I write to you openly, Onésimo. I know that you’re the very soul of discretion, simply because nobody believes in your disclosures and you’re able to hide conveniently behind a veil of silence. Keep on doing that and keep me informed.
P.S. Don’t worry about keeping this letter. As soon as you’ve finished reading, it will self-incinerate chemically. You can’t copy it or show it to anyone, you bastard. Didn’t you ever see Mission Impossible? The past is full of lessons for our present situation. Just ask yourself, in these dark days of our republic, how many letters, how many tapes, how many cassettes are being destroyed by their terrified recipients as soon as they read or listen to them? Just imagine. And don’t burn your sweet little fingers with my message.
41. TÁCITO DE LA CANAL TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN
Most dignified lady, is it possible to blackmail the blackmailed? I wouldn’t want to debase myself in your eyes, since I’m already so far down that you don’t even deign to look at me. I, on the other hand, look up: up, up, and away. Farther up and farther away, I dare say, than the two of you — and by “the two of you” I’m referring to Bernal Herrera, interior secretary, and you, María del Rosario Galván, his lover and the mother of his child. Yes, you.
Allow me to quote from a classic: “In the midst of the broad expanses surrounding Berchtesgaden, isolated from the quotidian world, my creative genius produces ideas that shake the world. At these moments, I no longer feel my mortality, my ideas transcend the mind and are transformed into facts of enormous dimension.”
Don’t think me presumptuous for invoking the words of Adolf Hitler. Whatever you think about the German Führer, he got as high and went as far as he wanted. His fall was terrible, true enough, but to fall from such heights is, in and of itself, a victory.
In other words, if I don’t know the limits of my own ambition, how will others know them? The question is one of proper timing, just as you yourself say in your letters to Bernal Herrera, which I take delight in reading before I go to sleep, as if they were a romantic advice column in a newspaper. Believe me, my dear lady, I know how to time things. Don’t forget — I have power because I, more than anyone else, have access. Need I say more? Other people have access, too. But I have it before anyone else. And don’t think I’m fooling myself. You and Herrera tell each other: “Tácito has access, but he’s totally unpopular.”
You, you diabolical little duo, lay traps for me. Very amusing ones, by the way. I know that you two are behind all those tributes in my honor carried out by powerful interest groups — unions and business associations where someone paid off by you praises me to the skies before some other crony of yours rips me apart. Nobody gets up to defend me. You think, don’t you, that you’ve both flattered my vanity and mocked my pride. That you’ve undermined me.
Wrong. You’ve only strengthened me. Every humiliating act, every cheap shot you fire my way strengthens me, stokes my courage, steels my spirit. Would you like to know how good I am at resisting offense? The other day I received a visit from César León, the ex-president for whom I worked as a young aide, some ten years ago. He complained about the way people have treated him since leaving the Eagle’s Throne, and accused me of mounting a smear campaign against him.
“I make you uncomfortable only because that’s what the president wants,” I replied.
“They aren’t making me uncomfortable — they’re hunting me down,” said the ex, in a voice that was commanding, not plaintive.
“I simply work for the president.”
“Were those his orders?”
“No, but I can predict what the president is thinking.”
Madam, I want you and Herrera to see the risks I’m willing to take, so that you understand that I’m not easily offended. I’m hardly a sensitive, romantic fifteen-year-old girl.
So that you see the extremes of my endurance, my serenity, and my determination, I’m going to tell you a little story.
President Terán made it clear that he hadn’t authorized what he considered to be my tactless treatment of ex-President León.
“But, Mr. President, I did it for you.”
“I never asked you to do that, Tácito.”
“Well, I thought it was obvious. . ”
“Ah! So you think you can read my mind, is that it? And did you read my mind when I thought to myself, If Tácito does this again, he’s sacked?”
I didn’t have to read anyone’s mind, my dear friend. I knew that the president would have to reprimand me pro forma, but that deep down he was glad that I’d done something he could never have done himself, or ordered me to do in any explicit way. I’m not called Tácito for nothing, you know. .
My distinguished friend: I know how to take risks. I know how to suffer humiliation without flinching. That is my strength. Do you think I don’t know what you tell the president?
“Tácito is a sign of your weakness, Lorenzo. You don’t need him. Only the weakest leaders need a favorite.”
Oh, the court favorite! An adviser who exercises real power on behalf of a weak or harebrained monarch. Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle for Charles V; Antonio Pérez for Philip II; the Duke of Lerma for Philip III, Philip IV, and the Count-Duke of Olivares. Some are more fortunate than others, some return from previous obsolescence, others betray and flee to enemy ranks disguised as women (Pérez, who only had to slap on an eye patch to imitate his one-eyed lover, the Princess of Eboli), while others drown in their own incompetence, even worse than that of the real monarch (Lerma), and still others are lionized for their success in running the empire.
Historical models, madam. Which of them will I resemble in the end? Oh, a favorite is as good as his protector — but also as good as his enemies. And to tell the truth, you and Bernal are completely useless to me.
“You are nothing but a flimsy reed disguised as a sword,” our beloved interior secretary once said to me.
“And you are a sardine who thinks himself a shark,” I replied.
“And me?” you dared to ask, petulantly.
“A noodle, nothing but a noodle.”
You say that I’m a masochist who derives pleasure from recounting the humiliation I’m forced to endure in my service to the president. The simple truth is that I walk through the corridors of the presidential house thinking about these things, and I chastise myself for the vileness of my acts, but I congratulate myself because my despicable nature not only keeps me alive, it keeps me on top. Your friend, the so-called Seneca, has this to say about me: “Tácito could corrupt the devil.”
And as I walk by, he murmurs, “There goes His Excellency the Evil One.”
(He borrowed that one from Talleyrand, as you probably know since you were educated by the Frogs.)
But me? I put lead in my shoes so that no sudden gust of wind can carry me off into thin air. I endure everything, madam, because the man with the greatest endurance is the man who laughs last. And as you so carelessly say in your letter, I too could fall at any moment. But I warn both of you that I’ll drag you down with me into the abyss.
You once said to me, “You’re a bat, Tácito. Don’t show your face by day.”
I didn’t dare confess that I admire you by night, madam, as you strip off your clothes with the light on. I was a gentleman.
“Certainly not, I’m nothing but a harmless little dove.”
“That would make you the first hawk ever to turn into a dove.”
“Nonsense. You and I are birds of the same feather.”
Your comparisons are not very accurate, María del Rosario. You’d be a lot better off thinking of me as “the man in the mist.” You’ll see that I’m not so easy to catch, and that I can get in under unguarded doors. Like yours, and your lover Bernal Herrera’s. Not to mention that of the wretched bastard born from your love affair and abandoned in an asylum for idiots.