This makes me think of a heresy, Tomás, and I’ll tell it to you here, at your grave.
“How many times can we be expected to rescue God?”
I’ve reached the limits of my endurance. I will not resign myself, my love. I will not tell myself, “Tomás is dead. Accept it.”
No. Instead I spend my nights wide awake, saying to myself, “If no one but God can hear my questions, and even God says nothing, then what can I do to make Him answer me?”
Tomás, my love. Give me back my life. You made me who I am. I was someone else before you. Perhaps I was nothing before you. In your arms I became a woman. And now that I no longer have you with me, I have to hold back my tears because, if I cry, I know that something even worse will happen to me. Tears will release the sadness, the grief that I haven’t been able to express.
Will there be no resting place?
I love you, I love you, I think of you all the time.
I hear boleros on the café jukebox (radio and television aren’t working; newspapers are selling very well now), and I remember our love.
No me preguntes más
déjame imaginar
que no existe el pasado
y que nacimos
el mismo instante
en que nos conocimos. . 1
But the music fades away when I walk through the cemetery gate and read the inscription at the entrance:
STOP: THE PROVINCE OF ETERNITY BEGINS HERE,
WHERE EARTHLY GRANDEUR TURNS TO DUST.
29. TÁCITO DE LA CANAL TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
Mr. President, I thank God for the crisis we now find ourselves in, caused by the knee-jerk reaction of our neighbors to the north, since it gives me a chance to leave a written record of my loyalty to you. I applaud your decision to place lasting principles above and beyond any and all other transient considerations. I know all too well that for you our ultimate purposes must always be ethical. There can be no other way. All I need is to look at your hands, Mr. President, to know that they’re capable of making miracles happen. You have a kind of sixth sense that other humans lack. And that intuition will have told you that I’m here to protect you and to prevent certain people from getting near you, people who might inconvenience you. Or, dare I add, people who aren’t humbled by your presence. You know, sir, that I obey your orders before you even utter them. And to this virtue I add another. Keeping things in strict confidence is a habit I’ve cultivated all my life. What I’m trying to say is that you can place your utmost trust in me. I know that I owe everything to you, and that by doing anything to hurt you I would only be hurting myself. I reiterate my position so that in the upcoming presidential succession of 2024, you remember that you will face opponents who wish to remain in opposition indefinitely because they are so scared of actually exercising power. But you will also encounter people like me who are already close to the nucleus of power but have never felt any ambition to wield power themselves. That’s why, Mr. President, I feel I can speak to you with truly impartial conviction.
Bear in mind, Mr. President, that you should possess the imperial gift of inflexibility. Let other people be the good guys. You don’t have the right to be a good guy. The people of this country will get down on their knees in respectful tribute to power, but they will not accept bonhomie and much less artlessness in a presidential figure. We respect the emperor, we respect Montezuma, we respect the Spanish viceroy, and we respect the dignified dictator honored by the rest of the world, like Porfirio Díaz was. And also, of course, we respect the rightful, legitimate man, defender of the nation and distinguished citizen of the Americas, don Benito Juárez. Can you think of anyone more solemn than he? Have you ever heard a single joke about Juárez? Didn’t he go down in history as Juárez the Impassive? Didn’t Juárez come up with that saying: “For one’s friends, justice and grace. For one’s enemies, the law”?
By this I don’t mean to imply that solemnity is synonymous with imperial arrogance — it’s synonymous with republican sobriety, but illuminated with the glowing halo of monarchy. Yes, let’s always be a hereditary republic, a monarchy with a six-year cycle, and in the interest of that tradition we must make sure we maintain the dignity of the presidential throne and restrict access to it as much as possible. For this reason, I venture to offer you a bit of advice regarding certain members of the cabinet who like to brag about their “access” to your office and who are perhaps a bit too chummy with you. Mr. President, don’t engage with inferiors. Always show them their place. Don’t listen to their biased advice — because there’s no such thing as unbiased advice when the person being advised is the president of the nation.
Mr. President, I work for you. I’m no different from the majority of our compatriots. Every good Mexican works for you. Because if things go well for the president, things go well for Mexico. Allow me to tell you, then, that at this particular political hour here in this country, there are eight small parties. And then there is you.
The gloppy guacamole that results from this abundance of small parties can only be eaten with the spoon of a strong president who knows how to take advantage of it. Put this idea to the test, Mr. President, now that the elections are looming. Mexicans don’t know how to govern themselves. History has proven this. Just watch them welcome the message of your renewed authority with gratitude and relief. I tell you this in the spirit of democracy. There’s no such thing as a soft-core dictatorship that doesn’t eventually degenerate into hard-core tyranny. You’re better off the other way around: starting hard and degenerating into something softer.
Please forgive my bluntness. I’m a guard dog, I know. I accept my role with humility. You, on the other hand, may act according to the free will your position grants you. But what would you think of a cabinet chief — a position I’m honored to have been conferred — who didn’t speak to you honestly? On a more humorous note, let me tell you that I’m not like the secretary who was asked the following question by the general, president, and head of state Plutarco Elías Calles: “What time is it?” To which the secretary responded, “Whatever time you say it is, Mr. President.”
I am a man who is accustomed to doing things he dislikes.
Use me as you wish.
30. NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN
My fair lady, there is someone I believe I’ve mentioned before: Penélope, the secretary who works in Tácito de la Canal’s office. Her full name is Penélope Casas and she’s a female freighter. She moves through the office like a transatlantic ship on the high seas, supervising the administrative tasks and cheering the girls on (for the lack of cheer in that office is as deadly as Tácito’s bad breath), acting sometimes as their confidante and counselor, and at other times as a shoulder for them to cry on. You see, Penélope has a heart as big as her bosom, and her bosom is covered by a shawl the size of a flag. Her dark-skinned face is dotted with pockmarks, the vestiges of childhood smallpox, which she halfheartedly conceals with a layer of matte powder. Her lips are heavily painted, as if to distract the eye, and presided over by two dense eyebrows joined in the middle like the celebrated eyebrows of Frida Kahlo. And as for her hair, María del Rosario, I think our lofty Aztec goddess must get up at four in the morning to create those rib-boned braids, those tottering towers that crown her head, and that torrent of bangs that hides her narrow, low forehead.