The Eagle's Throne (35 page)

69

MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA

I’ve walked a long way this morning, Bernal, in search of a high, open spot from which to look out onto our Valley of Mexico and renew my hope. The seedy, garish city that horrified (and prematurely killed) the great poet Ramón López Velarde. It is the “Valley of Mexico, opaque mouth, lava of spittle, crumbling throne of rage” that Octavio Paz whipped with a fury that saved him. Or perhaps it is the exact, balanced image of José Emilio Pacheco, the poet of intelligent serenity whose eighty-second birthday we’ve recently celebrated, when he allows himself to be carried along by the facts, and sing in a wounded voice of the “Twilight of Mexico, in the mournful mountains to the west . . .”

Allí el ocaso
es tan desolador que se diría:
la noche así engendrada será eterna.
⁹

Mexico of eternal seasons, “immortal spring” . . .

The rainy season has begun, washing away the eternal night, the opaque mouth, the seedy, garish look. . . . Settling the dust. Clearing the air. It’s true that on rainy afternoons, between shower and downpour, even from our disastrous highway, the Anillo Periférico, you can make out the sharp, clear outline of the mountains.

I decided to climb up to Chapultepec Castle so that I could look out over the city and the valley from a height that seemed more human, intermediate, where I could see the mountains whose names I know— Ajusco, Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl—in the intimate light that I want to rediscover, Bernal, at the end of this episode in our lives.

Do you realize that we’ve lived through this story in confinement, as if we’ve been acting on the stage of a prison? A story completely divested of nature. Pacheco was right: “Are stones the only things that dream? . . . Is the world nothing but these immutable stones?” That’s what I’m doing here now, trying to remember the natural world that slipped away from us, lost in a wood of words, buried in a swamp of speeches, cut down by a knife of ambition. . . .

Before I went outside I looked at myself in the mirror without makeup, without illusions. I have managed to keep my figure, but my face has begun to betray me. I now realize that I was a natural beauty when I was young. Today, the beauty I have left is an act of pure will. It’s a secret between me and my mirror. I say to the mirror, “The world knows of me. But the world no longer tastes of me.”

Why do we waste our youth and beauty? I see how I handed over my youth and my sex to men who turned to dust or statues. I touched my body this morning. Nothing wounds the body quite like desire. And I haven’t been able to satisfy mine—I admit that to you, since you are the one, true man of my life. Nothing has ever satisfied me, Bernal. Why? Because I have presided over too many altars where God was absent. My altars are the kind that cause hearts to age prematurely. Fame and power. But I am a woman. I refuse to surrender to the evidence of time. I convince myself that my sexual appeal is unaffected by age. That I don’t have to be young to be desirable.

I look back on the people, the places, the situations since the crisis began in January, and I find that there’s no sense of taste in my mouth. I wish I could summon sweetness, or bile—or even vomit. But my tongue and palate taste of nothing at all.

I consult my other senses. What do I hear? A cacophony of empty words. What do I smell? The excrement that ambition leaves in its wake. What do I touch? My own skin, every day less elastic, more vulnerable, grown thin. What do I touch with? Ten fingernails like knives that lash out at me. Not only do they fail to caress me. Not only do they scratch me. They sink into me and ask, what will become of my skin, how much longer will it last, what wasted pleasure awaits it? Nothingness.

I have my eyes. This afternoon, I shall become pure vision. Everything else betrays me, turns me into someone I don’t know. I retain nothing but my gaze and I discover, with shock, Bernal, that my eyes are filled with love. I don’t need a mirror to prove it. I look out from Chapultepec and I feel love, for the city and for the Valley of Mexico.

A loving gaze. That is my gift to my city and to my time. I have nothing else to give Mexico but my loving gaze on this luminous May afternoon after the rain, when the bougainvillea are the patient ornaments of urban beauty, and for one glorious instant the city is crowned by the lavender color of the jacaranda trees. The valley has such powerful light at this time of day, Bernal, that it transports me out of myself and then abandons me on the great terrace of the Alcázar with its black-and-white marble surface, and then transports me as if on a magic carpet around the city, high above the clusters of multicolored balloons sold on the avenues, and allows me to caress the heads of little children in parks, to walk in the muddy waters of the reservoir in Chapultepec Forest, and to continue walking, now in the hyacinth waters of Xochimilco, as if my bare feet were trying hard to become clean, Bernal, in the lost canals of what was once the Venice of the Americas, a city that embraced water and life, a city that slowly grew dry until it died of thirst and suffocation.

But not this afternoon, Bernal—this afternoon on which I’ve chosen to be reborn is a miracle, for it is a liquid afternoon, it has rained and all the avenues have become canals, all the limestone deserts have become lakes, all the sewer pipes have become cascading waterfalls. . . .

With my newborn eyes, I survey the city that your namesake Bernal Díaz del Castillo surveyed in 1519, resurrected through the force of desire, and I leave behind all the political melodrama you and I have lived through, and I resuscitate the old city, fanning out into boulevards made of gold and silver, rooftops of feathers and walls of precious stones, cloaks made from the skins of jaguars, pumas, otter, and deer. I walk past the Indian pharmacopoeia of remedies made of snakeskin, shark teeth, funeral candles, and the seeds known as “deer’s eyes.” I walk into the plazas painted with cochineal and I breathe in the aroma of liquidambar and fresh tobacco, coriander and peanut and honey. I stop in front of the stalls selling jicama, cherimoya, mamey, and prickly pears. I rest upon seats made of wooden boards and beneath tiled canopies, listening all the while to the concert of hens, turkeys, ducklings. . . .

How can we not delve back into our Mexican consciousness (unless we lose it) and return to that lakeside city that awakens our great lyrical passions, the city that seems to be the very cradle of our origins? “The flowers come out, they open their petals, and from within emerge the flowers of song.” But oh, my most cherished friend, is there a single poem of the indigenous world that does not possess the wisdom of uniting the song of life with the harbinger of death? “Bitterness predicts destiny. . . . With black ink you shall erase what was once brotherhood, community, dignity. . . .”

What, Bernal, warns us of impending disaster? The memory of the beauty and the happiness that was, or was not, I don’t know. I do know that beauty and happiness were imagined and that the imagination exacts a price from us that is also a gift: memory. And since I believe this, I pray that nobody and nothing can ever rob us of our memory. That is a gift from above: to remember. Because I can promise you, our bodies will be wounded by desire. Will you and I ever be able to recover all the things we put aside in order to become the people we are now? The moments of love, the duty, the dreams? Even those losses can be redeemed by the memory.

Yes, I’ve been looking out from Chapultepec at the city that no longer is, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and suddenly I see wildcats and badgers in its streets, and suddenly, Bernal, I hear a bark and then another and then I can no longer count because hundreds of dogs are now running down the valley, all of them vicious mastiffs, barking—with each bark they drown out the squawking of the hens, the scent of liquidambar, the hammering sounds of the daily grind, until the whole valley is invaded by that massive pack of wild dogs, set free by their evil owners as night falls. . . . A terrifying procession of giant, mangy, slobbering hounds with hungry eyes and spiteful noses, dogs without masters, dogs abandoned because their owners went on vacation or couldn’t be bothered to take care of them, or beat them for fun: the entire city, in the clutches of these rabid dogs, Bernal, every one of them glaring at me with eyes of fire, every one of them climbing uphill, toward the balcony where I stand, coming closer and closer, more and more menacing, with their filthy coats and their yellow fangs, led by one sole mastiff with a human-sounding cackle and a collar of deadly spikes around its neck, and it’s almost ready to attack me, Bernal. And then I recognize it. It’s the dog that belonged to our late president Terán, El Faraón, searching for his master’s grave.

Dogs with frightful voices, screaming at me, “Go. Don’t hesitate. Don’t ever look at him again.”

“Who? Who?” I shout. “Who are you talking about? Who should I never look at again?”

The Valley is filled with spikes.

The lake of time, not just the lake in this valley, grows smaller and smaller.

The only thing left for us is the dust of time.

And then, suddenly, the true king makes his appearance. The King of the valley. I don’t want to look at him. I tell myself it’s a mirage.

I desperately search for a silent space where I can hear and understand.

I feel my forgotten life emerge from the dead lake.

Or the life I never lived.

I wish I could be an arrow and defend myself.

The King of Mexico looks at me, without eyelids, and opens a mouth of mud and silver:

“Storms will come.”

He says nothing else, and then disappears together with the dogs that preceded him and the dust that followed him.

Oh, Bernal, how heavy my heart feels, and how impatient my soul. How the shadow of pain and sin pursues me.

How I ask myself why I didn’t kill myself before the pack of hungry dogs could rip me apart.

How I would love to plunge into a bottomless pool of freezing water that might clean me and give me back my spirit.

The noises died down.

The city emptied.

The dogs grew quiet and they fled, returning to their lairs in the vast landfills of the city.

Only El Faraón wanders still, howling for his master.

And I return to my home in Bosques de las Lomas.

Once again I am me.

Never again will I feel tempted by suicide.

Because falling in love with you again would be a form of suicide for the personality I’ve created—with such effort on the one hand and such weakness on the other.

Don’t worry.

You are right.

What kind of marriage can possibly exist between two people who only conspire against each other?

I’ll deliver myself back to the slow suicide of politics.

I wanted to empty myself so that I could be born again.

Instead, I surrender to the world.

Bernal Herrera, you will be president of Mexico.

I swear to you.

70

(LORENZO HERRERA GALVÁN)

(I am playing hide-and-seek in the garden I laugh a lot they can’t find me I hide behind the tree and they say there he is we’ll get him now run over there and I hide behind another street and shout there he is but I am the one who shouts because I am alone playing all by myself and I think I should shout here I am, right? here I am playing all by myself in the middle of all the trees in the house where I have always lived was I born here? the lady doctor says no that they brought me here who brought me here I ask and she says nothing and I try to remember who brought me here to my house I hear the house talking but I only say my house because I have never had another house and I know that I will never leave here but I don’t mind I have a fuzzy picture in my head of a man and a woman who came here when I was little but they came less and less and the lady doctor told me they love you they love you they are very worried about you they are people who are good and I don’t know what that means good people but I know I love them too I love everything that comes near me and says hello and talks and touches me I love that a lot but it doesn’t happen much I am very alone and I love all those things a lot but it is hard for me to tell the lady doctor that’s what they call her she said to me they love you I wish I could talk like her but I can’t I talk without even opening my mouth if they knew all the things I say without opening my mouth I hear everyone but nobody hears me I talk to the inside talk to me talk to me a lot please I hear them I understand them I understand everything they say they think I don’t understand because I don’t talk but yes I do understand everything they don’t tell me much because they think I don’t understand I don’t know how to say the things I want and I don’t know how to say the things I think and without talking I say what they say I understand them very well you are intelligent the lady doctor says intelligent intelligent I understand them very well but they don’t know that and that’s why they don’t talk to me they just talk about me but they don’t talk to me they should know that I understand everything even if it’s hard for me to talk the doctor should realize that I understand because if I didn’t how could I laugh so much when once a week on the day called sunday sunday sunday they put us all together and show us cartoons of dogs mice cats that make us all laugh at first I didn’t know what to do watching the duck get angry and break plates because he was so angry and I started to laugh when I saw all the other kids laugh it was OK to laugh it wasn’t bad to laugh everyone laughs watching the duck all angry but I only see the children on sunday sunday sunday they keep me away the rest of the time and the lady doctor whispers to the nurses that’s what they are called all of them in white white white you see I do understand white sunday sunday sunday white duck angry the doctor talks in whispers I don’t know what she tells them I am all alone except on sundays now I have changed because I am growing up like they say to me I am not a little boy anymore be careful with your hands I don’t know what to do with my hands I ask them why don’t I see anyone else I am always all alone before they used to pat me on the head and now they don’t even do that now all they say is careful with your hands but the lady doctor her eyes get filled with water and she whispers to the other nurses in white white white now nobody ever comes to visit me like when I was little and I used my hands to play ball careful with your hands when you play ball Lencho they call me Lencho or Lenchito now I want to ask them why they look so pale what is wrong what is going to happen I don’t know anything outside this place who knows what there is behind the walls why do they get sad when they look at me why do they move their heads like that when water falls they close the windows I don’t know what happens there outside where I used to play hide-and-seek now they lock me up in a dark room what did I do what did I do what did I do I don’t know I feel my head spin even though I don’t move I am alone in a dark room and I say I am nice to the plants and the animals and the trees I love them I smell the plants I stop at the trees I am like them I am them I have nobody else except the garden before now they don’t let me out into the garden I am the tree I am the plant I am the animal I have nobody but them I don’t see the other children I can still see the squirrel a dog some flowerpots with flowers but the trees no not anymore now they don’t let me out all I have is a blue blue blue notebook I heard them say let him scribble in his blue book when I scribble I write things down like these things I write without ink the notebook has letters I only have a finger to write on these white papers I remember the man and the lady that used to come and visit me and now don’t ever come I don’t ask them anymore if I will ever see them again and sometimes I think I never saw them I only dreamed them I ask the lady doctor who were they why don’t they come and see me anymore she says Lencho love is real Lencho love is real Lencho love is real write it in your blue notebook with your finger remember everything you think and dream because you won’t see them again they are very important people I knock on the door don’t they hear me? won’t they come to see me? can’t they see me all alone? don’t they know a boy can’t forget? why do they tie my hands behind my back? how can I play like that? how can I write in my blue notebook?)