Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

Nelson opened the front page. He looked for news from the city, politics, sports. National news was relegated to an inner section, a few poorly written items that read like dispatches from a distant planet. A senator had proposed a law against drunk driving. (Bar owners were opposed.) A police dog had been wounded in a fire, and would have to be put down. (Animal rights groups were opposed.) A building in the colonial center had partially collapsed, and would have to be demolished. (Preservation groups were opposed.) Nelson scanned the paper, then the empty plaza, and failed to see any connection at all.

Just then Jaime stepped out. He saw Nelson and frowned. “Let’s go.”

“Just a second.”

“We’re leaving,” Jaime said. “Segura, I understand my sister owes you some money.”

The man nodded.

Jaime reached into his pocket and pulled out a few bills, which the storeowner accepted with his head bowed. Then Jaime turned, and began to walk off. Nelson closed the paper, and hurried after him. He saw then — and it was strange that he hadn’t realized it earlier — how physically impressive Jaime was. It was somehow more apparent at this distance: he wasn’t tall, he was wide. His shoulders were broad and strong, and now that Nelson saw his shape, Jaime’s swift attack on Henry was even more surprising.

“I’m coming,” Nelson called out.

“Rogelio doesn’t read,” Jaime said when Nelson had caught up. “Not the newspaper, not anything. I told you that.”

Nelson apologized.

They walked on, across the plaza, toward the northeast district, over a footbridge, and then up the steep hill that rose to the east of town. A few blocks on and the houses petered out, giving way to terraced fields and irrigation ditches carved expertly into the earth. By whom? Nelson wondered. Where were the people? He wanted to ask, but was afraid to.

“Do you know San Jacinto?” Jaime asked when they were above the town. He didn’t wait for an answer. Below them, lay T—, its red-roofed and white-walled houses, its narrow, picturesque streets. “San Jacinto is a terrible place. Nothing like this. Hideous. But it’s where the work is.” He cleared his throat. “What did you earn on this little tour you did?”

“You mean money?”

He always meant money.

One page of Nelson’s journal was dedicated to a rough accounting of what he’d made and spent on the tour. The figures were a jumble, but the basic arithmetic was clear enough: he’d broken even. Nelson knew that, and he’d had no opinion on this information until that very moment. One didn’t join Diciembre for the wages, after all. But now, the idea of breaking even seemed suddenly disappointing. He glanced at Jaime and saw opportunity. He made up a number, an outrageous, ambitious number , he wrote that evening, to which Jaime laughed.

“That’s it?” he said.

Nelson blushed.

“I’ll give you twice that. Now start thinking like Rogelio.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means don’t say silly things like ‘It’s great to be home.’ If it was great, you would’ve come home ten years ago.”

“Okay,” Nelson said.

Jaime sighed. “You know what I think, when I see this?”

“No.”

“I think, How lovely. Thank God I don’t live here. Now, do you have your wallet? Good. Take it out. Give me your ID card.”

Through it all, Nelson was still thinking of money, the possibility it implied. He could pay a few months’ rent. Or take Ixta on a trip. Buy his mother something nice. Not all of those things could be done, but some of them could. In particular, this phrase stood out: “twice that.” He did as he was told. Jaime squinted at the picture on the ID card, smiling. He held it up and compared it to the young man standing before him. Then he put it in his pocket.

“I’ll be back in a week,” he said to Nelson. “In the meantime, be nice to your blameless mother.”

IT’S DIFFICULT TO WRITEabout these days in T—, about this lull in the action (for that is precisely what it is) without succumbing to the pace. Such is the languorous nature of small-town life. I know it well enough. Thought slows, the need for conversation vanishes. You are prone to introspection, never a productive habit, and one which city life, for example, quite rightly suppresses in the name of efficiency. On the third day of any visit to T—, I give in to a specific kind of melancholy that is part depression, part boredom. The normal stimuli one associates with human activity begins to seem aberrant, even unnecessary. Throughout my childhood and early adolescence, arriving in T— was like stepping outside time, just as it might have been, I suppose, for Nelson, had he not had the length of the tour itself to adjust, at least in part, to the rhythms of provincial life. Perhaps this is why the appearance of a newspaper was so striking to him that first morning. It reminded him just how far away he was.

For the most part he spent his days listening to Mrs. Anabel; keeping her company. At night, he and Noelia swapped stories, and with her, he could be Nelson again, something they both seemed to welcome. “He was very funny,” she told me later, “and I hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long. He told me about his mother, about his brother. He told me about Ixta, and even said he was going to be a father.”

“When was that?” I asked.

She thought for a moment. “It must have been at the end of the first week. We were expecting my brother back any day, and Nelson had even packed his things. He was glad to be going home, he said, so he could see her.” She paused here, offering a bemused smile. “But then Jaime didn’t come, so he unpacked his things and stayed.”

Nelson was getting anxious.

On the ninth day, they got a note delivered by the man who drove the bus to San Jacinto. It was from Jaime:

Something’s come up, it said. I’ll be there in a week to settle up.

“See?” said Noelia. “He hasn’t forgotten about you!”

At least the work was manageable. They’d settled into routines, and the old woman seemed quite happy about that. She peppered him with questions, but they were mostly variations on the ones she’d had at the beginning, and Nelson felt enough confidence to shift his answers — just slightly — to suit his mood. One day, to his surprise, he didn’t make movie sets when Mrs. Anabel asked; instead, he fixed boats in the harbor. He wasn’t sure why he said it. The old woman clapped with delight. “Where did you learn boats?” she asked, as if boats were a language one studied in school.

“In the city, Mama. When Jaime sent me to the city.”

She nodded very seriously. “And when was that?”

“Oh, you know how Jaime is. Always bossing me around. Sending me here, sending me there.”

“That Jaime!”

To keep things interesting, Nelson invented an accent, a variation on the sort of voice he imagined might result from two decades living in California, among Mexicans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans. It didn’t take. He shed it, almost without thinking, a few days later, and she didn’t seem to mind. What was the point of this invented vernacular anyway? Had she even noticed this dash of authenticity?

I’m not going to try so hard anymore, he wrote that evening. If all goes well, I’ll be home in a week.

WHILE NELSON WASin this state of suspended animation, playing Rogelio for his very small audience, his life was going on without him. And by life, I’m referring to his real life , his life in the city. This is not urban chauvinism or elitism or discrimination against the provinces; only fact: Nelson’s rural exile did nothing for the problems waiting for him back in the capital.