The Eagle's Throne (26 page)

55

“LA PEPA” ALMAZÁN TO TÁCITO DE LA CANAL

So, my precious little melon, you were going to become president with my help? So first you had to become the perfect smoke screen that would fool the world, and you and I were going to form an alliance to make my husband Andino Almazán acting president so that he’d haul you up onto the Eagle’s Throne? So I was to deceive my husband and lead him to believe I was working on his behalf to make him president? Is it possible I actually trusted you and your cynicism to get me where I wanted to go?

“My morals are inferior to my genius,” you whispered to me as you blew your fetid breath into my ear.

Let me laugh out loud at your vanity, you disgusting idiot. You’ve been the doormat of Mexican politics. They say you chose the wrong vocation. That you should have been a priest, not a politician.

“You’re wrong. He’s both.”

That’s what my husband said when he told me that the interior secretary, Valdivia, had you by the balls with that MEXEN scheme, and that he had to appeal to Andino to make sure the treasury kept it under wraps. . . . And now, as if that weren’t enough, you’re trying to rope my husband into your corruption with a new financial scam.

You’re a priest. You’re a politician. But you’re also an idiot.

In other words you’re a piece of shit, and your only consolation is that in this goddamn country shit attracts ass-kissers, who are like flies. How will you go down in history, poor Tácito?

“Tácito de la Canal? He had problems with his digestion. A saintly aunt. A senile father. A bald head. Nails that went farther than his eyes could see. Programmed nightmares.”

“Was he a fag?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But he was a bachelor.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Who did he sleep with?”

Oh, you bastard, they can link you with every last secretary and waitress for all I care, but I don’t want anyone mentioning my name in connection with you. I’m warning you. I don’t want to hear anyone say, “Of course. He was sleeping with Josefina Almazán, ‘La Pepa,’ you know. . . .”

Did you think I’d go that far to defend you, you loser? What haven’t you done in order to get to the top? Do you think I haven’t seen you talking on the phone to the late president (when we had telephones, you bastard), standing up as you talked, clicking your heels every time you said “Yes, sir!”? Do you think I haven’t seen you saving the stubs of the cigarettes that killed President Terán in the end? Do you think I haven’t seen you standing in front of the mirror, saying, “Nothing defines me more than my desires. They are unique. Mine and mine alone!”

Oh, and to think of how I put up with your nonsense, your vain pretensions. I was working on you the way they do in the Yucatán, using you to help my husband—I was always Andino Almazán’s loyal wife, even when I let you lick my ass, you worm. Look at yourself in the mirror. Do you really think a woman could fall in love with you, my beautiful darling? Do you think I didn’t want to piss myself laughing when after your pitiful orgasms you’d say, “I’m devoured by ambition. I want to leave my mark on the wall of time, and all I have, like a lion, are my claws”?

How dramatic of you, dear! God, what I’ve had to put up with! And all of it for Andino, to help him on his way to the presidency, to forge an alliance between him and his opposite, General Arruza, and then strike. President Almazán—and not acting president, but president for six years, with the aid of Arruza’s coup. That was the real plan, not yours, you miserable shit. I even slept with Arruza and used you as a cover to get you to believe that all the scheming was for your benefit. Oh, how Arruza and I laughed at you! My general—now there’s a man who really knows how to fuck. Not like you, you worm . . .

“Careful,” the general said to me. “He may be a worm. But remember that when you cut worms down the middle they keep on moving.”

You know, the best thing about all this is that nobody will ever believe that a delectable, sexy Yucatecan woman like me could want a slob like you in her bed.

And you know something else? I’m being open with you because I don’t give a fuck if you show this letter to everyone in the world. You’ve got no credibility left. Everything you say or do will be taken for fraud, fraud, fraud. . . . That’s what’s written across your melon head: LIAR AND THIEF.

“I have the features of an ascetic and the ways of a libertine.”

That was the first thing you said to me, you slug. That was your calling card. I had to hold back the laughter. I was ready to play all my cards. With the general, so that he would declare Terán incompetent, push him out of office, and name Andino interim president. Then we’d just leave him there as a puppet while Arruza and I ruled the country together. You were the second option in case you made it to the presidency “on your own merits” (after all, in this life anything is possible) or Congress named you president and Andino only interim. How long would you last? As long as the general and I wanted, no more than that.

Or at worst, you, as the interim president, would have backed Andino for president, with Arruza ruling from behind the throne.

You see, it was a game of chess in which I was the queen, Arruza the king, Andino the bishop, and you the bloody pawn.

Goodbye, my poor Tácito. You crawled out of a hole and now you’re going straight back to where you came from. And tell Nicolás Valdivia that ideals aren’t important, that convictions aren’t worth a fucking thing. Tell us whose side you’re on. That’s what matters.

Oh—by the way, Valdivia has banned you from entering any government office. FYI.

56

DULCE DE LA GARZA TO THE OLD MAN UNDER THE ARCHES

Mr. President, I can no longer bear my joy and my sadness, which is why I’m writing to you. I don’t know if I’d dare look you in the eye, you who have caused me so much pain and who now give me back an impossible happiness that I stopped dreaming about long ago. You summoned me to the café by the port. I knew that Tomás respected you immensely. How many times did he tell me that you were more than his mentor, that you were like his father; and like a father you always advised him not to be so good, to be tougher.

“The worst enemy of power is the innocent,” you said to Tomás, and those words are engraved on my heart, like everything my love told me. “Up until now you’ve been a docile pre-candidate, which is as it should be. Now you want to be a reformer. Wait. Don’t be too eager. Don’t start your day in the middle of the night. Make your reforms when you’re sitting on the Eagle’s Throne, like I did. Take advantage of my experience.”

Yes, I know Tomás was brave, that he never held back, that he threw himself into the ring. Yes, I know that all the powerful people in Mexico saw him as a threat. That’s why they killed him.

I’ve endured eight years—I was twenty-one then, and I’m twenty-nine, nearly thirty now, “in the flower of my youth,” isn’t that what they say? Eight years of suffering, Mr. President. At least my pain was solid, real. Now, all of a sudden you appear and plunge me into a pit of desperation and misery worse than before.

Yes, Tomás is alive. And you have the nerve to tell me what you told my love when you—and nobody but you is to blame—took him away from me. . . .

“Tomasito, think of yourself as a privileged prisoner. Think of life as ugly and dangerous and cruel. Look, my boy, close the door to the world for a little while, and come back rejuvenated. Wait for your moment: It hasn’t arrived yet. It will come. I swear.”

You didn’t have the courage to go to that cell yesterday. Instead you sent Tomás a written message via me. I have it here:

I wanted to give you power. I wanted to give you the chance to do the things I couldn’t do because in my day the system was different. I’m so sorry, truly sorry, Tomasito. You didn’t understand. You didn’t know how to judge the moment. What I did, I did for you. It was neither the first nor the last time I would offer you my good counsel and try to shield you from your idealistic impulses. Now your time has come. Now the country wants legitimacy, symbols, drama, hope. Not since the Resurrection of Christ has there been a resurrection like yours, my son. I who shun publicity will have an army of photographers and reporters waiting for you when you come out. From Ulúa? God, I’m better than that. Listen to me, Tomás: You were never in Ulúa. You got lost in the jungle, you were kidnapped, disoriented by torture and peyote—you got lost in the goddamn jungle. A witch from Catemaco buried your fingernails and your hair underneath a ceiba tree. You’ve been under a spell for eight years, Tomás, lost in the natural world, part of the jungle yourself, no different from the vanilla creeper, the pepper plant, the prickly pear, the hawthorn, the
jonote
tree, the sugarcane, the vast, abundant natural world of Veracruz that was there before we were born, Tomás, that enveloped you like a splendid cloak, that swallowed you up and made you part of it. . . . Don’t forget, Tomasito, you are under a spell. You sleep sitting down because if you lie down the sea breeze won’t blow over you. You sleep with the windows open so that the rain from the Gulf of Mexico soaks your skin. And if you die, they can just say that the “North Wind” was an accomplice in the crime. You thought you were dead, Tomás. And now your girl Dulce has appeared to rescue you, to tell you, “We’ve found you at last! You got lost in the jungle.”

Oh, Mr. President. What were you thinking? Do you really believe what you said to me?

“Everything in Mexico requires symbolism. If they can turn an amnesiac, impressionable, ignorant Indian like Juan Diego into a saint, why not make Moro president at the right moment, which is the year 2020—not 2012! Miracle, miracle! Miracles, faith, trust—what motivates Mexico more? A president-elect lost in the jungle, amnesiac like a saint, who reappears to reclaim nothing less than the Eagle’s Throne! A sensation, Miss de la Garza! And what a sensation if you, his saintly girl-friend, are the one who rescues him and delivers him back to his rightful place. A love story! Love and miracles, my dear! Who could be opposed to that? It is my masterpiece. Now I can die in peace, I can leave behind the sealed envelopes, ‘the concealed one,’ the electoral racket, the carousel voting, the ballot tricks, all those dead people’s votes, everything else that went on when I was president. This is the culmination of my political career: I’ve given Mexico the right president at the right moment, I’ve resurrected him just like God the Father resurrected his son Jesus Christ. I’ve brought him steeped in mystery back to the world. All the ingredients are there: cloak-and-dagger adventures, mystical ascensions, inevitable pain, melodrama, lovers reunited . . . Miss Dulce, sweet lady, can’t you sense the emotion in my voice, my recovered strength, my masterpiece completed?”

Yes, Mr. President, I feel it and I feel sorry for you, and I feel hatred for you, as well. Shame on you. I think you’ve gone mad. You’re deranged, a senile monster who plays with the lives and emotions of others without any humanity. . . . You were right to send me to Tomás, and I went happily, but I was scared to death, too; my heart was pounding because I didn’t know what I’d find.

They led me down those dark tunnels that smelled like the forgotten dead. A filthy rat looked at me as if it wanted to seduce me. Saltwater dripped from the ceiling, and the whole castle creaked as if offended by my footsteps. I’m telling you this so that you can see the eloquence that took hold of my head and my tongue, preparing me for the most intense emotion of my life. . . .

He was wearing his mask when I entered the cell.

“Tomás, my love, it’s me. . . .”

Nothing but silence. The longest of my life, long enough for me to remember how Tomás and I first met, at the museum in Monterrey, and then to remember every moment of our love.

“Tomás, my love, it’s me. . . .”

He turned his back on me.

Then, he scribbled something on the wall with a piece of chalk, something he’d written a thousand times before, as the cell was covered with those white marks, fading in the humid air:

BREAD. TIME. PATIENCE.

I embraced him. He freed himself from me with a violent shrug of the shoulders. It threw me—it was like being struck by lightning. I sank to my knees and held his legs.

“Tomás, I’m back, it’s me. . . .”

I looked at him, imploring him.

He remained silent.

I caressed him, still down on my knees, and then I looked up, imploring him.

“Take off your mask. Let me see you again.”

He laughed, Mr. President. Never in my life have I heard laughter like that, and I hope I never hear it again. It was as if he had chains in his throat, iron instead of words. My own voice began to tremble, as if death were my lover, as if I had risen from the grave that I visited for eight years, taking flowers to it, sometimes crying, sometimes refusing to let my tears fall onto that gravestone. My own voice trembled, as if I were a lover who, having resigned herself to disappearing, was now back to court death, because that man you cruelly deceived, imprisoned, and perversely—yes, perversely—manipulated is no longer mine.

He is another man, and I don’t know what to call him or how to speak to him.

He didn’t respond to my words. I pulled at his mask, I tried to pry it open like a can. He only laughed. Then a voice escaped, stifled, indistinct, a voice that I didn’t recognize, asking me who I was, what I was doing there, how I dared enter the place that was his and no one else’s.

“Your face . . . let me see your face, Tomás. . . .”

He told me not to be an idiot, that I wouldn’t want to see the face beneath the mask because why would he be wearing it, if not to hide something awful, the face of a monster, an eagle’s head, snake’s eyes, and a dog’s mouth? Is that what I wanted to see, idiot that I was, a man with the face of a lunatic, smothered by his beard and unable to speak properly, so that even the guards couldn’t bear to look at him when they took off his mask to feed him? They’d put the mask back on and he’d just let them, not even putting up a fight. He’d gotten used to the mask—“bread, time, patience”—and he’d go completely insane in the daylight. Reality wasn’t outside, it was here inside, and he’d believe that until he died. He was a prisoner, yes, but free from the shams, the lies, the illusions, and the dreams of the outside world.

“This is my house: truth, peace, time, patience.”

What he said hurt me. He spoke without recognizing me, or he pretended not to recognize me, I don’t know, but he refused to look me in the face, and his voice was muffled by the huge clump of hair, as thick and dense as that jungle you cruelly invented, the voice shut in behind the mask, and then those bizarre words: “Wake the dead, since the living are asleep. . . .”

He didn’t recognize me. But I tell you, and I knew Tomás Moctezuma Moro better than anyone: He’s found his home inside those four frozen walls. He can’t even see the water or feel the sea spray down in that hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. San Juan de Ulúa is the only reality he knows, or wants to know. And that, Old Man, is your cruel and evil accomplishment.

How did I know it was him?

That voice was unmistakable, even distorted.

How could I tell he was alive?

From the fear in his eyes, which were visible through the slits in the mask.

From the fear in his eyes, Mr. President. A fear that I can’t imagine, not even in my worst nightmares, a fear of everything, do you understand? A fear of remembering, loving, desiring, living, dying . . . The fear that you put there, Mr. President, and may the devil bury you in the deepest pit in hell the day you die. And I’d pray for that day to come soon, but I know that your life is already a living hell.

It was all in vain. You sacrificed the man I love for nothing. Tomás Moctezuma Moro will never leave Ulúa. Neither alive nor dead. That cell is impenetrable. It’s his womb. He wouldn’t recognize any other home.

Your home is a house of shame. Or perhaps—and this would be even worse from your point of view—the house of lost opportunity. I think this must be the first time things haven’t come out the way you hoped. You sicken me. But most of all I pity you.

I have only one thing to ask of you. Keep on bribing the cemetery guards so that I can open Tomás Moctezuma Moro’s false grave, as I did before.