The Eagle's Throne

62. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

My beautiful lady, I don’t want to seem insistent, but I do feel it’s time for you to honor the promise you made to me when we first met. I am what I am and that was your condition, wasn’t it?

“Nicolás Valdivia: I’ll be yours when you’re president of Mexico.” That’s why I’m at your window. I adore your coquettish ways. Before you open the doors of your house to me will we be repeating our initial rite? That’s fine. I’ll go along with your whims. You have the right to ask what you want of me. Your prophecy came true. I’ve arrived, as you so boldly foretold in January. Or should I say promised.

I realize that I owe my position not to María del Rosario Galván, but rather to a chain of events that nobody could have predicted at the beginning of this fateful (or very fortunate) year. Once again, need is a matter of chance. Don’t think that I’m any less grateful for that. On the contrary. I came to you with no commitments, pure and free. I have you to thank for my political education. I’m the star student who has come to give his teacher her prize. Might I now complete my erotic education in her bed?

I’ll follow your instructions. Tonight I’ll return to the woods surrounding your house and from there I’ll watch you take off your clothes in front of the lit window. Give me a sign. Turn off the other lights, light a candle, as if you were in one of those old mystery films — and I’ll come to the “beds of battle, soft field.”

Anxiously yours, N.