The Dancer Upstairs

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Father Ramón had baptized her.

  My father, a timid man with few close friends, believed that a part of the reason we love someone is because of the person we become when we’re with them. When they’re dead, we can never be that person again. It’s that other person, my father would say, for whom we’re grieving. When I read the bald fact of Father Ramón’s death, I had no intention of journeying to La Posta. But I had to speak with others who had known him.

  The three altar boys had drifted apart. The last I heard of Nemecio, he was teaching in Cajamarca. Santiago was in a seminary. I had no idea where they were at that time.

  As you will see from that letter, Father Ramón mentions several of his fellow pilgrims. One of them is Santiago’s mother.

  Rejas waited for Dyer to find the reference. Although it puzzled the journalist, this concern for him to know every detail, he reread the passage.

  My feelings for Leticia Salano will always be informed by the utmost tenderness, but I will be relieved when we part. She would prefer it if her feelings towards me escalated to a level of greater intimacy, although this I attribute to her failing eyesight. We have known each other a long time – most of my life! – and she is so possessive of my company that once or twice it has led to friction with other members of our group. Since leaving the valley – she lives somewhere in Belgrano: is that near you? – I hear she is more troubled than ever. I do not know if Santiago is at the root of her disquiet. I believe there has been a falling out. Do you see your friend ever? We lost touch when he abandoned the ministry. It grieves me to think he didn’t trust me enough to share his doubts. I would have told him what my Bishop told me when I contemplated the same action: maybe God doesn’t exist, but people who believe in Him generally lead better lives.

  I found two Solanos listed as living in the Belgrano district, one of them with the initial L. The telephone company said the line had been disconnected owing to non-payment.

  One evening I followed an orange cat between puddles up an alley, looking for Solano, L.’s house.

  Clap, clap went the echo of my knock on the shabby door. The cat darted under a gate. Beyond the wall, a fig tree writhed unwatered. Presently a shutter rattled open. A bowl of white azaleas was shoved aside and, partly obscured by a line of drying clothes, an old woman’s face appeared over the ledge.

  “Yes?” She looked down between a pair of black stockings.

  I stepped back. “It’s Agustín. Agustín Rejas.”

  She weaved her head. “Who?”

  “Santiago’s friend. I’ve come about Father Ramón.”

  “What does he want?”

  Her voice was bothered, her face lost in the flowers.

  “Can I come in?”

  She withdrew. On the sill the cat watched me. I thought, Why do people who go to pieces like cats so?

  I heard a shuffle of feet and then metal squeaking. A gruff voice reminding itself, “Rejas, Rejas. The coffee farm.”

  We sat upstairs in a dingy kitchen, where she warned, “I’ve nothing to give you. No coffee.” Her face and chest had flattened and she couldn’t see very well. She relied on a neighbour’s boy to bring provisions. He hadn’t called today. She was thinking of Father Ramón, but too proud to ask.

  “I wanted to get in touch with Santiago,” I said.

  Something fluttered across her face. “Santiago? Why Santiago?”

  “We were at school together.”

  “In Pachuca?”

  “No, before that. La Posta.”

  “Why didn’t we meet?” She pretended she could see me. The eyes which had once caused havoc in the valley and beyond had a cloudy look. “Why didn’t he bring you to the hotel ever?”

  “He did. But you weren’t there.” She had abandoned hotel, husband and son for the alcoholic who pretended to be a wealthy cotton-grower. Everyone but Santiago had known of the affair.

  I said, “We both were servers at Mass.”

  I thought of walking with Santiago to the church. Horses grazing in the browned grass. A young goat shivering. Santiago wanting to be a priest. He looked very like his mother.

  “I played the flute and he sang.”

  Santiago had the best voice in the village. I thought of Father Ramón, tone deaf, encouraging Santiago to the eagle lectern; my friend’s nervous face popping over those wings as though he was clinging to a condor.

  “He gave up singing.”

  “Why?”

  “Same reason he gave up the priesthood,” she said bitterly. “He preferred to talk, didn’t he?”

  “What about?”

  “Foreign names. All nonsense.”

  “What foreign names?”

  “Why are you so interested? Why should I tell you?”

  It’s something I inherited from my father. If asked a direct question, I tell the truth. “I work for the ATP.”

  “The police?” She brushed the cat aside. Her cataracted eyes slunk back along the table towards me. “Paco told me they’ve found those actors you killed.”

  Bones had been discovered under the seats of a cinema which the University was restoring as a cultural centre.

  “That was nothing to do with us.”

  “The army, then. What difference does it make?”

  “It hasn’t been proved.”

  “Why are you all behaving like this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is it you want to see your schoolfriend?” The last word sarcastic.

  “I want to talk to him about Father Ramón.”

  “That’s what the others said.”

  “Who said?”

  “Two men who came to see him.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Friends from university. They needed Santiago, they said.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two, three weeks.” She lifted her head. “Why does everyone want to talk about Father Ramón?”

  “What did they want to know?”

  The cat had crept back. “His sermons –”

  “They didn’t like what he was saying?”

  She folded her arms. “I told them to get out.”

  “Did you tell them where to find Santiago?”

  “I have no idea where he is.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Then it’s not true.”

  “He writes. He sends money.”

  “What do the letters say?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated, her eyes unable to make tears. “The boy who brings the food doesn’t read.”

  “Don’t you keep the letters?”

  “Pass me that.”

  I unhooked the imitation leather bag from the back of a chair. She fumbled with the clasp and felt inside, bringing out an envelope.

  The postmark was two months old, from La Posta.

  She said, “Tell me, what does he write?”

  I unfolded the letter. The page was blank, something to fold the money in so it couldn’t be seen through the envelope.

  “He says he loves you and everything is fine and he will write again soon.”

  The outline of a smile. “That’s Santiago.”

  She moved her head to the wall. The thermometer was a Fatima Virgin. She bit her lip. “Tell me,” she said more brightly. “How is Father Ramón?”

  I requested a fortnight’s absence. The General refused. The bowl on his desk was piled high with oranges as if stocked against a great siege. “I tell you, Tomcat, it’s pandefuckingmonium out there.” Calderón had given himself dictatorial powers. Everything went first to Lache. “If I know General Lache, the Arguedas Players, they’re just the beginning. He’s adopting the French solution – and the French haven’t won a war since 1812. It’s vital you stay here.”

  I held my ground. “And it’s vital I go to La Posta, sir.”

  “Why?” He stood up and looked uncertainly at his map.

  “Ezequiel has been trying to contact a friend of mi
ne.”

  “So?”

  “This friend may be involved.”

  It had burst upon me in Leticia’s kitchen. All the time I had been searching for Ezequiel I had been looking in the wrong place.

  10

  On the morning I left for La Posta, Laura sidled into the bedroom. She was miserable. Children hold adults to their promises.

  “Look.” I watched her through the camera. “I’ll take masses of photos for you.”

  Her face hardened.

  “I’ll bring you a flute – like the one I used to play. I promise.”

  She said nothing.

  “The military have declared it an emergency zone, Laura.”

  To prove that she was the child I took her for, she locked herself in her room and sang aloud to the cat.

  Sylvina drove me to the airport. An unusual peace had settled on her, and on the city we passed through. If you live with violence you become acclimatized to it. After a car bomb, people will jog round the dead bodies. They will go to their tennis courts. One of Sylvina’s cousins, to circumvent the curfew, had bought a second-hand ambulance to transport his friends to parties. There is a routine even to menace.

  As we drove past the Inca Market, Sylvina said, “Agustín, I have a way we can make money.”

  She had been discussing our problems with Marco. She knew I’d be cross, which is why she waited until this moment to talk about it. The fact was, Marco had come up with a fail-safe plan for us to become millionaires. In the vague terms in which I grasped it, Marco’s solution – upon which, shortly, all her hopes would fix – required Sylvina to sell certain beauty products to her friends and induce them to do likewise while taking a percentage.

  “If you persuade people to work for you, you get ten per cent of everything they sell, so if they sell fifty dollars I receive five dollars, and if they in turn find two people to work for them, eventually I’ll be at the top of the pyramid and it can’t fail.” A lavender Cadillac seemed to be involved at some point, because she brought up that again after the engine stalled at the security checkpoint.

  “Marco’s obsessed with it. Just in his own street two women have made millions.”

  We kissed through the car window. “You know what communications are like in the sierra,” I said. “But I’ll try to ring.”

  “Anyway, Marco’s sending me a sample kit.”

  I flew in a military transport to Cajamarca, from where I caught a lift with a lorry heading north. The driver was a round, thick-set man with an overhanging forehead and huge, offended eyes. We left for the mountains that night, splashing out through the mud, our headlamps shedding a watery dazzle in the pelting rain.

  The truck had been climbing for three hours when Ezequiel struck. We were approaching a high pass, and the driver was telling me about his family, killed by the police. I sat, appalled, watching a bank of mist nudge into the sweep of our lights.

  He said he knew the policeman who had killed them, knew his name and nickname, knew where he lived. Every night since his wife and daughters had been found in a sheep field, strangled with khaki webbing, he had driven backwards and forwards past the policeman’s house, fifty yards one way, then reverse and fifty yards the other way. Up, down. Up, down, Up, down. Until daylight. He lifted a plump hand from the wheel and pointed a finger at my temple.

  “Pow!” he whispered.

  “Watch out!” The headlight picked out a barricade of rocks in the mud.

  He braked hard and the truck slithered towards the hillside, shuddering to a stop against a bank of earth. Soon another vehicle pulled up behind us, and another, until the lights of six cars illuminated the bend.

  He slapped the flat of his hands against the steering wheel. “What the fucking hell is this about?”

  It was ten o’clock. The mist was rolling in.

  And then four figures solidified in the haze, stepping between the rocks, waving powerful flashlights, advancing through the rain.

  The driver leaned from his window and yelled: “Let us pass.”

  “Shut your face.” It was a young boy, speaking through a woollen mask. His gloved hands gripped what, in that light appeared to be a gun, but might have been a stick. He wasn’t nervous.

  “Turn out your lights and wait in the cab.” There was the flop of feet and he continued down the line of cars, flanked by his three companions.

  The driver turned the lorry’s lights off and slumped back in his seat.

  I said quietly, “If they order us out, we’ll be shot.” I carried no weapon, but concealed in my right shoe was a military pass and my police identity card. Should they discover these, there would be no mercy. Not for me, not for the driver, either.

  A shadow, then a tap on the window. A light beamed in my face. The door opened and a moment later my first gasp of the chill mountain air froze my lungs.

  “Your money. Quickly.” The light remained in our eyes while we groped for our wallets. A hand seized them, then the torch was flashed at my feet.

  “That bag. Pass it here.”

  The bag was unzipped, a hand in a long, damp orange love thrust inside. It emerged with my old Leica: one of the few nice things my father left me. On the film were pictures of Laura and Sylvina at Paracas: standing in the waves, offering crisps to a sea-lion, pointing at a turtle on the sand. I would later regret the theft of those happy images even more than I did now.

  I could easily afford to contribute to the revolution, snarled the voice. This instrument was worth more than he earned in a year.

  He jumped to the ground and ran off, leaving me to shut the door. Beside me the driver expelled his breath. There’s something frightening about a twelve-year-old with a gun. Then, suddenly agitated, he twisted in his seat. “Hey,” he whispered, “what’s that?” The truck squealed on its chassis and we could hear the heavy boxes sliding in the back.

  They were unloading his vegetables. With the hand that had been a pistol he covered his eyes and sobbed.

  Five minutes later the boys came by again, not looking at us. They reached the rocks and switched off their torches; shadow-thin, sheathed in denim, they slipped down the bank and vanished.

  It was something tremendous, this silence. We waited, waited, as the quietness dripped around us. Eventually the car behind switched on its sidelights, and after an interval a strained voice was heard calling, “Shall we risk it?”

  Two men stooped over the rocks and began lifting them. The driver and I got out to help. We didn’t exchange words. Then we climbed back in and everyone started their engines and we drove from that place.

  Two days later I reached the valley where I was born. The road signs had been stolen, but I knew where I was.

  I banged on the cab roof. As the pick-up slowed I jumped from the back.

  The air smelled sharply of wet earth and the barky scent of catuaba shrubs. Midges, bloated by rain, danced over puddles reflecting terraces of corn and cactus.

  I paused at the top of the track. La Posta lay below, a village on the edge of a drop into a valley at the headwaters of the Amazon. I could see the white domed church, the ironwork bridge, and the thread of road winding through the valleys beyond the town. It led to our farm, though the house was hidden by an escarpment.

  You know how you feel when you see your name in print? I experienced the same shock of recognition. Nostalgia engulfed me and the landscape trembled a little and I walked down that track as if the rest of my life hadn’t happened. The landscape hadn’t changed – therefore nothing else had either.

  Just outside the village I heard a cry. A boy came round the corner, whipping a donkey with a strip of rubber. When he caught sight of my bag he leapt off down the slope, not looking back. The donkey, ignoring me, lowered its peeled-back lips to the verge.

  I was too excited to be offended. I walked on down into the main street. It was eleven in the morning, but I was shocked by what I didn’t see.

  I expected the sidewalks to swarm with women from the lower farms.
Every morning they would sit cross-legged behind pyramids of coca leaf and manioc flour. At the same age as the boy with the donkey, I had loved to watch their hands sneak from under impossibly coloured shawls, either to ladle a cup of reddish chicha; turn over a chunk of sweet-smelling alpaca; or offer a roasted guinea pig with a mouth of charred teeth.

  Today the muddied sidewalk was deserted save for three small figures hurrying away. I breathed in deeply. Even the air seemed tainted.

  In the Plaza de Armas, steam gargled from an open drain and drifted over a scraggy hedgerow, smudging the knees of a statue. I remembered how, on Sundays, dissatisfied young women would loiter before our band, making eyes at the musicians. Parents would push their prams across the cobbles to meet other parents, and the benches would creak with watchful old men, tapping their feet to badly played tunes. This morning two girls knelt by the fountain in the square. They crouched at the spout, spraying water at each other from the dribble. José’s daughters? They had the butcher’s curly black hair. When they saw me, they ran off through the threadbare topiary into a house beyond.

  On his plinth, Brigadier Pumacacchua averted his concrete gaze.

  I paused on the corner at the butcher’s shop. Twice a week my mother would send me to buy the lamb’s tongues for which my father had a weakness. The idea had entered her head that this was every man’s favourite dish – Father Ramón included. She adored the priest and was always fussing over him, inviting him to dinner, serving him these tongues which, uncomplainingly, he ate, telling her they were wonderful.

  Twenty-five years ago I’d been waiting my turn in the queue, a lamb’s head resting on a blue chair beside me, when the door burst open and the printer we knew as “the Turk” bustled in holding a Thermos flask of calligraphy fluid, warmed-up, and a stack of blank invitation cards under his arm. “They’ve expropriated the coffee farm!” He didn’t know I was in the shop, and at José’s dismayed expression he turned, dropping the flask when he saw me. I watched the steaming ink spread under the chair, mingling with the lamb’s blood until the floor was a vivid pattern of reds and blacks streaking one into the other.