The King Is Always Above the People. Daniel Alarcon

This corruption, the only kind of commerce that had thrived during the war, was also the only kind we could always count on. Why he found it so disconcerting, I couldn’t figure. Nothing could have been more ordinary.

      By nightfall we’d made it to my father’s hometown. My great-uncle’s old filling station stood at the top of the hill, under new ownership and doing brisk business now, though the truckers rarely ventured into the town proper. We eased the car onto the main street, a palm-lined boulevard that sloped down to the boardwalk, and left it a few blocks from the sea, walking until we reached the simple public square that overlooked the ocean. A larger palm tree, its trunk inscribed with the names and dates of young love, stood in the middle of this inelegant plaza. Every summer, the tree was optimistically engraved with new names and new dates, and then stood for the entire winter, untouched. I’d scratched a few names there myself, years before. On warm nights, when the town filled with families on vacation, the children brought out remote-control cars and guided these droning machines around the plaza, ramming them into one another or into the legs of adults, occasionally tipping them off the edge of the boardwalk and onto the beach below, and celebrating these calamities with cheerful hysteria.

      My brother, Francisco, and I had spent entire summers like this, until the year he’d left for the U.S. These were some of my favorite memories.

      But in the off-season, there was no sign of these young families. No children. They’d all gone north, back to the city or farther, so naturally, the arrival of one of the town’s wandering sons was both unexpected and welcome. My father and I moved through the plaza like rock stars, stopping at every bench to pay our respects, and from each of these aged men and women I heard the same thing. First: brief, rote condolences on the death of Raúl (it seems no one much cared for him); then, a smooth transition to the town’s most cherished topic of discussion, the past. The talk was directed at me:

      “Your old man was so smart, so brilliant …”

      My father nodded, politely accepting every compliment, not the least bit embarrassed by the attention. He’d carried the town’s expectations on his shoulders for so many years they no longer weighed on him. I’d heard these stories all my life.

      “This is my son,” he’d say. “You remember Nelson?”

      And one by one the old folks asked when I had come back from the United States.

      “No, no,” I said, “I’m the other son.”

      Of course, they got us confused, or perhaps simply forgot I existed. Their response, offered gently, hopefully: “Oh, yes, the other son.” Then, leaning forward: “So, when will you be leaving?”

      It was late summer, but the vacation season had come to an early close, and already the weather had cooled. In the distance, you could hear the trucks humming along the highway. The bent men and stooped women wore light jackets and shawls, and seemed not to notice the sound. It was as if they’d all taken the same cocktail of sedatives, content to cast their eyes toward the sea, the dark night, and stay this way for hours. Now they wanted to know when I’d be leaving.

      I wanted to know too.

      “Soon,” I said.

      “Soon,” my father repeated.

      Even then I had my doubts, but I would keep believing this for another year or so.

      “Wonderful,” responded the town. “Just great.”

      My father and I settled in for the night at my great-uncle’s house. It had that stuffiness typical of shuttered spaces, of old people who live alone, made more acute by the damp ocean air. The spongy foam mattresses sagged and there were yellowing photographs everywhere—in dust-covered frames, in unruly stacks, or poking out of the books that lined the shelves of the living room. My father grabbed a handful and took them to the kitchen. He set the water to boil, flipping through them idly and calling out names of the relatives in each picture. There was a flatness to his voice, a distance—as if he were testing his recall, as opposed to reliving any cherished childhood memory. You got the sense he barely knew these people.