He gestured disdainfully, inviting Felix to stand. “Follow me, Licenciado. I am going to take you for a ride in my automobile.”
Felix got to his feet. He felt dizzy and weak. For an instant, he supported himself by holding on to the back of the chair. The Director General turned away and with deliberation lighted a cigarette, his hand shielding his eyes from the unbearable brilliance of the flame. Felix dropped to his knees, plugged in the light Simon and his cohorts had used to torture him, and the sudden glare — congealed in the room like the breath of the man lighting his cigarette before the lidless eye of the reflector — blinded the Director General. He screamed with anguish and clapped his hands over his eyes. The lighter fell to the cement floor, followed by the cigarette, dropped from his unfeeling fingers and dripping a tiny trail of lava down the Director General’s chest.
“Right behind you,” said Felix, crushing out the cigarette with his heel.
The Director General suppressed the trailing notes of his cry of agony. He stooped down and groped for his lighter, found it, and again rose, his dignity completely recovered.
“Be my guest,” he said to Felix Maldonado.
37
THE METAL DOOR closed behind them and they walked along a glass-and-iron gallery ventilated by draughts of cold night air smelling of the recent rain.
They descended iron stairs to a garage where an ancient long, low, black Citroen was parked. The Director General opened the door and gestured Felix to enter.
Felix climbed into the luxurious imitation coffin. His host followed and slammed the door. He settled back with a sigh, and took the black mouthpiece hanging from a metal hook.
He gave orders in Arabic, and the funeral carriage drove off. The interior of the Citroen was upholstered in black velour; the windows were covered with black curtains, and two sliding panels of black-painted metal separated the unseen chauffeur from the passengers.
Felix smiled secretly, imagining the conversations that could take place between his host and him in this place and under these circumstances. But the Director General was too occupied to talk, absorbed with the drops that would alleviate the pain of the sudden glare. He replaced the bottle in a case fitted into the back of the divider facing them, and with closed eyes leaned back against the cushioned seat.
He spoke with extreme courtesy, as if nothing had happened during the preceding hour. One might think the two men were on their way to a banquet, or returning from a funeral. In tones of modulated affability, the Director General recalled his life as a student at the Sorbonne. There, he said, he’d formed indestructible bonds of friendship with the elite of the Arab world. Doors had been opened to a sensibility that made the Western world seem crude and impoverished. Without the Arabs, he added, the Western world would not be enjoying its own culture; the Greek and Latin heritages had been destroyed or ignored by the barbarians, preserved only by Islam and disseminated from Toledo throughout medieval Europe. The sons of wealthy Palestinians studied in France; through them, he came to understand that their Diaspora, because it was current and tangible, was worse than that of the Jews begun two thousand years before. The Palestinians were the contemporary victims of colonialism in the Promised Land, and were living a destiny Jews could only recall, a destiny that never would have gone beyond a vague Zionist nostalgia had not Hitler once again martyred them. But, while the Jews were rich bankers, prosperous businessmen, and honored intellectuals in pre-Nazi Germany, the Palestinians were already victims, fugitives exiled from the land they, and only they, had truly inhabited.
“The Middle East is an impassioned geography,” the Director General murmured. “One need only go there to share its passions — including violence. But the violence of the modern Occident is different from all others because it is programmed, not spontaneous. Western colonialism introduced that violence into the Middle East; the Zionist project prolonged it. Palestinian violence is a passion. And passion is consumed in the instant; it is not a project but a living thing, inseparable from religion and all it implies. In contrast, Zionism is a program that must separate itself from religion in order to be compatible with the secular project of the West whose violence it shares. Consider, friend Velázquez. Palestine was a land already inhabited. But, for the Jews of Europe, anything that was not Europe was, as it had been for European colonialism, land to be occupied. That is to say, colonized, mmh? The Jews forced the Arab world to pay the price of the Nazi ovens. The result was fataclass="underline" the Palestinians became the Jews of the Middle East, the persecuted of the Holy Land. But Israel’s penance is in its guilt. Little by little the Israelis are becoming Easternized and, like the Arabs, entrenched in a struggle that has become religious as well as secular, passionate and instantaneous. The Easternization of Israel makes a new war inevitable, perhaps many successive wars, since Oriental politics can only conceive of negotiation as a result of, never as an impediment to, war.”
Felix didn’t wish to reply. He was reaching the end of an adventure in which he couldn’t be sure whether he’d been following some plan — either his own or another’s — or whether he’d been the blind instrument of chance, completely divorced from will.
The Director General tapped Felix’s knee. “Bernstein must have given you his arguments. I shall not persist in mine. You, like poor Simon, must believe you’re a Mexican, and what does all this have to do with you? You carry out your assignment, and that’s that, n’est-ce pas? But your friends are right. Mexican oil is becoming a more and more important card to be played in the case of continuing war in the eastern Mediterranean. Hence all our efforts, n’est-ce pas? One cannot isolate oneself, Licenciado. History and its passions sift through the universal chinks of violence. Did you study Max Weber? The decisive means of politics is violence. And as each of us, personally, possesses a more or less controlled measure of violence, the encounter is fatal; history becomes the justification for our hidden violence. You may think I quote Weber only because he expresses my own view. But think about it. At this moment you are exhausted, all you want is to bring this to an end. I understand. But I urge you, ask yourself, don’t you have a reserve of personal violence completely separate from the political violence surrounding you? Don’t you intend to use it to find out the only thing you want to know?”
Felix and the Director General took each other’s measure in silence; Maldonado knew that his own gaze was empty, opaque, uncommunicative; in contrast, the two lenses of the Director General’s pince-nez glittered like black stars in the black bosom of the ancient Citroën.
“Well.” The Director General smiled. “I believe we are almost there. Forgive my chatter. The fact is, I had only one thing to say. Cruelty is always preferable to scorn.”
He drew back one of the window coverings and Felix saw that they were approaching the stone bridge of Chimalistac. The Director General again laughed, and said the Spanish had learned from the Arabs that architecture should never be in conflict with the climate, the landscape, or the soul. Such a shame, he added, that modern Mexicans had forgotten that lesson.
“All Mexico City should look like Coyoacán, in the same way that all Paris, in a certain sense, is like the Place Vendôme, n’est-ce pas? One must multiply the beautiful, not isolate it, or destroy it, as unfortunately we do.”
The auto stopped, and the Director General’s voice again became hollow and dry. “Rest. Relax. When you feel well, return to our office. We will be waiting for you. The same office. Malenita is waiting eagerly. Poor thing. She’s like a child, she needs someone who will be a father to her. She will cash your checks punctually, and you won’t have to go out of your way or stand in lines. And every month, come by to see my secretary Chayito. Special perquisites aren’t processed through the Ministry’s public accounting office.”