The Dancer Upstairs (19 page)
Read The Dancer Upstairs Online
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
The doctor, observing the deterioration in his patient, advised a lumbar puncture. The hallucinations could indicate that the drugs were destroying the parasites. Or her condition was untreatable. The answer would show up in her spinal fluid. With the two men's approval, she was laid on her left side, curled up like a baby, while a long needle was inserted into her back. The sample had been sent for analysis to a lab in Rio. That was a week ago. They were still waiting for the results.
“You think you're grown up,” said Rejas. “Then you see your sister ill â and she's a ten-year-old again. But there are some people â their youth never leaves them. It's the only time of life which interests them and they respond to everyone they meet as if they are still ten-year-olds. Yolanda was like that. In some ways she could be grown up beyond her years, in other ways oddly childish â as ballerinas can be who've not been around people much.
“Then there are those like me, who don't think about their childhood. Which is a common experience in the sierra. When their parents die, people who've moved away don't come home any more, not to small towns. I went back to La Posta only once after I left â with Sylvina for a fortnight's holiday the summer I graduated. After the military had seized our farm, there was nothing to go back for. I didn't investigate Ezequiel's influence in the valley because you never think things are going to be so bad in your own village. Then Yolanda mentioned Ausangate.
“That night I lay awake, remembering in detail the village, my friends, the skipping-rope rhymes, our coffee plantation. It was at this period I learned the fate of our priest.”
He searched for something in his trouser pocket. “Tell me, did your aunt mention a Father Ramón, who might have worked with her on the children's project?”
“Ramón? I don't think so.”
“I was one of his altar boys. There were three of us â me, Nemecio, and Santiago, his favourite.”
Dyer had been so relieved to see Rejas this evening that for a while he didn't mind what the policeman talked about. Now he was anxious for him to continue his story. “Last night you were talking about Yolanda.”
Rejas, his hand now rummaging in another pocket, ignored him. “This old man. He wasn't just any priest, you understand. He was a priest I loved. It's a terrible story. But it was he who led me to Ezequiel.”
He had found what he was looking for. “I want to show you this. It's important.”
It was an airmail letter, the paper so thin that the blue writing pressed through like veins.
“My last contact was this letter from Portugal.”
Rejas waited for Dyer to read it. The hand was large and neat.
You remember my hope of one day visiting Our Lady's shrine at Fatima? My prayers have been answered. I have been lucky enough to be appointed religious guide for a tour comprising eighteen pilgrims from our diocese.
The priest, whom Dyer gathered had never before left La Posta, was excited by the airport, by the food on the plane, by the way the time changed as he flew.
Five hours of Palm Sunday lost! Where did that day go? Was it a sin not to be in church, do you think?
In Portugal he had eaten well, if curiously
â a dish with pork and clams . . . On the way to the shrine we took a bus to Coimbra, where I saw the library. Gold everywhere. Your father would have loved it! At Fatima the shrine to the Virgin surpassed his expectations. I walked on my knees all the way with the same speed as if I had been on my feet. You have no idea how holy this place is. The Virgin's presence is palpable. I said a prayer for you and your sister. Also for the village. Things are not so good in the valleys at the moment, AgustÃn. I have had to send five children to an orphanage in the capital. You will understand why Our Lady's message of peace has never seemed more needed. I prayed through the night â and I did feel I was listened to.
I had not heard from Father Ramón since receiving that letter. Then, about a week after my meeting with Yolanda, Sucre handed me a newspaper cutting.
“La Posta? Isn't that your village, sir?”
“Why? What's wrong?”
“They've killed the priest.”
The cutting, three weeks old, reported that Maoist forces had executed Ramón because he had been “participating in the counterinsurgency struggle designed by the government and armed forces”.
I heard the details later. It was hideous.
They waited for him by the Weeping Terrace, which is now an airstrip. He walked there every Saturday, composing the sermon he would broadcast over our local radio station. They seized his hat, his stick and the small Bible he carried everywhere â a gift of my father's, with gilt-edged pages. He was forced to his knees on the grass, his hands tied behind his back. A woman knelt in front of him. She searched the Bible for the appropriate page.
“Read it out,” she ordered.
The passage was from Job. He started reading. His voice was famous. He would have said the words as if he was touched with their emotional truth.
“âHis breath kindleth coals and flame goeth out of his mouth. In his neck remaineth strength and sorrow is turned to joy before us.'”
She tore the page out, screwed it into a ball, forced it between his lips. “Eat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eat!”
I picture his lips parting.
“Swallow.”
I see him making the effort to swallow and the woman, a dreadful expression on her face, tearing first page of Genesis, telling him “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” making another ball, holding that to his mouth. I see him willing himself to transform this page into the Host. I remember there are six hundred and twenty-seven pages.
After he passed out, he was stabbed repeatedly. They scooped out the guts and filled his stomach with the rest of the Bible â which, according to a message left inside his hat, had been written as a propaganda tool.
Lastly, they attacked his face. Those who found his corpse couldn't tell if it belonged to a man. But when the face is mutilated like that, it means one thing: the killer is known to his victim.
Father Ramón had baptized her.
My father, a timid man with few close friends, believed that a part of the reason we love someone is because of the person we become when we're with them. When they're dead, we can never be that person again. It's that other person, my father would say, for whom we're grieving. When I read the bald fact of Father Ramón's death, I had no intention of journeying to La Posta. But I had to speak with others who had known him.
The three altar boys had drifted apart. The last I heard of Nemecio, he was teaching in Cajamarca. Santiago was in a seminary. I had no idea where they were at that time.
As you will see from that letter, Father Ramón mentions several of his fellow pilgrims. One of them is Santiago's mother.
Rejas waited for Dyer to find the reference. Although it puzzled the journalist, this concern for him to know every detail, he reread the passage.
My feelings for Leticia Salano will always be informed by the utmost tenderness, but I will be relieved when we part. She would prefer it if her feelings towards me escalated to a level of greater intimacy, although this I attribute to her failing eyesight. We have known each other a long time â most of my life! â and she is so possessive of my company that once or twice it has led to friction with other members of our group. Since leaving the valley â she lives somewhere in Belgrano: is that near you? â I hear she is more troubled than ever. I do not know if Santiago is at the root of her disquiet. I believe there has been a falling out. Do you see your friend ever? We lost touch when he abandoned the ministry. It grieves me to think he didn't trust me enough to share his doubts. I would have told him what my Bishop told me when I contemplated the same action: maybe God doesn't exist, but people who believe in Him generally lead better lives.
I found two Solanos listed as living in the Belgrano district, one of them with the initial L. The telephone company said the line had been disconnected owing to non-payment.
One evening I followed an orange cat between puddles up an alley, looking for Solano, L.'s house.
Clap, clap went the echo of my knock on the shabby door. The cat darted under a gate. Beyond the wall, a fig tree writhed unwatered. Presently a shutter rattled open. A bowl of white azaleas was shoved aside and, partly obscured by a line of drying clothes, an old woman's face appeared over the ledge.
“Yes?” She looked down between a pair of black stockings.
I stepped back. “It's AgustÃn. AgustÃn Rejas.”
She weaved her head. “Who?”
“Santiago's friend. I've come about Father Ramón.”
“What does he want?”
Her voice was bothered, her face lost in the flowers.
“Can I come in?”
She withdrew. On the sill the cat watched me. I thought, Why do people who go to pieces like cats so?
I heard a shuffle of feet and then metal squeaking. A gruff voice reminding itself, “Rejas, Rejas. The coffee farm.”
We sat upstairs in a dingy kitchen, where she warned, “I've nothing to give you. No coffee.” Her face and chest had flattened and she couldn't see very well. She relied on a neighbour's boy to bring provisions. He hadn't called today. She was thinking of Father Ramón, but too proud to ask.
“I wanted to get in touch with Santiago,” I said.
Something fluttered across her face. “Santiago? Why Santiago?”
“We were at school together.”
“In Pachuca?”
“No, before that. La Posta.”
“Why didn't we meet?” She pretended she could see me. The eyes which had once caused havoc in the valley and beyond had a cloudy look. “Why didn't he bring you to the hotel ever?”
“He did. But you weren't there.” She had abandoned hotel, husband and son for the alcoholic who pretended to be a wealthy cotton-grower. Everyone but Santiago had known of the affair.
I said, “We both were servers at Mass.”
I thought of walking with Santiago to the church. Horses grazing in the browned grass. A young goat shivering. Santiago wanting to be a priest. He looked very like his mother.
“I played the flute and he sang.”
Santiago had the best voice in the village. I thought of Father Ramón, tone deaf, encouraging Santiago to the eagle lectern; my friend's nervous face popping over those wings as though he was clinging to a condor.
“He gave up singing.”
“Why?”
“Same reason he gave up the priesthood,” she said bitterly. “He preferred to talk, didn't he?”
“What about?”
“Foreign names. All nonsense.”
“What foreign names?”
“Why are you so interested? Why should I tell you?”
It's something I inherited from my father. If asked a direct question, I tell the truth. “I work for the ATP.”
“The police?” She brushed the cat aside. Her cataracted eyes slunk back along the table towards me. “Paco told me they've found those actors you killed.”
Bones had been discovered under the seats of a cinema which the University was restoring as a cultural centre.
“That was nothing to do with us.”
“The army, then. What difference does it make?”
“It hasn't been proved.”
“Why are you all behaving like this?”
“I don't know.”
“Why is it you want to see your schoolfriend?” The last word sarcastic.
“I want to talk to him about Father Ramón.”
“That's what the others said.”
“Who said?”
“Two men who came to see him.”
“Who were they?”
“Friends from university. They needed Santiago, they said.”
“When was this?”
“Two, three weeks.” She lifted her head. “Why does everyone want to talk about Father Ramón?”
“What did they want to know?”
The cat had crept back. “His sermons â”
“They didn't like what he was saying?”
She folded her arms. “I told them to get out.”
“Did you tell them where to find Santiago?”
“I have no idea where he is.”
“Is that true?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Then it's not true.”
“He writes. He sends money.”
“What do the letters say?”
“I don't know,” she repeated, her eyes unable to make tears. “The boy who brings the food doesn't read.”
“Don't you keep the letters?”
“Pass me that.”
I unhooked the imitation leather bag from the back of a chair. She fumbled with the clasp and felt inside, bringing out an envelope.
The postmark was two months old, from La Posta.
She said, “Tell me, what does he write?”
I unfolded the letter. The page was blank, something to fold the money in so it couldn't be seen through the envelope.
“He says he loves you and everything is fine and he will write again soon.”
The outline of a smile. “That's Santiago.”
She moved her head to the wall. The thermometer was a Fatima Virgin. She bit her lip. “Tell me,” she said more brightly. “How is Father Ramón?”
I requested a fortnight's absence. The General refused. The bowl on his desk was piled high with oranges as if stocked against a great siege. “I tell you, Tomcat, it's pandefuckingmonium out there.” Calderón had given himself dictatorial powers. Everything went first to Lache. “If I know General Lache, the Arguedas Players, they're just the beginning. He's adopting the French solution â and the French haven't won a war since 1812. It's vital you stay here.”
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