Free At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón Page B

later, dead men who’d begun to appear in his dreams. Perhaps the script itself was cursed. These men, these ghosts, hovered about the stage at every rehearsal, sat in the ragged seats of the Olympic to critique every line of dialogue. They booed each poorly rehearsed scene, whispered their doubts in his ears. It was impossible not to feel unsteady when confronted with this text. After all, the man who wrote it had lived another life, and that life was gone. That’s what Henry was dealing with. Nelson, unfortunately, and through no fault of his own, had to watch this up close. It wasn’t pretty.
    The kicking incident, for example, which Patalarga described so vividly—Henry recalled it too, answering all of my questions politely and without hesitation. He had experienced it this way: a feeling of looseness, a momentary disorientation. Anger. Impotence. Then, an image: in August 1986 he’d seen a man be kicked to death, or nearly to death, by a mob that formed unexpectedly at the door to Block Twelve. He and Rogelio had stood by, at first horrified, then simply frightened. Then, almost instantaneously, they’d accepted the logic of the attack: every victim was guilty of something. The chatter: What did he do? Who did he cross?
The men watching felt safer. Less helpless. A crowd had formed around the victim, but no one moved. Henry took Rogelio’s hand. Squeezed.
    â€œDo you see what I mean?” Henry asked me.
    I said that I did, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.
    Not every memory was poisonous. For example: one day, Henry gathered up his courage, and went to see Espejo, the boss, about doing
The Idiot President
in Block Seven; surely this was one of his fondest memories. Espejo was a small but well-built man whose lazy grin belied a long history of violence, a man who’d risen far enough from the streets to relax, and now controlled the block through sheer force of reputation. He was languorous and content, occasionally dispensing pointed but very persuasive doses of rage should any inmate question his authority. Mostly though, he protected them—there were less than two hundred men in their block, and after nightfall they were in constant danger of being overrun by one of the larger, more ferocious sections of the prison. Espejo directed a small army of warriors tasked with keeping those potential invaders at bay.
    Henry was afraid of this man, but he had to remind himself: me and Espejo, we’re Block Seven, we’re on the same side.
    Espejo’s cell reminded him of a small but comfortable student apartment, with a squat refrigerator, a black-and-white television, and a coffeemaker plugged into a naked outlet. Espejo kept a photo of himself from his younger days framed above his bed, an image Henry had never been able to shake in all the years hence. He described it to me: in the picture, Espejo is shirtless, astride a white horse, riding the majestic animal up the steps of a swimming pool, toward the camera. He is handsome and powerful. A few delighted women stand behind him, long-legged, bronzed, and gleaming in the bright sun. Everything is colorful, saturated with tropical light. A child—Espejo’s son, one might guess—sits at the edge of the diving board, watching the horse maneuver its way out of the water. On the boy’s face is an expression of admiration and wonder, but it’s more than that: he’s concentrating; he’s watching the scene, watching his father, trying to learn.
    Henry would’ve liked to be left alone with the photograph, to study it, to ask how and when it had been taken and what had happened to each of the people in the background. To the boy most of all. He might have fled the country, or he might be dead, or he might be living in a cell much like this one in another of the city’s prisons. There was no way of knowing without asking directly, and that was not an option. The photo, like the lives of the men