The Dancer Upstairs

Table of Contents

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Epub ISBN: 9781407063546

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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

Non-Fiction

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

‘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'

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

‘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'

‘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

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.

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 restaurant 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.

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.

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.