1、The Idiot President by Daniel Alarcn January 2, 2009When I was first out of the Conservatory, I did a two-month stint with a theatre group called Diciembre. It was an established company that had formed during the anxious years of the war, when it was known for its brazen trips into the conflict zon
2、e, bringing theatre to the people, and, in the city, for staging all-night marathon showspop reworkings of Garca Lorca, stentorian readings of Brazilian soap-opera scripts, always with a political edge, sometimes subtle, often not at all, anything to keep people awake and laughing through what would
3、 otherwise have been the dark, lonely hours of curfew. These shows were legendary among the theatre students of my generation, and many of my classmates claimed to have been present, as children, at one or another of these performances. They said that their parents had taken them, that they had witn
4、essed an unholy union of recital and insurrection, of sex and barbarism, and that they remained, however many years later, unsettled and even inspired by the memory. They were all liars. We were, in fact, studying to be liars. Its been nine years since I graduated, and I imagine that these days stud
5、ents at the Conservatory talk about other things. They are too young to remember how ordinary fear was during the war. Perhaps they find it difficult to imagine a time when theatre was improvised in response to terrifying headlines, a time when delivering a line of dialogue with a chilling sense of
6、dread did not even require acting. But, then, such are the narcotic effects of peace, and certainly no one wants to go backward. More than a decade after the war, Diciembre still functioned as a loose grouping of actors and actresses who occasionally put on a show, often in a private home, to which
7、the audience came by invitation only. Paradoxically, now that travel outside the city was relatively safe, they hardly ever went to the interior, so when a new tour was announced I auditioned eagerly. It was a rare opportunity, and, to my surprise, I got the part. Only three of us wentme, a curly-ha
8、ired actor named Henry, and a short, dark-skinned man who introduced himself as Patalarga and never bothered to give me his real name. They were related, sort ofHenry had, at some point in the distant past, married and then divorced Patalargas second cousin, a woman named Tania, to whom they alluded
9、 with the sort of hushed respect that tenant farmers might use when speaking of the weather. The two men had been friends for a long time, as long as Id been alive, and I was pleased to be accepted into their company. I figured it would be a chance to learn from veterans. Henry wrote most of the pla
10、ys, and for that tour we were doing a subtle piece of invective he called “The Idiot President.” Though its politics were easy to trace, it was very funny, involving a delicate interaction between an arrogant, self-involved head of state and his servant. Each day, the Presidents servant was replaced
11、, the idea being that eventually every citizen of the country would have the honor of attending to the needs of the leader. These included helping him dress, combing his hair, reading his mail, etc. The President was fastidious and required that everything follow a rather idiosyncratic protocol, so
12、the better part of each day was spent teaching the new servant how things should be done. Hilarity ensued. I played the idiot Presidents idiot son, Alejo, a role perfectly suited to my youthful skills, and over the course of our rehearsals I came to love this buffoonish adolescent in a way that I ha
13、dnt expected. He was a boastful lout and a petty thief, who was a great source of pride to his father, despite his many shortcomings. The climactic scene involved a heart-to-heart between the servant of the day and my character, after the President has gone to sleep, in which Alejo lets his guard do
14、wn and admits that he has often thought of killing his father but is too frightened to go through with it. The servant is intriguedafter all, he lives in a ruined country, subject to the Presidents disastrous whims, and furthermore has spent the entire day being humiliated by him. The servant probes
15、 Alejos doubts, and he opens up, voicing his concerns about freedom, about the rule of law, about the suffering of the people, until the servant finally allows that, yes, perhaps killing the President wouldnt be such a bad idea. For the sake of the country, you understand. Alejo pretends to mull it
16、over, and then kills the startled servant himself, as punishment for treason. He picks the corpse clean, pocketing the mans wallet, his watch, and his rings, and the play ends with him shouting toward the room where the President is sleeping, “Another one, Father! Well need another one tomorrow!” Pa
17、talarga, Henry, and I left the capital in early March, the day after I turned twenty-one. It was summer on the coast, hot and humid, and we rode a bus up into the rainy mountains to the region where Patalarga was born, a part of the country Id never seen before. Even at the time, I felt certain that
18、 I would never see it again. Everything about my life thenevery decision I made or failed to makewas predicated on the idea that Id be leaving the country soon. I expected to join my brother in California before the year was up: my visa was being processed, and it was only a matter of time. This was
19、 a very pleasant way to live, actually. It gave me a kind of private strength that allowed me to withstand certain indignities, confident that everything was temporary. We performed in small towns and villages, up and down a wide and gloomy valley, subject to heavy, freezing downpours that were like
20、 nothing Id ever experienced. The skies swirled with blue-black clouds, and when it wasnt raining the winds blew straight through you. We were greeted warmly in each town, with a certain ceremony and solicitousness that I found charming, and every night the audience gave us a standing ovation that m
21、ade all our efforts seem worthwhile. Sometimes the villages were just a handful of houses dotting endless yellowish gray fields. Our audience might be a dozen people altogether, a few farmers with ruddy faces, their long-suffering wives and undernourished children, whod approach Henry after the play
22、, never looking directly at him, and say respectfully, “Thank you, Mr. President.” The cold nearly destroyed me. In two weeks I lost three kilos, and one night, after a particularly energetic performance, I nearly fainted. When I recovered, we were invited to a party at a one-room adobe house on the
23、 outskirts of town. Henry and Patalarga were both on edge, drinking more than usual, because this was the town where Tania lived; apparently shed been at the show, and might reappear at any moment. I was too ill to worry about that: taking a breath was like swallowing sharp knives, and my head felt
24、as if it might separate from my neck and just float away into the threatening Andean sky. But everyone was exceedingly kind, paying special attention to feeding me and getting me drunk. The liquor helped, and it felt nice to be doted upon. When I started turning blue, the owner of the home, a squat
25、gray-haired man named Cayetano, asked if I wanted a jacket. I nodded enthusiastically, and he rose and walked to the refrigerator, standing before its open door, as if contemplating a snack. I thought, Hes making fun of me, and I heard Henry and Patalarga snickering. But then Cayetano opened the veg
26、etable drawer and took out a pair of wool socks. He tossed them to me, and when he opened the door a little farther I saw that the refrigerator was, in fact, being used as a wardrobe. There were mittens in the butter tray, sweaters and jackets hanging from a wooden bar nailed to the inside walls. On
27、ly then did I notice the few perishables sitting on the counter. In this cold, of course, they were in no danger of spoiling. The gathered men and women told sad stories about the war and laughed at their own suffering in ways that I found incomprehensible. Sometimes they would speak in Quechua, and
28、 then the laughter became much more intense, and also much sadderor, at least, thats how it seemed to me. When Tania arrived, everyone stood. She had long black hair, which she wore in a single braid, and an orange-and-yellow shawl draped over her shoulders. Older than me but a little younger than m
29、y colleagues, Tania was petite, and yet somehow she gave the impression of great strength. She circled the room, shaking hands with everyoneexcept Henry, who instead received a floating kiss in the air just beside his right ear. “Are you still acting,” she asked when she got to me, “or are you actua
30、lly that sick?”I didnt know what to say, so when someone shouted, “Hes drunk!,” I was relieved. The room roared, and then everyone sat. The drinking began in earnest now, and soon a guitar appeared from a corner of the room. It was passed from person to person, making a few laps around the circle be
31、fore finally Tania kept it. Everyone cheered. She strummed a few chords, then cleared her throat, welcoming the visitors, thanking us all for listening. She sang in Quechua, picking out a complex accompaniment, her agile fingers unrestrained by the cold. I turned to Henry and asked him in a low voic
32、e what the song was about.“About love,” he whispered, without taking his eyes off her. As the night wore on, I found myself appreciating Tanias beauty with greater and greater clarity. Henry and Patalarga watched me watching her, alternately glaring and smiling, in a sequence that was impossible to
33、interpret. Much later, when I was finally succumbing to the cold and the liquor, Tania offered to lead me back to the hostel where I was staying. This was noted with feigned alarm, but she ignored it all. The town was small, there was no possibility of getting lost, and we trudged drunkenly through
34、its streets, both of us wrapped in Cayetanos blanket. “You sing beautifully,” I said. “What was it about?”“Just old songs.”“Henry said you were singing about love.”She had a lovely laugh: clear and unpretentious, like moonlight. “He doesnt speak Quechua,” Tania said. “Must have been a lucky guess.”W
35、e paused at the door of the hostel. I moved to kiss her, but she just patted me on the head as if I were a little boy. “Drink lots of water,” she said, “and get as much rest as you can.” And then she walked back to the party. Inside the hostel, the owner gave me a large rubber bladder, swollen with
36、boiling water, and as I prepared for bed I held it in my hands the way one might hold a beating human heartmy own heart, perhaps. I tried to go over my daywhat had happened, or what, to my chagrin, had not. But the cold made coherent thought impossible, so I lay down with the bladder pressed against
37、 my belly, curling myself around it like a snail. I wondered whether I should have stayed in the city and what my friends were doing at that exact moment. Theyd been jealous of me and my tour with Diciembre, and I struggled to remember that. Patalarga and Henry had done this circuit before, were con
38、stantly running into old friends. They seemed unfazed by the conditions that were slowly wearing me down. They had lived in the city for decades but did not consider it home. And it was like this for weeks. In the mornings, weather permitting, we rode to the next town on a rickety bus, or on the bed
39、 of a truck piled with potatoes. Id learned to chew coca leaves by then, had come to enjoy the numbness as it spread over my face, down my neck, and into my chest. The roads were barely wide enough for a horse cart, and often I looked over the face of a crumbling mountain, forcing myself to think of
40、 something other than death. Patalarga and Henry recovered from the previous evening with their eyes closed, suspended in deep and peaceful dreams. They were enjoying themselves; me, I was trying to stay alive.Toward the end of the tour, we arrived at a town called San Germn, which was the remote ou
41、tpost of an American mining company. The town consisted of a couple of hundred houses that seemed to have been airlifted to the wind-battered top of a desolate mountain, which was surrounded on three sides by even higher, more foreboding peaks. I think it was a silver mine, but it could have been co
42、pper or bauxite or something else, and, in a sense, it doesnt matter: all mining towns are the same. They are pitiless and isolated, often situated in places that might be beautiful were they not so extreme, and defined by a kind of human deprivation particular to the industry. In San Germn, thick c
43、louds hung just above us, and I could smell metal in the air. I had never felt so far away from the world. We were more than four thousand metres above sea level, and the altitude rendered me useless. I spent the first day in the hostel, gripping the sides of the bed as if I were riding a roller coa
44、ster. San Germn was a small place, and there was very little to see, but Patalarga and Henry sat by my bedside, regaling me with the invented wonders of the town. “You must get up,” Patalarga said. “You have to see this place.” “Theres a replica of the pyramids,” Henry told me, “and it shines golden
45、 in the sunlight.” I opened my eyes and saw his breath gathering in a cloud.“A miniature Arc de Triomphe,” Patalarga said. “Cafs, tree-lined boulevards, and the night lifeyou wont believe it! Discos like in Batistas Havana, like Beirut before the war.” I paid them no attention. The roomindeed, my br
46、ainfilled with the concussive sound of their voices. I begged to be left alone, and then they disappeared. I closed my eyes again, and for a few hours I didnt move. I just listened desperately to the sound of my own breathing.When my colleagues returned, they were sullen and angry. I could smell the
47、 mud that clung to their boots. “You tell him.” “No, you tell him.” From my sickbed, I could hear them pacing. “Someone fucking tell me,” I said. I had intended to shout, but I was weak, and it came out as the raspy plea of a heart patient. I kept my eyes closed. Someone sat on my bed. It was Henry.
48、 Bad news. Our first performance was scheduled for the next night, but there was a glitch. There was no electricity, no light. This was not a temporary condition, as we had been told when we checked into the hostel. The only power still running in town went to the homes of the American engineers, on
49、 the other side of the mine. “You should see how they live,” Henry said, and described how, behind a high fence, they had created a facsimile of American life. Comfortable suburban homes, neatly paved streets, a baseball diamond. I sat shivering beneath a half-dozen blankets. It sounded nice.“Dont you have a brother in the U.S.?” Patalarga asked. “Sure.” “Does he play baseball?”“How should I know?”I could barely get the words out. I knew nothing about baseball. In fact, I knew virtually nothi
