The Dancer Upstairs Read online

She had been in her tenth season with London’s Royal Ballet when she met Hugo Vallejo after a performance of Giselle in Lisbon. Hugo, at that time an attaché at his country’s embassy, told her, did she know? it was incredible, but in shape and colour the birthmark on her right cheek matched exactly the drop of tea he had splashed that afternoon on to a tablecloth at his ambassador’s residence.

  “It was the corniest shit, and I told him so.” That night they dined at Tavares. A month later she exchanged Covent Garden for South America.

  Her body had thickened since Dyer had lived with them. In those days she attracted to the house a corps of dedicated admirers. Gossip accused her of reserving her most accomplished steps for the dance she led her husband. “I married Hugo,” she told Dyer in one of those phrases of hers he never forgot, “because he didn’t put his hand on my knee after dinner and say ‘What do you want to do now?’ He put it here, on my hip, where it mattered.” And if she had disengaged those fingers once or twice to indulge a passionate life behind Hugo’s back, their marriage had still endured. Now approaching seventy, she remained devoted, balanced and worldly; and, despite her accent, modulated like that of a nineteen-fifties radio announcer, very un-English.

  Neither the excitement he felt in Vivien’s presence, nor the fact she was his aunt, did anything to conceal from Dyer her essential toughness. She was an effective figure in her adopted country and skilled at getting things done, something she ascribed to her Covent Garden training. “All ballet dancers are made of iron, my dear. If you work nine hours a day, your life is regimented, orderly and extremely strict. You can’t have an ounce of woolliness.” And it was true. When Vivien said, albeit with perfect grace, “This is what I want,” people by God jumped.

  Greatly loved, she was also well aware, not least through friends like Calderón, of the political processes of the country. Too wise to take sides, although her opinion and her company were deliberately courted, she acted as a sort of “ambassador without portfolio” – and at one stage was invited to be special envoy to UNESCO. She declined, offering as an excuse her worry that she might lose her British passport. Besides, diplomacy was Hugo’s bag.

  For Hugo she might have given up dancing, but she did not sever links with the world of ballet. As Principal of the Metropolitan, she had kept her name prominent – if not sanctified – in that milieu. Of late, though, she was more associated in the public mind with the Vallejo Orphanage.

  The story was famous, how Vivien, driving through the outskirts of the capital, spotted some children playing beneath a water-tower. She assumed the creature they were teasing as it thrashed on the ground was an animal. Then, through the circle of legs, she saw a boy. Telling Hugo to stop the car, she had pummelled her way past the children. Their victim was no older than five or six. His mouth was locked open in a spasm and his moans bubbled through saliva trails flecked with sand. One of the boy’s tormentors lifted a foot and wiggled his toes between the caked lips.

  Vivien had pushed him aside, gathered the boy in her arms, and made Hugo drive to the hospital in Miraflores, where she had agreed to meet the medical expenses.

  The boy spoke almost no Spanish, but phrase by incomplete phrase she had pieced together his history. He came from near Sierra de Pruna. His father had been executed by Ezequiel. His mother had fled. He had contracted meningitis. Such handicaps are a stigma in the highlands. His mother set out for the capital and when she got there, she abandoned her son by the roadside.

  “It changed my life. It would have changed anybody’s life. What else could I have done? Left him there? Just be thankful you didn’t find him, my dear.”

  In the weeks ahead Vivien learnt of other cases. Two sisters from Lepe, alone in the city, their parents victims of the military. A girl, her family destroyed by a car bomb. A two-year-old, his mother seized by three men disguised as policemen.

  “For every child I found, another two popped up – dazed, hungry, sick. My heart wrinkled to see them, but we simply didn’t have room.”

  She began to call in favours.

  Vivien’s international status as a dancer had always endowed her with a snobbish appeal for a certain kind of powerful person. Now she sought their patronage. She cajoled and bullied friends for donations, rented a house in San Isidro and, before quite realizing it, had set up an institution for the orphans of the violence. Within eight weeks, she found herself responsible for sixty children. Dyer would hear them during rehearsals at the Metropolitan, hiding under the seats, hitting each other, bawling. Once the music started, they shut up.

  Among the influential people whom Vivien had badgered was the sometime lawyer Tristan Calderón. He was now a director of the orphanage.

  On a silver tray in the hallway, under an authentic, moss-coloured ballet slipper, an envelope waited for Dyer. The letter was on stiff cream paper. Vivien had flown the coop.

  J – Paths have crossed/Must fly to Brazil, organizing charity gala at the Pará opera house/Can’t wriggle out since it was my idea in first place/Meanwhile you’re here/Too maddening.

  Got your message/But Darling, I can’t/For one thing, T’s not doing any interviews/As you are perfectly well aware/For another, how can you possibly expect me to help after what happened last time with the President/What you wrote was most unkind/It was unworthy of you.

  I feel badly about your job/But I’m an Old Lady and suddenly I cannot face one more of my friends saying to me: “Your Bloody Nephew, I only agreed to see him for your sake – and now he’s revealed this Appalling Secret/Did he think we lived so far away we’d never find out?/ etc. etc.”

  You know I love you, Johnny/It’s your profession I can’t stand/Do remember: Hugo and I have to live here/So while part of me is on your side and hopes you get your story, this time you are going to have to do it all on your own/Sorry.

  Your birthday card was sweet/Tell your father Thank You for the lovely umbrella/By the way, could you take this ballet slipper back when you leave/The shop’s somewhere behind Copacabana/I’ve taped the address inside/Ask Hugo – he knows/It’s so bloody frustrating/I keep writing to them to say it’s this kind of leather I like and they send me some other kind/I want them actually to see the shoe/And, darling, do make sure it’s the Emerald – not the Forest.

  Make yourself at home etc/Hugo is looking forward to your visit/You’ll find him much better.

  Love – V.

  PS It is your home, whenever you need it/Do come back soon/ Don’t wait until there’s another war.

  PPS There is no such thing as off the record/As you jolly well know.

  Dyer reacted with panic. When you sit in an office a thousand miles away it is easy to make rash promises. Vivien’s advocacy had been crucial to his getting the interview. Without her, he couldn’t hope to track down Calderón.

  He tried the obvious sources. There was a Deputy to whom Vivien had introduced him two years ago. He left three messages on an answering-machine. Either the man was away – or had no desire to renew acquaintance.

  Nor did the local press, commonly a rich seam of unexplored leads, prove useful. His buddies on Caretas and La Republica were happy to see him, but as soon as he mentioned Calderón’s name they became guarded in a way they had never been about Ezequiel. Not even in the days when his organization was killing them.

  Dyer resorted to the official channels, but the people he had known at the Palace had been replaced. Captain Calderón was a functionary of average rank, nothing more; and it was not government policy to grant interviews to the media.

  On the second evening he took Hugo out to dinner at the Costa Verde.

  “How’s that pretty girlfriend of yours?” This was the first time he had seen his nephew on his own.

  “She’s been gone for ages,” said Dyer.

  Hugo, humbled, shook his head. “I shouldn’t ask so many questions.”

  His uncle had been with him in the Rio clinic when Astrud died. Vivien was touring Argentina with her dance company. Hugo flew over after
things took a turn for the worse. Astrud had gone into labour prematurely. Dyer and Hugo sat outside the operating theatre. Winter sunlight spreading lozenge shapes on the lino; down the corridor a man selling magazines; the doctor taking off his glasses to wipe the bridge of his nose.

  The amniotic fluid had entered her bloodstream. She died giving birth to a stillborn girl.

  Hugo took control. He dealt with the hospital, the burial, the foreign desk in London. He spoke with Astrud’s parents in São Paulo and her grandmother in Petropolis. Then he brought Dyer home to Miraflores.

  That was eleven years ago. Since when Hugo and Vivien always welcomed him with an unwavering warmth. “This is your home, Johnny.” He must invite anyone he wanted to. So the house on the Malecón became the place where Dyer brought his new girlfriends.

  “I’ll get Mona over tomorrow night.” Hugo mentioned the name of a dull cousin, recently divorced.

  “I’m here to work,” said Dyer.

  Hugo nodded. He didn’t ask about the nature of this work, nor did Dyer tell him. He had no wish to involve his uncle in his quest for Calderón. Hugo had not been well of late, and in any case had always preferred to turn a blind eye to Vivien’s adventures.

  While they ate, Hugo discoursed about Vivien’s orphanage, to which Dyer supposed she would be donating the proceeds of the Pará gala. He ran through the membership of the Jockey Club where he was now Secretary; and when conversation petered out over coffee, he turned to the subject of genetically modified vegetables in which, since his stroke, he had developed an interest. About the civil war which had disembowelled his country, he said not a word.

  “What are things like here now?” Dyer enquired at last.

  “There’s an uneasy peace,” said Hugo cagily. “It’s real because it’s happening, but maybe something more is going to happen.”

  “You were brave to go on living here. Why in heaven’s name didn’t you leave?”

  “It’s not me. It’s Vivien,” said Hugo, and not for the first time Dyer was conscious that few conversations he conducted with Vivien’s husband ever hit the nub of the matter.

  “When is she coming back?”

  Hugo had been adroit so far in steering away from this subject and he remained vague. “I was expecting her home by the weekend. Or maybe she’ll stay in Pará some more.”

  “I forgot Pará had an opera house.”

  Hugo raised what had once been an eyebrow. The stroke had removed both brows and given to his features, already bald, an unprotected air. “Pavlova danced there.”

  By Sunday there was still no sign of Vivien. “She’s bound to be back tonight,” said Hugo, who had spent all day at the race-track. But she did not reappear.

  Nor did she turn up on Monday.

  On Wednesday morning, Dyer joined Hugo for breakfast in the conservatory. Before going to bed, he had been rereading Vivien’s letter.

  “Hugo, what is it with this slipper?”

  “Is that the shoemaker in Rio? She swears by his shoes. I discovered him by chance, when I was staying with you that time.”

  Hugo accepted the letter from Dyer and studied it. His face was normally difficult to read, but not on this occasion. “If you ask me – and this is just a hunch – it’s Vivien’s way of saying she’s not going to come back until she is sure you’re gone.”

  “Why would she behave like that?”

  Dyer sensed his uncle’s reluctance to hurt him. “I didn’t want to tell you,” said Hugo. “But perhaps it’s not such a bad thing you know.” The truth was, his last article had made Dyer persona non grata in one or two circles. “It frightened Vivien quite a lot. I’ve also had my share of barbed remarks at the club.”

  “About what?”

  “Something you wrote upset Calderón. From what I understand, he intimated to Vivien that there might come a time when she is going to have to stop talking to you. He finds it disconcerting to have people around who are so well informed.”

  “I was hoping to get an interview with him.”

  “Well, exactly, but you can put that out of your mind. You’re a good journalist, Johnny, and that’s what makes you dangerous. For some people in our society, the whole practice of journalism menaces their peace of mind. Half the dinner parties Vivien goes to, she’s terribly proud to be your aunt. The other half, she keeps very, very quiet about it.”

  There followed two fraught days. Dyer, his options running out, spent his time in the library of the Catholic University, using the opportunity to read early explorers’ accounts of the Amazon. By Thursday, it was obvious that Vivien was going to stay on in Brazil. Hugo spent conspicuously more time at the Jockey Club, but continued to behave with unflagging hospitality on the few occasions they met.

  Unwilling to be more of a headache to him, Dyer announced his intention to go upriver. There was research on the Ashaninkas he needed for his book. Not to alert Vivien, he told Hugo he would be spending a few days among an Indian tribe near Satipo. But he had decided to smoke out his aunt in Pará.

  The Pará opera house is a coral-pink building across the Praça da Republica from the Hotel Madrid. On the morning of his arrival, Dyer walked down an avenue bright with mango trees to an entrance swathed in scaffolding.

  The young woman in the administration office confessed herself perplexed. She had, of course, heard of Senhora Vallejo, but did not believe the Metropolitan were dancing in Pará. Besides, no performance would be possible until the municipality had completed the work of restoration. She suggested Dyer try the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus.

  He telephoned Manaus and drew another blank. Six hundred miles upriver and no Vivien, no ballet. He contacted theatres in Santarém and Macapá. By mid-afternoon he knew he was wasting his time. The ballet story was a ruse. His aunt had left home because she knew he was coming.

  He walked down to the river, then back through the bird market to his hotel. The air was humid, sweetened overripely with mangoes; beads of sweat tickled his neck and he wanted a shower. Afterwards he lay down on a hard bed under the window, unable to sleep. He squeezed a hand over his eyes, but with each mango-laden breath the sensation increased. It was four in the afternoon in a place where he didn’t want to be, and he was furious.

  He was stuck. He saw that now. He had bought a fixed date ticket; the return flight another week away. He was loath to give up the chase on Calderón. He thought it yet possible to snare his aunt with a last-ditch appeal. But what could he do in the meantime? It was pointless to fly back to keep Hugo company. The most sensible course would be to take a leaf from Vivien’s book. Lie low for a few days, then surprise her.

  Next morning he moved into a hotel close to the British-built port; a plaster-fronted building with white shutters and a verandah perched over the immense river. This was the old quarter, built during the rubber boom. Once prosperous, it had grown decrepit. Many of the houses were boarded up, with trees bursting out of the roofs. Others, like the building opposite, stood no deeper than their façade. To Dyer, the emptiness behind the preserved frontage mimicked one of Vivien’s stage sets. Standing on his verandah, he could see the cloudless sky beyond the windows, the slanting drift of vultures between the architraves, and every now and then the agitated flight of a black and yellow bird, the bem-te-vi.

  Bem-te-vi, bem-te-vi. I’ve seen you, I’ve seen you.

  Frustrated, lethargic, crushed by the heat, Dyer could not hear that call without thinking of the slave hunters who trained the bird to hunt down fugitives. Catching sight of those yellow wings hovering in the sickly-sweet air, he wanted to shout out: “Go and find her, you stupid bird.”

  Bem-te-vi, bem-te-vi.

  He tried to be calm about his fate. He had been given free run of the world he cared about, the fount of his stories, and he had failed to deliver. If he telephoned Hugo, that would blow the whistle on Vivien. If he telephoned his editor, he ran the risk of having to return to London immediately. What could he find to do in Pará – except what he ought to be
doing anyway?

  The proposal of a book on the Amazon basin had interested him when originally he was approached by a London publishing house. He had long been fascinated by the area and had no doubt that he was qualified to write an introduction – although, in the absence of any reminders, it did cross his mind that his publishers might have gone the way of his newspaper. Vivien’s vanishing act gave him an excuse. He had the notes he had made in the Catholic University library, and had had the foresight to bring with him several learned works. And hadn’t this wild-goose chase landed him by sheer chance in a sea-port which he needed to write about? Rather than kicking his heels for a week, he would spend the time sketching out captions for as yet imaginary photos, studying texts, gathering information.

  No sooner had he switched hotels than he began to enjoy Pará more. Due to its position on the Equator, it was a place which lived obstinately in its own time. Pará time never altered. And then there were the hours kept by the rest of the world.

  He liked the fact that the sun rose and set at the same time each day. He liked the unforgeable smells of the port, and the torpor of the riverside, which met a commensurate emotion in him. Something having snapped in his bond to the newspaper, he suddenly looked forward to this time on his hands, time to reflect on the future, time to lay to rest one or two hungry ghosts, time to plot his book. There was nothing and no one to distract him, he remembered thinking, as he walked towards a restaurant he had marked out earlier in the day.

  Only Euclides da Cunha, whose Rebellion in the Backlands he was thankful he had brought with him.

  2

  Dyer sat down at a table and at once began reading. He had read a chapter by the time the man at the window called for the bill. Dyer smiled, trying to remember where they could have met. The man responded with the unfavouring half-smile people reserve for helpful shopkeepers. Dyer looked away.

  The pattern repeated itself the following night. The two diners sat together in that room for no longer than twenty minutes before, punctual as the last ferry, the man called for his bill. They read and ate their meals in silence. It must have confounded the waiter to watch his only clients sitting like that, not exchanging a word.