At Night We Walk in Circles

by Daniel Alarcón

  I didn’t have one; or rather, I didn’t have a good one. I wasn’t family. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t even a friend.

  He smiled slyly. “Are you scared? Is that it? Do you think something unspeakable will happen to you?”

  I’d never been teased by Henry Nuñez before.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m terrified.”

  Henry slumped back in his chair. “Well, you’re no fun.”

  His apartment was messier than usual, with piles of books on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink. A white dress shirt was draped over one of the plastic chairs in the corner, drying stiffly.

  “So what happened here?” I asked.

  Ana wasn’t allowed to visit, he explained, so there was no need to keep up appearances. “Not that I would’ve fooled you anyway.” It seems that on Ana’s last overnight, there’d been a gas leak somewhere in the building. Everyone on the block had been evacuated, and many had slept in the park, including Henry and his daughter. It was a warm night, a neighborly night tinged with the mood of a carnival. But his ex-wife was furious.

  “Sleeping outdoors. Must’ve reminded you of the tour.”

  Henry shook his head. “It was nice, but no. There’s nothing like being on tour.”

  We talked for a while about his plans, went over a few questions I had about the history of Diciembre, and when I was about to leave, I asked why he’d called me. It was odd, given that for each of our previous interviews, I’d had to work to track him down.

  Henry looked up, nodding, as if trying to remember. Then: “I’m ready to write that script. The one we were going to do together.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “We?”

  “Nelson and I. Our prison story.”

  “Your prison story.”

  He was energized, almost manic. “A love story. Rogelio’s story. We were going to write it together. A play. We can take it on tour. He said he wanted to help. Now we can. Now I’m ready. Will you ask him?”

  “Is this what you and Patalarga fought about?”

  Henry frowned and rubbed his neck. “Just ask him,” he said. “Will you ask him?”

  IT WAS JANUARY 2004 before I could get the proper permissions to visit Nelson myself. I remember we’d just hit ten thousand subscribers at the magazine, and were celebrating at the offices with an impromptu party. In the middle of it, my letter arrived.

  You are granted permission to enter Collectors Prison on this day, at this hour.

  I was given an appointment at the ministry building in the Old City to have my fingerprints taken. The celebration became more serious, more sincere. It was as if I’d won an award.

  “Maybe we’ll finally see that article,” Lizzy said.

  I’d been petitioning for something more than an ordinary visit: I wanted the okay to bring in a microphone and a tape recorder; and given the conditions inside, the authorities were skittish about these kinds of requests. No one wanted a journalist to embarrass them. I think back now and wonder why I insisted, and can only conclude it was a stalling tactic. These things take time, and I knew that. Perhaps I could’ve pushed harder against the sluggish prison bureaucracy, but I didn’t. I was busy, it was true, but I’ll admit that part of me was hesitant to compare my invented version of Nelson with the man himself.

  Mónica went to see her son every couple of weeks, a ritual she both looked forward to and dreaded; and she often called me the next day to read me Nelson’s most recent letter over the phone. I’d hear the shuffle of papers through the receiver, she’d clear her throat; I’d make myself comfortable and listen. I liked hearing his words in her voice. When she finished, I’d thank her. I knew these letters were edited, because I’d read the ones he gave Patalarga.

  “When are you going to see my boy?” Mónica would ask. “He says he has something to tell you.”

  “Soon,” I’d respond.

  I finally went to Collectors in March. Nelson was almost twenty-six years old now, and coming up on the third anniversary of his incarceration; an unimaginable length of time, but only a fraction of what he’d been condemned to serve. That was the thought I couldn’t shake as I presented my papers to an unsmiling guard, as I handed my bag over to be searched by another. Fifteen years. My tape recorder was removed from its case, examined by a guard who looked at it curiously, as if considering some obscure tool from another age. Twelve to go. He searched for and eventually found the serial number, which he then compared with the one on the document I’d presented. The numbers matched, and he let out a little sigh of disappointment. Then he checked my microphone, my headphones and cables, and once everything was confirmed to be in order, my arm was stamped, and I was on my way. All of this was accomplished without exchanging a single sentence.

  I was patted down at the next gate, and then sent through with a grunt. I stepped out of the primary holding area and into the bright, beating sun. I covered my eyes. Standing between the two gates, neither inside the prison, nor out of it, but in a neutral zone, I stared through the heavy chain-link fence at the inmates of Collectors: young men milling about, looking bored. I would’ve liked to observe them for just a moment, but the next guard hurried me along, and quite suddenly I was inside. The gate closed behind me: just closed, it didn’t slam or make any noise at all. It’s subtle, in fact, the difference between inside and outside.

  I looked all around, trying not to seem overwhelmed. There were so many men, but no Nelson.

  Then a voice: “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  He’d pushed through the gathered, idle men, and come up from behind. There was a playfulness to his expression that told me this had been deliberate.

  We shook hands. He looked different; better in fact. He’d cut his hair, and this alone changed the tenor of his features. No boyishness left; no whimsy. His face had lost its youthfulness, and it had been replaced by something else, something tougher and more determined. He wore jeans and a clean, light blue T-shirt. Last time I’d seen him at the courthouse, he’d been thin and callow and frightened; there was none of that now. He’d put on weight, had a certain heft to his shoulders.

  Nelson was observing me too. “I don’t remember you. I’ve been wondering if I would, but I don’t. Nothing.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I just thought you should know.” He pressed his lips tight. “My mother says you were at the trial. I didn’t notice you.”

  “You had other things on your mind.”

  He smiled cautiously. “She thinks we’ll be friends or something.”

  A couple skinny, shirtless men hovered just behind Nelson, eyeing me.

  “Seems like you have friends.”

  “A man needs them. Is this your first time?”

  “It is.”

  “So take a look.”

  This is what I saw. There were men: ordinary men as you might find on any street, in any neighborhood, tall men, short men, skinny men, fat men, black men, brown men, white men (though only a few of those), tired men, frantic men, old men. They looked like people I’d known, people I’d seen before, only harder, perhaps. But that was only part of the story: together, they were outnumbered by another group, the broken men, and these were legion. They were shirtless and desperate and wilting in the late-summer heat. This was their home, the front of the prison, the public spaces that no one owned. These fallen ones were sinewy and gaunt, covered in scars and the blurry tattooed names of lovers they’d forgotten and who’d forgotten them, men with sunken cheeks, men with dirty hands. They watched me with great intensity, or perhaps I only felt like they were watching; perhaps they were so high they didn’t even notice who I was. An outsider.

  “What are you looking for?” Nelson asked.

  “Guards,” I said.

  Nelson’s laugh was odd in that it did not contain within it an invitation to laugh along. It was dry, cutting.

  We went left up the path that rounded the prison’s edge, past the entrances to the odd-numbered blocks. The shirtless p
air followed us at a distance. We reached the top of the hill and stopped, facing an alley that led to the even-numbered blocks.

  “They call it Main Street,” Nelson said.

  It was the width of a bus, and served as both thoroughfare and market: mismatched pairs of plastic sandals, shaving mirrors and old batteries, plastic combs and razors were for sale, displayed on square patches of plastic lying on the ground. Every few steps there was a man slumped against the wall, smoking crack from a tiny metal pipe. Or maybe it only seemed this way; maybe I was so taken aback by the sight of the first addict that in my mind this one helpless man was multiplied, until I saw him everywhere, like a bright light present even with your eyes closed. In any case, I can describe him, and the men just like him, very easily: he had a narrow face dotted with uneven stubble, a receding hairline. He held up the pipe, and when he did, I noticed his thin, almost delicate wrists, his long fingers. He sat on his haunches with his knees bent, and I saw the stained black bottoms of his feet. He flicked the lighter, and curled his toes in anticipation of the high.

  Nelson and I both watched him as he struggled with the lighter. He flicked it, a soft breeze blew down Main Street, and the flame went out. He tried again, and then again. Beneath it all, there was an eagerness that was almost childlike. It was impossible not to root for him.

  We walked halfway down to Nelson’s block, Number Ten, and I watched through the rusty bars, trying to be invisible, while Nelson explained who I was, and why I was there. He was negotiating with an inmate, so I could pass.

  Our two escorts kept their watch.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “They’re protecting you,” Nelson said.

  Then we were let inside. All of us.

  Men shouted from the third floor to the ground floor, from the second floor to the roof, voices straining to be heard above blasting stereos, above blaring televisions, above a dozen other voices. Noise everywhere. Nelson led me through the tier; following him was like trying to walk in a straight line through a windstorm. I wanted to see everything, remember every detail. I knew, even then, that this was my one chance, that I wouldn’t be coming back. I saw a blackened tube of a fluorescent light dangling by its cord, swaying dangerously above me. I watched how Nelson moved through the space, the way he held himself. He didn’t talk to anyone, and no one spoke to him. I remember thinking, it’s as if he’s not even here.

  He told me he’d arranged for a quiet cell, so we could talk. “Terrific,” I said. It was on the second floor. His two friends waited outside while Nelson and I went in, and I quickly discovered it wasn’t actually quiet at all, only quiet in comparison to the cells on the other side of the block, overlooking the yard. I wanted good sound on this interview, but I hadn’t anticipated how difficult that would be in a place like Collectors.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It’ll do.”

  “I can’t understand why you’re here,” he said as I set up my recorder and microphone. I was checking the levels, and his words came blasting through my headphones. I looked up, startled.

  “I’ll explain. Just give me a second.”

  He waited. He sat in one of those white plastic lawn chairs, the same kind Henry kept in his dour bachelor’s apartment. Nelson leaned back now. With a nod he gestured toward the block, toward the men roving and shouting just outside the cell door.

  “Pick any of them,” he said. “Stick a microphone in their face, and they’ll tell you a story. They’re dying to be heard.”

  “You aren’t?”

  He shook his head.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ve been trying for months to get Ixta to visit me. I want her to bring Nadia. That’s what I want most of all. Why won’t she come?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I know you don’t. Have you seen the baby?”

  I nodded. We lived in the same neighborhood now; it felt cruel to say I saw her all the time. “She’s beautiful.”

  “I imagine.”

  “And what does she tell you?” I asked.

  “Reasonable things. That she wants to move on with her life. That she’s got to look forward and not back.” He frowned. “She doesn’t think I killed Mindo, does she?”

  “No one thinks you killed Mindo.”

  “The judge does.”

  He gave me a sharp, almost defiant smile, as if he were happy to have proven me wrong.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, but something in the way he looked at me made me think: Finally, an opening. I was sure of it. He rubbed the top of his head with his palm, bit his thumbnail, and narrowed his eyes. “Everyone in here is innocent, you know? Ask around, they’ll all tell you the same thing.”

  I leaned toward him. “Sure. That’s what they say. But you really are.”

  “So what?”

  I stopped. I wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe it was time to admit that. “Would it be better if I put this away?” I asked, gesturing at my tape recorder.

  Nelson nodded, and I pressed Stop. I peeled off the headphones and the world dropped to its regular volume again.

  He smiled. “This is better, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “We can just talk now.”

  I nodded.

  “Can I hold it?”

  I gave him the tape recorder, then the microphone. I handed over the headphones too. He left it all in his lap.

  “What if I did kill Mindo? Have you thought about that?”

  There was something very cold in his voice.

  “You didn’t.”

  “What if I did? What if I were that kind of person?”

  Nelson had been inside for thirty-odd months, studying this very sort of performed aggression. And he was good. He let the questions hang there. I knew it couldn’t be true, but then he shifted his gaze, and part of me wondered why I thought that, why I was so sure. I felt a chill.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s suppose.”

  “So what do you think I would do to someone who was outside while I was in here, and had decided he had the right to tell my story? If I were the person capable of killing a man on a dark street?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Just think,” Nelson said.

  I smiled, but now he didn’t smile back, and for a few long moments nothing was said. He’d made his point, and while I mulled it over, he busied himself examining my tape recorder and the microphone. He pressed Record, and pointed the mic in different directions. He snapped his fingers at the working end of the mic, and watched the needle jump.

  “It’s not recording yet,” I said. “It’s on pause. If you want to …” I said, and reached for the machine. There was a button he hadn’t pressed. That was all I wanted to show him.

  But he pulled the recorder away from me. It was a quick gesture, very slight. “I’ll hold it,” he said.

  “I just …”

  “You’re fine.”

  I could feel myself turning red. I understood what was happening.

  “You’re robbing me?”

  Nelson gave me a disappointed look. “Is that what you think?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Let’s just be clear about who’s been robbing whom.”

  When I didn’t respond, he stood. He took my tape recorder and the microphone and placed them on the table behind him. I could have tried to grab them, I suppose, but Nelson set his body between me and my equipment, as if daring me to take them back. And I thought about it, I did. We were the same size, neither of us particularly imposing, but my last fight had been in middle school. And now I was in Collectors, which was, for better or worse, his home. His two friends, the ones who were protecting me, stood just outside the cell. As if to underline the point, Nelson pushed the door open, and all the noise from the block came rushing in.

  “Do you understand?” he asked.

  “I
do,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

  I stepped out, and he closed the door behind me.

  The two shirtless men had gone, and I found myself in the middle of the block, buried in sound. I had nowhere to go. I was in no hurry. I stood there for a moment, trying to pick out a voice, any voice, from the din.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the Lannan Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation for their support. Mark Lafferty, Lila Byock, Joe Loya, and Adam Mansbach all stepped up at various points in the process to give me insight and encouragement on a manuscript that seemed, frankly, impossible to resolve. I am forever grateful.

  This novel, like almost everything I write, is the product of a meandering, limitless conversation with my friend Vinnie Wilhelm. Thanks, brother.

  Collectors is an invented place, but I owe a debt of gratitude to Carlos Álvarez Osorio, who first took me inside Lima’s prisons in 2007, and who has, on each subsequent visit, helped me understand what I was seeing. The men I met inside Lurigancho and Castro Castro trusted me with their stories, and for that I will always be grateful. My editors at Harper’s, Claire Gutierrez and Chris Cox, were very supportive of the research that became first a piece of nonfiction, and eventually part of this novel.

  I’d like to thank Gustavo Lora and the Collazos family, who helped me discover T—. Walter Ventosilla’s play El Mandatario Idiota served as an early inspiration, and with his permission, I have adapted it here. Both Walter and Gustavo were members of Setiembre, the theater troupe on which Diciembre is based, and I have borrowed liberally from stories they shared with me.

  My agent, Eric Simonoff, was helpful every step of the way. My editor, Megan Lynch, offered great advice, patience, and generosity, and helped make this book better in innumerable ways. Thank you.

  Most of all, I’d like to thank my family—my parents, my sisters, their partners, their children, and especially my wife, Carolina, who made me laugh when I wanted to give up, gave me love when I needed it, and space when I was scared to ask for it.

  Gracias, mi amor.