The Dancer Upstairs Read online

  Dyer would have taken the man for a fellow stranger to Pará had not the waiter treated him so respectfully. Emilio hurried for no one, yet when signalled by the man at table seventeen he stopped whatever he was doing and directed himself between the straw-seated chairs, clasping his black folder as though it contained, not a bill for a grilled fish, but the freedom of the city. A moment later, walking like someone out of uniform, his other customer brushed past Dyer’s table.

  But Emilio could not satisfy Dyer’s curiosity. The courtesy with which he brought and removed plates concealed a splendid disdain. Emilio, if Dyer was reading, was not above lifting both book and plate and dusting away the crumbs, all the while smiling apologetically as though he were somehow to blame for their presence on the table. His manner seemed determined by the assumption that Dyer would leave no tip. Emilio would call at his back as he left, “Good evening, Senhor,” as if he didn’t mean it. These words, spoken in correct Portuguese but with the trace of a Spanish accent, were the only three he addressed to Dyer. When asked about the person at the window, he shrugged.

  Not until the third night did the man pause at Dyer’s table.

  Dyer was so engrossed in Rebellion in the Backlands that several seconds passed before he became aware of someone looking over his shoulder.

  The man held out his own cloth-bound volume. They were reading the same book.

  “I don’t believe it. Extraordinary!” Dyer got to his feet. The coincidence was not so extraordinary, at least not in Brazil. But in that scarcely patronized restaurant it was strange indeed.

  Dyer gestured at the chair opposite. The man checked his watch.

  “I cannot stay long,” he said, in Spanish. He drew the chair to him and sat on the edge of the seat, facing away. “I am expected at home.”

  Dyer sought Emilio, but, observant as ever, he was already advancing.

  “Beer?”

  “A coffee, I’d prefer.”

  The man placed his book, the Spanish edition, on the table. “If only the author could see!”

  Dyer said, “You know how people go on about a book, then you are disappointed. But it’s as good as I hoped.”

  “I’ve come to reading late.” His face had a preoccupied look. “My father had a library, but I never made use of it. At last I have time.”

  “Then we’re in the same boat.”

  The eyes which inspected Dyer were brown and steady. He was neither good-looking nor ugly, and while he would not have turned a young girl’s head, someone older might have been struck by his face and the evidence of a passion which had left its traces.

  “Don’t you think that each time a good book is written it’s a triumph for everyone?” said the man. “The same each time someone is cured of a disease or a criminal is caught. It’s one more tiny victory against the darkness.” It was touching, this faith in books. He’d only just discovered them and now he had discovered them terribly.

  “But da Cunha and his kind,” said Dyer, “aren’t they practitioners of a dying art? The public want to watch videos. They don’t want to read Rebellion in the Backlands.”

  He chose not to answer. “You’re not Brazilian?”

  “I’m English.”

  “You are here on business?”

  Dyer found it sensible all over South America to avoid telling people he was a journalist. “I’m finishing a book.”

  “About Pará?” He gazed steadily at Dyer.

  “I mean to concentrate more on the Indians.”

  The man sighed. “When we go to Europe, we’re looking for civilization. Yet when you come here, you are seeking for the primitive.”

  Dyer said awkwardly, “And you, what do you do?”

  Nothing in the eyes hinted at what the man was thinking. His gaze rested on the books which had brought them together.

  “I used to be a policeman.”

  “Used to be? At your age? You mean you’ve retired?”

  “Not exactly. But I am required to do less and less.”

  Family matters had brought him to Pará. He was spending some time with his sister, who was ill, taking turns with her Brazilian husband to sit by her bed.

  “You don’t come from Brazil either?”

  “No,” and he picked up Dyer’s book, keeping the place with a finger. “Tell me, where have you got to?”

  Dyer had been reading an ode celebrating the death of a soldier who, kneeling beside his commander’s dead body, fought on until the ammunition ran out. On the day after the battle, the leading Rio newspaper had devoted the lion’s share of their front page to this poem. Dyer had been musing over the likelihood of the foreign subs in Canary Wharf being able to coax iambic pentameters to bed.

  “I’m a little further on than you.” He looked at Dyer over the book. “May I see – to test my English?”

  “Please do.”

  He peered at the type. “You write in the margin.” Then, twisting the book, “But I can’t read your hand.”

  “It’s a habit,” said Dyer.

  “I share it. I went through my law books the other day. All those illegible scribbles. Like a different person.”

  In that second the man’s face relaxed and Dyer remembered who he was.

  He was aware of palpitations in his chest. His breaths came fast. He watched the bubbles rising in his beer, calculating his next move.

  “The most wanted man in the world.” Headlines had debased the phrase, but for twelve years it might have applied to the philosophy professor, Edgardo Vilas – or, as he became known, President Ezequiel. Sitting less than three feet away, so near that Dyer could, if he wanted, touch his sleeve, was the man who had captured the Chairman of the World Revolution.

  No one knew the story. The policeman had been forbidden to speak. He had defied his orders; had not immediately handed Ezequiel over to Calderón, who would certainly have executed him. Everyone had expected the revolutionary to be shot, to fight his way out, to take his own life. Only this man could say how Ezequiel had been arrested without a struggle.

  His name was Agustín Rejas. For years he had worked undercover to capture the Public Enemy Number One. For years he had been an unknown police colonel. Then, suddenly, his name was on the lips of a whole population. Within a few days he was being touted as a presidential candidate. The following week he had vanished. Which is how things were in his country.

  All Dyer knew of Colonel Rejas was that he was forty-four, that he came from a village north of Cajamarca. For twenty years he had served as a policeman and for twelve of those years he had been responsible for one case. It was about this case that Dyer had been trying, a week earlier, to contact him, though not with any expectation of success. His pretext had been to gather background material for the Calderón profile. Had he had the spectacular good fortune to meet Rejas he would have wanted to discuss a great many other things as well. But this was a man nobody met. People said he was out of the country. He was unfindable.

  “Apparently he’s on a witness protection programme,” Dyer had been told by the BBC stringer. She was the most reliable of the local foreign correspondents. “Although I have also heard that he’s abroad, talking to the Americans.”

  They were drinking chocolate in the Café Haiti. Dyer told her of the call from the editor.

  “Maybe the fellow up there’s telling you something.” She blew her nose. “Maybe it is time to get out.”

  Lonely, in need of a companion, he would have asked her out to dinner, but she was taking her younger lover to a Brahms concert in the Teatro Americano. A year ago, with Ezequiel still at large, such an event would have been unthinkable.

  “Has Calderón come to terms with Rejas?” Dyer had asked.

  “I doubt it. I’m sure Calderón wanted to snuff out Ezequiel there and then. My contact in the Palace says that when he saw Rejas presenting Ezequiel to journalists, Calderón was so enraged that he put a whisky decanter through the television screen.”

  One year before, from a friend at
Canal 7, Dyer had borrowed a video tape of Rejas reading aloud his prepared statement. On the tape, the policeman stood outside the Anti-Terrorist Headquarters in Via Expreso. He held himself erect, hardly moving. The speech was impressive for its modesty. Thanks to the hard work, patience and discipline of his men during twelve years, the man styling himself President Ezequiel had been taken into custody at eight-forty the night before. Rejas said that he had not completed the process of interrogation. He concluded by speaking of his hope for the country; his belief in the institutions of justice and democracy. He would donate any reward to charities for children orphaned by the violence.

  The camera had been jostled frequently. For a second it had focused on Rejas as he read, his chin caught in the same position as Dyer would see it in the restaurant. And here was the extraordinary thing: he betrayed not a trace of exultation.

  Two days later a curt bulletin from the Palace announced that Ezequiel had been removed from Colonel Rejas’s charge.

  “There’s a widespread feeling that Rejas has been treated extremely shabbily,” said Dyer’s BBC contact.

  “So he’s not given his version of events?”

  “Apparently not. After they robbed him of his spoil, there was a quiet promotion. He serves as Quartermaster of the National Police, a post having no executive responsibility whatever. And it means that Calderón can keep tabs on Rejas. I can’t tell you how much this sudden popularity unnerved the Palace.” She took Dyer’s Spectator and slipped it into her basket. “But Calderón must have some hold over him – or else why hasn’t Rejas spoken out? Everyone would have listened. The people here worship him.”

  “Are the rumours true?”

  “That he will run for president? All I know, there’s a group of Deputies, quite influential. They’ve been to see him.”

  She gave the names. An impressive list.

  “What chance he’ll accept the nomination?”

  “The people badly want someone of his calibre, a truly heroic person who is also a modest man. But who knows? Since the blaze of publicity he’s disappeared off the scene.”

  When Dyer’s plan to interview Calderón was scuppered by Vivien’s defection, he did not want to think about such characters again. Now, in a sea-port on the Amazon, fate had thrown him a bigger prize, a man who could help incidentally over Calderón, but who knew more about Ezequiel’s organization than anyone alive.

  Dyer knew he had to suppress his excitement. He had this astonishing and wonderful catch. He must not scare him off. If he tried for too much, he might wreck everything – but there was no time for an elegant, oblique approach.

  Rejas was still reading when Dyer said, “So, a policeman. Did you have anything to do with that terrorist who was captured?”

  Rejas raised his eyes from the book. “Which terrorist?”

  “The President Ezequiel.”

  Rejas threw back his head and laughed. The laugh was not unpleasant or cruel. An outsider might have taken it for an amused laugh, one that said: How could you imagine such a thing? But to Dyer, the laughter contained the sound of hatches being closed, of shutters going up, of a man protecting himself. It declared that Rejas wouldn’t tell Dyer a thing, that if he made an attempt to pry he would be steered from the subject and the policeman would leave the restaurant and once the beads had settled behind him he would not be returning to that table by the window and Dyer would never see him again.

  “It’s another interesting coincidence,” said Dyer, “but I believe my aunt is a good friend of an associate of yours.”

  Rejas lowered the book. “An associate?”

  “Tristan Calderón.”

  Too late he saw that he had alerted Rejas, had shown him that he knew who he was.

  Rejas replaced the book behind the paper tulip.

  “Who is your aunt?”

  “Actually, I believe she’s quite well known in your country. Vivien Vallejo.”

  “The dancer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The ballerina?” – as if he wanted to be certain. “Who runs the Metropolitan?”

  “Yes.”

  Dyer watched him roll the thought in his head, approving it. “Do you have an interest in the ballet?”

  “My daughter has a picture of your aunt on her wall. A great admirer. And there are others I know . . .” When he spoke again he was not looking at Dyer, but at the river. “Her philanthropy is very much appreciated.”

  “I would be honoured to give your daughter an introduction.”

  “That’s very kind, but . . .” Rejas didn’t finish his sentence. A light moved across the black backcloth beyond the window, one of the palmthatched boats puttering upriver.

  “Naturally, if she knew it was your daughter . . .” Dyer said, seizing on the slenderest excuse to keep Rejas at his table. At the same time, why would such a rigorously secret man speak to him? This was not an Ancient Mariner. He was here to get away from his country, not to talk about it.

  Rejas did not answer. And there was not a thing more Dyer could think of to say. Here he sat, helpless, tired, a bit drunk, watching his thoughts flow out through that window with Rejas’s gaze, unable to stop them.

  At last, turning back into the room, Rejas said, “Did you know that we caught Ezequiel above a ballet studio?”

  3

  “Did you know that we caught Ezequiel above a ballet studio?”

  “No.”

  Rejas considered this lie.

  “Have you seen a man with his head cut off?”

  “No.”

  “Once I saw a man with his head cut off,” said Rejas. “The body remembers what it used to do, what it was told to do seconds before, and it just keeps on going, shrugging blood, shuffling forward. It’s a little while before it gets the message the boss man isn’t there.”

  “Where was this?”

  “A tiny hamlet. Jaci. Way up in the—hills. You wouldn’t have heard of it. I was trapped there on the morning Ezequiel’s people invaded. I watched the execution through an earth wall, on my stomach. The man was ordered to kneel and come forward on his knees. After the machete struck he continued several paces as if at the end of a long day’s pilgrimage to Fatima. My nights are still haunted by that rippling body. He jerked about on the ground, spraying up dirt, quivering, not dead at all. Then his executioner; a girl about seventeen, picked up his head and swung it like a lantern across his chest, yelling, ‘Look, pig! Look!’

  “That was the most extraordinary thing. The reaction of the face, I mean. Try to imagine the expression of a man’s face staring at his own body. You see, the head goes on working too. For a few seconds he is still capable of registering sight and sound and thought. The eyes blink open, the lips pucker. He can even mouth a sentence or two. Well, almost. The words bubble to the lips, but you can’t hear them because the vocal cords have been sliced. When I told our pathologist he dismissed it. Muscle contraction, he said. But that’s not what I saw.

  “The man they’d executed was the sacristan: they’d discovered he was my informer. I think of the sacristan’s face when I remember the situation in my country after May 1980. Ezequiel, when he declared his revolution, intended to slice off the state’s head. He intended to swing us by the hair, force down our eyes, shout in our ears. He wanted us to recognize our past vileness.

  “But perhaps you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  Rejas leaned back, dug a hand into his jeans, and produced a wallet from which he drew a small wrinkled photograph.

  “Why I keep this, I don’t know.” His eyes flickered over the image, his expression neutral. With a forefinger he slid it across the table.

  Dyer picked up the photograph, taken head-on in black and white, and held it to the light of the overhead bulb. It showed, patterned by finger-marks, a handsome, clean-shaven man in his early thirties with mixed-race features similar to Rejas’s own: dark eyebrows; a nose broadening at the base; narrow eyes. The eyes stared at the photographer, but tellin
g nothing. It was a face from which all emotion had been extinguished.

  “You know who that is?”

  Dyer nodded. How many posters of it had he not seen, with details of a million-dollar reward across the top. It was for ten years the only known photograph of Ezequiel.

  “It was taken at twelve-fifteen in the morning, the seventeenth of May, nineteen eighty. That is,” Rejas said, “on the day he vanished.”

  Dyer looked at the well-remembered features. The chin raised defiantly. The thick black hair, swept back in iron waves from a high forehead. The unreflecting eyes. The dark scarf round his neck. No one visiting Rejas’s country in the past decade could have failed to see this face.

  “He’s sitting on an empty beer crate.”

  Dyer looked closer. “Really? How can you be sure?”

  “I took the photograph.”

  4

  I met Ezequiel only twice. The first time I was thirty-one. I was coming to the end of my stint in Sierra de Pruna, a small town north of Villoria. Sylvina hated it, called it the Styx. “I didn’t marry you for this,” she said. But after the election we would be moving to the capital. I’d been promoted to a unit protecting foreign diplomats. Soon Sylvina would be among friends. Laura would be able to play with their daughters.

  This was the first democratic election since the coup. Twelve years ago now. We’d forgotten what to do, although we anticipated trouble. My job was to set up road blocks outside the villages and check documents. Very tedious work, like sentry duty at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier: six months of vigilance in case someone blew out the flame! It did fail once, during a gas workers’ strike; I had to use our Primus stove. Road-block duty was like that. After three years in Sierra de Pruna, I’d reached a point where I wasn’t doing my job well. The routine was wearing me out. Just as much as Sylvina, I looked forward to a new start under a government elected by the people.