At Night We Walk in Circles

by Daniel Alarcón

  So, upon seeing Henry descend on Nelson this way, Patalarga chose to keep his distance “out of respect for the artistic process.”

  Nelson, after an initial moment of protest, fell silent, staring back at his tormentor, bewildered. He was not unaccustomed to this sort of treatment, in fact. His face went flat, expressionless, calm. It was a trick Nelson knew from childhood, from waging battles with his brother that he knew he couldn’t win. It wasn’t stoicism or deference or indifference; it was all those things.

  Nelson deflected Henry’s vitriol with a few phrases from his past. They came forth with surprising ease: “I’m sorry you feel that way.” “What can I do to make you more comfortable?” “Is it something I’ve done?” “What would you like to get out of this conversation?”

  It wasn’t long before Henry’s energy petered out. He gave up, slumping into a seat a few rows behind Nelson, spent. A few long minutes of silence passed, not a sound in the theater but those that emerged from the neighborhood outside: a revving motor, a distant horn, a few bars of music from a passing street vendor.

  “You remind me of my ex-wife,” Henry said finally. “I’ll be needing a drink now.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have yelled. Come here.”

  Nelson stood, and walked a few rows back. What hadn’t he done for the play? What wasn’t he willing to do?

  “I don’t know what’s going on with me,” Henry said. He’d been having these swells of anger, righteousness, he explained, explosive moments that were catching him increasingly unawares.

  “It’s just part of the process,” Nelson offered, unknowingly echoing Patalarga’s interpretation.

  Henry didn’t buy it. “I haven’t done this in more than ten years. I don’t have a process.”

  Nelson shrugged, and handed over Ana’s drawings. On top: a pastoral scene done in finger paint, a family of thumbprints adorned with dots for eyes and wide smiles, bounding about a prairie, or perhaps a city park. It was difficult to say. The sky was smeared across the top of the page in its traditional blue—here, in a city that suffers beneath thick gray clouds for ten months out of the year. Why do local children insist on coloring it this way? Is it simplicity? Wishful thinking? Nelson felt certain he’d done the same when he was Ana’s age. Did the sky-blue sky reflect a lack of imagination, or an excess of the same?

  Henry took the pictures without comment, and leaned down to put them in his shoulder bag. “Sit,” he said to Nelson, gesturing to the seat beside him. His voice was calm now. “Look at that stage. Imagine this theater full of people. They don’t know you or me or a thing about the play. Maybe they’ve never been to a play before. They aren’t your friends. They’ve come to be entertained. Edified. Comforted. Distracted. Can you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The lights dim. The curtain opens. Who comes out first?”

  “Patalarga,” Nelson said.

  “The servant.”

  “Right.”

  “And what does he say?”

  “He says, ‘The time has come, like I told them it would.’”

  “And what does he feel?”

  “He feels uneasy. A little afraid. Angry. Oddly, a hint of pride.”

  “Good,” Henry said. “And where are you?”

  “Backstage.”

  Henry shook his head gravely. “There’s no such thing as backstage. The play begins, and there’s only the world it dramatizes. Now, where are you?”

  “With my father, the president. In his chambers.”

  “Right. With me. Your father. And now—this is important—do you love me?”

  Nelson considered this; or rather, Nelson, as Alejo, considered this.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I do.”

  “Good. Remember that. In every scene—even when you hate me, you also love me. That’s why it hurts. Got it?”

  Nelson said that he did.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because it does hurt,” Henry said. “Don’t forget that. It’s supposed to. Always.”

  IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Henry recited his usual lines with a little more bite, berated Alejo with a little more vigor. It was hard not to take it personally, and even when the rehearsals ended, something of this bad feeling lingered. The president and Alejo were two members of a troubled family, with a complicated, tense history; Nelson and Henry were two actors who barely knew each other. Patalarga tried to run interference, but it wasn’t easy. He suggested drinks at the Wembley one evening after rehearsal, but Nelson begged off. He proposed lunch the following day, but Henry arrived late. He organized a dinner of old Diciembre veterans, and the two actors spent the evening at opposite ends of the room, never interacting. And still: they were getting it, scene by scene; getting at the dark truth of it. The Idiot President could be an acidly funny farce about power, trickery, and violence, Patalarga told me. That much anyone knew. What he hadn’t realized until now was that it was also a painful statement about family.

  There was a scene toward the end of the first act, when Henry is having his boots laced up by the servant. Patalarga is on his knees before the president. It’s an oddly intimate moment. “Rub my calves,” Henry’s character says, then confesses, “I’m sore from kicking my boy.”

  The startled servant says nothing—the president is famously cruel, and he assumes this statement to be true. With downcast eyes, he kneads the president’s calves, while Henry exhales, relishing this impromptu massage. “In truth, I only dream of it,” the president says, and then pulls his leg away and kicks the servant in the chest. “But oh, how I dream!”

  In early rehearsals (and in the original 1986 performances at the Olympic) this moment happened with Alejo offstage; in later versions, Henry wanted Nelson’s character there, hidden just a few steps behind the action, eavesdropping as his father daydreams about kicking him. This small change was, in part, a recognition of the realities of the tour that awaited: more likely than not, there would be no backstage (real or metaphorical) out in the hinterlands, when they were on the road. Still, it altered something, shifted the chemistry of the performance. They ran through it again and again one afternoon, and even set up mirrors so Henry could see Nelson’s reaction. Three, four, five times, he kicked poor Patalarga, all the while locking eyes with Nelson.

  “Remember, I’m not kicking him, I’m kicking you!” Henry shouted.

  On the sixth run-through, he missed Patalarga’s hands, and nearly took off the servant’s head. Patalarga threw himself out of harm’s way just in time. Everyone stopped. The theater was silent. Patalarga was splayed out on the stage, breathing hard.

  “Okay,” he said, “that’s enough.”

  Henry had gone pale. He apologized and helped Patalarga to his feet, almost falling down himself in the process. “I didn’t mean to, I …”

  “It’s all right,” Patalarga said.

  But Nelson couldn’t help thinking: if he’s kicking Alejo the whole time, why isn’t he apologizing to me?

  For a moment the three of them stood, observing their reflections in the mirror, not quite sure what had just happened. Henry looked as if he might be sick; Patalarga, like a man who’d been kicked in the chest five times; Nelson, like a heartbroken child.

  “Are you all right?” Henry said toward the mirror.

  It was unclear whom he was asking.

  5

  IN THE FINAL WEEKS before they left the city, Henry began to jot down a few ideas. Notes. Dictums. Data points. Pages of them, from a man who had all but abandoned writing since his unexpected release from Collectors fourteen years before. Later, when we spoke, he shared these folios with me, apologetic, even embarrassed, as if they proved something about the ill-fated tour, or his state of mind in the days prior. I was unconvinced, but I scanned the pages anyway, trying to make sense of them.

  A sampling:

  Bus was twelve minutes late today, read a line scraw
led on a page dated March 16, 2001. Reasons unknown and unknowable. Mystery. Could have driven.

  Two days later: Woke to a serviceable erection at 7:00 a.m. Sat up in bed, turned on the light, to observe it. Watched it wilt, like time-lapse photography. My very own nature special. I should have been on television when I was young, before I was ugly. Slept awhile longer. Three eggs for breakfast. No coffee. Pants feeling tight in the thighs. A woman got in the cab today, black hair, asked if I would—

  The following week: For seven months, I hardly talked about life outside. Except with Rogelio. Because he asked.

  March 27: A play for Rogelio. Finally. A love story. A man learning to read in a rented jail cell. Being taught to read, in exchange for sex. A plainly capitalist transaction, between two men pretending to be in love. Perhaps they are. Awkward moments. Butter as lubricant, stolen from the commissary and warmed between their palms. Between their thumbs and two fingers. Strange that such a simple gesture could be so arousing. A woman got in my cab today, black hair, ruby lips. Asked if I would climb in the back and make love to her—

  Then pages of lists: Dead things I’ve seen—telephones, lightbulbs, street corners, nightclubs. Also: pigs, painters, passengers, plays, presidents, prisoners …

  On and on like this.

  Was Henry losing it?

  I don’t think so.

  Or—perhaps.

  Far worse things have been published as poetry and won awards; which is what I told him, in so many words, as I tried to hand the journal back. He wanted me to keep it. Correction: he insisted I keep it—as if the pages contained something toxic he wanted desperately to be rid of—and I obliged. The important thing for us to understand is this: Henry thought he was losing it, and it worried him. He entered the prison every night in his dreams, walked its dark hallways, inhaled its fetid air. He’d forgotten so many details about his time inside that it terrified him: the color of Rogelio’s eyes, for example. The number of the cell they shared on Block Seven. The meal they shared on the last night before his release.

  But every afternoon, at every rehearsal, something struck him, some bit of the past emerging with surprising clarity. Henry began to remember, began to piece things together. This particular play, of the dozen or so he’d written, had special characteristics: it was the last one he’d finished, the one that had brought his career (such as it was) to a premature close. It had last been performed by men who’d died only a few months later, dead men who’d begun to appear in his dreams. Perhaps the script itself was cursed. These men, these ghosts, hovered about the stage at every rehearsal, sat in the ragged seats of the Olympic to critique every line of dialogue. They booed each poorly rehearsed scene, whispered their doubts in his ears. It was impossible not to feel unsteady when confronted with this text. After all, the man who wrote it had lived another life, and that life was gone. That’s what Henry was dealing with. Nelson, unfortunately, and through no fault of his own, had to watch this up close. It wasn’t pretty.

  The kicking incident, for example, which Patalarga described so vividly—Henry recalled it too, answering all of my questions politely and without hesitation. He had experienced it this way: a feeling of looseness, a momentary disorientation. Anger. Impotence. Then, an image: in August 1986 he’d seen a man be kicked to death, or nearly to death, by a mob that formed unexpectedly at the door to Block Twelve. He and Rogelio had stood by, at first horrified, then simply frightened. Then, almost instantaneously, they’d accepted the logic of the attack: every victim was guilty of something. The chatter: What did he do? Who did he cross? The men watching felt safer. Less helpless. A crowd had formed around the victim, but no one moved. Henry took Rogelio’s hand. Squeezed.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Henry asked me.

  I said that I did, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  Not every memory was poisonous. For example: one day, Henry gathered up his courage, and went to see Espejo, the boss, about doing The Idiot President in Block Seven; surely this was one of his fondest memories. Espejo was a small but well-built man whose lazy grin belied a long history of violence, a man who’d risen far enough from the streets to relax, and now controlled the block through sheer force of reputation. He was languorous and content, occasionally dispensing pointed but very persuasive doses of rage should any inmate question his authority. Mostly though, he protected them—there were less than two hundred men in their block, and after nightfall they were in constant danger of being overrun by one of the larger, more ferocious sections of the prison. Espejo directed a small army of warriors tasked with keeping those potential invaders at bay.

  Henry was afraid of this man, but he had to remind himself: me and Espejo, we’re Block Seven, we’re on the same side.

  Espejo’s cell reminded him of a small but comfortable student apartment, with a squat refrigerator, a black-and-white television, and a coffeemaker plugged into a naked outlet. Espejo kept a photo of himself from his younger days framed above his bed, an image Henry had never been able to shake in all the years hence. He described it to me: in the picture, Espejo is shirtless, astride a white horse, riding the majestic animal up the steps of a swimming pool, toward the camera. He is handsome and powerful. A few delighted women stand behind him, long-legged, bronzed, and gleaming in the bright sun. Everything is colorful, saturated with tropical light. A child—Espejo’s son, one might guess—sits at the edge of the diving board, watching the horse maneuver its way out of the water. On the boy’s face is an expression of admiration and wonder, but it’s more than that: he’s concentrating; he’s watching the scene, watching his father, trying to learn.

  Henry would’ve liked to be left alone with the photograph, to study it, to ask how and when it had been taken and what had happened to each of the people in the background. To the boy most of all. He might have fled the country, or he might be dead, or he might be living in a cell much like this one in another of the city’s prisons. There was no way of knowing without asking directly, and that was not an option. The photo, like the lives of the men with whom Henry now lived, was both real and startlingly unreal, like a framed still from Espejo’s dreams. What did Espejo think about when he looked at it? Did it make him happy to recall better times, or did the memory of them simply hurt?

  Rogelio had warned him not to stare, so he didn’t.

  “A play?” Espejo said when Henry told him his idea.

  Henry nodded.

  Espejo lay back on his bed, his shoeless feet stretched toward the playwright. His head and his toes shook left to right, in unison. “That’s what we get for taking terrorists,” Espejo said, laughing. “We don’t do theater here.”

  “I’m not a terrorist,” Henry said.

  A long silence followed this clarification, Espejo’s laughter replaced by a glare so intense and penetrating that Henry began to doubt himself—perhaps he was a terrorist after all. Perhaps he always had been. That’s what the authorities were accusing him of being, and outside, in the real world, there were people arguing both sides of this very question. His freedom hung in the balance. His future. Henry had to look away, down at the floor of the cell, which Espejo had redone with blue and white linoleum squares, in honor of his favorite soccer club, Alianza. One of Espejo’s deputies, a thick-chested brute named Aimar, coughed into his fist, and it was only this that seemed to break the tension.

  “Did you write it?”

  Henry nodded.

  “So name a character after me,” Espejo said.

  Henry began to protest.

  Espejo frowned. “You think I have no culture? You think I’ve never read a book?”

  “No, I …” Henry stopped. It was useless to continue. Already he’d ruined himself.

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “Go on. If you can convince these savages,” Espejo said finally, waving an uninterested hand in the direction of the yard, “I have no objection.”

  Henry thanked Espejo and left—quickly, before the boss could change
his mind.

  “I told Rogelio the news, and we celebrated,” Henry said to me.

  “How?”

  Henry blushed. “We made love.”

  “Was that the first time?”

  “Yes.” His voice was very soft.

  Then: “I don’t remember.”

  Then: “No.”

  I told Henry we could stop for a moment, if he wanted. He sat with his head at an angle, eyes turned toward a corner of the room. He laughed. “It’s not because we were in prison together, you know. You’re making it sound cliché.”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m not making it sound like anything. I’m not judging you.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said.

  He frowned. “Are you a cop? Is that what this is?”

  I thought I’d lost him. I shook my head. “I’m not a cop,” I said in a slow, very calm voice. But at the time, even I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

  “Nelson and I, we’re almost like family,” I said.

  Henry’s brow furrowed. “He never mentioned you.”

  Silence.

  “The play,” I said, after a moment. “Was it easy to get inmates to volunteer for the play?”

  Henry sighed. That, it turned out, was easy, and he had a theory as to why:

  Everyone wanted to be the president, because the president was the boss.

  Everyone wanted to be the servant, because like them, the servant dreamed of murdering the boss.

  Everyone wanted to be the son, because it was the son who got to do the killing. And it was this character, Alejo, whose name was changed. He became Espejo.

  And indeed, the project sold itself. A week of talking to his peers, and then the delicate process of auditions. Henry had to write in extra parts to avoid disappointing some of the would-be actors. It was for his own safety—some of these men didn’t take rejection very well. He added a chorus of citizens, to comment on the action. Ghosts of servants past to stalk across the stage in a fury, wearing costumes fashioned from old bed sheets. He even wrote a few lines for the president’s wife, Nora, played with verve by Carmen, the block’s most fashionable transvestite. Things were going well. Someone from Diciembre alerted the press (how had this happened? Neither Henry nor Patalarga could recall), and after he’d done an interview or two, there was no turning back. Espejo even joined the enthusiasm. It would be good for their image, he was heard to say.