Carlos Fuentes - The Eagle's Throne

“Where is my father?”

“Where he always is. Watching television. Day and night.”

She wrapped her shawl gracefully over her breasts. I didn’t bother telling her that the television antennae had been dead since January.

“Oh. Day and night?”

“Yes. He sleeps there, he eats there, he says he can’t miss a moment’s television. He says those people might come and kill him at any moment, and he has to be ready to defend himself.”

“Who wants to kill him?”

“Bad people.”

“What are their names?”

“Oh. . Sute Cúpira. The other one’s Cholo Parima. I dream about them, sir. He says they’re Venezuelans and they live in a jungle called Canaima.”

I stared at her, more and more bewildered by the minute.

“All right. Your name’s Gloria Marín. And the man you work for, what’s his name?”

“Jorge Negrete.”

“No. His name’s Enrico Canali. Where did you get the name Jorge Negrete from, bitch? Negrete was a movie star, a matinee idol, the kind of heartbreaker that women like you used to dream about. He died nearly a century ago.”

Gloria Marín started crying.

“Oh, sir. Don’t tell him that. Don’t kill him. He’s Jorge Negrete. He really believes that. Don’t take that away from him. I swear it will kill him.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Call me whatever you want. At your service.”

I sighed as I used to sigh when I was a young man. Then I walked into the tiny living room, which opened onto a neglected patio where grass grew between the cracks in the tiles, and a solitary pirú tree made its penance. And there, in an easy chair facing the television sat my AP, my Aged Parent, his eyes fixed on the screen. He was talking to himself, in a reverie.

“Now I go into the bar and I give everyone a dirty look. ‘Machine gun’s here!’ I shout, my hair in my face, and the whole place goes quiet, they’re scared, and I grab the prettiest girl by the waist — I’m sorry, Gloria, not you, you weren’t in this movie — and I sing ‘Oh, Jalisco, don’t back out. .’ ”

He felt my presence, and his cold, freckled hand that felt like marble settled on top of mine and guided it up to his shoulder, as if thanking me for being there without knowing who I was. He changed the picture with the remote control. You see, he was only watching a homemade montage of scenes from a bunch of different old movies. Suddenly, there was Jorge Negrete dancing away on a Veracruz stage to the melody of the Niño Aparecido son with the stunning Gloria Marín dressed like an aristocratic lady from the nineteenth century in a mantilla and ankle-length silk skirts, and Negrete dressed up like a chinaco. The two of them gaze at each other with a defiant passion until the villain, an apothecary named Vitriolo, mad with jealousy, stabs Gloria with a knife. . My AP fast-forwarded the tape, his hand trembling in anticipation of the excitement of watching Jorge give Gloria a long, slow kiss in the film A Letter of Love.

My father paused the film as the two characters kissed, and sat there in rapture, savoring the moment.

Then, after a long while, he turned to me.

“Thank you for coming to see me. I’ve been waiting for my squire.” He looked at me with a blank stare.

“Who are you, young man? Mantequilla or El Chicote?”

“Chicote, Father.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. Chicote. I’m Chicote, your loyal companion.”

“That’s what I want to hear. Come on, have a tequila and lime over here in the corner, it’s on me, we’ll drink until we fall over, and we’ll dream of all the women who let us down, you and me, soul mates. . ”

Negrete sang on the screen, my father sang from his chair, and I sang too, holding on to my father’s hand, as we watched scenes from the movie Me he de comer esa tuna.

L’águila siendo animal

se retrató en el dinero.

Para subir al nopal

pidió permiso primero. 2

Out on the patio, not paying us any attention, Gloria Marín watered her flowers and sang her own song: “I am a little virgin, I water the flowers. . ”

She directed her gaze, coy and coquettish, at me.

I looked back at her.

You can say what you’re thinking, Josefina: “Of course you’d end up fucking her. . ”

How sorry I am that your husband, honorable to a fault, had to tell you about my financial recovery plan, calling me a scumbag and a criminal. Let’s see how you and he navigate these turbulent political waters. I offered him a transatlantic liner. He’s willing to put up with a canoe. It’s in God’s hands now.

No matter what you read, no matter what they tell you, remember this: I’ll always be a politician, and politics is a business with many twists and turns. In politics, you assume your responsibilities and you get what you put into the job. That’s the way it has to be, that is the simple truth.

Yours,

T.

Distinguished president and esteemed friend: I know that nobody knows the rules of national politics as well as you. Every president leaves behind a rosary of more or less famous sayings that become part of our political folklore.

“In politics, you have to swallow frogs without flinching.”

“A politician who is poor is a poor politician.”

“He who doesn’t deceive, doesn’t achieve.”

“Onward and upward.”

“We are all the solution.”

“If things are going well for the president, things are going well for Mexico.”

I remember only two of yours.

“In order to preserve customs, we must break laws.”

“Becoming president is like reaching Treasure Island. Even if they expel you from the island, you’ll never stop yearning for it. You want to return, even though everyone — including yourself — tells you no.”

Very well, Mr. President, the moment has arrived. It’s time to abandon Treasure Island. I understand your feelings. You would like to be an agent of reconciliation at a difficult time for the republic.

You’ve stated publicly, “The struggle for power destroys the one thing that gives power any meaning, which is to create wealth for the country within a framework of peace and legality.”

I couldn’t agree with you more. And I understand your dismay, Mr. President. You’re anticipating the struggle ahead. You fear that it will degenerate into riots, civil war, balkanization, dog-eat-dog, and all that. And you see yourself as an agent of unity, experience, authority, and continuity.

Mr. President: I see how you act and I think that the politician who goes around thinking he’s more than he is will never know who he is.

This confusion, this lack of self-awareness, might be interesting material for psychoanalysis but it’s fatal for the person in question and, above all, the political health of the country.

I know what’s going through your mind — some matadors will die and some will shield themselves behind the barriers, but the fierce bull will never abandon his favorite spot in the arena.

Yes, I want to eliminate them all until he and I are the only two left.

So now the question is: Who is “he”? And who am “I”?

Yes, Mr. President, power effects its own fiction, according to the distinguished Chilean philosopher Martín Hopenhayn, in a reference to Kafka. And fifty years ago, Moya Palencia, interior secretary as I am now, said that in Mexico Kafka would be considered a chronicler of local customs.

I find it amusing that Mexicans call “customs” what the rest of the world, the serious world, calls realpolitik — which is nothing less than the politics of my friend Machiavelli: “Since all men are wicked and do not keep faith with you, you also do not have to keep it with them.” The Prince’s skill lies in his ability to use this evil reality in his own interest, while seeming to be acting in the interests of the people.