At Night We Walk in Circles (27 page)

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
Henry offered to give Nelson a ride to the Monument District. It was understood that Nelson had to see Ixta, to make sure Mindo was all right, and to apologize for any trouble he might have caused between them. Traffic was unusually light, and though the two friends didn't talk much, both found it comforting not to ride alone. Neither had slept more than a few hours. They listened to the news on the radio and, in particular, to the tenor of the announcers, which fluctuated unexpectedly between horror and amusement. It was frankly confusing, and perhaps this was the point: bad news was almost indistinguishable from good, or perhaps there was simply no such thing as good news anymore.

“You don't drive like I thought you would,” Nelson said when they were near their destination. “I somehow expected you'd be more erratic.”

To Henry, this sounded about right. He did almost everything erratically, but behind the wheel, he'd always been possessed with a certain calm. The congested streets of the capital disturbed most drivers, but not him. He had a surprisingly high tolerance for traffic jams. When he was in Collectors, he told Nelson now, he sometimes sat in bed, looking up at the ceiling, and imagined himself behind the wheel of a car, any car, on any city street. He and Rogelio shared this love, in fact: the tranquillity that came only from being alone, at the wheel, that sense of autonomy. He'd first conceived of
The Idiot President
while driving a tan 1976 Opel hatchback to visit a friend who lived outside the city. In an alternate life, if he'd been a criminal, Henry mused, he would have made a decent wheelman.

“Do you drive?” he asked Nelson now.

The young actor shook his head. He'd never learned. Henry smiled and offered to teach him. After all, Nelson would need to know, if he were to go through with his plans to travel to the United States.

At the mention of this, Nelson frowned.

“I was trying to be positive,” Henry told me.

Nelson confessed that he was spooked by what had happened the night before. Hopefully that had been the worst of it. Nelson held his hands up, as if to offer proof of his nerves. “Look,” he said, “they're shaking!”

They were in the Monument District now, with its quiet, smoothly paved streets, its sleek houses shielded by high walls. Nelson turned his attention to the roads, pointing out a few turns ahead. “It's a tricky part of town.”

“This,” Henry told me when we spoke, “was when I began to notice the station wagon behind us.”

“Did you mention it to the police?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I told the police everything. And they believed nothing. Then again, let's say a car was following us. What does that prove?”

It was a light blue station wagon, and it had been behind them for a long while now. Henry recalls thinking how strange it was, that he was likely imagining it—a low-speed chase along an otherwise deserted street. They took a turn, and the station wagon followed, just a few car lengths behind.

“Did you see the driver?” I asked.

He didn't. He couldn't.

In any case, Henry didn't mention his suspicion to Nelson, who had enough on his mind; later he saw this as a mistake. Instead he slowed the car to a stop, and kept his eyes on the rearview mirror. The blue station wagon slowed too, and then, almost reluctantly, drove on, past them and off into the neighborhood beyond. Henry and Nelson heard a hot blast of
cumbia
as the car rolled by.

“Why'd you stop?” Nelson asked.

“That car needed to pass.”

They drove a little farther on, and pulled up in front of the filmmaker's house. Nelson got out to ring the bell, just as he had the previous morning, and Henry watched. “I saw him rocking back and forth on his feet, looking nervous and pale. Then the door opened. He leaned in, talking to someone I couldn't see.”

That someone was the filmmaker, who, by his own admission, “was not having a good morning.” Ixta hadn't come to work, nor had she called. She wasn't answering her phone, and he was annoyed. When he opened the door, he was expecting to find her, not Nelson.

“I shooed him away,” the filmmaker told me. “I didn't want him around. He looked terrible. And I didn't like the way he looked at me. She didn't come in today, that's all I told him. He tried to peer past me, as if he thought I might be lying, and at that point . . . well, I just shut the door in his face.”

Nelson rang the doorbell again, and the scene was repeated, with a little more vehemence. Again the door was shut. This time Nelson ambled back to the car, a little dazed, and told Henry what had happened.

“So what do we do?” Henry asked. He glanced at his watch involuntarily as he asked. It was already past ten. On this particular day, he had his first class in an hour. He needed to get moving. What Henry meant by his question was: Where can I leave you?

“I'll walk from here,” Nelson said.

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

Nelson didn't say where he intended to walk. Back to the theater, Henry assumed, though Nelson went to Ixta's instead. The two friends embraced.

“The next time I saw him,” Henry told me, “was that night on the television news.”

•   •   •

IXTA HAD BEEN WOKEN
at around five in the morning by a ringing doorbell. It was a policeman. He took a look at her belly, blanched, and asked her to sit. She was still rubbing sleep from her eyes. They sat. The policeman's voice trembled as he spoke.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I'm sorry,” the officer said, then asked if she knew a man named Mindo.

But for a few stray details, her memory of the morning ends there. Mindo, dead. She was already beginning to lose herself to the hysterics that would take over for the next six hours.

The officer meted out in small doses what information he had: the exact location where Mindo's body was found (four and a half blocks to the west of the Olympic, slumped in a recessed doorway on Garza); the cause of death (bleeding from multiple knife wounds). No wallet, telephone, or identification had been found, so they were treating this death as a robbery and homicide. They'd found her name beneath a drawing Mindo had made in his notebook.

“Did Mindo have any enemies?” the policeman asked. He'd already pulled out a small reporter's notebook.

“I just remember that nothing he was saying made any sense,” Ixta told me.

“Enemies?” she asked. “Enemies?”

She cursed the policeman and called him a coward, while he tried in vain to calm her down. A neighbor heard the commotion and knocked on the door to find out what was going on. At one point, Ixta passed out. Her mother was summoned. Her brother. A medic. And just like that, the small apartment she'd shared with Mindo was full: more family; cousins; friends of hers; friends of Mindo; and eventually, another policeman, a woman this time. Their shoes piled at the door; a dozen mourners and cops standing around in their socks.

It should be noted that a similar scene was unfolding on the other side of the city, where Mindo's parents sat before a somber officer, having their lives politely shattered. Mindo's father, who was almost seventy, didn't speak for three days afterward. He never recovered from the shock.

One friend of the family put it to me this way: “If their son had died violently at age eighteen,
that
they might have understood. But to die now? When he'd already escaped?”

Mindo had painted three quarters of the neighborhood's death murals, which you can still see along the streets that surround his childhood home in the Thousands—bright, colorful, expansive portraits of young men laughing at death. Ignorant of death.

Now he has his own.

According to the reports, Nelson left Ixta's work in the Monument District, and crossed his city one last time on foot. He went north on the boulevard known colloquially as Huanca (though on most maps it appears under a different name), turned right just past the cathedral, zigzagged through the neighborhoods on the south side of Marina, crossed that broad avenue, then went east, along Brazil, where the cheap, poorly built high-rises were just beginning to go up. He didn't talk to anyone, or stop anywhere. Some press reports would imply that he was hoping to escape, but wanted to try once more to convince Ixta to come with him. We know this isn't true. If he were fleeing, would he have walked right into an apartment filled with police?

He arrived just before eleven in the morning and stepped into a horror show. Ixta was in a terrible state, and Nelson's arrival didn't make things any better. By then Mindo's sister had arrived, an emissary from that other world of pain. There was no solidarity. She yelled at Ixta, cursed her, and once she figured out who Nelson was, spat her vitriol at him as well. When Ixta admitted she'd seen Nelson the day before, Mindo's sister all but demanded they both be arrested. There was even a moment when it appeared this might happen, but in the end no officer wanted to arrest the pregnant woman.

That left Nelson, and nothing could've been more convenient. In a city with hundreds of unsolved and frankly unsolvable crimes, the police could hardly believe their luck: a suspect had strolled right in. He looked guilty; his motive was clear.

“Do you know a man named Mindo?” they asked him.

“Sure I do,” Nelson said. “I was with him last night.”

They had their killer.

There would be no mention of the events of T——; none of Rogelio nor Jaime; no attention paid to the possible motives of a provincial thug avenging the death of his mother. All the dots were lying out in the open, waiting to be connected. For the police, and then the prosecutors, and then the judge, it was simply irresistible.

“Call my mother,” Nelson shouted to Ixta as he was taken away. “Please call my mother.”

“I did that, at least,” Ixta told me. “I don't know how, but I did it.”

Mónica confirmed this. “A call no mother should ever receive,” she said when I asked. Her eyes were closed tightly. “I didn't see him for another three days.”

And when she did, it was in Collectors.

THE NEWS NEVER MADE IT
to our town, though I suspect Jaime must have heard. I imagine it concerned him; I don't believe he intended for anyone to die, and, if he did, that person was certainly not Mindo. But these things happen, and Jaime was well acquainted with unexpected outcomes. His work had taught him about the occasional necessity of violence and the randomness of the law. When he learned of Nelson's arrest and the accusation against him, one imagines he might even have smiled. Setting aside for a moment Mindo's unfortunate demise, from the point of view of Mrs. Anabel's grieving son, justice had been done.

I left T—— in late August, but heard nothing of Nelson's predicament until a few months later. I wouldn't say that I'd forgotten him, only that my life went on. I was lucky enough to find work at a magazine that had launched while I was away, a publication that quite miraculously still survives, and where I work even now. There were four of us on staff then (today we are twelve), and at the beginning we did everything: the writing and editing, the layout and design. We were the accountants, which explains why bankruptcy loomed each month; and we were the custodial staff, which explains why the office was in a state of constant disarray. The owners, the impatient but enthusiastic Jara brothers, would come by the office once a month; we'd all pile into their battered old van, and deliver the magazines ourselves. We ended these days at our favorite bar, just a few blocks from the office. I liked the Jaras, liked my coworkers, and this was something I'd never experienced before. We were paid laughable wages, but in exchange were allowed to write whatever we wanted, more or less. Every month we got letters from readers, which we passed around the office like love notes.

On one of these nights after having delivered an issue, the managing editor, Lizzy, brought up the many local scandals I'd missed on “my Andean sabbatical.” That was what she called my time in T——, a phrase made charming by the playful manner in which she offered it to the group. It had become a running joke: when I interviewed for the job I'd only been back in the city a few days, and must have seemed a little out of sorts. Still, I was hired, and often entertained my new friends with the folkloric details of provincial life; they, in turn, pretended to be amazed. I let this playacting go on, because it was obvious to me that we all came from similar backgrounds, that we all had similarly tense relationships with our families, with our cultural inheritance.

“That hometown of yours,” Lizzy or one of the others might say. “What year is it out there?”

Everyone would laugh, including me. Time, we all knew, was a very relative concept.

That evening—it was late October 2001—among the scandals mentioned was the story of a young theater actor who'd murdered his rival in a fit of jealous rage. “The sort of thing that never happens where you're from,” Lizzy said, waving an open hand to signify the provinces. She went on, others joined in, and together my new friends told the story. They cycled through what details they could remember: the disputed paternity, the actor and painter dueling on a late-night street in the Old City. Some particulars had vanished: my friends had a hard time remembering the name of the theater where the killer had been hiding out, or the plays he'd been in before his arrest. But the pregnant girl, the woman at the center of all this; they remembered her. She was an actress, like her lover; very striking, though she never smiled in photos. She'd appeared in the papers under a number of unflattering captions: “The Ice Woman Cometh” or “Blood Wedding.”

And they recalled her name. It was unforgettable, a name rarely heard in these parts.

“Ixta,” they said as one.

Ixta, I repeated to myself.

Our bar—we considered it ours—was and remains one of the places I feel most at home in the world. There are no surprises and not a thing is out of place. But when I heard the name Ixta, I felt a kind of vertigo. This comfortable setting looked suddenly strange to me. My friends too. What they were saying struck me as so dismaying, so arbitrary, that I wondered for a moment if they were having fun at my expense.

Finally I asked, “Was the actor named Nelson?”

“That's it,” Lizzy said, grinning. “Nelson!”

That is what sent me on this path. I told them about T——, about my interaction with the murderer, and they didn't believe me. I insisted, and that evening we decided I should write it all down. I even had his journals! We thought it would become a piece for the magazine, maybe even a cover story. It would've been my first.

I went back and looked at the press from the days immediately after Mindo's death, and saw that it was all true: Nelson's name and photo had been splashed across the front pages of all the local papers. It was unsettling to see him, this man I'd met so briefly, back in July. I spent many days gathering clippings, making lists of places to visit, people I might want to see. The Olympic appeared in a few television reports I managed to find, described as if it were some sort of criminal hangout; this, I later learned, is what finally drove Patalarga to reunite with his wife, moving home in the dead of night, in the hopes of avoiding any further attentions from the media. In the papers I saw many of the people who would later become my informants. Some, like Mónica or Ixta, did all they could to avoid the cameras; others, like Elías and a few of Nelson's other friends, took the opposite approach, speaking all too freely, as if they were auditioning for a role.

•   •   •

I FINALLY READ
Nelson's journals, the ones Noelia had given me, and after a good deal of encouragement from my colleagues at the magazine, decided to visit Mónica. At the time I had no real sense of Nelson's guilt or innocence. Just curiosity. It wasn't difficult to find her, and one evening in November, I knocked on her door. Until that point, I'd been another kind of journalist; she appeared behind her gate, watching me, and I became someone else. She was a slight, tired-looking woman with short hair and a pair of reading glasses twirling in one hand. I was so nervous I could barely explain who I was, or what I wanted.

“I know Nelson,” I blathered finally, and this seemed to get her attention. At the sound of her son's name, she narrowed her eyes at me, and opened the gate.

We sat in the living room, and while I told her my story, Mónica focused her attention on an origami swan she was making from the tea bag wrapper. When she was done, she placed it on the coffee table with the others, a flock of six or seven, all of them looking in different directions.

“So you met my son in T——,” she said. “Is that all?”

Then I showed her the notebooks, and she almost broke down. She held them for a moment, flipping through the pages quickly, inhaling the scent. After a moment, she shook her head and set them beside her on the sofa.

“What do they say?”

I considered lying, just telling her I hadn't read them. She gave me a searching look, and I realized the only option was to tell the truth. Of course I'd read them; that's why I was there.

“They're about the tour,” I said. “Up until the morning he left to come home.”

She nodded gravely. “Should I read them?”

“Yes,” I said. “They might help.”

By the time I left it was nearly ten o'clock. I gave her the journals (which had always belonged to her, which had never been mine) and promised to visit again.

November passed, the New Year came, and I went to see Mónica again. This time we spoke for many hours. I recorded that conversation. She'd read my magazine. “It isn't bad,” she said. I told her I was going to write about Nelson's case, and she gave me her blessing. We looked through the old photo albums, and when I left that day, she lent me some of his journals. We made a list of the people I should talk to; old classmates mostly, a few kids from the neighborhood, but also a couple of names from the Conservatory, classmates who'd come to visit her since the news had broken.

“But I don't really know who his friends were,” she confessed with a sigh.

“At a certain age, that's normal.”

She smiled. “Is it? I'm not so sure.” She gave me Francisco's number in California, and I promised to call him. “And have you spoken with the actors? The gentlemen from Diciembre?”

I'd already planned a visit to the Olympic, and chatted briefly by phone with Henry.

“Good,” Mónica said. “But you should start with Ixta.”

I had tried her twice already and been rejected—but after seeing Mónica, I insisted. The third time I rang her door, Ixta let me in, scowling.

“Again?” she asked. “For the love of God, what's wrong with you?”

•   •   •

IN APRIL 2002,
while the court proceedings were being held up, I went back to T——, following the path that Diciembre had taken the previous year. I spoke with as many people as I could, taking notes, making recordings, and helping them make sense of their memories. I spoke with Cayetano and Melissa, with Tania, and attempted to find the bar in Sihuas where they'd seen all the gold miners, but the authorities had shut it down. I spoke with people who'd seen Diciembre's performances, and heard a few phrases again and again: “He was such a nice boy!” and “What a show!” In my hometown I managed, with some coaxing, to draw a few people out of their reticence. Nothing having to do with Jaime was ever openly discussed. Whenever anyone asked, I said I was writing a piece for a magazine, and they'd look at me suspiciously. A newspaper, that they would've accepted; even a book would've made sense. But a magazine?

Who did I think I was?

I went to see Jaime in San Jacinto, intending to pose all the questions I could safely ask. I would not say, for example, “Why did you let your brother take the fall for your drug shipment?” or “Did you send someone to kill Nelson?” or “Who was driving that station wagon the night Mindo was killed?” I had a list of other questions, more innocent-sounding ones, but in the end, it didn't matter, because he refused to see me at all.

In August 2002, Nelson's trial got under way, and I attended as many days as I could. I often saw Henry or Patalarga there, sitting in the back, whispering among themselves, and during breaks we'd discuss the proceedings like fans at a sporting event. Our team was losing; that much was clear. I was there when the judge refused to allow the notebooks to be entered into evidence, and decreed that no theory relating Mindo's death to events in T—— was admissible. “Hearsay,” he called it, and Nelson was sunk. I was in the courtroom the day Mindo's sister called Ixta “a dirty slut” from the witness stand; Mónica sat in the third row with her sister, Astrid, weeping. She appeared in a few of the papers the next morning, under headlines about “a mother's sadness.”

One day, at the courthouse, Nelson's uncle Ramiro turned around in his seat, and eyed me, frowning. Then his expression softened.

“It's like you're always here,” he said, in a tone of amazement. “Don't you have something else to do?”

I sometimes wondered the same thing. My colleagues at the magazine, the ones who'd encouraged me at first—they wondered too. “Where's your article?” Lizzy asked me from time to time, and I'd put her off. Eventually she stopped asking.

I was at Nelson's sentencing in February 2003, a full two years after the auditions that had changed his life. Mindo's father had passed away by then, but his mother was there, stoic, and unblinking. She barely reacted at all when the judge announced a sentence of fifteen years. The term felt like an eternity to all of us who sided with Nelson, who believed he was incapable of murder, but I could tell that to Mindo's mother it felt like an insult.

Only fifteen years.

In the gallery's front row Mónica collapsed into her sister's arms, and Nelson was taken away again, back to Collectors, with a look on his face of utter bewilderment. He'd lost weight and had an unhealthy pallor. I don't think he ever understood that this was actually happening, that this was his life now.

•   •   •

IN THE MONTHS
that followed, he wrote letters to his mother, which she showed me, very beautiful letters that described his friends, his surroundings, and detailed his concerns. He'd been placed among inmates from the northern districts, as far from the Thousands as possible, for his own safety. There was a very real possibility that someone from Mindo's old neighborhood might seek to avenge the painter's death. He described the power structure of the prison, the fearsome men who ran it, who hailed from districts of the city Nelson had never set foot in, but which he now knew intimately. He knew the way these men spoke, what worried them, what motivated them. They were men who demanded respect, and who were prepared to go to war over any perceived insult, no matter how slight. Nelson described the cramped quarters, his melancholy cell mate (whom he called “roommate,” because it sounded “less institutional”); and how quickly a placid day inside could shift and become spectacularly violent. He told his mother about the roving bands of homeless inmates who camped in the rocky field outside his block, and he expressed wonder at their plight. What surprised him the most was that everyone else accepted the situation of these people as normal. There was nowhere to house them, no one wanted them, and so there they were: three hundred shirtless, shoeless men, hungry, drug-addled, dying slowly en masse. The year before Nelson's arrival, one young addict had climbed up the radio tower (which hadn't worked in two decades) and hung himself with a gray scarf. When they brought his body down, they left the scarf, and it had stayed there, the prison's new and unofficial flag. Nelson never knew the man, but could understand him, he said in a letter, not to his mother but to Patalarga—he kept the worst details from her, so as not to add to her worry. He talked about the view from the roof of his block, the open sky, the hillsides dotted every day with new homes. He watched the women carrying water up the hill in plastic buckets, watched them pause to wipe the sweat from their brows. They were very poor, but he envied them.