(Far off, the Arab music comes to life again.)
SANTIAGO: (Dictating) … Shortly I’m to discover what it is the wily perfume-seller is suggesting. With cloying charm, he begs me to wait, while he attends to the other tourists. He brings me a cup of tea and, I, naïve as I am, accept and remain in the shop.
KATHIE: Don’t you think that bit about ‘naïve as I am’ sounds a trifle vulgar?
SANTIAGO: Yes. Yes, it does. And I, stupid as I am, remain in the shop …
KATHIE: Doesn’t it sound a bit unsubtle — ‘stupid as I am’?
SANTIAGO: (Correcting) Yes. And I, er, I remain in the shop …
KATHIE: Then before you could say knife, the craftsmen disappeared and the perfume-seller started to take out some jars; he put them in front of me and offered me them. Then he suddenly began to take out some trinkets and jewels as well.
(SANTIAGO has got to his feet and is doing what, according to KATHIE, the Cairo perfume-seller did. Arab music with hornpipes, flutes, bongo drums, castanets, seems to waft through the air.)
SANTIAGO: Make your choice, my foreign beauty, make your choice! Here I have lotions, pure essence of perfume, life-giving elixirs, balsam and lacquers. To put on your hair, behind your ears, on your neck, your breasts, under your arms, on your navel, your groin, between your toes and on the soles of your feet! Choose, oh choose, my foreign beauty! For here I have necklaces, ear-rings, watches, powder-cases, bracelets, bangles, anklets, diadems! Made out of amber, tortoiseshell, lapis lazuli, butterfly wings!
KATHIE: (Pleased yet intimidated) Thank you very much, monsieur. Your perfumes are ravishing, and your jewels are quite dazzling. But I don’t wish to buy anything. Thank you very much all the same, monsieur, you’ve been most helpful and kind.
(SANTIAGO ingratiating, snakelike, circles hypnotically round KATHIE moving his hands and rolling his eyes.)
SANTIAGO: But who’s talking of buying anything, my foreign beauty, who’s thinking about filthy money, oh my beautiful exotic foreigner from the exotic kingdom of Peru? Everything I have is yours. Everything in this shop is yours. Choose whatever you want, take it away with you. Take it as a tribute to your beauty!
KATHIE: Your generosity overwhelms me and confuses me, monsieur. But I can’t accept presents from strangers. I’m a respectable woman, a Catholic, I come from Lima, and I have a family. I’m not one of those light-minded tourists you’re no doubt accustomed to, monsieur.
SANTIAGO: I’m an amorous perfume-seller, madame. Let me take you for a stroll through Cairo by night, let me introduce you to those secret little pleasure dens, those sacred temples of sensual delight. Cairo is the most corrupt city in the world, madame!
KATHIE: Control yourself, monsieur. Behave like a gentleman, like a respectable human being. Don’t come so close. Take your filthy hands off me!
SANTIAGO: We’ll go to see the pyramids, bathed by the moonlight and barefoot we’ll walk in the cool of the desert. We’ll visit a night-club where houris do the belly dance, their boneless bodies writhing in ecstasy. Dawn will discover us peacefully sleeping, lulled by the charm of those aphrodisiac melodies which make serpents hiss and give camels orgasms.
KATHIE: Help! Help! Don’t touch me! You filthy Indian! You miserable mulatto! You disgusting halfbreed! Let go of me or I’ll kill you! Ah, you didn’t know, did you, that Kathie Kennety is ready and able to challenge villains the whole world over? Hands up or I’ll shoot!
(She threatens him with a small woman’s pistol and SANTIAGO returns to his place of work. He continues dictating. An alarm clock start to ring.)
SANTIAGO: When he sees the little revolver the perfume-seller releases me. Rapidly I leave the perfume shop and lose myself in the dusty narrow alleyways of the old city …
KATHIE: While I was going back to the hotel, I shuddered at the thought of that fat, coarse, impertinent …
SANTIAGO: And as I wind back and forth, asking my way, through that labyrinth of streets which is old Cairo, I eventually find the road back to the hotel, and my whole body squirms in sheer revulsion as I recall the alchemist’s embrace, and my nostrils still detect the pungent aroma of his perfumes, as if they were poison …
(The alarm finishes.)
KATHIE: Ah, how quickly the two hours went today …
SANTIAGO: They flew past. But we did some good work, didn’t we, Kathie?
(They smile at each other.)
ACT TWO
The set is the same. As the house lights go down, we hear the Parisian music which sets the atmosphere for Kathie Kennety’s little attic: it could be ‘Les feuilles mortes’, ‘J’attendrai toujours’ or something equally well known and dated. The four characters are on stage, but the lighting is focused on SANTIAGO — who is sitting in his usual place of work, dictating into the tape-recorder — and KATHIE, who strolls around the room with a bundle of papers and maps in her hands, recalling memories and relating incidents from the past. The Parisian melody is replaced by some African music: tribal drums throb, wild beasts grunt, and birds sing, against the thunderous roar of a waterfall. In an imaginary parody of the scene, ANA and JUAN may mime what is being narrated.
KATHIE: The first night at the Murchison Falls, I was woken up by a frightful noise.
SANTIAGO: It is a windswept moonlit night on the shores of Lake Victoria, on the edge of the Murchison Falls. All of a sudden mysterious noises tear into the velvety darkness of the African night, and I wake up.
KATHIE: It wasn’t the waterfalls but some other noise. The hotel was full, and so they’d put me in a tent in the garden. The canvas was flapping about in the wind and looked as though it would take off at any moment.
SANTIAGO: The flimsy bedouin tents of the encampment where they’d given me shelter quiver as if made of rice paper.
KATHIE: I threw on my clothes, and I went out to see what all the fuss was about.
SANTIAGO: Frightened and bewildered, I sit bolt upright in my hammock; I grope for the mosquito net which I draw aside as I reach for my revolver with the mother-of-pearl handle which I keep under my pillow.
KATHIE: What was happening? What was going on?
SANTIAGO: What is happening? What is going on? Are the waterfalls overflowing? Is the lake flooding its banks? Is it an earthquake? Is our camp being attacked by a herd of elephants? Or a tribe of cannibals?
KATHIE: Nothing like that. Two hippos were fighting over a ‘hippa’.
SANTIAGO: (Switching off his tape-recorder for an instant) Hippopotamuses? Was that what woke you up? Two hippopotamuses fighting over a hippopotama?
KATHIE: Shouldn’t you say female hippopotamus?
SANTIAGO: You should say whatever sounds best. Hippopotama has more of a ring to it, it’s more incisive, more original. (Dictating again) Is the lake overflowing? Is it an earthquake? Is our camp being attacked by a herd of elephants? Or a tribe of cannibals? No. Once again it’s that old eternal love triangle, that familiar tale of lust, rape and revenge. In the murky mud on the banks of the Murchison Falls, roaring and thundering, two hippopotamuses fight to the death over a hippopotama …