The President was frustrated because he couldn’t get the oil drum into the hole; perhaps for that reason he said calmly, “Turn the troops on them, that’s why we have Colonel Inclán.”
“That’s the last option, Mr. President.”
“So they tell me.” He sighed, the toy dangling from his hands. “But just explain to me why, Mr. Secretary: for years and years I fought in the opposition with the secret desire to be president and turn the troops on people whenever I wanted instead of having them turned on me. Now here I am and I find out that troops are the ‘last option,’ that I should avoid it so as not to have a rerun of Tlateloco or a Corpus Christi and lose everything. Look here: I’m in PAN, I have to govern through PRI cadres and I can’t tell the Army, ‘Get out there and kick some ass.’ Tell me now, is it worth being president if I can’t do this?”
“Mr. Paredes,” said Robles Chacón after looking at him for a long time with incredulous severity.
“Yes?” said the President, alarmed that someone, especially a Minister of State, was not calling him “Mr. President.”
“No one forced you to be president,” said the minister, not in an absolutely conclusive tone, but in one that invited a response that never came, which gave Robles Chacón yet another victory.
3. The fact is they didn’t have faces
The fact is they didn’t have faces: they had numbers, mass, vague labels; they were the insane released from sanatoria, bands of eunuchs from Jalisco, desperadoes from Hidalgo, clowns from Nuevo León, rogues originally from Puebla; but now they were not attracted by the mirage of the city, consumerism, jobs: now they were called by that macho voice that told them through the thousands of cassettes carried by the truckers to every corner of the country:
THERE IS A NATION! WE ARE ALL HERE!
WE ARE THE NEW NATION!
LET’S BE GLORIOUS!
REAL MEN AREN’T ASHAMED TO PRAY
FOR THE FATHERLAND!
Know something? Matamoros Moreno said right at the beginning to Concha, now rebaptized for the sake of the grand campaign with the sonorous Chilean name of Galvarina Donoso: Did you know that for the first time in my life I’ve discovered that there’s a huge number of poor people, a freaking mountain of screwed-over jerks who hate themselves?
“Better late than never,” answered Galvarina. “If I didn’t know that, I’d be a damned fool, but they’ve stopped believing that the blonde in the beer ads would be waiting for them when they got to the city: one blonde coming up, son! These boys ain’t so stupid!”
“You took the words right out of my mouth, ma’am. You always know everything, and that’s why I adore and respect you: just what I was thinking, and now put it in a song. I swear you’re terrific!”
Which is what Concha Toro did: “One song coming up,” as she would say, and she transformed the driest political ideas into bolero lyrics, songs people could hum all over the roads of Mexico: “The sky on this earth may be ever so high / The sea may be ever so deep / But nothing can keep our love from the Virgin / who watches over our sleep…” Or: Save us! Save us, Ayatollah: we ask you now as before / we wandered full of anguish and suffering: no more, Ayatollah, no more! / beautiful Ayatollah, you’re our heart’s delight / thanks to your message, we’ll make it through the night!
No one knew exactly where these jingles came from, the scattered drivers could not have invented them, but they were everywhere, they upset some people, excited others, angered still others, and made everyone stop and think. Egg told my mommy all this when he visited her. He never gave up: he was bald, and they never paint hope bald. Egg himself was fed up with his new job, which was as a salesman for Souvenir Portraits, which is to say, tapes which the customer could have made of himself while alive which could then be put in the coffin so he could speak to his descendants. All you had to do was push a button.
“A terrific idea, but nobody wants to leave even a memory of himself anymore. Neither the deceased-to-be nor his heirs-to-be want to survive in any way. They hate themselves too much.”
“So turn it around and offer them total oblivion when they die. Nothing, néant,” said my mother.
“Oblivion insurance!” exclaimed Egg: “People hate themselves.”
* * *
(A lie, I’ll never be like that handsome devil in the ad driving his Meiji-Maserati, I’ll never wear that Bill Blass blazer made in Hong Kong, I’ll never fly to Tokyo on the Concorde, the chicks will never be all over me because I put Yojimbo in my armpits, I’ll never be accepted by the Diners Club, the Blonde of My Dreams will not be waiting for me at Indios Verdes when I roll in from Pachuca in overalls looking for love, fortune, and glory in the city: it’s not true, exclaimed Orphan Huerta as he painted election ads on the walls for the election of August 31, which came before the President’s address to Congress on the first of September.) (President Paredes had reduced the year’s electoral calendar to two days: on the first you voted, on the second you applauded, and in the meantime we had lots and lots of National Contests to amuse us, and the Orphan worked painting walls for President Parades):1
CANDIDATEIZE YOURSELF
FEEL LIKE A CANDIDATE!
slogans that summarized the President’s obsessive philosophy: there should be no former presidents, only candidates; the most important obligation of a president in 1992 is to choose his successor and then die: did he really believe it? Is that why he walks around so slowly, so desperate at times, so taciturn, so given to playing ball-and-cup and delegating decisions to Minister Robles or Colonel Inclán?
People hate themselves because they can never be what they’ve been told they can be, my father Angel had said when he fled from the threat of Colasa Sánchez’s vagina dentata and realized, sadly, mediocrely, with no glory whatever, that he’d been left without either dark or light meat: poor Daddy — no Colasa, no Penny, not even my poor knocked-up mommy! The Orphan Huerta paints slogans on walls and it bores him so much that he succumbs to the amusing vice of memory and wonders about his brother, the Lost Boy. What a laugh! He starts playing with words as if he were writing a song, a song no one will ever sing: Lost Boy, Copper Field, Twisted Oliver, Little Lord Fartalot, Eddy Piss, Eddy Poe, Eddy Feets, and he looks at his own torn-up feet, feet burned up since he was a kid because of having to walk, with no memories, through the garbage dumps of the city: Where ma brudder at? Suddenly, painting walls and elsewhere with English names: Little Dorrit, Copperfield, Oliver Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer, said the Orphan Huerta tapping his toe as he painted walls.
He has the sensation he’s surrounded by phantoms and he does this work mechanically as he dreams. The Orphan Huerta has the overwhelming sensation he’s surrounded by water, that he’s falling, brush in hand, into a vast liquid dream: the city once again floats over its lake, the placid skiffs ply the canals laden with flowers — geraniums and zempazúchiles and wild roses, the ahuehuetes, grandfather trees, lend their shade to those on foot and the weeping willows moisten their branches like green handkerchiefs in the clean river waters: the Orphan Huerta opens his eyes and looks at the white wall devoid of destiny before his abandoned eyes: the dead lakes he sees, the canals transformed into industrial burial grounds, the roasted rivers, a burning shield of cement and black wax devouring what it was going to protect: the heart of Mexico.
The Orphan Huerta, full of the rage and bitterness accumulated in his twenty years, scratches the white wall, leaving in it a wounded trace, his fingernails bleed, his signature is blood: a sign on the clean wall, a destiny for me and mine, a scratch on the clean wall of destiny, damn it to hell!