Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

“Do you really believe the masses will follow you, Jericó?”

“Distinguish between rhetoric and reality. I have to invoke the masses to justify myself. I need only a shock corps to triumph. A small, determined group. All of that about a class in the vanguard is late-night Marxist rhetoric. If you wait for the masses to act, Josué, you’ll wait till the cows come home.”

Once again, his world of North American sayings and references surprised me. Wait till the cows come home. Espera a que las vacas regresen .

“All the people,” I said to introduce an idea (let’s see if it sticks). “The mass of workers.”

“All the people are too much.”

“Who then?”

“A small group,” said Jericó, “a small, cold, violent group for insurrectionary tactics.”

“The mass of workers…”

“I don’t need them!” Jericó exclaimed. “An assault group is enough. The assault group represents the mass of the dissatisfied. Do you realize that half a million workers have returned to Mexico from the United States and don’t find anything but poverty and unemployment?”

“Detachments?”

“Armed. It’s enough for me to say from Los Pinos: Distribute weapons to defend the chief of state.”

I repressed my laughter. I transformed it into doubts. I managed to say: “They won’t pay attention to you.”

He turned red. Enraged. I saw something crazy in his eyes. As if saying to himself and saying to me, They are going to obey me.

“A few people,” he said as if he were praying. “Limited terrain. Clear objectives, the vanguard forward, the masses back.”

In the meantime, I should say that more than the insurrectionary tactics foreseen by Jericó, Jericó himself interested me, his evolution, his ambition. Should I have been surprised? Hadn’t he been my first friend? Wasn’t Jericó the one who gave me his hand in school, protecting me against the damned bullies? Wasn’t Jericó the one who took me to his apartment when “the House of Usher” fell on Calle de Berlín? Wasn’t he the one who introduced me to fundamental readings? Didn’t we argue together with Father Filopáter? Didn’t we see each other naked in the shower? Didn’t we fuck as a team the whore with the bee on her buttock? Weren’t we Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, founders of cities, Argonauts equal to Jason and the archer Phalerus and Lynceus the lookout and Orpheus the poet, and the herald, son of Hermes, and the courier of Lapida who had been a woman and Atalanta of Calydon, who still was: Argonauts plowing the seas in search-you Jericó and I Josué-of the Golden Fleece that hangs in a distant olive grove, guarded night and day by a sleepless dragon? I looked intently at Jericó, as if a direct gaze were still the guarantee of truth, the beacon of certitude, as if the most malicious men in the world had not understood-from the very beginning-that the direct gaze associated with frankness, humility, understanding, and friendship is the mask of falsehood, pride, intransigence, and enmity. I should have known it. I didn’t want to know it. Until this very moment when I’m narrating what happened, I insisted on evoking our youth as students as the most valuable part of our past, the friendship that was the reason for being, the watchword, the birth certificate of the relationship between Josué and Jericó. A reality that had to be expressed thoroughly and to the very last moment-I told myself-under penalty of losing my soul.

My references to the ideas and images that united us were only a way of telling myself and telling Jericó: “Every friendship rests on a myth and represents it.”

I asked: “In addition to the fleece, whom did the beast guard?” I answered myself: “A ghost. The specter of an exiled king whose return would bring peace to the kingdom.

“Recovering a ghost in order to sacrifice a republic,” I murmured then, and Jericó simply asked me: “What was more interesting, recovering the fleece or bringing back the ghost?”

“Crowning a specter?”

I understand now that this question has hung over our destinies because Jericó and I were Castor and Pollux, part of the eternal expedition in search of desire and destiny, a mere pretext, however, for recovering a specter and bringing him back home.

“Did you see this?” I handed him the newspaper across the table.

“What?”

“What happened at the zoo.”

“No.”

“A tiger died after being attacked by four other tigers.”

“Why?”

“They were hungry.”

I pointed.

“They ate his entrails. Look.”

Perhaps I just wanted to indicate that he and I became friends because of a debt . That brought us together. We established a lifetime alliance on the basis of that debt.

WILL VALENTÍN PEDRO Carrera go to Max Monroy’s offices and residence in the Utopia building on the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga? Or would Max Monroy again go to the president’s residence and office in Los Pinos?

“Let him come,” advised the novice María del Rosario Galván.

“Why?” asked Carrera, prepared to admire the young woman’s beauty in exchange for excusing her errors and disregarding her opinions.

“Well, because you are… the president…”

Carrera smiled. “Do you know what ancient kings did to exercise their rights?”

“No.”

“Every year they went from village to village. They didn’t ask the village to come to see them. They went to the village, do you understand what I’m saying, beautiful?”

“Of course.” She attempted to recover her composure. “If the mountain doesn’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad goes to the mountain.”

“Exactly right, babe.”

The president smiled indulgently and went to the neutral territory approved by his representatives and Max Monroy’s. The Castle of Chapultepec, now the National Museum of History and the setting for Boy Heroes, Hapsburg Empires, and Porfirista Dictatorships. Monroy acceded to arriving first and viewing the tawny panorama of the city from the heights as if he were viewing non-existence itself. Why pretend to be master of nothing when one was master of everything? On the other hand, the president came to the esplanade of the palace as if he were a boy hero about to throw himself into the void, wrapped in the flag. As if the throne of the dynasty that ruled Mexico the longest (more than two centuries)-the Hapsburgs-were waiting for him. As if he were prepared to govern for three decades because listen, María del Rosario, you have to come here thinking you’re eternal, if not, you lose your six years the first day…

To see or not to see the arrival of the powerful entrepreneur Max Monroy? Act distracted, be surprised, greet each other, embrace?

“Ah!”

The embrace of the two men was recorded by cameras and microphones before Valentín Pedro Carrera and Max Monroy walked ten paces to distance themselves from publicity and bodyguards. María del Rosario Galván and Asunta Jordán, practically identical in their professional attire of tailored suit, dark stockings, and high heels, blocked the press and held off the guests.

“Truce, my dear Max?” The president’s smile dissipated the capital’s smog. “A meeting of two souls? Primus inter pares? Or pure show, my esteemed friend? An Embrace of Acatempan ending the wars of independence?”

“No, my dear president. Another battle.” Monroy did not smile.

“If you divide you don’t rule,” Carrera reflected, trying to catch Monroy’s eye.

“And if you rule by force, you divide but govern the parts.”

“Each to his own philosophy.” Carrera almost sighed. “The good thing is that when there’s danger, we know how to come together.”

“Understand it in terms of mutual convenience,” Monroy said with great suavity.