“I repeat; only the name, not the man. But, en fin. You know as well as I that in Mexico there are no checks and balances to absolute Presidential power. To exercise that power without regrettable excess requires great equanimity. But how does the poor man know what actually is happening? He lives in isolation, his only information that furnished by the sycophants who surround him. Presidents who listen to the people are very rare. The general rule is that, little by little, the court isolates the President, and gradually and inexorably, n’est-ce pas? the President becomes accustomed to hearing only what he wants to hear. From there, it’s only a step to totally capricious rule.”
The Director General sighed, as if he were delivering a lecture to an exceedingly slow student. “The first rule in a political system as baroque as that of Mexico is this: Why do things the easy way if they can be made complicated? Thence, the second rule: Why do things well if they can be done badly? And third, the perfect corollary: Why win if we can lose?”
Deliberately, he removed the pince-nez and, with them, the resemblance to Victoriano Huerta. However, the effect was opposite to what had happened with Bernstein; without his glasses, the Director General’s gaze did not diminish; if anything, the greenish slits of his eyes gained in intensity.
“The North Americans follow Thoreau’s counseclass="underline" simplify, simplify; as well as its corollary that nothing succeeds like success. For good or evil, their political system is transparent, a mode accepted by men as disparate as the stupid, well-meaning Eisenhower and the perverse, satanic Dulles. But he who seeks to imitate Machiavelli finds himself drowning in Watergate, n’est-ce pas? In contrast, no Mexican politician is disposed to believe that simple things are simple; he suspects something fishy. We Mexicans are, understandably, defensive. Mexico, to continue our ichthyological metaphor, is a fish that has too often taken the bait. One must suspect everything and everybody, and that means that everything and everybody is complicated, hélas!”
“Was it the President’s orders that I be jailed, shot while trying to ‘escape,’ and buried?”
“That wasn’t necessary. A cabinet member who was present at the ceremony requested an investigation of Felix Maldonado. That caused an Under-Secretary to run to the hot line and order the Chief of the Secret Police to detain Maldonado. We, oh so happily, handed over an unconscious man to their agents, and they, with a small assist from us interpreted the President’s intentions in their own manner. In view of the enormity of the crime, they tossed the hot potato to the authorities at the Military Camp, saying those were orders direct from the ‘Orifice’ of the President — if you’ll forgive the pun. Of course, I was the, shall we say, source, n’est-ce pas? That night I went to Military Camp Number One and spoke to the officer of the guard, a mere commandant, and told him — I have sufficient credentials — I had come on behalf of the President of the Republic to speak with the prisoner. We went to the cell where Maldonado was resting.”
He interrupted his account to emphasize the verb. “I choose my words carefully when I say resting. The poor man was dead, wrapped in a coarse blanket scarcely worthy of a recruit. Imagine the confusion of a minor officer who finds he has the corpse of a presumed Presidential assassin on his hands. I suggested that in such instances one must make a virtue of necessity, and that he might distinguish himself if he shot the corpse in the back and said he had been trying to escape. Naturally, he interpreted my suggestion as an order from above. En passant, the fact that the prisoner had been shot while attempting to escape relieved me of any responsibility in Maldonado’s death; that was transferred directly to the officer of the guard and, thus, to the entire National Army, ah, well … The death was a public secret, but everything was clarified and accepted in the higher spheres: a discreet burial the following day, after advising the next of kin of a sudden heart attack, et cetera, et cetera. Finis, Felix Maldonado. Malicious tongues will always say he was struck dead by the emotion of seeing the President at such close range. And that is the felicitous journey that takes us from a simple suspicion voiced in the President’s presence and picked up by one of his cabinet, to the brutal decision of a minor army officer — before we are elevated to the plane of appropriate grief at the ceremony at the Jardín Cemetery, mmh?”
“What is the name of the poor devil all this happened to?”
“Felix Maldonado. Felix he wasn’t, if you remember your Latin. He was a miserable mediocrity. A mediocre economist, a mediocre bureaucrat, a mediocre Don Juan. Yes, a miserable fellow.”
The Director General stared at Felix with judicious ferocity. “Velázquez, place on one side of the scales that miserable, insignificant Maldonado, and on the other an internal crisis with international repercussions. You will see we have no reason to weep over such a man.” He replaced his tinted pince-nez. “On the other hand, we must concern ourselves with Licenciado Diego Velázquez. Felix Maldonado did not accept our offer and you have seen what happened to him. A whole world awaits Diego Velázquez: a position with a considerable increase in salary, juicy commissions, trips abroad with generous per diems, everything he could desire.”
Felix felt as if his facial muscles were tied in knots. “But I have a wife, remember?”
He could only guess that the Director General’s invisible eyes were intrigued. “But of course. And now you can have all the little ones God chooses to send, n’est-ce pas?”
“Right. A litter of fucking little sons of bitches, all named Maldonado!”
The Director General didn’t resort to striking Felix. Rather, he leaned close to him; his deeply furrowed, greenish skin, taut over salient bones, was the image of death, if not death itself. The breath expelled from the flaring nostrils and fleshless lips thin as stone knives issued from a cavernous tomb that spoke a threat worse than any beating.
“Listen carefully. The only certainty in this adventure is that you will never know whether you are the true Felix Maldonado or the one who took his place by our orders. You still deny you are the man buried in the Jardín Cemetery? Reflect upon the moment you awakened in the clinic, and ask yourself whether you can be sure you knew who you were. There will always be a before and an after in your life, separated by a chasm you will never be able to span, do you understand that? From this time forward, what you can recall of your past may only be what we, out of the goodness of our hearts, wish to teach you. Can you be sure of the truth?”
“Ruth…” Felix murmured, hypnotized by the deathly voice and eyes and movements of this man as elusive as an oiled serpent.
“I promise you,” continued the Director General, ignoring Felix’s mumbled allusion to his wife, “that every time you think of Felix Maldonado’s past you will be remembering something I taught you while you were unconscious in the hospital. And as you are living Diego Velázquez’s life, you will remember of him only what I tell you. Every choice will lead to its impossible antithesis. If you were the man you were yesterday, can you be sure where your today begins? If you are the man you are today, can you know where your yesterday ended? There’s no way out for you, do what you do, go where you go. Felix Maldonado was a nobody who frustrated my perfect plan. Diego Velázquez will bear the curse of that guilt.”
From the intensity of the words, Felix knew there must be sweat on the Director General’s brow, but like his breath, his brow was mortally cold. The official composed himself, and stood straight, no longer crouching over Felix. “Our poor Maldonado is the ideal man, not because of his debatable virtues, but because he doesn’t exist. He will remain dead so that we may continue to profit from his services. His chief agrees.”