Latin American Plays
Page 6
GIOVANNI. Like a cursed island! So you chose me. Now you have an accomplice. You can rejoice: our breaths are linked and they will wither the crops and poison the fountains. (Pause). Speak, say something!
BEATRICE (calmly). I expected all of this. I knew what you were going to say to me. But I was crazy and believed in a miracle. I’ve lived alone since I was a little girl and I’ve been happy with my fate. Sometimes the buzz of the world shook the walls of the house and those calls upset me . . . my blood pulsed to another rhythm. Then I looked at the garden, I was drugged by its deadly scent and I forgot that cats, horses, roses, carnations, men exist. Why should apples, pomegranates or pears matter to me if I had the fruit of this tree, which is like the tree of Paradise? My father told me that in this tree death has become life.
GIOVANNI. What you call life breeds sickness, madness, and death. Your breath kills.
BEATRICE. My breath kills, not my thoughts. I belong to my father, to his infinite dream. Like these plants, I am a replica and a challenge to nature: the most powerful poisons flow in my veins without hurting me. I am one of my father’s creations: the most daring, the most reckless, the most . . .
GIOVANNI. Disastrous.
BEATRICE. Disastrous.
GIOVANNI. The most guilty . . .
BEATRICE. I’m not guilty. I have had nothing alive around me, I haven’t hurt anyone, except myself. I haven’t had a cat, or a dog, or a canary. No-one ever taught me how to sing, no-one played with me, no-one trembled with me in a dark room. My life has been made up of growing, breathing, ripening. Ahh, ripening!
GIOVANNI. Ripening like an infinitely desirable fruit, infinitely untouchable.
BEATRICE. I have lived the life of a seed, alone, sheltered within myself, planted in the centre of my being. Isolated.
GIOVANNI. An island that no human foot will ever stand on, a secluded island, lost in the immensity of time, condemned never to leave yourself.
BEATRICE. Sleeping, without memories or desires, firmly rooted in the ground, planted in myself. The world has split in two. You have picked me like a blade of grass, you have cut my roots, you have thrown me into the air. Hanging from your eyes, I have swung through the void. From that moment I have had nowhere. I would throw myself at your feet, but I won’t because it would poison your shadow.
GIOVANNI. Condemned to look at each other but never to touch!
BEATRICE. Gazing at you is enough. Your gaze is enough for me. I do not own myself, I don’t have my own existence, or my own body, or my own soul. Your thoughts have penetrated me and there is no cave or hiding place where you cannot enter. There is no room in me for me. But I want to be inside you, not inside me. Let me be one of your thoughts, the most insignificant! And then forget me.
RAPPACCINI’S VOICE (unseen, lost in the garden). Child, you are no longer condemned to solitude. Cut one of the flowers from our tree and give it to your beloved. He can touch it without fear. And he can touch you. Thanks to my science – and to the secret solidarity of your blood – your opposing natures have been reconciled. The two of you can now be one. Bound together you will travel the world, feared by all, invincible, like gods.
GIOVANNI. Surrounded by hatred, surrounded by death. Like two vipers hidden in the cracks of the earth.
RAPPACCINI’S VOICE. Fool! Surrounded by awe and reverent fear, life’s victors, impenetrable, grand donors of death.
GIOVANNI. You’re crazy! Your arrogance won’t beat us. You won’t catch us in your trap. There is a way out. I hold the key to our freedom. Beatrice, take this antidote and drink it without fear: it will give you back your true nature. (Hands her the phial.)
RAPPACCINI’S VOICE. Don’t drink it, child, don’t drink it. The antidote will poison you. You will die.
GIOVANNI. Drink it. The old man is trying to trick you again. Drink it without fear and disown this monster. You will be free.
RAPPACCINI. You’re so ignorant! The elements in her blood have assimilated my poisons in such a way that any antidote will cause instant death. Child, don’t drink it!
BEATRICE. Father, if you wanted to condemn me to solitude, why didn’t you pluck out my eyes? That way I wouldn’t have seen him. Why didn’t you make me deaf and dumb? Why didn’t you plant me in the ground like this tree? That way I would not have run after his shadow. (To GIOVANNI.) Ahh, blind, deaf, dumb, tied to the ground with irons, I would still have run to you. My thoughts embrace your image like a vine. I am bound to the wall by thorns and claws, I tear myself away and fall at your feet.
GIOVANNI. I opened my eyes and saw myself planted in this garden like a cursed tree, cut off from the flow of life . . .
BEATRICE. To get there, to true life, we wandered under the arches of death with our eyes closed. But you opened yours, you lost heart . . .
GIOVANNI. I got dizzy! I stepped back . . . Open your eyes, look at me, look at life!
BEATRICE. No, I’m going back to myself. At last I am travelling through myself and I possess myself. In the darkness I feel myself, in the darkness I penetrate my being and I go right down to my root and I touch the place of my birth. I begin in myself and I end in myself. A river of knives surrounds me, I am untouchable.
RAPPACCINI’S VOICE. Listen to me crying. I beg you not to drink it! I will withdraw. I will make nature change its course. I wanted to make you stronger than life: now I will humiliate death.
BEATRICE (drinks). I have now made the final leap, I am now on the other shore. Garden of my infancy, poisoned paradise, tree, my brother, my son, my only lover, my only husband, cover me, embrace me, burn me, dissolve my bones, dissolve my memory! I am falling, falling inwards, never to reach the bottom of my soul!
RAPPACCINI (appearing). Child, why have you abandoned me?
Epilogue
THE MESSENGER. One after the other the figures pass by – the Minstrel, the Hermit, the Lady. One after another they appear and disappear, they meet and part. Guided by the stars and by the wordless will of blood, they walk away, always further away, towards the discovery of themselves. They cross and merge for an instant and then scatter and are lost in time. Like the methodical movement of the suns and planets, they repeat the dance tirelessly, condemned to search for themselves, condemned to find themselves and lose themselves and search for themselves without rest through infinite corridors. Peace to those who search! Peace to those who are alone, spinning in the void! Because yesterday and tomorrow do not exist: everything is today, everything is here, present. What has passed, is still passing.
Curtain.
Endnotes
1. The characters in the original have both Spanish and Italian names. I suggest that Beatrice is pronounced in the English way, although Giovanni may choose to woo her using the Italian pronunciation, a playful gesture that leads to her remark: ‘How strange my name sounds on your lips!’
2. When rehearsing the play, the best equivalents we found between the Tarot characters in the text and those in a pack of Tarot of the Witches cards matched the Minstrel with the Fool; the Queen of the Night or Lady with the Queen of Cups; the King with the Emperor; the Hermit and the Lovers with their direct namesakes; Death with the Moon; and Life with the Sun. These equivalents will depend, of course, on any particular production’s interpretation of this scene, and on which set of Tarot cards is used.
3. Many of the names of the poisons and antidotes are not easily translatable into English. Paz told me: ‘I took the names from different dictionaries. Many of the words I use do not have an equivalent in English or have another meaning. I tried, wrily, to list the poisons and herbs which might have interested a doctor in the 17th century. Strange names. So you have the freedom not just to translate but to adapt these passages.’ I have tried to find direct equivalents where possible, Satan’s boletus, for example. Otherwise, I have taken associations with the original word as the basis for choosing an English translation: for instance, I have translated el bálano impúdico, which literally means ‘the lewd tip of the penis’ as ‘
the lecherous mandrake’ in order to keep the phallic associations.
4. I have used different antidotes to translate el estalión and la triaca romana, although I have used the direct translation of la piedra bezoar.
INTERVIEW WITH OCTAVIO PAZ
SD: How did you come to write Rappaccini’s Daughter?
OP: I wrote Rappaccini’s Daughter in 1956 for the program of a Mexican university theatre company called Poetry in a Loud Voice. The painter Leonora Carrington immediately offered to take charge of the costumes and set. This was one of the reasons which encouraged me to write the play. In the production, we sought to achieve a union between the text, the actor and the director.
SD: What are the literary sources of the play?
OP: It is adapted from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. My play follows its plot, not its text or its meaning: I use other words and have another notion of evil and the body. Hawthorne’s source – or the source of his sources – lies in India. Mudra Rakshasa, or The Seal on Rakshasa’s Ring, by the poet Vishakadatta, who lived in the ninth century, is a political drama about the rivalry between two ministers. Among the strategies which one of them uses to beat his rival is the gift of a desirable girl who is fed on poison. This theme of the lady who is turned into a living phial of venom is popular in Indian literature and appears in the Puranas. From India the story passed to the West and, Christianized, it features in the Gesta Romanorum and other texts. In the seventeenth century Burton picked up the tale in The Anatomy of Melancholy and gave it an historical character: Porus sends Alexander a girl brimming with poison. Thomas Browne repeats the story: ‘An Indian King sent Alexander a beautiful girl who was fed on monks-hood and other poisons, intending to destroy him, either through copulation or through some other physical contact.’ Browne was Hawthorne’s source.
SD: How would you define the genre of this play?
OP: I judge it to be a dramatic poem. You might think about Yeats’ theatre.
SD: What are the specifically theatrical traditions behind the play?
OP: It seems to me that the play combines two traditions which are both very different and at the same time have points of contact: the Japanese Noh theatre and the Spanish auto sacramental, written by Calderón and others.
SD: How have you seen the play staged?
OP: I have seen two different productions of the play and both surprised me. I didn’t imagine them the way I saw them. I liked the first one, at Poetry in a Loud Voice, very much.
SD: Did you intend the danger of scientific experimentation to be the principal theme of the play?
OP: This play does show a clear distrust of certain scientific experiments. I think that the reality of our times has given me the reason: biological manipulations, the nuclear danger etc.
SD: This is the only play you have ever written. Why?
OP: I have not written other plays because in my wandering life I have not found the opportunity to collaborate with a company which might have been interested in the rather experimental theatre which has always seduced me. I regret that.
SD: Can you imagine writing for the stage again?
OP: Yes, although it is a little late.
This was a faxed interview conducted in Spanish in November 1995.
NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS
by José Triana
Oh so much! Oh so little! Oh the others!
Cesar Vallejo
. . . we are all dream monsters to ourselves.
André Malraux
. . . this human world penetrates us, participates in the dance of the gods, without looking back, on pain of being turned into our selves: into pillars of salt.
Antonin Artaud
Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
T.S. Eliot
Characters
LALO
CUCA
BEBA
Setting
The 1950s. A basement or an attic. A table, three chairs, rolled-up carpets, dirty curtains with large floral-patterned patches on them, vases, a judge’s gavel, a knife and various objects discarded in the corner next to a broom and a duster.
Acting Note
While these characters play other characters, they must do so with the utmost simplicity and spontaneity. They must not use characterising devices. They are capable of representing the world without any artifice. Bear this in mind for the production’s staging and set. These characters are adults, but exhibit a fading adolescent grace. They are figures in a ruined museum.
For María Angélica Alvarez
For José Rodríguez Feo
La Noche de los Asesinos was written in 1965 and first staged on 4 November 1966 in the Teatro Estudio, Havana, Cuba, with the following cast:
LALO
Vicente Revuelta
CUCA
Miriam Acevedo
BEBA
Ada Nocetti
Director Vicente Revuelta
Designer Raúl Oliva
This translation of Night of the Assassins was first staged on 22 August 1994 in the Demarco European Art Foundation, Edinburgh, by the Southern Development Trust, with the following cast:
CUCA
Gabrielle Jourdan
LALO
Tighe Twomey
BEBA
Gemma Moses
Director Sebastian Doggart
Designer Line Loen
Producer Tanya Stephan
Act One
LALO. Shut the door. (Beats his chest. Exalted, wide-eyed.) An assassin. An assassin. (Falls to his knees.)
CUCA (to BEBA). What’s all this?
BEBA (indifferently, watching LALO). The performance has begun.
CUCA. Again?
BEBA (annoyed). Of course! It’s not the first time.
CUCA. Please don’t get upset.
BEBA. Grow up.
CUCA. Mum and Dad haven’t gone out yet.
BEBA. So?
LALO. I killed them. (Laughs. Stretches his arms solemnly out to the audience.) Can’t you see the two coffins? Look: candles, flowers . . . We’ve filled the room with gladioli. Mum’s favourite. (Pause.) They can’t complain. Now they’re dead we’ve made them happy. I myself dressed their stiff, sticky bodies . . . And with these hands I dug a deep, deep hole. Earth, more earth. (Gets up quickly.) They still haven’t discovered the crime. (Smiles. To CUCA.) What are you thinking about? (Caressing her chin as if she were a child.) I understand: you’re scared. (She moves away.) Oh, you’re impossible.
CUCA (dusting the furniture). I can’t stand all this nonsense.
LALO. Nonsense? You think a crime is nonsense? How cold you are, little sister! Nonsense? Do you really think that?
CUCA (firmly). Yes.
LALO. Then what is important to you?
CUCA. I want you to help me. We have to tidy up this house. This room is a pit. Cockroaches, rats, moths, caterpillars . . . the whole bloody lot. (Takes an ashtray from the chair and puts it on the table.)
LALO. How far do you think you’re going to get with that duster?
CUCA. It’s a start.
LALO (authoritatively). Put the ashtray back in its place.
CUCA. The ashtray belongs on the table, not on the chair.
LALO. Do what I tell you.
CUCA. Don’t start, Lalo.
LALO (picks up the ashtray and puts it back on the chair). I know what I’m doing. (Picks up the vase and puts it on the floor.) In this house the ashtray belongs on the chair and the vase on the floor.
CUCA. And the chairs?
LALO. On the table.
CUCA. And what about us?
LALO. We float with our feet in the air and our heads hanging down.
CUCA (annoyed). Fantastic! Why don’t we try it? What wou
ld people say if they heard you now? (In a harder tone of voice.) Look, Lalo, if you keep being pushy, we’re going to have problems. Leave me alone. I’ll do what I can.
LALO (purposefully). Don’t you want me to help you?
CUCA. Don’t mess things up.
LALO. Then don’t mess with my things. I want the ashtray there. The vase there. Leave them where they are. It’s you who’s being pushy, not me.
CUCA. Oh right! Now it’s me who’s being pushy? Darling, that is priceless! Now it’s me . . . ? Look, Lalo, please shut up. Order is order.
LALO. There is none so deaf as she that won’t hear.
CUCA. What?
LALO. You heard.
CUCA. Well, darling, I don’t understand. That’s the honest truth. I don’t know what you’re on about. It all sounds crazy. It gets me into an utter state. I can’t say or do anything. And if it’s what I think it is, then it’s sick.
LALO. Scared again? Get something into your tiny little head. If you want to live in this world you have to do many things, and one of them is to forget fear.
CUCA. Doesn’t that sound easy!
LALO. Well, do it then.
CUCA. Stop hassling me. And don’t preach, it doesn’t suit you. (Dusting a chair.) Look at this chair, Lalo. How long since it was last cleaned? There are cobwebs even. Ugh!
LALO. Shocking! (Approaching cautiously, purposefully.) The other day I said to myself: ‘We must clean up’; but then we got sidetracked into some nonsense and . . . Look, look at it. (Pause. Purposefully.) Why don’t you help?
CUCA (almost on her knees next to the chair, cleaning it). Leave me out of it.
LALO. Go on.
CUCA. Don’t push.
LALO. Just for a bit.
CUCA. I’m no use.