Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [82]
“It’s your son, Mr. President,” said the serious one.
“Enriquito,” the idiot said with a smile.
“He’s racing with a friend.”
“Richi, you know? Richi Riva.”
“We thought you had authorized it.”
“ ‘Don’t worry. My father knows.’ That’s what he said. Quique and Richi.” The aide-de-camp with a limited future in the presidential residence gave a stupid smile.
2. Enrique Mayorga felt offended, uncomfortable, flat-out annoyed that his father, the president, had made a date with him for breakfast at nine in the morning without taking into account the scant hours of filial sleep, not to mention his hangover, his eyes like a bedbug’s, his tongue like a rag.
To make matters worse, President Mayorga had seated Quique’s mama at the table, the first lady, Doña Luz Pardo de Mayorga, Lucecita. Father and mother sat at the two ends of the table. Enrique sat in the middle, like the accused between two fires, naked under the Calvin Klein robe with the yellow and green stripes. Barefoot. The only things missing, the boy thought, were the hooded executioner and the guillotine.
He scratched at the bristles emerging on his neck and thought with pride that his Adam’s apple was not trembling. “What the hell is it now?”
The president got to his feet and gave his son a resounding slap in the face. Enrique swallowed hard and waited.
“Do you know who you are, you moron?” said Justo Mayorga, still standing, looking down at his diminished offspring.
“Sure. Enrique Mayorga, your son.”
“That’s what you know, you idiot? Only that?”
“The son of the president,” Quique managed to say in quotation marks.
“And do you know who I am?”
“Don Corleone.” The boy laughed before he was slapped a second time.
“I’m a man of the people.” With a powerful hand, the president lifted his son’s chin, and the boy could feel the controlled trembling of his father’s long, sensual fingers. “I come from the bottom. It cost your mother and me a lot to reach the top. When I was a boy in Sinaloa, I lived in a hut with a roof so low you had to go in on your knees. Yes, Señor, when I was a boy, I slept with the straw roof up my nose.”
“And now, Papa, you want me to live like you did?”
The third slap of breakfast.
“No, Señor. I want you to be responsible about my position, not make me look ridiculous, not give my enemies ammunition, not let people think I’m a weak or frivolous man who spoils his son, a rich kid who doesn’t work or do anyone any good.”
Enrique was attached to the idea that the words and slaps weren’t going to upset him. But now he kept silent.
“From the bottom, kid. Through diligence, dedication, studies, night classes, humble jobs but a great ambition: to move up, to serve my country—”
“Without friends?” Quique interrupted. “Alone, all by yourself?”
“With your mother,” the president said in a firm voice.
“Your slave,” Quique said and smiled, but Doña Luz nodded and signaled her husband with her finger.
“My companion. Loyal and discreet. Attentive to my needs and not putting obstacles in my way.”
“Justo . . .” murmured Doña Luz with an unknown intention.
“I can’t have friends,” Justo Mayorga said savagely. “And neither can you.”
“Without friends,” his son repeated, sitting up straight in his chair. “The Loner of Los Pinos, that’s what they call you. Listen, don’t you like anybody? Why don’t you have friends?”
Justo Mayorga returned to his seat. “A president of Mexico has no friends.”
Doña Luz shook her head, imploring or understanding. Her tastes were always ambiguous.
“I achieved everything because I had no friends.” He paused and played with the crumbs from his roll. “I had accomplices.”
“Justo . . .” Doña Luz stood and walked to her husband.
“A president of Mexico can govern only if he has no friends. He can’t owe anything to anybody.” He looked at his son with cold severity.