Three Plays: The Young Lady from Tacna, Kathie and the Hippopotamus, La Chunga (9 page)
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Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
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MAMAE: Of course it was a sin. Isn’t it a sin to hurt your neighbour? If the young lady fancied the gentleman was ill-treating her, then she must have wanted the gentleman to offend against God. Don’t you realize?
(GRANDFATHER
gets up. With a gesture of disgust he dismisses
SEÑORA CARLOTA,
who goes away, casting a sardonic glance
at
MAMAE. GRANDFATHER
passes his hand over his face, straightens his clothes
.)
gets up. With a gesture of disgust he dismisses
SEÑORA CARLOTA,
who goes away, casting a sardonic glance
at
MAMAE. GRANDFATHER
passes his hand over his face, straightens his clothes
.)
GRANDFATHER: ‘When I come to Arequipa, I’ll throw myself at your feet until you forgive me. I’ll demand from you a penance even harsher than my sin. Be generous, be understanding, my angel. I love you and adore you and want to kiss you more than ever. Your ever loving husband, Pedro.’
(
He goes out.
)
He goes out.
)
MAMAE: That evil thought was her punishment for reading other people’s letters. So be warned. Never pry into what doesn’t concern you.
BELISARIO: There are things that don’t make sense. Why did the gentleman beat the Indian woman? You said it was she who was the perverse one and he was goodness itself, and yet in the story he gives her a thrashing. Whatever had she done?
MAMAE: It must have been something dreadful for the poor gentleman to fly off the handle the way he did. She must have been one of those women who talk about passion and pleasure and nasty things like that.
BELISARIO: Did the young lady of Tacna go and confess her evil thoughts?
MAMAE: The terrible thing is, Father Venancio, as I was reading that letter I felt something I can’t explain. A sort of elation, an inquisitiveness, which made my whole body tingle. Then suddenly, envy for the victim of what was described in the letter. I had evil thoughts, father.
BELISARIO: The Devil is always on the lookout – he never misses an opportunity to tempt Eve, like in the beginning …
MAMAE: It had never happened to me before, father. I’d had a few warped ideas, vengeful feelings, I’d been envious and angry. But I’d never had thoughts like this before! Least of all about someone I respect so much. The master of the house I live in, my cousin’s husband, the very person who gave me a home. Ahhh! Ahhh!
BELISARIO: (
Getting up, going towards his desk, starting to write
) Look, young lady from Tacna, I’m going to give you Brother Leoncio’s remedy for evil thoughts. The moment they strike, go down on your knees, wherever you are, and ask the Virgin for help. Out loud, if necessary. (
Imitating Brother Leoncio
) ‘Mary, keep temptation away, like water keeps a cat at bay.’
Getting up, going towards his desk, starting to write
) Look, young lady from Tacna, I’m going to give you Brother Leoncio’s remedy for evil thoughts. The moment they strike, go down on your knees, wherever you are, and ask the Virgin for help. Out loud, if necessary. (
Imitating Brother Leoncio
) ‘Mary, keep temptation away, like water keeps a cat at bay.’
(BELISARIO
carries on writing.
)
carries on writing.
)
MAMAE: (
To an imaginary
BELISARIO
still at her feet
) When your Grandma Carmen and I were children together in Tacna, we went through a phase of being very pious. We did penances severer than the ones imposed at confessional. And when your Grandmother Carmen’s mother – my aunt Amelia – fell ill, we made a vow, so that God would save her. Do you know what it was? To have a cold bath each day. (
Laughs.
) At that time, it was considered madness to have a bath every day. That habit came in later when the foreigners arrived. It was quite a performance. The servants heated up pails of water, the doors and windows were all bolted, the bath was spiced with salts, and when you got out of the tub, you went straight to bed so you didn’t catch your death of cold. So in our efforts to save Aunt Amelia, we were ahead of our time. Every morning for a whole month, we got up as quietly as mice and plunged into icy cold water. We’d come out, our skin all covered in goosepimples, and our lips purple. Aunt Amelia recovered and we believed that it was all because of that vow we made. But a couple of years later she fell ill again and was in the most agonizing pain for months on end. She finally went out of her mind with all the suffering. It’s hard sometimes to understand God, my little one. Take your Grandpa Pedro, for example. Was it fair that everything should have turned out so badly for him, when he’d always been so upright and so good?
To an imaginary
BELISARIO
still at her feet
) When your Grandma Carmen and I were children together in Tacna, we went through a phase of being very pious. We did penances severer than the ones imposed at confessional. And when your Grandmother Carmen’s mother – my aunt Amelia – fell ill, we made a vow, so that God would save her. Do you know what it was? To have a cold bath each day. (
Laughs.
) At that time, it was considered madness to have a bath every day. That habit came in later when the foreigners arrived. It was quite a performance. The servants heated up pails of water, the doors and windows were all bolted, the bath was spiced with salts, and when you got out of the tub, you went straight to bed so you didn’t catch your death of cold. So in our efforts to save Aunt Amelia, we were ahead of our time. Every morning for a whole month, we got up as quietly as mice and plunged into icy cold water. We’d come out, our skin all covered in goosepimples, and our lips purple. Aunt Amelia recovered and we believed that it was all because of that vow we made. But a couple of years later she fell ill again and was in the most agonizing pain for months on end. She finally went out of her mind with all the suffering. It’s hard sometimes to understand God, my little one. Take your Grandpa Pedro, for example. Was it fair that everything should have turned out so badly for him, when he’d always been so upright and so good?
(BELISARIO
stops writing and looks up.
)
stops writing and looks up.
)
BELISARIO: And, you, Mamaé? Why didn’t everything turn out well for you in life? What youthful little misdemeanour
were you punished for? Was it for reading that letter? Did the young lady from Tacna read that letter? Did that letter actually exist?
were you punished for? Was it for reading that letter? Did the young lady from Tacna read that letter? Did that letter actually exist?
(MAMAE
has taken from among her old clothes, an exquisite mother-of-pearl fan, dating from the beginning of the century. After fanning herself for a moment, she lifts it up towards her eyes, and reads something that is written on it. She looks apprehensively to right and left in case anyone is listening to her. She is going to recite, in a voice full of emotion, the poem on the fan, when
BELISARIO
gets in ahead of her and says the first line.
)
has taken from among her old clothes, an exquisite mother-of-pearl fan, dating from the beginning of the century. After fanning herself for a moment, she lifts it up towards her eyes, and reads something that is written on it. She looks apprehensively to right and left in case anyone is listening to her. She is going to recite, in a voice full of emotion, the poem on the fan, when
BELISARIO
gets in ahead of her and says the first line.
)
BELISARIO: ‘There’s none more beautiful than thee, Elvira …’
MAMAE: (
Continuing reciting
) ‘Standing here before thee, oft I wonder …’
Continuing reciting
) ‘Standing here before thee, oft I wonder …’
BELISARIO: ‘Art thou angel? Art thou goddess?’
MAMAE: ‘Thou’rt so modest, virtuous, sweet and humble …’
BELISARIO: ‘Fortune smile upon thee, sweet deserver …’
MAMAE: ‘A thousand times more fortunate be he …’
BELISARIO: ‘Who finally may call thee wife.’
MAMAE: ‘For I am but a humble bard of Tacna …’
BELISARIO: ‘Who with heavy heart doth end my weary life …’
MAMAE: ‘And deem myself too small for such an honour.’
BELISARIO: ‘Mistrust me, therefore, not, when I thee flatter:’
MAMAE: ‘Since I cannot, sweet Elvira, be thy master …’
BELISARIO: ‘Let me, leastwise, be thy servant and thy slave.’
(
He starts to write again. As he says the last line of the poem
AMELIA
enters from the inner part of the house, sobbing. She leans against a chair, dries her eyes.
MAMAE
remains in her chair, as if asleep, only her eyes are open – a melancholy smile fixed on her face
. CESAR
enters from the inner part of the house, an expression of remorse on his face.
)
He starts to write again. As he says the last line of the poem
AMELIA
enters from the inner part of the house, sobbing. She leans against a chair, dries her eyes.
MAMAE
remains in her chair, as if asleep, only her eyes are open – a melancholy smile fixed on her face
. CESAR
enters from the inner part of the house, an expression of remorse on his face.
)
AMELIA: She’s dead, isn’t she?
(CESAR
nods and
AMELIA
leans her head on his shoulder and cries. He lets out a little sob too. Enter
AGUSTIN,
also from the inner part of the house
.)
nods and
AMELIA
leans her head on his shoulder and cries. He lets out a little sob too. Enter
AGUSTIN,
also from the inner part of the house
.)
AGUSTIN: Come on, cheer up. It’s Mama we ought to be thinking about now. It’s particularly dreadful for her.
CESAR: We’ll have to put her on tranquillizers until she’s got over the shock.
AMELIA: I feel so miserable, César.
CESAR: It’s as if the whole family were falling apart …
BELISARIO: (
Looking towards the audience
) Has Mamaé died?
Looking towards the audience
) Has Mamaé died?
AGUSTIN: She got weaker and weaker until finally, like a little flame, she flickered out altogether. First it was her hearing, then her legs, her hands, her bones. Today it was her heart.
BELISARIO: (
Still in the same position
) Mother, is it true that Mamaé’s died?
Still in the same position
) Mother, is it true that Mamaé’s died?
AMELIA: Yes, dear, it is. She’s gone away to heaven, the poor darling.
CESAR: But you’re not going to cry, Belisario, are you?
BELISARIO: (
Crying
) Of course I’m not. Why should I? We all have to die sometime, don’t we, Uncle César? Men don’t cry, do they, Uncle Agustín?
Crying
) Of course I’m not. Why should I? We all have to die sometime, don’t we, Uncle César? Men don’t cry, do they, Uncle Agustín?
CESAR: Choke back those tears, son, and let’s see you behave like a brave little man, eh?
BELISARIO: (
Still at his desk, facing the audience
) Like that famous lawyer I am going to be one day, uncle?
Still at his desk, facing the audience
) Like that famous lawyer I am going to be one day, uncle?
(
Making an effort to stifle the emotion that has got the better of him,
BELISARIO
starts to write again.
)
Making an effort to stifle the emotion that has got the better of him,
BELISARIO
starts to write again.
)
AMELIA: That’s right, like the famous lawyer you’re going to be one day.
AGUSTIN: Go and join Mama, Amelia. We’ve got to talk about the funeral arrangements.
(AMELIA
nods and goes out, towards the inner part of the house
. AGUSTIN
moves towards
CESAR.)
nods and goes out, towards the inner part of the house
. AGUSTIN
moves towards
CESAR.)
And funerals, as you know, cost money. We’ll give her the simplest there is. But even so: it still costs money.
CESAR: All right, Agustín. I’ll do what I can. I am more hard up than you are. But I’ll help you out all the same.
AGUSTIN: It’s not me you’re helping, but Mamaé. After all, she was as much your Mamaé as she was mine. You’ll also have to help me with the legal proceedings, that trying district council, the cemetery and so on …
(CESAR
and
AGUSTIN
go out towards the street
. MAMAE
remains still, huddled in her armchair.
BELISARIO
has just finished writing. On his face we can detect a mixture of feelings
:
satisfaction, certainly, for having completed what he wanted to relate, and at the same time emptiness and nostalgia for something which is over, which he has lost
.)
and
AGUSTIN
go out towards the street
. MAMAE
remains still, huddled in her armchair.
BELISARIO
has just finished writing. On his face we can detect a mixture of feelings
:
satisfaction, certainly, for having completed what he wanted to relate, and at the same time emptiness and nostalgia for something which is over, which he has lost
.)
BELISARIO: It’s not a love story, it’s not a romantic story. So what is it, then? (
Shrugs his shoulders
.) You’ll never cease marvelling at the strange way stories are born, will you, Belisario? They get embellished with things one believes to be long forgotten – the most unlikely events are retrieved from the memory only to be distorted by the imagination. (
Looks at
MAMAE.) My only recollections of you were that final image: a shadow of a woman, huddled up in her armchair, who wet her knickers. (
Gets up and goes towards
MAMAE.) You were very good to me, Mamaé. Of course you were. But you had no alternative, had you? Why did it occur to me to write your story? Well, you should know that instead of becoming a lawyer, a diplomat or a poet, I ended up by devoting myself to a craft I probably learnt from you: that of telling stories. Yes, that may be the reason: to pay off a debt. As I didn’t know the real story, I’ve had to add to the things I remembered, bits which I made up or borrowed from here and there. Like you did in your stories about the young lady from Tacna, didn’t you, Mamaé?
Shrugs his shoulders
.) You’ll never cease marvelling at the strange way stories are born, will you, Belisario? They get embellished with things one believes to be long forgotten – the most unlikely events are retrieved from the memory only to be distorted by the imagination. (
Looks at
MAMAE.) My only recollections of you were that final image: a shadow of a woman, huddled up in her armchair, who wet her knickers. (
Gets up and goes towards
MAMAE.) You were very good to me, Mamaé. Of course you were. But you had no alternative, had you? Why did it occur to me to write your story? Well, you should know that instead of becoming a lawyer, a diplomat or a poet, I ended up by devoting myself to a craft I probably learnt from you: that of telling stories. Yes, that may be the reason: to pay off a debt. As I didn’t know the real story, I’ve had to add to the things I remembered, bits which I made up or borrowed from here and there. Like you did in your stories about the young lady from Tacna, didn’t you, Mamaé?
(
He closes her eyes and kisses her on the forehead. As he moves away towards one of the wings, the curtain falls.)
He closes her eyes and kisses her on the forehead. As he moves away towards one of the wings, the curtain falls.)
Theatre as fiction
In a make-believe Paris, a man and a woman agree to meet for two hours each day to devote themselves to fiction – to the art of telling lies. For her, it is a hobby; for him, a job. But lies are seldom either gratuitous or innocuous; they are nurtured by our unfulfilled desires and our failures and are as accurate an indication of our characters as all those irrefutable words of truth we utter.
To lie is to invent; it is to add to real life another fictitious one disguised as reality. Morally abhorrent when practised in everyday life, this strategem seems quite acceptable, even praiseworthy when practised under the pretext of art. We applaud the novelist, artist or dramatist who, through his skill at handling words, images or dialogue, persuades us that these contrivances which set out merely to be a reflection of life are in fact life itself. But are they? Fiction is the life that wasn’t, the life we’d liked to have had but didn’t, the life we’d rather not have had or the one we’d like to relive, without which the life we are actually leading seems incomplete. Because unlike animals, who live out their lives to their full potential from beginning to end, we are only able to realize a small part of ours.
Our hunger for life and our expectations always far exceed our capacity as human beings who have been granted the perverse privilege of being able to dream up a thousand and one adventures while only being capable of realizing ten, at the most. The inevitable gulf between the concrete reality of our human existence and those desires and aspirations which exacerbate it which can never themselves be satisfied, is not merely the origin of man’s unhappiness, dissatisfaction and rebelliousness. It is also the
raison d’être
of fiction, a deceptive device through which we can compensate artificially for the inadequacies of life, broaden the asphyxiatingly narrow confines of our condition, and gain access to worlds that are richer, sometimes shabbier, often more intense, but always different
from the one fate has provided us with. Thanks to the conceits of fiction, we can augment our experience of life – one man may become many different men, a coward may become a hero, a sluggard a man of action, and a virgin a prostitute. Thanks to fiction we discover not only what we are, but also what we are not and what we’d like to be. The lies of fiction enrich our lives by imbuing them with something they’ll never actually have, but once their spell is broken, we are left helpless and defenceless, brutally aware of the unbridgeable gap between reality and fantasy. For the man who doesn’t despair, who despite everything is prepared to throw himself in at the deep end, fiction is there waiting for him, its arms laden with illusions, which have matured out of the leavening of our own sense of emptiness: ‘Come in, come in, come and play a game of lies.’ But sooner or later we discover, like Kathie and Santiago in their ‘little Parisian attic’, that we’re really playing a melancholy little game of deception, in which we assume those roles we long to play in real life or, alternatively, a terrifying game of truth, which in real life we’d do anything to avoid.
raison d’être
of fiction, a deceptive device through which we can compensate artificially for the inadequacies of life, broaden the asphyxiatingly narrow confines of our condition, and gain access to worlds that are richer, sometimes shabbier, often more intense, but always different
from the one fate has provided us with. Thanks to the conceits of fiction, we can augment our experience of life – one man may become many different men, a coward may become a hero, a sluggard a man of action, and a virgin a prostitute. Thanks to fiction we discover not only what we are, but also what we are not and what we’d like to be. The lies of fiction enrich our lives by imbuing them with something they’ll never actually have, but once their spell is broken, we are left helpless and defenceless, brutally aware of the unbridgeable gap between reality and fantasy. For the man who doesn’t despair, who despite everything is prepared to throw himself in at the deep end, fiction is there waiting for him, its arms laden with illusions, which have matured out of the leavening of our own sense of emptiness: ‘Come in, come in, come and play a game of lies.’ But sooner or later we discover, like Kathie and Santiago in their ‘little Parisian attic’, that we’re really playing a melancholy little game of deception, in which we assume those roles we long to play in real life or, alternatively, a terrifying game of truth, which in real life we’d do anything to avoid.
Theatre isn’t life, but make-believe, that is to say another life, a life of fiction, a life of lies. No genre demonstrates as splendidly as theatre the equivocal nature of art. The characters we see on stage, as opposed to the ones we find in novels or paintings, are flesh and blood and act out their roles right in front of us. We watch them suffer, enjoy themselves, laugh, get angry. If the show succeeds, we become totally convinced of their authenticity by the way they speak, move, gesture and emote. Are we in fact aware of any difference between them and real life? Not at all, except that we know they are a pretence, a fiction, that they are theatre. Curiously enough, in spite of its blatantly deceptive and fraudulent nature, there have always been (and always will be) those who insist that theatre – and fiction in general – should express and propagate religious, ideological, historical and moral truths. But I don’t agree. The role of the theatre – of fiction in general – is to create illusions, to deceive.
Fiction is not a reproduction of life: it complements it by
cutting down on what we have enough of in real life, and adding what is lacking, by bringing order and logic to what we experience as chaotic and absurd, or alternatively injecting an element of mystery, craziness and risk into the balanced, the routine, and the secure. There is evidence of this systematic modification of life throughout the history of humanity: it has been recorded rather like the negative of a photograph – in the long catalogue of adventures, passions, gestures, infamies, manners, excesses, subtleties, which man had to invent because he was incapable of living them himself.
cutting down on what we have enough of in real life, and adding what is lacking, by bringing order and logic to what we experience as chaotic and absurd, or alternatively injecting an element of mystery, craziness and risk into the balanced, the routine, and the secure. There is evidence of this systematic modification of life throughout the history of humanity: it has been recorded rather like the negative of a photograph – in the long catalogue of adventures, passions, gestures, infamies, manners, excesses, subtleties, which man had to invent because he was incapable of living them himself.
Dreaming, creating works of fiction (the same as reading, going to plays, suspending disbelief) is an oblique way of protesting against the mediocrity of life and it is also an effective, if cursory way of ridiculing it. Fiction, when we find ourselves under its spell, bewitched by its artifice, makes us feel complete, by transforming us momentarily into those great villains, those angelic saints, or those transparent idiots, which we are constantly being incited to become by our desires and aspirations, our cowardice, our inquisitiveness or simply our spirit of contradiction, and when it returns us to our normal state, we find we have changed, that we are more aware of our limitations, more eager for fantasy and less ready to accept the status quo.
This is what happens to the main characters in
Kathie and the Hippopotamus
, the banker’s wife and the writer in the little attic room where the play is set. When I wrote it, I didn’t even know that its underlying theme was the relationship between life and art; this particular alchemy fascinates me because the more I practise it the less I understand it. My intention was to write a farce, by pushing the characters to the point of unreality (but not beyond because total unreality is boring), taking as a starting point a situation that had been haunting me for some time: a lady employs a writer to help her compose an adventure story. She is, at this point, a pathetic creature in so far as art for her seems to be a last resort against a life of failure; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Victor Hugo whose abundant personality he admires in all its many aspects: the romantic, the literary, the political,
and the sexual. During their working sessions and arising from the transformations the story itself undergoes between what Kathie dictates and what her amanuensis writes down, their respective lives, both the real and imaginary sides of them, that is, what they actually were and what they would have liked to have been – are acted out on stage, summoned together by memory, desire, fantasy, association and chance. At some point during my work on the play, I noticed beside the ghosts of Kathie and Santiago, who I was trying to breathe life into, other little ghosts queuing up behind them, waiting to earn their rightful place in the play. Now when I discover them, I recognize them, and am once again quite astounded. Santiago’s and Kathie’s fantasies, quite apart from their real lives, in many ways reveal my own, and the same is no doubt true of anyone who puts on display that crude mass of raw material out of which he fashions his fiction.
Kathie and the Hippopotamus
, the banker’s wife and the writer in the little attic room where the play is set. When I wrote it, I didn’t even know that its underlying theme was the relationship between life and art; this particular alchemy fascinates me because the more I practise it the less I understand it. My intention was to write a farce, by pushing the characters to the point of unreality (but not beyond because total unreality is boring), taking as a starting point a situation that had been haunting me for some time: a lady employs a writer to help her compose an adventure story. She is, at this point, a pathetic creature in so far as art for her seems to be a last resort against a life of failure; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Victor Hugo whose abundant personality he admires in all its many aspects: the romantic, the literary, the political,
and the sexual. During their working sessions and arising from the transformations the story itself undergoes between what Kathie dictates and what her amanuensis writes down, their respective lives, both the real and imaginary sides of them, that is, what they actually were and what they would have liked to have been – are acted out on stage, summoned together by memory, desire, fantasy, association and chance. At some point during my work on the play, I noticed beside the ghosts of Kathie and Santiago, who I was trying to breathe life into, other little ghosts queuing up behind them, waiting to earn their rightful place in the play. Now when I discover them, I recognize them, and am once again quite astounded. Santiago’s and Kathie’s fantasies, quite apart from their real lives, in many ways reveal my own, and the same is no doubt true of anyone who puts on display that crude mass of raw material out of which he fashions his fiction.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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