The King Is Always Above the People

by Daniel Alarcón

  “Did the poet Carlos Max really eat here?”

  Holden frowns. “Who?”

  “You mentioned him in your speech the other day.”

  The manager waves a disinterested hand in the air. “How should I know?”

  The day is busy, like any other, and his ankle really does hurt. Hernán thinks of the soldier he became last night. The battle he survived and the promise he made. The memory carries him through the morning, until the lunchtime crowd rushes in, among them Clarisa with two friends. Lena is one of them; the other he’s never seen before. They’re seated at a table in the center of the dining room, the three of them watching Hernán carefully as he maneuvers through the restaurant, carrying his tub of dirty dishes. His hands are cold and damp, his apron mostly clean. He can feel their anticipation. He spots Holden across the dining room, and the manager smiles at him.

  Hernán wonders: What am I doing?

  At the height of lunch hour, Holden tends to glide back and forth along a straight line that runs from the entrance to the end of the waiter station at one end of the bar, very rarely stepping out among the diners, unless to greet a table and shake hands with one of the sharp-suited, silver-haired gentlemen who run the city and its port. Mostly he keeps watch, surveying the floor like a general, occasionally giving an order in the gruff, unaffectionate tone reserved most often for a misbehaving pet. There is something quixotic about Holden’s quest for perfection. A mistake-free lunchtime rush—it must be what Holden dreams of.

  Later, he’ll admit it: the fact that Holden had done nothing to deserve what’s coming is all the more satisfying. Maybe, Hernán thinks, this is what I’ve needed all along. A capacity for malice. A mean streak. Didn’t my father always tell me this? Didn’t he have it, and my grandfather before him? Why not me?

  Hernán steals a glance at Clarisa, at her friends, who pick at their meals, daintily, without much enthusiasm because after all, they have not come to eat, but to be entertained. Hernán lets it happen. He counts to ten. Little by little, the room begins to sway, the soothing ebb and flow of the sea, and Hernán must remind himself to breathe. He is sure this is happening, but is it happening to him? He approaches Holden, who turns just in time, no idea what awaits him. Hernán doesn’t smile—he’s too far beyond that now—instead, with one swift motion, he takes his gray plastic tub and swings it against Holden’s head. The old man crumples to the floor.

  It’s awful, so unnecessary and magnificent. Hernán can hardly believe the joy he feels.

  The dining room goes quiet, just as it had when Aurelio ran into him so many years ago. Hernán beats the manager with his plastic tub, not savagely, but efficiently, to the rhythm of his breath. He catches a thought as it flits across his fevered brain: Why don’t I do this more often? The beating goes on for a euphoric, senseless minute, and to his surprise there is no resistance. No one intervenes. Holden barely manages to cover his face. He whimpers.

  Finally, Hernán feels a hand on his shoulder. Clarisa.

  “That’s enough,” she whispers. “You were wonderful.”

  Hernán takes off his apron, drops it on the floor beside Holden, and walks out. He doesn’t look back.

  THE MUSEUM

  He spends his first morning without work worrying, peeking through the curtains at the empty street. He drinks his coffee, half expecting the police to burst in at any moment and arrest him, but Clarisa has assured him this won’t happen. The city is too disorganized for that, and people are beaten in public all the time, she says. He’s never seen such violence, nor is it comforting to learn that he has made a home, even a temporary one, in such a place. Still, some facts are on his side: no one at the restaurant ever bothered to get his full name, or his address. He never signed any papers, and was always paid in cash. It’s not as if Holden is dead. According to Clarisa, he sat up only a few minutes after Hernán fled (“‘Fled’? Is that the right word? Didn’t I just walk out?”), groggy, bruised, but alive.

  Still, Hernán is uneasy. It’s late April, six weeks since he left the city, nearly four months since he left the apartment he’d shared with Adri. Sometimes it’s the middle of the afternoon before he’s really thought about how he arrived here, while on other mornings, he wakes with Aurelio’s name on his lips, and shame like a vise gripping his chest. He has nothing to do, so he decides to write a letter.

  Dear Aurelio, he writes, Welcome to the museum of my new life, and he goes on to describe the small, comfortable home that he shares with Clarisa (as pretty as your mother, he might have written . . .), the unwitting generosity of her seafaring husband, who is due home in five months, and the charms of a city where buildings burn with startling regularity. Besides that first fire, there have been three others—smaller, less spectacular—and a day of mourning for the first anniversary of a gas explosion that claimed a half-dozen lives. But none of it really registers. The city exists in a kind of stupor. The bay is undeniably beautiful, and the clouds, when they come, are high, white ornaments, like the ribbon adorning a woman’s Sunday hat. And yet: the children all wear black and never let anyone see them smile. At night they wander the alleys and write their names on the old city walls with thick black markers. The elderly shoo them away by name, as they do the street dogs, as important to the city as any human resident, more important than many. The port is the only place that stays open late; in fact, it never closes, and its constant clang and hiss is the town’s true lifeblood. But only ten blocks away, everything is quiet, and every night the fog rolls in, impossibly heavy, so an evening stroll is like walking backward in time, into a living gallery of diffuse, grainy photographs. On every corner, a yellow street lamp scatters its weak light, illuminating nothing, and the moisture simply hangs in the air, never appearing to rise or fall. In the bars along the main avenue, the bent old men gather to tell stories of their youths misspent at sea. By noon the next day, the sun shines mercilessly, relentlessly, and everything is dry, so that in truth, there are two versions of this place, one burning and parched, one rotting and damp. Or perhaps there are more than two, and these are simply the ones he has discovered thus far. Perhaps he will leave before he stumbles onto a third version. (Though where would he go?)

  Hernán finds the place difficult to describe, but he does what he can, while the story of the restaurant and his run-in with Holden—this comes easily. A confession. I have beaten a man, Hernán writes, a man as old as my own father, and when he sees these words on the page, Hernán feels ashamed. He describes Holden’s bright red face frozen in shock. I am unemployed now, he writes, and this feels strangest of all. He’s worked since he was his stepson’s age, first in his father’s furniture shop, as his old man’s mistreated and consistently disappointing assistant; then, when he confessed to his father that he wanted to be paid, for the neighborhood grocery store, where he swept the concrete floors with a wood-handled broom taller than he was. “Like dancing,” the grocer told him with a flourish. Later, when he began his studies at the university, he collected tickets at the central train station, an art deco monstrosity long since shuttered, scheduled for demolition any day now. There were flocks of bats sleeping up in the rafters, and they would wake at dusk, as the late train from the north pulled in, and swoop down low over the arriving passengers’ heads. It was a wonderful job. He spent most of the day reading—and now? He hasn’t picked up a book in weeks. His brain is atrophying. There is no need to work now, he writes. There is no need to do anything. Josué sends money enough for the both of us.

  When he’s finished his letter, he folds the thin pages into an envelope. Now what? he asks himself. What does an unemployed man do in a city like this? He has seen them—the old and infirm, and the others, much too young to be doing nothing, those men who shuffle down the streets, and sit for long hours on park benches in the shade, spending all day reading a single page from a poorly written newspaper. They feed the pigeons. They play checkers with colored stones in pl
ace of pieces lost long ago. They speak indecently to the women who happen by, and otherwise communicate among themselves in an invented language of gestures and nonsense words. Will that be his life now? Will I die here?

  Back in the capital, Hernán had lived with Adri and Aurelio in an apartment overlooking a park. A nice enough place, though not large. The apartment’s best feature was its balcony, which on a breezy day was a fine place to take in the scent of eucalyptus and stare at the clouds as they drifted indolently across the sky. It was on the second floor, so that its view of the park was somewhat obscured by a stand of leafy trees on the near sidewalk. When Aurelio was three or four, Hernán would sit on this balcony, the boy on his knee, and together they would talk about the park as if it were a faraway land, completely foreign and unlike the grounds they walked through several times a week. The boy had a magical imagination. The park had waterfalls, secret tunnels burrowed in the earth, flocks of exotic birds. It had been one of the boy’s favorite games—this reimagining—and his ability to play without distraction was one of those attributes Hernán felt the child had inherited from him. Of course, the boy had not, strictly speaking, inherited anything from him, not genetically, only learned it, but did that really make a difference? By the time Hernán moved out of the apartment, they hadn’t played this game in years.

  And this is what Hernán thinks that afternoon as he’s finishing his letter: One day, when Aurelio is older, no longer a child, he will come upon the park of his youth again. He will be an adult, perhaps a student at the university, and he will be driving to pick up a girlfriend, say, or a young woman he is only beginning to know, but whose smile he finds captivating. Her eyes will be brown or green. She will give him an address, a time, a coquettish look, and he will arrive in a borrowed car, which he has washed himself for this very occasion. He won’t notice that the address is so close to the place where he once lived, because in truth, he hasn’t thought of it in a very long time. He arrives, he checks his watch, he realizes he has come early. He’ll drive around to a side street, and turn off the car. A few minutes to kill. Into the park then, where it will hit him slowly: this curving cobblestone path, that fountain, these sagging benches, those eucalyptus trees with their scent of imminent rain. How long has it been? Then he’ll recall the exotic birds, the system of tunnels he’d once imagined with that man who was his stepfather, the electric rivers and glass-bottomed boats, the goblins he’d decided lived here after dark, the music they made when no one else was around. He’ll remember Hernán—his sad face, his dark hair, his sad eyes. Aurelio will walk around the park, stunned and silent, a young man losing himself. A bank of fog will settle over the city, then night will come, and still Hernán’s son (no longer his son) will be there. Morning will come, and noon too, and when the fog has lifted, when the sun is out, an old woman out walking her dog will find the boy, asleep on a bench and dreaming.

  AN INTERRUPTION

  He’s finishing the letter when there’s a knock at the door. It’s the other woman, the one who’d sat with Lena and Clarisa at the Versailles.

  She stands expectantly in the middle of Clarisa’s living room.

  “What now?” she asks finally, but doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead she begins to undress.

  He feels suddenly compelled to tell her his name. It doesn’t seem to register; instead she turns so he can help her undo the top clasp of her yellow dress. He does, hands hardly trembling, heart pounding at the absurdity of it, this strange woman in her underwear, bouncing her weight from one short, slim leg to the other. She seems very nice. Her black hair falls to her shoulders. Nothing could be less erotic.

  “So?” she says, and he realizes he no longer has the right to refuse. That choice is not available to him.

  “So,” he says.

  It’s over a few minutes later.

  While she dresses, Hernán picks the cushions off the floor and rearranges them on the sofa. There’s a heaviness to his gestures, a certain hopelessness.

  She turns once more so he can help with the last clasp of her dress. She lifts her hair again and offers her back to him. A soft rain taps the roof. The skin of her neck is tinted blue in the afternoon light.

  “I’m a friend of Clarisa’s. Just so you know. You were wonderful yesterday at the Versailles.”

  “Thank you,” Hernán says, defeated.

  She’s about to go. He wants her to go.

  Then: “Do I pay you or just work it out with Clarisa later?”

  LIFE VERSUS ANARCHY

  For a long time, Hernán thought his marriage could be saved. More than that: he knew it could be. This was factual certainty, something scientists could prove in a laboratory. At the same time, if he were honest, he knew it wasn’t the pertinent question, not the one he should be asking.

  Did he want it to be saved?

  It tormented him. He woke up wondering, and carried it with him all day. As he made breakfast; when he walked Aurelio to school across the River; at the university, even as he lectured before a roomful of students, even as the words spilled out automatically, his mind was elsewhere. If his marriage was his life, then every moment had to be interrogated. Is this worth saving?

  How about this?

  Or this?

  Then he realized that not being sure was answer enough. Then he realized Adri wasn’t sure either. He felt their combined uncertainty floating above them as they pretended to sleep. In the dark early-morning hours, as they lay in bed, silent, he could tell she was thinking it too.

  Then he knew it was over.

  But still, Hernán didn’t leave. People far better than him in every way have skated to their graves stuck in bad relationships, such is the coercive power of inertia. Maybe we can make it, he thought. Perhaps the routines will carry us through. They had a home, after all. They had Aurelio.

  But in his heart, Hernán knew it was coming. She was stronger than he was. Less enamored of habit. He knew he’d never have the strength to walk away, but began to suspect that she would. He could sense it in her manner, the way her jaw set before she answered him, the flatness of her speech. He wasn’t surprised exactly. When it happened, finally, her eyes were trained on him with a directness he’d never seen, her face expressionless, almost lawyerly. He knew this was the moment—panic—and made some sort of plea, something about how much he loved her, how much he loved Aurelio, how they were a family, in spite of it all—when she interrupted him, shaking her head.

  “You’re a good father, Hernán. You’ve been a good father to my son.”

  He felt a sudden surge of gratitude, even hope.

  “But that’s not enough. You still have to be a good husband.”

  A strand of black hair had fallen in her eyes, and now she tucked it behind her ear.

  “What do you mean?” he managed.

  “You expect me to be grateful. Like you saved me. Saved us. Like I don’t have the right to complain because you’re doing us some kind of favor by raising my son.” She gritted her teeth. “You aren’t.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Do you?” She shook her head, answering her own question. She sighed like someone setting down a heavy weight. “I let you into our life. I did you the favor.”

  Now, in the port city, that seems truer than ever. There was no greater gift, and now it’s gone.

  His debasement begins in earnest. He’s a kept man, unemployed, at least officially, but suddenly working harder than ever.

  “Oh no,” he’d said that day Clarisa’s friend mentioned money. He’d answered without hesitation, a fact that still surprised him. Perhaps he’d known what was happening all along—he certainly should have. The scale of his vanity was suddenly clear to him.

  “Just work it out with Clarisa.”

  The strange woman smiled. “Of course.”

  Then: ten days, six visitors. He never confronts Clarisa. Ten mo
re days, and he’s stopped counting the women. He watches Clarisa for a sign, but she hasn’t changed. She has no need to. Hernán makes love to the women on the sofa in the living room. Some afternoons he’s more inspired than others. Some women desire him with genuine passion; others are more reserved, their bodies letting him know they don’t expect much in the way of acrobatics. They grunt and moan politely, nothing more. The sofa is in frankly terrible shape, the cushions flipped over so many times, he doesn’t remember which sides are supposedly clean. On a few occasions he’s had to move the coffee table against the wall, to make space on the floor for a particularly energetic visitor.

  By now it’s June, and his strength is waning. Hernán is exhausted. Some afternoons, he considers leaving the house, scattering into the streets before any visitor arrives.

  But he doesn’t, of course. He’ll never leave. In fact, he’s still there. See him: sleeping in the storage room that Josué transformed for him when he returned, sitting up in his twin bed to peer out the tiny window that faces the alley behind the house. He doesn’t come out in the morning until the house is empty, Clarisa to the boutique, Josué to the port. He hears them talking at breakfast. He hears them laughing. And still the women visit, and Hernán does his job. He is diligent, dutiful, though he no longer expects any reward. In the evenings, Clarisa brings him a plate of food, a glass of juice, which she leaves on a tray by the door. He’s free to go whenever he wants, they tell him. They’re good to him, and he knows they mean it.

  “You did well today,” Clarisa whispers through the door. “We’re proud of you. Aren’t we, Josué?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, I’d like to explain the title story of this collection and where it came from. “The King Is Always Above the People” references an image of a hanging, and is inspired by a cartoon by Ardeshir Mohassess. The original can be found in the excellent Life in Iran: The Library of Congress Drawings.