Destiny and Desire (31 page)

She offered no opening. She let them look at her. She imposed silence as she passed. And if she held my arm, it was as if I were a cane, a walking puppet, a theatrical prop. She needed me to circulate through the reception with no need to speak with anyone, exciting everyone’s curiosity each time she said something to me in a quiet voice, smiling or very, very serious. I was her support. A straight man.

In the real world (for me these excursions into society were almost imaginary) Asunta brought me up to date on my duties with
rapid efficiency. There existed a national and global market of young people between twenty and thirty-five, Generation Y, given this name because they succeeded Generation X, who were now past forty and even though everybody adjusts to the customary until they fear that the newest thing will bite them, the twenty-year-olds are the primary target of consumer advertising. They want to make their debut. They want to be different. They want brand-new objects. They need technologies they can control immediately and that are (at least in their youthful imaginations) forbidden to “the older generation.”

The notable thing—Asunta continued—is that in the developed world each generation of the young is smaller than the one before because of the decline in population. New families, more divorce, more homosexual couples, fewer children. On the other hand, in the world of poverty—ours, the Mexican world, Josué, don’t kid yourself—the population increases but so does poverty. How can we combine demography and consumption? This is the problem set forth by Max Monroy, and your job, my young friend, is to solve it. How to increase consumption in an impoverished population?

“By making them less impoverished,” I dared to remark.

“And how do we do that?” the queen bee insisted.

I opened my eyes to think clearly. “By taking the initiative? By opening limited credit for them and giving them short-term cards? By educating. Preparing. Communicating.”

“Communicating,” she moved ahead. “Letting them know they can live better, that they deserve credit, cards, consumption, just like the rich …”

I tried to look intelligent. She moved ahead of me like an Alfa Romeo passing a Ford.

“And how do we do that?” she said again.

Asunta was enthusiastic, dazzling me because I desired her, but I understand now that to have her I would have to respect her for what she was, an executive woman, an arm in the enterprises of Max Monroy that, like the goddess Kali, has as many arms as it has needs.

I was content with two, ready to love, caress, strangle me. She
looked at me, confusing my desire with ambition. They’re not the same thing.

“I’ll tell you how,” and she snapped her fingers, on the offensive. “Move ahead. Give them the medium of communication. Send an army of our employees from village to village, settlement to settlement. Bring in trucks loaded with handheld devices. Like tire salesmen did when the first highways and cars were promoted by Doña Concha, Max’s mother, in the 1920s. Like the Christian missionaries did, so long ago, when they brought the Gospel to the conquered Indians. Now, Josué, we’re going to bring in the medium of communication, the tiny device, call it Creative Zen, YP-Tq, LGs, whatever you like, the toy, show it to the poorest campesino, the most isolated Indian, the illiterate and the semiliterate, who by touching this button can express their desires and by pressing the other receive a concrete response, not dead promises but the living announcement: Tomorrow we’ll install what you asked for, we’ll give you a cellphone, an iPod so you can hear already programmed music, we know your tastes, an iPhone so you can communicate with your friends, and by God, Josué, break the isolation in which your, our, compatriots live, and once you give them the devices free of charge you’ll see how demand is born, credit is given, a habit is created …”

“And generations will be in debt to us,” I said with healthy skepticism.

“And so?” She managed to smile despite herself. “You and I will be dead.”

“And while we’re alive?” I said, not expecting a reply, since Asunta Jordán’s program seemed to run out in this life, not the next.

Still, when I thought this, it occurred to me that at the age of eighty-three, Max Monroy had already considered the future, had already made a will. Who would be his heirs? What would Asunta obtain in Max’s will, if in fact Max left her anything? And to whom else could Max leave his fortune? I laughed to myself. Public welfare. The National Lottery. An old age home. His own business, recapitalizing it. His loyal collaborator Asunta Jordán?

I digress.

—

I
OUGHT
TO
have imagined, oh woe is me, that in a fashion parallel to my technosentimental education at the hands of the beautiful, crepuscular Asunta Jordán in the fiefdoms of Max Monroy, my old friend Jericó must have been receiving political instruction at the hacienda of our joker president.

Maestro Don Antonio Sanginés informed me that Jericó was still working in the presidential offices at Los Pinos. One night he invited me to supper at his mansion in San Angel, and after the previously mentioned patrol of children—they were already in their pajamas—he sent them away and sat me down to a meal not only of dishes of food but of biographies, as if, since he was the conductor of the destinies allotted to me and Jericó, it was now time for him to turn to a new function: the president’s biography.

“How much do you know about President Valentín Pedro Carrera?” he asked before attacking a consommé with sherry.

“Very little,” I replied, my spoon at rest. “What I read in the papers.”

“I’ll tell you about him. So you’ll know where and with whom your friend Jericó is working: Valentín Pedro Carrera won the presidential election with the invaluable assistance of his wife, Clara Carranza. In the pre-election debates, each candidate boasted of his marvelous family life. The children were a delight”—Sanginés’s eyes gleamed, and from the top floor we could still hear the prenocturnal tumult of his youngsters—“his wife was the ideal woman, a loving mother, a disinterested colleague, a First Lady because she was already his first companion (relatives had to be hidden).”

All the candidates fulfilled these well-known formalities. But only Valentín Pedro Carrera could swallow with difficulty, suppress a fat tear, take out a large colored handkerchief, blow his nose vigorously, and announce:

“My wife, Clara Carranza, is dying of cancer.”

At that instant, our current leader won the election.

Who will vote, perhaps not for the candidate but no doubt for the health, agony, and probable death of Doña Clara, elevated to a combined sainthood and martyrology by that television moment
when her husband dared say what no one knew and, if they did, had kept hidden in the old closets of discretion?

The candidate is married to a heroic, stoic, Catholic woman who may very well die before the election—vote for widower Carrera—after the election—what will happen first, the funeral or the inauguration?—during the ceremony—how brave Doña Clara was, she got out of her bed to support her husband when he rendered his affirmation that he would protect the Constitution and the laws emanating thereof!—or in the first months of the new government—she clutches at life, she doesn’t die so as not to discourage the president—or when, at last, the señora gave up the ghost and Valentín Pedro Carrera transformed personal grief into national mourning. There was no church without a requiem, no avenue without posters with photographs of the transient First Lady, no office without a black bow in the window, no barracks without its flag at half-mast, no private residence without its crepe.

Virtuous, intelligent, charitable, devoted, loyal, what virtue did not come to rest, like a pigeon on a statue, on the spiritual eaves of Doña Clara Carranza de Carrera? What sorrow was not drawn on the distressed though ecstatic face of the commander in chief of the nation? What Mexican did not weep seeing on TV the repeated images of a saintly life dedicated to doing good and dying better?

A stupid woman, ignorant, foolish, and ugly, from whom unpleasant odors emanated. A strange, unintelligible woman because of her mania for always speaking in profile. A spur, however, to a mediocre, neurotic man like Valentín Pedro Carrera.

“What memories do you have, you dummy?” she would say at the private dinners Sanginés attended.

“I have a longing to be a nobody again,” he would respond.

“Don’t kid yourself. You are a nobody. Nobody, nobody!” the lady would begin to shriek.

“You’re dying,” he would reply.

“Nobody, nobody!”

Sanginés explained the obvious. The lust for power leads us to hide defects, feign virtues, exalt an ideal life, put on the little masks of happiness, seriousness, concern for the people, and always find,
if not the phrases then the appropriate attitudes. The fact is that Valentín Pedro Carrera exploited his wife, and she allowed herself to be exploited because she knew she would not have another opportunity to feel famous, useful, and even loved.

Neither one was sincere, and this confirms that in order to achieve power, a lack of sincerity is indispensable.

“Valentín Pedro Carrera was elected on a corpse.”

“Nothing new, Maestro,” I interrupted. “It was the rule in Mexico: Huerta kills Madero, Carranza overthrows Huerta, Obregón eliminates Carranza, Carranza ascends on the corpse of Obregón, etcetera,” I repeated like a parakeet.

“A bloodless etcetera: the principle of nonreelection saves us from succession by assassination, though not from ungrateful successions of heirs who in the end owe power to their predecessor.” Sanginés finally tasted his cold consommé.

“The obligation to liquidate the predecessor who gave power to his successor,” I completed the thought.

“Rules of the Hereditary Republic.”

Sanginés smiled before continuing, having tasted with that spoonful my elementary political knowledge due, as you all know, to the secret information Antigua Concepción gave me in a nameless graveyard.

Many jokes were made about the presidential couple. Doña Clara loves the president and the president loves himself. They have that in common. And the black humor was profitable. In La Merced they sold dolls of the president run through with pins by his wife, with the legend:
You die first
.

Which is what really happened. Without the amulet of his dying wife, and as the memory of Clara Carranza, the martyr of Los Pinos, and the concomitant sorrow of Valentín Pedro Carrera began to fade, he was left without his saving grace, which consisted of living through the agony of waiting. At times you could say the president would have wanted to live the agony of Doña Clarita himself, make certain she continued to suffer, continued to serve him politically and not constantly threaten him:

“Valentín Pedro, I’m going to kill myself!”

“Why, my love, what for …”

“The fact,” Sanginés continued, putting aside the consommé, “is that the weaknesses of Valentín Pedro Carrera wasted no time in appearing, like cracks in a wall of sand. Issues came up that required the decision of the executive. Promulgating and executing laws. Appointing officials. Naming army officers. Conducting foreign policy. Granting pardons and privileges and authorizing exemptions and import duties. Carrera let them slide. At most, he passed them on to his ministers of state. When he didn’t, the ministers acted in his name. At times what one minister did contradicted what another said, or vice versa.”

“We’re negotiating.”

“Enough negotiations. We must be firm.”

“We have an agreement with the union.”

“Enough coddling of the union.”

“Oil is a possession of the state.”

“Oil has to be opened to private initiative.”

“The state is the philanthropic ogre.”

“Private initiative lacks initiative.”

“There will be a highway from Papasquiaro to Tangamandapio.”

“Let them travel by burro.”

“Let us collaborate with our good neighbors.”

“They’re the neighbors. We’re the good ones.”

“Between Mexico and the United States, the desert.”

The truth, Sanginés continued, is that the president made the mistake of forming a cabinet composed only of friends or people of his generation. This formula had fatal results. Friends became enemies, each one protecting his small plot of power. The generational idea did not always get along with the functional one. Being from a generation is not a virtue: it is a date. And you don’t play with dates, because none possesses intrinsic virtues beyond its presence—no matter how fleeting—on the calendar.

“Dead leaves!” Sanginés exclaimed when the servant came in carrying a platter of rice with fried bananas, and as he offered it to me, he said respectfully:

“Good evening, Señor Josué.”

I looked up and recognized the old waiter from Errol Esparza’s house who had been fired by the second and now overthrown wife, Señora Sarita Pérez.

“Hilarión!” I recognized him. “How nice!”

He said nothing. He leaned over. I served myself. I looked at Sanginés out of the corner of my eye. As if nothing had happened. The servant withdrew.

“Rumors began to circulate,” my host went on. “The president does not preside. He inaugurates public works. He makes vague remarks. He smiles with a face more florid than a carnation. The unfailing evil tongues begin to speak of a cursed term. They even insinuate, in the second year of the government, that longevity in office is fatal to the reputation of the leader.”

“And to his health as well.”

Guided by a mad compass, Carrera dipped his big toe into foreign policy, the traditional refuge of a president of Mexico without a domestic policy. It turned out badly. The North Americans increased the armed guards along the northern border with increasing deaths of migrant workers. The Guatemalans opened the southern border for an invasion of Mexico by Central American workers. All that was left for the president to do was to stroll through the Davos Forum dressed as an Eskimo and give a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations attended by no one except the delegates from Black Africa, who are very courteous.