“As far as I’m concerned,” he went on, “a politician should be like a Japanese pilot: He should carry pistols but no parachute.”
He made an unusual gesture — a cinematic flourish straight out of an old Tyrone Power movie.
“Between the two extremes of Quasimodo and the kamikaze, I chose to be Zorro. The masked man everyone believes to be perfect.”
Did he sigh? I placed my two hands on the back of my chair.
The Old Man noticed and in a compassionate voice said, “Don’t rush. I haven’t breathed my last sigh yet. Oh, if you only knew how many times I’ve been taken for dead!”
I leaned forward. I took my chance.
“Don’t die on me without telling me first, Mr. President.”
“Tell you what?” the parrot said, as if he’d been preparing for that question all his life.
I had to laugh.
“The secret that you’re keeping.”
He didn’t move an inch. Unexpected or not, my question did not disturb him.
“Nobody should know everything,” he said after a long pause. “It’s not good for the health.”
“Don’t you mean, ‘Nobody can know everything?’ Isn’t that more to the point?”
“How straight you are, Mr. Valdivia. Get real. No, it’s not a question of can. It’s a question of should.”
“But we’re running out of time. I’m pleading with you now, like the young man you once were. Don’t send me back to Mexico City empty-handed.”
“I was never young,” he replied with a hint of bitterness. “I had to suffer and learn a lot before I became president. Otherwise I would have suffered and learned during my presidency and that would have been at the country’s expense.”
He looked at me with unconcealed scorn.
“Who do you think you are?”
He paused.
“You have to have lost a lot in order to be someone before and after you wield power.”
“But sometimes it’s the country — not the powerful leader — that loses with all that secrecy, intrigue, and personal ambition. And that’s what I’d call a catastrophe,” I said in the most dignified voice I could muster.
“Catastrophes are good,” said the Old Man, licking his lips like the Cheshire cat. “They reinforce the people’s stoicism.”
“Aren’t they stoic enough?” I asked, somewhat exasperated by now.
The Old Man looked at me with a mixture of pity, sympathy, and impatience.
“Look: Everyone thinks they can lock me up in an old age home. They underestimate my craftiness. But my craftiness is what makes me indispensable. The chitchat I leave to the parrot. You’re here because I know something everyone wants to know, information that could be critical for the presidential succession.”
He narrowed his eyes diabolically, María del Rosario.
“Do you think I’m going to spill the beans and let myself get thrown out in the garbage? Are you an idiot or are you just pretending to be?”
“I respect you, Mr. President.”
“What I said stands. I’m keeping my mouth shut.”
“Believe me, your honesty in no way diminishes the respect I have for you.”
He laughed. He dared to laugh.
“Comrade Valdivia, I believe in the law of political compensation. What I give with one hand, I take away with the other. If I give you what you want, what will I take away in exchange?”
Disquieted, I said, “Are you asking what you can expect from me?”
His response, lightning fast, was, “Or from the people who sent you here.”
“My protection,” I murmured, realizing my stupid mistake as soon as the words came out.
The Old Man who never laughed stopped laughing but didn’t stop smiling.
“Never believe in the improbable. Only believe in the incredible.”
“But you’re offering me neither the improbable nor the incredible. You’re offering me nothing.”
“Oh my goodness. What if I told you Mexico needs hope? Someone to create absolute ideals and relative realities? To fuel the imagination?”
“I’d think you were fooling me.”
“See? And yet I’m telling you the truth, the whole truth. And I’m also giving you the key to my secret, just in case you really do want to know what it is.”
“You’re giving me a pebble, and I want the whole rock, Mr. President.”
“A pebble thrown into the water creates a tiny ripple, but the tiny ripple makes waves.”
Pause. Sigh. Resignation.
“And in the end, all those waves are the same.”
In an instant he recovered the energy that had been sucked out of him, as if the Gulf of Mexico were a giant drain. And that afternoon, perhaps it was. On my first visit, the Old Man had talked of the tide of invaders that had entered Mexico through Veracruz. But tides have to go in, taking some of the land with them, land that’s used up, no longer wanted or needed. What would the tides of the gulf carry away with them now? Everything, I thought, if the Old Man let them. Nothing if he was stubborn enough to stop the ebb and flow of the sea.
“The mist of conspiracy hovers over Mexico and no man’s head is higher than the air he breathes,” he said, and for the first time I detected a dreamy note in his voice — perhaps incongruous and rather unjustified, but dreamy nonetheless. Then he looked away toward the docks, the castle, the water. .
“Polluted air, sir.”
“I’m going to tell you one thing,” said the Old Man, his face and tone of voice back to normal now. “If you want to breathe easy, if you want to cut through some of that fog and put an end to all those conspiracies, you need to give the country back its hope.”
“Again?” I asked, resigned.
“I’m talking about a symbol,” the ex-president said, his voice growing stronger. “Cheated, lost, corrupted, this country can only be saved if it finds the symbol that can deliver it the promise of new hope.”
“But for a long time now we’ve given the people new hope — every six years, in fact — and then they lose it. Do you have the key to eternal hope?”
He went silent for some time because he was thinking. Out of courtesy I tried not to look at him. That was when I noticed that the vultures were no longer flying over Ulúa, and I wondered if I’d noticed them in January when I made my first visit to the Old Man. The sense that the vultures weren’t circling overhead may have been something I’d felt before and that now, as if life were a dream, I was feeling for the first time, having only dreamed it before. Or was it the other way around? Did I feel it first and then dream about it afterward?
“There once was a cat with feet made of rags. . ” the parrot interrupted, chirping away.
“A symbol that will offer new hope.”
“Again?”
Silence.
I dared to speak for him.
“You’ve just said it. Mexico needs a symbol. Have you got one?”
He nodded his graying head. His receding hairline lent a noble air to his features. He looked up.
“Haven’t you wondered why the vultures aren’t flying over Ulúa today?”
Now I was the one to respond without words. I shook my head. “I had a very foolish and tactless government minister working under me. My advice to him was this: ‘Be careful. You’ve been accused.’ ”
“Of what, Mr. President?”
“Of telling the truth.”
He went silent, María del Rosario.
I think I understood, María del Rosario.
“The moment still hasn’t arrived?”
“No. Not yet.”
“What message shall I take to the capital?”
“When the coyotes howl, howl along with them. You don’t want people thinking you’re a cat.”
“Do you want me to tell you again?” the parrot chanted.