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Dance of the Dwarfs, 1968
From the first sentence -- "It will be remembered that the death of Dr. Owen Dawnay was attributed to partisans of the Columbian National Liberation Army" -- one is aware of the protagonist's fate. Yet how easily we forget that Dawnay (damné ) is doomed. Once immersed in the compelling personal journal that records his methodical investigation of a dangerous enigma and his manly confrontation of the final, fatal emergency, the reader is captivated by Dawnay's vigorous personality and intently inquiring mind. Rarely does the hero of a "thriller" inspire the spontaneous sympathy and admiration that readers of Dance of the Dwarfs will tribute to this valiant young scientist, who goes down to defeat, in the end, through a purely human, noble, reactive impulse of duty and love. The last interrupted word in his diary comes as a heartbreaking shock to those who had forgotten the ample warning conveyed by the preface.
Geoffrey Household is best known for his novels of adventure and suspense, of which Rogue Male is one of the more successful. But here he subtly crosses the border into a neighbouring genre and writes what can only be called a story of authentic horror--and one that has few, if any, equals for intensity and credibility. Owen Dawnay is an agronomist working at a remote experimental station in southeastern Columbia, on the edge of vast, unexplored jungles. During an unusual dry season, having time on his hands while waiting for the rains, he becomes intrigued by an incoherent local superstition and boldly brings his trained scientific mind to bear on the unknown, only to take ever more harrowing lessons on the nature of fear as he pursues and discovers the mystery's ferocious origin.
Mario, the caretaker of the ruined estancia Dawnay has chosen for his agricultural experiments, has a stubborn fixation on keeping the adobe walls in constant repair and at sunset always takes refuge with his wife behind barred doors, a precaution advised by the former owner, a rancher named Cisneros who has vanished without trace or explanation. What is he afraid of? Mario does not know; all he is sure of is that by acting as he does, he will stay safe. In the anarchic village of Santa Eulalia, 12 miles away on the banks of the Guaviare, Dawnay arouses unrest simply by treating the llaneros to an evening of guitar-playing and song, and Mario reacts with terror to his casual joke about jaguars dancing to the music. None of the tough, swaggering Santa Eulalia cattlemen venture willingly in the direction of Dawnay's estancia after dark and they inexplicably shun what to the agronomist seems excellent grazing on the verge of the jungle. A creek flowing across the open plain between the estancia and the looming wall of trees appears to mark a boundary beyond which no one, except Dawnay, dares set foot.
"I want to marshal the facts of my relationship to my environment and compel myself to think about them," Dawnay writes when he first takes cognizance of what he calls "the blank spot," the incomprehensible dread felt by his inarticulate neighbours for an indefinable menace they shy from discussing. He himself can perceive in his peaceful surroundings no rational cause for alarm. Yet it is true that the horses are often restless at night. Dawnay trusts their animal instincts. "It seems to be either forest or creek which upsets the horses. Last week I walked as far as the water's edge to see if I could spot puma on the llano or an anaconda watching the shallows ... I was only aware of star-lit silence, emphasized by the whine of mosquitoes. This silence itself sometimes produces a feeling of awe, a prickling of the scalp. So I cannot definitely say that I was uneasy. I did perhaps feel that I was observed. Hostile? No. For the moment a neutral observer like myself."
Dawnay's inquiries into the forbidden subject are met with reticence and disquiet. Even Joaquín, the Santa Eulalia medicine-man, is reluctant to divulge what little he may actually know. From a few incautious words and Joaquín's mystic maundering, Dawnay is left with the vague impression that the jungle might harbour a hitherto undiscovered tribe of pygmies, a dwarflike people reluctant to cross water, who very rarely emerge to hunt or "dance" on the open llano, and of whose past visits Santa Eulalia has retained an imprecise, frightened folk-memory. Working under that hypothesis, he determines to dispel the myth, make contact, and win the forest-dwellers' trust. He fearlessly sets forth bearing gifts. But each excursion into the sunless depths of the jungle only sharpens his own instinctive awareness of danger. He finds no trace of tribesmen and surprisingly little animal life--yet something is there. Dawnay is not just observed; he is stalked, and to his dismay he discovers himself capable of irrational panic.
Whether he should recklessly continue to brave the jungle's unknown menace becomes a serious problem for Dawnay to ponder when an absorbing new interest enters his isolated existence. His friend Captain Valera of the Columbian army unexpectedly decides to do something about Dawnay's sexual frustation and despatches a homeless Peruvian girl named Chucha to keep him company. Chucha is a fetching young stray who has already been passed on from one man to another in the course of her aimless roaming up and down the great rivers of the South American interior. Her lively intelligence, prettiness, and affectionate nature captivate the lonely scientist. Despite Dawnay's original intention to view Chucha strictly as a sexual convenience, he slowly falls in love with her and becomes tormented by thoughts of the future. What place can this primitive, uneducated girl half his age occupy in the civilized life to which he must inevitably return?
Meanwhile he is visited by members of the National Liberation Army, suspicious of his presence in the area. Despite his political neutrality, Dawnay is involontarily caught up in their harassment of the Santa Eulalian cattlemen, whom the rebels are trying to pressure into driving beef on the hoof to their hide-out in the mountains. When a government air raid intercepts the clandestine delivery of some cattle, Pedro, the village headman, is accused of giving the game away; forced to flee Santa Eulalia, he begs food and assistance from Dawnay. Alone of all the villagers, the practical Pedro scorns the reputed danger of the jungle and intends to make his way through it on foot to the Guaviare, where he can perhaps hail a passing canoe. But not long afterwards Dawnay, on one of his determined expeditions, discovers Pedro's corpse under the trees, already stripped of flesh by scavenging insects. Who killed him? Not the Santa Eulalians, who would never dare pursue him that far. The guerrillas, then? But when Dawnay leads them to Pedro's skeleton and levels his accusation, they indignantly refute it.
So matters stand as the creek dries to a few shallow puddles, freeing whatever lurks in the jungle to range ever farther afield. None of the other factors in Dawnay's complex life can long distract him from his search for the truth, and when in due course he discovers it, he learns that he alone is capable of facing up to it. With every journey Dawnay makes into the haunted gloom of the trees, the helpless reader will participate in his nerve-wracking adventure, and even when the mystery is solved, the tension refuses to abate. Indeed, if anything, it augments. This is an exceptionally well-written and powerful story that can be reread numerous times with the same sensations as on a first encounter. And once read, it is highly unlikely to be forgotten.
© Wordreign, November 1999
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