The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page A

be later. It is a benevolent look.
    Merino is our most distinguished policeman. As a cadet in the Sixties he helped crush Fuenie’s revolt and he protects his service with a similar ferocity. He has a reputation for hating the army and is known to be honest, brave and overworked. His joy in life is fishing. A rod is propped against the map on the wall behind his desk.
    â€œYou speak Quechua, right?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œYou know the north well?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    There is a glass bowl with oranges on his desk.
    â€œWant one?”
    â€œNo thank you, sir.”
    He takes an orange and peels it. “To corner a tomcat, Colonel Rejas – I call you Colonel, you understand, because I am promoting you – what do you do? You don’t send two alsatians up an alley. They’ll play havoc with the garbage cans and the cat just leaps up the tree. No. You send in someone who knows the area, the other’s way of thinking, what he smells like. You send in another tomcat.”
    The General, I will learn, is someone who reaches a decision quickly, reasonably intelligent, and once he has delegated a problem he has no intention of being bothered with it again. He gestures to a thick blue folder on his desk. “I want you to be our tomcat, Rejas.”
    He gives me until next morning to acquaint myself with the contents.
    At home I slip open the adjustable metal fastener. The files catalogue incidents in the countryside since 17 May 1980, the day of the last general election. On that night, seven months before their appearance in the capital, dogs were hung from lampposts in four villages of Nerpio province. The symbol was, apparently, a Maoist one. “In China a dead dog is symbolic of a tyrant condemned to death by his people.” Nor was it limited to the Andes. In the weeks ahead, dead dogs would hang under the street lights of Cajamarca, Villaria and Lepe, culminating in the incident I have described on the bridge over the Rimac. The capital had no more such incidents after that first spate.
    The animals that came next were alive.
    In February, in Cabezas Rubias, a black dog ran through the market, frothing at the mouth. A fruit-seller was chasing him away with a broom, when the dog exploded. Three people suffered appalling wounds and a meat stall was blown all over the market place.
    In Judio, a donkey, galloping wildly, exploded into a thousand bloody pieces outside the police station. No one was hurt, but the blood seemed to have been etched into the stucco of the building.
    In Salobral, during a meeting of the council, a hen was introduced into the Mayor’s office and spattered the walls with feathered blood.
    In none of these cases did anyone claim responsibility, but the dog and the donkey had evidently a placard round their necks proclaiming: “Ezequiel”.
    â€œA delinquent!!!” declared the Mayor of Salobral. “An Argentine,” hinted the local bishop in a sermon recorded from the pulpit. “An American,” avowed someone in a bus queue, this quoted by the correspondent of El Comercio.
    There were also reports from the deep country areas.
    From the police post in Tonda: eyewitness accounts of a public assassination, the victim accused of stealing bulls.
    From Anghay: two prostitutes assassinated on a crowded street.
    From Tieno: the assassination of the Mayor in a barber’s shop.
    Again, the name Ezequiel associated with these atrocities sometimes scrawled on to the walls in the victim’s blood, sometimes spelled out in rocks on a hillside. “Viva El Presidente Ezequiel. Viva La Revolución.”
    This name repeated itself in valley after valley. Whoever this Ezequiel was, he was everywhere. At the same time he was nowhere. He had published no manifesto. He never sought to explain the actions taken in his name. He scorned the press. He would apparently speak only to the poor.
    This was why the government had ignored