The Dancer Upstairs Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Dedication

  The Dancer Upstairs

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407063546

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2005

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5

  Copyright © Nicholas Shakespeare 1995

  Nicholas Shakespeare has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1995 by

  The Harvill Press

  Vintage

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

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  Random House (Pty) Limited Isle of Houghton, Corner of Boundary Road & Carse O’Gowrie, Houghton, 2198, South Africa

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009 www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099466567 (from Jan 2007) ISBN 0099466562

  Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Limited, Reading, Berkshire

  About the Author

  Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bruce Chatwin was published to unstinting critical acclaim and was lauded as being one of the most outstanding biographies of the decade. Shakespeare is also the author of The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award; The High Flyer for which he was nominated as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and The Dancer Upstairs, which was the American Libraries Association’s Best Novel of 1997 and which was later adapted for the film of the same title directed by John Malkovich. His most recent novel is Snowleg.

  ALSO BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE

  Fiction

  The Vision of Elena Silves

  The High Flyer

  Snowleg

  Non-Fiction

  Bruce Chatwin

  In Tasmania

  ‘As cracking a story as any yarn, as informed as any journalism, and delivered with firmness and urgency’

  The Times

  ‘In addition to being a satisfyingly rich tale or romance this is a highly intelligent examination of Peruvian – and South American – reality . . . Funny and devastating . . .

  I was riveted by this superb novel’

  New Statesman & Society

  ‘Truth is certainly stranger than fiction, but the fictionalised facts of The Dancer Upstairs make the story of the Shining Path illuminating reading’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Shakespeare is a good writer and a clever and ingenious storyteller . . . this is as good a book as we are likely to get about the atmosphere of the Sendero years’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Nicholas Shakespeare, using only black marks on white paper, has set in 1990s South America a story quite as evilly enchanting as the one about the Third Man Graham Greene set in Vienna . . . Shakespeare’s unadorned prose is as clean and precise as the coroner’s scalpel. The Dancer Upstairs is an extraordinary story; no grown-up reader should neglect it’

  George V. Higgins

  ‘A completely overwhelming novel, and I suspect that it will become a classic . . . one of those perfect novels’

  Colin Wilson

  For Ruth Shakespeare and Donna Tartt

  This novel may be read on its own, or as a sequel to The Vision of Elena Silves. Like that book, it is a work of fiction. Although inspired by the capture of Abimael Guzmán in September 1992, none of the characters are based on anyone involved in that operation, or drawn from anyone in life.

  I am indebted to many people for their help and generosity, including Patricia Awapara, Toby Buchan, Sally Bowen, Frederick Cooper, Richard Clutterbuck, David and Jane Cornwell, Iva Fereira, Nigel Horne, Celso Garrido-Lecca, Adam Low, Christopher Maclehose, Juan Ossio, Christina Parker, Roger Scruton, Angela Serota, Mary Siepmann, Vera Stastny, Ben Turner, Cecilia Valenzuela, Antonio Ketín Vidal and Alice Welsh. I am grateful also to the Victoria Ocampo Association in Mar del Plata, where part of this novel was written.

  The words of “I’ll Remember April” are reproduced by kind permission of MCA Music Ltd.

  “I have always thought that if we began for one minute to say what we thought, society would collapse.”

  ALBERT CAMUS quoting Sainte-Beuve

  1

  Night was swallowing the square. The cobbles glistened with river mist, and it was impossible to see more than a few steps ahead. Strange screams – he couldn’t tell if they were human – penetrated the fog, and from the old fortress at the end of the quay came the thump of a samba rhythm.

  Dyer remembered the restaurant being on the waterfront, at the corner of the square. He knew that he was close, for he could hear the river slapping against the steps. Then the wind picked up and through the parting mist he recognized the sign swaying beneath a wrought-iron balcony above him. “Cantina da Lua”. Light streamed down from the dining room on the first floor and one of the shutters crashed against the tiles.

  Later, when he thought of those evenings and his walks across the square, there would come back to him nights which smelled of mango rinds and woodsmoke and charred fish. But mostly he remembered that wind, leaping in warm gusts over the waterfront, rattling branches on the rooftops, banging the shutter.

  A waiter squeezed on to the balcony, secured the shutter with a loop of wire, and stepped back inside. That was when Dyer saw the man for the first time, an outline defined by the overhead bulb. Dyer was struck by the stillness with which he held himself. How could he not have been distracted by the shutter’s banging? But the man stared at the river pouring into the night as if nothing else existed.

  Dyer passed beneath the balcony, through a doorway and up a stone staircase. At the head of the stairs, a bead curtain stood guard over the entrance to a whitewashed room; burgundy-coloured table cloths, bentwood chairs, an old-fashioned till on a bar. Each table had a tiny vase and a flower. The restauran
t was empty save for the waiter and the man at the window.

  Straight-backed and attentive, wearing a navy blue polo shirt, he was talking to the waiter in Spanish. A book lay open on the table.

  Dyer heard the waiter say, “How is the señora today?”

  “She’s better. Thank you.” In that moment he looked up, took in Dyer and then his eyes dropped back to the book.

  Dyer saw a man a year or two older than himself: early forties, middle height, short black hair, clean-shaven. And, in that brief glance, eyes whose intelligence had been tempered by extremes of suffering seen and suffering borne.

  Dyer could not have said from where, but he recognized him.

  When the ultimatum came, Dyer was on the point of leaving for Ecuador to cover the flare-up on the border.

  I do wish we had the chance to talk this through. It’s much easier across a desk than across the Atlantic. Long story short, the cutbacks we’ve got to make are so draconian that I can’t see us maintaining the Rio bureau. I gave it my best shot with the proprietor. He said he didn’t know why I bothered. The accountants want him to shut down three offices – and yours is first on his list, John. If there’s another Falklands we can always fly you out.

  Everyone agreed, Dyer was the doyen of Latin American correspondents. No one more richly deserved another big challenge, etc. which was why the editor could make the following proposal.

  You can have either Moscow or the Middle East.

  The only other question he needed to address was the date of his return.

  The receipt of this rapid, handwritten note from his editor did not keep Dyer from flying north, but in the jungle it pressed on him. He spent four days and nights with units of the Ecuadorian army. Once, wading across a stream, he was fired on by a man leaning out of a helicopter. Throughout these days he felt a weight on his heart and behind his eyes, like mountain sickness. He could muster not one iota of enthusiasm for Moscow or the Middle East. This was the region which had formed and blooded him. Anywhere else he would be out of his depth.

  He returned to Rio and the office on Joaquim Nabuco, from where he sent nine hundred words describing the dispute. Twenty minutes later the telephone rang. The foreign desk, no doubt, to suggest cuts. Anxious about his fate – the imminent parting from friends, from his wife’s family, from his whole geography – he had overwritten.

  The voice belonged to his editor, booming into a car-phone. “If you won’t get in touch, John, I’ll have to give it to you straight. The accountants have decreed: Shut Latin America. Full stop. So which is it to be: Moscow or Jerusalem?”

  Dyer walked to the window. He held the receiver an inch from his ear to distinguish the voice from the catarrhal crackle. “That’s it?”

  He stared down the street towards Ipanema beach. A paper kite had caught in telegraph wires and a white-skinned boy looked up at it.

  “Believe me, this is the last thing I want,” said the editor, overly sympathetic, now. “But I speak after another bruising meeting with the proprietor. It’s down to this price war. We haven’t any money. If you were in my seat, what would you do?”

  Dyer kept his eyes on the kite. “We’re talking about fifteen years.”

  “Look, I know how good you are,” said the voice across the sea, probably on its way to its club. “But our C2 readers aren’t switched on to your neck of the woods.”

  “Twenty-one countries?”

  “I can’t hear what you’re saying. Are you there? John? John?”

  Dyer last heard a long, bracing obscenity and the line went dead.

  He put down the receiver and leaned against the desk, waiting. On the wall hung a watercolour he had painted of Astrud. His eyes fastened on her face while he toyed with the alternatives. The BBC had last month replaced their bureau chief in Buenos Aires. Le Monde needed him, God knows, but would probably not appoint an Englishman. The New York Times? A long shot, and the present incumbent was a friend.

  The telephone rang.

  Astrud smiled at him from beneath a green beach umbrella.

  “There you are. These things are hopeless for abroad. I was about to say, can we look for you at the end of April?”

  “I really can’t. There’s a book I’m supposed to be writing. I do have to finish it before I leave.”

  “How long do you need?”

  “To assemble the bits – four, five weeks.”

  “Fine. Then next month is holiday. In June, I want to see you here.”

  “All right,” Dyer said rapturelessly.

  “I give you this time-off on one condition. You write me a major piece. We can run it Saturday and Sunday. Allow yourself 12,000 words, but give Nigel plenty of warning about pics. You have the background taped. There must be a story you really want to do? Something we can syndicate?”

  Always Dyer had cherished the idea that if ever the time came to leave this continent he would go out on one wonderful note. His book was to be an introduction to the cultural and social history of the Amazon Basin. But he thought of it as a task he had to complete. It was not a grace note on which to end his South American career.

  On the other hand, the editor’s valedictory commission did at least give Dyer the freedom to pull off an interview which every journalist down here would be envious to see in print, and which would be the logical climax of the story he had been tracking for a decade.

  “There is something I’d like to write,” he said. “Do you remember the terrorist Ezequiel?”

  “The chappie in the cage?”

  Ezequiel was a revolutionary leader who had been caught after a twelve-year hunt. His guerrilla war against the institutions of his Andean country had resulted in 30,000 deaths and countless tortures and mutilations. Ezequiel’s public humiliation – he was indeed shown to the international press from inside a cage – had captured headlines across the world a year before.

  “You can get him?” It showed the editor’s lack of awareness that he could ask such a question.

  “It’s not Ezequiel. No one’s allowed to see him.” After being paraded through the streets under military escort, Ezequiel had been kept underground in a lightless cell. He had not spoken a word to the press.

  “It’s the person who put Ezequiel in the cage.”

  “What’s he called?”

  “Tristan Calderón.”

  “And who is he?”

  “On the face of it, a humble Intelligence captain. In fact, he’s the President’s right-hand man. He runs the country.”

  “Has he been interviewed ever?”

  “Never.”

  “What makes you sure you can crack it?”

  “I have a good contact.”

  The contact was truly a good one. Calderón was infatuated with Vivien Vallejo, an Englishwoman who had given up her career as a prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet to marry a South American diplomat. Calderón called her the whole time and sent presents, much to the annoyance of her husband. Vivien was Dyer’s aunt.

  “Why haven’t you suggested it before?”

  “I have. Twice.” The foreign desk, under pressure to reduce expenses, had judged it too obscure.

  While it was nowhere in his nature to shelve a story which excited him, he was aware of his aunt’s hostility to the press: gossip-column pieces, photographs of Vivien on the arm of someone not Hugo, had jeopardized her marriage more than once. For this reason, Dyer had not wished to enlist her support until he could be one hundred per cent sure of an appropriate space in the paper.

  “That’s it, then,” said the editor, sounding pleased. “You get me the Caldon interview and you have a month off. Nothing would make me happier than for you to come out with all guns blazing.”

  Dyer looked down the beach to where he had painted Astrud. The kite was still there, but the boy had gone.

  When, two days later, he saw the grey-tiled turret above the jacaranda, he felt he was coming home.

  The garden walls of Vivien’s house on the sea-front had grown sinc
e the summers he had lived here as a child. Topped with broken brown glass and electrified wire, they surrounded a building conceived in imitation of a Gascon manoir. The effect was wide of the mark it aimed at. The house resembled nothing so much as a sub-tropical folly, crammed, because of Hugo’s profession, with objects of little beauty but plenty of nostalgia.

  It was to this address on the Malecón that Dyer had sent his fax. He was coming to stay, he informed Vivien. He hoped this wouldn’t be an inconvenience, but he found himself in desperate straits. He begged for her help in fixing an interview with Calderón – on or off the record. He had signed the faxed letter, perfectly honestly, with his love. Vivien, his top card, happened also to be the person he most wanted to say goodbye to before he was made to depart South America.

  Until the last, when the taxi turned into her street, he had forgotten how much he missed his aunt. He had first driven up this road as a six-year-old, after his mother died. In that doorway had stood a small, vivacious woman. By the way she held herself, he had thought she waited to greet him, but she was saying goodbye to a neat, bald man who soon excused himself. Catching sight of the boy, she had run out, flung open the car door, plucked him into the sunlight. Her understanding hands caressed his face, looking for her sister. Then she hugged him to her neck and laughed.

  The sound of Vivien’s throaty laugh was among his earliest memories. Her bold blue eyes would bewitch anyone they looked on. Unlike most charmers, she had known suffering of her own, so that those same eyes also shone with the pale brightness of someone who has peeked over the rim. As a young girl, she had been wasted by a rheumatic fever which no doctor, and certainly no one in her family, expected her to survive. Recovering, she had taken up ballet in order to develop her weakened muscles. “No miracle, my dear, I just decided one day that every hour was a gift and I liked being alive.” It was not long before she had become famous as a classical dancer – and for renouncing everything the moment it came within her grasp.