The bad part is, if you make it to that bed you’ll have to sleep under the mattress. Because I’ll be on top. Don’t doubt it for a second.
Augustus.
P.S. Oh, how I despise this six-year cycle. It reminds me of a cake divided into slices—just when you’re really beginning to enjoy it, you’re not allowed to finish it. And I’m warning you now—don’t even think of turning me over to your boss. Not only have I dug my trenches with him—I share them with him. He’s a good man. Gullible, to be sure. So don’t go around telling him nasty stories about me. He’ll take you for a gossip, a meddler. And you and your aspirations will then go straight to fucking hell. So be it.
22
ANDINO ALMAZÁN TO “LA PEPA” ALMAZÁN
Beloved Pepona, this bizarre situation keeps us even farther apart than usual, but it brings us together spiritually more than ever. Distance has always brought me closer to you, my darling, because our separations only heighten the desire we feel for one another. Don’t you feel the same, my love? You in Mérida, I in the capital. You in a beautiful, placid, tranquil city. I in this asphyxiated, chaotic, vulgar, noxious metropolis. You, surrounded by gentle people, cordial and unaffected. I, suffocating inside the car that takes me from the apartment to the office, then back to the apartment late at night, with no other reward than that of hearing your voice on the telephone at midnight—at least, until a few days ago. Now we don’t even have that. Your sweet voice eludes me, I can only imagine it. I must make do with these letters to you. So here I am, surrounded all day long by enemies, the object of attacks, the butt of endless jokes and caricatures in the newspapers (“Andino, abandon ship,” “Andino, head for the Andes”) to say nothing of all the plots hatched and traps laid in the corridors of bureaucracy.
How different from my true nature is the mask of the cold, efficient technocrat I must don every morning! There was a time when I needed a mirror to rehearse the facial expression of the implacable bureaucrat. But I don’t need it anymore now, my Pepona. The mask has become a real face, a face with harsh features, furrowed brow, pursed lips, and shit-smelling nose. Eyebrows permanently circumflexed by doubt. Ears pricked up, ready for lies. And eyes, eyes, my love, not showing hatred, but certainly filled with disdain, scorn, lack of interest . . . Did you know I’ve learned to speak like an Anglo-Saxon, without articles or context?
“Exactly.”
“Done.”
“Nothing.”
“Careful.”
“Perfect.”
“Warned.”
“Face consequences.”
I say these things, nothing else. My eyes avert all attempts at conversation—whether they are friendly, unfriendly, unpleasant, sincere, ambiguous, or impertinent conversations. For me, anything and everything people say represents a potential danger. The danger of contradiction in the best of cases. The danger of persuasion in the worst.
I give what’s expected of me. My technical expertise. My knowledge of international markets. My macroeconomic parameters. My careful attention to our currency’s parity with the dollar, our foreign cash reserves, the payment of our foreign debt, the amount of our national debt, the trade deficit, European and North American aid, the forced fraternity with the directors of the central banks in Washington, Berlin, London, Madrid . . .
And yet I don’t give what I’d most like to give: my humanity. You may laugh at me, Josefina, with those noisy cackles that jealous people call “vulgar,” as if your vitality—the vitality I’m so attracted to—could ever be considered vulgar. Who could ever describe your capacity for joy, fun, and humor as vulgar? Who could ever dare criticize your delightful wordplay and double entendres? Oh, my darling, if those things make you “vulgar,” then vulgarity is what I need—oh, how I come alive whenever I hear your crude jokes, your brazen suggestions, all those things that inspire my fidelity because you make me feel (and this I whisper in your ear, my darling) that I have my whore at home. I don’t need to go out looking for women like my boring cabinet colleagues, I already have my woman at home—foulmouthed, horny, and ready for every position and every pleasure under the sun, I have her in my own house. . . .
Oh, how I miss you, Pepona! Hot and sweet, faithful wife and loving mother. How safe I feel knowing that my “three Ts,” Tere, Talita, and Tutú, are with you, my darling triplets who came into the world in perfect order, lending a virginal glory to your three successive but actually simultaneous births—for does anyone even remember which of them came first? To me it always felt as if my three angels came down together from the heavens to bless our union, my Josefina, a singularly joyous marriage that goes beyond physical separation, gossip, and beatitudes. A marriage made, just like our three girls, in paradise.
Do you remember our wedding?
Do you remember the Hacienda de los Lagartos, all decked out just for our nuptials? Do you remember the garden, filled with dozens of pink flamingos? And the massive banquet of papadzules and motuleño eggs, pickled chicken, and stuffed cheese? Do you remember the heat of our passion that night, our loving surrender to each other? Do you remember how nervous your mother was in the bedroom next door to ours at the Hotel del Garrafón, listening for you either to call her for help if it hurt—ow, ow, ow!—or sing the Marseillaise if you liked it— ah, ah, ah, allons, enfants de la patrie! How wonderful, my Pepona, that you let me storm the Bastille of your tightly locked jail, how marvelous that you loved Andino’s guillotine!
As you can see, you’re the only person with whom I can truly express my feelings and rediscover the Andino Almazán you fell for twelve years ago, married eleven years ago, and had triplets with ten years ago. But then, in what feels like a split second, I have no choice but to assume once again my other persona, that of the treasury secretary, completely consumed by the world of economics, hiding behind a mask of statistics, creating an exterior character to disguise my interior obsession, which of course is you, my voluptuous one.
When I wake in the morning, Josefina, I won’t be the person you know.
I know what they say about me:
“When Andino enters a room the temperature drops.”
“The secretary has arrived. All rise.”
“Watch out. For Secretary Almazán only two possible opinions exist: his opinion and the wrong opinion.”
My soul is dying, my darling Pepa. But I’ve assumed certain responsibilities and I must fulfill them for the president, for the country, and for myself. If the treasury didn’t have me, the ship would drift out into uncharted waters. I’m the indispensable helmsmann. I’m the one repeating the same old mantra: discipline, discipline, discipline. Avoid inflation. Raise taxes. Lower salaries. Fix prices. I’m the iceman. I may be a native of the tropical Yucatán, but I’m thought of as a miser from Monterrey. Miserly when it comes to the budget and miserly in conversation.
You see, I’ve already decided simply to say nothing, my Pepa. Every time I open my mouth to chastise Congress, all I do is scare off investors. I’m better off keeping my mouth shut. I can pass as the perfect dumb witness. I say nothing because I have nothing to say, and that, somehow, has earned me a reputation for being wise. I look upon everything with glacial objectivity, but I understand nothing. That’s fine. Someone has to play this thankless role. I’ve already had to fire three deputy secretaries who talked too much. The one who said “Poverty in Mexico is a myth.” The one who said “If Congress doesn’t approve the new tax bill we’re going to go under just like Argentina.” And the one who said “The poor possess the virtue of being discreet.”
They hired me to disinfect the system. I’m the government’s DDT. I hunt down insects.
And my life, darling, is drying up—or at least it would dry up if I didn’t have you and my three Ts, Tere, Talita and Tutú. Send me a recent photo of the four of you, will you? You keep forgetting to do that. I, my dear, don’t forget you for a minute. Your A.
P.S. In the interest of safety, I’m sending this to you via my good friend and collea
gue Tácito de la Canal. They say that if you want to survive in the cabinet you have to behave as though you’re dead. Tácito is the exception to this rule. Thanks to him I’m able to walk in and out of the president’s office without any problem. He’s an agile man, a man with a future—flexible when necessary, tough when the situation requires grit. Trust him. Farewell. A.A.
23
GENERAL CÍCERO ARRUZA TO GENERAL MONDRAGÓN VON BERTRAB
General, you and I are in constant and amicable communication. You know that I’ve always acknowledged your superiority and, above all else, above you and me, the superiority of the president of the republic, commander in chief of the armed forces. Well, General, with my usual frankness I must warn you that this goddamn country is getting out of control. Sure, we’re all so damn proud of the fact that in Mexico there are seventy million people under the age of twenty. A country full of kids. Have you ever heard them? Have you ever put your ear to the ground? How do you think those kids see the old mummies that govern them?
How old are you? Fifty? Fifty-two? And me, sixty-four, sixty-five? The record books are a little sketchy in the tiny village where I was born, in the state of Hidalgo—that is, if you can say that Hidalgo exists and wasn’t just an invention to separate Mexico City from dangerous rival states like Michoacán and Jalisco. Hidalgo is the Uruguay of Mexico, but poor and without any records. Anyhow, General, my point is that you and I are in our prime, as my granny would have said. But to youngsters we’re old. They want a young leader. Young like Madero, Calles, Obregón, Villa, and Zapata were when they threw themselves into the Revolution—all of them under thirty.
Keep your eyes peeled, Mr. Secretary. Where’s our fresh-faced leader? How old is that ass-kisser Tácito de la Canal? Fifty-two like you? And his opponent, Bernal Herrera, isn’t he in his early fifties, or maybe late forties? Do you think today’s kids trust them at all? Do you think those millions of kids who cruise on their motorcycles as if their Harley-Davidsons were Pancho Villa’s horse, old Siete Leguas himself, and those half-naked party animals who spend all night clubbing, and those DJs who fly from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Honolulu for twenty-five thousand dollars a pop to play CDs, and the children of serial millionaires who’ve been inheriting fortunes passed down since 1941, will trust any of us?
That’s what the elite are saying in the newspapers, General. But what about the middle-class kid who has had to watch how every six years his parents lose their car, their house, and their washing machine because they can’t keep up with the monthly payments? Or students who can’t even study because public universities are constantly paralyzed by strikes and private universities cost a fortune?
Look at them, General—they wanted to be engineers, lawyers, big shots, but look at them now—they’re driving taxis, delivering pizzas, working as ushers in movie theaters, browbeaten into making a living parking other people’s cars. They’re broken people who should have become something better, and now all they get are kicks in the ass. And all the sweet young things who only dreamed of becoming decent, middle-class housewives? They’re out there working as typists, sales girls, and waitresses—if they’re lucky. Otherwise it’s lap dancing and the brothel. And don’t even get me started on the stories of the little farm girls who find work in factories and dream that some gringo will one day want to marry them, the stupid idiots, and then the factory goes under or moves to China, where the workers make 10 percent of what Mexican workers earn, and they’re back out on the street again begging, or back in their villages eating nopalitos, with their babies bundled up in their shawls, wanting to cross the border and become gringos like so many young men and women trying to find work on the other side of the fence—even if it means drowning in a river or suffocating in some trafficker’s truck or dying of thirst in the desert or getting shot full of holes, like a sieve, by the gringo border patrol’s bullets. Tell me, General, what can those seventy million kids look forward to? Who will they look to? Think about it while there’s still time, General.
And remember, in these matters you have to act quickly.
24
NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN
So, my lovely and demanding lady, you warned me from the start that everything is politics with you, but I had my doubts the day you told me to come to the woods outside your house at night and watch you undress. As if that weren’t enough, I was beaten to it (surely through my beautiful lady’s doing) by Tácito de la Canal. Is that politics, too, or is it just sex? Oh, my good lady María del Rosario, how many other secrets do you keep that have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with that region of “the heart that has its reasons” that reason (or politics) doesn’t understand?
Well, I’ve learned another lesson, though perhaps more of a human one than a political one. After all, in our country, can politics exist without that thing we call endurance? As I mentioned to you the other day, I’ve become quite friendly with one of the archivists in the presidential office, an old man I described to you a while back. He was kind enough to invite me to his house. Well, it isn’t exactly a house, it’s an apartment, a third-floor flat with a little terrace roof, in the Vallejo area, near the Monumento a la Raza.
You enter the place through a little shop between the front door and the stairway. I couldn’t describe the building to you even if I tried. It’s a place, my dear lady, that slips from the memory the minute one lays eyes on it. Some events, some people, some places are like that—as much as you try to remember them, they simply refuse to appear in the mind’s eye. And it’s sad not to remember them, until you realize that the memory has no room for the unremarkable. There are some people, though, that we can never forget, my dear lady, because the only possessions they have are the impressions they leave in other people’s minds, and their eyes are none other than those of the people who see them.
Do you understand what I mean? For me it was something of a revelation precisely because they asked nothing of me and yet I found myself fascinated, drawn to the pleas of these people who wanted nothing. What pleas am I talking about? you may ask. The archivist is a man named Cástulo Magón, who told me, when I noted the connection between their last names, that he is indeed distantly related to the revolutionaries Ricardo and Jesús Flores Magón, the anarchist brothers who languished away during Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship inside the San Juan de Ulúa fortress at Veracruz, which I saw the other day when you sent me to visit the Old Man Under the Arches. Well, don Cástulo is almost sixty and has been an archivist for nearly forty years, since the time of the López Portillo government. He married late because it took him a while to put the money together for a wedding and to find a woman who suited him and who was willing to work to make ends meet every month.
Don Cástulo has that tired, dreary look of the classic archivist and, as I said before, he even wears the ubiquitous green eyeshade and arm garters that make him look like the typical minor bureaucrat, straight out of a soap opera. Archives are dark places—perhaps out of fear that the papers might grow faded and illegible if exposed to sunlight, or perhaps simply to allow the documents to fall into oblivion as they lie in their yellow folders in gunmetal gray tombs. Perhaps, my scornful mistress, so that they may be exorcised of all, shall we say, luminous content. Yes, don Cástulo is the phantom of the archives. Just like the character dreamed up by Gaston Leroux who lived in the subterranean bowels of the Paris Opera, Cástulo Magón lives beneath the offices of the president of the republic.
His face is gray and his eyes, while not tired, convey a sense of resignation. But his fingers, María del Rosario, are astonishingly nimble— you should see the speed and precision with which he flips through the different files! At that moment his age, his tired, careworn appearance, and his exhausted body are transfigured and Cástulo becomes something like the alchemist of the public records office. He knows where everything is but even more importantly he also knows where to find everything that shouldn’t be there, those things he was t
old to destroy. Cástulo, not out of disobedience, but simply because he’d never really thought about it, you see, archived the unarchivable according to an eccentrically Mexican filing system: He didn’t file by name (Galván, María del Rosario, or Herrera, Bernal), nor by section (Ministry of the Interior, Congress) but by reference.
Arcane references. Where would you think I, for example, might be found in the archives at Los Pinos? Under my name, “Valdivia, Nicolás”? Under my position, “Chief of Cabinet, Assistant to”? “Presidency of the Republic, Office of ”? No, my dear María del Rosario. As it turns out, I appear in a file entitled “ENA.” Now, what is ENA? you might ask. École Nationale d’Administration, Paris. In other words, the college I went to. Take note, madam! If you’re looking for a labyrinth of solitude, this takes the cake. And our friend the archivist Cástulo Magón can find his way around the files using those hands of his, like the hands of a blind pianist, more blind than Hipólito in Santa. The fact that his economic status in no way reflects his professional abilities is almost tautological. Cástulo receives a meager salary, some 500 dollars a month, which, given the cost of living these days, is barely enough to spruce up the white locks framing his temples and whip them up into a slick bridge from left to right across his head to hide the balding pate. (For what? From whom? Tell me—after all, you’re a woman who knows so much about human vanity, especially that of the dispossessed and humiliated like myself, your hapless soupirant .) Don Cástulo, believe it or not, still uses homemade hair pomade, even though it went out of fashion about a hundred years ago. I believe it to be the only evidence of his vanity in the tiny bathroom largely taken over by his family: his wife, Serafina, his daughter, Araceli, and his son, Jesús Ricardo, named after the aforementioned heroes of Ulúa, the Flores Magón brothers.