The Eagle's Throne

11. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

Thank you for allowing me to address you in the familiar, María del Rosario. It’s a gift, especially because it makes up for the position you’ve put me in. I know it’s the president’s decision. I know that I can thank him through you for the fact that I’m now sitting at a desk in the hallowed halls of the executive branch. But what a price you’ve made me pay! To have to deal with Tácito de la Canal all day! Everything you told me about him pales in comparison to the dismal truth. If I’m able to bear him at all it’s only because I love you and am grateful for all the help you’ve given me. Besides, I respect your reasons. My first post in the Terán administration is quite close to the president, in the office that’s the heart of the country’s highest authority, at the service of the president’s chief of staff, Tácito de la Canal.

I must be disciplined about this and simply accept the daily company of this repugnant man. Obey him. Respect him. If this is not the best and most genuine proof of my love for you, María del Rosario, I don’t know what is, other than romantic suicide in the manner of young Werther. You tell me that I have to start somewhere, and I do hope that my tenure in this office is brief and instructive. I really am repelled by the sickening obsequiousness of Mr. de la Canal: the way he bows before the president, the way he always stands at the president’s side like a cardinal next to a king, and that servile way in which he hurries to arrange the president’s chair each time Terán stands up and sits down. Must Tácito always unfold and place the president’s napkin on his lap at mealtimes? Meanwhile, our casual, unpretentious Lorenzo Terán eats in shirtsleeves and tosses bits of meat to his dog, El Faraón. I can’t decide whether the chief of staff would rather feed the dog himself, or if he’d actually prefer to be the dog and receive those presidential scraps on all fours.

María del Rosario, if you wished to offer me a crash course in the iniquities brought about by political servility, you couldn’t have chosen a better place or a more consummate subject. I can offer you a basic analysis already, and I’ve only been in this office a week. Tácito de la Canal is a master of deceit, daring in the shadows, humble in the light of day, generous when it suits him, but a miser by nature. Just look at how he treats his subordinates. He evinces fear and resentment because he knows that he is not a subordinate but might go back to being one.

There’s a secretary at the office who stands out because of the strange outfits she wears to work. She’s about forty years old — and looks it — but dresses like a little girl. Not a teenager, María del Rosario, but strictly, literally, like a little girl. Curly ringlets crowned by a baby blue bow. Blue and pink taffeta dresses, white ankle socks with embroidered angels at the edges, and patent leather Mary Janes. Her only concessions to adulthood are the abundant layers of powder she piles on her face to hide her wrinkles, the bold vermilion-colored lipstick she wears, the waxed eyebrows and mascara-caked eyelashes.

The minute I laid eyes on her I knew this woman had a secret, and the right thing, the human thing, was to respect that.

Imagine my revulsion, my horror, when yesterday I found a Barbie doll sitting on the swivel chair of this child-secretary, who grew very flustered when she saw it and read the card stuck to the Barbie doll’s blond mane with a hairpin.

I don’t know what the card said, but she read it, burst out crying, and tossed the doll into the trash. I wanted to know what this was all about, and Penélope, an older, stocky, and very forthright secretary, told me that Mr. de la Canal gets his kicks humiliating Doris (that’s the woman-child’s name). He sends her gifts meant for a ten-year-old girl and taunts her constantly by saying things like: “What would your mommy say? That you aren’t a very hardworking little girl. That the teacher should punish you.”

Then Doris went into Tácito’s office and came out half an hour later, crying but trying to hide her sobs, completely disheveled, carrying the baby blue bow in her hand, adjusting her bra. .

Penélope says that de la Canal simply can’t live without a female employee to abuse, and in Doris he’s found the ideal victim. Now, I always call first or knock on the door before entering Tácito’s office, but yesterday I couldn’t stand it any longer and I walked straight in when Doris was alone with de la Canal. There he was, clutching that overgrown child, his right hand caressing her breast, his left hand digging into her frilly panties, while he said into her ear, “Don’t tell your mommy or else she’ll punish you very badly. If you’re good to me, I’ll buy you more dolls. Respect your mother, fear her, and obey her in everything— except when it comes to the things you and I do together, little slut.”

I swear to you, María del Rosario, Tácito de la Canal’s cruelty is even more abhorrent than his perversion. He does such infinitesimally hateful things — for example, each week he goes through all the supply closets in the office, counting out all the pencils, the sheets of letterhead, paper clips, erasers, scissors, folders, pens, et cetera. Yesterday, Penélope beat him to it and replaced all the office supplies that had gone missing.

“I keep an exact count, sir,” she said. “If you like, we can go through it together and you’ll see nothing is missing.”

“Did you just put them all back in time, Penélope?” the arrogant de la Canal asked.

“I never took them, sir.”

“Have you been snooping through my desk, Penélope?”

“My job is to see that nothing is missing, don Tácito.”

Do you know what I did, María del Rosario? I took Doris by the arm, dragged her to Fratina, and dressed her in black from head to toe, black tailored suit, black stockings, black stiletto heels, Chanel handbag, the works, and then I took her to her mother’s house in Colonia Satélite. The poor girl was frightened to death, and once we walked through the door I introduced her anew to her mother, a dried-up old hag who was staring aimlessly at a ball of yarn in her hands, sitting in a wheelchair with a jug of lemonade and an arsenal of pills at her side. Oh, yes, and an ugly cat on her lap.

All I said was, “From now on, this is what Doris will wear to work.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“I’m her employer, madam, and if you want your daughter to bring a salary home and look after you, Doris better turn up to work looking like this, because if not, I might just kidnap her and take her to come and live with me. . ”

The old lady began to scream and suddenly I had one of those revelations, like a little thunderbolt flashing through the brain. “And I’d be very careful about saying anything about this to that lowlife Tácito de la Canal. The game is over, madam. If you continue pimping your daughter I’ll put you in jail.”

The old lady started to shriek in earnest now, and the cat jumped up, meowing with a vengeance, as if defending its mistress. I kicked the bloody cat in the ass and when Doris saw that her mother was defeated she smiled for the first time. Ever since then, she’s come to the office dressed like a woman her own age.

Penélope winks at me and gives me the thumbs-up for that one.

But Tácito looks at me with true hatred. He knows I’ve read him like a book, from top to bottom. Servile with the powerful. Contemptuous with the weak. In what intermediate position have I placed myself? I look him straight in the eye. He has no choice but to stare right back at me. But I smile. He does not. And when he calls Doris into his office, I say, “Sorry, sir. Doris is working on a very urgent matter for me.”

If the bastard had any hair, it would stand on end.