The Eagle's Throne

13. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

So, my beloved and admired lady, I’ve yet again followed your instructions (which you euphemistically call suggestions) and traveled to the port of Veracruz in the interest of “earning points” and “polishing my political education,” as you put it. I arrived with the letter of introduction you gave me for the Old Man.

There he was, just as you said he’d be, sitting at a table under the great colonnade of the Café de la Parroquia, cane in hand and with a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. He still looks exactly as you and I and the rest of the country remember him. The noble head atop the fragile body. Broad forehead, receding hairline as wide as a boulevard, perfectly clipped and well-combed salt-and-pepper hair. (I don’t know why but he gave me the impression of having been combed from head to toe.) And of course, the most arresting thing about him, his gaze: as absentminded as a sparrow and as keen as a hawk! He really is an eagle, though, in every sense of the word, no matter how intense or distracted his perfectly calculated gaze may be. No other president of the republic has embodied such a perfect symbiosis of the person and the symbol. When he sat on the Eagle’s Throne, the Old Man was the original eagle.

Now he’s known to all as “the Old Man Under the Arches.” Although he may change his name and lie about his age, the deep, dark rings that make his eyelids look like two great black curtains remain, softened only by his wide eyebrows. They say that some mountains are covered by “perpetual snow.” The Old Man Under the Arches has “perpetual darkness” in those eyebrows that would almost seem diabolical if they didn’t contrast so starkly with the petrified smile across his thick lips, rosy for someone so advanced in years, framed and accentuated by deep lines on either side. And in between mouth and eyes, his straight but flat nose, discreet but for the broad, flared nostrils like a bloodhound’s.

I’m describing someone you’re more than familiar with in order to confirm my own impression of the Old Man. Because that’s how he’s known around here: the Old Man under the Arches, sitting all day long at one of the Café de la Parroquia’s outdoor tables, sipping the aromatic coffee from Coatepec in between sips of mineral water, a copy of La Opinión spread out on his lap. Dressed to the nines, as always, in his dark gray pinstriped suit, white shirt, the inevitable polka-dotted bow tie, his cuff links bearing the image of the eagle and the serpent, his flecked socks, and his well-polished black shoes.

I introduced myself, gave him your letter and, just as you warned me, the Old Man Under the Arches launched into a litany of political definitions and recommendations like a priest reciting the Creed. The Old Man doesn’t lack a sense of humor. He knows full well that he is an old, old man and that the younger generation condemned him a long time ago to death by oblivion.

“Some people think it would be humane to hasten my journey to the grave,” he said, laughing without laughing — a habit of his, it seems. “I won’t give them that pleasure. I’ll continue to be what some people call ‘a political nuisance.’ ”

Then, without missing a beat (just as you said he would and just as he knew you would tell me he would), he began spewing out his famous sayings, now so old and universally known that they’re part of our political folklore. But as I said before, the Old Man doesn’t lack a sense of humor, nor is he incapable of deadpan self-criticism.

“Let’s get through all those sayings attributed to me, so we don’t have to go over them again. . ”

“I’m one of the young people who wouldn’t mind that, Mr. President. Everything about you is new to me.”

“What do you mean, ‘about me’? And don’t call me ‘Mr. President.’ Remember, I’m not president anymore.”

“It’s my French education, Mr. President. In France, nobody is ex-anything. That would be considered rude.”

“Another Frenchman in Veracruz!” he exclaimed without smiling. “Those damn Frogs again!”

“What I was going to say is that I studied at l’École Nationale d’Administration in Paris. . ”

“French battleships disembarked here, you know, during the Pastry War.”

“The what. .?” I asked, revealing my scant knowledge of Mexican history.

“Yes,” he said, sipping his coffee. “A French pastry chef by the name of Remortel in Mexico City complained that during a riot the rabble had destroyed his éclairs and croissants, and so in 1838 the French deployed a fleet to bomb Veracruz and demand payment for the ruined pastries. How about that, then? Haven’t you ever seen the movie with Mapy Cortés?”

“Mapy. .”

“A Puerto Rican beauty, oh, yes. A knockout. Thighs so perfect you could cry. She danced a conga called the pim-pam-pum,” he said, and took another sip.

“Of course,” I replied in an attempt to recover a bit of my bruised credibility, realizing now that Mapy Cortés and her pim-pam-pum were more important than l’École Nationale d’Administration. “Of course— the whole world has come to Mexico via Veracruz, ever since Hernán Cortés arrived on these shores in 1519. . ”

“And the French came back in 1862 to help defend the empire of Maximilian and Carlota.” Nostalgia brought a momentary sparkle to his hooded eyes. “Just picture the troop of Belgians, Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, men from Prague, Trieste, Marseilles, the Zouaves, Bohemians, Flemish, who landed here with their flags held high, my little friend, and every last flag had an eagle, two-headed eagles, crowned eagles, heraldic eagles, and here we were with one poor little eagle of our own — but what an eagle, my little friend Valdivia, a bloody fine eagle, incomparable, its talons perched atop a nopal and devouring a serpent. Those Europeans weren’t expecting that, now, were they?”

“I suppose not, sir.”

“Oh, and the trail of dark-skinned blue-eyed children those imperial troops left behind in Veracruz. Did you ever see the film Imperial Cavalry?”

“No, but I read a marvelous novel, News from the Empire, by Fernando del Paso.”

“Thank goodness,” he said, with a note of pity in his voice. “At least you know something.”

He looked into the distance toward the sea and the San Juan de Ulúa fortress, an imposing, uninviting gray mass on a forbidding island. The Old Man saw me watching and seemed to know what I was thinking.

I spoke as if he’d asked me something.

“Forgive me, Mr. President. . It’s just that when I was a child there was a breakwater that connected the castle to the mainland.”

“I had the breakwater removed. It was a blight on the landscape,” he said, as the waiter, arm raised high above his head, poured steaming coffee with perfect aim straight into our glass coffee cups.

The Old Man kept talking.

“That’s why I sit here, looking out at the port of Veracruz, so that I can give warning should any foreign enemy dare to profane our land with his soles, as our national anthem puts it.”

I began to think that the Old Man Under the Arches was nothing but a raving monomaniac going on and on with his litany of wrongs suffered by Mexico over the centuries.

“And the gringos, son, the gringos who’ve sucked the brains out of Mexico’s youth. They dress like gringos, dance like gringos, think like gringos — they wish they could be gringos.”

He then made an obscene gesture with his left hand as he raised his cane with his right.

“By Santa Anna’s lost leg, those gringos can come and kiss my ass! Here they landed in 1847, then again in 1914. . When will they be back?”

He readjusted his dentures, which had slipped out of place from all the excitement, and returned to the topic at hand.

“Listen, son, just so you don’t leave here disappointed, let me give you some of my legendary maxims. . ”

And he recited them. Seriously, almost as a meditation, all the while stirring the sugar in his coffee cup.

“Politics is the art of swallowing frogs without flinching.”

He didn’t laugh. All he did was bite down hard on his dentures to fix them squarely in his gums.

“In Mexican politics, even cripples can pull off a high-wire act.” He took advantage of my feigned laughter to ask the waiter for a mollete.

“Refried beans and melted cheese in a hot bread roll. Good for the digestion,” he said. “Look, the simple truth is that the presidency is a roller coaster. The expression on your face when they send you off is the expression that stays with you forever.”

He took a big bite of his mollete.

“That’s why you always see me with the same look on my face, exactly the same as my very first day in office.”

He continued, María del Rosario, with a slightly macabre smile.

“What nobody knows is that my arsenal of unpublished sayings knows no end.”

I gave him a courteously quizzical look.

And then, with a sound like a death knell from the back of his throat, he said, “Make no mistake. I’m immune to bullets and to colds.”

I fell silent after that resounding maxim, waiting for him to say something else, wondering what I was really doing there, my lovely lady, aside from simply following your instructions: “Talk to the Old Man Under the Arches. Be patient and learn from him.”

“You know what, son? Before becoming president, a man has to suffer and learn. If not, he’ll suffer and learn during his presidency, at the country’s expense.”

Could this mean that María del Rosario Galván — yes, you, my dear lady — had informed the old ex-president of her daring promise to deliver me to the Eagle’s Throne, and explained that I was in Veracruz to learn from him? If the thought crossed my mind, I didn’t say it out loud, of course.

I merely dared to point out: “Cárdenas became president at the age of thirty-six, Alemán at thirty-nine, Obregón at forty-four, Salinas at forty. . ”

“I’m not talking about age, Mr. Valdivia. I haven’t said a word about age, which is a taboo subject for this old man. I was referring to suffering and learning. I was referring to experience. All the men you mention were young, but they were experienced. Are you?”

I shook my head. “Mr. President, I admit I’m a novice. But one morning with you is enough to teach me everything I didn’t learn at the ENA in Paris.”

He shook his head very slightly, as if he were afraid that all the parts inside it might become unhinged, that the screws would come loose.

“Right,” he said, sipping his coffee. “You do know that every president finishes where the next one should start. That is, where he himself should have started. Am I being clear? The outgoing president speaks to his successor without having to use a single word. That’s the experience I’m talking about.”

“Except that the successor tends to be deaf to his predecessor.”

I thought he would warm to my graceful wit. Instead, his dark-ringed gaze grew even darker.

“Gratitude, Mr. Valdivia, gratitude and ingratitude. The former is a very rare form of political currency. The latter, everyday trash.”

Very discreetly he removed a speck from the corner of his eye.

“Just think for a moment of how many PRI presidents were loyal to their predecessors. After all, under the old PRI’s rule the man who came to occupy the Eagle’s Throne had been placed there by the throne’s previous occupant. ‘The concealed one’ became ‘the anointed one.’ A perverse consequence of the system: The new all-powerful leader had to prove, as quickly as possible, that he was not dependent on the man who appointed him. How paradoxical, Mr. Valdivia, or should I say how parafucksical. A single-party system in which the opposition always wins, because the new president has to screw his predecessor.”

“There were exceptions, though,” I said in a Cartesian spirit.

The Old Man picked out three rolls from the bread basket and left the other eight there. He didn’t have to say anything else, although with the finger of God he did invisibly trace the numbers “1940–1994” on the tablecloth.

“Now, of course, we live in a democracy,” I said with forced optimism.

“And the incumbent still has his favorites to succeed him, he’s already mulling over who will best serve the country, who will be most loyal to him, who will respect his people, and who will not. . ”

“But nowadays the president’s own candidate will not necessarily be the successor, as he was in your day. . ”

“No, but regardless of who wins the elections the ex-president will always be, lethally, the ex-president. And every ex-president, it turns out, has skeletons in his closet. Crooked brothers, insatiable lovers, incorrigible sisters, deviant children, false proxies for his business interests, lifelong friends that cannot be condemned to death, who knows what else. . What other choice does he have but to make amends for the extravagance of those closest to him by living with monastic austerity? See what they say about me? I go to bed early so as not to waste the candles.”

“You know everything.”

I flashed him my best smile. He didn’t reciprocate.

“Suffer and learn,” he sighed, and once again looked out dreamily toward the misty bulk of the San Juan de Ulúa castle, the fortress guarding the entrance to the port.

I realized that, focused as I was on the Old Man’s words and gestures, I hadn’t looked very closely at Ulúa’s grayish mass, which seemed an architecture apart, embedded in the past, weighed down by a history that couldn’t be undone.

“See that castle that used to be a prison? Can you begin to imagine the number of politicians who should be there now, purging their wrongs?”

“If you say so, sir. .”

He shrugged his shoulders, creaking slightly.

“We have two golden rules in Mexican politics. One is benign: no re-election. The other is more unforgiving: exile. The reason, however, is the same: All delinquents are recidivists, my young friend.”

He peered at me from the depths of the lines under his eyes.

“You know, it is a mistake to think that a president controls only the weak. The most urgent but most difficult task is that of controlling the powerful. I’m going to give you a rule for you to share with all the people you know who aspire to public office. Anyone who wants to be part of the cabinet should first take in a liter of vinegar through his nose. That’s the best training there is for getting close to the presidency, I promise you. . ”

The waiter approached us with the massive, steaming coffeepot. The Old Man declined. He had not offered me a third coffee, but he pushed my coffee glass toward me.

It was then that, rather inopportunely, I asked the former head of state, “And you, Mr. President, is there anyone you favor to be Lorenzo Terán’s successor?”

The Old Man fell silent for a moment as he gazed out at the crows settling down for the night in the Indian laurels that lined the plaza: flocks of birds making such a racket as they searched for nighttime shelter that luckily they drowned out my voice, even though I know the Old Man heard me. I’ve never known a man with as keen an ear as the ex-president, my dear lady, even though all the people who used to ask him for favors would very stupidly steer him over to the most isolated corner of his office and say to him, “Since everyone says that deep down you’re a good man. .”

I don’t know if the Old Man Under the Arches is a good man or a bad man. All I know is that he’s a sly old dog, that he knows everything, and reveals nothing. Did he hear me? Did he not? Did he not want the waiter to hear? Whatever the case, my admirable though cruel friend, the Old Man used those minutes of silence, interrupted only by the raucous (or was it mournful?) cawing of those birds in the twilight, to give me a political lesson in how to say everything without saying anything.

I urge you to repeat, in front of a mirror, each and every one of the gestures the old ex-president demonstrated for me.

First, he raised one finger to his earlobe and rubbed it. One must know how to listen.

Then he covered his eyes with both hands. If I saw you, I don’t remember.

After that, he took his index finger and tugged at one of his eyelids. Keep your eyes open. Careful. Always be on your guard.

After that, he raised one eyebrow as if to suggest skepticism. Don’t let this man pull the wool over your eyes.

And at the same time, he tilted his hand left and right as if to say, Be careful with this other one. He’s more slippery than an eel. He knows how to sustain a ruse.

For his finale, he placed his index finger on one of his nostrils. Don’t let them fool you. Sniff them out.

I enumerate, my dear friend, the quick succession of signals that followed the nasal symbolism. Hand on heart. Both hands flapping to indicate the separation of incompatible issues. Hand on crotch to indicate balls. Thumb pointed upward, like Caesar granting life in the Circus Maximus, and then turned down as if condemning someone to death. Index finger cutting the throat like a razor blade. Index finger and thumb held together in a perfect “O” to indicate success. Lips pursed in a grimace to inject a measure of doubt into the moment of triumph. Squinting eyes to suggest doubt and the question, Who do you think you are? Shoulders raised in resignation, as if to say, What can we do about it? Hands held open, as if to say, Such is life. And then his famous index finger raised in ominous warning. And finally, the same finger passing over the lips like an invisible zipper. Not a word. Shh! Silence is golden.

After this masterful display of body language, my admirable and desired lady, all that was left for me was to thank the Old Man Under the Arches for his advice, his time, his attention. He looked at me from behind his mask of impartiality. He wanted me to look at him as a character playing a role. The benign country patriarch. The wise Mexican Cincinnatus. He was educating me: Son, play stupid. A man has to know how to act the fool. Be the village idiot. Pure gesticulation. Not a word. The master of circumlocution. The juggler of all things unspoken because they are understood by all. The king of the euphemism.

I left, thanking the Old Man, who bowed his head toward me as a parrot settled on his shoulder and the waiter offered him a box of dominoes.

The sun was setting quite spectacularly, hidden crows cawed, and the castle-prison of San Juan de Ulúa, so sinister during the day, looked legendary as night fell.

P.S. You have rescinded my right to speak to you in the familiar until I can prove myself worthy of these circumstances. You have sent me like a little schoolboy to be taught by the Old Man Under the Arches as if the latest version of Plato’s Academy were now located in this derelict old port’s main plaza. But don’t think I’m offended, it only entices me. NV.