The Dancer Upstairs

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  The attendant, slim with a scanty mop of grey hair, was about to tear us tickets when she saw Yolanda. She chucked back her head and called a name through an open door. A short young man with a close-cropped beard and cautious eyes strode out. “What is it?” At the sight of Yolanda he threw up his arms. He hugged her, speaking into her ear in a jaunty, whistling voice. “I have the lights, the loudspeakers, two hundred chairs. I’ve rung Miguel. He promises to write a review.”

  Over her shoulder, he peered at me from between heavy, red-veined lids.

  “Lorenzo, this is my friend Agustín. I wanted to show him the stage.”

  He pulled back. “Sure, carry on. How’s everything going?”

  “I’m not there – yet.”

  “You need help?”

  “That’s sweet of you. I’ll manage.”

  He looked at me, then in a low voice said to her, “I’d love to see a dress rehearsal. The others would too.”

  “There really isn’t that much time.”

  He thought about this for a moment. “Listen, I’ve someone on the line. We’ll be in touch.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Good to meet you, Agustín.”

  We passed into a lofty room hung with silk sheets. She whispered, “Lorenzo, when he isn’t running this theatre, is a depressed choreographer.” She glanced back. “We used to work together. You can’t believe his jealousy. Worried continually I’d run off with his steps.”

  The room, arranged with uncomfortable-looking cane chairs, was lit naturally from a glass roof which revealed the grey wool sky and the top of a palm tree. Stage lights cast elaborate shadows across a stained wooden floor.

  Yolanda waited for two students to leave the room, then slipped off her shoes, handing me the shopping bag.

  “I need to measure this.” She walked to one wall. Abruptly, she pirouetted once, twice, three times, then leapt five paces across the floor. “Zsa, zsa, zsa, zsa, chu!”

  Burned in my mind is the flash of her feet, naked and white, through the bright air.

  A yard from the opposite wall she stopped. “That’s fine. I was worried about the width.”

  Another couple wandered into the room. She retrieved her shoes. “Isn’t this a nice place?” She spread her arms and her voice rang beneath the glass. “In my first year at the Metropolitan I danced Stravinsky’s ‘Symphony of Psalms’ here. Hey, look at these faces.”

  My attention fixed on Yolanda, I had failed to notice the faces staring at us from the silk sheets. Close to, they defined themselves. They had been lifted from newspapers in Chile dating back thirty years, blown up to life-size, and printed on the silk.

  The faces of pickpockets.

  The faces of murderers.

  The faces of terrorists and freedom fighters.

  The faces of their victims.

  The faces of their pursuers

  The faces of their judges.

  The faces of patients from a schizophrenic ward.

  The faces of extinct aborigines.

  “Many of these people had one thing in common: They were not included in the society that was photographing them – either for the purpose of anthropological observation; or as objects of police control.”

  “Are you a good judge of character?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Everybody thinks they are. Let’s see.”

  We played a game. She darted to a sheet, covering a caption with her bag. “Now, answer me. What kind of person is this?”

  “Thief?”

  She raised the bag. “Murder victim.” She ran to another face. “What about . . . her?”

  “Policeman?”

  “Policewoman it is. Him?”

  “Judge?”

  “No. Murderer. Her?”

  “Freedom fighter?”

  “Schizophrenic. Him?”

  “Extinct Indian?”

  “Right. Two out of four. Which means that half the people you meet, you get wrong.”

  Across the room the couple, who had been watching us, began to copy our game. They likewise had been confident of their ability to distinguish a murderer from a freedom fighter, a general who had been blown up in his bed from a Yaghan who had died of a common cold. But this was the artist’s challenge. He was saying: put them side by side and the schizophrenic assumes the personality of the judge.

  “In other words,” said Yolanda, “we know nothing about anybody.”

  Not every face had been alive when photographed. I had been about to test Yolanda’s skill when she halted before the mummified features of a body in a dress.

  “Yaghan?” I asked.

  “Look.”

  The caption read: One of General Pinochet’s disappeared. Eva Vasquez, student, for seventeen years buried in a mine shaft.

  Yolanda said, “It’s the same story, over and over again.” She added, fiercely, “Bastards.”

  I looked at the torn drum of skin, the wretched angle of the head, and thought of Nemecio, his mouth filling, drowning in earth. Thought, too, of a widow five miles away, scrunching her dress at the knees. My years as a policeman, what had they achieved? What if I had followed Santiago’s path? A sense of my emaciated duty all at once made ridiculous the distinction between Ezequiel and Calderón. You might have asked me to choose between Emilio’s grilled fish and his grilled pork.

  Yolanda said, “I don’t know what you are like, Agustín, but I can’t look at a face like this and say nothing. What happened to her is happening to us, now.”

  She told me that while I’d been away the university had held a service for the Arguedas Players. She had joined the parents lighting candles for their missing children. The remains found under the cinema floor included a scrap of green blouse and two keys on a keyring, one of which fitted Vera’s locker. But no body, or at least not enough of one to be identifiable.

  Yolanda, looking at the desiccated face on the silk, spoke as if to herself. “You have to have a body to be able to grieve. It’s something you can’t understand unless you’ve seen a loved one die. You have to see the corpse to be certain they’re dead, so they can begin living in your memory. Without a body, you can’t be rid of the horror.” She broke off, covering her eyes. “Stop it, Yolanda, stop it, stop it.” She composed herself, not without effort. Giving a quick look round, she said, “Come on, let’s leave.”

  Outside, people pushed their prams or stretched out on the grass, reading. Through the railings I saw a yellow barrow and bought two lemon water ices on sticks. We sat on the grass, but a darkness had brushed Yolanda and she had retreated into herself.

  “What would you do,” I asked, “if you were Eva Vasquez and your boyfriend asked you to fight that war?”

  “I don’t know.” She nibbled at her ice cream. Her eyes were red. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “I’m thinking of Laura. If I was her age, I’d be tempted to fight.”

  “She’s a dancer.”

  “Does it frighten you, that I talk like this?”

  “No, I’m thinking. What I would do.” But she had retreated from me as well. She finished her ice cream and buried the stick in the grass. “I give up. I need a cigarette.”

  Ten yards away, a young man lay on his stomach, reading a newspaper. Yolanda went over and talked to him. She came back, drawing on a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “I don’t. I feel like one.”

  Forcefully, she blew out the smoke. “What about you?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “I mean what would you do?”

  Something about the jut of her chin, her glowing eyes, must have reached me, stung me even. I said, “There was a moment when I sacrificed everything.”

  “When was that?”

  “I was younger than you.”

  “What happened?” She had been distracted. Now she was focused.

  “I had a good job with a law firm. I was just married. I was going to be rich, maybe become a judge. One day my con
science spoke to me. When I heard it, the barriers went down. My wife, career, friends. Nothing mattered when I heard this voice. Next day I left my job.”

  Her hand slapped the ground. “That’s what she felt!”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, I see everything through Antigone. She didn’t want the dogs to eat her brother’s corpse. She was saying, life and death, those obligations are more important than a state’s decree – and that’s how I feel. I value Eva Vasquez’s life – or Laura’s, or yours – much more than the laws of this country.”

  “So our political situation can never change?”

  “I’m not interested in politics. The only command you have to listen to is the one inside you – which you listened to.”

  She flattened a hand against her chest. “I’m interested in doing the things you know in your heart are right. Burying your brother is one of them.” She spoke like a child, seeing what a child saw, then became serious again. “That’s what stirred me up about the Arguedas Players. They were people’s brothers and sisters.” She was crying.

  “Lovers and sons and daughters, too.”

  She shook her head, coughing, stubbed out the cigarette. “Not so important. You can find another lover, give birth to another child.”

  “You mean, you’d sacrifice your child?”

  She stroked the grass. She spoke as if she were on stage. “It doesn’t take much to break a man-made law. A little dust, that’s all. So what can we do, Agustín? We can follow orders and do nothing. But aren’t there other demands? You’ve been back to your people. Don’t they need our help?”

  I didn’t move. She stared at me, her face swollen. The path her tears had taken shone down her cheeks. In a hurt voice, she said, “Agustín, do you have a reason for not telling me about your journey?”

  I had been concerned to protect Yolanda from knowing the things which churned me inside. My eyes fastened on her ankle and the scar an inch or so above her boot where the leggings had pushed up.

  “I’m not who you think I am. I’ve deceived you.” I nodded at the Teatro. “I’m like one of the photographs in there. Laura may have told you I was a lawyer, but I’m not.”

  I couldn’t reveal to her the work I did, but it involved lies, violence, death. I had been engaged in it when I returned to La Posta. I kept back the details of Father Ramón’s murder, but not the church massacre, nor the communal grave at the airstrip, nor the people beating their pan lids along the eucalyptus avenue.

  “They never found me, nor did their dogs. I can only think it’s because I had changed my clothes.”

  I told her how I had lain, tucked under a lip in the crevice throughout that cold night, my clothes damp with urine and insects crawling over my face, under my shirt. At sunrise I climbed out of the hole, my arms and legs aching. I was filthy.

  After washing in the river, I walked back to the village. During the night I had made a decision. Because of it I had to move with extreme care, so that neither the Mayor or the army would discover my presence.

  I wasn’t going to leave La Posta until I had gathered depositions.

  “People were too scared to talk to begin with. But when word got out it was Agustín from the farm, they filled Lazo’s surgery. I didn’t like to think how many of those faces had chased me the night before.”

  I spoke still to her ankle. I was conscious of my hand jerking in the air and the ice cream melting, running down between my fingers.

  “For many, this was the first time anyone had paid attention to them since they’d been at school. They reverted to the elementary habit of raising their hands to speak. One old lady, no longer able to walk, told how three soldiers had escorted her to the far end of a field and raped her, beginning with the officer.”

  Yolanda took the stick from my hand and poked it into the earth.

  “Another woman lost her son when soldiers found the toy gun he carried for the Independence Day Parade.”

  She rested her hand on my hand, the ice cream sticking her skin to mine.

  “There was a woman holding a baby, born as a result of a rape she’d suffered on a previous invasion by the military. She’d been asked for her identity card. The soldier had ripped it up, put the pieces in his mouth, eaten them. He had repeated his demand. ‘Where’s your identity card?’”

  Yolanda raised my sticky hand to her lips. She spread out the fingers. One by one she inserted each finger into her mouth and licked it clean.

  The air went still and in that instant something altered between us. It was as unsuspected as a conversion, and as explosive.

  Absent-mindedly I rubbed a damp finger over her eyebrows, down her cheeks. She pressed her head to my knee. Her face had a cracked look. Neither of us said another word, but when we got to our feet, she was no longer Laura’s teacher.

  Much later I contacted Sucre.

  “Still no luck with that number,” he said.

  “It must be on the computer.”

  “The exchange is down, sir. Lorry-bomb.”

  “If you hear anything, call.”

  I had collected the car from where I’d parked it behind the shopping arcade and driven home. The lights blazed in our street. On the night of my wife’s presentation, Ezequiel had decided to be charitable.

  I could hear Sylvina talking. I closed the door softly behind me. Reflected in Laura’s mirror, six ghostly visitants sat chin up in a line, towels bibbed under their necks.

  Sylvina was saying, “You risk tragedy if you mix different products from different cosmetic companies.”

  “I’ve just spent a lot on a new Estee Lauder.” Marina’s voice.

  “Well, you could try Sally Fay’s under-eye cream and see how you like that.”

  “We’re not supposed to mix, you said.”

  “I was thinking of having a facelift,” another said, doubtfully. “Like Marina’s.”

  “Then I suggest before you undergo the knife, Consuelo, you try this alpha-hydroxide cream. It works something like an actual facelift – it’s the most revolutionary product we’ve created.”

  “It does exactly what?”

  “It will protect you against environmental damage. It will combat free radicals. It’s even got Vitamin E. Here, put a little under your eyes. No, let me help you. Maybe on your chin, I see a little blemish there.”

  She took up position behind the next chair.

  “Maria, you have reddish undertones to your skin so we’re going to use this colour to even them out. Yes, it does seem a little green, but don’t be scared . . . Oh, Agustin –”

  “Don’t get up, don’t get up.” Six hands gesticulated from beneath their towels. “How’s it going?”

  From the chairs an uncertain chorus. “How do we look? Horrible?”

  Necks extended, they peered at Sylvina’s husband. My unpredictable hours, my weekend shifts, my unexplained absences in the countryside, ensured that many of them could barely remember what I looked like.

  I gave an enriching smile of encouragement. “You’re going to be angels.”

  Patricia said tartly, “If there’s a blackout, we’ll need to be.”

  I mumbled my excuses and went into the kitchen. Since leaving Yolanda I felt hungry. I toyed with the sandwiches Sylvina had made for her guests.

  My appearance, far from discomposing the women, had relaxed a tension. I heard them swapping blackout stories.

  Patricia had come home ten days before to find her angelfish belly up. The filter had gone off and it had died of heat and suffocation.

  Margarita, a cheerless woman who complained about bleeding gums, had come home to find the freezer thawed and already squirming with maggots. “They’d hatched in the beef – so there was not only this bad smell, but the meat was alive!”

  Tanya’s husband had not come home at all, having started an affair with a total stranger with whom he had been stuck for three hours in a lift.

  Sylvina spread her lotions.

  “Now this is a really good de
fence against skin fatigue”

  Patricia said, “This old man, he was directing the traffic in his pyjamas.”

  “It goes on like silk, see, and it doesn’t have to be reapplied.”

  “There are characters who like to direct the traffic,” said Marina. “In Miami, the nut-houses were full of them.”

  “It’ll give you a more youthful appearance.”

  “Daddy!” Laura’s head appeared at the door. “Those aren’t for you.”

  I sprang up. I wanted to make peace with her.

  “Someone’s on the phone,” she said, writhing away from my kiss.

  Sucre had an address.

  “1128. That one!”

  He’d collected me in the Renault. Behind us Sergeant Gomez and three others sat in a van we’d borrowed from Homicide.

  “Tell them to overtake and park the other side.”

  Sucre spoke into his handset. The van crept past. Its headlights uprooted a tree outside the house, kaleidoscoping its shadow-branches against the blue stucco.

  Santiago’s last resort in an emergency was a flat-roofed, single-storey building five minutes’ walk from the sea. Paint curled from the wall in page-sized sheets. The shutters, unvarnished and lopsided, were closed. No one had cared for 1128 Calle Tucumán in a long time.

  “Not much squeal on the place,” said Sucre. “Lease ran out in February. Until then rented to a Miguel Angel Torre. Says he’s a poet on his lease form.”

  “Where’s Torre now?”

  “We’re looking for him. But someone’s paying the bills. Electricity and telephone haven’t been disconnected.”

  The van drew into the kerb fifty yards beyond the house. Opposite, boys threw stones at a beer bottle on a low wall. One boy, spotting our car, detached himself and loafed towards us. He stopped some way away, trying to look uninterested. The radio in the car came alive.

  “What’s that up there?”

  “A cage, it looks like.”

  I took the binoculars. A wire coop on the roof fluttered with birds.

  “Stake it out for a day or two, sir?”

  “No.” Santiago might have alerted them. I lowered my gaze. Sprayed on the door in grey paint was the name of a novelist who had stood for president.