Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

In other words: they were becoming friends.

Meanwhile, the rainy season was ending. By that point, they’d spent some eight weeks on the road; had gone from the coast to the highlands to the lowlands and back up again; passing through a succession of villages that seemed from a distance to bleed together in kaleidoscopic intensity. The country, which for Nelson had always been a mystery, was real to him now, a series of stark tableaux come to life: from mining settlements like Sihuas to lazy riverside towns in the lowlands to clusters of tiny houses spread atop a high mesa, homes to modest families of cattle grazers. This area fascinated Nelson most of all, these people who’d settled in ever-widening concentric circles around a massive slaughterhouse, smelling of offal and rot, a mean, dark place which was nonetheless the center of the region’s economic, social, and cultural life, and which had even become, for one brief but magical evening, a theater.

They were mostly inured to the austere beauty of the landscape by then; it was right in front of them, so commonplace and overwhelming they could no longer see it. In Nelson’s journals his descriptions of the highland terrain are hampered by his own maddening ignorance, that of a lifelong city dweller who has no idea what he’s looking at: mountains are described with simplistic variations of “large,” “medium,” or “small,” as if he were ordering a soda from a fast-food restaurant. Trees and plants and birds, and even the color of the sky, are given much the same treatment. Greater attention is paid to the people: pages upon pages devoted to Cayetano, Tania, and others (descriptions which I’ve drawn from to prepare this manuscript), as well as a vast assortment of miners, laborers, farmers, money changers, and truck drivers whom they’d met along the way. They appear, unique and alive, often nameless, and then are gone.

On the morning of June 11, 2001, Diciembre arrived in the small city of San Jacinto, which felt, relative to all the previous stops on the tour, like a version of Paris or New York or London. It was the largest town on their itinerary, and they were due to perform a couple nights at a local English language institute named after Franklin D. Roosevelt. How Patalarga had programmed this particular show, no one knew; but once in San Jacinto, Henry and Nelson thanked him for it. Suddenly dropped into the town’s delightful chaos, they became aware of the sensory deprivation they’d endured those long eight weeks. They walked casually through the city, taking in the movement with an appreciative mix of panic and wonder. San Jacinto’s sixty thousand or so residents lived atop a flat, dry plain, trading anything and everything according to rules only they understood. One noisy street was overrun with musicians for hire. “All the hits!” shouted a saleswoman with manic streaks of red in her hair. “Pay for eleven hours, and the twelfth hour is free!” Another was filled with the cheerful, drunken employees of a trucking company, christening six new vehicles in the middle of an intersection, blocking traffic in all directions. The trucks shone brightly with wax, as if smiling in the sun, and were decorated with bunting fastened to the tops of the cabs. Men dashed about, tossing confetti in the air, spraying the chassis with champagne. It was like a wedding, only it wasn’t clear who was marrying these giant, gleaming machines, or if they were marrying each other. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson stayed to observe the confusing ceremony, and then, when the noise became too great, followed the railroad tracks away from the center, hoping for some quiet. For many blocks, they could hear the horn blasts, now fading, but still frantic and celebratory.

They came to a small plaza where dozens of men stood among large chalkboards placed in rows that zigzagged from one end of the space to the other. It wasn’t at all clear what the men were after. A heavyset woman sat at one end of the chalkboards with a pen and clipboard in her lap; now and again, she would hand a piece of paper to an adolescent girl, who would then climb a small stepladder and begin copying the words out in colored chalk. The men would gather around, with severe expressions on their wind-bitten faces, scrutinizing her work. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson watched from the edges of the crowd, waiting for the right moment to get a better look. For once Henry didn’t pretend he knew everything, but took in the scene with the same puzzlement as the rest. He sent Nelson, finally, to investigate.

“You’re an actor,” Henry said, “you’ll blend.”

Nelson returned moments later. He had not blended, but been met instead with dozens of distrustful eyes.

They were job postings, he reported. Classified ads, performed live.

Henry rejoiced. “Theater for the people!” he said, as if the idea had been his all along.

That evening, they ate at a chicken restaurant near the center of town, its tables wrapped in thick plastic. They’d done well the previous night, recouping enough in donations to treat themselves to a real sit-down dinner. Lunch had passed without their even noticing it: confronted with the sights and sounds of San Jacinto, they’d simply forgotten to eat. Now a liter bottle of soda stood before them, but no one drank.

But Nelson had something on his mind; he had for days, since the night in San Felipe. He asked Henry about it now. He felt he was owed some clarification. “Have you been calling home?”

The playwright smiled, saying nothing at first, but finally, he nodded.

“I thought we weren’t doing that,” Nelson said.

Patalarga laughed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because I’ve been calling too.”

The food came.

As it turned out, the only one of the three protecting the integrity of “the play’s constructed universe” was Nelson. He lost his appetite. Henry and Patalarga found this very funny; Nelson, less so. They chided their friend playfully, trying to pull him from his bad mood, which they found entirely unreasonable. And perhaps they were right. How could he have been so literal? they asked, but he had no answers. The commitment Nelson had shown the project — something he’d been proud of only a moment before — was now a sign of gullibility.

Patalarga attempted to explain away Nelson’s complaints: Henry had lied, yes, in the strictest sense, but this is what great directors do. They challenge their actors, prod them, force them against their will into a place of discomfort, in this way extracting some extra dose of magic for the performance. Isolated, mournful, longing for home — this was Nelson, the actor, at his best.

“Imagine a happy, well-balanced Alejo,” said Patalarga. “That would never do. I should tell you one day how he treated my wife, when she had your role.”

Henry agreed. “Diana still won’t talk to me.”

“This was what you wanted?” Nelson asked. “To make me unhappy?”

“Sure it was. We needed you to be. For the play.” With that, he thrust a piece of chicken into his mouth.

“But—”

Henry’s face was covered in grease, and he chewed for a long, luxurious minute. He loved these moments, loved Nelson’s disappointment, in fact. Mentorship, such as he understood it, consisted primarily of didactic exercises like this one: transforming frustration into the building blocks of knowledge.

“Please, my dear Alejito: did you really expect me not to talk to my daughter?” Henry said finally. “Or for the servant not to call his wife?”

“I guess not.”

“Who did you want to call?” Patalarga asked.

Nelson rolled his eyes. “ Now you want to know?”

“We do,” said Henry, softening. “We really do.”

Henry, later: “I loved Nelson. Of course I wanted to know.” After a pause: “I’m so sorry for what happened.”