The Dancer Upstairs (26 page)

We drove through the blacked-out suburbs. Pyramids of lorry tyres blazed on a hillside. The night smelt of burnt rubber. Inside the bus we started coughing.

At eight-fifteen we were spat out into the chaos of the terminal. I pushed my bag through the crowd. The streets dinned with people bashing their car doors, hooting. In the middle of the road, as if answering to some weird impulse, a barefoot figure in striped pyjamas and brandishing a straw hat directed the traffic.

“That's it, straight on. You'll get there.”

Figures weaved between the car bumpers selling objects they had looted. Beneath a set of dead traffic lights, a boy held up a canvas, ornately framed, of a peaceful European river scene. An accomplice, in jeans and a woollen hat, lowered his head beside a driver's window, offering a silver goblet to an alarmed woman.

I crossed the road, searching for a bus to take me to Miraflores. Another firework exploded. A few feet away, an antlered head reared glassy-eyed over the bonnets. Its throat lifted skywards, and then with a desultory toss, the head tilted and disappeared. Gripping the horns, a dishevelled man in a flapped-open boiler suit said, “Twenty pesos, señor?”

There was no blackout in Miraflores. The bus might have rattled out of the darkness into another planet. Couples sat on benches, holding hands. In a café, brilliantly lit, a girl raised a glass of iced coffee to her lips and, laughing, wiped a cream spot off her nose. By the flowerbeds a man slapped his green mackintosh and called to his dog.

I stepped off at Parque Colón and hurried towards our flat.

I had not spoken to Sylvina since she drove me to the airport nine days before. I hoped she had not started to worry. Whenever my work took me outside the capital I made certain to telephone. I would write down a list of things I wanted to say and never get round to saying them. But always I called.

This evening, I desperately wanted to talk to someone.

Laura, her face lifted to the ceiling, sat at the end of the table while Sylvina applied a grey paste to her cheeks. A pink vinyl case gaped open and scattered about it were a number of small gold pots with their tops off.

Sylvina stood back. Her mouth shone unnaturally bright and her eyes had the undaunted stare of the convert.

I looked at Laura. “What is going on?”

“Laura's been filling in for one of my clients, haven't you, darling? No, give it time to set.”

“Clients?”

She kissed me, but not so as to disturb whatever she had smeared on her lips. “I've got six, Agustín. Six in three days! Patricia, Marina – I won't go on. They're coming tomorrow. Consuelo said she'd pop in, but wouldn't buy anything. Otherwise they've sworn to place an order, even if it's only an eyebrow-pencil. People are wonderful.”

Sylvina's scheme. Our salvation. I'd forgotten. From a leaflet on the table, a frosted blonde, teeth framed between bright lips, smiled at me. “Strategy. A revolutionary skin care for the mature woman.”

“I know you don't like him, but Marco's office expressed these samples last week.” She'd spent the last two days with Laura, learning the spiel, how to apply the cosmetics. “It's so exciting, Agustín.”

My tired eyes took in the gold pots. Lip gloss. Throat creams, Concealers. Moisturizers. Foundations.

“We're going to make money, darling. Thousands of dollars in weeks. It's the Sally Fay promise. They're keen to get into our market. There's no one doing this here.”

Laura lifted her head, trying to say something.

“No, don't speak yet. She's been very good, listening to my pitch. There's this pack of promotional material I'm expected to memorize.”

“Sylvina –”

“They want me to put over the idea that Sally Fay works best when the products are used together.”

“Sweetheart –”

“I've asked everyone to come over tomorrow without their make-up – so I can confirm their skin types.”

She had stopped paying any attention to me. Here on this shrinking island of Miraflores she had found in that vinyl briefcase her answer to the horror.

She inspected Laura's closed lids. “Yes, it's ready to come off. How was your trip?”

I pulled out a chair. I wanted to tell her, but my words dissolved in the air between us.

“I'll tell you later.” I sat down. “What's been going on here? You know there's a blackout in the suburbs?”

“To tell the truth, Sally Fay's been devouring my time. But you remind me: I must get more candles.”

I turned to Laura. She was rubbing off what looked like dirt. “How are your new classes?”

Sylvina said on her behalf, “Going well, aren't they? I do like her teacher. Deliciously pretty and so dedicated with it. Nothing too much trouble. But it's all dance, dance, dance. I told her – not too sternly, I hope – ‘I want to see you with a boyfriend. This city is no place for a single girl.' By the way, Agustín, remember that pepper grinder? I can't find a new one anywhere. There. Show your father.”

“How do I look?” said Laura.

“All right.” The paste has turned her skin blotchy, as if she had stood too long in the shower. It made her resemble Marina's daughter.

She spat something out. “It tastes like seaweed.”

I made myself a sandwich in the kitchen. I hadn't eaten since breakfast. The wireless, which Sylvina sometimes left on for the cat, was playing classical music above the fridge. I made an unconvincing animal noise and the cat bolted.

A moment later Laura entered, holding it in her arms.

I looked at her, and my heart turned out. “You wouldn't have enjoyed it.”

She stamped her foot. “How do you know?”

“You couldn't have seen the Weeping Terrace. It's become an airstrip.”

“Did you bring me a flute?” She saw I'd forgotten. “Oh, Daddy . . .” The cat leapt from her arms as she ran out.

I finished eating the sandwich and made a pot of tea. Outside I heard Sylvina speaking.

“What?” I put my head round the door.

She had taken up position in front of the mirror and was speaking to herself.

“All those companies you can't pronounce. It's so easy to understand and say Sally Fay. We're not trying to hide behind some exotic French name. Sally Fay takes you into the next millennium of skin care without you having to leave the comfort of your own living room . . . Laura? What comes next?”

“. . . and because we don't have overheads . . .”

I took a shower. She was still speaking to herself when I came out of the bathroom, smiling in a way I'd not seen before.

She offered the mirror a tube.

“Now this is a really good defence against skin fatigue.”

As soon as I woke, I telephoned Sucre.

“Any luck with the chiropodist?”

“Nothing.”

“Dr Ephraim?”

“Ditto. No one suspicious.”

“And the rubbish?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.”

I read him the number Santiago had given me. “I want to know the address. A month ago it was hot.”

“It could take a day.”

“Take a day.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“I'll ring in. I've got to repay a loan.”

Lazo's daughter worked in a cavernous, ill-lit bakery opposite a tin-roofed church.

The manager agreed to spare her for five minutes. I didn't tell him who I was. Family business, I said. I'd come directly from the bank.

“Agustín.”

She met me at the door, sleepy-faced. She had her father's eyes and her daughter's tight mouth. We kissed. Her cheeks smelled of flour.

“How did you find me?”

“No other bakeries on the hill.”

“Your voice, it's deeper . . . but the same.”

“You haven't changed, either.”

We were being polite. If you know someone as a child you'll recognize them as an adult. For a few seconds she was the Graciela who loved detective stories and pizza with grated cheese. And I was Agustín who played in a band.

“You're crazy, Agustín. Look at me. I'm exactly the same as I was twenty something years ago? Is that what you're telling me?”

Coquettishly, she fanned out her dress, releasing a floury puff, and pushed out a cumbersome hip.

The day was hot, but I could feel the hotter blast of the ovens. From inside, a man shouted.

“I'm coming,” she called – then with sudden anger over her shoulder, “Jerk.” She rubbed an eye. “Tell me, how is Papi?”

“He sends you his love. And some money.”

“Didn't he write?” She leafed through the notes. “Nothing for me, no word?”

“He couldn't talk for long. He was mending the Mayor's teeth.”

“Agustín, they – the military, I mean – found a piece of red cloth in my bedroom. It meant nothing. Tomasio used to wave it at the bulls. They said he was one of Ezequiel's men. I had to leave . . .” She looked down the hill, over the ghetto of dust-coloured houses. This was not what she'd anticipated when she stepped on to the bus in La Posta. Last night, the second in succession, the army had choked the streets of the capital, had beaten down doors, had thrust people into vans.

“But you say Papi's well, and Francesca, did you see her, how does she look, Agustín? Has she lost that sore on her arm? It wouldn't go away.”

“Your daughter's well.”

“I want her here with me, but I'm waiting to hear from Tomasio. Did you see Tomasio? He said he'd write – but I haven't heard.”

“I didn't see him.”

“It would be just like Tomasio to send his letter to the wrong address.”

I could not look her in the face, embedded my stare instead in her dress. Then, gently, I asked if we could find somewhere quiet to sit down.

An hour later, exhausted and on the verge of retching, I drove over the Rimac bridge.

I could taste the styrofoam cup which Graciela had filled with lukewarm coffee. Not thinking, I drove to Miraflores. Whenever Sylvina needed to forget an unpleasantness she shopped.

I walked into an arcade, looking for presents for my wife, for Laura. But in each window the glass reflected back a dress scrunched at the knees, and two flour-covered hands clawing at printed yellow flowers, mashing them.

I turned away. What was I doing in a shopping arcade? I couldn't afford presents anyway. I moved towards the daylight – and it was at that moment I recognized the silhouette of Laura's ballet teacher.

She wore, despite the heat, a pale pink sweater – V-neck, far too large for her, made of some fluffy angora stuff like kitten fur – over a black leotard and leggings. She stared at an enamelled urn in the window.

“Yolanda!”

She had a Walkman on. Her head swayed from side to side and her knees brushed against her shopping bag in abbreviated movements, shorthand for a dance.

“Yolanda!”

She had her hair pulled up with a dark green band and was wearing black Doc Martens – like combat boots, only with something very childish about them. Laura has a pair. They made her legs look thin.

Yolanda moved off, clasping a plastic bag to her chest. Not looking round, she walked out of the arcade, her stride long and loping.

Running into the street, I touched her shoulder.

She spun.

“Yolanda! It's me.”

The muscles of her neck relaxed.

“I didn't see you,” she called. She plucked off the headphones, slipping them over my ears. Her face, excited, awaited my reaction.

Have you had this feeling? You are sitting in a car, radio on, and across the street someone tunes in to the same frequency – but much louder. For a second you are physically somewhere else. That's how I felt. I was looking at Yolanda, but at the sound of those pipes a different air filled my chest and I knelt on the moon-blue rim of a glacier. I was planting candles in the ice while, beside me, Nemecio axed out a block to carry on his shoulders. The ice, melted into holy water, we would use as medicine.

“For my Antigone.”

“What do you mean?”

She stopped the tape. “That's the music I'm going to dance. I'd been stuck on something totally inappropriate – Penderecki. Then we – you and me, I mean – started talking about Ausangate and I had the idea.”

I returned the headphones. “So your ballet, I haven't missed it?”

“It's this Sunday. Since I last saw you, I've been rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. Suddenly I felt I had to get out or I'd go mad.” She dropped the Walkman into her bag.

“It's wonderful to see you.” My voice sounded far off to me, as if on the mountain.

“You're thinner,” she said.

“I've been away.” I hadn't combed my hair and my fingernails were filthy and she looked so alive with the sun on her face.

“I've missed our conversations. I've thought a lot about the other night. But what are you doing here?”

I shuffled my feet. I hadn't polished my shoes. My hands felt large, my palms sticky. “I was looking for a pepper grinder. And a flute.”

“A flute? Don't you have one?”

“Let's see, what have you bought?”

She opened her bag. “A jersey for my brother.”

“Let's see.”

She held a yellow alpaca cardigan against my chest. I sucked in my stomach, conscious of the white-flour fingermarks on my shirt. Afterwards, I'd held Graciela for ten minutes.