My references to the ideas and images that united us were only a way of telling myself and telling Jericó: “Every friendship rests on a myth and represents it.”
I asked: “In addition to the fleece, whom did the beast guard?” I answered myself: “A ghost. The specter of an exiled king whose return would bring peace to the kingdom.
“Recovering a ghost in order to sacrifice a republic,” I murmured then, and Jericó simply asked me: “What was more interesting, recovering the fleece or bringing back the ghost?”
“Crowning a specter?”
I understand now that this question has hung over our destinies because Jericó and I were Castor and Pollux, part of the eternal expedition in search of desire and destiny, a mere pretext, however, for recovering a specter and bringing him back home.
“Did you see this?” I handed him the newspaper across the table.
“What?”
“What happened at the zoo.”
“No.”
“A tiger died after being attacked by four other tigers.”
“Why?”
“They were hungry.”
I pointed.
“They ate his entrails. Look.”
Perhaps I just wanted to indicate that he and I became friends because of a debt. That brought us together. We established a lifetime alliance on the basis of that debt.
WILL VALENTÍN PEDRO Carrera go to Max Monroy’s offices and residence in the Utopia building on the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga? Or would Max Monroy again go to the president’s residence and office in Los Pinos?
“Let him come,” advised the novice María del Rosario Galván.
“Why?” asked Carrera, prepared to admire the young woman’s beauty in exchange for excusing her errors and disregarding her opinions.
“Well, because you are… the president…”
Carrera smiled. “Do you know what ancient kings did to exercise their rights?”
“No.”
“Every year they went from village to village. They didn’t ask the village to come to see them. They went to the village, do you understand what I’m saying, beautiful?”
“Of course.” She attempted to recover her composure. “If the mountain doesn’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad goes to the mountain.”
“Exactly right, babe.”
The president smiled indulgently and went to the neutral territory approved by his representatives and Max Monroy’s. The Castle of Chapultepec, now the National Museum of History and the setting for Boy Heroes, Hapsburg Empires, and Porfirista Dictatorships. Monroy acceded to arriving first and viewing the tawny panorama of the city from the heights as if he were viewing non-existence itself. Why pretend to be master of nothing when one was master of everything? On the other hand, the president came to the esplanade of the palace as if he were a boy hero about to throw himself into the void, wrapped in the flag. As if the throne of the dynasty that ruled Mexico the longest (more than two centuries)-the Hapsburgs-were waiting for him. As if he were prepared to govern for three decades because listen, María del Rosario, you have to come here thinking you’re eternal, if not, you lose your six years the first day…
To see or not to see the arrival of the powerful entrepreneur Max Monroy? Act distracted, be surprised, greet each other, embrace?
“Ah!”
The embrace of the two men was recorded by cameras and microphones before Valentín Pedro Carrera and Max Monroy walked ten paces to distance themselves from publicity and bodyguards. María del Rosario Galván and Asunta Jordán, practically identical in their professional attire of tailored suit, dark stockings, and high heels, blocked the press and held off the guests.
“Truce, my dear Max?” The president’s smile dissipated the capital’s smog. “A meeting of two souls? Primus inter pares? Or pure show, my esteemed friend? An Embrace of Acatempan ending the wars of independence?”
“No, my dear president. Another battle.” Monroy did not smile.
“If you divide you don’t rule,” Carrera reflected, trying to catch Monroy’s eye.
“And if you rule by force, you divide but govern the parts.”
“Each to his own philosophy.” Carrera almost sighed. “The good thing is that when there’s danger, we know how to come together.”
“Understand it in terms of mutual convenience,” Monroy said with great suavity.
“Does this mean I can count on you, Max?”
“You can always count.” Monroy managed to smile. “What you don’t understand, Valentín Pedro, is that my policies are part of your power. Except your power lasts six years. My policies do not occur every six years.”
“And so?” the president said, halfway between amiable and falsely surprised.
“And so everything ends up contracting, understand that. The six-year term contracts. A life contracts. An era contracts.”
“What?” Carrera exclaimed in surprise (or pretending to be surprised). “Look how my belly’s growing and my hair’s falling out. Don’t kid me.”
“Of course,” Monroy continued, very calm. “With my policies I achieve what you’re missing. If we stayed only with your policies, we’d stay with half-measures. You believe in circuses without the bread. I believe in bread with the circuses. I believe in information and try to communicate that to the majority. You believe in conspiracy reserved for a minority. That’s why I believe that, in the long run, I can manage without you but you can’t get along without me.”
“Monroy, listen-”
“Don’t interrupt. You and I never see each other. I’ll use the occasion to say a person has to deserve my respect.”
“And admiration?”
“For superstars.”
“And esteem?”
“I’m a patient man. Everyone has gone. And those who remain ask me for favors. Our individual histories don’t count. Who remembers President Lagos Cházaro? Who could have been Secretary of Finance under Generalísimo Santa Anna?”
What a strange look the politician directed at the businessman.
“We’re part of the collective aggregate. Don’t go around thinking anything else.”
“What are you saying, Max?”
“Why am I telling you this? Well, we don’t see each other very often.”
Asunta-who tells me the preceding to the degree she heard something, guessed more, and read lips-says that Carrera sighed as if Monroy’s words sealed a previously mentioned reality. The president wasn’t going to change his policies of national distraction only because his official operative, Jericó, had betrayed him by taking advantage of the opportunity to find his own power base that turned out to be perfectly illusory, and Monroy would not abandon his of giving information media to citizens. The crisis perhaps demonstrated that the better informed the citizen, the fewer opportunities demagogic illusion would have.
“Or official carnivals?” asked Carrera, as if he had read (Asunta believes he did) Monroy’s mind.
“Look, Mr. President: What you and I have in common is possible control of the real communication media in this day and age. Insurgents once believed that by taking the central telephone offices they would take power. Do you know something? My telephone operators are all blind. Blind, you understand? In this way they hear better. Nobody hears better than a blind man. On the other hand, a thousand eyes are in thousands of cellular devices, the mobile phones that replace television, radio, the press. I am giving all Mexicans, whether or not they can read and write, a message, a family, a past, an inheritance. They constitute the real national and international information network.”