Lost City Radio

by Daniel Alarcón

  “A whole city of men wakes up with me whispering in their ears.”

  “Stop.”

  “It’s true,” she said, biting her lip, and already his hands were under her clothes, her body tingling. She was cold and hot all at once. Looking over Rey’s shoulder, she saw the door was open. He had closed it with his foot in his hurry to take her into his arms, and the lock hadn’t caught. Their neighbor’s ten-year-old son stood in the doorway, watching. He was wide-eyed and curious, just a child. “Rey,” Norma whispered, but he wasn’t listening. She felt she should shoo the child away, but then she didn’t care. They were behind the couch, and he couldn’t see anything. So she closed her eyes and imagined they were alone. It wasn’t hard to do. The war had always been with them, and she was accustomed to pretending.

  “Hands up,” the rifle barked. He stepped to Manau and patted him down. He took Manau’s wallet out and flipped through it. He seemed disappointed by its contents. He held Manau’s ID up to the light. “This is fake.”

  “It’s not fake,” Manau said. “Who has fakes?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Norma, tell them.”

  “I said shut up.”

  “Norma.”

  It was cold, and her body stiffened. She turned to Manau and glared. Tell them what? These people didn’t want to hear her stories, they didn’t want to know of her disappointments.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The radio,” Manau said. “Norma.”

  “Who’s Norma? Which Norma?”

  “Norma Norma.”

  For a moment, the rifle seemed to consider this possibility. With the end of the weapon pointed downwards, he told Norma to turn around. She did, and he examined her in the harsh, white light. He seemed suddenly nervous. “You’re Norma? You don’t look like Norma.”

  “But have you ever seen her?” Manau said.

  The rifle was raised suddenly to eye level, Manau pushed roughly against the car, the end of the weapon at his temple: “Are you ever going to shut up?”

  “Please, not in front of the boy. It’s me. Really. It’s me.”

  “They’ll all love you,” Elmer had said when it began. But how had he said it? With his head shaking and his lips pressed into a tight, disbelieving frown. “It’s that voice you have…” Norma had felt the unpleasant sensation of being pitied. And then Rey disappeared, and she’d felt it every day since: Rey’s absence clinging to her like some contagion. Elmer had been right, of course: they did love her. For years, she’d received perfumed letters full of names, modest gifts wrapped in newsprint. At the station, there were a half-dozen shoeboxes full of photographs with scalloped edges, each with an inscription noting which of the smiling faces in the picture might still be alive. And this was it: might be. This not knowing, this exhaustion—you could hear it in every voice that called, see it in the careful script of every letter. It was mercy they sought: an answer, a yes or a no to release them from the burdens of waiting and hoping and wondering. It was what she heard in the soldier’s voice, too: something unexpectedly timid, something afraid.

  “I don’t believe you,” the soldier said. He still held the gun to Manau’s head. “You think I’m stupid.”

  “No, no,” Norma said, “no one said—”

  “Let me hear you.”

  It was, in the end, what she was good at: being heard. She should have been a poet or a preacher. A hypnotist, a politician, a singer. Norma took a deep breath.

  “Talk!” the soldier yelled, and she did.

  “This evening,” Norma purred, “on Lost City Radio: from the jungle comes a boy…”

  The soldier’s face became very serious. “Names. I want to hear names.”

  “Names?” she asked, and the soldier nodded. She took the list from her pocket, and she gave him names. Which ones?

  All of them. All of them, except one.

  When she saw that he had heard enough, when he lowered the rifle and smiled with recognition, only then did she stop.

  With great ceremony, the young man took the weapon with his left hand and pointed it upwards, the barrel against his shoulder. He kicked his boots together and, with his right hand, gave Norma a military salute.

  “It’s an honor, Miss Norma.”

  She blushed. “That’s really not necessary,” but already the other soldier had come and offered his salute as well. “We listen every week,” he said.

  Norma huddled with Victor, who was now completely awake. It was cold for October, cold enough that they could see their breath. Victor blew clouds of it, and seemed charmed. Of course, he’d never seen his own breath before. Manau was shaken, but he took off his jacket and draped it over the boy.

  Meanwhile, the soldiers busied themselves remembering names of people they had known. The younger one had dropped his cigarette before he saluted. Without it, he was still a boy, with big, red cheeks that made his face almost perfectly round. He ran to the oil drum by the side of the road, where he had stashed his bag. He returned with paper. The first soldier propped his rifle against the car. Apologizing for the delay, he spread the paper on the hood. He chewed the edge of the pen for a moment and began to write.

  “May we wait in the car?” Norma asked. “It’s very cold.”

  Again, the apologies: “Yes, yes, of course.” He turned to the younger soldier. “Get the door for Miss Norma.”

  In another time, it would have been impossible to conceive of this, but now Norma let it happen: the young soldier opened the door for her and bowed deeply. When he had closed it, she accepted his docile, childlike smile the way she imagined a queen might: benevolently, as if she expected nothing less. Everything had changed. They had taken Rey to the Moon on a night like this. How many others?

  Manau sat in the front seat, blowing on his hands. Victor was the only sensible one among them. “Why are we going to the radio?”

  “We’re going to read the names,” Norma said.

  “Where else do we have to go?” said Manau.

  Victor looked at Norma, and when she nodded, he seemed satisfied.

  A moment later, the first soldier knocked on the front window. Manau rolled it down, and a column of cold air filled the car. “It’s our list,” the soldier said, “for Miss Norma. And this”—he pointed to a second page, where he had written his name, his rank, the date, and the time in a crooked, childlike script—“is a pass I wrote. You can show it to anyone else if they stop you.” He smiled from ear to ear. She thanked him again. “Miss Norma,” he said, bowing. “A pleasure.”

  They drove on through the sleeping city, through its vacant streets. The boy began to ask a question, but then seemed to think better of it. He was beyond surprise, and too tired to notice anything in the darkened streets. Every now and then, the car hit a pothole, and the windows shook, and the frame rattled, but a moment later, it had passed, and Victor could close his eyes again. Norma held him; the car had warmed, but the boy shivered in his sleep.

  The security guard didn’t hesitate to let them in. She was Norma, after all, and this was still her radio station. He let the three of them pass with a deferential nod and then led them to the lobby where the boy had first presented his note. The lights were low, and it seemed they had stepped into the crypt of a church. Just as I remember it, Norma thought, as if she were returning to a childhood home. She had been here just the day before, but this is what life does to you: things happen all at once, and your sense of time is exploded. But what exactly had happened, and how? A boy had come. When? It began on Tuesday, she remembered, and now it was…She didn’t know. Whom could she ask? Everything was foggy: there was a list, she’d had a husband, he was dead or gone. He was IL, or he was not. The war had ended, or perhaps it had never begun. Was that it? Was that all? She held the boy’s hand tightly. Norma felt sure he had grown in these last few days, hours, and, at the thought, her heart was off at a gallop. It was a struggle just to stand. The security guard, she realized with some surprise, was still talking, had
never stopped talking, though his voice hadn’t registered at all. She resolved to smile but made no attempt to listen. He was an old man with a shiny bald pate and pockmarked skin. He rubbed the boy’s head and pinched his cheek. He was thanking her effusively, and Norma couldn’t help but wonder what she had ever done for him.

  With his key, he activated the elevator. The doors closed, and he bade them good-bye with a wave. They were inside.

  “I’m tired,” Victor said. “I want to sleep.”

  “I know you do.” Norma held him close. She was torturing the boy by keeping him awake, she knew she was—what was it she hoped to accomplish that could not be done tomorrow? “We’ll sleep soon,” she said, but it sounded less like a promise and more like a wish.

  The overnight deejay was easy enough. She couldn’t remember his name, but they had met before. Many times. He knew who she was, of course. He had a young face and unnaturally white hair to go along with it. Norma put her hand on his shoulder. He was easy to lie to: the words were coming on their own now. Yes, Elmer had approved it. Yes, it’s fine. Yes, a special show. Call him? Of course, if you’d like, but he’s probably sleeping. You could use a rest? Couldn’t we all. A little laughter—she didn’t even have to force it. And have a great night. Yes, a pleasure. With Manau and Victor watching, she had an audience for all this lying, this manipulation of the truth; they were with her. Without even looking behind her, she could feel Manau nodding on her behalf.

  But the displaced deejay didn’t leave. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  “Yes?”

  “May I sit in?” He smiled meekly. “It would be an honor, Miss Norma.”

  It felt cruel, but the truth was there would be no room. “You understand,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, turning red. “Of course.” He slinked away, and Norma wanted to embrace him. Her eyes stung, and every part of her was sore. A waltz was playing: it was a woman, of course, and she sang about a man.

  WHEN THE IL finally returned three years after the war had ended, it was a surprise to everyone but Zahir. He’d been waiting for them since the day a platoon came and took Adela’s man and two others away into the forest. Of course, Zahir knew nothing about the dispersed remnants of a once-mighty insurgency, so he couldn’t have known they were coming: it’s just that he had seen this man pass his son off to Adela and disappear into an army truck, the point of a rifle at his back. He’d seen the desperate way the man had looked at his son, the way the child clutched at his mother, and the way this woman began to sob. Such things do not go unpunished. The two other men said good-byes as well, and Zahir could scarcely remember what he had accused them of in his reports—oh, yes: he had wondered why they spent so much time in the forest. He had reddened at this thought: they were hunters.

  It was not the IL Zahir was expecting, not specifically, but some form of castigation, celestial or otherwise, for his role in the war. Before that moment, it had seemed that his monthly reports were filed away and never seen again, that all his effort amounted to a simple exercise with no bearing on the war or on anything else. Then, that day, it became clear: he was not innocent. Three men died. That is, he could guess they had died: three men disappeared because of him. Because he had, on a whim, invented a story about a man he barely knew. Because he had padded his report with musings about what a villager might do in the forest with a gun besides hunt. Something would come to disturb his otherwise comfortable life. In the days after the platoon came, all guns and stern faces, the village continued listening to the radio, now broadcasting reports of victory marches in the city. Celebrations. It rained heavily that week, and they could see helicopters whirring below the purple clouds. They could even hear the rumble of distant explosions. Was the war really over? It was hard to know what to believe.

  Then the fighting in the distance flared out, and the placid years began. His own son grew up strong. The school was rebuilt, and a procession of teachers from the city began coming to 1797. They didn’t stay long, but they took the place the army had once occupied in the village’s collective imagination: the only tangible evidence that somewhere a government existed, and it knew of them. This, too, was a positive development.

  The IL arrived on an early October day of limpid sun, firing shots in the air and demanding to be fed. They gathered the village folk together, and one of them, a dark-eyed young woman, spoke shrilly of the victory that awaited them all. Still? Even now? She was thin enough and young enough that Zahir allowed himself to feel pity for her. Her hair was tied back loosely, and when she raised her arms, he could see dark stains. Then she fired a shot in the air, and it was as if a scrim had been lifted.

  “But the war is over,” Zahir said. Softly at first.

  A masked guerrilla walked toward him. Zahir knew what was coming, or thought he did, but when the butt of the rifle struck in his stomach, his vision went gray, and he doubled over, clutching helplessly at his midsection, fully expecting his organs to spill from his body. The guerrilla kicked him, called him a collaborator, and this word struck Zahir as right and just, and so he resolved to take his beating like a man. He heard a child crying out, and imagined it must be Adela’s boy. He felt something not unlike pride. He winced, pressing tears from the corners of his eyes, but the boots bruised him like tender caresses.

  When he came to, the IL was announcing tadek. This he had not expected. His vision was blurry, and a dull pain spread out from his belly to encompass his entire torso, his heart, his neck. He blinked: his brain wasn’t right either. They had all been taken to a clearing, and the sun beat down on them with blistering intensity. He was being held up by two women, and everyone was there: an entire village of frightened adults standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. Zahir stood rigidly, only vaguely aware that it had begun, that the boy was loose and drunken among them, ready to accuse somebody. He could barely see the child but could make out his rigid movements, stumbling now to the left, now to the right, hands before him grasping, as if teasing some meaning from the air. Each time he approached the edge of the circle, everyone tensed, and those most in danger backed up ever so slightly. The IL kept a strict watch, firing shots into the air. At one point, Victor sat down in the middle of the circle, balling his fists and pressing them against his temples, until an IL man stepped in, nudging the boy to his feet. “Go on,” he said. “Find the thief.”

  It’s coming, it’s coming: Zahir could see now, and stand on his own, but the women still held him. One of them whispered in his ear: “Don’t be afraid.” It was Adela’s voice, but he didn’t turn or say anything in response. Maybe she was talking to herself, he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t scared; three deaths would be atoned for. Wasn’t he responsible for this orphan? The boy tumbled and fell; now he stood again. There was dirt on his knee. He was crying, he was looking for her. “Mother,” Victor said, and Zahir felt Adela shrink behind him. No one, it seemed, had breathed in many minutes. The shots came every thirty seconds or so, and each time, the boy stopped and looked up, as if searching for the bullet’s trajectory in the bright sky. Then Victor found her—find me, Zahir thought—and trundled in her direction. It’s coming, it’s coming: but before he stepped forward to claim his guilt, Zahir was able to see the boy’s eyes: glassy with tears, fearful, focused on something distant and invisible, on some dark spot in the forest or a cloud shaped like a beast.

  Then the boy touched him, and everything else happened in an instant: with guns at the ready, the IL led the town in baleful chant of “Thief! Collaborator!” The women were crying but they shouted, because they were afraid not to. Zahir caught sight of his wife then, her face red and teary, helpless and shrinking. Another woman held her so she wouldn’t collapse. Where was his son? His daughter? He squinted; there was so much light upon him; then he was lashed to a tree stump, and then he was screaming. The IL sang patriotic songs. His new life began with music.

  THE SHOW Norma had imagined goes this way: suddenly, there are no restrictions, and
all names are fair. The accusations that had been published after the war—that Rey had been an IL assassin, a messenger, or a bomb-thrower—these are rendered moot. There are only missing people, their innocence or complicity unimportant, irrelevant. The show begins: Norma plays a song, the calls come. I knew a professor, a voice says, he was my teacher at the university, and he disappeared.

  When?

  At the end of the war.

  What did he teach?

  Botany. He loved the forest, but not the way a scientist would. The way a poet would. He knew the basic stuff, the chemical composition of the soil in different river valleys. The patterns of rainfall and flooding. But that wasn’t it. What he most cared about—

  And what was his name?

  The caller hangs up abruptly. Next.

  I knew a man at the Moon who was fascinated by jungle juju. He said everything we were seeing was a hallucination. That in the real world people didn’t do things like these to each other.

  And what sorts of things were they doing to you?

  Dial tone.

  Another caller: I had a friend who worked once in Tamoé, gathering information for the census. He said the people had nothing except nearly infinite stores of patience, that they wanted only to keep what little they had and be left alone.

  But why wouldn’t people leave them alone?

  Each time, the callers come closer; it’s almost coy, the way they dance around him. After a dozen calls, Rey’s life has been described completely: colleagues, acquaintances, friends from every era of his short life. The boys who betrayed him that night of the fire have called to ask about him, and they have even apologized: we were afraid, they said. We were just children and the town wasn’t the same after Rey left. Where did he go? A call has come from a man who was with them the night of the first Great Blackout: when you said you’d been to the Moon, I winced. I’d been there too. And there are so many more: a cop who knew Trini. A man with a jungle accent who claimed to be an artist. A woman who was IL: she suspects that they knew the same people. But no one can remember his name. Who is this stranger? Can’t anyone remember? It’s been so long. Norma is sweating. Even in her imaginary show, she is balanced delicately above a precipice; even here she is afraid. Then it is her own voice she hears: I knew a man, she says, or was he a boy then, this man who took me dancing, who charmed me, who blew smoke into the bus as we rode together across this beautiful city, across the city as it was before the war—does anyone remember what a place this was? And this man, this boy, this lovely and terrifying child, he let me touch him and I loved him until a soldier came and took him away. For my entire life, he has been a great and disappearing angel, a vanishing act, a torturer, and now he’s gone and the question is, for how long, and the answer I fear most is forever.