Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

“They watched the whole scene without sitting,” Eric told me. “I noticed them because Henry had asked me about Noelia.”

What were they thinking?

Or more specifically, what was Jaime thinking?

Though he’d lived in San Jacinto for more than two decades, Rogelio’s older brother was a well-known figure in town. He’d done well for himself, made money — and nothing earned the people’s respect like money. That night of the play in T—, he stood beside his sister with his arms crossed, squinting at the stage, staring intently at Henry. He hadn’t seen the playwright in fifteen years, but he knew it was him. He had no trouble recognizing that face, those gestures, that posture.

According to Henry, they’d met only once, in Collectors, a scene I imagine Jaime was playing over in his mind. A winter’s day in 1986, in the yard of Block Seven. Jaime had come from San Jacinto to see his brother. He spent a few hours with Rogelio, strolling up and down the yard. Seen from a distance, they were like fish caught in a current, Rogelio and Jaime and all the others. Henry had been watching them all afternoon. Then visitors’ hours were almost over, and as the two brothers were saying their good-byes, Henry couldn’t resist any longer. “I’m not sure why or how,” he told me later, “it just came out.” Perhaps he was hurt that he hadn’t been introduced, though he found that hard to admit. He barreled toward them now, furious, protective, jealous, catching both brothers by surprise.

This is what he said to Jaime that afternoon in 1986, in a voice far too loud for Collectors:

“You need to take better care of your brother.”

Jaime frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“You owe him that. I know what you do.”

“Who’s this?” Jaime asked his brother.

“No one,” said Rogelio.

There was no time for that betrayal to sting. Henry had already gone too far. “It doesn’t matter who I am. I know who you are. You’re the reason he’s in here.”

Jaime glared at this stranger. To his brother, he said, “Get this idiot away from me.”

“That’s enough, Henry.”

It was more than enough, but he couldn’t stop. He was shouting now: “You have the money. I know what you do!”

Jaime shook his head, then he threw a punch at Henry, landing it on his jaw. Henry staggered and fell. Jaime threw an arm around Rogelio, and together they walked to the gate of Block Seven. Jaime never visited Collectors again. Rogelio didn’t speak to Henry for three days.

Now, onstage at T—’s municipal auditorium, the president accepted tribute from his son and his servant. As the scene devolved into noise, Jaime and Noelia found a place to sit.

“Who is he?” Noelia whispered to her older brother, but Jaime didn’t respond.

For Noelia, the next forty minutes were something of a revelation. She’d never seen a play before, except the ones the schoolchildren put on every spring to commemorate the founding of the town. This particular play wasn’t necessarily easy to follow, and as the scenes barreled toward their conclusion, she began to wonder about the young lead. He was handsome, she thought, and it occurred to her he was the same age as Rogelio had been the last time she saw him. That was all. It was an idle thought. They didn’t look alike; it’s just that Nelson was an odd sight in a place like T—. He was a young man in his twenties with a drifting gaze and bad posture. He looked lost, and perhaps this is why she thought of her missing, suddenly dead, brother.

Perhaps it was something else; when pressed, Noelia admitted she didn’t really know. “There was something about him,” she said, and that was all she could manage.

Meanwhile Jaime sat by her side, stone-faced. The actors floated back and forth across the stage, recited their lines, made their jokes, and the audience laughed, or shouted with joy, or fell into a meditative hush. Jaime was unmoved. The play’s climax, when Nelson’s character chats up the servant, tricks him, and then kills him — this was particularly powerful that evening, and the audience responded with gasps that could be heard all over that chilly auditorium. According to Eric, there were even some tears. When asked if it was Diciembre’s best performance of the tour, Patalarga was unequivocal. “Of course,” he told me. “Nelson’s anger that night was real. And Henry’s despair was too.”

Noelia agreed: “It gave me chills.”

The play ended ten minutes before nine in the evening, to sustained applause.

There was no one to close the curtain, so the three actors spent a moment onstage, smiling and waving at the audience. Then the clapping died down, and most of those in attendance headed toward the exit. But not everyone. Not Jaime. He stood, lingered in place for a moment, rocking side to side almost imperceptibly and never taking his eyes off the stage.

“Are you all right?” Noelia asked.

Her brother nodded.

“Should we go, then?”

“Not yet.”

“Please,” said Noelia. “Don’t hurt anyone.”

Jaime turned to her then. There was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t place, almost like pity.

Then he walked straight forward, pushing through the metal folding chairs that stood between him and the performers. I imagine something akin to a parting of the waters, the chairs clanging this way and that, Jaime cutting a rough path through them with long, heavy steps. Eric, still lingering along the wall, thought the gesture was rude, but chose not to say anything. It was Jaime, after all. You didn’t say anything to Jaime.

Nelson, Patalarga, and Henry had begun to gather their props: the scattered letters; the presidential scarf used to mimic a hanging in the third scene and then tossed off to the side at the beginning of the second act; the flimsy but surprisingly realistic plastic knife used in the murder scene. The houselights had come on, but they were weak, and none of the actors noticed Jaime until he was standing before the stage. He called Henry by name. Noelia hadn’t moved from her seat. She saw the whole thing.

“He said something to the president, the one who’d come to see us.”

Henry knelt down until they were almost at eye level with each other. They exchanged a few words.

“I saw my brother nodding. Then I saw the president’s expression drop. He was facing me, you see. He went pale. My brother grabbed him by the collar, pulled him from the stage, and tossed him to the floor.” She paused and took a deep breath. “At that point everything got very confusing.”

From the corner of his eye, Patalarga saw Henry tip off the stage. “My first thought was that he’d fallen, that it was an accident.” He hadn’t really paid much attention to the man Henry was talking to, but then he heard a shout.

Jaime had Henry on his back (once more, all these years later), but this time, he got six or seven good kicks in before anyone could respond. “I jumped off the stage and tried to grab the guy, but he shook me off,” Patalarga told me later. “It was the second time in five hours that I’d had to defend Henry.” For his trouble, he caught an elbow to the face.

Patalarga lunged at Jaime again, and by this time Nelson and Eric had rushed over too; together they were able to pull him away. Jaime was shouting, struggling against them, but no one seems to recall what he was yelling.

They all remember Henry though, the shock of him: the president lay on the floor, writhing and covering his face with his bloodied white gloves. His lip was busted, his nose broken. There was blood on his chin, and though he didn’t know it yet, two of his ribs were cracked. He lay on his back, taking shallow breaths; after a moment, he opened his eyes. The lights above blurred in and out of focus.