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

him.
    You’ve spent time in my country. You must understand why Ezequiel could describe the capital as “the head of the monster”. His “revolution” passed unnoticed there. His actions, if ever they reached the newspapers, were dismissed as an aberration, the work of “delinquents” and “thieves”.
    But you know what the capital is like. It believes itself to be the whole country. Everything beyond its limits is the great unknown. It only starts caring when the air conditioner is cut off or there’s no electricity for the freezer. So long as he operated in the highlands, Ezequiel was no threat to our metropolis. And all this while his movement was stealthily encroaching underground. A gigantic scarab growing pincers and teeth. Ignored. Until the moment, one week before General Merino summoned me, when a boy nearly the same age as Laura walked into the foyer of a hotel in Coripe and blew apart.
    That frightened people.
    The photograph from the Journal de Coripe is dated 10 June. It must have been taken in a photo-booth, because doubt is wandering on to the good-looking face. He holds his smile, uncertain, waiting for the flash.
    In the article his profile is placed alongside a shot of the hotel’s gutted lobby. Six bodies are arranged on stretchers. Paco, according to the manager, who survived the blast, was dressed in smart Sunday clothes with a brown leather satchel slung over his right shoulder. The manager remembered seeing his face, shielded by his arm, appear at the door. Local parliamentarians had convened in the foyer to discuss the building of a milk-powder factory. Catching sight of Paco’s eyes bulging against the glass, the manager opened the door. The child had an urgent message for his father, the chairman. He must deliver it personally. “Over there,” said the manager, indicating the chairman already rising to his feet, puzzled by the boy running towards him, holding up a satchel, and calling out “Daddy, daddy!” The fact was, he had no son.
    â€œViva El Presidente Ezequiel!”
    â€œThis Ezequiel, sir, do we know anything about him?” I asked General Merino next day.
    â€œMotherfuck all. Nothing beyond what you will find in that file.” The General had trouble grasping anything in the abstract.
    â€œWe were a small unit, never more than six in the early days. Our brief was ‘to investigate and combat the crimes perpetrated in the name of the delinquent Ezequiel’. But it is hard to establish an effective intelligence system from scratch. You need money – and we had little of that. One year we couldn’t afford new boots. It takes also time.”
    â€œYou had twelve years,” Dyer pointed out.
    â€œYou sound like the General. And I tell you what I told him. Intelligence is no different to any other art. It’s about not trying to push things. It’s about waiting. Do you know how long it takes a sequoia seed to germinate? A decade. Of course, there’s a time for impatience, when you must act quicker than you’ve ever acted before. Until then it’s about collating and analysing information. Ezequiel, remember, had prepared his disappearing act since 1968. Once he disappeared, we would spend another twelve years tracking him down. But that’s how long the Emergency lasted in Malaya.
    â€œSuccess might have come sooner had we reacted earlier, with a clear policy and an image of the state as just, generous and firm. Unfortunately the state wasn’t that. It was directionless and its mongrel policies fuelled Ezequiel’s appeal to the country people and, of course, eventually also to people in the cities. By the time we decided to take note of him, it was too late. He had gathered momentum to such a degree that he could not be contained.
    â€œI was glad to be entrusted with the case. My vocation, for which I had abandoned a prosperous position, had fallen short of my hopes for