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Authors: Carlos Fuentes
Tags: Fiction
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friend, as our own capacity for mutual gratitude and affection. We should assume that every secretary of state owes Tácito as many favors as they owe us. Not for nothing is he the holder of the keys to the Holiest of Holies, the president’s inner sanctum, our very square “Oval Office.”
In any case, we ought to think of it as a fight among equals. Now, will your protégé Valdivia, embedded as he is in Tácito’s bureaucracy, be able to come up with the one secret that can ruin him, something more damaging than Tácito’s habit of seducing secretaries?
Poor results, María del Rosario, very poor. If we don’t produce solid evidence soon to bring Tácito de la Canal down, he and I will start the fight with equal strength.
I cannot tolerate that.
I want to have an indisputable advantage. What will it be? I can only count on your well-deserved reputation as a woman who is intelligent, intuitive . . . and seductive.
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
In any case, we ought to think of it as a fight among equals. Now, will your protégé Valdivia, embedded as he is in Tácito’s bureaucracy, be able to come up with the one secret that can ruin him, something more damaging than Tácito’s habit of seducing secretaries?
Poor results, María del Rosario, very poor. If we don’t produce solid evidence soon to bring Tácito de la Canal down, he and I will start the fight with equal strength.
I cannot tolerate that.
I want to have an indisputable advantage. What will it be? I can only count on your well-deserved reputation as a woman who is intelligent, intuitive . . . and seductive.
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
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