Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

For three consecutive six-year cycles, the AP was a significant influence on Mexican politics. He went from one government ministry to the next, always wielding his power from the shadows, always as a political operator working for the big payoff — that is, getting the PRI to put his minister on the presidential ticket, and then push him into office. He never managed to do it, and so he always gained the winner’s trust. Nothing gains people’s trust quite like losing. Always in the shadows. Always a secret operator. He couldn’t hope for anything more than that because he was born in Italy of Italian parents, the Canalis of Naples. That was why people could trust him: His ambitions were thwarted by the law. He himself could never be president. Three six-year periods. But then the day came when he had too many secrets under his hat. That was the problem. So many secrets, in fact, that nobody believed they could possibly all be true because secrets are, by nature, contradictory and ambiguous, and what is inevitable for A is nonsense for B, what is virtue for X is vice for Z, and so on. In other words, everything my father knew, everything he knew too much about, turned against him in the end.

“A” reproached him for keeping a secret when it could have been useful to expose it.

“B” pounced on him because he didn’t understand that my father’s silence protected him, while what B really wanted was for his secret to get out and become a political threat.

“X” wanted my father sacrificed precisely because of his secrecy: The secrets he kept were crimes of state.

And “Z” reproached him, on the other hand, for a series of supposed indiscretions. .

Yes, he was pulling strings on too many puppets and the theater of his life was a house of cards.

My father was clever. Too clever. Too clever for his own good. He overdid it. He forgot to purge those who purge. He forgot that the best way to secure your enemy’s life is by killing him. He forgot the immortal lessons of the longest dictatorships: Invisible service to the powerful can bring reward but also punishment. After a time my father knew so many secrets that people began to fear him, and he became famous. His silence didn’t save him. On the contrary, they decided to bury him before he could open his mouth.

How did they destroy him? With flattery, my Pepa. Heaping praise on him. Dragging him out of the shadows that were his natural habitat. Showing him off and applauding him at the political circus, trotting him around the ring. My poor father suffered — he couldn’t decide if he should stay in the shadows or revel in his public adulation. He forgot the cry of one of Stalin’s close collaborators: “Please! Don’t flatter me! Don’t send me to Siberia!”

Yes, my AP had too much applause. Not the public kind, which doesn’t matter, but the private: the applause of the president, which inspires people to feel envy and spite for the president’s favorite. .

In short: He spent too much time being both the light of the house and the darkness of the streets.

They say that public figures are condemned to live in constant anguish but must never show it. And yet sometimes anguish must be translated into action. Stalin was terrified of dentists. He preferred to let his teeth rot rather than risk going to the dentist. In other words, one believes that loyalty, not ability, is what gets rewarded in the end. Laugh at me if you want, remember all my despicable acts, mock me for my vanity. And take pity on my defeat. It is simply act two of my own father’s downfall.

It had been years since I’d last seen him. I always sent him money, but I was afraid to go near him. Failure is contagious, and I didn’t want to end up like him. I was going to succeed where he failed. I was going to make it to the Eagle’s Throne. Bernal Herrera, María del Rosario, my great enemies, you, the woman who betrayed me, the little enemies that one should never underestimate, the little snakes inside my own office: Dorita with her sky-blue ribbons; Penélope with her hulking frame and dark skin; and the true architect of my downfall, Nicolás Valdivia, who is now interior secretary, the man who thought up the scheme that cost me my power, those damned documents kept by that imbecile archivist Cástulo Magón, those documents that I signed only because President César León asked me to, a request that was an order and a consolation:

“Don’t worry, Tácito. I have an archive all ready for the moment I leave office. I need it for my memoirs. I’ll be selective, I promise. But I can’t sacrifice a single document from my administration. You understand. A president of Mexico doesn’t govern for just six years. He governs for posterity. Everything must be saved, the good and the bad. Who knows, my good Tácito, time might prove you were right about those necessary legal oversights. What will matter more in the end, the fact that we cheated a group of small shareholders or that we saved the great companies that are the driving force behind an export economy like ours?”

He smiled mischievously.

“And besides, the archivist has orders to put the originals through the shredder. I’ll keep certified copies.”

There was a blatant threat in his beady fly’s eyes. Oh yes, my Pepa, that man is just like a fly, his eyes can look in every direction simultaneously. He has very long antennae on his head. He has two pairs of wings, one for flying and the other for keeping his balance. He always lands on trash dumps. He’s an old fly, gray with a yellow belly. That’s what gives him away. Be wary of him. He can stick to walls and crawl across ceilings. He uses maggots as bait, and everyone knows maggots feed on dead flesh. You despise me. I don’t despise you, and that’s why I’m warning you now: Don’t rest on your laurels with Arruza. Don’t be taken in by the pure brute force of the general. And keep your eye on César León. He always has an ace up his sleeve.

I told Valdivia all this and now I’m telling you, especially now that you’re in bed with a wolf. Let Arruza the wolf fear León the fly. Whoever thinks the ex-president is willing to retire is sorely mistaken. He’ll keep on being a nuisance until the day he dies.

But I want to get back to my Aged Parent. The world was his downfall, my Pepa, just as it was mine, but it was worse for him because he never aspired to the Eagle’s Throne; all he wanted was to keep on operating from the shadows. Yes, and since he was less ambitious, it hurt more to lose. It was like an affront to his moral code of discretion, you see. Thanks to his modesty, a vast horizon stretched before him, as long as his career as a trusted political adviser — like Talleyrand, Fouché, and Father Joseph Le Clerc de Tremblay, the original éminence grise at the side of Richelieu. Look how quickly my memory comes back — I’m the passionate student of history again. Oh, but that only shows how much I’ve changed, Josefa. I’m someone else — do you see? I feel purified by this moment of emotion. My father’s greatest gift, his greatest strength, was that of being invisible. It earned him the trust of powerful men. But it made him expendable when he finally knew everything but was still nobody.

I went into the little house in the Desierto de los Leones.

The girl that looks after the AP was wearing the traditional outfit of the china poblana.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, because although I pay her salary I’d never seen her.

“Gloria Marín, at your service.”

I smiled.

“Oh, just like the actress.”

“No, sir. I am the actress Gloria Marín.”

And it was true, she looked exactly like one of those disturbingly beautiful belles of the Mexican cinema. Gloria Marín: jet-black hair, eyes wistful and suspicious but sensual behind the inevitable defensive-ness of the world-weary Mexican woman. Her profile was perfect, her face oval, light brown. And those lips, always on the verge of a bitter smile. In appearance, submissive. In reality, a rebel.