Free Three Plays: The Young Lady from Tacna, Kathie and the Hippopotamus, La Chunga by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A

You were obsessed by her, weren’t you, Mamaé? She’d been given a thrashing, she was mentioned in some letter or other, and you hated her with such venom that you even used to mix her up with Señora Carlota. ( Walking round the table, shouting ) What happened? What happened? I need to know what happened! I know, the three of you got on marvellously together. But was it like that for all the forty or fifty years you shared under the same roof? Didn’t the gentleman ever clasp the young lady surreptitiously by the hand? Did he never make advances to her? Did he never kiss her? Didn’t any of those things happen, that normally happen? Or did you control your instincts through the strength of your moral convictions, and quash temptation by sheer force of will? ( By now on his way back to his desk, feeling dejected ) Things like that only happen in stories, Mamaé.
    ( While BELISARIO is soliloquizing, the doorbell rings . CESAR and AGUSTIN come in . They kiss the GRANDPARENTS and MAMAE.)
    AGUSTIN: How are you feeling, Papa?
    GRANDFATHER: I’m fine, absolutely fine, old son.
    GRANDMOTHER: No, he’s not, Agustín. I don’t know what’s got into your father, but he gets more and more depressed every day. He walks round the house like some sort of ghost.
    AGUSTIN: I’m going to give you some news that’ll cheer you up. I had a call from the police and guess what! They’ve caught the thief.
    GRANDFATHER: ( Without knowing what it’s all about ) Have they really? Oh good. Good.
    AMELIA: The man that attacked you when you were getting off the tram, Papa.
    AGUSTIN: And what’s more, they’ve found your watch; it was amongst a whole lot of stolen goods. The man was keeping them in a little cache near Surquillo.
    GRANDFATHER: Well, well. That is good news. ( Dubiously, to GRANDMOTHER) Had they stolen a watch?
    CESAR: They identified it by the date engraved on the back: Piura, October 1946.
    ( Their voices gradually fade until they are nothing more than a distant murmur. BELISARIO stops writing and sits fiddling thoughtfully with his pencil .)
    BELISARIO: Piura, October 1946 … There they are, the High Court Judges, presenting him with a watch; and there’s Grandfather thanking them for it at that banquet they gave for him at the Club Grau. And there’s little Belisario, as pleased as Punch, because he’s the Governor’s grandson. ( Looks round at his family .) Was that the final moment of glory? Was it, Grandpa, Grandma, Mama? Was it, Uncle Agustín, Uncle César? Was it, Mamaé? Because after that the calamities fairly started to deluge down on you: no work, no money, bad health and impending dementia. Yet in Piura you looked back nostagically to when you were in Bolivia: there, life had been far better … And in Bolivia you looked back to Arequipa: there, life had been far better …
    ( At the table, the GRANDPARENTS carry on chatting with their sons and daughter .)
    Was that the golden age, in Arequipa, when Grandfather used to travel back and forth from Camaná?
    GRANDFATHER: ( Youthful, smiling and optimistic ) We’ve made it at last. We’re finally going to reap the rewards after ten whole years of waiting. The cotton is doing marvellously. The plants are larger than we ever dared hope for. The Saíds were in Camaná last week. They brought an expert out from Lima, a string of letters after his name. He was
quite amazed when he saw the cotton fields. He just couldn’t believe it, Carmencita.
    GRANDMOTHER: You really do deserve it, Pedro. After all you’ve sacrificed, burying yourself away in that wilderness for so long.
    GRANDFATHER: The expert said that if the water doesn’t let us down, and there’s no reason why it should, because the river is higher than ever – we’ll have a better harvest this year than the richest plantations in Ica.
    AGUSTIN: Are you going to buy me that doctor’s outfit then, Papa? Because I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be a famous lawyer like Grandfather any more. I