At Night We Walk in Circles. Daniel Alarcon

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СКАЧАТЬ had drunk a good deal, perhaps too much, or perhaps only too much for Nelson. He didn’t know what to say. He began to explain. His point had simply been that Henry’s work deserved wider recognition; his mind was neither colonized nor feeble. If anything, he was more skeptical of the United States than the rest of his generation. Why wouldn’t he be? His older brother had all but abandoned the family to make his life there.

      Francisco would not have agreed with this point, but let’s limit ourselves, for the moment, to Nelson: he’d been employing his older brother as a straw man for years, to suit whatever narrative purpose his life required at any given moment. A hero, a lifeline, an enemy, or a traitor. Now, when a villain was called for, Francisco once again obliged.

      “Really?” Henry asked.

      “There was a time when I idolized him. When I would have given anything to go. But then … I don’t know what happened.”

      “It passed?” Patalarga said.

      “You outgrew it,” said Henry.

      Nelson nodded. He raised the glass of beer to his lips, as if signaling an end to his confessions. Just like that, he’d updated his story for this new audience, something closer to the truth. His friends from the Conservatory would have been surprised.

      It was early, not yet nine, when they left, but they’d been drinking for what seemed like an eternity. The long summer day slid toward night, the sky shaded pink and red and gold; a sunset made to order, splashed across the horizon. Patalarga sprang for a cab, and the three of them headed south from the Old City. Henry rode up front, declaring it a relief to be in the passenger seat for once. He chatted with the uninterested driver, suggesting a scenic route. “It’ll cost more,” said the driver.

      “What is money? We have to see it all,” Henry answered. “We’re leaving soon, and heading into exile!”

      He shouted this last word, as if it were a destination, not a concept.

      They drove past the National Library, past the diminished edge of downtown, through the scarred and ominous industrial flats, past trails of workers in hard hats trudging the avenue’s gravel-lined shoulder; then along the eastern boundary of Regent Park, where the vendors packed away their wares, bagging up old magazines and books, sweeping away the remains of cut flowers and discarded banana leaves, stacking boxes of stolen electronics into the beds of rusty pickup trucks. Nelson sat by the window and watched his city, as if bidding farewell. It wasn’t an unpleasant drive: at this speed, along these roads, beside these fallen monuments, the capital presented its most attractive face: that of a hardworking, dignified metropolis, settled by outcasts and opportunists; redeemed each day by their cheerless toil and barely sublimated willingness to throw everything away for a moment’s pleasure.

      “Isn’t it lovely?” Henry asked from the front seat.

      Patalarga had fallen asleep; Nelson was lost in thought. The city was lovely. There could be no place in the world to which he belonged so completely.

      That was why he’d always dreamed of leaving, and why he’d always been so afraid to go.

       4

      IN EARLY 1998, Mónica secured funds to pay for a public health theater troupe in the city. She would hire a group of actors to perform plays about unwanted pregnancy, teenage depression, sexual health, et cetera, before audiences of local public school students. Nelson had just finished his third year at the Conservatory, and it briefly occurred to him that he might get a job within this farsighted (and therefore doomed) government program, but Mónica wouldn’t even consider it. “Nepotism is the lowest and least imaginative form of corruption,” she told him, as if her objection were purely a matter of aesthetics. Nelson must have given her an odd look, because she added, rather half-heartedly, “Not that you aren’t qualified.”

      He let the issue drop, and a few weeks later she asked him to help oversee the auditions, as an unpaid adviser. This was how he met Ixta.

      The troupe was to be modeled on a similar program based in Brazil. Each week the Brazilians sent Mónica a package containing proposals, planning documents, full-color graphs charting the rise and fall of the teen suicide rate in the infinite slums of Rio de Janeiro. Except for the reports to European and American donors, which were in English, these materials were all in Portuguese, including the scripts, which would eventually prove to be something of an inconvenience. Mónica’s supervisor—a natural-born bureaucrat, if ever one existed—was ambivalent about the whole enterprise, and for weeks he dithered, neglecting to approve the cost of translation in time for the auditions. He claimed it was a mistake; insults were traded, but in the end, Mónica had no choice but to make the best of it.

      The day of the auditions arrived, muggy and warm, and they gathered in a conference room on the third floor of the Ministry of Health. Because of an architectural defect, the windows would not open, and the temperature in the room rose slowly but relentlessly, so that by lunchtime, both mother and son were sweating profusely. One after another the actors came in, took a look at them, at the script, and then scratched their heads. At first it was all very funny: Mónica apologized; the actors apologized. They squinted at the pages, then read phonetically, and everyone laughed. Some of the actors translated as best they could, Mónica and Nelson listening with some amusement as the Portuguese was rendered haltingly into stiff and lifeless Spanish. If there was any acting happening, it was hard to tell.

      Nelson took notes, but as the heat intensified, as the monologues became increasingly predictable and maudlin, his mind drifted. The soporific heat, the grating sound of broken Portuguese, and these disappointing actors—his friends, many of them—it was all too much. More than a few gave up and walked out. They blamed the heat; they blamed the script; they blamed the Ministry of Health and the entire hapless government.

      Ixta was different. They’d already been at it for three and a half hours when she walked in. She wasn’t pretty but had what one might call “presence”: the set of her jaw, perhaps, or her pale, powdered skin, or the bangs that fell precisely before her eyes, so it was difficult to guess what she was thinking or what she was looking at. And she’d dressed the part, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform, right down to the white knee-high socks and shapeless gray skirt. With a few quick steps she carved out a space that became hers, transforming the carpet into a stage. She took the pages they’d given her, and flipped through them very quickly, nodding. She handed the pages back to Mónica, and promptly crumpled to the floor. It happened very fast.

      “Is everything all right?” Mónica asked.

      Ixta looked up for a moment, and shook her head. It was a hideous, pitiful face: battered and young and streaked with tears.

      “How can everything be all right?” she muttered. “How can it?”

      Mónica looked on with a raised eyebrow.

      “What happened?” Nelson asked, playing along.

      “The girls at school. You know the ones. They say things.”

      Ixta sat up, rolled her head around, so that her bangs fell back, and Nelson caught, briefly, a glimpse of her red, swollen eyes. Then she stood slowly, unlocking each of her joints one by one. When she was on her feet, she slouched and crossed her legs, scratching her face and mumbling a few words neither Mónica nor Nelson could make out. Something about the cliques that ran the school and a boy she’d liked.

      “He СКАЧАТЬ