CHARACTERS
LA CHUNGA
MECHE
The superstuds
EL MONO
JOSE
JOSEFINO
LITUMA
LA CHUNGA’S HOUSE
Piura, 1945.
La Chunga’s restaurant-bar is near the stadium, in a district of reed matting and wooden planks which grew up not long ago in the sandy area, between the main road to Sullana and the Grau Barracks. Unlike the flimsy dwellings of the neighbourhood, it is a proper building — with adobe walls and zinc roof — spacious and square. On the ground floor there are rustic tables, benches and seats where customers sit, and a wooden counter. Behind this, there is a kitchen, blackened and smoky. On a higher level, which is reached by a small staircase, there is a room, which no customer has ever visited. It is the proprietress’s bedroom. From there, La Chunga can observe all that goes on below through a window hidden behind a flower-patterned curtain.
The customers of the little bar are local people, soldiers from the Grau Barracks on leave, football fans and boxing enthusiasts, stopping for a drink on their way to the stadium, or workers from the building site in that new area for the rich which is making Piura into an expanding city: it is called Buenos Aires.
La Chunga has a cook who sleeps in front of the stove, and a boy who comes in during the day to serve at the tables. But she is always at the bar — usually standing. When there are not many customers, as tonight, when the only people in the place are those four layabouts who call themselves the superstuds (they have been playing dice and drinking beer for some time) La Chunga can be seen rocking slowly back and forth in a rocking chair made of reeds, which creaks monotonously, as she gazes into space. Is she lost in her memories or is her mind a blank — is she simply existing?
She is a tall, ageless woman, with a hard expression, smooth taut skin, strong bones and emphatic gestures. She observes her customers with an unblinking gaze. She has a mop of black hair, tied back with a band, a cold mouth and thin lips — she does not speak much and she rarely smiles. She wears short-sleeved blouses and skirts so unseductive, so unprovocative, that they seem like the uniform of a school run by nuns. Sometimes she goes barefoot, sometimes she wears heel-less sandals. She is an efficient woman: and runs the place with an iron hand and knows how to command respect. Her physical appearance, her air of severity, her terseness, are intimidating; it’s not often that drunks try to take liberties with her. She does not listen to confidences nor does she accept compliments; she has never been known to have a boyfriend, a lover, or even friends. She seems resolved always to live alone, dedicated body and soul to her business. Except for that very brief episode with Meche — which was quite baffling for the customers — no one has ever known her altering her routine for anyone or anything. For as long as the local Piuranos can remember, she has only ever been seen behind the bar — where she stands motionless and unsmiling. Does she perhaps occasionally go to the Variedades or the Municipal to see a film? Does she take a walk through the Plaza de Armas in the afternoon when there’s a concert? Does she go to the Eguiguren Pier or the Old Bridge to bathe in the river at the beginning of each summer if it has rained in the Cordillera? Does she watch the military procession on Independence Day, among the crowd congregated at the foot of the Grau Monument?
She is not an easy woman to engage in conversation; she replies in monosyllables or by nodding or shaking her head and if she is asked a facetious question she’ll reply with a coarse remark or a monstrous lie. ‘La Chunguita’, say the Piuranos, ‘does not stand any nonsense.’
The superstuds, who are always playing dice, drinking toasts to each other and joking, know this very well. Their table is right underneath a kerosene lamp which hangs from a beam, around which insects flutter. They remember the time when the little bar belonged to a certain Doroteo, who was La Chunga’s first business associate and whom — according to local gossip — she pushed out by hitting him over the head with a bottle. But despite coming here twice or three times a week, not even the superstuds could call themselves friends of La Chunga. They are merely acquaintances, customers — nothing more. Who in Piura could boast they know her intimately? The fugitive Meche, perhaps? La Chunga has no friends. She is a shy and solitary soul, like one of those cacti in the desert of Piura.
Truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
This translation of La Chunga was first performed as a rehearsed reading on 29 April 1989 at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. The cast was as follows:
LA CHUNGA Valerie Sarruf MECHE Geraldine Fitzgerald EL MONO Tom Mannion JOSE John Skitt JOSEFINO Tom Knight LITUMA Alan Barker Director David Graham-Young
ACT ONE
A game of dice
EL MONO: (Holding the dice above his head) Come on, superstuds. Let’s sing the old song again, to bring me some luck.
JOSE, LITUMA, JOSEFINO and EL MONO (Sing in chorus with great gusto)
We are the superstuds.
We don’t want to work.
All we want is a little bit of skirt.
Drinking, gambling all night long,
In Chunga’s bar where we belong.
Wine, women and song —
Wine, women and song.
In Chunga’s bar where we belong.
In Chunga’s bar where it’s cheap and nice,
And now we’re going to throw the dice!
(EL MONO blows on his fist and kisses it, then throws the dice on to the table. The little black and white cubes hurtle across the top of the table, bouncing up and down, colliding, ricocheting off the half-empty glasses and finally come to rest, their journey cut short by a bottle of Cristal beer.)
EL MONO: Ahaha! Two threes! That’ll do me nicely. Right, I’m doubling the bank.
(No one reacts or adds a single cent to the pool of banknotes and coins that EL MONO has beside his glass.) Well come on, you spineless lot of buggers. Is no one going to take me on?
(He picks up the dice, cradles them in his hands, blows on them and shakes them above his head.)
Now here goes for another six — a five and a one, a four and a two, a three and a three — or this little stud’s going to chop off his pecker.
JOSEFINO: (Offering him a knife) For all the use it is — here, borrow my knife. Go on, cut it off!
JOSE: Just toss the dice, will you, Mono. It’s about the one thing you’re good at — tossing.
EL MONO: (Pulling faces) And they’re off … Whoosh. A three and a six. (Crosses himself.) Holy Whore. Now for the six.
LITUMA: (Turning towards the bar) Don’t you think Mono’s become very vulgar lately, Chunga?
(LA CHUNGA remains unperturbed. She does not even deign to glance at the superstuds’ table.)
JOSE: Why don’t you answer poor Lituma, Chunguita? He’s asking you a question, isn’t he?
EL MONO: She’s probably dead. That thing rocking backwards and forwards over there is most likely her corpse. Hey, Chunga, are you dead?