At Night We Walk in Circles (16 page)

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.

And all the while, Noelia sat frozen in her seat. It was extraordinary, the weight she felt, the absolute impossibility of moving. She held her hands tightly in her lap, and gave in to it. Everyone else had gone. This was all part of the play, an extra scene performed just for her, as if to reveal some special secret. This was why they all fear my brother, Noelia remembers thinking. This
is why they're scared of him. Maybe those stories she'd heard were true, after all.

Nelson, Patalarga, and Eric held Jaime, while Henry got to his feet, holding the edge of the stage to steady himself. The prop knife was there, just an arm's length away, and he grabbed it. With that, Henry turned to face his attacker once more, brandishing it with surprising conviction.

“Come on!” Henry shouted. He was manic, dancing back and forth, and carving the air with his plastic knife. His voice echoed through the nearly empty auditorium. “Come on, you asshole!”

For all Henry's fury, there was no threat in the spectacle. Jaime eased, and his captors instinctively relaxed with him. They still held him, but without the same force or fear or urgency. Patalarga was afraid his old friend might faint before them.

“Okay,” Jaime said. “Enough. If I wanted to kill this piece of shit, I would've done it already.”

He shook himself free. Eric, Nelson, and Patalarga backed off.

At that, Henry stopped. Out of breath, he dropped both arms to his side, still gripping the knife in his left hand. He and Jaime locked eyes.

“Tell me you remember me now,” Jaime said. “Go ahead. Think real hard.”

Henry nodded. “You're Rogelio's brother.”

“Good,” said Jaime.

Henry bowed his head. He dropped the plastic knife, and with his sleeve wiped a thin line of blood from his chin. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

Noelia was still pegged to her seat, watching it all. Henry called out in her direction: “I'm sorry! I'm very sorry!”

It was at this point that she finally snapped to. It was not a play after all; it was real, and once again that strange man was talking to her. His voice, shouted across the auditorium, was ghostly. She stood, and as she rearranged her shawl, noted that they were all looking at her: these men, her brother, the actors, the mayor's deputy. She took a deep breath and walked down the path Jaime had made only a few moments before, through the carelessly strewn metal chairs, to the foot of the stage, where the lights shone brightest. As she got closer, it was as if the air changed. There was heat pulsing off these men, the lingering remains of the fight. She saw Henry up close and gasped. His right eye had begun to swell, and his shirt was ripped at the collar. He leaned against the stage, as if he might tumble over at any moment.

She turned to her brother.

“Shame on you!”

Jaime shrugged and looked down at his hands, his knuckles, the way one might admire a well-built tool or a machine.

There was quiet.

•   •   •

MUCH LATER
I asked Henry about that night. This was back in the city, months after the events recounted here had run their course. I was trying to piece it all together based on versions provided by Patalarga, Noelia, and to a lesser extent, Eric. As for Henry, his recollections were cloudy. He talked at great length about his recovery, the slow easing of pain over the weeks that followed that night; but the play, the fight, its immediate aftermath, that, he said, was all a blur.

Instead he talked about fight scenes in general. The fake kind. He talked about how they are staged; and he seemed more comfortable speaking this way, in the abstract. Like any scene involving large numbers of cast members, Henry told me, fight scenes are complicated and unwieldy. A good one must mimic chaos without being chaotic, must be confusing without being confused. The crowd must delight in the tension, while the actors themselves are perfectly relaxed. Henry ran his fingers through his hair, and leaned forward, briefly animated, evidently pleased with this series of contradictory phrases. Did I get it? Did I understand?

And I began to wonder if he saw it all as a performance. If that night, when the play ended and the attack began; when his past, as represented by Jaime, stood before him, and his friends demanded answers; at that point, was he conscious of himself as a performer?

“I don't know,” he said. “Jaime kicked the shit out of me. I fell to the ground. I grabbed a plastic knife. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted someone to save me. Is this performing?”

“I'm asking you.”

Henry rubbed his face. He stood from his seat, and raised his shirt with his left hand. “There were bruises here,” he said, pointing to his stomach and chest. “And here. And here. These two ribs”—he pinched one and then the other—“these two were broken.”

“I know. That's not my question. I didn't say you were faking it.”

He frowned. “So what are you asking, then?”

“When it was over, were you aware that a delicate negotiation had begun? Were you careful as you were playing it?”

“Of course I was careful. I was scared this man might kill me.”

That night, Jaime wore a grimace, aloof and distant. He wasn't handsome, Patalarga told me later, but he had “an interesting face.” His too-small mouth stayed closed, lips pressed together with the hint of a smile. People were afraid of him and he enjoyed that. His sleek black hair had gone wild in the skirmish, but he didn't mind.

“I guess we were expecting him to say something,” Patalarga said, “but he didn't.”

Instead, it was Noelia who spoke, addressing her brother: “Do they know too?” she asked, her voice desperate. “Do they know Rogelio is dead? Does everyone know but me?”

Patalarga responded. “Madam, I can assure you we don't know anything.”

She looked at them all skeptically. Her brother and Henry nodded.

“Just to be clear, Rogelio is . . . ?” asked Nelson.

“My little brother,” Noelia said.

“My cell mate,” said Henry. “My friend.”

The six of them made a wary circle, with Jaime pushing in close so they could feel the threat of him. Eric fidgeted. Nelson picked the plastic knife off the floor, and wiped its flimsy blade against his leg. It was Eric who told me this detail: he found it was almost tender, the way the actor cared for this prop, the way he wiped the blade as if it were real. During the performance, when Alejo murders the servant, Eric had been impressed. He remembers thinking: He looks like he could use it, and for next few minutes, Eric said, while they all spoke, Nelson held the knife at the ready, as if he might.

“How's your mother now?” Henry asked.

“She was in a fit all afternoon,” Noelia answered. “I had to give her a sedative, the poor thing.”

“She's ill?” asked Patalarga.

“She was fine until he came,” Jaime said.

Noelia interrupted. “No. No no no no no. That isn't true, Jaime. It just isn't.” Her shoulders were shaking now. “Mama's been faltering. She doesn't remember. She talks to our father all the time and he's been dead for years. She doesn't know the difference. But when you said Rogelio was dead . . . Well, you know what happened.”

“I'm sorry,” Henry said, not for the last time.

Noelia wiped a tear from her eye, and sighed. Henry would have offered her the presidential handkerchief, only it was dotted with blood. They were silent, out of respect for a woman's tears.

“How did my brother die?” she asked finally.

Henry offered a weak smile, and would've answered, but Jaime spoke instead. “There was trouble, that's all.”

His face was blank, impassive, and Noelia didn't press him any further. She looked up, trying to catch his attention, but he had his eyes locked on Henry.

“What do you want from me?” Henry asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

The conversation was Jaime's once more. He pressed his hands together, palms flat.

“Why were you in that prison, Henry? Will you tell my sister that? I'd like her to know the kind of person you are.”

Henry shrugged. “I was accused of terrorism.”

“Falsely,” added Patalarga.

Jaime smiled. “So this terrorist comes to my house, to my family, and tells my mother awful things. Things I never wanted her to hear. She's sick. She isn't well.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know you are. Here's what I want. I want you to tell my mother you were wrong. That you made a mistake. That this was all a misunderstanding.” His eyes narrowed, and there was anger in his voice. “I want you to say you're very sorry, and I want you to convince that poor woman that this was all your fault, and leave her mind at peace. I want her to have no doubt that her youngest child is alive.”

“I told her that already,” Henry said.

“It didn't work.”

Patalarga shook his head. “Look at him. Do you really think that going back to her, looking like that, is going to help anything?”

“Put some makeup on him. She won't even notice.”

“Jaime, be reasonable,” said Noelia.

“I am reasonable. He comes. He apologizes. He goes.”

“I'm apologizing now.”

Jaime shook his head. “You apologize to her. Is this too much to ask?”

Henry dropped his head into his chest. “No,” he said.

THAT NIGHT IN T—,
after Jaime and Noelia had gone; after the props had been put away, and the auditorium padlocked; after Eric had said good night; Diciembre trudged back to the Imperial. Everything in town was shuttered, and no one was out. When they got to the hotel, it was as if the man at the front desk had already heard what had happened. He handed them the key with a sad shake of the head.

The three friends went up to their room. The mood was funereal. Without much talk, they prepared for the long trip back to the coast. Henry began by removing the red presidential sash, the presidential eye mask, the white presidential gloves, which were no longer white. These items were all folded and packed away. The presidential dress shirt too, its ruffles now spotted with drops of blood. Patalarga followed: he pulled off the smock he'd worn almost every night for the previous months, untied the colorful pants cinched at the waist with rope, and removed his rubber sandals. Then, Nelson: the riding boots and pants, a wig he wore briefly in the third act. From his bag, he pulled a set of hand cymbals, played by the servant in one key scene, a flourish offered whenever the president wanted one of his own witty statements celebrated. “You sure you don't want to keep those out for later?” Patalarga said, but no one was in the mood for jokes. The fake knife was put away as well, wrapped in an old pair of socks, as if its plastic blade needed protecting. It was a simple production, really; everything was packed away in a matter of minutes.

Then Henry found his way back to the window.

“Let's go out,” he said after staring at the plaza for a while. “Can we go out?” and to his surprise, his friends were not opposed. It was early yet, and none were ready to sleep. They seemed to know instinctively that if they stayed indoors, the gloom might overcome them; so they headed out, into the night and toward the school, the same direction that Patalarga and Nelson had gone only a few hours before.

When they were nearing the edge of the town, crossing one of the bridges toward the fields, Henry began to talk. It might have been less an apology, and more a listing of regrets—but it was something, and this was important. It was a start. Nelson and Patalarga listened. We never should have revived his moribund play, Henry said. Another one, perhaps, but why
this
play, which carried with it so many ghosts? This play, which had caused nothing but trouble since it had been written? He went on: we never should have gone on tour, never should have left the city, where we were safe, or interrupted our lives with these quixotic aspirations toward theater, toward art. He spoke with great feeling, but there was a fallacy at the center of his logic. The idea to revive the play had not been his but Patalarga's. The idea to take Diciembre out on tour once more—he'd had to be convinced, after all, and the one who'd done that convincing was Patalarga.

“I told them it was my fault,” said Patalarga. “I wanted to take that burden off Henry. He was eating himself alive.”

Of their walk that night, Patalarga remembers most clearly the sky, indigo graced with stars. Clouds had followed them everywhere throughout their travels; they'd suffered cold rain and hail, but now, here was their reward.

“You should've told us about Rogelio,” Patalarga said.

He wanted this to come out differently than it did: he hadn't intended it to be a complaint but an affirmation of solidarity. He didn't feel betrayed, or even disappointed; only confused. For years, Henry had insisted on believing that he was alone. He'd refused help, refused counsel. His marriage had fallen apart. His life had stalled. It was painful to watch.

“What I mean is, you could have. We would've listened.”

Henry nodded. “Thank you,” he said, but he was very far away.

The cold was tolerable; you could even say it was invigorating. They'd come to the school, just five classrooms and an office arranged around a barren courtyard, beyond which lay the vast planted fields of T——. There was a low concrete retaining wall at the edge of a rusting playground, and here, Nelson and Henry sat. Patalarga had his back to them, his eyes trained on the town they'd left behind. Without realizing it, and without much effort, they'd risen in elevation, just enough to sense the faintest glow of light from the plaza. This place is so very small, Patalarga thought. It could be erased in a moment, and it would be as if none of this had ever happened. Not the play. Not this evening. Not Rogelio, or any of us. It would all be a rumor from a far-off place, something folded into the long history of that which has been forgotten. Somehow, Patalarga found this thought comforting.

He turned to share this mundane insight with his friends, and noticed, to his surprise, that they were holding hands. He couldn't tell if it had just happened, or if they'd walked a long way like this without his noticing. Nor could he say who had reached out for whom, who'd offered comfort and who'd accepted it; but in a sense, it didn't matter.

Patalarga turned away. He sat on the wall, and kept his eyes trained skyward. When he looked again, his friends had let go.

But for a light breeze, the valley was almost silent.

“Do you want to know?” Henry said.

“Know what?” Nelson asked.

“What he was like. Who he was.” Henry sighed. “I'll tell you. If you want to know, I'll tell you.”

•   •   •

ROGELIO WAS THE YOUNGEST OF THREE,
the skinniest, the least talkative. As a boy he slept with Jaime in the same room, and his earliest, most profoundly comforting memories were of those late nights, before bed: the chatter between them, the camaraderie. Then Jaime left for San Jacinto, and shortly afterward, when Rogelio was eight, his father died. In the months afterward, Rogelio began to skip school and spend hours walking in the hills above town. He liked to be alone. He gathered bits of wood, and used his father's tools to carve tiny animals, birds, lizards, that sort of thing, which he kept in a box under his bed. They weren't particularly lifelike, but were surprisingly evocative, and at age twelve, he presented one to a girl he liked, as a gift. Her name was Alma. With trembling hands and a look of horror on her face, she accepted it, and for the next week she avoided his gaze. The other children whispered about him whenever he came near. There was no need to hear the exact words, for their meaning was clear enough. Alma's family came from the northwest district. The following year, at age thirteen, Rogelio quit school officially, and his mother and older brother agreed there was no practical reason for him to stay in T—— any longer; so he left for San Jacinto, to join Jaime.

Rogelio was small for his age, but tough, good with his hands and his fists. Unlike his older brother, he didn't have a temper, but instead possessed an equanimity the entire family found almost disconcerting. He'd been shunned all his life, or that's how he felt, and he'd grown accustomed to it. He loved his brother, looked up to him, and never worried whether Jaime loved him in return. He was trusting. He could follow instructions, had decent mechanical intuition, but he could not read. Jaime even tried to teach him, but soon gave up: the boy kept getting his letters backward. A decade later in Collectors, Henry would be the first person to tell him there was a condition called dyslexia.

“How about that?” Rogelio had said, but his face registered nothing—not regret or shame or even curiosity—as if he were unwilling to contemplate the ways his life might have been different if he'd had this information sooner.

For those first couple of years in San Jacinto, he worked on the broken-down trucks his brother bought on the cheap, and together they would cajole these heaps of rusting metal back to life. Each machine was different, requiring a complex and patient kind of surgery. Parts were swapped out, rescued, jerry-rigged. It was as much invention as it was repair. When a truck was reborn, they sold it, and reinvested the profits, which weren't much at first, but the brothers were very careful with their money, and not ostentatious. Henry recalled a photograph he saw, one of the few that remained from that era, which Rogelio had tacked onto the wall by his bed: in it, Rogelio is lithe, wiry, sitting on a gigantic truck tire with his shirt off. He wears the blank expression of a child who asks no questions and makes no demands of the world. I never saw this photo—it was buried beneath the rubble of the prison—but I can imagine it: not a happy boy, but given his situation, perhaps a wise one.

Eventually Jaime bought his kid brother a motorbike, the kind outfitted with a flatbed of wooden planks in front. This machine became Rogelio's source of income for the next few years; he drove it across town, from one market to another, carrying cans of paint, lashed-together bundles of metal pipes, chickens headed for slaughter, crammed in pens stacked so high he had to lean to one side in order to steer. San Jacinto was growing steadily, but not yet at the torrid pace that would later come to define it; Rogelio knew every corner of the city then, and years later, in Collectors, he'd drawn a map of it on the walls of the cell he shared with Henry. He used white chalk to trace the streets, the railroad tracks, and even labeled the old apartment he'd shared with his brother.

Henry asked him why he'd gone to the trouble.

“Because one day I'll go back there,” Rogelio said.

(“See,” Henry added, when he told me this. He had a wry, almost pained smile. “I guess our love story would've ended anyway.”)

In 1980, the year Rogelio turned seventeen, his brother took him to a brothel near the center of town. It was the first of its kind, and had been built for the hoped-for wave of young, fearless men with money. There were rumors, even then, of gold in the hills, and the brothel's fantastical anteroom paid tribute to those still-unconfirmed stories. The walls were painted gold, as was the bar, as were the wooden tables and chairs. In fact, that night even the three prostitutes on display for Rogelio's choosing had followed the color scheme: one in a gold miniskirt, another in gold lace panties and bra, and a third in a gold negligee. Three little made-up trophies, all smiling coquettishly, hands on their hips. Jaime encouraged Rogelio to choose, but he couldn't. Or wouldn't. The moment stretched on and on, far past what was comfortable, until the girls' put-on smiles began to fade. And still the boy stood there, immobilized, amazed.

“Oh, fuck it,” Jaime said finally. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, and paid for all three.

It seems that Jaime had begun to sell more than just refurbished vehicles.

“He told you this?” Nelson asked Henry that night they sat by the school in T——, and the playwright shrugged.

“There was nothing to do inside but talk.”

When Rogelio was eighteen, he traded in his motorized cart for a small loading van, and shortly after, he traded that in for a truck he bought himself, and brought back to life with his own hands. The first time the reconstructed engine turned over was one of the proudest moments of Rogelio's life. Each new vehicle expanded his world. Now he was a driver; he ferried a dozen laborers down to the lowlands, men who stood for hours without complaint as the truck bounced along the rutted and bumpy roads. Once there, Rogelio discovered a prickly kind of heat he'd never felt before. He began volunteering to drive that route whenever it was available. The following year, his brother sent him in the other direction, over the range to the west; and on that trip, Rogelio first saw the ocean. It was 1982; he was almost twenty years old. He remembered sitting along the edge of the boardwalk in La Julieta, along the bluffs overlooking the sea; not far, incidentally, from the spot where Nelson would let Ixta walk away and out of his life nineteen years later. The fancy people of the city strolled by, confident-looking men in blazers and women in bright dresses, boys he took to be his age, but who appeared to possess a variety of secrets that Rogelio could only guess at. None so much as glanced in his direction. He wondered if he looked out of place, if they could tell he was a stranger here, or if they could even see him at all. But when he considered the ocean, Rogelio realized how insignificant these concerns were. He was happy, he told Henry, and later, in Collectors, he liked to remember the hours he'd spent there, staring at the sea.

For the next few years, he drove the route to the coast, to the lowlands, and back again, carrying vegetables to the city, raw materials to the mountains, laborers to the jungle. He was a quiet young man, still a boy in some ways, but Jaime trusted him. He was dependable. He began to ferry other packages as well, small, tightly bundled bricks, which he kept under the seat or in a compartment hidden above the wheel well. One or two at first, then dozens. These were delivered separately, to other contacts. Rogelio never opened them to see what was inside (though he knew); he never touched the money (though he assumed the quantities in play were not insubstantial). He had no qualms about this work. He trusted his brother. He never considered the consequences, not because he was reckless, but because what he was doing was normal. Everyone was doing it. He was only dimly aware that it was not allowed.

Nelson found this hard to believe, as did I. In fact, Henry had too: How could Rogelio not have known?

Well, he knew; but he didn't
know
.

On the last of these trips, Rogelio's truck was searched at a checkpoint along the Central Highway, sixty-five kilometers east of the capital. The war was on, and the soldiers were searching for weapons and explosives, randomly stopping trucks from the mountains to have a look. Rogelio was very unlucky. Perhaps if he'd been more astute, he could have arranged to pay off the police, but he didn't. Instead he waited by the side of the road while the men in uniform went through his vehicle with great care. Young Rogelio had time to consider what was happening, how his life was changing course before his very eyes. Not everyone has this privilege; most of us lose sight of the moment when our destiny shifts. He told Henry he felt a strange sort of calm. He might have run into the hills, but the soldiers would've shot him without thinking twice. So instead he admired his truck, which he'd had painted by hand, emerald and blue, with the phrase “My Beautiful T——” splashed across the top of the front windshield, in cursive lettering. At least that's what they told him it said. He recalled thinking, What will happen to this truck? Will it be waiting for me when I get out? In any case, he had time enough to decide to keep his mouth shut. He'd never spent more than a few days at a time in the city, and besides the ocean, he had no real affection for the place. Now he'd be staying. The soldiers found the package, just as he'd expected they would, and to protect his brother, Rogelio said nothing about its origins. He played dumb, which wasn't difficult. Everyone—from the soldiers who did the search to the policemen who came to arrest him, to his ferocious interrogators, to the lawyers charged with defending him—saw Rogelio as he assumed they would: a clueless, ignorant young man from the provinces. All these years, and nothing had changed: he was invisible, just as he'd always been.