The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare Read Free Book Online

reindeers I assembled above our Christmas candles, except he isn’t tinkling. A drop splashes my face.
    â€œHe’s got something in his mouth,” says Sucre.
    I step back. The jaws have been forced open, something holding them apart in a frozen pant. A placard hangs down from the legs.
    Twice I jump up, but the dog is too high. My attempts to pull him down disturb the flies at his eyes. I drive the car on to the kerb and stand on the roof to cut the wire. The body drops to the ground, expelling a gasp of air. In the orange light I read the words, “Deng Xiaoping”.
    I untie the placard and hand it to Sucre. Puzzled, he reads aloud the message written below. “Your fascist leadership has betrayed our world revolution.”
    He frowns. “Who’s President Ezequiel?”
    But I am concentrating on the dog. From the mouth pokes a narrow truncheon of dynamite. My first thought is for the traffic below.
    The sun would rise on dogs hanging from street-lamps in Belgrano, Las Flores, and Lurigancho. Four more mutilated animals were found along the highway to the airport and another outside the Catholic University. People gathering beneath them experienced the same bafflement. No one had any idea who or what Ezequiel was. Nor his world revolution.
    In the morning I spoke to the Chinese Embassy. Despite the references to Deng Xiaoping, no threats had been received. After a fortnight without more such incidents, I put the events of that evening from my mind.
    Sylvina was relieved to be back in the capital. I had not seen her so happy since the early months of our marriage.
    For about a year we rented the flat of her cousin Marco, who had moved with his wife to Miami. Eventually we found a modest basement apartment in Miraflores, three blocks north of Parque Colón. It wasn’t as nice as Marco’s flat, or the flat we had lived in six years previously, when I worked as a lawyer; and I couldn’t easily afford the lease. But her mother’s death had left Sylvina with a modest inheritance. How we would cope when this source exhausted itself, neither of us found the courage to contemplate. Meanwhile the inheritance paid for a cleaning lady and the subscription to the tennis club in San Isidro where Sylvina played four afternoons a week.
    Our daughter Laura was growing up to look like my sister: large brown eyes, a strong body and masses of black hair which Sylvina insisted on braiding into a plait. Already Sylvina was talking about ballet lessons.
    We had lived a year in the new apartment when I was promoted to assistant head of the Diplomatic Protection Unit. Despite that, Sylvina remained convinced that I was crazy to stay in the force. Who could imagine becoming a policeman? They were all either psychologically disturbed or they’d had run-ins with the law. “And all of them are poor.” But I worked regular hours, and it was a quiet time in our marriage and in the capital.
    One morning in November I am summoned to an office on the third floor of a building in Via Expreso.
    I reported here for duty on my return to the capital, but have had little occasion to come here since. It is a cheerless place, and when the wind blows off the sea, as it does this morning, the corridors smell of car fumes and maize hobs and urine. Because the place was always known as one of the ugliest office buildings in the city, money has been spent to brighten up the exterior with a particularly unhappy green wash which makes it even more charmless. The colour does not sit well with the barbed-wire emplacements at the entrance or the concrete blocks which prevent people from parking.
    General Merino is a large-shouldered man with the trace of a moustache and small shining eyes pouched into a grey face. He wears a black turtleneck shirt, a half-sheepskin jacket with belt-flaps and looks at me from one side of his face, then the other, like a chicken. There is no tic at the corner of his eyes, as there is to