(JUAN approaches KATHIE. He seems to want to strike up a silent conversation with her, but she declines, retreating into her private reverie. ANA approaches SANTIAGO.)
ANA: You know, you’re rather like a hippopotamus yourself, Mark Griffin. Don’t try and pretend you’re not listening. Well, wouldn’t you agree you’re like a hippopotamus?
SANTIAGO: How am I like a hippopotamus?
ANA: You look so strong and reliable, anyone would think you could take on a man-eating tiger. But it’s all façade! When it comes down to it, all you can do is catch flies, beetles, butterflies and little birds.
SANTIAGO: (Fantasizing) I know how I’m like a hippopotamus …
KATHIE: (Playing the role of Adèle) My dear sweet professor, my love, pay no attention to that spiteful bitch. She’s always trying to manipulate you, ignore her, don’t let her sour our relationship.
SANTIAGO: (Eagerly) Of course I won’t, my little Persian kitten! Now come here, let me smell your fragrance, let me tickle you and lick you. You’re not going to get away from me this time.
KATHIE: (Charmed by him, but also fearful) You frighten me, Mark. You will start playing these games, but we both know where they’re going to end up, don’t we?
SANTIAGO: (Lifting her up and parading her in his arms) Must end up. But what does it matter? Aren’t you pleased you can arouse such ardent passion in your husband, Adèle?
KATHIE: In my lover, you mean. I’m not your wife, it’s that spiteful bitch.
SANTIAGO: No, she isn’t. Not any more. Not since I left her for you, silly. Now you’re my wife — as well as my pupil, my lover and my kitten.
KATHIE: Don’t get so excited, my love. This is hardly the time. Didn’t you have a lecture to give on the Spanish mystics?
SANTIAGO: The Spanish mystics can go to hell. Today I’ve got a lecture specially for you. And I’m going to give it to you now, over there, in the bedroom. Come, come.
KATHIE: (Mesmerized) What again, my angel? Have you gone quite mad? We made love last night and this morning.
SANTIAGO: (Driven crazy) And we’ll do it again — before lunch, after lunch, at teatime and suppertime. We’ll do it nine times a day. Did you hear that? Nine times!
KATHIE: Who’d have thought Professor Griffin capable of such feats?
SANTIAGO: It’s all your fault, you awaken in me feelings of such passionate intensity, I’m like a vulcano about to erupt. When I see your little body, when I touch it and stroke it, when I hear your voice, when I smell your fragrance, my blood starts to course through my veins like a raging torrent.
KATHIE: (Pouting) But I’m not the only one who unleashes such storms, Victor. Do you think I don’t know what you get up to with Juliette Drouet? And all those other ephemeral little flies that swarm around you? Do you think I don’t know how many of them you’ve made love to?
SANTIAGO: (Proud, seductive) But these are minor escapades, Adèle. They don’t impinge on either my feelings or my poetry. They’re quite unimportant. No, the only use these little creatures have is to prove to me how incomparable you are, my Adèle chérie.
KATHIE: (Sobbing) When I think about you making love to them, I get so jealous. You’ve no idea how much I suffer.
SANTIAGO: Jealousy adds a certain piquancy to love. It makes it more exciting, it colours it, it gives it flavour.
KATHIE: But you go after anything in a skirt! Look at my nails. They used to be long and beautiful and now, just look at them! It’s all your fault, it’s all because of your treachery. Every time you go out, I get quite sick with anguish: which of those little insects will he be with this time? What’ll he be saying to them? What’ll he be doing to them? Where? And how many times? Nine?
SANTIAGO: Whether it’s God, Mother Nature or the Devil, I don’t know. But talents have been bestowed upon me, which set me apart from ordinary men. The gift of poetry which in my case comes inextricably linked with an infinite propensity for passionate love.
KATHIE: But don’t we make love every day, Victor?
SANTIAGO: It’s not enough, Adèle. I must satisfy these longings, quench these flames.
KATHIE: You’re one of nature’s marvels!
SANTIAGO: I am.
KATHIE: You’re insatiable, indefatigable, a colossus amongst men.
SANTIAGO: I am.
KATHIE: You’re Victor Hugo, Mark Griffin.
SANTIAGO: Just as other men need air, so I need women. I need a constant supply or else I suffocate … Like the drinker of absinthe, like the opium eater, I’m quite addicted to them.
KATHIE: Your knowledge exceeds that of the Kama Sutra, the Ananga Ranga, Giacomo Casanova, and the Marquis de Sade.
SANTIAGO: It does. What do women feel when they make love with me, Adèle chérie?
KATHIE: Like tropical butterflies pierced by a pin, like flies struggling in a glutinous web, like chickens on a spit. (ANA who has been watching them sardonically, bursts out laughing and breaks the spell. Attention is focused on KATHIE and JUAN.)
JUAN: (Transformed back into Johnny darling) And what about our son?
KATHIE: (Herself again) My son! Poor boy! He didn’t turn out to be at all like his father. (To JUAN) You were just an amusing rogue, a lovable playboy, Johnny darling. Your only interest in money is spending it. Little Johnny, on the other hand, is the most hard-working man in the world, the most dependable, the most boring and the most disagreeable. His only interest in money is making more of it.
JUAN: That’s not true, Kathie. You’re maligning little Johnny.
KATHIE: I’m not maligning him. He’s only interested in banking, boards of directors, rates of exchange, the price of shares and the property market. His sole concern in life is whether or not we’ll ever have agrarian reform in this country.
SANTIAGO: (Thinking aloud) And do you know, Kathie, what agrarian reform would mean?
KATHIE: Taking away decent, respectable people’s land and giving to the Indians. Sometimes I wish we would have agrarian reform if only to see the look on little Johnny’s face.
JUAN: Have you got such a low opinion of your daughter too?
KATHIE: She’s superficial and brainless. She takes after you there, Johnny darling. The new improved version. She doesn’t think about anything except beaches, parties, clothes and men. In that order.
JUAN: I think you detest your children almost as much as you used to detest me, Kathie Kennety.
KATHIE: No. Not quite that much. Besides, they’re the ones that hate me. Because I won’t let them do what they want with my property.
JUAN: You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you, Kathie? But you know very well it’s not true.
KATHIE: Yes, I know it isn’t. They really detest me because of you.
JUAN: Because they think you’re responsible for their father’s death. Which is fair enough.
KATHIE: It’s not fair enough. They never knew what happened, and they never will know either.
JUAN: They may not know the details. But they certainly smell a rat somewhere. They suspect something, they guess, they sense something. That’s why they hate you and that’s why you hate them.
SANTIAGO: (Very timidly) Did you and your husband ever separate, Kathie?
KATHIE: Johnny and I never separated … I … I was widowed.