Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [86]
“Mr. President. The army has surrounded the Congress. We’re waiting for your order to remove them.”
6. For the whole blessed day, Luz Pardo de Mayorga wandered like a ghost through the empty rooms of Los Pinos. Her intimate, enduring alliance with Justo Mayorga made her as sensitive as a butterfly trapped under a bell jar. Something was going on. Something besides yesterday’s unpleasant breakfast. Who knows why, this afternoon she would have liked to be absent. She had dressed for lunch, but her husband sent word he wouldn’t arrive in time. There was no one in the residence except the invisible servants and their feline secretiveness. Doña Luz could fill the afternoon hours however she chose, watching soap operas, playing the CD of the boleros she liked best,
We who loved so much,
who made a wondrous sun of love . . .
she hummed very quietly because in this house—the president had told her—even the walls have ears, be careful Lucecita, don’t show your feelings, keep the rancor you feel in your heart, because you can’t be authentic, because you’re the prisoner of Los Pinos, because you’d like it if your husband weren’t so powerful, if he got sick you could show him the real affection you have for him, if you were braver you’d demand that he understand Enrique, that he not feel so resentful if the boy has a good time and you don’t anymore, Justo, you don’t know how to have a good time anymore and you can’t stand pleasure in anybody else, try to imagine my soul split in two, between the love I feel for you and the love I feel for our son, don’t you say you love only your family, nobody else, that a president doesn’t have the right to love anybody, only his family? you’ll allow me to doubt, Justo, you’ll permit me to think that your political coldness has come into our house, that you treat your son and me like subjects, no, not even that, because with the masses you’re seductive, affectionate, you put on a mask with the people, and with us who are you, Justo? the time has come to say who you are with your wife and son . . .
“Don’t dress up too much. Be more circumspect.”
“I only want to look nice.”
“Don’t fondle me so much.”
Justo Mayorga leaned over to kiss her temple. Then he saw something he hadn’t seen before. A tear suspended in the corner of his wife’s eye. He felt transported, irrelevant, on his way elsewhere. He looked at that single trembling tear, suspended there without ever falling, without rolling down her cheek, he saw it kept there since her youth, since they were married, when Luz Pardo promised herself never to cry in front of her husband.
“I can’t conceive of losing you and continuing to live. It would make no sense.”
7. Attack, Mr. President. In half an hour we can empty the Congress. Don’t do anything, Mr. President. Just surround them until they give up because of hunger. Don’t make them into martyrs, Mr. President. If they go on a hunger strike, more people will come to encourage them than there are soldiers surrounding them. Abandon the place, Mr. President. Be noble. Leave them there until they get tired and leave on their own.
Attack. Surround. Don’t do anything.
The dusty wind of a February afternoon shook the trees in the park and the curtains of the official residence. Father, mother, and son sat down for supper. First there was a long silence. Then the first lady remarked that a storm was brewing that night. She bit her tongue. She didn’t want to refer to anything more serious than the weather. Restless, impulsive, irritated, Quique broached the subject of what the point was of getting to the top and not enjoying life.
“Don’t worry, son. Three more years and we go back to the ranch.”
“You, not me,” said the rebel, then immediately modulated that. “I’m not going to any ranch. Even if you drag me. I’m staying here in the capital. Here’s where my pals are, my life, I