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Now, there’s a man who loves you so much that he’d kill you. And whom you love so much that you can’t bring yourself to kill him. Jesús Ricardo Magón.

Decide, Nicolás. I can’t offer you any advice. Politics is the public expression of private passions. Could public politics exist without private passions? At this stage in the game, need I repeat your Florentine namesake’s ABC?

It is much safer to be feared than loved. . Love is held by a chain of obligation, which, because men are wicked, is broken at every opportunity for their own utility, but fear is held by a dread of punishment that never forsakes you.

The prince should nonetheless make himself feared in such a mode that, if he does not acquire love, he escapes hatred.

Choose your words carefully. Don’t let a single word that can’t be interpreted as charity, integrity, humanity, rectitude, or pity escape your lips. The people judge more by what they see than what they understand.

Choose your words carefully. Mussolini, early on, spoke badly of the last remaining independent deputy of the Italian left, Matteotti. His aides — his lackeys — heard him and killed Matteotti. The fascist dictatorship was strengthened. Because of a verbal faux pas. How wise Obregón was when he said, “A president speaks badly of no one.”

Have your last words ready, Nicolás. “Light, more light,” at one extreme. “Après moi, le deluge,” at the other. The words of a humanist and the words of a monarch. But don’t end up like the aforementioned Álvaro Obregón, the best military officer in the history of Mexico (why didn’t we have him in 1848 instead of that one-legged traitor Santa Anna!), Obregón, the man who vanquished Pancho Villa, the brilliant strategist and politician, killed at a banquet by a religious fanatic just as he stretched out his hand to say, “More tortilla chips, please. . ”

More tortilla chips. Don’t let these be your last words. Why did they kill Obregón? Because he wanted to be reelected. You need to be able to say, “Light, more light,” if you win and “ Après moi, le deluge,” if you lose. But never, and I mean never say, “More tortilla chips.” It would be such a disappointment to me. I’d hate to see you in the back streets of Marseilles again. I’d say what Bernanos said about Hitler: Mexico has been raped by a criminal while it slept.

Eliminate your tortilla chip, Nicolás. My information is thorough. In 2011, the military attaché of the Mexican embassy in France was General Mondragón von Bertrab. He gave you your official identity papers. He invented your life history. He forged your documents. Everything is in my safe deposit box in Congress.

You have eliminated the little tortilla chips. Tácito de la Canal. Andino Almazán. Pepa, his wife. General Cícero Arruza. The Old Man. That weeping woman of the cemeteries of Veracruz, little Miss Monterrey, Dulce de la Garza. And the phantom of this opera, Tomás Moctezuma Moro. It’s just you and me now, Nicolás. And a shadow over our lives. General Mondragón von Bertrab.

We have to act quickly. Early to bed, early to rise. True enough, if you’re a baker. A politician has to wake up as early as the night before sometimes, otherwise he — or she — might be the victim of a very rude awakening.

Rest assured that everything we’ve discussed is between the two of us. Gypsies don’t tell one another’s fortunes, as they say. And anyway, I’m unconvinced by all these reports on you. Pure fantasy. I trust you. I give no credence to your enemies. It’s all conjecture. And if any of it comes to light, we’ll simply accuse María del Rosario Galván and Bernal Herrera of libel and slander. Remember what the ex, César León, said to his enemies: “I’m not going to punish you. I’m going to vilify you.”

Count on my loyalty. And don’t stop calculating the cost — deceit ratio.

66. GENERAL MONDRAGÓN VON BERTRAB TO NICOLÁS VALDIVIA

For the very reason it’s no longer necessary, I’m writing you this letter. You may surmise that my desire is not to communicate but to leave documentary evidence. Everyone has told you about my military education at very demanding schools of exceedingly high intellectual caliber. The Hochschule der Bundeswehr in Germany is excellent in that sense. Nobody leaves there without having read Julius Caesar and Clausewitz (obviously), but the students are also made to read Kant so that they learn how to think, and Schopenhauer so that they learn how to doubt. The Honorable Military Academy of Mexico is also an excellent institution. While in Germany one learns to strive for victory, in Mexico one learns to endure defeat.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves, however. There are still men like Arruza around. Survivors of Mexico and its barbaric past, harbingers of a barbaric future. They dwell in our country’s subterranean depths.

Educated Mexican officers are something else entirely, but every bit as real as the savages. In every human relationship there’s a battle between truth and lies. We could never answer the question “What is truth, what are lies?” if we didn’t apply both absolute and relative criteria. For example, in military strategy courses the first thing they teach you is to question the information you receive.

Are you familiar with an old corrido song from the revolutionary days, “Valentín de la Sierra”?

El coronel le pregunta,

cuál es la gente que guías?

Son ochocientos soldados

que trae por la sierra Mariano Mejía.4

True or false? Should the colonel in question accept the confession of the captured officer, or should he question it? How will the truth be known? Truth can be stubborn, cautious, as the corrido reveals in the following lines:

Valentín, como era hombre

de nada les dio razón.5

So Valentín gives out no information and the other man claims that there are eight hundred men under Mariano’s command. Ah, but Valentín, to make his quatrain rhyme, adds something even more confusing to the mix:

Y soy de los meros hombres

que han inventado la Revolución. .6

What does the officer do with all this information? If he really believes the “Mariano” story, he must prove it or expose himself to failure. He can interpret Valentín’s silence as proof that “Mariano” is a fabrication. But “Valentín” gives the information an unexpected ideological twist when he says that he is one of the true men who “invented the Revolution.”

True or false, the information must mean something. The poor officer asking the questions might assume that the “Mariano” truth is an objective one in the sense of using a singular proposition to speak of the other person, “Mariano Mejía.” But Valentín de la Sierra doesn’t do that. He speaks of the proposition itself: He is one of the true men who invented the Revolution.

Therein lies the difficulty of making decisions, Nicolás, by adhering to the solid basis of what is true and what is false. Those of us who are military officers, fortunately, are beholden to a code that dictates our conduct. Up to a certain point, of course. Because even when you obey the written code down to the letter, the paradox of the lie is that what we say is only true if it is a lie.

This is what I want you to understand, Nicolás. In this letter I shall confess my lie only to justify my truth.

Perhaps the criteria for speaking the truth should be a question.