War by Candlelight by Daniel Alarcon

Author:Daniel Alarcon [Alarcon, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-12T21:00:00+00:00

Leaving is no problem. It’s exciting actually; in fact, it’s drug. It’s the staying gone that will kill you. This is the handed-down wisdom of the immigrant. You hear it from the people who wander home, after a decade away. You hear about the euphoria that passes quickly; the new things that lose their newness and, soon after, their capacity to amuse you. Language is bewildering. You tire of exploring. Then the list of things you miss multiplies beyond all reason, nostalgia clouding everything: in memory, your country is clean and uncorrupt, the streets are safe, the people universally warm, and the food consistently delicious. The sacred details of your former life appear and reappear in strange iterations, in a hundred waking dreams. Your pockets fill with money, but your heart feels sick and empty.

Wari was prepared for all this.

In Lima, he rounded up a few friends and said his good-byes. Tentative, equivocal good-byes. Good-byes over drinks, presented as jokes, gentle laughter before the poof and the vanishing—that Third World magic. I may be back, he told everyone, or I may not. He moved two boxes of assorted possessions into the back room of his parents’ house. He took a few posters off the walls, covered the little holes with Wite-Out. He encouraged his mother to rent out his room for extra money if he didn’t come home in a month. She cried, but just a little. His brother wished him luck. Wari offered a toast to family at Sunday dinner and promised to come home one day soon. He embraced his father and accepted the crisp $100 bill the old man slipped into his hand. And in the last days before leaving, Wari and Eric exchanged feverish e-mails, ironing out the fine points of the exhibit: the exact size of the canvases, the translated bio, the press release. All the formalities of a real opening, but for Wari, it was so much noise and chatter. The only solid things for him were the ticket and the runway and the plane and the obligatory window seat for a last, fading view of Lima. The desert purgatory, the approaching northern lights.

I’m ready, he thought.

And if no one questioned him, it’s because the logic was self-evident. What would he do there? How long could he live at home? A divorced painter, sometime teacher—what does an artist do in a place like that? In America, you can sweep floors and make money, if you’re willing to work—you are willing to work, aren’t you, Wari?

Yes, I am.

At anything? Outdoor work? Lifting, carting, cleaning?

Anything.

And that was it. What other questions were there? He’d be fine.

Only his mother gave voice to any concerns. “Is it about Elie?” she asked a few days before he traveled. Wari had been expecting this question. Elie, his ex-wife, whom he loved and whom he hated. At least there were no children to grow up hating him. Wari was relieved it was over, believed she must be as well.

“No, Ma,” he said.

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