(BELISARIO 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?
(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.)
BELISARIO: ‘There’s none more beautiful than thee, Elvira …’
MAMAE: (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.)
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.)
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?
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?
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?
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?
(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.)
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.)
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?
(He closes her eyes and kisses her on the forehead. As he moves away towards one of the wings, the curtain falls.)
KATHIE AND THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
A Comedy in Two Acts
To Norma Aleandro
INTRODUCTION
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.