Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

He looked at me with intense melancholy.

“Don’t judge him severely. He’s not a superficial man. He just has a different idea of political destiny. He wants to create, Josué, politics with joy. It is his honor. It is his perdition. He carries in his genes the omnipotence of the Mexican monarch, Aztec, colonial, and republican. Everything that happened before, if it’s good, ought to justify him. Nothing of what occurs afterward, if it’s bad, concerns him. And if the good he did is not recognized, it’s sheer ingratitude. He prefers evoking to naming. He sneezes with a smile and smiles sneezing, to deceive others… They are his masks: laughing, sneezing.”

“Is he deceiving himself, Maestro?” I sopped up the mix of juice from the meat and mashed potatoes with a piece of bread.

I don’t know if Sanginés sighed or if he did so only in my imagination. He said at times Valentín Pedro Carrera becomes lost in thought, joining his knotty hands at his forehead as if his head were hurting. At those moments he seemed old.

Sanginés looked at me intently.

“I believe he says something like ‘too late, too late,’ but reacts by taking out his portable, picking at keys, and consulting, or pretending to consult-”

“And Max Monroy?” I interrupted so Sanginés wouldn’t fall into pure melancholy.

“Max Monroy.” I don’t know if Sanginés permitted himself a sigh. “Let’s see, let’s see… They’re different. They’re similar. I’ll explain…”

He looked in vain for a dish that didn’t come because he hadn’t ordered it. He picked up an empty glass. He avoided looking at me. He looked at himself. He continued.

“Power wearies men, though in different ways. Carrera becomes exasperated at times and then I see his weariness. He has unacceptable outbursts. He says inconsequentially violent things. For example, when he passes the Diego Rivera frescoes in the Palace, ‘You don’t paint a mural with lukewarm water, Sanginés,’ and when I sit down to work: ‘We’ll open a credit column for Our Lord Jesus Christ, because I’m going to fill out the debit column right now.’ He tries to avoid violence but can be disparaging and even vulgar when he refers to ‘the street pox.’ He prefers the government to function in peace. But it’s difficult for him to admit change. He prefers doing what he did: inventing popular festivals to entertain and distract people. Then he transformed the Zócalo into an ice skating rink. And then he opened children’s pools in areas with no water. People were hurt in the rinks. They drowned in the pools. It didn’t matter: Circuses without bread.”

“Have a good time, kids,” I added without too much sense, suspecting that by talking about the president, Sanginés avoided talking about Max Monroy.

Sanginés nodded. “When I tell him all this doesn’t solve problems, Carrera replies: ‘The country is very complex. Don’t try to understand it.’ In the face of that, Josué, I am left speechless. Injustice, intolerance, resignation? With these facts our leader makes his bed and night after night lies down with these paradigmatic words: ‘Making decisions is boring.’ ”

“Does it console him to know that some day he’ll be seen naked?”

“Naked? His skin is his gala outfit.”

“I mean without memory.”

Sanginés ordered an espresso and looked at me attentively.

Certainly it attracted his attention that I equated “nakedness” and “memory.” I do realize that in my imagination memory is like a seal in which wax retains the image without any need to pour it. My conversation with Sanginés placed before me the dilemma of memory. Immediate memory: ordering an espresso and not remembering it. Intermediate memory: When all was said and done, would I keep it?

“A man without memory has only action as a weapon,” said Sanginés.

“Did the president’s patience come to an end?” I insisted.

“Your friend Jericó ended it for him.”

He wasn’t going to let me talk. And I didn’t want to talk.

“Jericó tricked the president. He offered loyalty and gave him betrayal. This is what Carrera didn’t forgive. Everything else I’ve told you this afternoon was left behind, it collapsed, and the president was left alone with only the black tongue of ingratitude, and of solitude, which is even more bitter.”

The coffee tasted less bitter than his account. I felt that interrupting him was something worse than foolishness: it was lack of respect.

“He’s clever. He realized that to crush Jericó the forces of law and order were not enough, though I can tell you he used them. Jericó gave the president the opportunity to demonstrate his social power, his ability to represent the nation. And for that he needed Max Monroy.”

“Monroy doesn’t like Carrera. I know, Maestro, I saw it myself. Monroy humiliated Carrera.”

“What serious politician hasn’t eaten shit, Josué? It’s part of the profession! You eat toads and don’t make faces. Bah! Carrera needed Monroy to demonstrate unity in the face of an attempted rebellion. Monroy needed Carrera to give the impression that without Monroy the republic can’t be saved.”

“A pact between thieves.” I tried to be ironic.

Sanginés ignored me. He said I should understand Max Monroy. I said I had never underestimated him (including his sex life, which I had learned about and never would reveal out of respect for myself).

“It’s difficult not to admire a man who never allows himself to be flattered. He knows the best men lose their way in flattery…”

He looked at me with something resembling sincerity: “In Mexico we have a word that is categorical, juicy, and insuperable: lameculos . The person who flatters to obtain favors. In my day we talked about the UFA. United Front of Asskissers. Today it would be the UFT, United Front of Traitors.”

“And Monroy?” I said in order not to reveal I didn’t know what he was talking about. The UFA! The Stone Age!

“Monroy.”

“He can’t bear a flatterer. It’s his great strength in the midst of the national milieu of political, professional, and entrepreneurial asskissers.”

“But…” I interrupted and didn’t dare continue. The name and figure of Miguel Aparecido were on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I came up with a question: “And Jericó?”

“He’s in a safe place,” Sanginés answered without looking at me. He said it in a categorical, almost disagreeable way.

We left.

Outside the Danubio it was raining. Lottery sellers pursued us. Sanginés’s driver got out of the Mercedes, offered us an umbrella, and opened the door.

“Where can I drop you, Josué?”

I didn’t know how to answer.

Where did I live?

I got into the Mercedes like an automaton, removed from the intense activity of Mexico City. I lived in the Zona Rosa, transformed once more into the bohemian district, an oasis from the surrounding violence of the city and, in any case, from the latent menace that was more the rule than the exception. I tried to comfort myself with that idea…

What Sanginés and I talked about in the car is too important and I’ll leave it for another time.

ASUNTA JORDÁN RECEIVED me again in her office and didn’t raise her head. She reviewed papers. She signed letters. She initialed documents. She told me Jericó was “in a safe place.” What does that mean? That he won’t bother anyone anymore. Is he dead? I asked, getting right to the point. He’s in a safe place. Did she mean he wouldn’t cause any more trouble?

I tried to control conflicting impulses. In a safe place? What did the formula signify? I remembered it from my studies of law. Especially Roman law. The verb recaudar means to collect money. It also means to watch over or guard. And finally, to achieve what you want through entreaties. The scholarly tome says all this. To be in safety. Miguel Aparecido is, voluntarily, in his cell in San Juan de Aragón. Maxi Batalla and the shameless Sara P. are, against their will, in the same prison. Where is Jericó? A fraternal impulse that refused to die disturbed my breast. My friend Jericó. My brother Jericó. Castor and Pollux yesterday. Cain and Abel today. And the woman who knew everything didn’t tell me anything. She reviewed papers, not as a way to disguise her feelings or distance herself from the situation but as part of the daily work of an office that had to function. The Utopia office on the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga in the extensive district of Santa Fe in an interminable Mexico City.