Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

“I make you uncomfortable only because that’s what the president wants,” I replied.

“They aren’t making me uncomfortable — they’re hunting me down,” said the ex, in a voice that was commanding, not plaintive.

“I simply work for the president.”

“Were those his orders?”

“No, but I can predict what the president is thinking.”

Madam, I want you and Herrera to see the risks I’m willing to take, so that you understand that I’m not easily offended. I’m hardly a sensitive, romantic fifteen-year-old girl.

So that you see the extremes of my endurance, my serenity, and my determination, I’m going to tell you a little story.

President Terán made it clear that he hadn’t authorized what he considered to be my tactless treatment of ex-President León.

“But, Mr. President, I did it for you.”

“I never asked you to do that, Tácito.”

“Well, I thought it was obvious. . ”

“Ah! So you think you can read my mind, is that it? And did you read my mind when I thought to myself, If Tácito does this again, he’s sacked?”

I didn’t have to read anyone’s mind, my dear friend. I knew that the president would have to reprimand me pro forma, but that deep down he was glad that I’d done something he could never have done himself, or ordered me to do in any explicit way. I’m not called Tácito for nothing, you know. .

My distinguished friend: I know how to take risks. I know how to suffer humiliation without flinching. That is my strength. Do you think I don’t know what you tell the president?

“Tácito is a sign of your weakness, Lorenzo. You don’t need him. Only the weakest leaders need a favorite.”

Oh, the court favorite! An adviser who exercises real power on behalf of a weak or harebrained monarch. Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle for Charles V; Antonio Pérez for Philip II; the Duke of Lerma for Philip III, Philip IV, and the Count-Duke of Olivares. Some are more fortunate than others, some return from previous obsolescence, others betray and flee to enemy ranks disguised as women (Pérez, who only had to slap on an eye patch to imitate his one-eyed lover, the Princess of Eboli), while others drown in their own incompetence, even worse than that of the real monarch (Lerma), and still others are lionized for their success in running the empire.

Historical models, madam. Which of them will I resemble in the end? Oh, a favorite is as good as his protector — but also as good as his enemies. And to tell the truth, you and Bernal are completely useless to me.

“You are nothing but a flimsy reed disguised as a sword,” our beloved interior secretary once said to me.

“And you are a sardine who thinks himself a shark,” I replied.

“And me?” you dared to ask, petulantly.

“A noodle, nothing but a noodle.”

You say that I’m a masochist who derives pleasure from recounting the humiliation I’m forced to endure in my service to the president. The simple truth is that I walk through the corridors of the presidential house thinking about these things, and I chastise myself for the vileness of my acts, but I congratulate myself because my despicable nature not only keeps me alive, it keeps me on top. Your friend, the so-called Seneca, has this to say about me: “Tácito could corrupt the devil.”

And as I walk by, he murmurs, “There goes His Excellency the Evil One.”

(He borrowed that one from Talleyrand, as you probably know since you were educated by the Frogs.)

But me? I put lead in my shoes so that no sudden gust of wind can carry me off into thin air. I endure everything, madam, because the man with the greatest endurance is the man who laughs last. And as you so carelessly say in your letter, I too could fall at any moment. But I warn both of you that I’ll drag you down with me into the abyss.

You once said to me, “You’re a bat, Tácito. Don’t show your face by day.”

I didn’t dare confess that I admire you by night, madam, as you strip off your clothes with the light on. I was a gentleman.

“Certainly not, I’m nothing but a harmless little dove.”

“That would make you the first hawk ever to turn into a dove.”

“Nonsense. You and I are birds of the same feather.”

Your comparisons are not very accurate, María del Rosario. You’d be a lot better off thinking of me as “the man in the mist.” You’ll see that I’m not so easy to catch, and that I can get in under unguarded doors. Like yours, and your lover Bernal Herrera’s. Not to mention that of the wretched bastard born from your love affair and abandoned in an asylum for idiots.

Marucha, my Marucha, what’s happened to you? I hardly recognize you, I hardly recognize myself. Why have you let a vengeful impulse get the better of you? Why haven’t you controlled your passion? Why have you let your hormones hasten the plan that you and I agreed to, the two of us together, as ever, always so synchronized? You and I have never confused our loyalties. . Our political bond grew out of a carnal bond, and only now am I struck by how very different we were when we met and fell in love, before we paid the inevitable price of all romantic beginnings. It was in our nature, psychological and political, to doubt everything. We met. We were drawn to each other. But you doubted me, just as I doubted you. Until the night we shared a bottle of Petrus and realized that we loved each other even though we couldn’t trust each other. We laughed (was it the wine, was it the lust, or was it the risk, without which no erotic encounter is possible?) and said to each other, “If we doubt everything, we’ll understand each other perfectly.”

I told you that a public figure should never stop doubting, even though that means living in perpetual anguish and insecurity without ever revealing it to anyone. That’s the other rule, my Marucha. Doubt and anguish leaven our public clarity and serenity. We’ve become professional politicians because we don’t suppress our insecurity — that is, our capacity for suspicion. Profession: politician. Party: suspicionist. In other words, we make the most of our anguish so that our serene facade is fed by human matter. We had a son, María del Rosario. A mongoloid child or, to speak scientifically, a child with Down syndrome. We had to make a choice. We could have lived together, looked after our child, and sacrificed our political ambitions. Or you could have kept the child and set me free, free and doubly condemned for having frustrated your ambitions and abandoned our child. Or we could have done what we did: Put him in an institution, visit him now and then — increasingly less often, let’s be honest, increasingly less connected to that fateless fate, increasingly worried that that defenseless creature with a face tender and happy yet distant and indifferent, that child whose future holds nothing but premature death, will wrench our lives away from us in exchange for nothing.

These were our reasons and we’ve kept the secret for fourteen years. I warned you, María del Rosario, that I was never to receive the bills from the institution at my office. I’m so scrutinized and besieged, I’m so surrounded by spies working for my enemies (who are also your enemies, don’t forget) that the least little oversight can and will be used against me — and you.

So it has happened. Guess who saw the bill from the institution and sniffed out the truth. Do you think I don’t know? My friends claim to despise Tácito — but I can only suspect they say the same thing to him: “We are your friends. We despise Herrera. We’re with you all the way.”

The schemes you and I have to use to test the people around us are occasionally useful, usually useless, and always detrimental to one’s peace of mind. Eventually you decide that friends and enemies can conceivably be friends among themselves, and, whether you want to or not, you end up repeating that sentence by Stendhal you taught me, “How difficult it is to bear this continued hypocrisy!”