Let me continue. Andino Almazán, very simply, doesn’t pass muster with the people. Apart from López Portillo, no treasury secretary has ever become president. He really is the villain in this little soap opera, spending six years saying no to everyone who asks him for money. It seems his profession is to be hated, and what the voters want is to love, even if only for a little while before disillusion sets in.
We are left, then, with two serious candidates. Bernal Herrera and Tácito de la Canal.
Don’t be alarmed if I say Tácito must be eliminated.
Nicolás Valdivia sent me, via young Magón, copies of the documents that prove Tácito’s criminal conduct in the MEXEN negotiations. How such a crafty operator allowed an archivist to file such incriminating papers, I have no idea. Magón, who is the son of the archivist, says that his father never lets a single paper disappear. That may be true. But still, why did Tácito let the documents get to the archive instead of sending them straight to the paper shredder? The only thing that occurs to me is that perhaps this is part of the muddy terrain of pride associated with power — hubris, Onésimo (a word I’ve already explained to you twice and which I’m not going to explain again). Hubris was what made President Nixon, for instance, zealously save all the tapes that proved him to be a revolting criminal and that ultimately got him expelled from the White House. . At every level you’ll find them, Onésimo — governors who save videos of their murders, military commanders who have their shootings filmed, torturers who adore replaying their atrocities on-screen. . Is Tácito any different? I don’t think so. Nixon, to return to our best example, had an archive labeled “The White House Files,” which contained a full record of all his unethical deeds and crimes, but which was ready to be removed from the White House if he lost the election.
There’s definitely something fishy going on with Tácito. His signature is on the documents. But signatures are easily forged. What I’m asking myself now is this: Who handed those papers over to Cástulo Magón, the archivist? I don’t think it was de la Canal. If we can find out who said to him, “Don Cástulo, don’t forget to file this. .” then our mystery will be solved.
I repeat. Eliminate Tácito. María del Rosario has all the original documents and she’s already shared the secret with her darling Nicolás Valdivia, whom she’s pulled up to the top, and of course she’s also shared it with Bernal Herrera, her ex-lover and the other candidate for the Eagle’s Throne.
Nicolás Valdivia, I repeat, sent me (via young Magón) copies of the documents that prove Tácito’s criminal conduct in the MEXEN case. Again, how could such a sly dog have overlooked the fact that the archivist was holding on to such incriminating evidence? I can’t figure it out. But I now see why President Terán did everything he could to accelerate Tácito’s resignation.
And Herrera’s, too. Herrera emerges, then, as the favorite. Magón told me the president himself killed the story that Tácito had cooked up against María del Rosario and Herrera, making it very clear, in the process, that Herrera was his chosen one.
This is the best picture we have of things as they stand now. Very well, Onésimo, the real picture encompasses all these possibilities, with one small exception: The invisible issue here will not be the presidential candidate issue, as we’ve all been led to believe, but the issue of the acting president in the event of the resignation or absence of the president in office.
I can just see your face. Cover up your astonishment. And don’t think César León’s scheming or Cícero Arruza’s threats can prompt the president to resign. There’s something bigger going on here. Something very big. Young Magón told me that Valdivia told him that the president’s trusted adviser Seneca saw Terán in a state of acute physical debilitation.
How does Valdivia know this? Because Seneca told María del Rosario, whom he’s secretly in love with, and our little Eva Perón told her protégé Valdivia. There it is, Onésimo. Everyone’s spying on everyone else, stealing documents from one another, and maybe even spying on themselves when nobody’s looking. .
Which confirms the notion that in politics secrets are open and only the loudest voices tell secrets. Work out the mystery that’s there in what you know, Onésimo, and forget the secrets: They’re empty vessels. Distractions. Better to think — and think hard — about what you know.
That’s where the mystery is.
49. MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA
President Lorenzo Terán has died. It’s like losing a good father, Bernal. All my life I’ve lived with the repugnant image of my own father, who was tyrannical and corrupt. Sometimes he appears in my nightmares. I wake up, shouting at him, “Go away! Disappear! You’re worse dead than you were alive!”
When Franco died, Juan Goytisolo, anti-Franco always (he’s now eighty-nine and lives somewhere in the medina in Marrakech), couldn’t help giving a requiem for the stepfather who subjugated the Spanish for forty years.
Lorenzo Terán, on the other hand, was a good patriarch. Perhaps too good. I call him “father,” but really he was our son. Your son and mine, Bernal. We made him. We persuaded him to give up his business in Coahuila and become president in the midst of our multiparty catastrophe, from which not one political group has emerged unscathed, as if they were eight spoiled, measles-ridden children locked up in a room together.
Lorenzo Terán, on the other hand, was clean, unfettered, industrious. And as if that weren’t enough, Bernal, he was ours. Nevertheless, you and I made a decision. We were not going to manipulate him. We’d be loyal and we’d respect his position and his autonomy. We’d serve him. We’d advise him. But we wouldn’t treat him like a puppet. Were we wrong? Should we have pressured him more? Should we have been more than mere counselors and loyal servants? Did the president realize that he had you to thank for all those shows of power: the strikes, the students, the peasants? You were the one who acted. You always handed the president faits accomplis. Because Lorenzo Terán, so contentious on the campaign trail, decided to be a saint in office. He climbed up to the top of a column so that he could serve God and he chose to let society govern itself.
You and I had to act on his behalf. That was our way of being loyal to him. We didn’t manipulate him. We respected his autonomy. But we filled the gaps for him. Since he never called us to task, we did whatever we could. You could do a lot from the interior office but not everything. I think there was a utopian lost somewhere in Lorenzo Terán’s heart. The only person he listened to — unfortunately, for us — was Seneca, and that elicited a vicious response from the gringos. It was to be expected.
My own role was limited because I am a woman. For all that we’ve progressed, an unwritten law still holds sway in this country: A man can be forgiven all his vices. Not a woman.
I can see you smiling, Bernal. You’re a good man. You’re generous. Only once did you reproach me for being indiscreet, when I got into that argument with Tácito de la Canal. You were right. My hormones did get the better of me. Once again, I ask you to forgive me. Not only did I break our political pact. Discretion, discretion, discretion. The bad thing about power is that it gives one a sense of impunity. The more you get used to it, the more indiscreet you become.
I swear never to make that mistake again. That’s why I’m putting everything down in writing, so that we have a record this time of what you proposed to me yesterday at President Terán’s funeral, as we knelt side by side in the Metropolitan Cathedral.
You’re thinking of your future, as am I. The president’s death doesn’t only move the political calendar ahead. It changes it. How quickly things change in politics! There are more cracks, winding paths, waterfalls, gulfs, narrow passes, hidden islands, bottlenecks, and gorges than in the whole length of the Amazon! When I said to Nicolás Valdivia, “You will be president of Mexico,” I was only stringing him along. I thought it would be one thing or the other. Either he would take it as an erotic dare, a sexual promise I kept putting off, a woman’s fancy: “Come to my arms, my sweet young thing. . Be the president of my bed. Didn’t you understand what I meant? My bed’s the real Mexican presidency, silly. . ”