Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

Nelson could have chosen to share the story of his afternoon, or the content of his conversation with Ixta, but he didn’t. In fact, he’d mentioned her only a couple of times, never by name, keeping her and a lot of things about himself private from his collaborators during those first weeks of the tour. He didn’t tell them about Sebastián’s passing, for example, or much more about Francisco beyond the vagaries he’d shared that first afternoon. He never showed them his plays, though he did admit, after some questioning, that he wrote.

That neither of the Diciembre veterans asked why he was upset should not, in my opinion, be interpreted as a lack of empathy on their part but rather as an indication of who exactly these three men were in relation to one another at the beginning of the tour. While Patalarga and Henry were old friends, they were also, in very important ways, strangers, two middle-aged men getting to know each other again after many years. They were working together for the first time since Henry had been imprisoned. And as for Nelson, the fact that they liked him, that they’d chosen him from among the dozens of actors who’d auditioned for the role of Alejo, does not imply any intimacy.

So, a snapshot of Diciembre as the tour begins: Nelson, troubled, fills the pages of his journal with words about Ixta and his heartbreak, before finally dozing off some three hours from the capital; Henry, beside him, attempting little or no conversation, dons a satin eye mask from the play’s wardrobe, and promptly falls into a dream about the prison, about Rogelio; and Patalarga, who hasn’t been to a movie theater in five or six years, sits across the aisle from his companions, engrossed by the action film blinking on the bus’s tiny television.

IXTA WALKED HOMEthat afternoon a little dazed, trying to fix the details of her conversation with Nelson within the trajectory of their relationship. It had once seemed that the world would defer politely to their whims, but the disappointing last eight months had been a slow unraveling of all that optimism, a break and a period of mourning, a faltering attempt to recapture what had been lost. Doom. Starting over. Now this, whatever it was.

Mindo was not home, and Ixta was glad for this: a small mercy that she celebrated with a cigarette (she almost never smoked anymore) and a few hours of television. She burrowed deep into the couch, clutching the cushions as if they were life vests. On the other side of the pulled curtains, day turned to dusk. Like Nelson at the bus station, Ixta took in the news of the dead singer, marveling at the scandal the press seemed determined to create. Unlike Nelson, she did know who the singer was. The newscasters played old videos, showed soft-focus stills of the singer’s early days playing dusty fields at the edge of the city. Night fell, and the fans gathered in front of the murdered star’s home; with candles and bloodshot eyes, they performed their sadness flamboyantly, pushing the very limits of realism. This is what Ixta thought to herself, and then: that phrase, it sounds like something Nelson would say. She put the television on mute, and watched for a minute, in silence, to verify that it was true. It was. Yes, she could hear his voice. Yes, it was still there: ironic, wry, curious. Ixta turned off the television, and sat very quietly, listening to the room hum, and waiting for Nelson’s voice to fade from her consciousness.

One day, when they were just starting out, they’d blown off a class on the theory of representation and gone to eat at the Central Market. It was Ixta’s idea, and Nelson wasn’t opposed. The crowds got denser as they approached, and the lovers held hands casually, letting themselves be jostled by the passersby. The shoppers and pickpockets and stray dogs and maids and businessmen and lonely hearts. A teenage boy pushed through the masses, hoisting above him a wooden broomstick strung with cartoon piñatas. Ixta and Nelson followed him, past the vegetable stands, the dozens of varieties of potatoes, the fishmongers huddled over ice chests; past the boys tending to anxious lizards, those golden-eyed marvels destined to die behind glass for the amusement of the city’s children. An old man sold shakes, made with frogs, boiled and skinned, blended with water and egg yolk. The savage little creatures crawled about in their aquariums, blissfully unaware of their fate. “For potency! For love!” the man shouted as Ixta and Nelson passed. He had the desperate voice of a faith healer, as if his primary concern were not commerce but their conjugal happiness.

They ate ceviche served in a paper bowl, while looking up at the market’s old steel girders and the light leaking in through the high windows. There was something lovely about it, but they couldn’t decide what exactly. When they finished, they headed straight east from the market, though it was the long way, into the sleepy, run-down neighborhoods on the edge of the Old City, until they were on a narrow side street, far enough from the tumult of the market to feel almost provincial. A woman in a bathrobe sat on her balcony, elbows on the railing, watching them pass.

And Ixta was watching Nelson. All day she’d felt it, a hazy sense of expectation, only she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. She slowed, and then stopped. She made Nelson stop too.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

He bit his lip, and she did too, unconsciously, so that for a moment they stood on the sidewalk, mirror images of each other.

I’d like to explain very carefully what happened next, as carefully as Ixta explained it to me: with his right hand, Nelson scratched his temple, and at that moment she felt a sudden itch on her temple as well. He covered his face, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, and immediately Ixta’s eyes too felt a desire to be massaged. He licked his lips, and hers felt dry. With every gesture he identified a need her own body was slow to register on its own. He blinked many times, and her eyes opened and closed of their own volition. He repeated his question—“Are you all right?”—but there was no point in answering it anymore.

I’m falling in love, she thought. That must be what’s happening.

Years later, on the evening Nelson and Diciembre left the city, Ixta tried to get Nelson’s voice out of her head. And failed. That night and the next, and for a week after, Ixta was not the same person everyone expected her to be. Or the person she herself wanted to be. It was odd, she said when we spoke. A sense of drifting. A fondness for quiet. The city seemed alien to her, and she found herself daydreaming about going on a trip herself. For the past few months she’d been looking for new work, but set that search aside for a moment. Though she was loath to admit it, Nelson’s absence affected her, at least at first.

She even thought of writing him a letter, she told me, only there was nowhere to send it.

THE BUS ARRIVEDin San Luis at dawn, stopping at the town’s central plaza, where they were met by Patalarga’s cousin Cayetano. It was far too cold out to be chatty, and while they waited for the bags to appear from the storage compartment beneath the bus, Nelson observed his new surroundings in silence. The light was gray and thin, mist still clinging to the hillsides, but there were small houses dotting the slopes and footpaths snaking between them. Those must be the suburbs, he thought. On the western side of the valley, the terraced hills were dark with recently tilled earth and he could make out a few human shapes — farmers — moving about in the half-light. It had rained overnight and the streets were rutted and pooled with water. At the far end of the plaza, a woman in traditional dress swept her front steps with a broom that seemed taller than she was. From a distance, it was impossible to tell if the broom was overlarge or if she was very small.