The Dancer Upstairs Read Online Free Page A

course, heard of Senhora Vallejo, but did not believe the Metropolitan were dancing in Pará. Besides, no performance would be possible until the municipality had completed the work of restoration. She suggested Dyer try the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus.
    He telephoned Manaus and drew another blank. Six hundred miles upriver and no Vivien, no ballet. He contacted theatres in Santarém and Macapá. By mid-afternoon he knew he was wasting his time. The ballet story was a ruse. His aunt had left home because she knew he was coming.
    He walked down to the river, then back through the bird market to his hotel. The air was humid, sweetened overripely with mangoes; beads of sweat tickled his neck and he wanted a shower. Afterwards he lay down on a hard bed under the window, unable to sleep. He squeezed a hand over his eyes, but with each mango-laden breath the sensation increased. It was four in the afternoon in a place where he didn’t want to be, and he was furious.
    He was stuck. He saw that now. He had bought a fixed date ticket; the return flight another week away. He was loath to give up the chase on Calderón. He thought it yet possible to snare his aunt with a last-ditch appeal. But what could he do in the meantime? It was pointless to fly back to keep Hugo company. The most sensible course would be to take a leaf from Vivien’s book. Lie low for a few days, then surprise her.
    Next morning he moved into a hotel close to the British-built port; a plaster-fronted building with white shutters and a verandah perched over the immense river. This was the old quarter, built during the rubber boom. Once prosperous, it had grown decrepit. Many of the houses were boarded up, with trees bursting out of the roofs. Others, like the building opposite, stood no deeper than their façade. To Dyer, the emptiness behind the preserved frontage mimicked one of Vivien’s stage sets. Standing on his verandah, he could see the cloudless sky beyond the windows, the slanting drift of vultures between the architraves, and every now and then the agitated flight of a black and yellow bird, the bem-te-vi.
    Bem-te-vi, bem-te-vi. I’ve seen you, I’ve seen you.
    Frustrated, lethargic, crushed by the heat, Dyer could not hear that call without thinking of the slave hunters who trained the bird to hunt down fugitives. Catching sight of those yellow wings hovering in the sickly-sweet air, he wanted to shout out: “Go and find her, you stupid bird.”
    Bem-te-vi, bem-te-vi.
    He tried to be calm about his fate. He had been given free run of the world he cared about, the fount of his stories, and he had failed to deliver. If he telephoned Hugo, that would blow the whistle on Vivien. If he telephoned his editor, he ran the risk of having to return to London immediately. What could he find to do in Pará – except what he ought to be doing anyway?
    The proposal of a book on the Amazon basin had interested him when originally he was approached by a London publishing house. He had long been fascinated by the area and had no doubt that he was qualified to write an introduction – although, in the absence of any reminders, it did cross his mind that his publishers might have gone the way of his newspaper. Vivien’s vanishing act gave him an excuse. He had the notes he had made in the Catholic University library, and had had the foresight to bring with him several learned works. And hadn’t this wild-goose chase landed him by sheer chance in a sea-port which he needed to write about? Rather than kicking his heels for a week, he would spend the time sketching out captions for as yet imaginary photos, studying texts, gathering information.
    No sooner had he switched hotels than he began to enjoy Pará more. Due to its position on the Equator, it was a place which lived obstinately in its own time. Pará time never altered. And then there were the hours kept by the rest of the world.
    He liked the fact that the sun