Lost City Radio

by Daniel Alarcón

Inside, along the four walls of the canteen, were a dozen faces of men and women and boys that Blas claimed to have re-created from the descriptions of their loved ones. It was, of course, impossible to say if the old man was lying or, if he was not, if the drawings were in any way accurate. Even the loved ones could not say: memory is a great deceiver, grief and longing cloud the past, and recollections, even vivid ones, fade. Still, there was something to these renderings, and Zahir recognized it immediately: they were undeniably human, these faces. These creased women with their sad eyes and dark hair; these prematurely old men with pendulous lips and sagging cheeks; these young warriors, now missing, boys whose very skin shone with an inexplicable bloodlust, an excitement and hunger for life they couldn’t help but betray. Together they formed a confused race of men anxiously awaiting some grave disappointment. It wore him down in a manner Zahir hadn’t anticipated and could hardly articulate. The village, of course, had been disappearing steadily for years, but it wasn’t until he stepped out of the canteen and into the afternoon sun that he felt so acutely the emptiness of the place. He was surrounded by it. There were the sounds of the breathing forest, the cawing of a bird, the distant and susurrant murmuring of water. What else was there? In fact, most of the village was there. In his grief, Zahir hadn’t noticed them. They numbered in the two hundreds, and there were no more than fifty men, one for every three women. Those who had seen the exhibit were, like Zahir, milling about in a daze. They had entered the canteen not quite knowing what to expect, and left despondent. Now only Blas seemed to know what to do. He began taking appointments right then for the following morning: half-hour interviews, he said, and a drawing by the end of the day. “Your name, madam?” he called out. “And the name of your missing?” and it was all carefully listed in a notebook. The women thronged around him, some shook with sobbing. Zahir stepped away from the knot of despairing women and sat on the stump of a fallen tree. It was damp and beginning to rot: a soft, pleasant perch from which to take it all in. The village’s women, who had seemed to him, only hours before, to be the very picture of steadfast resolve, had come to this. Even his wife was among them. Her brother had left for the war a few years prior, on an army truck with a captain who had promised every recruit forty acres of land when it was all over.

  “But you can have a hundred acres here!” they’d told him. Wasn’t the forest infinite?

  “Land on the coast,” said the captain in his city accent, “is more valuable.”

  Zahir knew this place and its people: he’d lived his entire life in this forest, kissed a dozen different girls! Fought and beaten twice as many opponents! He had been one of them: one of these bare-chested boys, wrestling in the mud and climbing the trees that hung over the river, all the way to the top, for no reason at all other than to stare at the sky and let the mind go blank. What pleasure! He had followed the river’s edge to the cataract a day’s hike upstream, and let the water spray cover him, let it bead on his skin like fine drops of sweat. He had let the hugeness of that noise erase him. He had never been alone in his youth—not once in fifteen years. Where were they now? Those boys he’d shared his childhood with, those girls who were now women whom he had kissed and touched beneath the trees?

  He looked up. There were hours yet to this day. The children had formed another circle around their mothers, not quite understanding what the fuss was about, and this, too, made Zahir despair—how could they understand? Didn’t they want to leave as well? Weren’t they just biding their time?

  Blas drew more than seventy pictures in the village over the next week. Business, he told the regulars at the canteen, had never been so good. Many drawings, quite surprisingly, were of people who were not yet missing. Women came with their husbands, mothers with their sons. “We’re afraid,” they said, tears in their eyes. “He’s here now, but what about tomorrow?”

  “I’M LISTENING, madam,” the old artist said. Blas had worked on his voice for years. It was important in his line of work to put women immediately at ease: he very nearly purred. It had rained for two days, and so he had moved into the canteen, at the far end. He pulled the curtain, and they were alone in this makeshift private studio: two stools, an easel, an array of colored pencils. “Tell me.”

  Adela said nothing for a long moment. Her feet tingled.

  “Does the boy look like his father?”

  She shook her head. “He looks like me.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twelve months,” she said. “A year.”

  The artist rubbed his face. He leaned toward her. “The father. How old is the father?”

  “Oh,” Adela said. “I don’t know.”

  Blas turned the canvas around. It was empty, not a mark on it. “Don’t be nervous, dear,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Close your eyes and talk about him, and we’ll do this together.”

  Adela took a deep breath. “He’s not from here. And that’s what you notice first. He comes from the city. His smile is like city people smile: halfway. He’s careful. His hair flops forward onto his forehead, but he’s always brushing it back with his palm. He has dimpled cheeks, and his eyes seem tired all the time. His hair is gray at the temples, with nearly white streaks, but he won’t admit it. I think he may dye his hair. He’s vain.”

  “Should I draw it black then? Or white? Which is it?”

  “Draw it true. It’s white.”

  “Is he thin?” Blas asked.

  Adela nodded.

  “His skin tone, madam. Is he dark like coffee, or light like milk?” He still hadn’t begun to draw, not really; two very light strokes, vaguely parallel. His eyes were closed, and the point of the pencil just barely touched the paper.

  “Like coffee,” Adela said, but her mind was wandering. “And he loves the boy, I know that, I can tell.” She paused. “But he doesn’t love me.”

  “Madam!”

  “A woman knows these things, sir. He has another life. He’s told me and I’ve known from the beginning. I know some other things, some things he hasn’t told me. I know that one day he’ll come and take my child from me. I swear he will. He’ll say it’s for the boy’s own good, and how can I argue with that? But then what will I do? I’ll be like these old women here, who can’t remember who used to love them or why they’re alive.” She took a shallow breath. “He’s cruel.”

  “Madam, pardon me, what does he look like?”

  “Oh, yes. His hair, for example. It’s beginning to fall out. Each time I see him he looks older. His nose is crooked, just a bit, to which side? Well, to the left. His beard doesn’t grow in evenly; isn’t that the strangest thing?”

  “Strange yes, madam, but not the strangest.”

  “You’ve seen all kinds of things.”

  “Of course,” Blas said apologetically.

  Adela rocked the sleeping child in her arms. “Every time he leaves,” she said, “I’m afraid he won’t come back.”

  “Why are you scared?”

  “His work is dangerous.”

  The old artist didn’t look up and didn’t say anything. Dangerous work was the only kind that existed in those days. The country was at war. He selected another pencil, a lighter color, and his right hand moved feverishly around the paper. He rubbed the page with his thumb, blurring the markings. “Are his eyes far apart?”

  “No.”

  “Are they close together?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “His hair is curly?”

  She thought for a moment. “Wavy.”

  “His forehead—it’s high like this? Or small, like this?”

  Adela squinted at the drawing. “In between, I suppose. And more wrinkled. He’s getting older, did I tell you that?”

  The child twisted in her arms, a tiny hand poking free, a small fist opening, closing, grasping at the air. In an instant, it was over, and the boy was completely asleep once again. Blas and Adela had both stopped to watch him.

  “It’
s a pity for your husband that he doesn’t look like this boy of yours. He’s a beautiful child.”

  “Thank you,” Adela said. “He’s not my husband.”

  “I’m sorry, madam. God is merciful.”

  “Are we nearly finished here?”

  “Yes, very nearly.”

  Blas leaned over the page, touching up the drawing. He asked a few more questions: about the shape of the man’s jaw, the size and placement of his ears, the style in which he wore his hair, and how gray was it exactly, and how did she know it was grayer than he wished it to be.

  “Don’t we all want to be young forever?” Adela said.

  Rey flashed across her mind, images of him in various stages of undress. He was not a beautiful man and he was not even hers. But the child was. She looked at her boy, asleep: the drawing, she told herself, was for him. When Rey first came to her, he was surprised at how cool the nights were here when the days were so hot. He knew almost nothing about the forest. “What do they teach you at that school?” she’d asked, but it was what she’d loved most about him: he knew nothing, because he was a stranger. His foreignness, his accent, his gestures—they belonged to another place, and just being with him was enough for Adela to imagine another, less claustrophobic existence.

  When Blas asked about the lips, Adela licked her own, as if she could still taste him. “They’re full,” she said. Blas drew, he erased, then he drew some more. When he was satisfied, Blas asked Adela to look very carefully. “Is this him?” he asked. He had a pitch, a tone of voice, prepared just for this question. He had posed it a thousand times since the war began, and the answer was always the same.

  THE DECISION was made for them. By the time they thought to leave, there were no cabs to take them home. Not at that hour, not so close to curfew. The deserted city was a minefield. So they returned to the party, Norma and Rey, Elmer not far behind, and they found themselves once again in the great room, being served drinks by the bartender in a tuxedo. The man had taken his jacket off and was drinking himself now. Elmer spoke, but they couldn’t hear him, and they didn’t try. There was dancing all around them, and night had fallen heavily on the room. Where there was panic, there was freedom. What a giddy feeling! Rey took his wife by the hand, led her to the middle of the dance floor. He pressed his body against hers. She pressed back, and it was beautiful, and then they were moving, as they had once upon a time: there are things the body won’t allow you to forget. It had been too long since they’d danced. “Louder!” someone yelled, and the music rose even more. Her chin rested on his shoulder, and he could smell her. The chandelier shook. The darkness was nearly complete; Rey had to be careful not to lose her to the crowd.

  FOURTEEN

  THERE WERE rules, of course, even that first night. The program would run on a six-second delay. This took some of the pressure off of Norma. The calls would be screened and everyone warned not to mention the war. This was good advice, not just for the radio, but for life, because these days, someone was always listening. Neutrality was the word Elmer kept repeating. Not to be confused with indifference, Norma thought. People, she should keep in mind, went missing for all sorts of reasons, and the show was not to be a sounding board for conspiracy theories or gripes about this or that faction, or speculations about a certain prison whose very existence was a state secret, however poorly kept. The show, Elmer lectured Norma, was a risk, but a calculated one. There were hundreds of thousands of displaced people who would form the loyal core of her audience. Hope could be dispensed in small doses to the masses of refugees who now called the city home. They didn’t want to talk about the war, he guessed; they wanted to talk about their uncles, their cousins, their neighbors from that long-ago-abandoned village; the way the earth smelled back home, the sound of the rain as it fell in bursts over the treetops, the lurid colors of the countryside in bloom. “You, Norma, just be nice, the way you know how to be, and let them talk. But not too much. Get names and repeat names and the phone calls will come in by the dozens. Ask nice questions. Got it?”

  She said she did. The very idea of it gave her chills. Her own show. Of course she got it.

  “Need I mention Yerevan?” Elmer said, as a final warning. “Need I mention that he is no longer with us?”

  She went on the air that first night with a dry, metallic taste in her mouth. Excitement, fear: things could go wrong, catastrophically, with a single phone call. The minister of state had called the station, to say that someone on his staff would be listening. The theme music, commissioned from an out-of-work violinist, played, and already Norma was sweating. Elmer was sitting in the sound booth with her, taking notes, paying close attention. Three—two—one:

  “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to Lost City Radio, to our new show. To all the listeners, a warm greeting this fine evening, my name is Norma, and I should explain a little about the show, since this is our first time.” She covered the microphone and took a sip of water. “No one needs to tell you that the city is growing. We don’t need sociologists or demographers to tell us what we can see with our own eyes. What we know is that it is happening rapidly, some say too rapidly, and that it has overwhelmed us. Have you come to the city? Are you alone, or more alone, than you expected to be? Have you lost touch with those whom you expected to find here? This show, my friends, is for you. Call us now, and tell us who you’re looking for. Who can we help you find? Is it a brother you’re missing? A lover? A mother or father, an uncle or a childhood friend? We’re listening, I’m listening…Call now, tell us your story.” She read the number of the radio station, emphasizing that it was a free call. “We’ll be right back after a short break.”

  Cue music. Commercial. Norma could breathe again. No bombs yet. No explosions. “Well done,” Elmer said, without looking up. There were a few lines already lit up. They had been building up the show for a few weeks. The people were primed for this. The commercial began to fade. “Nervous?”

  Norma shook her head no.

  The engineer began his countdown.

  “Now the fun starts,” said Elmer.

  The first caller was a woman, whose thick accent said she was from the mountains. She spoke rather incoherently about a man she had known, whose name she could not recall at first, but who said he came from a fishing village whose number ended in three. “Can I say the old name? I remember the village’s old name.”

  Norma looked up. Elmer was shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry. You said the number ended in a three?”

  It was all she had—was his name Sebastián? Yes, she was sure now and he came from the north.

  “Is there anything more you can remember?” Norma asked.

  “Sure,” the woman said, but it might get someone in trouble: private things, she said, there were dirty things. She laughed. This would be enough, she added. She would wait on the air for him to call back. She knew he would call. “I’m fifty-two years old,” she said slyly, “but I told him I was forty-five. He said he thought I looked even younger.” She spoke directly to her lover: “Honey, it’s me. It’s Rosa.”

  Norma thanked her. She put the woman on hold, and the light blinked for a few minutes, then disappeared.

  Meanwhile, there were others: mothers who called about their sons, young men about girls they had last seen in train stations or standing alone in the maize fields of their native villages. “The love of my life,” one man managed, just before breaking down, and in each case, it was Norma counseling, condoling, offering words of hope. “Are they thinking of me?” one woman asked of her missing children, and Norma reassured her they were. Of course they were. It was exhausting. Elmer was gleeful. The calls kept coming: from The Thousands and The Cantonment, from Collectors and Asylum Downs and Tamoé. Husbands confessed to have named their daughters after the mothers they hadn’t seen in a decade—but perhaps they were in the city now, perhaps they had found a way to leave that decaying village: Mother, are you here?

  There were no reunions that day, but th
e calls never stopped. An hour after they had gone off the air, the phone kept ringing. Elmer twice changed the tape on the answering machine they had set up specially for the new show. He gave the two tapes to Norma the next morning. “For your listening pleasure,” he said. “You’re a hit.”

  THE BEDS were prepared, the puzzle left unfinished, the lights turned low. Manau’s mother went off to bed, though not before giving kisses all around, and promising to knit the boy a warm hat. She asked what his favorite color might be, and he said it was green. She disappeared into a back room.

  Norma still felt a buzzing within her. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. Even so, she said good night to Manau, then carried Victor to the sofa and tucked him in beneath a blanket. He didn’t resist being held. “What will we do tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. It wasn’t just tomorrow she was concerned about; it was right now. Still, she told him not to worry. She sat in the armchair by the window. A dim yellow light came from the streetlamp. No cars passed. Curfew had begun.

  It wasn’t long before Manau came. He said something about not being able to sleep. “Can I sit here?” he asked. She nodded, and he was mercifully silent.

  She could guess some things by the boy’s age, but without Rey here to answer for himself, Norma was interrogating a ghost. Victor was eleven: where was I eleven years ago? Where was Rey? What were we like, and what wasn’t I giving him? She could kill him; if he were here, she would. At what point had their love become counterfeit? When had he begun to lie to her?

  The most likely answer, she supposed, was that he had always lied. In one way or another. Hadn’t it been that way since the beginning? When they found each other again at the university, after his first disappearance, what was it he did? Remember, Norma, and spare him nothing. He pretended not to see me. Then, when you were there before him, unavoidable, human, flesh and blood, what was it he said?

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?”