The Dancer Upstairs (33 page)

The night before I had come home from the ballet studio. After taking a shower, I found her in the kitchen. She threw her arms about me.

“Daddy, thank you! I was so horrid. I thought you'd forgotten. Mummy said you must have been keeping it as a surprise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I shouldn't have opened your briefcase, but I was looking for your newspaper . . .” She slipped her head from beneath my hand. Her fingers, their span not yet great enough to cover the holes, clutched Yolanda's gift to me.

Behind me in the car, Laura's voice, “The flute's all right.”

“Is that all?”

“That's what you say whenever we ask you something. I can't wait to show it to Yolanda.”

“I don't want you to take it to the studio,” I said hastily. “It's too precious.”

“But Daddy –”

“What have you both been dancing this week? Samantha?”

“Yesterday we danced The Nutcracker. The day before we tried a dance from the sierra.”

“What dance?”

Laura, reminded of her aborted trip, said: “You won't have heard of it.”

“Try me.”

“I know what it's called,” said Samantha, perking up.

“Don't tell him.”

“‘Taqui Onqoy',” pronounced Samantha, accurately.

“The dance of illness?” It was a messianic dance.

“Samantha has an audition at the Metropolitan,” said Laura.

Samantha, looking out of the window, said in a lethargic, grown-up voice, “But I don't really know if I want to go there. Daddy says I might be better off in Florida.”

“What about Yolanda,” I said, “are you pleased with her, both of you?”

Laura came forward, hugging the headrest on my seat, her breath on my neck.

“We think she's got a boyfriend,” she said slyly.

Both girls giggled. I flushed. Were they talking about me?

I adopted Samantha's bored tone. “Who is he, do you know?”

“Christina saw a birthday cake in the fridge,” said Laura. She had removed her hairclip and now shook loose her hair. “And the two wine glasses, Samantha – remember?”

“Someone's given her an old pot,” Samantha added. “She was furious when I put out my fag in it.”

“Samantha! Sssh!”

I was too interested in Yolanda to take up the matter of a forbidden cigarette.

“Must it be a boyfriend?”

“Oh, yes,” said Laura. “She's changed, don't you think, Samantha? She's started worrying what she looks like. She never did before.”

I felt an unpleasant tingle at the back of my neck. Perhaps Yolanda did have a boyfriend.

“Daddy,” whispered Laura, “you shouldn't scratch like that. Your neck's covered in spots.”

“You've missed the studio,” noted Samantha.

“I'll drop you both here.”

I parked on the corner and they climbed out. I tilted my wing-mirror, watching them walk back a block until they stood outside the door in the green wall. Samantha pressed the bell. Laura fiddled with the zip on her Adidas bag. Aware that I was watching, she refused to look back. She tugged up one leg, then the other, exercising. She was the only reason my marriage survived.

The door opened. I saw Laura's face light up.

I drove past Gomez who followed me at a distance to a car park behind the Banco Wiese in Calle Salta. I then climbed into Gomez's van and he drove me to Calle Diderot, parking in a narrow cul-de-sac opposite the studio. After he got out, locked up and walked away, I took up position in the back. Through the perspex I could see the studio's strip lights. Laura had left her hairclip in the car and I held on to it, thinking of her inside with Yolanda.

You have to realize, watching – it's also about desire. I was deeply shaken when I sat down in that van.
We think she's got a boyfriend
. Laura's words were a punch to my heart. She was Yolanda's pupil and I was her father and Yolanda had
Antigone
to think about. It was none of my business – but suppose there
was
someone else in Yolanda's life? She'd mentioned a fiancé, had said,
Oh, I've catted around
. Then there was the matter of her visit to the sierra. Had she made the journey to the ice festival alone? Or had she been with a lover when she was researching the dance groups? People tend not to mention former companions when talking to a third person they are fond of – and I didn't doubt Yolanda liked me. But how much? And was her brother really her brother? Or was I being jealous of myself?

How many times did I tell myself none of this should concern me? But after what both Laura and Samantha had said, my hopes and suspicions ran wild. One minute I was elated. The next, I felt the cold feet of jealousy climbing into bed beside me. With everything else that was going on, it was hard to reconcile myself to the fact I was in love.

There's no point trying to understand why people fall in love. My contact with Yolanda had been so snatched, yet the impact had been intense. I was forty-three years old, but I had lived only for a few days. Once you wake up like that, you don't drop back into sleep. Not easily. Since Monday, when I had bumped into Yolanda in the Bullrich Arcade, I had hardly slept. My heart had become a vast and uncomfortable thing. It reared out of my chest, throwing back my head so I could only breathe with difficulty. As I pressed my forehead to the dark perspex strip, I could no longer hide from myself the reason for these feelings, this behaviour.

In the few hours that remained until I saw her again, this is what I argued: I was in the saddle of a passion that could lead nowhere. I sifted Yolanda's character for faults, fumbled with them to that narrow bar of light. She was immature, unpredictable. She had chubby cheeks, an unquenchable appetite for cakes, ugly feet. I pictured her in revolting positions. I summoned her feet and stamped their deformed features on her face, over her eyes. There! Could I find her attractive now? I did. I did! I was in pain. I was miserable. I was ashamed. I was thrilled. The smallest detail rang with her name, from the outline of the jacaranda to the pattern of specks on the perspex.

You remember I told you how she flipped the jug in the air? Well, what happened . . . happened shortly afterwards. She remained in that position, eyes closed, arms raised, holding her breath. I can only say that, to me, the air about her was charged with the naked thrill of what she had done. She looked as if some extraordinary truth had dawned on her. I mean, think of it. She had with that simple gesture buried her brother, the state, herself.

Then she lowered her arms and this expression vanished and her breath returned in chokes. Her throat and shoulders were sweating. Tiny crystals of rosin sparkled in her eyes, on her breasts. The dress had opened at the front. Her dark ruby nipples showed through the thin cloth, catching at the material. She was devastated, but also intoxicated.

We fell against each other. I felt her hair rubbing my cheek and her breath, flavoured with wine and banana cake, scorching my neck. Her closeness was unbearable. I longed to move my hands down her sweating back, to take off her dress. Her breasts pressed hard against my chest and I smelled her coppery skin. In that moment I wanted her more than anything I had ever seen or known or done.

I touched her and became something else. All the vital experiences of my life had predicted this moment. Touching her, I repossessed them and relived them, felt their reverberations. I was a candle burning in the snow. I was my father carrying my mother in his arms. I was grief and joy.

Slowly, she tilted back her head. She held my face between her hands, and she kissed me.

Then she pushed away. “Oh, my darling, what are we going to do?” She blinked, putting out a hand to the barre. Rosin had fallen into her eyes. She rubbed them with the back of her hand.

“It's not allowed, you know that. What are we going to do? I –”

She couldn't escape my face in the mirror. Nor the effect on me of her words. “And believe me, I want to, I want to . . .”

Now she folded her arms, bowed in pain. “Agustín, you must go. It's impossible. It's nearly the curfew.”

My voice came out thick, desperate. Our kiss, which had made her all of a sudden vulnerable and tense – like someone without a skin, really – had brushed me with fire.

“Tomorrow, can I see you tomorrow?”

She unfolded her arms, clasped and unclasped her hands. “It disturbs me very much to have you here.”

“Disturbs you?”

“This is a really important decision. For us both. It is not one I can make now. Not now. The dance is an impediment, Agustín. I've been working too hard. I'm not clear-headed.”

She glanced crookedly up at me in the mirror. It was easier to fend me off there. In a ravaged voice, she said, “It's not something to be entered into lightly. After the dance – after that, let's talk about it. Let's be sure.”

The ballet class ended at eight-thirty. Through the perspex I watched the girls being collected. Marina drove off in her red BMW, Laura and Samantha squabbling in the back. I trained my binoculars on the door, but I did not see Yolanda.

A mosquito wailed in the air near my face, then fell silent. I slapped my cheek.

Some time later, there was the noise of a key in the lock. The door opened and Sucre climbed in. The chassis rocked as he clambered to the back. I unfolded a chair for him. He had inspected the rubbish bags from Calle Perón. Nothing of substance. He took a paper bag from his jacket pocket. “Sandwich, sir?”

He reeked of the basement. I had to ask him what the sandwich filling was.

The streetlight threw a band of orange across our faces. Sucre touched his cheek to indicate the spot. “You've been bitten, sir.”

I wiped my face and looked at my finger. There was blood on the tip.

“I've a can of spray in my truck.”

“It doesn't matter. I'm leaving soon. Tell Gomez to be here at ten.”

Sucre would start collecting the rubbish once the curfew started. Piled outside each house, the black sacks had materialized throughout the day. As ten o'clock approached, they stopped appearing. The curfew wasn't for another twenty minutes, but its shroud prepared to wrap the city. Everything fell still and you heard sounds you never normally heard. The fragile hum of a drunk. The receding gargle of a motorbike.

The clink of a rubbish bag against a door frame.

I heard the noise, glanced across the street. What I saw made me sit bolt upright in my chair. All day I had longed for this sight. It jarred me to see her.

Yolanda, in black leotard, black tights and a bright red headband, squeezed sideways through the door in the wall and on to the sidewalk. She held one bin-bag against her chest and dragged another behind her. She swung them on to the heap at the base of the lamppost and wiped her hands. I expected her to return inside, but she paused under the light.

I focused the binoculars. That I was snooping shamed me. What would she think if she knew that, fifty yards away, I sat spying on her?

With her feet turned out, she walked two or three paces towards me. Her shadow lengthened out and revolved against the wall. Rising on her toes, she gazed down the street.

My head swirled: She's expecting somebody.

“That's got a nice little walk on it,” observed Sucre. “Your girl's teacher, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Single, is she, sir?”

“That's right.”

“You know, a single girl like that – it's kind of tragic.”

Balanced on the tips of her ballet slippers, again she looked down the street.

“Although,” said Sucre, “that's a heap of rubbish for a girl on her own.”

She turned and loped, head down, towards the studio. I adjusted the focus, following her inside. I expected her to shut the door and draw the chain. Instead she stood on one leg, eased off a slipper and wedged it between the door and frame.

Sucre scratched at the plaque on his teeth, sucking. “Hello. She's waiting for someone.”

Before leaving the van, I put my pistol in the glove compartment. “Time to start collecting the rubbish.”

She saw me the instant I entered. All those mirrors – you're aware of who's walked into the studio without having to look behind you.

“It's you.” She stood with her back to me, not turning, one arm up, one leg raised in an arabesque.

“You're still rehearsing?” I looked at Lazo's jug and the tapes, which she hadn't moved – which she had played for me. I looked at the two glasses on the floor where we had left them, the wine evaporated to a powdery red blush.

“I didn't expect you.”

I put into my voice all the passion I felt. “I wanted to see you.”

She lowered her leg to the floor.

“I love you.”

In an empty dance studio – or anywhere else, I suppose – a whispered love is a deafening thing. I had not known I was going to say the words. But in the van, when I visualized our scenes together, I had been drawn back to everything that was truest about myself.

She bowed her head as if someone was saying grace. “Please don't.”

“But this last week –”

She whirled towards me. “And I meant everything I said.”

Then she crumpled to the floor.

It's funny, the memories you keep of people. The moments which fix them in your mind aren't always the most obvious. My last image of Father Ramón is the vision of him in dirty tennis shoes spreading a silver chain above my head. I remember my mother shooing parrots and my father in too large a suit at my wedding and my wife leaning against the kitchen window, tapping at the glass. She was tapping like that to make a bird on the lawn fly away, to save it. But, startled by the noise of her fingers, the cat pounced. “And Agustín wanted to put you down,” she said afterwards, stroking it.