Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

Henry and Patalarga knew people in every town: old collaborators or antagonists from the early days of Diciembre, the men and women with whom they’d shared their youth. These acquaintances had lived most of their lives in the provinces, at a different rhythm. They told funny stories masquerading as tragedies, and sad stories purporting to be comedies; they drank heavily, and seemed not to notice those things most concerning to Nelson: the abject poverty of their surroundings, the terrible condition of the roads, the relentless rains and the bitter cold. He admired this too: their ability to preserve joy at any cost, the way prehistoric man might have preserved fire. Nelson had learned to chew coca leaves, had come to enjoy the numbness as it spread over his face, down his neck, and into his chest; a small pleasure that muted the harshness of the rainy season and smoothed over the effects of the altitude. And they were at the edge of a different region now: the lower valleys, where the forests began. If they went farther, another day or two or three, the cold would give way completely, and they’d be at the edge of the jungle, free to breathe again, almost normally. Now they sat around a rectangular wooden table in a cramped restaurant, listening to the old police chief tell this funny little war story about arresting actors. A fluorescent light buzzed; the television was on, but no one watched. Behind them stood a second line of men, anxious to listen in — if the table were the stage, they were the balcony, so to speak. Workers, all of them, men with rough hands jammed deep in their pockets, men who laughed when it was time to laugh, who fell silent when it was time for quiet. They were the chorus, carefully following the police chief’s cues. If a glass of beer was offered, they accepted; if it wasn’t, they didn’t complain. They were indifferent to cold, didn’t mind standing, and followed the conversation in the bar as closely as they’d followed the play itself.

The old man went on: “So then these kids, these ruffians, show up on the back of a pickup truck, wearing bandanas and smelling bad. They set up a tent in the plaza, without even asking. They play rock music from a boom box. You must think we’re primitives here, but this is how it happened. My deputy — God bless him, he’s abroad now — he says to me, That’s them! That’s who? I ask. The terrorists! But how do you know? I say, and this one, he was always reading the papers. He had an answer for everything: Look how dirty they are! What did we know? We’d never seen one. The ladies, they smoked cigarettes, they had patches on their jeans. The boys looked sickly, with stringy hair and thin mustaches. Look at them! Even now they look shifty! Was I wrong to worry? Tell me, son, was I wrong?”

The old man laughed with his entire body, the chorus too. Henry and Patalarga didn’t, but no one seemed to notice.

“I’d arrest them now!” Nelson called out.

“But what would I charge them with?” the police chief said in an exaggerated whisper.

“I’m sure you could come up with something,” Patalarga said.

“Anything will do,” Henry added. “The courts aren’t very picky, you know.”

No one had anything to say to that. The police chief smiled politely, and the chorus held its breath for a moment. Nelson sensed the discomfort too, and when it had gone on just a second too long, he changed the subject, and brought up the rains; the police chief smiled, deferring to the chorus, who were the laborers, the ones who tilled the earth. They’d come into town for the show, but what they really knew was the land.

“How are things out there?” the old police chief asked. “What’s happening over in the provinces?”

The provinces — this was another thing Nelson had come to understand. No matter where you went, no matter how far you traveled into the far-flung countryside, the provinces were always farther out. It was impossible to arrive there. Not here— never here —always just down the road.

One of the men said his fields might be washed away. Two straight weeks of rain this late in the season; it wasn’t normal. The rivers are swollen, said another, the bridges could collapse. And then, a third man, with a broad face and black hair that fell limply just above his eyes, said, “Heard from my cousin that it’s getting so bad in the lowlands that the planes can’t even fly!”

At this, everyone fell silent.

“Planes?” Nelson asked.

He hadn’t heard of any planes. He hadn’t seen them, or even imagined them. Though he’d never flown, air travel was his; it belonged to that other world, the one he’d left behind.

The former police chief’s face was stern. He glared for a moment at the offending chorus member, who’d broken the rules by speaking out of turn and mentioning the lower valley’s most important and fastest growing industry, the drug trade.

“Perhaps you could arrest him for that ,” said Henry, a comment that did nothing to lighten the suddenly oppressive mood.

After that night, and after Henry had explained, Nelson looked to the skies when they traveled. He noted it in his journal, welcoming this new way to pass the time, to distract himself from the precariousness of the roads or the raw winds. He never saw a plane. They spent four days in that area, descending toward the heat, before Henry decided they should turn back toward the highlands.

“I feel more comfortable when there’s less oxygen,” he said. “The play makes more sense that way. Don’t you agree?”

And because he was the president, Diciembre returned to the highlands.

Then there was the night in San Felipe, when, after a particularly energetic performance, Nelson nearly fainted. Patalarga’s murder took a lot out of him that evening, and he sat afterward, slumped in a chair, unable to catch his breath. Inhaling was like swallowing knives, and his head felt as if it might separate from his neck and float away. Eventually he recovered, and they were all invited to a party in a one-room adobe house on the outskirts of town. He was rushed inside, where the strangers paid special attention to feeding him and getting him drunk. Surprisingly, the liquor helped, and it felt nice to be doted on. When Nelson began to turn blue, the owner of the home, a gray-haired man named Aparicio, asked if he wanted a jacket. Nelson nodded enthusiastically, and his host rose and walked to the refrigerator, standing before its open door, as if contemplating a snack. Nelson thought, He’s making fun of me. He watched Aparicio open the vegetable drawer and take out a pair of wool socks. He tossed them to Nelson, and when the door opened a bit more, Nelson saw the refrigerator was, in fact, being used as a wardrobe. The bottom shelves remained, but all the rest had been removed. There were mittens in the butter tray, sweaters and jackets hanging from a wooden bar nailed to the inside walls. Only then did he notice the few perishables sitting on the counter. In this cold, they were in no danger of spoiling.

The gathered men and women told sad stories about the war and laughed at their own suffering in ways Nelson found incomprehensible. Sometimes they would speak in Quechua, and then the laughter became much more intense, and also much sadder, or at least that’s how it seemed to Nelson. Later, a woman arrived, Tania, and everyone stood. She had long black hair, which she wore in a single braid, and an orange and yellow shawl draped over her shoulders. She was beautiful, and very small, but somehow gave the impression of great strength. She circled the room shaking everyone’s hand — except Henry’s, who instead received a floating kiss in the air just beside his right ear.

“Are you still acting,” Tania asked when she got to Nelson, “or are you actually that sick?”