Over the phone, Nicolás! Can you believe it? That was all it took, a few little acts of deference for Washington to lift the sanctions. And as President Terán was discreet enough not to complain, what happened between January and May. . never happened. That’s all.
“There are blank pages in all history books,” Condoleezza said to you.
The fact is, starting today all communications will resume and we can finally say goodbye to this tedious task of writing letters.
Why then do I write to you now?
For the record.
You know, I love poking around in the archives. Like you. Thanks to the absentminded Cástulo Magón, Tácito de la Canal is through. When I saw your folder from the ENA in Paris, I started connecting the dots, and like Sherlock Holmes I set out on my investigation. Is that how you spell “Sherlock Holmes”? Because I had a Cuban friend once who used to pronounce it “Chelmojones.” He was one of those memorable Cubans who reinvent a whole life on the basis of pronunciation. How do we know who the famous film actor was if they pronounce his name “Cagable”? And how can we recognize “Retamar” if it’s pronounced “Letamale”?
Anyway, I started to make my deductions, from the specific to the general, piece by piece.
You came to Mexico straight from the ENA in Paris, and settled into your “native” city of Juarez, crossing the border every day so that you could study at the library of the University of Texas at El Paso, where you devoured everything that had to do with Mexican politics, from Salinas onward. You applied for residence in Juárez and produced a confusing birth certificate — the son of a Mexican father and a North American mother, both accountants by profession, employed by companies that were fronts for a U.S. business empire with double and sometimes even triple accounting, run by the business magnate Leonardo Barroso, Sr. In other words, your family background was shady, and any revelation could compromise a number of companies on both sides of the border. The secrecy was justified. You were born in a clinic in Texas, but granted Mexican citizenship thanks to Article 30, section A.ii, which guaranteed it to all children born out of the country to Mexican parents. You were more fortunate than José Córdoba or Rogerio de la Selva, strongmen in the Carlos Salinas and Miguel Alemán administrations, but constitutionally barred from the Eagle’s Throne because of being “foreign.” But you know all this, because nobody knows more about Mexican political history than you, since you studied it so intensively and so recently, too. . Not like the rest of us, who learned it in elementary school. Or were weaned on it.
Moving on, my good friend Valdivia, your parents died in a car accident in Texas when you were fifteen. Since you had the right to dual citizenship, you buried them in the U.S. That’s where the documents are with the name you used on the other side of the border, “Nick Val,” so you could get work, you said, and avoid discrimination.
There’s a gap between the Nick Val who buried his parents in Texas and the Nicolás Valdivia who studied at the École Nationale d’Administration in Paris and was much engaged with Mexican student groups in France — they vividly remember you talking to them, observing them, finding out about their family backgrounds, trying to score points for being an orphan as well as a foreigner.
You wanted to know everything about the country you missed so much!
You were preparing to serve Mexico by studying in France — just like María del Rosario Galván and Bernal Herrera — as is fashionable now. It distinguishes us from the gringos and gives us cachet.
You’re not the only one who knows how to use the archives. Take the file you’re familiar with because Cástulo Magón showed it to you when you went to work at Los Pinos.
ENA PARIS VALDIVIA NICOLÁS
Student. Open courses. École Nationale d’Administration, Paris. Mexican passport. Date of birth: December 12, 1986. Residence: Paris, France. Professional plans: Return to Mexico. Education and discipline: Optimal. Physical description: Darkish skin. Green eyes. Regular features. Black hair. Height: 1.79 meters. Distinguishing marks: Dimpled chin.
That’s the file on you from Paris, with photo and everything. But then, my curiosity got the better of me. Where were you before you went to Paris, during that gap between the age of fifteen and twenty-two? Well, since I’m a member of Congress, I had no trouble sending your details to the people at Interpol. They needed only your initials. In that, my dear Nicolás, you weren’t very clever, no. All I had to do was go through the lists of Mexican students in Europe between 2010 and 2015. A little exhaustive, but it wasn’t that hard, what with modern methods of locating information — methods unknown to men like our good Cástulo Magón.
Nicolás Valdivia in Paris disappeared without trace. A file on someone named Nico Valdés, however, did turn up, and it included a dossier from the Swiss police department and a photograph: yours.
NICO VALDÉS, Student. University of Geneva, Switzerland. Registered for courses in political economy and constitutional theory. Expelled upon discovery of falsified academic record. Address unknown.
What were those false documents? The Swiss hang on to every scrap of paper, as you know well. It turns out that “Nico Valdés” was already registered as a foreigner — same photo as “Nico Lavat”—and the Swiss justice system doesn’t like double identities because they can lead to double indemnities.
Who was this Nico Lavat unjustly detained in Switzerland? As you know, photographs can be scanned through electronic imaging processes that can show how a person ages — fascinating, isn’t it? The point is, though, among these facial “identities” was one of your twin brother, Nicolás.
NICOLÁS LAVAT. Spanish employee hired as doorman to the building that was the main office of the Le Rhône publishing house, April 25, 2006. Considered an exemplary employee. Dedicated reader when not fulfilling professional obligations. Perfect French. Accused of conspiring with a gang to rob banks and of the theft of 250,000 Swiss francs. Released due to inconclusive evidence. Physical description: Dark skin. Light green eyes. Normal features. Black permed hair. Height 1.79 meters. Distinguishing traits: Dimpled chin.
One thing leads to another. Elementary, my dear Watson. Just use Hercule Poirot’s little gray cells — he’s another of my favorites when it comes to the art of detection. Consider, for example, this report found in the files of the Barcelona police department.
NICO LAVAT, b. December 12, 1986, in Marseilles, France, Catalan parents, migrant workers. Associated since adolescence with Marseilles criminal elements. Drugs, male prostitution, “scab” gangs. Active in Le Pen’s National Front. Two years in prison for anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic vandalism, 2000–2002. Whereabouts unknown following release from prison. Failed to meet obligations to report to authorities and renew documents. Physical description: Dark skin. Green eyes. Normal features. Shaved head. Height. 1.79 meters.
Good Lord! First a black woman president and now a Catalan president!
I’m sending you copies of these documents, my sweet. I’ll keep the originals in my office at Congress, in a sealed envelope that I’ll open only in the event of violence against my person. A remote possibility, if I’ve got someone as affectionate and understanding as you to protect me. No, I don’t think I should accept your marriage proposal. If you want me to be your Evita Perón, fine, as long as I don’t have to sleep under the same roof as you, hire a food taster like the Borgias did, or go mad, thinking I’m in a Hitchcock film every time I have a shower.
No, we’re better off as we are, affectionate friends, secret conspirators, highly discreet lovers.