuf. You saved me the trouble.”

I swear to you that you smiled, you who are always so solemn, my darling Jesús Ricardo Magón.

“Get me up to speed, Magón. Anarchism was born in the nineteenth century to fight the industrial machine. What are you going to fight? Computers? Didn’t Marcos already stage a little mini-revolution on the Internet?”

This time you definitely let out a cackle.

“You can borrow my pigeons, Nicolás. I know you have no other form of messenger.”

“True enough. I will have to be my own messenger. I will have to deliver my letters in person, but I can never receive one from you — it’s just as if you were a politician from the PRI days: Nothing in writing.”

I interrogated with my eyes before saying, “And do you know the message I plan to send with your little pigeons?” I answered my own question emphatically as soon as I’d asked it: “That there is no such thing as an anarchist who doesn’t end up a terrorist. That the rejection of authority, and millenarianism, are very beautiful ideas until you start acting on them.”

Your face lit up, millenarian that you are.

“You can’t deny the beauty of revolt,” you said, serious once more.

“Even if the results are horrifying?” I replied with that verbal foil you force me to brandish every time we spar.

“Do you find equality horrifying?” you asked humorlessly.

“No. I can only repeat that the great problem of equality is not overcoming the pride of the rich, but rather overcoming the egotism of the poor.”

“Do you know what I like about you? You get angry without swearing. You nurse your rage inside. That’s why I find you more dangerous than someone who explodes with violence, verbal or physical.”

You look at me and you know I know. I understand you. And if I’m repeating our conversation back to you it’s only because, despite our political differences, you and I have a common faith in the word.