Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

Yes, Mr. President, I feel it and I feel sorry for you, and I feel hatred for you, as well. Shame on you. I think you’ve gone mad. You’re deranged, a senile monster who plays with the lives and emotions of others without any humanity. . You were right to send me to Tomás, and I went happily, but I was scared to death, too; my heart was pounding because I didn’t know what I’d find.

They led me down those dark tunnels that smelled like the forgotten dead. A filthy rat looked at me as if it wanted to seduce me. Saltwater dripped from the ceiling, and the whole castle creaked as if offended by my footsteps. I’m telling you this so that you can see the eloquence that took hold of my head and my tongue, preparing me for the most intense emotion of my life. .

He was wearing his mask when I entered the cell.

“Tomás, my love, it’s me. . ”

Nothing but silence. The longest of my life, long enough for me to remember how Tomás and I first met, at the museum in Monterrey, and then to remember every moment of our love.

“Tomás, my love, it’s me. . ”

He turned his back on me.

Then, he scribbled something on the wall with a piece of chalk, something he’d written a thousand times before, as the cell was covered with those white marks, fading in the humid air:

BREAD. TIME. PATIENCE.

I embraced him. He freed himself from me with a violent shrug of the shoulders. It threw me — it was like being struck by lightning. I sank to my knees and held his legs.

“Tomás, I’m back, it’s me. . ”

I looked at him, imploring him.

He remained silent.

I caressed him, still down on my knees, and then I looked up, imploring him.

“Take off your mask. Let me see you again.”

He laughed, Mr. President. Never in my life have I heard laughter like that, and I hope I never hear it again. It was as if he had chains in his throat, iron instead of words. My own voice began to tremble, as if death were my lover, as if I had risen from the grave that I visited for eight years, taking flowers to it, sometimes crying, sometimes refusing to let my tears fall onto that gravestone. My own voice trembled, as if I were a lover who, having resigned herself to disappearing, was now back to court death, because that man you cruelly deceived, imprisoned, and perversely — yes, perversely — manipulated is no longer mine.

He is another man, and I don’t know what to call him or how to speak to him.

He didn’t respond to my words. I pulled at his mask, I tried to pry it open like a can. He only laughed. Then a voice escaped, stifled, indistinct, a voice that I didn’t recognize, asking me who I was, what I was doing there, how I dared enter the place that was his and no one else’s.

“Your face. . let me see your face, Tomás. . ”

He told me not to be an idiot, that I wouldn’t want to see the face beneath the mask because why would he be wearing it, if not to hide something awful, the face of a monster, an eagle’s head, snake’s eyes, and a dog’s mouth? Is that what I wanted to see, idiot that I was, a man with the face of a lunatic, smothered by his beard and unable to speak properly, so that even the guards couldn’t bear to look at him when they took off his mask to feed him? They’d put the mask back on and he’d just let them, not even putting up a fight. He’d gotten used to the mask—“bread, time, patience”—and he’d go completely insane in the daylight. Reality wasn’t outside, it was here inside, and he’d believe that until he died. He was a prisoner, yes, but free from the shams, the lies, the illusions, and the dreams of the outside world.

“This is my house: truth, peace, time, patience.”

What he said hurt me. He spoke without recognizing me, or he pretended not to recognize me, I don’t know, but he refused to look me in the face, and his voice was muffled by the huge clump of hair, as thick and dense as that jungle you cruelly invented, the voice shut in behind the mask, and then those bizarre words: “Wake the dead, since the living are asleep. . ”

He didn’t recognize me. But I tell you, and I knew Tomás Moctezuma Moro better than anyone: He’s found his home inside those four frozen walls. He can’t even see the water or feel the sea spray down in that hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. San Juan de Ulúa is the only reality he knows, or wants to know. And that, Old Man, is your cruel and evil accomplishment.

How did I know it was him?

That voice was unmistakable, even distorted.

How could I tell he was alive?

From the fear in his eyes, which were visible through the slits in the mask.

From the fear in his eyes, Mr. President. A fear that I can’t imagine, not even in my worst nightmares, a fear of everything, do you understand? A fear of remembering, loving, desiring, living, dying. . The fear that you put there, Mr. President, and may the devil bury you in the deepest pit in hell the day you die. And I’d pray for that day to come soon, but I know that your life is already a living hell.

It was all in vain. You sacrificed the man I love for nothing. Tomás Moctezuma Moro will never leave Ulúa. Neither alive nor dead. That cell is impenetrable. It’s his womb. He wouldn’t recognize any other home.

Your home is a house of shame. Or perhaps — and this would be even worse from your point of view — the house of lost opportunity. I think this must be the first time things haven’t come out the way you hoped. You sicken me. But most of all I pity you.

I have only one thing to ask of you. Keep on bribing the cemetery guards so that I can open Tomás Moctezuma Moro’s false grave, as I did before.

Don’t worry about me, my love. I’ve lost everything. Except the most intimate refuge of my soul, which is my love for you. I don’t care if you mock me, insult me, push me away forever. I don’t care. I’ve come back to the safest harbor. I want you to know that. It’s neither a triumph nor a defeat. You reproach me for my servility and vanity. You humiliate me and I deserve it. Everything I thought was fortune has suddenly, instantly, changed.

Yes, I’m the man to whom the president could say, “Tácito. Jump out the window.” And I would reply, “With your permission, sir, I’ll gladly jump from the roof.”

I had a premonition, you know, the day a foreign head of state came to Los Pinos to see the president. I was waiting for him at the door, and he handed me his raincoat as if I were a servant. That’s what he thought I was. I should have crossed my hands behind my back, like British royalty do, to indicate politely that I was not a palace servant. But since that was, in fact, exactly what I was, I took the man’s raincoat, bowed my head, and ushered him into the office. He didn’t even glance at me. And there I was, clutching the president of Paraguay’s raincoat, as he walked away from me remarking, “It’s so cold here in Mexico!”

I was definitely the servant. And again I asked myself what I’d asked when I started working for President Lorenzo Terán. “What the hell do they want from me? I’m nobody.”

You’ll say, “Sure, now that you’re no one you can play at false humility.”

Believe me. Don’t believe me. What does it matter? I’m writing to you for the last time, Pepona. I’ll never write to you again, I swear. I only want you to know how and where I’ve ended up, and I want you to know that I accept it with genuine humility.

My father lives in a tiny, isolated house in the Desierto de los Leones. It’s a modest, decent little house, very hidden away. The only way to get there is by taking those very steep, winding roads from where you can see Ajusco. My father is very old. I call him my AP, my “Aged Parent,” as a tribute to something I read in a novel by Dickens when I was young. Yes, I was young once, my Pepa, hard as it may be for you and the rest of the world to believe. I was young, I studied, I read, I prepared for the future. I was driven by ambition and by something else: my father’s destiny. Not to repeat it, to be precise. I couldn’t bear to be like him.