by Nick Joaquin
CANDIDA: Yes—and I can just imagine what they are saying. Oh, this is the chance they have long been waiting for! Yes—they will be all there watching—and “Look, look!” they will be saying, “Look at those two old maids, those two proud señoras, who are so delicate, who have such grand manners, who hold their heads so high—and look, look: they cannot even pay their light-bill!”
PAULA [covering her face]: Oh, this is dreadful, dreadful! How can we ever show our faces again in the street!
CANDIDA: We must close those windows.
PAULA: No, Candida! They will see us!
CANDIDA: But perhaps no one has noticed yet that we have no light . . .
[She cautiously tip-toes toward balcony, keeping herself out of street-range. As she closes the windows, she notices something odd in the street and peers out. Then, boldly, she steps right out onto the balcony and looks up and down the street. She turns around joyously and steps back into the room.]
CANDIDA: Paula, there is no light anywhere!
PAULA: No light?
CANDIDA [with exultant relief]: All the houses are dark! All, all of them!
PAULA: What has happened?
CANDIDA: Oh, come and look! There is a total darkness all over the city!
PAULA [approaching balcony]: Why, yes, yes! There is no light anywhere! [Clasping her hands in gratitude.] Oh, merciful, merciful God!
CANDIDA [suddenly bursting into laughter as she moves downstage]: But what fools we are! What ignorant fools we are!
PAULA [following]: What has happened?
CANDIDA [laughing uncontrollably]: Nothing has happened! Nothing has happened at all! Oh Paula, Paula—we must read the newspapers with more interest! It was in all the newspapers! Didn’t you read it? Tonight, Paula—tonight is the night of the black-out—of the practice black-out! All the lights have been turned off!
PAULA: Why?
CANDIDA: It is part of all their preparations—they are preparing for war!
PAULA [sighing with relief]: Oh, is that all?
CANDIDA [laughing hysterically]: And we thought . . . Oh Paula, we thought. . . We thought our light had been cut off!
PAULA: Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God!
CANDIDA: And how frightened we were, Paula! We were almost trembling!
PAULA [beginning to laugh, too]: And we were afraid to close the windows! We were afraid to go down to the street!
CANDIDA [gasping with laughter]: And we . . . we were afraid that we could never . . . never show our . . . our faces again in the . . . in the street! Oh Paula—how funny! How funny we were!
[She goes off into another wild peal of laughter that ends in sudden sobs. She buries her face in her hands.]
PAULA [alarmed; approaching]: Candida, Candida!
CANDIDA [wracked with sobs]: I can bear no more! I can bear no more!
PAULA: Candida, the neighbors will hear you!
CANDIDA [holding out her hands before her face]: All the humiliations, Paula . . . All the humiliations we have suffered, Paula . . . All the bitter, bitter humiliations we have suffered!
PAULA [taking her sister in her arms]: Hush, Candida! Compose yourself!
CANDIDA [breaking away and standing with clenched fists before PORTRAIT]: And there he stands! There he stands smiling! There he stands laughing at us! Oh, there he stands mocking, mocking our agony! Oh God, God, God, God!
[She sinks sobbing to the floor.]
PAULA [kneeling down and taking her sister again in her arms]: Please, Candida! Please, please, Candida!
[Candida is still sobbing wildly while Paula holds her tight and strokes her hair whispering “Candida, Candida,” as
THE CURTAIN FALLS
THE SECOND SCENE
As in preceding Scene, the curtains open on the “Intramuros Curtain,” Bitoy Camacho is standing at far left, in light.
BITOY: After my father died—he died when I was about fifteen—I stopped going to the Marasigan house. I had no more time for tertulias. I had to leave school and go to work. My childhood had been spent in the tranquil innocence of the nineteen-twenties; I grew up during the hard, hard nineteen-thirties, when everybody seemed to have become poor and shabby and disillusioned and ill-tempered. I drifted from one job to another—bootblack, newsboy, baker’s apprentice, waiter, pier-laborer. Sometimes I felt I had never been clean, never been happy; my childhood seemed incredible—something that had happened to somebody else. When I was working at the piers, I often passed this way late at night. I would see the windows of the Marasigan house all lighted up, and I would hear them up there, talking and laughing—Don Lorenzo, Candida, Paula, and their little crowd of shabby old folk.
[The lights go on inside the stage; through the curtain, the sala becomes visible.]
I would stand out here in the street—tired and dirty and hungry and sleepy—and I would think of the days when father and I went there together—me, in my pretty sailor suit and my nice white shoes. But I never felt any desire to go up there again; I despised all those people—and anyway I was too dirty. I would walk on down the street, without looking back.
[The “Intramuros Curtain” opens, revealing the Marasigan sala in daylight.]
I had said goodbye to that house, goodbye to that world—the world of Don Lorenzo, the world of my father. I was bitter against it; it had deceived me. I told myself that Don Lorenzo and my father had taught me nothing but lies. My childhood was a lie; the nineteen-twenties were a lie; beauty and faith and courtesy and honor and innocence were all just lies.
[Enter PEPANG MARASIGAN from doorway at right. She goes to table at center where her bag is. She opens bag, takes out her cigarettes, & lights one.]
The truth was fear—always fear—fear of the boss, of the landlord, of the police, of being late, of being sick, of losing one’s job. The truth was no shoes, no money, no smoking, no loitering, no vacancy, no trespassing, and beware of the dog.
[Pepang glances round the room, her eyes stopping at PORTRAIT. Looking at it, she comes forward & stands before it, with a half-wistful, half-mocking smile.]
When the nineteen-forties came along, I had become a finished product of my Age. I accepted it completely, and I believed in it. It was a hard world but it was the truth—and I wanted nothing but the truth.
[Enter MANOLO MARASIGAN from doorway at right. He glances toward Pepang as he goes to table & helps himself to her cigarettes. Having lighted one, he comes forward too, and stands beside her, gazing up at PORTRAIT.]
I had rejected the past and I believed in no future—only the present tense was practical. That was the way I thought—until that October afternoon—that afternoon I first went back to the Marasigan house, the afternoon I first saw that strange painting. I had gone there seeking nothing, remembering nothing, deaf to everything except the current catchwords and slogans. But when I left that house, the world outside seemed to be muffled—seemed to have receded far away enough for me to see it as a whole. I was no longer imprisoned within it; I had been released; I stood outside—and there was someone standing beside me. After all the years of bitter separation, I had found my father again.
[The light dies out on Bitoy; he exits. Pepang & Manolo continue a moment longer to stare at PORTRAIT in silence.
Pepang & Manolo have inherited their father’s good looks; but in Pepang, those fine features have grown hard; in Manolo, they have gone flabby. She looks ambitious, he looks dissipated; she is cynical, he is shifty-eyed. They are both very stylish, and becoming too stout.]
PEPANG: The hero of our childhood, Manolo.
MANOLO: Oh, he was more than that to us.
PEPANG: Only children are capable of such love.
MANOLO: He was our God the Father.
PEPANG: And the earth, the sky, the moon, the sun, the stars, and the whole universe to us!
MANOLO: The most w
onderful thing that can happen to any child is to have a genius for his father. Oh, the most wonderful thing really!
PEPANG: And the most cruel.
MANOLO: Yes.
PEPANG: Having to break one’s childhood hero—to spurn one’s childhood god . . .
MANOLO: Oh Pepang, we all have to grow up!
PEPANG: Growing up is cruel. The young have no pity.
MANOLO: But look at Mr. Aeneas up there. He’s carrying his old father on his back. He’s carrying his father forward with him, along with all the family idols.
PEPANG: But you and I are not Aeneas . . . Manolo, is that what father meant?
MANOLO [scowling]: He always did have a sardonic sense of humor!
PEPANG: And now he has only himself to carry himself . . .
MANOLO [testily]: Oh, stop it, Pepang! We haven’t abandoned him to die, have we? That’s one of father’s old tricks—getting everybody to feel sorry for him.
PEPANG [smiling]: Yes. Poor father! [She turns away.]
MANOLO: Oh, he’s still the same old hero up there—still the same old god!
PEPANG: And nobody to worship him anymore. [She sits down on sofa.]
MANOLO: He still has got Paula and Candida, hasn’t he? [He turns away, too.] And where can they be—those two? Haven’t they shown up yet?
PEPANG: They’ve probably gone to market.
MANOLO: They get crazier every day.
PEPANG: We must talk to them, we must make them listen. Now remember, you promised to be firm. Where’s the senator?
MANOLO: Still in father’s room. And they’re still talking away!
PEPANG [glancing at her watch]: That makes two hours of the good old days.
MANOLO: Oh, it’s a regular reunion of the old boys in there.
PEPANG: With the senator around, we can make Candida and Paula listen to us. You know how they look up to him.
MANOLO: Because he’s a senator?
PEPANG: Because he is a poet.
MANOLO: Was, Pepang—was! He stopped being a poet a long time ago.
PEPANG: Oh, but they still remember him the way he used to be—when he was still coming here to recite his verses—before he went into politics.
MANOLO: And forgot all about us—the old snob!
PEPANG: And besides, he is their godfather, you know.
MANOLO: Well, if the senator can persuade them to leave this house—
PEPANG: If anybody can do it, he can. And I’ve made a bargain with him. He says the government is very anxious to acquire that painting. I promised to help him persuade Candida and Paula to sell it if he will help us persuade them to leave this house.
MANOLO: I’ve got a buyer for the house.
PEPANG: I told you—I already have a buyer.
MANOLO: Now look—you leave all that business to me. After all, I’m the eldest son in this family.
PEPANG [smoothly]: That’s just it—you are. And I have no confidence at all in the business ability of the men in this family.
MANOLO: Poor father! He ought to hear you!
PEPANG: We all have to grow up, you know.
MANOLO [looking around]: How about the furniture?
PEPANG [rising]: Well, let me see . . . I’ll take that chandelier; I need it for my front hall. And I’ll take the marble table in the study. You can have all the furniture here in the sala, Manolo—except the piano. I’ll take that. And I’ll take the dining room set. We can divide the plate and the silver.
MANOLO [sarcastic]: Oh, what for? Why not just take everything, Pepang?
PEPANG: Thank you. Maybe I will.
MANOLO [raising his voice]: Sure! Take everything! Take the floors and take the stairs and take the walls and take the roof—
PEPANG: Shh! The senator will hear you!
MANOLO [lowering his voice]: . . . and take the whole damned house! I’ll cram it down your throat for you!
[Through the ensuing scene, they speak savagely but in controlled voices.]
PEPANG: Are we going to fight over a few old chairs?
MANOLO: Excuse me—but you have already given me the few old chairs. Do I still have to fight for them? You have taken everything else!
PEPANG: You know that my Mila is getting married next year—and she will need furniture.
MANOLO: If your Mila is getting married next year, my Roddie is getting married this year—and he’s going to have furniture! I shall take all the furniture here in the sala, and all the furniture in the dining room, and all the furniture in three of the bedrooms, besides all the books and cabinets in the study, the big mirror downstairs, and the matrimonial bed!
PEPANG: Don’t be funny!
MANOLO: I don’t see you laughing!
PEPANG: I shall take the matrimonial bed for my Mila!
MANOLO: Okay, let’s see you take it! Let’s see you move anything out of this house without my permission!
PEPANG: And why should I ask your permission? Who has been paying to keep up this house for the last ten years, I’d like to know!
MANOLO: Okay, who? Are you going to tell me I don’t pay my share?
PEPANG: Yes—when you remember!
MANOLO: Now listen—just because I forget to send the money now and then—
PEPANG: Forget! I have to call you up and call you up, month after month, before I can squeeze any money out of you! Pay your share! You are the eldest son—this is your duty, not mine! But if I had left you alone to do it, father would have starved to death by now! And do you think it has been easy for me? Month after month I have to ask my husband for money to support my father and sisters. Do you think I enjoy that? Do you think I don’t shrink with shame when he demands why it is not you who are supporting them?
MANOLO: Oh, so he asks that, eh?
PEPANG: You never have any money to send here—but, oh, you have plenty of money to throw away at the races, or to lavish on your queridas!
MANOLO: Well, you can tell that husband of yours—
PEPANG [whispering; glancing toward stairway]: Shut up!
MANOLO: Or, no—I shall tell him myself—
PEPANG: Shut up, I tell you! They’re coming!
[Manolo sulkily throws himself into a chair. Pepang sits down on the sofa. Paula comes slowly up the stairs, carrying an umbrella and a basket full of the marketing. She looks rather bleak; but on seeing her brother & sister, hurries to them—having deposited her umbrella at stand—with a show of animation.]
PAULA: Oh, are you two here?
MANOLO [affectionately]: Hello there, Paulita.
PAULA [approaching Pepang]: Have you been waiting long?
PEPANG: Only two hours.
PAULA: I walked all the way from Quiapo. [She kisses Pepang on the check.]
PEPANG: Well, how are you, baby? You look rather haggard.
PAULA: Oh Pepang, they cut off our light a week ago! We thought at first it was only the black-out—but we found afterward that it really had been cut off!
MANOLO [after a pause during which he & Pepang look down at the floor]: Yes, but you have light again now, haven’t you? I went over to the company and fixed it up as soon as you called me. You have light again, no? Everything is all right now?
PAULA [bitterly]: Yes—everything is just fine!
[Manolo & Pepang unwillingly glance at each other.]
MANOLO: We are sorry it happened, Paula.
PEPANG: And where is Candida?
PAULA [evasively]: She . . . she went somewhere.
PEPANG [firmly]: Where did she go?
PAULA: She is out looking for a job.
MANOLO: Good God—where?
PAULA [rather proudly]: At the Bureau of Health & Science.
MANOLO: But whatever gave her the idea she could find a job there!
PEPANG: W
hat does she think she is—a scientist?
PAULA: Why not? They published an advertisement, she has gone to answer it.
PEPANG: You two girls are becoming—oh, I don’t know what! All these crazy ideas! And what are all those signs you have placed down there at the door? “Rooms For Rent.” “Expert Lessons in the Piano.” “Expert Lessons in Spanish.” Who is giving all those “expert lessons”?
PAULA [timidly]: I am . . . I mean, I want to—I am willing—but . . .
MANOLO: But you have no pupils yet.
PAULA [miserably]: No—not one! Nobody has even come to inquire. And we have had those signs for a week!
[She feels herself at point of tears and quickly moves away, toward doorway.]
I must take this basket out to the kitchen.
PEPANO: Paula—
PAULA [stopping but not turning around]: Yes, Pepang?
PEPANG: Don Perico is here.
PAULA: Oh? Where?
PEPANG: In father’s room.
PAULA: He has come to visit father?
PEPANG: And to talk to you and Candida.
PAULA: About what?
PEPANG: Well, he feels that being your godfather, and Candida’s godfather too, he has a right to advise you two girls about your future.
[She waits; but Paula says nothing.]
Paula, did you hear me?
PAULA: Yes, Pepang—but I must put these things away first. Excuse me. [She goes out.]
MANOLO [rising moodily]: Oh, the hell with it!
PEPANG: There you go again, Manolo!
MANOLO: But if they want so desperately to stay here—!
PEPANG: But how can they stay here? Do be sensible! We simply can’t afford to keep up this house any longer!
MANOLO: Oh, can’t we?
PEPANG [grimly]: Whether we can or not, I don’t want to! This house gets on my nerves!
MANOLO: Yes—it gets on my nerves too . . .
PEPANG: And I refuse to be sentimental over it anymore. It will have to be sold. And you will take Candida to live with you; I will take Paula.
MANOLO: So you can have someone to look after your house while you go off and play mah-jongg with your society friends!