“Chiquitita”

“Chiquitita” is one of the songs that gives the improvised disco at the inn on Killary Fjord its intimate, nostalgic character. As floodwater enters the building, the song becomes part of the group’s effort to make a night of danger into a night of dancing together.

Place in the Flood-Night Playlist

When the waters breach the harbour defences and reach the inn, the narrator moves guests upstairs to a function room with a stocked bar and working disco lights. He fetches familiar records, including music by ABBA, The Pretenders, and Bryan Adams, then announces that the group might as well have a disco. “Chiquitita” is the first named song in the account of the dancing.

Dance and Collective Memory

The song is danced to slowly and sensuously, in contrast with the energetic air-punching that accompanies “Summer of ’69.” Alongside the wistful dancing to “Brass in Pocket,” it helps bring older memories into the present: the narrator describes the group as still knowing the old steps, as though 1979 were only yesterday. The song’s role is therefore not merely to provide music; it gives the flood-bound guests a shared rhythm and a temporary return to the past.

The Disco Amid the Rising Water

The dancing takes place while the emergency continues. Six Belarusian guests sit at the top of the stairs as the water rises halfway up them, and objects including footstools, toilet rolls, placemats, and phone books float through the lobby. The narrator checks the flood again later with Alexei, who signals that the water has fallen by a couple of steps. Against these changes in the water level, the disco creates a brief communal ritual: the guests remain together upstairs, with the narrator serving drinks and keeping the gathering going.

Narrative Significance

“Chiquitita” belongs to a sequence in which ordinary popular music and dancing provide a practical social response to threatened disaster. The song’s slow pace and nostalgic associations temper the surrounding urgency without resolving it. In the narrator’s account, the disco’s shared music and movement accompany a shift toward renewed creative confidence: after the water begins to recede, he feels a new quiet ecstasy and recognizes that the gloom of youth has lifted.