The Eagle's Throne

54. THE OLD MAN UNDER THE ARCHES TO CONGRESSWOMAN PAULINA TARDEGARDA

My beloved disciple and favorite friend, I turn to you with a sense of urgency, yes, but also with the reflection and deliberation that you know me for. “Slow and steady wins the race” has been my motto since the fig tree blossomed and Felipillo was made a saint — a real Mexican saint, crucified by the brutal Japanese in the sixteenth century, not like that third-rate Juan Diego de los Nopales.

Well now, just think, the fig tree is about ready to topple over with ripe fruit and the lonely nopal is flowering at last. Ah, the nopal, my darling Paulina. The symbol and the strength of our nation, for if in our emblem it is the eagle who rules and the serpent who suffers in its beak, the eagle still needs something to stand on so that it doesn’t fall into the waters of the lagoon.

I suppose I’d rather come off as a sly but ignorant old man, because the well-educated politician doesn’t inspire the trust of the common man. In the United States, Adlai Stevenson wasn’t accepted because he was too educated. “Egghead,” they called him. Bill Clinton had to hide his education from the public while Little Bush, on the other hand, actually showed off his ignorance. You know that sitting here in Veracruz I like to make the most of my francophobia, but the truth is, like everyone else, I grew up reading French novels. Dumas, Hugo, Verne — most of all Dumas and two novels, the one about the man in the iron mask, twin brother of the king who sent him to prison to eliminate any doubts as to who was in charge. Thrones have to be for one man only (or woman: sorry, Paulinita) because power depends on legitimacy for its authority. The Man in the Iron Mask, of course, and The Count of Monte Cristo, yes, unjustly imprisoned for years and years in a castle remarkably similar to our Ulúa, here in Veracruz. .

Well, there you have it, my dear Paulina. Your old friend, the Old Man Under the Arches, is going to introduce you to the Man in the Nopal Mask.

He is a prisoner.

He lives in the dungeons of the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa.

He wears an iron mask to ensure that he remains unrecognizable to all — even himself, of course; to make it Mexican I had it painted nopal green.

Nobody knows. And I can rely on the absolute silence of the guards because in Veracruz my word is law. One blabbermouth ended up as a snack for the sharks. That’s why Dulce de la Garza was allowed into the funeral crypt. Because I gave orders to let her in. All part of the plan.

I have kept this secret for eight years.

I’ve been patient. I’m more patient than those old ladies shuffling their cards. They say one old woman died while dealing cards. Your servant has survived by dealing his cards the way he likes. Quietly and unobtrusively, I rule this port of Veracruz. In a “balkanized” country, as Héctor Aguilar Camín would put it, divided into more fiefdoms than Argentina, who was going to deny me my little patch? Doesn’t Vidales rule in Tabasco, Quintero in Tamaulipas, and Cabezas in Sonora? They’ve respected my little republic in Veracruz, which doesn’t stretch farther than Boca del Río on one side and Hernán Cortés’s crumbling old house on the other and the road to Tononocapan just beyond. .

Here, I do and undo. And anyone who gets in the way gets thrown into the aquarium to learn how to wrestle with the sharks. . Here I am, still, untouchable, smiling. Or rather, untouchable, smiling, and patient. You know I’ve never stopped educating myself, but I don’t brag about what I know. You read Machiavelli’s The Prince out loud to me when you were a young girl. You came to console me after I was widowed. Virtue, necessity, fortune. I’ve never forgotten that. The qualities of a ruler. In Mexico in the nineteenth century, Juárez depended on virtue, Santa Anna on necessity, and Iturbide on fortune. In the twentieth century, Madero was the virtuous, Calles the necessary, and Obregón the fortunate. You see, only the necessary one wasn’t murdered. Virtue, necessity, fortune? I think only my good general Cárdenas combined all three. I, my dear Paulina, took advantage of all three, used all three, but I didn’t possess them. How could I be virtuous, necessary, or fortunate if I spent all my time being suspicious?

My vivid political sayings have been repeated ad nauseam. But there are others I keep to myself.

“In the great battles, after the heroes come the villains.”

“In politics, the noontime butterfly is the midnight vampire.”

“In Mexico, the thief precedes the honest man, who will in turn be the next thief.”

“The rear guard of Mexican politics are ass-kissers, thieves, blackmailers, villains, and perfumed groupies.”

“Look at the doves flying. The vultures are right behind them.”

Paulina, there are periods of national fright and there are periods of national fever. Today a feverish fright threatens. President Terán’s death may well open the floodgates. Arruza is betting on a military coup. César León, on re-election. Herrera on becoming the late president’s favorite son. As far as I can see it Tácito is out, he’s too obviously corrupt, a lackey and an idiot.

I said as much to him once, “You’re a rat climbing onto a sinking ship. You’re too clever for your own good, but you’re still nothing but an idiot.”

“I serve the president, Mr. President,” he had the nerve to say to me.

“What you do really well, Tácito, is obey the president’s orders before he’s given them.”

“Sir, I’m what they call an independent courtier,” the creep said.

“Never was there a better slave for a worse master.” I sighed.

An amusing aside, Paulina: Knowing that Tácito’s vanity is his greatest weakness, and that he thinks himself so popular, I organized a tribute to him, hosted by the so-called interest groups here in Veracruz. In that very place, when it was time for the toast, I accused him of being ambitious. Nobody stood up to defend him.

Tácito smiled, and extraordinary as it might seem, said, “What the hell do you want from me? I’m nobody. Don’t waste your time attacking me.”

“I’m not attacking you,” I said loudly. “I’m defining you. You are a parasite.”

“Since when has it been a crime here to do nothing?” he said with a broad smile.

As everyone present knew he was referring to them, the little gathering broke up with laughter and hugs.

[Brief pause in the tape, chuckles from the Old Man, and then a sigh.]

Andino Almazán is nothing but a puppet of his ambitious wife. The one I fear is Nicolás Valdivia. He’s young, he’s innocent, he’s intelligent, I like him, and I’d put my money on him. The question, Paulina, is this: Is he ours? I don’t think so. He’s young, he’s pure, he’s independent. That is to say he’s ambitious and is looking out for his interests and his interests alone. María del Rosario supports him. But does he support María del Rosario? That remains to be seen. I know you don’t get on with the Dragon Lady of Las Lomas, as you call her. Think about it objectively, weigh it up, gauge your potential for influence. And finally, your president of Congress, Onésimo Canabal, he’s pure Play-Doh. Between you and me we can shape him as we want, as long as César León, who has more power over him, doesn’t get there first.

[Long pause in the tape.]

Paulina. A ruler can be good or bad, but he must always be legitimate. Or at least he must appear to be legitimate. In a matter of days, perhaps hours, Congress will grant legitimacy to the person it makes acting president. You know how patient I am. I’ve reached old age because I’ve always taken the long view. I’ve never indulged in instant gratification, unlike so many people do today. I know that times change. There is a time to live, and a time to die, a time for war, and a time for peace. . You read me that years ago, my darling girl, and it left me more impressed than a condom in the rain.

A time for war, a time for peace. How are we to separate them, to distinguish them? Let me tell you. Eight years ago, Tomás Moctezuma Moro started his candidacy with a platform of combative idealism that stirred up a lot of animosity — and there’s plenty of that in this country. His government would have been impossible. They would have attacked him from every side. They would have paralyzed him and plunged the country into a tub of molasses. They would have frozen him as ice freezes, without the slightest breath of wind. Because wind is a hammer, but ice is a tomb. And that is that.

Paulina, you were the person who gave me the idea when you were inspired to say that the cold was the “secret ministry.” And Paulina, is there any place colder, darker, more humid, more resistant to wind, but hammer and ice at the same time, than a prison cell in the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa?

The Man in the Nopal Mask. A symbol, Paulina, a symbol in a world that can’t live without them. A symbol. The iron mask, but painted nopal green so that the poor prisoner feels comfortable, at home, less displaced. For eight years he’s been believed to be dead. A wax figure melting under his tombstone, which reads:

TOMÁS MOCTEZUMA MORO

1973–2012

and a man in a green iron mask languishing in the dungeons of Ulúa for his own good, Paulina, you must understand that, for his own good, to save him from the death to which his impetuous idealism would have condemned him, to save him from the inevitable bullet of the hit man, the local boss, the drug trafficker, to save him from the vultures ready to eat him alive, I killed him, Paulina, I ordered his kidnapping for his own good and I myself, with the authority of an old patriarch from Veracruz, announced his assassination to the shocked country, and ordered the immediate capture and death of the assassin, an Argentinian madman called Martín Caparrós, a militant from the underground party Cattle to the Slaughterhouse: pure fiction, all of it, but the best fiction — that is, impossible to confirm. .

I organized the funeral here in Veracruz, since Tomás was originally from Alvarado, where every May the landscape is a forest of crosses asking forgiveness for that obscene language they use. In Alvarado that means a lot of crosses. You’ll think I’m digressing, getting carried away about the place I came from. No, Paulina, Tomás Moctezuma Moro was the favorite son of this state; he deserved all the crosses in Alvarado.

I made all the people who participated in the funeral farce disappear (don’t ask me how or where). The bogus embalmers, the manufacturers of the wax model, the inevitable witnesses (very few, only two or three) of the invented crime. . And then one dark night, Tomás Moctezuma Moro entered the Ulúa fortress with no identity beyond that of “The Man in the Nopal Mask.” And he’s been there for the past eight years, his existence unknown, his mask part of his face, stuck to his skin. .

Why, what for, my dear child? To save him from himself, from his fatal idealism, from the inevitable swarm of enemies he’d aroused. Anyone could have murdered him! He was a threat not to too many, but to all vested interests. My idealistic, pure, dedicated, passionate disciple, why, he was like my son: Tomás Moctezuma Moro, eight years locked up in the castle fortress, eight years with the nopal mask, eight years waiting to be released and brought back into the light, when his virtues would no longer be a threat but a guarantee of legitimacy, butter instead of mustard for the national sandwich, my dear Paulina.

Let them not look for five legs when the cat’s only got four. Let’s not deceive ourselves, because Mexico already has a president elected according to the constitution.

His name is Tomás Moctezuma Moro.

He’s our cat — but tomorrow he’ll be a tiger capable of finishing off all those mediocre pretenders aspiring to succeed Lorenzo Terán.

Paulina. Set the wheels in motion for Congress to reinstate Tomás Moctezuma Moro and inaugurate him as the legitimate president elect — we don’t need an interim president, an acting president, or new elections. Stop César León in his tracks. Push that pusillanimous Onésimo Canabal out of the way. We have our president. It’s Moro’s hour. Eight years ago he was killed. And today his restless idealism is the best medicine we can give this country after Lorenzo Terán’s infuriating spinelessness.

Look me in the eye, Paulina. Look at me and see everything that’s going to happen. Better still, imagine that everything that’s going to happen has already happened.

And when you look at me again, don’t be afraid. My blood has to run cold in order to freeze everyone else’s.