LA CHUNGA: He’s a pimp. He sold you to me tonight. Next, he’ll be taking you to the Casa Verde, to whore for him like all his other women.
(MECHE tries to slip away from her arms, pretending to be more angry than she really feels, but after a short struggle, she relents. LA CHUNGA puts her face close to hers and talks to her, almost kissing her.)
Let’s not talk about that burn any more. Let’s just talk about you and me.
MECHE: (More calmly) Don’t hold me so tight, you’re hurting.
LA CHUNGA: I can do what I want with you. You’re my slave.
(MECHE laughs.)
Don’t laugh. Repeat: I am your slave.
(Pause.)
MECHE: (Laughs. Becoming serious) It’s only a game, isn’t it? All right. I am your slave.
LA CHUNGA: I’m your slave and now I want to be your whore. (Pause.) Repeat.
MECHE: (Almost in a whisper) I’m your slave and now I want to be your whore.
(LA CHUNGA lays MECHE on the bed and starts to undress her.)
LA CHUNGA: So you will be.
(The room becomes dark and disappears from view. From the rocking chair, JOSE keeps on gazing, mesmerized, into the darkness. At the table where the superstuds are playing dice, the noise starts up again: the noise of toasts being drunk, songs being sung and swearing.)
Speculations about Meche
The following dialogue takes place as the superstuds carry on playing dice and drinking beer.
LITUMA: Do you want to know something? I sometimes think all this about Mechita disappearing is just another of Josefino’s little stories.
EL MONO: Then maybe you’d like to explain it to me — loud and clear — because I don’t know what you’re talking about.
LITUMA: A woman can’t just vanish into thin air, overnight. After all, Piura’s only the size of a pocket handkerchief.
JOSEFINO: If she’d stayed in Piura, I’d have found her. No, she scarpered, all right. Maybe to Ecuador. Or Lima. (Pointing to the rocking chair where JOSE is sitting) She knows, but she’d die rather than give away her little secret, wouldn’t you, Chunguita? I lost a woman all because of you, a woman who’d have made me rich, but I don’t hold it against you, because basically I’ve got a heart of gold. Wouldn’t you agree?
EL MONO: Don’t start up about Mechita again, or you’ll give José a hard-on. (Nudging the invisible JOSE) It drives you crazy, doesn’t it — thinking about them up there, playing with each other?
LITUMA: (Carrying on, unperturbed) Someone would have seen her take the bus or a taxi. She would have said goodbye to somebody. She would have packed her things, taken them out of the house. But she left all her clothes and her suitcase behind. No one saw her go. So we can’t be so sure about her running away. Do you know what I sometimes think, Josefino?
EL MONO: (Touching LITUMA’s head) So you actually think! I thought donkeys only brayed, ha ha.
JOSEFINO: Well. What do you think, Einstein?
LITUMA: You beat her up, didn’t you? Don’t you beat up every woman who falls for you? Sometimes I think you go a bit too far.
JOSEFINO: (Laughing) So I killed her? Is that what you’re trying to say? What a profound idea, Lituma.
EL MONO: But this poor bastard couldn’t even kill a fly. He’s all mouth, just look at him there poncing around with his knife in his hand, as if he were the king pimp. I could knock him over with a feather. Do you want to see? (Blows.) Go on, over you go, don’t make a fool of me in front of my friends.
LITUMA: (Very seriously, developing his idea) You could have been jealous about Mechita spending the night with Chunga. And you’d just lost everything, down to your shirt, remember. So you were in a really filthy temper. You went home like a wild beast on the rampage. You needed to take it out on someone. Meche was there, and she was the one who got it in the neck. You could easily have gone too far.
JOSEFINO: (Amused) And then I cut her up into little pieces and threw her in the river? Is that it? You’re a bloody genius Lituma. (To the absent JOSE, handling him the dice) Here, José, it’s your turn to win now. The dice are all yours.
LITUMA: Poor Meche. She didn’t deserve a son of a bitch like you, Josefino.
JOSEFINO: The things one has to put up with from one’s friends. If you weren’t a superstud, I’d cut your balls off and throw them to the dogs.
EL MONO: Do you want to poison the poor little brutes? What harm have they ever done to you, for Christ’s sake?
(JOSE goes back to his seat, as discreetly as he left it. At the same time, without the other three being aware of him, LITUMA gets up and leaves the table.)
JOSEFINO: (To JOSE) Why are you so quiet? What’s up, mate?
JOSE: I’m losing and I don’t feel like talking. That’s all. Right, now my luck is going to change. (Picks up the dice and blows on them. Puts a banknote on the table.) There’s a hundred little sols. Who’s going to take me on? (Addressing Lituma’s chair as if he were still there) You, Lituma?
(In the two following scenes, JOSE, EL MONO and JOSEFINO behave as if LITUMA were still with them. But LITUMA is now at the foot of the small flight of stairs watching LA CHUNGA’s little room, which has just been lit up.)
Pimping
LA CHUNGA and MECHE are dressed. There is no sign whatever of them having undressed or made love. Their outward behaviour is very different from the previous scene in which they appeared. MECHE is sitting on the bed, a little dejected, and LA CHUNGA, who is standing in front of the bed, doesn’t seem at all like the sensual or domineering woman she was before, but rather more enigmatic and machiavellian. MECHE lights a cigarette. Draws the smoke into her lungs, trying to hide the fact that she feels uneasy.
MECHE: If you think he’s ever going to give you back those three thousand sols, you must be dreaming.
LA CHUNGA: I know I’ll never get them back. I don’t mind.
MECHE: (Scrutinizing her, intrigued) Do you really expect me to believe you, Chunga? Do you think I don’t know you’re the most tight-fisted woman in town, that you work day and night like a black so you can keep on coining it in?
LA CHUNGA: I mean, in this case, I don’t mind. Just as well for you, isn’t it? If I hadn’t given him that money, Josefino would have taken it all out on you.
MECHE: Yes. He would’ve beaten me up. Every time something goes wrong, every time he’s in a bad mood, I’m the one who pays for it. (Pause.) One of these days, he’s going to kill me.
LA CHUNGA: Why do you stay with him, silly?
MECHE: I don’t know … maybe that’s why. Because I’m silly.
LA CHUNGA: He beats you up and you still love him?
MECHE: I don’t really know if I love him. I did to begin with. Now maybe I stay with him just because I’m scared, Chunga. He’s … a brute. Sometimes even if I’ve done nothing, he makes me kneel down before him, as if he were a god. He takes out his knife and draws it across here. ‘Be grateful you’re still alive,’ he says. ‘You’re living on borrowed time, don’t ever forget that.’