At Night We Walk in Circles

by Daniel Alarcón

  “I knew he meant it,” she told me later. “I could hear in his voice that he was serious.”

  “When are you coming home, then?” she asked him.

  “Soon,” Nelson said.

  A week passed after Jaime’s message, and still they heard nothing. On the seventeenth day, Nelson demanded Noelia call. “Your brother promised me money,” he explained. “It isn’t a lot, but it’s a lot to me.” She said she understood, but Nelson wasn’t finished. Then there was the matter of the ID card; it was technically illegal to travel without one. Any police checkpoint could spell trouble. “Did you know that? Did you know I could be arrested on the road? While they confirm my identity, I’ll be enlisted in the army, clearing land mines on the northern border!”

  Noelia had not known that. He was exaggerating, she was sure of it. Still, she’d never really traveled, except to San Jacinto. And she hadn’t even been there in a few years.

  “I tried to tell Nelson there was nothing I could do. I assured him Jaime hadn’t forgotten, and that he hadn’t lied.”

  “So where is he?” Nelson asked. “Where is this powerful brother of yours?”

  “Jaime’s always busy,” she said carefully. “That’s all it is. He’ll be here soon. I bet we’ll hear from him tomorrow.”

  But when they didn’t, Nelson insisted they go to Mr. Segura’s bodega to make the call. The bus from San Jacinto had come and gone; no news from Jaime. Noelia relented. Mrs. Anabel saw them getting ready to leave, and began to panic.

  “Where are you going?”

  She hadn’t been alone since Nelson had arrived, a fact neither he nor Noelia realized until that moment.

  “Just to the plaza, Mama,” said Noelia.

  Mrs. Anabel opened her eyes wide. “Without me?”

  I almost snapped at her, Nelson wrote in his journal that night, without guilt, only wonder. He saw it as further proof that it was past time to leave this place, to abandon the performance before he made some mistake.

  “No, Mama, of course not. We’re all going together.”

  And they did: across town to Segura’s shop. It took them more than twenty minutes to make the six-minute walk. Segura was just closing up, but he seemed happy to have company. Noelia went in to call and Nelson waited outside with Mrs. Anabel. He and Segura lowered her delicately onto the steps so she could sit.

  “It’s like I’m a queen,” she said.

  Nelson had never been with Mrs. Anabel outside the house. Her eyes darted about the plaza, marveling at everything she saw. The heat of the day had passed, and a few locals were out for a stroll. Mrs. Anabel seemed happy to watch them go by. The shawl around her shoulders slipped, and Nelson helped her rearrange it.

  “This is my boy,” Mrs. Anabel said.

  “And a very nice boy, indeed, madam,” Segura answered. “Are you enjoying your stay?”

  “Quite a bit,” Nelson said.

  “And how much longer will you visit us?”

  Mrs. Anabel looked on. They’d never discussed it.

  “A while longer yet.”

  “Wonderful,” said Segura.

  A moment later Noelia came out of the bodega, apologizing. There’d been no answer on Jaime’s phone.

  “What are you sorry about?” Mrs. Anabel asked. She smiled gamely at Segura. “These children are always so polite.”

  Nelson sighed. “We need to talk to Jaime, Mama. That’s all.”

  The old woman nodded as if she understood. “That sounds nice.”

  “We’ll try again tomorrow,” said Noelia.

  NELSON DID GO BACK the next day, in fact, only this time he went alone. Segura was friendly, as usual. “Calling your brother?” he asked, but Nelson shook his head.

  “Calling the city,” he said, and Segura nodded.

  He was calling Ixta. There was very little in Nelson’s journals about the content of those conversations, but he scrupulously noted the length of each call: five minutes, eight and a half, three, seventeen. He made no mention of the long silences she reported to me, just these numbers, now rising, now falling. Perhaps the simple fact that she wasn’t hanging up on him was what mattered; perhaps what he feared most was that one day she might.

  Segura had a weather-bitten face and a heavy brow. His hair was mostly gone, so he wore a red cap on his head to protect it from the sun. That day, he dialed the number, then drifted outside to wait. It was his habit, a way of showing respect for his client’s privacy. The call was four minutes long, and when it was over Segura came in to write the amount in his red notebook. Nelson stood at the counter, tapping his fingers and forcing a smile.

  “You wanted to talk to your brother, didn’t you?” Segura said, and without waiting for an answer, he reached below the counter. “Take a look at this.” It was a drying, crinkled newspaper from the previous week. “Go ahead, you can take it. If I had to guess, I’d say your brother is busy these days.”

  Nelson thanked the shopkeeper and left.

  Months later, I found this paper folded into Nelson’s journals. By then it was yellowed and fading, but entirely legible, a copy of San Jacinto’s local tabloid, dated June 21, 2001. On the cover was a photo of a truck surrounded by policemen. The headline read busted, and the accompanying text recounted the seizure of eighteen kilos of processed cocaine at a checkpoint just fourteen miles outside San Jacinto, on the road to the coast. It was the largest seizure in the area in more than three years. There was another fact, mentioned only in passing, but which Nelson, or perhaps Segura, had underlined: the seized truck was registered to Jaime’s company, but had been reported stolen three months prior. Police were investigating. The driver, a young man surnamed Rabassa, was being held in the local jail. The paper said his transfer to another facility was imminent.

  THAT NIGHT, Nelson dreamed of the play. In the dream, he and Henry and Patalarga switched roles at random and constantly, even within a scene. It was dizzying and frenetic, but they couldn’t stop. The feeling was terrifying: to be onstage and not be in control. Nelson tried to apologize to the audience, but he couldn’t; nor was it necessary. Far from being put off by these sudden and confusing shifts, the crowd seemed to be loving them. Peals of laughter rose from the dark theater. Bursts of applause. Each time the actors changed characters, the spectators roared wildly, as if the members of Diciembre were acrobats on a wire, improbably cheating death. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson barreled along. Nelson might begin a line as the president, and finish it as the servant, then shift immediately to Alejo, all without the consent or agency of the actor himself. In the midst of all this chaos, Nelson realized the stage was familiar to him: it was the Olympic, only now the theater was filled with miners and farmers and half-starved children with windburned cheeks, the people he’d been performing for up in the mountains. His head hurt. It was like running on a speeding treadmill, and he couldn’t keep up. He didn’t want to. Meanwhile, Henry had given in to it: the playwright flashed a manic, energized smile, nodding toward the audience with each new round of applause. At a certain point, Nelson realized they were saying “Olé!” as if it were a bullfight; as is often the case in dreams, the metaphor seemed right for an instant, and then fell apart. Who exactly was the bull? Who was the matador?

  In the audience, Nelson caught sight of Ixta. (How? he wrote in his journal. Wasn’t the theater dark? It was, and yet, I could see her.) And just like that, he was free of the play. Volume dropped off. Henry and Patalarga went on without him, while Nelson tiptoed to the edge of the stage, and peered out into the dark (which was not so dark, in fact). It was her. It had to be. He could see her clearly: Ixta’s hands rested gently on her very pregnant belly, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was frowning. She was the only person in the theater who appeared not to be enjoying the play at all.

  She and Nelson himself, that is. Ixta didn’t call his name or wave or offer any gesture to acknowledge him. She just sat and watched.

  Nelson woke with the disturbing sense that many years n
ow separated him from the heady days of his past. From the tour, his life before, and the optimism he’d once had. It was still early, an hour before dawn, the time of day when one’s doubts are most devastating; they hang heavy on your bones. The room was very cold: if there’d been light enough, Nelson might have been able to see his breath. He didn’t understand why he felt the way he did, but there was no denying it. That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which has nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities. He turned on the bedside lamp, but the bulb flashed and burned out all at once. In that brief instant of light, Nelson was able to make out the contours of the messy sculpture with which he shared this icy space. A monster, he thought, and forced his eyes closed. He felt very alone.

  He forced himself to sleep again, and this time he did not dream.

  Morning came, as it always did, and Nelson readied himself for the day’s performance. He wrote down the dream in his journal and gathered his thoughts. This was what he must have expected of the hours to come: a few quiet moments sitting in the sun with Mrs. Anabel; a sputtering conversation, reminiscent in rhythm and tone of the squeaky up and down of an old children’s teeter-totter. A day like all the others, spinning in place. At some point, he would go for a walk, moving through the streets like a ghost. No one would speak to him unless he spoke first. No one would approach him, or ask where he was from. He’d been introducing himself as Rogelio, and no one in T— questioned him. Some people shrugged, as if they knew already; others nodded without skepticism. A few even smiled. Not complicit, knowing smiles, but ordinary, guileless expressions of approval, of satisfaction: Of course you’re Rogelio, they seemed to be saying. Who else would you be?

  When Nelson emerged from his room, Mrs. Anabel was up already, sitting in her usual place in the courtyard. One of the cats, the gray and black tabby, had curled up at her feet in a patch of sunlight. At the sight of Nelson, the cat yawned and stretched, then retreated into the tall weeds. Mrs. Anabel, on the other hand, smiled at him, a hopeful, contented smile, just as she had each of the previous twenty days. But this morning was different. Nelson didn’t smile back, not right away.

  “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Anabel asked when he sat.

  “Nothing, Mama,” he responded.

  Noelia watched from the kitchen window as she cleaned up after breakfast. She saw Nelson sit by Mrs. Anabel’s side and rub the back of his neck. He sat for a long time without talking. She was in and out of the kitchen that first hour, her usual flurry of morning activity; scrubbing, cleaning. As soon as she was finished, she started right in on lunch. Nelson hadn’t mentioned leaving again, not for two days, and she had come to hope he might stay, just awhile longer. She’d miss him when he was gone. At around ten-thirty, she went to the market for some vegetables, leaving her mother and Nelson alone. “They had their heads bowed and were whispering. I even saw my mother smiling, heard her laugh, and I thought everything was fine.”

  But when she returned an hour later, things were not fine. Mrs. Anabel’s face was full of worry and her eyes rimmed with red. Nelson wasn’t there.

  “Is everything all right?” Noelia asked. “Where’s Rogelio?”

  “He’s packing,” Mrs. Anabel said, despairing.

  “He’s what?”

  “He said he’s leaving. He said he has to go.” The old woman shook her head, then shuffled her feet, as if to stand. “I’d like to talk to your father. Is he out in the fields?”

  When she recounted the events of that day, Noelia paused here. There were, she said, some things I should know about her mother. Mrs. Anabel’s deterioration had come slowly, over the course of many years, a process so subtle that at times you wondered if it was happening at all. And even now, when that deterioration was an indisputable fact, her mind was always shifting: there were days when the old woman seemed completely lost, unable or unwilling to connect; and then, just when you’d begun to lose all hope, she’d recover. Like a fog lifting. There might be a spell of three days or more when she was something like her old self. Nelson’s stay in T— had coincided with a relatively consistent period. While Mrs. Anabel was not exactly sharp, she was not lost in the muddle, something Noelia attributed to Nelson’s steadying presence. This was the context, part of what made Mrs. Anabel’s remark about her husband all the more disconcerting. She had scarcely mentioned him in the previous days, and when she had, he’d always been dead.

  Noelia took a deep breath. “No, Mama. Papa’s not in the fields.”

  “And Jaime?”

  “He’s in San Jacinto.”

  “Then why won’t he pick up his phone?” The old woman frowned. “Who’s going to give this boy the money he needs?”

  Mrs. Anabel slowly got to her feet.

  “Where are you going, Mama?”

  “I must have something in there somewhere,” Mrs. Anabel said. She was standing now, gesturing toward the room where she slept. “Something I can give him.”

  “Sit down, Mama,” Noelia barked. “I said sit.”

  Mrs. Anabel gazed at her with big eyes.

  “Sit! Now wait here.” Noelia called out for Nelson. She was angry. She wanted an explanation. She deserved one.

  “Who is Nelson?” her mother asked.

  “I knew immediately I’d made a mistake,” Noelia told me later. She turned back to her mother, attempted a smile, but it was too late.

  “Who’s Nelson?” the old woman said again. “Why did you call Rogelio that?”

  Noelia knelt before her mother. Mrs. Anabel was breathing heavily, looking pale and worried. Her voice trembled. “You said Nelson.”

  “I know, Mama. I made a mistake.”

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s no one. Now calm down. Everything is going to be all right.” Noelia held her mother’s hands. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Anabel whispered.

  Noelia put a hand to her mother’s cheek, and held it there for a moment, until Mrs. Anabel had closed her eyes. “Stay,” she said, then got to her feet and went into the room where Nelson had been sleeping these last three weeks. She didn’t knock, just pushed the door open, and found him sitting on the cot with his back against the wall. He had his legs stretched out, resting on top of his already packed bag.

  “What’s going on?” Noelia said.

  Nelson didn’t answer. He offered her a space on the cot, but she shook her head and stood with her arms crossed, unsmiling, unmoved.

  “You know what’s going on. I want to go home. That’s all. I told her I was leaving.” His voice was full of exhaustion. “I told her I had to go see Jaime. She asked me what it was about, and I said money.”

  “Why would you confuse her like that!”

  Nelson turned very serious. “I never broke character.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not the one who just called me Nelson.”

  “He was right,” Noelia told me later. “And I’m not angry with him. Not really. I was then, but I’m not now. It’s just that I’d hoped things would work out differently.”

  “Different how?” I asked her.

  She thought for a moment. “I wanted things to go smoothly. I wanted it all to glide to the end. Most of all, I didn’t want my mother getting upset.”

  Just then, they heard a voice—Mrs. Anabel—calling out for Noelia.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  Then to Nelson: “You can’t just leave like that. You have to give her warning. You have to prepare her. It isn’t fair.”

  Again, Mrs. Anabel called for her.

  “I’m coming, Mama.”

  Nelson stood. “Of course it’s fair.”

  Just then there was a shout.

  Nelson and Noelia ran to the courtyard. Mrs. Anabel hadn’t gotten very far from her seat, only a few steps, in fact. She lay on the ground, face pressed against the stone path. She wasn’t moving.

/>   “Mama!” Noelia shouted.

  Nelson reacted quicker; he ran to her side, saw that she was breathing. He helped her turn over. She looked ashen. There was a cut just below her hairline, and a knot forming on her forehead. A tiny rivulet of blood ran down her temple. “Why did you leave me all alone?” she said.

  Nelson held her gently. “We didn’t. We were here all the time.”

  Mrs. Anabel shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

  Noelia had stood back, but she hurried over now.

  “Rogelio,” she said. “Go across the street and get Mrs. Hilda. She’s a nurse.”

  Noelia held her mother. Nelson hesitated for an instant.

  “Go now,” Noelia said.

  He did as he was told.

  I was the one who answered the door.

  19

  I HAD ARRIVED on the bus from San Jacinto that morning. So began my direct involvement in all this. I had no firm plans for my visit: stay a few weeks, perhaps, not longer, spend time with my parents, help my old man repair the roof of their house. I’d brought along a couple of books to read, the long ones I never seemed to find time for in the city, and was determined to enjoy myself. As far as the roof, I was frankly enthusiastic about the task, a fact that surprised even me. The prospect of working with my hands, as my father had done for his entire life, as his father had done before him, seemed appealing. In the days before I left for my hometown, I must have been feeling something akin to what Nelson had, just before embarking on the tour: the heady anticipation of change, the desire to shake up my life, if only slightly, only temporarily. I’d been laid off and I was bored. My friends bored me, my routines. The block I lived on, with its drab storefronts and constant noise. The implacably gray city sky bored me infinitely, and every morning when I stepped out into the streets, I imagined squatting on the roof of my parents’ home in T— after a few hours of work (the details of which I had a hard time conjuring), looking out over the valley, the hills, the cartoonishly blue sky, and feeling good about myself. Proud. I hadn’t felt that way in many months.