Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “I am. I just did.”

What happened next surprised them all: Nelson pushed Henry with two hands, sending the playwright tumbling backward. One of the chairs tipped over with a crash, and the empty beer glass toppled over once more, this time landing on the floor.

Nelson stood over Henry, his face red with fury. Perhaps he was a fighter, after all.

Patalarga forced his way between them, as best he could, trying to calm Nelson down. It wasn’t easy. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you bring us here?” Nelson shouted. “What do you want from us?”

“I’d never seen him like that,” Patalarga told me later.

He managed to push Nelson back, enough for Henry to get to his feet. The playwright stood, straightened his shirt, and raised a hand to the startled owner. Then he faced Nelson, glaring. He took a deep breath. There was some swagger to him.

“Patalarga,” he said. “Did I deserve that?”

“Honestly?”

Henry nodded.

“Yes.”

Henry looked puzzled for a moment, then deflated. That flash of vigor vanished as quickly as it had come; he considered his friends, the empty veranda, the plaza before them, and felt small.

“You’re wondering why,” Nelson said, still scowling. “I’ll tell you. You’re being selfish. For a change.”

Henry slumped into a chair. “Is it true?” he asked Patalarga, with searching eyes.

Patalarga nodded.

Henry rubbed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “You win. We’ll do it.”

AT ROGELIO’S CHILDHOOD HOME,the situation was deteriorating, and Noelia had begun to worry. This was the story these two women had been told, the story they knew: their beloved Rogelio had gone first to the city for work, then immigrated to the United States in 1984 at age twenty-one. Jaime told them all this, in broad strokes, with just enough detail to seem true. Rogelio had braved border crossings and skirted civil wars in Central America, negotiated Mexico by bus, and passed into the United States through a tunnel in Nogales. Eventually he made it to the city of Los Angeles. As far as they knew, that’s where he remained; and he hadn’t returned to visit only because he had no papers. Jaime claimed to speak to him roughly once a year, and they believed him. Noelia had never doubted it; and as for Mrs. Anabel, she held on to the idea with fierce resolve. Every year for her younger son’s birthday, she’d baked him a cake.

If Mrs. Anabel’s gullibility on this count seems far-fetched, remember this was T—: the rows of padlocked houses are all the context one needs. In another place it might strain credulity, but here nothing could be more normal than Rogelio disappearing for seventeen years, and still being thought of as alive . My father still speaks warmly of people he hasn’t seen or heard from in forty-five years, and by the tone of his voice you might expect them to appear tomorrow and renew their unbreakable friendship. Time means something very different in a place like T—. As does distance. As does memory. Almost every family had a son who’d gone off into the world. Some sent money; some vanished without a trace. Until proof to the contrary was offered, they were all to be thought of as living. It was the town’s unspoken credo.

The truth about Rogelio’s fate, the story Henry shared, had upset this balance. Mrs. Anabel was the most affected, naturally; even on a good day, dementia made her subject to mood swings she was unable to control. But that afternoon, the very thought of Rogelio dead threw her into a panic, and not long after Henry had gone, she was weeping with rage and helplessness.

“She kept calling for Rogelio, for her baby,” Noelia told me later. “I didn’t know what to do. If he was dead, why had no one told her? Shouldn’t a mother always know these things? Why had no one told me ?”

A few minutes before three, she managed to give her mother a sedative and coax her back to bed. This was not easy. She deflected all questions about Rogelio until the old woman was asleep, then Noelia pried open the door to the street and hurried into town. If Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson had not been caught up in their own discussion, they might have seen her rushing across the plaza, one hand clutching the hem of her skirt so as not to drag its edge across the cobblestones.

It was a little after three in the afternoon when she finally got her brother Jaime on the line. She tried to explain it as best she could, but she herself didn’t quite understand what had happened, why this stranger had appeared out of nowhere, talking about their Rogelio. Jaime didn’t seem to get it either, or pretended not to, and finally Noelia lost her patience. She changed tacks, stopped trying to explain.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The sound of her own voice startled her. Her hands were shaking. She hadn’t shouted in years.

On the other end of the line, there was silence. Then: “About what?”

“About Rogelio,” she said.

She could hear Jaime’s long sigh. “Does Mama know?”

“She’s in terrible shape.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. A moment later he’d hung up.

Jaime got in his car and arrived by early evening, just as the yellow lights in the plaza were flickering to life, and just as Diciembre was preparing to go onstage before a few dozen audience members in the municipal auditorium. Nelson had won the argument, perhaps the first time in the history of Diciembre that Henry had lost one.

It was June 12, 2001. As it turned out, this would be the troupe’s last show together. Though they didn’t know it yet, Diciembre’s first tour in fifteen years was over.

THE PREPARATIONSfor Diciembre’s performance in T— began around five, when the mayor’s deputy, a cheerful high school student in his last year, unlocked the municipal auditorium. The deputy’s name was Eric. He was young and fresh-faced, and he’d be leaving T— within a few months.

“This is it!” he said brightly.

“This is it,” repeated Nelson, whistling a long, fading note to himself. He dropped his end of the heavy duffel bag, and considered the space before him.

The auditorium was one of the town’s newer buildings, a charmless and impractical metal box that stayed cold in the rainy season and hot in the dry. It had been underutilized for years, suffering from a neglect that reminded Diciembre of their spiritual home, the Olympic. Eric left them just inside the door, and slid along the wall to the raised stage. There, he disappeared behind a curtain and began to turn on the lights, first one row, then another, then a few at once, and so on. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson stood with arms crossed, watching the fluorescent tubes above hum on and now off, in various combinations. None cast a particularly pleasing light on the dank space, but the young man finally settled on the arrangement that was the least offensive.

“How’s this?” he called out from behind the curtain.

Henry held his hands out in front of him, fingers spread. His white presidential gloves were a grayish yellow.

“It’s terrific,” said Patalarga.

They carried their things backstage, and began to unpack and then change, each man floating to different corners of the dressing area, hardly speaking. Henry was brooding; Nelson seemed distracted; Patalarga fretted about his costume. Somehow his clothes didn’t feel right, he said to no one in particular. Had they shrunk, or had he put on weight? There was no mirror, so they had to rely on each other, which might have worked if they’d been in a different collective mood. But they weren’t. The three of them dressed sloppily, and scarcely spoke. At six-thirty, Henry convened a brief meeting to go over some rough spots in the play, but this was entirely unnecessary, of course. What rough spots was he referring to exactly? What surprises could the performance hold at this point? Still, Nelson and Patalarga listened to Henry’s rambling instructions out of respect and a sense of duty. He might have gone on longer, but soon the people began shuffling in, and the three men fell into a reverent silence. It’s a sound every actor loves, and, in a sense, lives for: the murmur of a crowd, the patter of feet, hum of strange voices. You perk up in excitement, anticipation. You begin to imagine who your audience will be, what they will look like. Before you ever cast eyes on them, they are real people. Before you ever see them, you are connected.