Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

“Doing what, kid?”

“What I’m proposing, Señor,” said Jericó, reverting to respect.

“IF WE’RE GOING to spend time together,” Asunta said to me one lazy afternoon, “it’s better if I tell you about my life. I want you to know who I am because I told you about it, instead of having rumors coming up here from ten stories down.”

“And what obliges me to believe you?” I said with a touch of irony, just to protect myself from the dark surge of her gaze and respiration filled with vague nocturnal perfumes that were beginning to surround us. I liked this woman. She bored me, she frightened me, and I liked her.

The truth is that before talking about herself, Asunta talked to me about Max Monroy and I, more fool me, did not realize right away that this was her way of telling me, Look, Josué, this is who I am, the woman who talks to you about Max Monroy is the woman who talks to you about herself. You can hold on to the certainty I talked only about him and you’d be wrong. I’m letting you know in time. I don’t know any other way to tell you about my life than to tell you about my life with the man who determines my life.

“Max Monroy: You, who are writing a thesis on Machiavelli under my direction,” Maestro Sanginés said to me, “know that the end does not always justify the means. Max Monroy decided from the very beginning that the way to obtain the best ends is to forget about them and act as if the means were the ends. Thanks to this philosophy, he strengthened his own business to the maximum. A man of means, Max valued ends, convinced they were as separate from means as day is from night. He distrusted ultimate solutions: They’re always bad, he says, because they classify you forever and close the doors of renovation to you. Even worse: If the ultimate solution fails, you have to begin all over again. On the other hand, if a means doesn’t produce results, you have at hand a repertoire of other means that aren’t ultimate but partial, as disposable as a Kleenex. Though if you’re successful, they appear as ends. This is what Max Monroy rejects. Never ends. He never celebrates the success of an end but rather the viability of a means. Listen carefully to this, Josué. Everything Max Monroy accomplishes is only a means to achieving the next means, never an end. He says the word END serves only to conclude a film, turn up the lights, and ask the audience, courteously, to withdraw with no need to pick up the bottles of Coca-Cola or carry to the trashcan the popcorn scattered on the floor.”

“The Max Monroy film, Josué, ignores the word END. In this way, you understand, he never admits failure. Some endeavors are successful. Others are not. He abandons these in time. Sometimes he finds himself obliged to proclaim victory after a failure: a program that did not succeed with the public, an innovation that was soon surpassed by the competition. Max changes the subject, he does not refer to what happened, he goes on to the next topic. In this way he leaves no rancor behind him. No one thinks he is the loser. No one considers himself the winner. But the cash register does not stop ringing,” Asunta said to me the other day.

“Monroy is famous for having said that thanks to him we abandoned the abacus. He walked new ground just to open even newer ground. What I mean is that he’s careful to have his successes not be failures paid for in exchange for success. Max is seen as an invulnerable entrepreneur who has to be stopped or eliminated. He navigates in silence over the waters of fortune. He is a master of the silent accomplishment, the stealthy success. He accepts his power. He tries not to allow envy to turn into idle conversation or an airplane without a motor destined to wander from airport to airport,” Antonio Sanginés confirmed on another night.

(I thought of my afflicted and dearly loved Lucha Zapata. My sincere though distrustful Asunta Jordán continued her discourse while her eyes gleamed even more, as if to keep at a distance approaching night.)

“Max Monroy is like the serpent. He coils around himself. He is a self-sufficient circle. When he looks out from the top floor of this building, he acknowledges that the city’s danger surrounds us. At the same time, he listens to the sound of the street and says that traffic is the music of business.”

“Capitalism’s symphony?”

Asunta laughed. Did she say it? Did Sanginés? Did I say it to myself? The discourse on Monroy in my head is unitary, like a fan that has one piece of cloth and many ribs. “To talk about capitalism is to think something can replace it. Max calls it one-worldism, globalization, internationalism. It’s a question of a planetary phenomenon, corrected if possible by social enlightenment. Max has always been ahead of his time. He acknowledges that in Mexico there are classes, abysmal differences between poor and rich. His utopia-we’re in the district of Tata Vasco and Thomas More, remember?-is for there to be increasingly fewer differences and for us to become a single river, with constant tides and a single current flowing to the sea, if not with greater equality, at least with greater opportunities. In this he differs from conventional politicians. Max wants to create the need in order to create the agency. Politicians create the agency and forget about the need. It’s what Max opposes in our president.”

(They tell me that with Jericó transformed into a presidential adviser?)

“Because this is what happens, Josué,” Asunta, Sanginés, and I myself continued in identical reflections without divisions, attracted by the personality of Max Monroy: “Max asks those who believe the world is already made what needs to be done, and moves ahead by doing it. His daily slogan is Never think there’s nothing left to do . Ask yourselves how much you’ve done and how much you found done or allowed to be done. That, Max clenches his fist, is what needs to be done.”

“And with people, Asunta? Is Max Monroy the machine you’ve described? Doesn’t he deal with human beings? Does he live shut away like an eagle without wings up there in his aerie?”

I myself, Sanginés, and Asunta laughed again, as if my questions were tickling us. “Max Monroy knows how to use masks. They say he has a lifelong poker face. He knows how to pretend. He approaches, threatening. He becomes cordial again. But anyone who saw him threatening does not forget the threat. He knows the price of silence. He wounds no one without making that person believe that he himself will close the wound. And sometimes, if it suits him, he lets it be known that the wound will never close. He doesn’t flatter anyone. And he doesn’t allow himself to be flattered. He says the flatterer, the fawner, puts the intelligence of the flattered person to sleep. Max does favors when necessary. But he tells me constantly that for each favor he’ll have one ingrate and a hundred enemies. He doesn’t say a word about business. Let the politicians talk. Let them make compromises. Let them make mistakes. Max Monroy, zipper-mouthed. Max Monroy, close-mouthed.”

“Doesn’t he feel guilty for anything?”

“He says the angels will take care of discussing his vices and virtues. Why try to anticipate heaven?” said the collective voice about Max.

“Doesn’t he ever ask for anything? Deference? Privileges?”

“Respect. That’s what he gave me,” said Asunta, opening her eyes wide and looking straight at me. “You asked about me? I answered with Max? Do you know who I am thanks to Max? Can you imagine me, Josué, my little Josué, before Max? Can you imagine a girl from the dry province, from the thorny north, with parents who wanted to turn her into a completely useless, completely supported girl, what could I be? Can you see me trapped in a family governed by three unbearable rules? ‘We don’t talk about that. Errors are not corrected. We don’t regret anything, child.’ Not anything? Where did my parents come up with the idea that everything they did was allowed, knowing they didn’t do anything worth disallowing? The north, the desert, the emptiness, the highways going nowhere, the mountains in the distance, the desert close at hand, the ocean a pious lie, the weather always undecided between suffocation and dawn. A desert husband. Quick, we don’t want the girl left behind with us. Is he the best? No. Is he the worst? Not that either. Who is he? He sells cars. Buses. Trucks. Is he in love? Is he calculating? Do we have more than he does? Does he have more than we do? Where did Tomás González come from? Where did Asunta López Jordán come from? Who’s better, the Gonzálezes or the Lópezes? Who presumes what, just tell me that? Who boasts of their cactus, their desert, their rock, their paving stone or tortilla, just tell us that? Why does he presume so much, what is the presumptuous man presumptuous about? Why on your wedding night does he show you his penis and say, Baby, let me introduce you to King Kong, from now on he’s going to sleep with us? Why is he presumptuous about everything except you? Why does he talk about you, Asunta López Jordán, as his ball and chain? Why does he presume with his friends that you take care of the house but he is a macho who needs broads livelier and sexier than you, Ernestina and Amapola and Cross-eyed Malva and Sweetass, all the whores of the north plus some from Arizona and Texas when he goes, as they say, to buy spare parts, sure, damn it, is that what they call it now? Why do you begin to pester him too, Asunta López de González, why do you tell him shave, you scratch when you make love to me, use deodorant, play golf, do something, stick King Kong in his cage?