The Eagle's Throne

16. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

If Tácito de la Canal is as slippery a snake as you suspect, my dear lady, then unfortunately I haven’t been able to provide any more evidence to support that claim beyond his obsequiousness with superiors and his cruelty with inferiors. The president’s chief of staff has been very careful to maintain a facade of exemplary humility. He lives in Colonia Cuauhtémoc in a tiny two-room apartment with a kitchen, a stairway landing that smells like cat piss, furniture from Lerdo Chiquito, and piles of old magazines. A monk, if you will, with no other luxury than that of power for power’s sake.

Well, then. Finally I’ve come up with a bit of evidence that is inconclusive in and of itself but which could open the door to greater mysteries.

You know, my mistress María del Rosario, it’s like one of those books our grandmothers used to give us. On a page with a picture of the inside of a home there’s a little window that allows us to see the garden on the next page, which in turn has a gate that opens onto a third page, and then that third page opens onto a forest that leads the eye all the way down to the water’s edge, where a boat waits to deliver us to an enchanted island. And so on. It’s like the never-ending story, isn’t it?

Well, having been transformed into a Versace model and duly instructed by yours truly, our little Doris led Tácito to believe that now that she was such an elegant, modern woman, she would not object to, let’s say, a more intimate sort of relationship with him. As surely as Tácito is a satyr, so was the god Pan’s machinery set in motion, and little by little — duly instructed, once again, by me — Doris, who needed only to break away from her sinister mother to blossom, began to toy with Tácito, putting him off, making him take her out to restaurants at first, and then to bars, to the Gran León dance hall so she could show off her tabaré dancing, but never to any motel, much less a hotel room.

Tácito’s ardor only grew. The whole office could tell. Finally she agreed to go to his apartment on Calle Río Guadiana. As she walked in, she held her nose and repeated a Bette Davis quote I taught her.

“What a dump! What a squalid hellhole! Vile shack! Shithole!”

Nearly dying of laughter, Doris told me that Tácito was so humiliated by this that he took her by the hand, pulled out a set of keys, went over to the tiny kitchen, and unlocked a door, revealing a luxurious panorama within, as if turning a page in one of those picture books. A sumptuous penthouse appeared before Doris’s eyes — a terrace with large flowerpots brimming with flowers, an oblong swimming pool, and chaise longues for sunbathing. And behind the terrace, a vast living room, luxury furniture, expensive collectors’ paintings — lots of fake Rubens, I gather from Doris’s description — Persian rugs, fluffy sofas, cheap glassware, and a door, left ajar, leading into the bedroom.

Doris, following her instructions precisely, exhibited shock and delight, while Tácito registered insouciance and pride. And when our despicable cabinet chief made a more, shall we say, wanton overture, Doris very coquettishly excused herself and went to the bathroom, as if getting ready for this late-afternoon tryst, and there she took a handkerchief from her bag and let it flutter down from the window into the street. I saw the sign, and within five minutes, feigning the rage of a cuckolded lover, I burst into our incomparable Tácito’s bedroom, and found him stark naked, exposing all that Mother Nature had so cruelly bequeathed him: the bald head, the dense thicket of hair on his chest and legs, not to mention a number of other shaggy areas that I would rather not describe. He ran after the well-trained Doris who, fully dressed, screamed at the top of her voice, “I can’t! What would my mother say!”

I yanked her away from the birthday-suited chief of staff and held her tight. I showered him with insults, saying Doris was my lover and I was her Pygmalion (the latter being true, the former false, of course), and at that the two of us left, barely able to hold in our laughter, while Tácito stood there naked.

Our little farce turned out to be quite amusing. But it doesn’t really prove anything, my dear friend, aside from the fact that Tácito’s a ridiculous little satyr and that hair loss is a sign — secondary, perhaps, but a sign nonetheless — of virility. In any event, at least you now have proof of how false his alleged austerity is. Let’s hope I have even better luck next time around!