The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes

Author:Carlos Fuentes [Fuentes, Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Action & Adventure, Mexico, Communication, Political, General, Literary, Politicians, Fiction, Espionage
ISBN: 9780812972559
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

42

BERNAL HERRERA TO MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN

Marucha, my Marucha, what’s happened to you? I hardly recognize you, I hardly recognize myself. Why have you let a vengeful impulse get the better of you? Why haven’t you controlled your passion? Why have you let your hormones hasten the plan that you and I agreed to, the two of us together, as ever, always so synchronized? You and I have never confused our loyalties. . . . Our political bond grew out of a carnal bond, and only now am I struck by how very different we were when we met and fell in love, before we paid the inevitable price of all romantic beginnings. It was in our nature, psychological and political, to doubt everything. We met. We were drawn to each other. But you doubted me, just as I doubted you. Until the night we shared a bottle of Petrus and realized that we loved each other even though we couldn’t trust each other. We laughed (was it the wine, was it the lust, or was it the risk, without which no erotic encounter is possible?) and said to each other, “If we doubt everything, we’ll understand each other perfectly.”

I told you that a public figure should never stop doubting, even though that means living in perpetual anguish and insecurity without ever revealing it to anyone. That’s the other rule, my Marucha. Doubt and anguish leaven our public clarity and serenity. We’ve become professional politicians because we don’t suppress our insecurity—that is, our capacity for suspicion. Profession: politician. Party: suspicionist. In other words, we make the most of our anguish so that our serene facade is fed by human matter. We had a son, María del Rosario. A mongoloid child or, to speak scientifically, a child with Down syndrome. We had to make a choice. We could have lived together, looked after our child, and sacrificed our political ambitions. Or you could have kept the child and set me free, free and doubly condemned for having frustrated your ambitions and abandoned our child. Or we could have done what we did: Put him in an institution, visit him now and then—increasingly less often, let’s be honest, increasingly less connected to that fateless fate, increasingly worried that that defenseless creature with a face tender and happy yet distant and indifferent, that child whose future holds nothing but premature death, will wrench our lives away from us in exchange for nothing.

These were our reasons and we’ve kept the secret for fourteen years. I warned you, María del Rosario, that I was never to receive the bills from the institution at my office. I’m so scrutinized and besieged, I’m so surrounded by spies working for my enemies (who are also your enemies, don’t forget) that the least little oversight can and will be used against me—and you.

So it has happened. Guess who saw the bill from the institution and sniffed out the truth. Do you think I don’t know? My friends claim to despise Tácito—but I can only suspect they say the same thing to him: “We are your friends.

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