The Eagle's Throne Read Free Page B

because you can be deferred.
For the price of consummated desire—don’t you know yet?—is subsequent virtue or, even worse, indifference.
    You’ll say that a woman of almost fifty is entitled to fend off the youthful and ardent but perhaps frivolous and transient passions of a
garçon
barely over the age of thirty. Believe that if you wish. But don’t detest me. I’m perfectly willing to delay your hatred and encourage your hope, my almost but no longer quite so naïve little friend. Tonight, at eleven o’clock, I will proceed with my
déshabiller.
I will leave my bedroom curtains wide open. The lights will be on so I might be wise, modest, and titillating in equal measure.
    We have a date, my dear. For the moment, I can’t offer you more.

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    ANDINO ALMAZÁN TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
    Mr. President, if anyone is suffering from the recent restrictions on communication it is I, your trusted servant. You know that my time-honored habit is to put all my advice to you in writing. “Opinions” are what some members of your cabinet, my colleagues, like to call those recommendations, as if the science of economics were a question of mere opinion. “Dogma” is what my enemies within the cabinet call them, proof of the insufferable, pontifical certainty of the treasury secretary, Andino Almazán, your loyal servant, Mr. President. But are laws the same thing as dogmas? Was the apple that fell onto Newton’s head and revealed the law of gravity dogmatic? And was it merely Einstein’s opinion that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared?
    Likewise, it is not my idea, Mr. President, that prices determine the volume of resources employed, or that profits depend on monetary flow, or that the productivity of an employee will determine his demand in the labor market. But you already know what my enemies—I mean colleagues—call my “old song and dance.” And yet, Mr. President, today more than ever, given the situation that we are now up against, a situation you have wisely chosen to confront with populist measures (which your critics, I should warn you, will call useless posturing and your friends, like me, will call tactical concessions), today more than ever, I must reiterate my gospel for the economic health of this country.
    First, avoid inflation. Don’t allow anyone to turn on those little bank-note machines under the pretext of a “national emergency.” Second, raise taxes to defray the costs of the emergency without sacrificing services. Third, keep salaries low in the name of the emergency itself: More work for less money is, if you know how to present it, the patriotic formula. And finally, fix prices. Do not tolerate—rather, severely punish—anyone who dares to raise prices in the middle of this national emergency.
    You once said to me that economics has never stopped history, and maybe you’re right. But it’s equally true that economics can certainly
make
history (even though it may not
be
history). You’ve decided to adopt two policies that will ensure you popular support (though nobody knows for how long) and international conflict (with the greatest superpower in the world). As for popular support, I ask you once again: How long can it last? As for the international tension, just so you see that I’m not as dogmatic as my enemies claim, I won’t tell you that it will outlast the short-lived patriotic support that we earn when we stand up to the gringos without assessing the consequences. Instead, I’ll now turn the other cheek and tell you, Mr. President—and call me cynical if you must—that Mexico and Latin America will advance only if they concentrate on creating problems.
    Mexico and Latin America are important precisely because we don’t know how to manage our finances. We are important because we create problems for everyone else.
    I anxiously await your address to Congress tomorrow, and remain, as always, at your service.

5
    NICOLÁS VALDIVIA TO MARÍA DEL