Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

5. Sitting at his desk with the tricolor flag planted behind him like a parched nopal, President Justo Mayorga read the urgent communiqué. The agrarian leader Joaquín Villagrán had occupied the federal Congress with an army of workers carrying machetes and demanding — nothing less — radical policies on all fronts to bring the country out of its endemic poverty. There were no insults on their banners. Only demands. Education. Security. Honest judges. From the bottom. Everything from the bottom. Jobs. Work. From the bottom. No waiting for investments from the top. No asking for loans and canceling debts. School and work, from the bottom. Sharecroppers, day laborers, trade unionists, artisans, members of village communes, Indians, workers, small contractors, poor ranchers, village merchants, rural schoolteachers.

And the movement’s flag. An Indian sitting on a mountain of gold. “Mexico is the country of injustice,” said Humboldt in 1801, the president recalled. The Indian, the campesino, the worker had joined together and taken over the seat of Congress. Who would get them out? How? With guns? Congress is surrounded by the army, Mr. President. Because in Mexico no one governs without the army, but the army is institutional and obeys only the president.

“While the president represents the state,” the secretary of defense, Jenaro Alvírez, informed Justo Mayorga. “Because we soldiers know how to distinguish between transitory governments and the state that endures.”

He stared at Mayorga. “If, on the other hand, the president stops representing the state and defends only his own government. .” He smiled affably. “We Mexicans are like a large extended family. .”

General Alvírez hurled his suspension points like bullets. And Justo Mayorga closed the folder with the day’s information and gave free rein to his interior murmur, I don’t do business with my conscience, I’ll do whatever I have to do, right now I don’t know what I should do, the situation is serious and I won’t resolve it the way I have other times by firing secretaries of state, removing functionaries, blaming others, letting it be known that I’ve been deceived by disloyal colleagues, the usual Judases, the fact of the matter is I don’t have any colleagues left I can blame, the ball stopped on my number on the roulette wheel, it’s not a day for distractions, it’s a day for internal courage, I must be strong in my soul to be strong in my body, outside, on the street, I have to repeat to myself that being president is not owing anybody anything and being grateful for even less in order to appear in public as if I were the dream of the man in the street which is to be president of Mexico, what every Mexican thinks he deserves to be, the chief, this is a country of chiefs, without chiefs we wander around more disoriented than a parakeet at the North Pole, that’s the truth, I have to be cold inside to be heated in my external performance and it irritates me that my son’s frivolity now seems like a fly in a storm, the idea that keeps coming back pains me, my son is my worst enemy, not the leader Joaquín Villagrán who’s taken over the Congress, not the army under the command of General Jenaro Alvírez surrounding the Palace of San Lázaro and waiting for my orders,

“Remove the agitators,”

my good-for-nothing son and his friend Richi Riva have draped themselves in the middle of my mind and I want to get them out so I can think clearly. I can’t be the mental prisoner of a couple of frivolous kids, I don’t want anybody to say how will he govern the country if he can’t govern his son, ah you pissant little bastard, you’re giving me a feeling of failure that paralyzes me, I haven’t known how to teach you my morality, don’t be anybody’s friend, you can’t govern with frivolity and sentimentality, being president is not owing anybody anything. .

“Mr. President. The army has surrounded the Congress. We’re waiting for your order to remove them.”

6. For the whole blessed day, Luz Pardo de Mayorga wandered like a ghost through the empty rooms of Los Pinos. Her intimate, enduring alliance with Justo Mayorga made her as sensitive as a butterfly trapped under a bell jar. Something was going on. Something besides yesterday’s unpleasant breakfast. Who knows why, this afternoon she would have liked to be absent. She had dressed for lunch, but her husband sent word he wouldn’t arrive in time. There was no one in the residence except the invisible servants and their feline secretiveness. Doña Luz could fill the afternoon hours however she chose, watching soap operas, playing the CD of the boleros she liked best,

We who loved so much,

who made a wondrous sun of love. .

she hummed very quietly because in this house — the president had told her — even the walls have ears, be careful Lucecita, don’t show your feelings, keep the rancor you feel in your heart, because you can’t be authentic, because you’re the prisoner of Los Pinos, because you’d like it if your husband weren’t so powerful, if he got sick you could show him the real affection you have for him, if you were braver you’d demand that he understand Enrique, that he not feel so resentful if the boy has a good time and you don’t anymore, Justo, you don’t know how to have a good time anymore and you can’t stand pleasure in anybody else, try to imagine my soul split in two, between the love I feel for you and the love I feel for our son, don’t you say you love only your family, nobody else, that a president doesn’t have the right to love anybody, only his family? you’ll allow me to doubt, Justo, you’ll permit me to think that your political coldness has come into our house, that you treat your son and me like subjects, no, not even that, because with the masses you’re seductive, affectionate, you put on a mask with the people, and with us who are you, Justo? the time has come to say who you are with your wife and son. .

“Don’t dress up too much. Be more circumspect.”

“I only want to look nice.”

“Don’t fondle me so much.”

Justo Mayorga leaned over to kiss her temple. Then he saw something he hadn’t seen before. A tear suspended in the corner of his wife’s eye. He felt transported, irrelevant, on his way elsewhere. He looked at that single trembling tear, suspended there without ever falling, without rolling down her cheek, he saw it kept there since her youth, since they were married, when Luz Pardo promised herself never to cry in front of her husband.

“I can’t conceive of losing you and continuing to live. It would make no sense.”

7. Attack, Mr. President. In half an hour we can empty the Congress. Don’t do anything, Mr. President. Just surround them until they give up because of hunger. Don’t make them into martyrs, Mr. President. If they go on a hunger strike, more people will come to encourage them than there are soldiers surrounding them. Abandon the place, Mr. President. Be noble. Leave them there until they get tired and leave on their own.

Attack. Surround. Don’t do anything.

The dusty wind of a February afternoon shook the trees in the park and the curtains of the official residence. Father, mother, and son sat down for supper. First there was a long silence. Then the first lady remarked that a storm was brewing that night. She bit her tongue. She didn’t want to refer to anything more serious than the weather. Restless, impulsive, irritated, Quique broached the subject of what the point was of getting to the top and not enjoying life.

“Don’t worry, son. Three more years and we go back to the ranch.”

“You, not me,” said the rebel, then immediately modulated that. “I’m not going to any ranch. Even if you drag me. I’m staying here in the capital. Here’s where my pals are, my life, I don’t need you two.”