SANTIAGO: I devote the following morning to the enamel helmets, the necklaces of turquoise and lapis lazuli, the coral brooches, and the golden statuettes of King Tutankhamun.
KATHIE: Hidden among masks and hundreds of other beautiful objects, there was a poor helpless blonde girl weeping like a statue of Mary Magdalene.
SANTIAGO: All at once, ‘midst the splendour of crystal urns, palanquins, sedan chairs, sumptuously adorned sarcophagi and shimmering caskets, I spy a ravishing young beauty with honeyed complexion and exquisite features, sobbing uncontrollably … What can have happened to her?
KATHIE: She was a German tourist. The stupid girl had gone out alone to sight-see in the streets of Cairo in a miniskirt. She’d caused such a commotion that she’d had to go inside the museum to escape the rabble.
SANTIAGO: Fleeing from the licentious looks, the importunate hands, the lascivious gestures, the illicit thoughts, and the extravagant displays of appreciation which her long pale legs provoked in the streets of Cairo, she had come to seek asylum amongst the wonders of Ancient Egypt. She reminded me of the girl Victor Hugo once described as obscene, because she was so innocent. Taking pity on her, I offered her my help.
ANA: (Sarcastically) It’s you who should be pitied … Mark Griffin.
SANTIAGO: (Without looking at her) Go to hell.
(KATHIE carries on dictating without seeing ANA.)
ANA: I went some time ago, Mark Griffin. You sent me there, with a millstone round my neck. Have you forgotten already? Cast your mind back, Mark Griffin, try and remember.
(As SANTIAGO and ANA talk, KATHIE carries on revising her notes and dictating as if SANTIAGO were still at his desk by the tape-recorder.)
SANTIAGO: (Getting to his feet) I can’t go on living in this house a moment longer. As far as I’m concerned, marriage is a totally meaningless institution. It’s how you feel about other people that’s important. I don’t love you any more. I can’t carry on living with a woman I don’t love, my principles won’t allow it. I suppose you’re going to cry, make a scene, threaten me with suicide, do what most middle-class women do when their husbands leave them. Behave like a sensible, grown-up woman with a mind of her own, for a change.
ANA: All right. I won’t make a scene. I won’t force you to stay. But what should I tell the children?
SANTIAGO: So it’s blackmail, is it? You’re going to accuse me of abandoning the children, is that it? Do you want me to lose my respect for you into the bargain? Stop acting like a woman who’s seen too many soap operas on television. Just because a marriage breaks up it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world for the children.
ANA: Oh, I dare say they’ll survive. I’m asking you what I should tell them, how I explain to them that their father is not going to live with them any more. I’m not arguing with you or blackmailing you. I’m asking your advice. They’re very young. They’ll be very upset. Just tell me what to say to them so they won’t be so hurt.
SANTIAGO: Tell them the truth. Or do you think it’s preferable to lie to them — to indulge that hypocritical middle-class habit just to spare their feelings a little longer?
ANA: So I tell them the truth, do I? I tell them their father has run off because he’s fallen in love with one of his pupils?
SANTIAGO: Exactly. It could’ve happened to you. It may even happen to them, later. And if they’re at all in touch with their emotions, and don’t grow up into repressed middle-class women, they’ll follow my example — like mature rational beings.
(He returns to his desk and sits, ready to carry on with the recording.)
ANA: Do you really think you’re mature and rational, Mark Griffin? Now that you’re writing that travel book about the journeys of Mrs Kathie Kennety through the Far East and Black Africa — the book she supplies the ideas for while paying you to put them into words — can you honestly keep criticizing middle-class women with a clear conscience, Mark Griffin?
(She leaves him and moves towards JUAN. A few bars of Arab music are heard.)
KATHIE: Then I went to the old part of Cairo, and saw a little church where the Virgin Mary had taken refuge with the infant Jesus during the flight into Egypt. It was very beautiful.
SANTIAGO: To my joy and delight, history and religion intermingle in that kaleidoscopic maze of eternal alleyways which constitutes the old quarter of Cairo. And this secluded chapel mellowed by time, which looms before me so gracefully and discreetly through clouds of dust — what could it be? Is it the sanctuary where Mary and the baby Jesus sheltered on their flight into Egypt?
KATHIE: And then I visited another little church, Jewish, I think, where Abraham was once supposed to have been.
SANTIAGO: (Dictating) Why do the walls of this timeless synagogue exude that other-worldliness which thrills me to the marrow? Because upon its stones the feet of the Patriarch Abraham once left their sacred imprint.
KATHIE: And finally I stopped at a shop which sold perfume.
SANTIAGO: And as in Egypt the material and the spiritual worlds are inseparable, I find myself almost immediately out in the dazzling morning sunlight on the threshhold of a perfumery.
KATHIE: It was late afternoon actually.
SANTIAGO: (Correcting) I find myself almost immediately in the crimson evening twilight on the threshhold of a perfumery.
KATHIE: There were some tourists there too. The perfume-seller explained in his disreputable English that the shop was very old, and he gave us some samples to try. He would keep on staring at me and in the end I became quite nervous.
SANTIAGO: The perfume-seller is tall and slim, with jet-black eyes and gleaming teeth. His gaze never leaves me, as he explains in French, the language of seduction, that the perfumery is as ancient as the earliest Egyptian mosques and that its craftsmen manufacture essences, the secret of which has been handed down from father to son throughout the centuries. He makes us sample exotic elixirs whose fragrance lasts for years on the skin. And as he talks, those lewd, hungry, lascivious eyes of his remain steadily fixed upon me.
(As he has been talking, SANTIAGO has got up and has now taken on the guise of a passionate young man. He is very close to KATHIE.)
KATHIE: Victor! What are you doing here? What do you want?
SANTIAGO: To run away with you, to elope with you. Yes, Pussikins. It’s all arranged. I’ve got hold of a van, I’ve persuaded that little priest in Chincheros, and they’ve lent me a house in the country.
KATHIE: Are you serious, Victor?
SANTIAGO: Don’t you think it’s a romantic idea? Wouldn’t it be romantic to run away and get married in secret to the man you love despite your parents’ wishes? Wouldn’t it be romantic to ditch that imbecile they’re always trying to foist on you? Aren’t you always telling me what a romantic girl you are?
KATHIE: You’ve got it all wrong. My parents have nothing to do with my decision to marry Johnny. They’re not forcing me to marry him, nobody is. I’m marrying him because I want to. Because … I love him.
SANTIAGO: That’s not true. You’re marrying Johnny because your family have been ramming him down your throat for the last I don’t know how long so you’ll forget about me. You’re not in love with that moron, don’t try and pretend you are.
KATHIE: You mustn’t say things like that about Johnny. He’s my fiancé and he’s going to be my husband.