Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

The mayor opened by saying he wasn’t “hostile to art, per se”; from there, things only got worse. He smiled often, but never warmly, tapping his long, slender fingers on his desk as he spoke. He described a number of killings that had taken place in the area since Diciembre’s last visit in 1982, with a tone that implied the first event was somehow related to the others.

Patalarga later admitted that his mind wandered throughout the speech, that he found himself looking out the window, at the church with the leaky roof, and above, at the sky, only then beginning to clear. It was midmorning. His wife, Diana, was surely awake, but perhaps still in bed, enjoying the silence of an empty house. The Olympic was locked up and empty, costing him money every minute of every day. For no good reason, he remembered his childhood in the mountains, on the whole, happy memories, and his early schooling, during which he’d been subjected to long-winded harangues not unlike this one. He’d had a teacher who was a communist. Another who was a reactionary. Both were living abroad now, in Europe. In a week he’d see his mother, and as always, the thought filled him with ambivalence. He’d pressured Henry into this tour, presenting it as something his old friend had to do for himself, for his art; but as the mayor prattled, Patalarga realized that, in fact, he was the one who’d wanted it. Who’d wanted it badly. It was a way to be young again; to escape the city for a spell and relive times which, though difficult, constituted the central experiences of his otherwise uneventful life.

“The war years,” he told me when we spoke. “It’s not that I miss them, not at all. But I remember them. Every last detail. It worries me, but sometimes I feel like everything else is a blur. Does that make any sense?”

I shook my head. Honestly, I didn’t understand.

“I was just a boy.”

We were silent awhile.

In San Luis, the mayor’s concern was the title of the piece.

“Idiot,” he said. “If, at school, my son were to call another student an idiot, the teacher would send a letter home and the child would be punished. Would he not?”

Cayetano furrowed his brow. “Your son is twenty-two years old.”

The mayor glared. “As usual, my esteemed Cayetano, you are missing my point.” He turned to Henry. “Are you a father, Mr. Nuñez?”

“I am.”

“And would you not punish your child if he—”

“She.”

The mayor paused, as if having a daughter had never occurred to him. “If she said something like that to a classmate?”

Henry thought of Ana, who was too smart to toss around insults thoughtlessly. If his daughter were to call someone an idiot, it would mean they were an idiot.

He opted not to say this. “But Mr. Mayor, is a play subject to the same codes of behavior as a child?”

The mayor frowned, paused, and wrapped his long fingers around a glass of water. “I don’t know the answer to that.” If he was an imbecile, at least he was honest. He took a sip of water.

Henry felt he’d scored a point, and opted to forge ahead: after all, he was the president, and it was his role to defend his play, his partners, their art form. He intended to be respectful, to negotiate this fine balance between the ego of a small-town mayor and the needs of a theater collective like Diciembre. What, Henry argued, is a play without an audience? Isn’t a script simply potential energy until that magical moment when it becomes something more? Isn’t alchemy like that only possible when the words are made real, when the actors step out from behind the curtain (or the tarp, in this case) and perform ? Henry could feel himself gaining momentum as he spoke. Every audience is different, and every audience is a gift which can never be overlooked or taken for granted; as for Diciembre, here they were—“Here we are!” Henry said, perhaps a bit too loudly — and they’d come to San Luis for an audience. To transform the virtual into the actual . They had hoped to use the recently remodeled school auditorium, but they would perform this piece one way or another; in the plaza, in the market, in the street beneath the pouring rain. They’d do it in Cayetano’s home if they had to!

The mayor smiled.

“Perfect. Do it at Cayetano’s house.” He stood. “Gentlemen, have a wonderful day. I wish you much success.”

TO PREPAREfor the show, Patalarga, Cayetano, and Nelson spent part of the afternoon carrying furniture outside, and covering it with Diciembre’s tarp, in case of rain. They cleared as much space as possible in the house, making room for an audience that would sit on the floor. While they worked, Cayetano apologized for what had happened. Their play, he explained, had fallen victim to a rivalry that had emerged in recent years between him and the mayor. A dispute about land. These things are common in small towns. He began to go into the details, but stopped himself.

“You know what? It’s not interesting, even to me.”

Meanwhile, Henry put on the presidential riding pants, the ruffled shirt and long coat, the leather boots, the white gloves and sash, and went down to the market once more.

“Everyone stared at me,” he reported. “They stopped me, and asked where I’d come from. It was wonderful.”

This time, there were more people around, the market was louder and more alive. Melissa borrowed a bullhorn from another vendor, and announced Henry to the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen: the president!”

With the people’s attention, Henry once more clambered atop a stool and spoke of Diciembre, the play, its surprising change of venue. There was a buzz this time — who is that oddly dressed man, and what exactly is he talking about? — and when he finished, Henry bowed, taking care not to lose his balance, and received the tour’s very first round of applause.

According to Patalarga, Nelson was both nervous and determined not to appear so. He was not a complete novice; after all he’d performed in a few of the capital’s more storied theaters. But this was undoubtedly different, Patalarga told me. “The intimacy of it, the nearness of these strangers, the way they look at you. It couldn’t have been easy for him.”

Did Nelson flub his first lines?

He did.

Did he miss his cue for the fight scene?

He did.

Did he see the faces of his audience, feel them close, smell their presence in the room, and long for the trappings of those theaters he knew back home?

He did.

But he pushed through all that, and by the time the mayor appeared, midway through the first act, Nelson had mostly recovered. Things were humming along. The mayor, full of bluster and pique, seemed unimpressed. He made his way to the corner opposite the door, and stood against the wall with his arms crossed, frowning.

Nelson had no idea who this man was, and later claimed it was mere coincidence that his line “But Father, you must be careful! Evil lurks everywhere!” was delivered with eyes locked on the latecomer.

Everyone noticed, and Cayetano laughed nervously; soon the entire room was laughing along with him. Everyone but the mayor.

“This is what Nelson had to learn,” Patalarga told me. “That the play is different every time. That it doesn’t matter if you mess up. There’s no such thing as a mistake.”

The mayor stormed out well before the climactic murder scene.

It was just as well. There was more humor at his expense once he’d gone. A gentle rain began moments later, just as Patalarga’s character was stabbed. It tapped pleasantly on the roof. When the play was finished, the applause and the rain seemed to blend into one, each augmenting the other. There’d been no theater in town for as long as anyone could remember. No one wanted to leave. Nelson, immersed in the chatter, felt warm. Then a bottle appeared, and the volume was raised, and the dancing soon began. Nelson stood against the wall, shy, but Cayetano and Patalarga sent Melissa across the room to pull him onto the floor. He took his first tentative steps to the beat, and Henry yelled, “The city boy!” his voice somehow carrying over the music and the rain.