A bean was caught in his teeth that I only now suspected might be false. He extracted it and disposed of it carefully on the bread plate.
“But he should cultivate suspicion. Is it a defect? No, because without suspicion one doesn’t gain political or economic power. The guileless man does not endure in the city of Pericles or in the city of Mercury.”
“How long does the man endure who only suspects?”
“He would like to be eternal,” Sanginés said with a smile.
“Even though he knows he isn’t?” I returned the smile with an ironic gesture.
“A politician’s capacity for self-deception is in-fi-nite. The politician believes he is indispensable and permanent. The moment arrives when power is like a car without brakes on a highway with no end. You’re no longer concerned with putting on the brakes. You don’t even care about steering. The vehicle has reached its own velocity-its cruising speed-and the powerful man believes that now nothing and no one can stop him.”
“Except the law, Maestro. The principle of nonreelection.”
“The nightmare of those who wanted to be reelected and couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?”
“They were not permitted to by a cabinet.”
“Alvaro Obregón was assassinated for being reelected.”
“Others were forbidden reelection by insurrectionist cabinets. Or a false belief that if one chose one’s successor, he would be a docile puppet in the hands of his predecessor. What happened was just the opposite. Today’s ‘stand-in’ destroyed yesterday’s monarch because the new king had to demonstrate his independence from the one who named him his successor.”
“Adventures of the Mexican six-year monarchy,” I remarked, watching as our empty plates were withdrawn like ex-presidents.
Sanginés said he found it astonishing that the lesson had not been learned.
“From the first day, I advised Carrera: Imagine the last day. Remember that we are subject to the laws of contraction. The president wants to ignore political syneresis. We all say right now. He says maybe later, as if he were asking God: Holy God, give me six more years…”
“Now,” I said in English with a smile and a paleological intention, “now now now.”
“It’s the terror of knowing there is an afterward.” Sanginés received the thick, succulent fillet with an involuntary salivation of his mouth and a liquid gratitude in his eyes, as if this were his last meal. Or his first? Because in any event, he and I had never met to converse in so conclusive a manner, as if a chapter of our relationship were closing here and another one, perhaps, were beginning. I was no longer the inexperienced young law student. He was no longer the magister placed above the fray but a zealous, intriguing, influential gladiator, a boxing manager with a champion in each corner of the ring and, I saw it clearly, a sure bet: No matter who loses, Sanginés wins…
“He should not be underestimated,” he said very seriously, though with a touch of arrogance. “I’ve seen him act up close. He possesses a tremendous instinct for survival. He really needs it, knowing as he knows (or should know) that a leader arrives with history and then leaves when history has left him behind or goes on without him. He refuses to know, however, that mistakes are paid for in the end. Or perhaps he knows and for that reason doesn’t want to think about his exit.”
He looked at me with intense melancholy.
“Don’t judge him severely. He’s not a superficial man. He just has a different idea of political destiny. He wants to create, Josué, politics with joy. It is his honor. It is his perdition. He carries in his genes the omnipotence of the Mexican monarch, Aztec, colonial, and republican. Everything that happened before, if it’s good, ought to justify him. Nothing of what occurs afterward, if it’s bad, concerns him. And if the good he did is not recognized, it’s sheer ingratitude. He prefers evoking to naming. He sneezes with a smile and smiles sneezing, to deceive others… They are his masks: laughing, sneezing.”
“Is he deceiving himself, Maestro?” I sopped up the mix of juice from the meat and mashed potatoes with a piece of bread.
I don’t know if Sanginés sighed or if he did so only in my imagination. He said at times Valentín Pedro Carrera becomes lost in thought, joining his knotty hands at his forehead as if his head were hurting. At those moments he seemed old.
Sanginés looked at me intently.
“I believe he says something like ‘too late, too late,’ but reacts by taking out his portable, picking at keys, and consulting, or pretending to consult-”
“And Max Monroy?” I interrupted so Sanginés wouldn’t fall into pure melancholy.
“Max Monroy.” I don’t know if Sanginés permitted himself a sigh. “Let’s see, let’s see… They’re different. They’re similar. I’ll explain…”
He looked in vain for a dish that didn’t come because he hadn’t ordered it. He picked up an empty glass. He avoided looking at me. He looked at himself. He continued.
“Power wearies men, though in different ways. Carrera becomes exasperated at times and then I see his weariness. He has unacceptable outbursts. He says inconsequentially violent things. For example, when he passes the Diego Rivera frescoes in the Palace, ‘You don’t paint a mural with lukewarm water, Sanginés,’ and when I sit down to work: ‘We’ll open a credit column for Our Lord Jesus Christ, because I’m going to fill out the debit column right now.’ He tries to avoid violence but can be disparaging and even vulgar when he refers to ‘the street pox.’ He prefers the government to function in peace. But it’s difficult for him to admit change. He prefers doing what he did: inventing popular festivals to entertain and distract people. Then he transformed the Zócalo into an ice skating rink. And then he opened children’s pools in areas with no water. People were hurt in the rinks. They drowned in the pools. It didn’t matter: Circuses without bread.”
“Have a good time, kids,” I added without too much sense, suspecting that by talking about the president, Sanginés avoided talking about Max Monroy.
Sanginés nodded. “When I tell him all this doesn’t solve problems, Carrera replies: ‘The country is very complex. Don’t try to understand it.’ In the face of that, Josué, I am left speechless. Injustice, intolerance, resignation? With these facts our leader makes his bed and night after night lies down with these paradigmatic words: ‘Making decisions is boring.’ ”
“Does it console him to know that some day he’ll be seen naked?”
“Naked? His skin is his gala outfit.”
“I mean without memory.”
Sanginés ordered an espresso and looked at me attentively.
Certainly it attracted his attention that I equated “nakedness” and “memory.” I do realize that in my imagination memory is like a seal in which wax retains the image without any need to pour it. My conversation with Sanginés placed before me the dilemma of memory. Immediate memory: ordering an espresso and not remembering it. Intermediate memory: When all was said and done, would I keep it?
“A man without memory has only action as a weapon,” said Sanginés.
“Did the president’s patience come to an end?” I insisted.
“Your friend Jericó ended it for him.”
He wasn’t going to let me talk. And I didn’t want to talk.
“Jericó tricked the president. He offered loyalty and gave him betrayal. This is what Carrera didn’t forgive. Everything else I’ve told you this afternoon was left behind, it collapsed, and the president was left alone with only the black tongue of ingratitude, and of solitude, which is even more bitter.”
The coffee tasted less bitter than his account. I felt that interrupting him was something worse than foolishness: it was lack of respect.