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“That’s great, that’s great” to everyone. It’s no wonder he’s nicknamed “Mr. That’s Great,” but I think he’s a lot sharper than he seems and that his reputation as a fool saves him from making crucial decisions or publicly offending the people he screws under the table. As you can see, that has its virtues and its drawbacks. Not for nothing, depending on the circumstances, can he be an eel or a clam.
    And now, my darling Nicolás, come the serious players. The treasury secretary, Andino Almazán, is a steely technocrat who refuses to budge an inch from his convictions about the economy. He’s a theologian of Economics with a gothic and capital “E.” For Andino, devaluing our currency would be like having a prostitute for a daughter. What the poor man doesn’t know is that his wife, whom everyone calls “La Pepa,” is a slut who cheats on him day and night. But more about that later, darling.
    I am anxious to get to the worst, to end this presentation with naked horror itself, the most inexplicable voice in this republican choir: President Lorenzo Terán’s chief of staff, the fawning, despicable, grotesque Tácito de la Canal. Look closely: He shouldn’t be seen in daylight. His head is like one big scar, from chin to occiput, both areas covered with prickly stubble that does little to hide his egg of a bald skull. Look at how he rubs his hands together in an effort to appear humble. He cultivates the look of the perpetually destitute, as if always on the point of begging. He’s the doormat, the paillason, the president’s rug in every sense. He controls access to the executive office and volunteers to clean the president’s soles before the chief executive sets foot in the Office of Offices. Tácito de la Canal is the kind of man who looks as though he’s never breathed fresh air in his life. That’s what they say about him. But I know better. Tácito de la Canal is the man who watches me from a certain spot in the woods every night as I take off my clothes. He’s the voyeur who beat you to my window, the repulsive peeping tom you saw the other night. . . .
    That is the cast of characters in this little show. I’ll wait for a better time to give you the lowdown on another singular group of characters: the third-rate legislators, the congressmen and senators who, pulverized into tiny minority factions, leave the management of Congress in the hands of the inept president of Congress, Onésimo Canabal, while preventing the passing of essential laws, which forces the president and Secretary Herrera to act with a pragmatism that is occasionally legal, occasionally not, but occasionally, like now (Colombia, the oil issue), one that must invoke principle as a way of making up for the pragmatism forced upon them by Congress’s fragmentation, which they have had to accept as part and parcel of the system.
    And now the good news, my beautiful prince of the night. My very close friend, Interior Secretary Bernal Herrera, has asked the president for a personal favor: to appoint you adviser to the presidential office at Los Pinos, where you’ll be working for none other than Tácito de la Canal.
    Am I giving you a poisoned chalice? No. I’m giving you the opportunity, my love, to bring me a golden apple from the very heart of a subverted Eden. Make the most of it, Valdivia. Any questions?

8
    XAVIER “SENECA” ZARAGOZA TO PRESIDENT LORENZO TERÁN
    Oh, Mr. President! How could I ever forget what you said to me twenty-four hours after entering office?
    “They swear you in as president, Seneca, they place the tricolor sash over your chest, you take your seat on the Eagle’s Throne and—you’re off! It’s like being on a roller coaster, they send you down, you grab hold of the chair as best you can and a shocked expression etches itself onto your face, a tight grimace that quickly turns into a mask that you can’t remove. The expression on your face that day will stay there for six years, no