Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

“All men fear women who are able to think and act for themselves. All men fear women who are strong and able to fend for themselves. I choose to act of my own accord and not inspire fear in a husband. I’m telling you this for your own good. That’s why I never married you when we were young. Don’t ever pity me. Would you ask a man to give up his friends? His restaurants, his habits? I would never accept it. Why should I force someone else to be what I don’t want to be? Let me be my own woman. Don’t forget, I’m the daughter of a man who inspired fear, and I feel justified in behaving in the political world just as he did in the business world. I justify myself, Bernal, by saying that he had an evil energy — he didn’t just want to make money, he wanted to be money— whereas I am inspired by the common good, in a devious way, you could say. Laugh if you want, but you’d better do it silently because we’re in the middle of the Te Deum. Think about it, though, and remember, I have one great fault. I don’t know how to be a good wife. I don’t know how to share, to laugh, to soothe. The only thing I know how to do is scheme, but that —j’espère— I do with a certain style well worthy of my allies. I may not know how to love a man. But I do know how to respect a friend, like you. . ”

On our knees, side by side at the high altar, we received the body of Christ from the hands of the archbishop of Mexico, Pelayo Cardinal Munguía.

As the service came to a close, you offered me a ride in your car. As you drove you told me that I hadn’t helped solve your problem. A man needs a first lady by his side at Los Pinos. The president has to be able to say, “I have a private life.”

I had to laugh at that.

“We all have the right to a private life. As long as we’re able to pay for it. If I were to marry you, no amount of money could compensate for our unhappiness.”

“You’re the only person I can confide in outside politics, do you realize that?”

“I feel the same about you. Let’s just leave things as they are. To be married would be a lie.”

“Isn’t the political life a lie?”

“Yes, and that’s why it’s so demanding.”

“What do you mean?”

“That lying successfully requires an enormous amount of time and attention. The successful cultivation of lies is a full-time job. Which is precisely what the political life allows for.”

“Have you still got the energy?”

“Look at yourself in the rearview mirror, Bernal. Let’s both look. Do you think we’re the same people we were twenty years ago? What does that little mirror tell you, Bernal?”

Your voice sounded so sad, my love.

“That we can’t turn back the clock.”

Chapultepec transformed into a shrine to rock music, quavering from all the benefit concerts, so noisy that some people claim to have seen the sleepless ghosts of Maximilian, Carlota, and the boy soldiers who died there rising up from the dead and wandering through the throngs of Mick Jagger fans. Mick Jagger’s here to celebrate his seventy-seventh birthday — he’s less of a rock star than a constipated old hag, like all aging hippies.

And finally Los Pinos, the presidential residence and office where all the foreign heads of state, ambassadors, and political groups have come to mourn. Who’s there to receive them? Naturally, the president of Congress, Onésimo Canabal, the president of the supreme court, Javier Wimer Zambrano, and the interior secretary, Nicolás Valdivia. The election of the acting president will not take place until the memorial ceremonies in honor of President Lorenzo Terán have concluded and the foreign politicians have gone home — although Fidel Castro says that he plans to visit Chiapas “with a very important announcement to make.”

You and I find ourselves back in the line. We’re no longer part of the government. We can only admire the composure of our Three Powers. And I search in vain for the woman, Bernal.

Because President Lorenzo Terán did have a woman at Los Pinos. An invisible woman, and she’s there peeping into the López Mateos room. Crying. With a handkerchief over her mouth. Dark-skinned. Pockmarked. As square as a safe. Loving. Grieving.

That woman is Penélope Casas.

She cries, but through her tears she gazes tenderly at Nicolás Valdivia.

She knows he will be president. And she is grateful, for he is her protector.

I watch the scene with you, Bernal, and I repeat, politics is my passion. How lucky we are, you and I, that we never married. I was able to give the darkest part of myself, the part I inherited from my father, to politics, without hurting you.

“Nicolás Valdivia, I will make you president.”

What I didn’t tell him was that I knew that President Lorenzo Terán was terminally ill.

Lorenzo Terán has died. The president has died. Are you and I still alive, María del Rosario? No, no, I won’t drag you into my own Viking funeral, the burning ship whose fiery sail will not survive the night of death. No. All I’m doing, my friend, is offering an assessment, which is perhaps a funeral prayer as well.

Was Lorenzo Terán a great man? Might he have been and failed? Or was he only what he always was: a decent, well-intentioned man and — de mortuis nil nisi bonum— without true intelligence? His presidency will not go down in history. Terán let things happen because that was his democratic credo. But what happened wasn’t what he wanted. Consider the situation. Power vacuums, entrenched local fiefdoms, uncontrollable palace intrigues. . and civil society incapable of governing itself in an atmosphere of tolerance, respect, and moral initiative. You, Bernal, and I know better than anyone that the man who died was honest and decent. But I must ask you this: Can anyone effect change with words? The words that the civilized world loves — Law, Security, Democracy, Progress — seem insipid, a lie, here in Mexico, and everywhere else in Latin America, a land ravaged by pain.

And I, a man everyone calls Seneca — what can I do but propose radical utopias, given that topos is, in itself, so absolute in the political realm? Faced with the inherent extremity of realpolitik, I championed the equally extreme notion of idealpolitik in the hope that, somewhere between two extremes, the coin of virtue might land. In medio stat virtu, as they say.

With this philosophy in mind, I accepted the position that President Terán offered me, so close to the Eagle’s Throne. I knew that life could be wretched even when thoughts sailed high. I accepted my place with serenity in the belief that, even if my advice was not always taken, at least a moral echo, if only a faint one, would always resonate in the president’s ears. Yes, I am a utopian. I will die dreaming of a society governed by men of knowledge, integrity, and good taste. But since this is impossible, aren’t we better off taking this conviction to the grave, where nothing can thwart or contradict it?

I’ve sought virtue so that we might better exercise our liberty.

I’ve believed in a country that belongs to everyone, that embraces everyone, regardless of sex, race, religion, or ideology.

It’s been difficult, but I’ve tried, María del Rosario, to extend my love to the bearers of evil, thinking of them as people who are simply “sick with passion,” as the original Seneca, native of Córdoba, called them.

But most of all, I’ve followed the Stoic advice: When it comes to aggression, never allow yourself to be conquered by anything but your own soul.

María del Rosario, I want you to understand this farewell note from your friend Xavier Zaragoza, the man everyone calls Seneca. I want you to feel that my despair is also my peace. That I still have the desire. What I’ve lost is the hope. I know, now you’re going to tell me that I should have been more aware of the realities the president faced, that I should have regarded my ideals — an enlightened, fair government — as merely corrective, a call to the refuge of the interior life in stormy times. Resigned myself to the crumbs of utopia. Yes, María del Rosario, you yourself believed that my presence was useful, like the condiment that’s unnoticed if the stew is tasty, but considered indispensable the moment someone asks, “Where’s the salt?”