Three Plays: The Young Lady from Tacna, Kathie and the Hippopotamus, La Chunga

INTRODUCTION

Theatre as fiction

In a make-believe Paris, a man and a woman agree to meet for two hours each day to devote themselves to fiction — to the art of telling lies. For her, it is a hobby; for him, a job. But lies are seldom either gratuitous or innocuous; they are nurtured by our unfulfilled desires and our failures and are as accurate an indication of our characters as all those irrefutable words of truth we utter.

To lie is to invent; it is to add to real life another fictitious one disguised as reality. Morally abhorrent when practised in everyday life, this strategem seems quite acceptable, even praiseworthy when practised under the pretext of art. We applaud the novelist, artist or dramatist who, through his skill at handling words, images or dialogue, persuades us that these contrivances which set out merely to be a reflection of life are in fact life itself. But are they? Fiction is the life that wasn’t, the life we’d liked to have had but didn’t, the life we’d rather not have had or the one we’d like to relive, without which the life we are actually leading seems incomplete. Because unlike animals, who live out their lives to their full potential from beginning to end, we are only able to realize a small part of ours.

Our hunger for life and our expectations always far exceed our capacity as human beings who have been granted the perverse privilege of being able to dream up a thousand and one adventures while only being capable of realizing ten, at the most. The inevitable gulf between the concrete reality of our human existence and those desires and aspirations which exacerbate it which can never themselves be satisfied, is not merely the origin of man’s unhappiness, dissatisfaction and rebelliousness. It is also the raison d’être of fiction, a deceptive device through which we can compensate artificially for the inadequacies of life, broaden the asphyxiatingly narrow confines of our condition, and gain access to worlds that are richer, sometimes shabbier, often more intense, but always different from the one fate has provided us with. Thanks to the conceits of fiction, we can augment our experience of life — one man may become many different men, a coward may become a hero, a sluggard a man of action, and a virgin a prostitute. Thanks to fiction we discover not only what we are, but also what we are not and what we’d like to be. The lies of fiction enrich our lives by imbuing them with something they’ll never actually have, but once their spell is broken, we are left helpless and defenceless, brutally aware of the unbridgeable gap between reality and fantasy. For the man who doesn’t despair, who despite everything is prepared to throw himself in at the deep end, fiction is there waiting for him, its arms laden with illusions, which have matured out of the leavening of our own sense of emptiness: ‘Come in, come in, come and play a game of lies.’ But sooner or later we discover, like Kathie and Santiago in their ‘little Parisian attic’, that we’re really playing a melancholy little game of deception, in which we assume those roles we long to play in real life or, alternatively, a terrifying game of truth, which in real life we’d do anything to avoid.

Theatre isn’t life, but make-believe, that is to say another life, a life of fiction, a life of lies. No genre demonstrates as splendidly as theatre the equivocal nature of art. The characters we see on stage, as opposed to the ones we find in novels or paintings, are flesh and blood and act out their roles right in front of us. We watch them suffer, enjoy themselves, laugh, get angry. If the show succeeds, we become totally convinced of their authenticity by the way they speak, move, gesture and emote. Are we in fact aware of any difference between them and real life? Not at all, except that we know they are a pretence, a fiction, that they are theatre. Curiously enough, in spite of its blatantly deceptive and fraudulent nature, there have always been (and always will be) those who insist that theatre — and fiction in general — should express and propagate religious, ideological, historical and moral truths. But I don’t agree. The role of the theatre — of fiction in general — is to create illusions, to deceive.

Fiction is not a reproduction of life: it complements it by cutting down on what we have enough of in real life, and adding what is lacking, by bringing order and logic to what we experience as chaotic and absurd, or alternatively injecting an element of mystery, craziness and risk into the balanced, the routine, and the secure. There is evidence of this systematic modification of life throughout the history of humanity: it has been recorded rather like the negative of a photograph — in the long catalogue of adventures, passions, gestures, infamies, manners, excesses, subtleties, which man had to invent because he was incapable of living them himself.

Dreaming, creating works of fiction (the same as reading, going to plays, suspending disbelief) is an oblique way of protesting against the mediocrity of life and it is also an effective, if cursory way of ridiculing it. Fiction, when we find ourselves under its spell, bewitched by its artifice, makes us feel complete, by transforming us momentarily into those great villains, those angelic saints, or those transparent idiots, which we are constantly being incited to become by our desires and aspirations, our cowardice, our inquisitiveness or simply our spirit of contradiction, and when it returns us to our normal state, we find we have changed, that we are more aware of our limitations, more eager for fantasy and less ready to accept the status quo.

This is what happens to the main characters in Kathie and the Hippopotamus, the banker’s wife and the writer in the little attic room where the play is set. When I wrote it, I didn’t even know that its underlying theme was the relationship between life and art; this particular alchemy fascinates me because the more I practise it the less I understand it. My intention was to write a farce, by pushing the characters to the point of unreality (but not beyond because total unreality is boring), taking as a starting point a situation that had been haunting me for some time: a lady employs a writer to help her compose an adventure story. She is, at this point, a pathetic creature in so far as art for her seems to be a last resort against a life of failure; he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Victor Hugo whose abundant personality he admires in all its many aspects: the romantic, the literary, the political, and the sexual. During their working sessions and arising from the transformations the story itself undergoes between what Kathie dictates and what her amanuensis writes down, their respective lives, both the real and imaginary sides of them, that is, what they actually were and what they would have liked to have been — are acted out on stage, summoned together by memory, desire, fantasy, association and chance. At some point during my work on the play, I noticed beside the ghosts of Kathie and Santiago, who I was trying to breathe life into, other little ghosts queuing up behind them, waiting to earn their rightful place in the play. Now when I discover them, I recognize them, and am once again quite astounded. Santiago’s and Kathie’s fantasies, quite apart from their real lives, in many ways reveal my own, and the same is no doubt true of anyone who puts on display that crude mass of raw material out of which he fashions his fiction.

Mario Vargas Llosa

CHARACTERS

KATHIE KENNETY

SANTIAGO ZAVALA

ANA DE ZAVALA

JUAN

The action takes place some time in the 1960s in Kathie Kennety’s ‘Parisian attic’.

SET, COSTUME, EFFECTS

Kathie Kennety’s ‘little Parisian attic’ is not a caricature: it has that air of permanence and authenticity about it as if it were a real place.

Kathie, a woman with a sense of taste, has furnished her ‘studio’ in an attractive manner, reminiscent of the sort of artist’s garret one finds in pictures, novels, postcards and films; it also has something of the genuine chambres de bonne where students and impoverished foreigners congregate on the left bank of the Seine.

Under the sloping ceiling, there are ageing beams; on the walls, posters of the ubiquitous Eiffel Tower, the inevitable Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, some Impressionist paintings, a Picasso, and — one essential detail — a portrait or bust of Victor Hugo. There is nothing of great elegance, nothing superfluous, just what is necessary to give an impression of comfort and warmth: a little retreat where the occupant can feel safe and protected from the turmoil and scrutiny of the outside world, free to conjure up her innermost demons and confront them face to face. There is a thick wooden desk, a broad delapidated sofa, covered all over with rugs, some cushions on the floor, the tape-recorder and the typewriter, a small record-placer, the usual records of Juliette Greco, Léo Ferré, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens, etc. Filing cabinets, notebooks, papers and some books, but not too many, because Kathie’s idea of culture has little to do with literature.

There is nothing special or unusual about what Kathie or Santiago wear. The story takes place some time in the 1960s and this can be indicated in the way they dress. Santiago’s clothes reflect the modest salary and the hectic life of a journalist and lecturer, and it would not be inappropriate for Kathie to dress, when she’s in her little attic, in the Bohemian style of Saint-Germain in the 1950s: black turtle-neck jersey, tight-fitting trousers, stiletto-heeled boots. The costumes Ana and Juan wear need not be so precise. Unlike Kathie and Santiago, who are characters of flesh and blood, contemporaneous with the action, they only live in the minds and the imaginations of the two protagonists. They exist in so far as they are projections of the protagonists’ memories and fantasies. Their subjective, if not to say perceptual, nature should perhaps be subtly suggested in the way they dress, but any outlandishness or exaggeration should be avoided. One possibility is that, as Ana’s and Juan’s thought-processes, gestures, speech and names fluctuate in accordance with Kathie’s and Santiago’s recollections, so might their dress, if only in small details — such as the acquisition of a hat, a cloak, a pair of spectacles, or a wig — to emphasize the metaphorical, volatile nature of their personalities. The same might happen with Kathie and Santiago when they shed their identities and assume new ones, as a projection of either their own or the other’s fantasy. But none of this should be carried beyond the bounds of credibility; the characters should never seem grotesque or like circus clowns — Kathie and the Hippopotamus is not a farce, and should not be performed as such. It is in the subtext, the inner workings of the characters’ minds lying at the root of what they say and do on stage, that we find elements of farce.

The action of the play exceeds the conventional limits of normal life: it takes place not only in the objective world but also in the subjective world of the characters themselves, as if there were no dividing line between the two, and it moves with complete freedom from one to the other. Any exaggerated speech, gesture or movement, any distortion of reality such as we find in slapstick comedy would be counterproductive and out of place here: the play’s intention is not to provoke laughter through any crude stylization of human experience, but, by using the combined techniques of humour, suspense and melodrama, to lead the audience imperceptibly to accept this integration of the visible with the invisible, of fact with fantasy, of present with past, as a separate reality. Objective life becomes suffused with subjectivity, while the subjective life of the individual acquires the physical and temporal tangibility of objective reality. Characters of flesh and blood become to a certain extent creatures of fantasy, while the phantoms that emerge from their imaginations become creatures of flesh and blood. The deepest concerns of Kathie and the Hippopotamus are, perhaps, the nature of theatre in particular and fiction in general: not only that which is written and read, but, more importantly, that which human beings practise unwittingly in their everyday lives.

Visual effects can be helpful in the staging of the play, but it is primarily the use of music as a background presence that can evoke most effectively the different atmospheres — Paris, Black Africa, and the Arab world — that is to say the exotic appeal of a good part of the story.

It may not be superfluous to add that in this play I have tried, as I have in my novels, to create an illusion of totality — which should be understood qualitatively rather than quantitatively in this case. The play does not attempt to paint a broad panorama of human experience but seeks to illustrate that experience itself is both objective and subjective, real and imaginary, and that life is made up of both these levels. Man talks, acts, dreams and invents. Life is not just a rational catalogue of events — fantasy and ambition play their part as well. It is not the result of cold planning — but also of spontaneity. Although these two aspects of human experience are not entirely interdependent, neither could do without its counterpart without destroying itself. For a long time we have resorted to fantasy as an escape from reality when it becomes unbearable for us, but this is not just escapism; it is a devious means of gaining the knowledge required for understanding that reality. If we could not distance ourselves from it, it would seem confused and chaotic, little more than a stifling routine. The exploits of the imagination enrich reality and help us better our lives. If we didn’t dream, life would seem irredeemable; if we didn’t allow our imaginations free rein, the world would never change.

Mario Vargas Llosa

This translation of Kathie and the Hippopotamus was first performed as a rehearsed reading on 15 April 1989 at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. The cast was as follows:

KATHIE KENNETY Marian Diamond SANTIAGO ZAVALA Thomas Wheatley ANA DE ZAVALA Geraldine Fitzgerald JUAN Alan Barker Director David Graham-Young

Life, such as it has been made for men, can only be born with lies.

Simone Weil, ‘Miscellaneous Thoughts about Loving God’

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

ACT ONE

When the curtain goes up, Parisian music from the 1940s or 1950s can be heard in the background. SANTIAGO is dictating into a tape-recorder. KATHIE walks round him, going through some notes, recalling her experiences. When their voices become audible, the background music fades into an Arab melody with flutes, hornpipes and drums.

KATHIE: I stood beside the Sphinx until it got dark — then suddenly the lights came on.

SANTIAGO: Oblivious of the advancing night I stand transfixed, gazing up at the Sphinx. All at once, an unearthly glow illuminates her face, and she smiles serenely down at me. There we confront each other — I, the woman of flesh and blood; she with her heart of stone, head aloft, and lion’s claws.

KATHIE: There were masses of stars. It was late and I felt — I don’t know — sort of alone out there amongst all those Egyptian tombs.

SANTIAGO: I meander midst vast pyramidical sepulchres and megalithic colossi of the ancient pharaohs: beneath the canopy of night, an infinity of stars, which floats over Cairo in an indigo sea of opalescent hues.

KATHIE: It was rash of me to have stayed behind. Who would there be to defend me in case of danger? But then I remembered my revolver and didn’t feel afraid any more.

SANTIAGO: Not a living soul in sight — neither man, nor beast, nor plant: hardly aware of my isolation, I muse on that far-off civilization that raised such memorials, a race so perfectly attuned to the supernatural, as fish are to the ocean. I hold silent communion with the Sphinx. Suddenly my illusion is shattered and harsh reality reasserts itself: what am I doing there, alone, exposing myself to a thousand perils — does a hunger-crazed jackal or some ruthless desperado lie in wait? But I am reassured as I remember my small revolver with its mother-of-pearl handle which accompanies me round the world like a faithful dog.

KATHIE: At that point, the man appeared in front of me. Heaven knows how he’d got there. I couldn’t even shout, I was so frightened. What was he going to do to me?

(Enter JUAN.)

SANTIAGO: The figure of a man, in a red cape and white turban, suddenly emerges in front of me, as if conjured from the hot desert air or out of the past. He is tall, slim, with pitch-black eyes and gleaming white teeth. Is he going to attack me? Is he going to violate me? Should I run for help, burst into tears?

KATHIE: (Addressing herself for the first time to SANTIAGO) I don’t like that last bit.

SANTIAGO: We’ll rub it out then. Where shall we go back to?

KATHIE: To where the man appears in front of me.

(SANTIAGO leans over his tape-recorder to rub out the last part of his dictation. JUAN moves closer to KATHIE. They both undergo a transformation: they are now like two youngsters chatting on the corner of the street.)

JUAN: ‘Man’? You mean, of course, ‘boyfriend’.

KATHIE: You, my boyfriend? Ha ha, excuse me while I laugh.

JUAN: I’ll excuse you anything you like, Kathie. Except one thing — don’t try and pretend you’re not in love with me.

KATHIE: But I’m not.

JUAN: You will be though.

KATHIE: Don’t you ever get tired of me saying no to you, Johnny?

JUAN: Once I get an idea into my head, there’s no stopping me, Pussikins. I’ll keep on proposing to you till you say yes to me. You’ll be my girlfriend, my fiancée, and we’ll end up getting married, want to bet?

KATHIE: (dying of laughter) So I’m going to get married to you now, am I?

JUAN: And who else are you going to marry, if you don’t marry me?

KATHIE: I’ve plenty of admirers, Johnny.

JUAN: You’ll pick the best though.

KATHIE: How conceited you are.

JUAN: I know very well who’s been proposing to you. And why, may I ask, did you send them all packing? Because you’re really nuts about me.

KATHIE: You’re so conceited, Johnny.

JUAN: I’ve every reason to be conceited. Do you want me to tell you why?

KATHIE: Yes, go on, tell me why.

JUAN: Am I or am I not better than Bepo Torres?

KATHIE: How are you better than Bepo Torres?

JUAN: I surf better than him for a start. He can’t even stand on the board. Besides, I’m better looking than he is.

KATHIE: You think you’re the best-looking man around, don’t you?

JUAN: Well, I’m better-looking than Bepo Torres anyway. And Kike Ricketts. Do you really think Kike’s a match for me? Does he surf better than me? Is he better-looking than me?

KATHIE: He’s a better dancer than you.

JUAN: Kike? Ha ha, excuse me while I laugh. Can he do the mambo better than me? (Does a few steps.) The cha-cha-cha? (Another few steps.) The huaracha? (Another few steps.) When I dance at parties, everyone gathers round, as you very well know. Who showed poor old Kike how to dance in the first place? I even showed him how to smooch.

KATHIE: He’s better at the marinera and the creole waltz than you are.

JUAN: The marinera! The creole waltz! I say, how frightfully refined. No one does those fuddy-duddy dances these days, Pussikins.

KATHIE: You’re just dying of jealousy, aren’t you? You’re jealous of Bepo, of Kike, of Gordo …

JUAN: Gordo? Me, jealous of Gordo Rivarola? What’s Gordo got that I haven’t? A chevrolet convertible nineteen fifty. Well, I’ve got a Studebaker convertible nineteen fifty-one. Do me a favour, Pussikins, please. Why should I be jealous of Bepo, or Kike, or Gordo, or Sapo Saldívar, or Harry Santana, or Abel, my brother, or any of the rest of them who have proposed to you for that matter? They aren’t even in the same league as me, any of them, and you know it …

KATHIE: (Reflectively — forgetting about JUAN, and emerging for a moment from her fantasy world) Kike, Bepo, Harry, Gordo Rivarola … It seems ages ago now …

JUAN: (Who hasn’t been listening to her) And then there’s another reason, of course. Shall I be quite frank with you? Shall I?

KATHIE: (Returning to her fantasy world) Yes, Johnny. Be quite frank with me.

JUAN: I’ve got money, Pussikins.

KATHIE: Do you really think that matters to me? My daddy’s got more money than your daddy, silly.

JUAN: Exactly, Pussikins. With me you can be sure it’s you I want — if I marry you it’ll be for no other reason but yourself. You can’t be so sure about that with the others, can you? I heard my old man saying to yours only yesterday: ‘Be careful of those young men who gad about with your daughter. They’re out to land the best deal of their lives.’

KATHIE: (Confused) Don’t be so vulgar, Johnny.

JUAN: (Confused also) I’m not being vulgar. Marrying for money’s not being vulgar. OK, if I was, I apologize. You see, you’ve gone all quiet. It’s true what I’m telling you, ask your old man. You couldn’t deny it. You see, I’m already starting to convince you. Next time I propose to you, I don’t think you’ll send me packing quite so quickly, eh, Pussikins …

(As his voice fades, KATHIE distances herself from him, physically and mentally. JUAN remains on stage. He is like a little boy; he saunters about, whistling, looking idly around with his hands in his pockets. SANTIAGO has finished erasing the last part of the dictation on the tape-recorder.)

SANTIAGO: Ready, it’s all rubbed out. Shall we carry on from your visit to the Sphinx or shall we go on to another chapter, señora?

KATHIE: Why don’t you call me Kathie? ‘Senora’ makes me feel so old.

SANTIAGO: Can I ask you a question? Where did ‘Kathie Kennety’ come from?

KATHIE: Don’t you like the name?

SANTIAGO: It’s pretty. But how did it originate? Why did you choose it?

KATHIE: If I used my real name, no one would take my book seriously. Peruvian names don’t somehow seem right for authors. ‘Kathie Kennety’, on the other hand, has a certain exotic, musical, cosmopolitan ring to it. (Looks at him reflectively.) Santiago Zavala doesn’t sound too good either, not for an artist. Why don’t you change it? Yes, yes, let me rechristen you. Let’s see now … I know. Mark. Mark Griffin. May I call you that? We’ll only use it here, in this little attic. You don’t mind?

SANTIAGO: No, señora, I don’t mind.

KATHIE: Do you really find me so old, you can’t call me Kathie?

SANTIAGO: Of course not. But I’ve got to get used to the idea. I’m working for you, remember. I think of you as my boss.

KATHIE: Why not think of me as a colleague? Come on, we mustn’t waste our two hours. Let’s start another chapter. (Looking at her notes) The Visit to the Cairo Museum. The Fabulous Treasures of Tutankhamun.

(Enter ANA. Arab music. She shrinks shyly into a corner, and starts to cry. JUAN pesters her by grimacing and making obscene gestures.)

SANTIAGO: I devote the following morning to the enamel helmets, the necklaces of turquoise and lapis lazuli, the coral brooches, and the golden statuettes of King Tutankhamun.

KATHIE: Hidden among masks and hundreds of other beautiful objects, there was a poor helpless blonde girl weeping like a statue of Mary Magdalene.

SANTIAGO: All at once, ‘midst the splendour of crystal urns, palanquins, sedan chairs, sumptuously adorned sarcophagi and shimmering caskets, I spy a ravishing young beauty with honeyed complexion and exquisite features, sobbing uncontrollably … What can have happened to her?

KATHIE: She was a German tourist. The stupid girl had gone out alone to sight-see in the streets of Cairo in a miniskirt. She’d caused such a commotion that she’d had to go inside the museum to escape the rabble.

SANTIAGO: Fleeing from the licentious looks, the importunate hands, the lascivious gestures, the illicit thoughts, and the extravagant displays of appreciation which her long pale legs provoked in the streets of Cairo, she had come to seek asylum amongst the wonders of Ancient Egypt. She reminded me of the girl Victor Hugo once described as obscene, because she was so innocent. Taking pity on her, I offered her my help.

ANA: (Sarcastically) It’s you who should be pitied … Mark Griffin.

SANTIAGO: (Without looking at her) Go to hell.

(KATHIE carries on dictating without seeing ANA.)

ANA: I went some time ago, Mark Griffin. You sent me there, with a millstone round my neck. Have you forgotten already? Cast your mind back, Mark Griffin, try and remember.

(As SANTIAGO and ANA talk, KATHIE carries on revising her notes and dictating as if SANTIAGO were still at his desk by the tape-recorder.)

SANTIAGO: (Getting to his feet) I can’t go on living in this house a moment longer. As far as I’m concerned, marriage is a totally meaningless institution. It’s how you feel about other people that’s important. I don’t love you any more. I can’t carry on living with a woman I don’t love, my principles won’t allow it. I suppose you’re going to cry, make a scene, threaten me with suicide, do what most middle-class women do when their husbands leave them. Behave like a sensible, grown-up woman with a mind of her own, for a change.

ANA: All right. I won’t make a scene. I won’t force you to stay. But what should I tell the children?

SANTIAGO: So it’s blackmail, is it? You’re going to accuse me of abandoning the children, is that it? Do you want me to lose my respect for you into the bargain? Stop acting like a woman who’s seen too many soap operas on television. Just because a marriage breaks up it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world for the children.

ANA: Oh, I dare say they’ll survive. I’m asking you what I should tell them, how I explain to them that their father is not going to live with them any more. I’m not arguing with you or blackmailing you. I’m asking your advice. They’re very young. They’ll be very upset. Just tell me what to say to them so they won’t be so hurt.

SANTIAGO: Tell them the truth. Or do you think it’s preferable to lie to them — to indulge that hypocritical middle-class habit just to spare their feelings a little longer?

ANA: So I tell them the truth, do I? I tell them their father has run off because he’s fallen in love with one of his pupils?

SANTIAGO: Exactly. It could’ve happened to you. It may even happen to them, later. And if they’re at all in touch with their emotions, and don’t grow up into repressed middle-class women, they’ll follow my example — like mature rational beings.

(He returns to his desk and sits, ready to carry on with the recording.)

ANA: Do you really think you’re mature and rational, Mark Griffin? Now that you’re writing that travel book about the journeys of Mrs Kathie Kennety through the Far East and Black Africa — the book she supplies the ideas for while paying you to put them into words — can you honestly keep criticizing middle-class women with a clear conscience, Mark Griffin?

(She leaves him and moves towards JUAN. A few bars of Arab music are heard.)

KATHIE: Then I went to the old part of Cairo, and saw a little church where the Virgin Mary had taken refuge with the infant Jesus during the flight into Egypt. It was very beautiful.

SANTIAGO: To my joy and delight, history and religion intermingle in that kaleidoscopic maze of eternal alleyways which constitutes the old quarter of Cairo. And this secluded chapel mellowed by time, which looms before me so gracefully and discreetly through clouds of dust — what could it be? Is it the sanctuary where Mary and the baby Jesus sheltered on their flight into Egypt?

KATHIE: And then I visited another little church, Jewish, I think, where Abraham was once supposed to have been.

SANTIAGO: (Dictating) Why do the walls of this timeless synagogue exude that other-worldliness which thrills me to the marrow? Because upon its stones the feet of the Patriarch Abraham once left their sacred imprint.

KATHIE: And finally I stopped at a shop which sold perfume.

SANTIAGO: And as in Egypt the material and the spiritual worlds are inseparable, I find myself almost immediately out in the dazzling morning sunlight on the threshhold of a perfumery.

KATHIE: It was late afternoon actually.

SANTIAGO: (Correcting) I find myself almost immediately in the crimson evening twilight on the threshhold of a perfumery.

KATHIE: There were some tourists there too. The perfume-seller explained in his disreputable English that the shop was very old, and he gave us some samples to try. He would keep on staring at me and in the end I became quite nervous.

SANTIAGO: The perfume-seller is tall and slim, with jet-black eyes and gleaming teeth. His gaze never leaves me, as he explains in French, the language of seduction, that the perfumery is as ancient as the earliest Egyptian mosques and that its craftsmen manufacture essences, the secret of which has been handed down from father to son throughout the centuries. He makes us sample exotic elixirs whose fragrance lasts for years on the skin. And as he talks, those lewd, hungry, lascivious eyes of his remain steadily fixed upon me.

(As he has been talking, SANTIAGO has got up and has now taken on the guise of a passionate young man. He is very close to KATHIE.)

KATHIE: Victor! What are you doing here? What do you want?

SANTIAGO: To run away with you, to elope with you. Yes, Pussikins. It’s all arranged. I’ve got hold of a van, I’ve persuaded that little priest in Chincheros, and they’ve lent me a house in the country.

KATHIE: Are you serious, Victor?

SANTIAGO: Don’t you think it’s a romantic idea? Wouldn’t it be romantic to run away and get married in secret to the man you love despite your parents’ wishes? Wouldn’t it be romantic to ditch that imbecile they’re always trying to foist on you? Aren’t you always telling me what a romantic girl you are?

KATHIE: You’ve got it all wrong. My parents have nothing to do with my decision to marry Johnny. They’re not forcing me to marry him, nobody is. I’m marrying him because I want to. Because … I love him.

SANTIAGO: That’s not true. You’re marrying Johnny because your family have been ramming him down your throat for the last I don’t know how long so you’ll forget about me. You’re not in love with that moron, don’t try and pretend you are.

KATHIE: You mustn’t say things like that about Johnny. He’s my fiancé and he’s going to be my husband.

SANTIAGO: (Trying to kiss her) But you’re in love with me, Pussikins. Haven’t you told me so countless times? Do you want me to remind you about all those things you used to say to me in your letters? You’re making a big mistake, my love. Marry Johnny and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.

KATHIE: I’ll never regret it, I’m going to be very happy with Johnny. So stop following me around, stop ringing me up, and leave me alone. Just accept the fact once and for all: I’m going to marry Johnny.

SANTIAGO: I’ll never accept it. I won’t give up till the very last moment: not till you’re walking down the aisle together.

KATHIE: Then you’re going to be wasting your time miserably.

SANTIAGO: (Returning to his place of work and his tape-recorder, becoming himself again) It’s just that if I ever manage to convince myself there’s no more hope, that there’s no …

KATHIE: (To an invisible Victor) What will you do? Will you kill me? Will you kill Johnny?

SANTIAGO: You know it doesn’t sound very Egyptian, señora. Instead of Johnny, you need an Arab name. What about Ahmed? Or Gamul? Don’t you like Gamul, the prurient perfume-seller, or Ahmed, the amorous parfumier.

KATHIE: Oh, Johnny’s got nothing to do with my book. My mind was wandering. I was thinking of when I was young.

SANTIAGO: Stay young please, señora.

KATHIE: If you really meant that, you’d call me Kathie.

SANTIAGO: I’m sorry. From now on I’ll call you Kathie, I promise.

KATHIE: I was thinking of my admirers. I had masses of them: Kike, Bepo, Harry, Gordo Rivarola … In those days, I was what was called a good match.

SANTIAGO: I know. I knew you, though you didn’t know me. In fact everybody knew you. From the social columns, from society magazines.

KATHIE: What were you like in those days?

SANTIAGO: (Dreamily) Me? An idealist, a romantic. I dreamt I was going to be another Victor Hugo, I was going to dedicate my life to poetry, politics, art. Something important, where I could make my mark in society. I wanted to fill my life with grand gestures.

JUAN: (Moving closer) Can we talk for a moment, Kathie? It’s about … Victor.

KATHIE: I’ve absolutely nothing to say about Victor. I don’t want to talk about him. Either now or ever, with you or anyone else for that matter. I haven’t seen him since we got married, so you needn’t start making jealous scenes about him now.

(SANTIAGO has left his place of work, and is now beside them. He seems overcome with grief.)

SANTIAGO: So you married that clown after all, Pussikins. You’re not the romantic girl you led me to believe you were in your letters.

JUAN: (Uncomfortably) I know you haven’t seen him since we got married. And I’m not going to make any jealous scenes about him either. Have I ever done that? I trust you implicitly, my love. It’s just that … he came to see me.

(Turning towards SANTIAGO in surprise) You? But what a surprise, Victor! Come in, come in. Well, where did you spring from all of a sudden?

KATHIE: (Aside; transfixed with fear) Dear heavens! Victor! Victor! How could you have done such a thing! And all because of me, it was all my fault. You did do it because of me, didn’t you?

SANTIAGO: (Offering JUAN his hand) How are you, Johnny? You seem surprised to see me. Yes, I suppose it’s understandable. I don’t want to take up your time, I imagine you’re very busy. I just came to bring you these letters.

KATHIE: Yes, I’m sure it was because of me that you did it. I’ll never forgive myself, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. How are you? Are you miserable? Are you happy? Have you at least found peace of mind?

JUAN: (Leafing through the letters with increasing amazement) What are these letters? Why, they’re love letters. Letters from my wife to you. What does this mean, Victor? Why have you brought them here?

KATHIE: (Grief-stricken) Even if you’re in the furthest corner of the earth, ensconced behind walls of solid stone, even if we never see each other again, I’ll always be beside you, I’ll always be with you, Victor.

SANTIAGO: As a sign of friendship, Johnny. Pussikins is your wife now. I’m sure neither you nor she would like those letters to get into the wrong hands. She wrote them to me when she was my girlfriend. When you read them you’ll see that our relationship was always pure and innocent. I’ve brought you them, so you can tear them up or keep them, or do whatever you like with them.

KATHIE: (Very tenderly) With you I awaken at dead of night, the sky all aglow with myriad stars, having scarcely slept four hours on your mattress of straw, in that stark dank cell with its granite walls.

JUAN: (Becoming more and more bewildered) Ah, so that’s the reason … Look, I don’t quite know what to say to you. You’ve taken me rather by surprise. I … well, to tell you the truth, the fact is, I don’t really know what to say.

KATHIE: I meditate kneeling on icy stone floors in front of that skull which stares down upon us as much as to say, ‘I’m waiting for you.’ With you I weep for the evil men do, that has turned the world into a poisonous cesspool.

SANTIAGO: Well, you might at least thank me.

KATHIE: I scourge myself, and wear a hair shirt, and I try and try till my strength ebbs away, to atone for that boundless talent man has for harming himself and his fellow men.

JUAN: For these letters? Yes, of course, thank you very much. (Looking at him mistrustfully) But this must be some sort of a trick, Victor? Surely you’re pulling my leg?

KATHIE: With you I fast, in perpetual silence I live, barefoot I walk in the raw mid-winter and wear thick woollen garments in the searing summer heat. With you I till the soil with my own bare hands and with you I give succour and fodder to the rabbits.

SANTIAGO: No, Johnny, I’m not. I promise you.

KATHIE: With you I sing psalms to keep the world from splitting asunder and write eulogies to the wasp, the magnolia, the thistle, the fieldmouse, the laurel, the pollen and the ant.

JUAN: All right, I’m sorry. To tell you the truth, Victor, you’ve really rather thrown me. Well, I never! What a decent chap you are! Pussikins will be grateful to you as well. I’m sure she’d be quite upset if these letters were to go astray, now that she’s a married woman.

KATHIE: For you I’ve renounced the world of the serpent, the tawdry pomp, the anguish and the ulcers, for a life of slavery which to me is freedom, of martyrdom which is happiness, of death which is life.

SANTIAGO: That’s why I brought you them, I was thinking of her.

KATHIE: (Anxious, tense) And do you know why, Victor? Have you sensed it, have you guessed? Do you know?

JUAN: (Confidentially) You’ve taken a great weight off my mind, Victor. I thought you felt bitter about me, I thought you hated me.

KATHIE: Because I love you. Yes, yes, yes, Victor. I love you! I love you! I’ve always loved you! Always, always, always.

SANTIAGO: Why? Because Pussikins married you? What a fantastic notion, Johnny. I felt a bit hurt to begin with but then I got used to the idea. Now I think it was the best thing all round that she should have married you.

KATHIE: (Elated, ecstatic) Yes, what you hear is true. Your Adèle loves you, she has always loved you, and she always will love you. My master, my mentor, my guru, my lord and king. Oh, Victor, Victor.

JUAN: Of course, of course, I always thought so too. You and Pussikins are two very different people, you’d never have got on.

KATHIE: (Sad again) With you, the very air I breathed has vanished, the light from my eyes, the voice from my throat, the fire from my blood.

SANTIAGO: (Turning to an imaginary KATHIE) You didn’t marry me because you thought I was after your money.

KATHIE: (Still addressing the same phantom) I didn’t marry you out of sheer stupidity.

JUAN: (Still to SANTIAGO) Whereas Kathie and I got on famously together.

KATHIE: Because I was a coward and an ignoramus, because I was blind and frivolous.

SANTIAGO: (To the same imaginary KATHIE) How disappointing, Pussikins. I thought you were more of an idealist, more of a dreamer, more intellectually honest, I never thought you were so calculating, I credited you with more openness. You’re not like Adèle Foucher, Adèle!

KATHIE: (Mad with despair) Forgive me! Forgive me!

JUAN: Look, Victor, now that we’ve got things straight, we must see each other again sometime. You must come round to the house and have a meal with us one of these days.

KATHIE: Turn round, come back, there’s still time. Listen to me, answer me! Oh, Victor, come back!

SANTIAGO: (To JUAN) That won’t be possible, Johnny. I’m going on a journey. A very long one. and I don’t think I’ll be coming back to Peru again.

KATHIE: I want to be your servant, your slave, your pet bitch.

JUAN: (To SANTIAGO) That sounds very mysterious.

KATHIE: I want to be your whore, Victor.

SANTIAGO: You’re right. It is, in a way. Look, I’ll tell you. I’m going to Spain. To Burgos. I’m going to join the Trappists.

KATHIE: I’ll go down to the docks and I’ll take off my clothes before the grimiest of sailors. I’ll lick their tattoos, on my knees, if you like. Any little whim, Victor, any fantasy at all. However mad, just give the word. Whatever you command.

JUAN: You’re going to join the what?

KATHIE: You can spit on me, humiliate me, thrash me, lend me to your friends. Just come back, come back.

SANTIAGO: Of course, you don’t know what they are. The Trappists. They’re a religious order. Very old, very strict. A closed order. Yes, in a nutshell, I’m going to become a monk.

KATHIE: Come back even if it’s only to kill me, Victor.

JUAN: (Bursting out laughing) Sure you wouldn’t rather become a bullfighter? I knew you’d try pulling my leg sooner or later. There’s no keeping up with you, Victor.

KATHIE: (Desolate, resigned) But I know you can’t hear me, that you never will hear me. I know your Adèle has lost for ever her reason for living, for dying and coming back to life again.

SANTIAGO: I’m not pulling your leg. I’m going to join the Trappists. I’ve had a calling. But that’s not all. I’m asking you to help me. I’m destitute. The fare to Spain is expensive. I’m asking my friends to help me collect what I need for a third-class fare on the Sea Queen. Could you give me a little hand, Johnny?

KATHIE: (To JUAN) Why are you telling me all this? Why should any of it matter to me?

JUAN: I’m telling you because you’re my wife. Who else am I going to tell if I don’t tell you? Do you think it could be true, all that about the Trappists, or the Trappers, or the Traipsers, or whatever they call themselves?

SANTIAGO: (To KATHIE) What use would your money be to me? How many times have I explained it to you? I don’t want to be rich, I want to be happy. Is your daddy happy? Is Johnny happy? Well, maybe Johnny is, but that’s not because he’s rich but because he’s stupid. With me you would have been happy, you’d have had the most memorable wedding night of all time, Adèle.

JUAN: (To KATHIE) To start with I didn’t believe him, of course. I thought he’d come to touch me for some money, or to tell me some story or other. But now, I don’t know. You should have heard him … He spoke like a priest, all softly and gently. Said he’d had a calling. What do you want me to do with these letters, Pussikins?

SANTIAGO: (To KATHIE) So we won’t be living in Chincheros any more, the little village with the purest air in the mountains. And we won’t be sharing that free, simple life, that healthy, frugal, intimate existence. I’m not reproaching you for it, Pussikins. On the contrary, I’m grateful to you. You’ve been the instrument through which something greater than both you and me has manifested itself and made me see clearly what is expected of me. Thank you for leaving me, Pussikins! Thank you for marrying Juan! In the monastery I’ll always pray for you both to be happy.

(He returns to his place of work.)

JUAN: (To KATHIE) Of course I haven’t read them! (Regrets having lied.) All right, yes, I read them. What romantic letters, Kathie! You were very much in love with Victor, weren’t you? And I never even suspected it. I never suspected you were so romantic either. The things you wrote, Pussikins!

(He smiles and seems to forget about KATHIE. He crouches down, poised, giving the impression that at any moment he might start to surf.)

KATHIE: (Lost in thought) Johnny darling, Johnny darling … What a clown you turned out to be!

SANTIAGO: (Without looking at KATHIE, lost in his own thoughts) Well, with a name like Johnny darling, he doesn’t exactly sound like a very serious man.

KATHIE: (Glancing at SANTIAGO, who remains absorbed in his fantasy world) It would be such a relief if I could talk to you about my disastrous marriage, Mark Griffin.

SANTIAGO: Tell me about it, Kathie. That’s what I’m here for — in this little Parisian attic. It’s part of my job. Well, what were the problems? Did Johnny darling treat you badly?

KATHIE: I didn’t quite realize it then. I do now, though. I felt … let down. One, two, maybe three years had gone by since we’d got married and life had become very tedious. Could this really be what marriage was like — this dull routine? Was this what I’d got married for?

SANTIAGO: What did your husband do?

KATHIE: He used to go to the Waikiki.

SANTIAGO: That surfers’ club, on Miraflores beach?

KATHIE: Every day, winter and summer. It was the main occupation of his life.

JUAN: (Youthful, athletic, carefree, looking towards the horizon) I like it, and why shouldn’t I? I’m young, I want to enjoy life.

KATHIE: (Absorbed in her thoughts) But, Johnny darling, Hawaiian surfing isn’t the only way of enjoying life. Don’t you get tired of being in the sea all day? You’ll soon start growing scales.

JUAN: (Looking straight ahead) I like it more every day. And I’ll keep on doing more of it. Till either I’m dead — or I’m so old I can’t ride waves any more.

(SANTIAGO finally looks at JUAN; it is as if he were creating him with his look.)

SANTIAGO: Did he really devote his life to riding waves? Didn’t he feel ashamed?

(As he surfs, JUAN keeps his balance by paddling with his hands, and by leaning from side to side to steady himself as the waves tug him along tossing him up and down.)

JUAN: Ashamed? Quite the reverse. It makes me feel proud, I like it, it makes me happy. Why should I be ashamed? What’s wrong with surfing? I’ve surfed all over the world — in Miraflores, Hawaii, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa. What’s wrong with that? It’s the most fantastic thing there is! I enter the water slowly, smoothly, gliding along, teasing the waves, outwitting the waves, then suddenly I dive, I slice through them, I cut across them, harnessing them, taming them, on, on I go, further and further, pulled by the undertow right up to the rollers after they’ve broken. I get on to my board, and like a jockey on the starting line, I size them up, getting their measure, calculating, guessing. Which of these little crinkles will grow and grow and become the best wave to ride? That one! That one there! I can hardly wait. It’s thrilling. My muscles tingle! My heart pounds! Pum, pum, pum. There’s not a second to lose, Johnny! I get into position, I wait poised, now, I slap the water, and we’re away, it’s got me, it tows me along, I caught it just at the very moment before it broke, I jump, I stand on the board, I stretch up, crouch, stretch up again, it’s all in the hips now, it’s all balance, experience, stamina, a battle of wits. No, little wave, you won’t knock me over! I’ve ridden waves which could topple a skyscraper, I’ve tunnelled under waves as sheer as cataracts, like gaping caverns, like soaring mountains, I’ve ridden waves which, had I lost my balance, would have smashed me to pieces, torn me limb from limb, pulverized me. I’ve ridden waves through jagged coral reefs, in seas infested with marauding sharks. I’ve nearly been drowned a hundred times, nearly been deafened, paralysed, maimed. I’ve won championships on four continents and if I haven’t won any in Europe it’s because the waves in Europe are lousy for surfing. Why should I be ashamed of myself?

KATHIE: (Still immersed in her dreams) What do you spend all these hours thinking about, sitting there on your surfboard, in the middle of the sea?

JUAN: (Scanning the horizon, the seascape) How large will the next wave be? Will I get on to it? Will I miss it? Will it knock me over? Will it carry me safely to the shore?

SANTIAGO: Do you ever think of anything other than waves?

JUAN: Sometimes, when it’s a flat calm, I think about the last little woman I fancied. The one I met yesterday, or the day before, or even this morning. Will she be easy? Will she be difficult? Will we make love? Will it be the first or the second time of asking? Will I have to work on her, delicately, skilfully? Will it take a long time? When and where will it happen? What will it be like? (Becoming ashamed, like a child interrupted doing something naughty) Sometimes, I get so excited, I have to think of rhombuses, cubes, triangles and parallelograms to calm myself down.

KATHIE: Of course, you even used to make love to the surfboard. I’m not surprised. And when you’re on the top of the wave, flapping your arms about like a ragdoll, what do you think about?

JUAN: Will they be watching me from the terrace of the Waikiki? Will the bathers see me from the swimming pool or the beach? And what about the motorists on the Embankment? Will they be looking? Will they be praising me? Will they be envious?

SANTIAGO: And what do you feel?

JUAN: I feel that I’m growing, that I’m handsome and virile, that I’m a real man. I feel like a god. What’s wrong with that?

KATHIE: Does it make any difference to you if I’m the one who’s watching you, if I’m the one who’s admiring you?

JUAN: It did, before we got married, yes. It doesn’t now, though. It’s funny, but now you’re my wife and it’s your duty to admire me, I only seem to do it for those other women — beautiful women I’ve just got to know, or known for a bit, or haven’t yet met.

SANTIAGO: (Lost in thought) Did it never enter your head it might be a crime to waste your time like this, when there are so many creative, productive things to be done in life?

JUAN: (Fighting the waves) Of course it never entered my head. Nothing quite so daft ever would. Do I do anyone any harm with my surfing? And if I stop, is that going to solve anyone’s problem? Is going to the bank any more creative and productive than a good day’s surfing, or making love to a woman?

KATHIE: (Distressed by her memories) Was this how my married life was going to be? Watching Johnny darling riding waves and being unfaithful to me?

SANTIAGO: (Thoughtfully) The real middle classes were even more bourgeois than the pamphlets made them out to be; we used to hate them on principle or on ideological grounds. I didn’t deceive you there, Anita.

(ANA approaches SANTIAGO, who seems not to see her. KATHIE continues with her reminiscences.)

KATHIE: Going to bed late, getting up late. Are you going to the bank today, Johnny?

JUAN: For a short while, yes, just to keep up appearances. But what do you say to meeting at the Waikiki at around one, OK?

KATHIE: Those damned waves, those damned surfboards, those damned championships, and those damned trips to Hawaii. It was all so excruciatingly boring, staying in hotels with synthetic lawns and plastic palm trees. And having to watch them all, indulge them, fête them, flatter them, compliment them, and then there was the tittle-tattle, whose wife’s sleeping with whose husband, which couples have come together, fallen out, made it up again and finally fallen out for good. Getting ready for drinks, dinner, Hawaiian parties, hen parties, always waiting for the big surprise. Going to the hairdresser, wearing new outfits, having one’s nails manicured. Same thing tomorrow and the day after. Is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of your life, Kathie?

SANTIAGO: (In a brusque, aggressive and sarcastic tone of voice) Stuff and nonsense. I know very well what the real problem is, and so do you, Kathie Kennety. But you’re ashamed to admit it.

KATHIE: (Without seeing him or hearing him) Things will be different when you have children, Kathie. Looking after them, bringing them up, watching them grow, that will give your marriage meaning. Stuff and nonsense! They didn’t change a thing, they didn’t fill the vacuum. Now, instead of going to the Waikiki alone, you go with Alexandra, and sometimes with Alexandra and little Johnny too. Now instead of getting bored alone, you get bored en famille. Is this what marriage is all about? Is this what motherhood is all about? Is this what you dreamt of, yearned for, throughout your schooldays? Just to go through life watching some poor imbecile prancing about between the waves on a piece of balsa wood?

SANTIAGO: Stuff and nonsense! Pure fiction! Shall I tell you the truth of the matter? Kathie Kennety was getting bored because her sublime surf-rider was ignoring her, leaving her alone every night, unattended and uninterfered with. That surfer wasn’t exactly Victor Hugo, was he, Adèle? What with all those waves, he’d completely lost his sexual appetite.

ANA: (To SANTIAGO) Are you speaking from personal experience? When you ran off with that other woman, you hardly touched me for months. You didn’t have any waves to ride, and yet you seemed to lose your sexual appetite too.

SANTIAGO: (Discovering ANA) No, I didn’t. I just didn’t fancy you any more, that’s all. I used to make love every day with Adèle. In fact several times a day. Nine times, on one occasion, like Victor Hugo on his wedding night. Didn’t I, Adèle?

KATHIE: (Transformed into a young and bright little coquette) No, professor, you didn’t. But don’t worry, I won’t give away your little secret. You could never manage it more than twice a day, and with a long break in between. Ha ha ha …

SANTIAGO: (To ANA, furiously) And I’ll tell you something else. The thought of night used to fill me with dread because it meant I’d have to share a bed with you. That was why I left you.

KATHIE: (Becoming herself again, but still lost in her memories) Going to bed … that got boring too, like going to the Waikiki and all those parties.

ANA: (To SANTIAGO) In other words you behaved just like the sort of person you claimed to loathe so vehemently: like a good middle-class man. Didn’t you use to say that it was the most despicable thing in the world? Have you already forgotten what you used to teach me? All those lectures you gave me to make a free, liberated, emancipated woman of me.

(SANTIAGO declaims very seriously, to ANA, who listens to him fascinated. KATHIE, who has now become Adèle, puts on nail varnish and looks at him mockingly from time to time.)

SANTIAGO: It’s not passionate love, but love based on mutual understanding. That’s what our relationship will be, Anita. Passionate love is a sham, a bourgeois swindle, a fraud, an illusion, a trap. A relationship founded solely on sexual attraction, in which everything is justified in the name of pleasure, spontaneity and natural impulse, is bound to be false and ephemeral. Sexual desire isn’t everything nor should it ever be, it isn’t even what fundamentally binds us together. No partnership can possibly last if it’s reliant solely on lust.

(KATHIE, still Adèle, bursts out laughing, but ANA nods, trying to understand.)

KATHIE: (Smiles; returning to being herself) And yet, it was nice to begin with, when we used to hug each other every night and you used to say those naughty things to me, Johnny darling. I used to go quite puce with embarrassment, it made me dizzy, it was lovely. It seemed everything was going to be as I’d always dreamt, that I’d find meaning to life, that I’d be happy and fulfilled.

SANTIAGO: In a relationship based on mutual understanding, sex is just one component amongst many and it isn’t even the most important, either. Such a relationship is founded on a sharing of ideals, a spirit of selflessness, a struggle for common causes, mutual participation in work, and a feeling of moral, spiritual and intellectual empathy.

ANA: (To SANTIAGO) I tried to please you. I did everything you asked me to do so that this special relationship you described could flourish. Well, did I or didn’t I? Didn’t I give up my job in the boutique? Didn’t I take up sociology, as you suggested, instead of interior design which was what I really wanted to do?

JUAN: (From his surfboard) Am I or am I not as good in bed as I am on the surfboard, Kathie? Am I or am I not better than Victor Hugo, Adèle?

KATHIE: You are, Johnny darling. That’s why so many young girls are always throwing themselves into your arms. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, yellowheads. That’s why you’re unfaithful to me in so many different languages and on so many different continents, Johnny darling.

ANA: (To SANTIAGO) Didn’t I try to please you by wearing what you wanted me to wear? I stopped putting on lipstick, nail varnish, and make-up, because you said it was frivolous and bourgeois. And what did I gain by trying to please you? I stopped pleasing you, that’s what.

SANTIAGO: (To KATHIE, all sweetness and flattery) You know, you’ve got very pretty hair, Adèle.

(KATHIE is transformed into Adèle; she seems to coo and croon.)

KATHIE: So that it stays that way — soft, shiny, wavy and bouncy, I give it one of my special treatments twice a week. Shall I tell you what it is, professor? But you mustn’t breathe a word about it to the other girls in the faculty. Promise? You take one egg yolk, an avocado pear and three teaspoonfuls of oil. You put them all in the liquidizer for half a minute, then you daub the paste all over your hair and leave it to dry for three-quarters of an hour. You then wash it with a good shampoo and rinse it. It looks nice, don’t you think?

SANTIAGO: (Entranced) Very nice indeed: soft, shiny, bouncy and wavy. You’ve get pretty hands too, Adèle.

KATHIE: (Looking at them, showing them off) To stop them from getting rough and the skin from getting hard, and so that they look smooth and silky like two little Persian kittens, I’ve got a little secret for them too. Or rather, I’ve got two little secrets. Every morning for ten minutes I give them a good rub with lemon juice and, every night, for another ten minutes with coconut milk. They look nice, don’t they?

SANTIAGO: (Entranced) Yes, as smooth and silky as two little Persian kittens. Whenever I catch a glimpse of them in the lectures, they remind me of two tiny white doves, fluttering across the desks.

KATHIE: Ah, what a poetic little compliment! Do you really like them that much, professor?

SANTIAGO: I like everything about you, your hair, your nose, your eyes … Why do you call me ‘professor’? Why are you always making fun of me?

KATHIE: Well, aren’t you my professor? It’s a question of respect. What would my fellow students say if they heard me call the first-year lecturer in Golden Age Literature, Mark — Mark Griffin?

SANTIAGO: Is that why you address me so formally?

KATHIE: You should always address older people formally.

SANTIAGO: In other words you think I’m ancient.

KATHIE: Not ancient, no. Just an older man. Who’s married, with two little daughters. Do you have a photo of them in your wallet that you can show me?

SANTIAGO: You know you’re very wicked, Adèle?

KATHIE: A lot of people like me for it.

SANTIAGO: Yes. I do, for one. I like you very much. You know that, don’t you?

KATHIE: It’s the first I’d heard of it. And what is it you like most about me?

SANTIAGO: You’re such a flirt.

KATHIE: Do you really think I’m a flirt?

SANTIAGO: The very devil in person.

KATHIE: Now tell me what you don’t like about me.

SANTIAGO: The fact that you refuse to go out with me.

KATHIE: You crafty old thing, professor.

SANTIAGO: Seriously though, Adèle, why won’t you? Bourgeois prejudice? What’s wrong with going to the cinema together, for instance? Or listening to a little music?

KATHIE: All right, I accept. But on one condition.

SANTIAGO: Whatever you want.

KATHIE: That we take your wife and two little girls with us. And now, I’m going off to study. I don’t want you giving me bad marks. If you behave yourself, I’ll let you into another secret some time: I’ll tell you how I keep my teeth sparkling and my eyes shining, how I stop my nails from breaking, and why I never get freckles or a double chin. Ciao, professor.

SANTIAGO: Ciao, Adèle. (To himself) She’s so gorgeous, so delicious, so exciting.

ANA: And I stopped being gorgeous, delicious and exciting because you said it was frivolous and bourgeois.

SANTIAGO: (Pensively) Well, it was. (Discovering ANA) It is, Anita. Am I to blame if it’s the frivolous, bourgeois women that happen to turn me on? Is it my fault if all these free liberated women are so earnest and sober that they leave me absolutely cold, Anita? A leopard can’t change his spots. Moral principle and political persuasion carry no weight at all when it’s a matter of basic human nature.

ANA: But how come? Didn’t you teach me there was no such thing as human nature?

SANTIAGO: (Pontificating) It doesn’t exist. Human nature doesn’t exist, Anita. It’s just another piece of bourgeois trickery to justify the exploitation of the masses, Anita.

ANA: You miserable cheat! You liar!

SANTIAGO: (Magisterial) Man is made of malleable stuff, Anita. Everyone makes of himself what he chooses, Anita! Only thus can one have faith in the progress of humanity, Anita! You really must read Jean-Paul Sartre, Anita!

ANA: You really led me up the garden path, Mark Griffin.

SANTIAGO: (Pensive again) Jean-Paul Sartre really led me up the garden path, Anita.

KATHIE: (Becoming herself again) That’s something you could never do, Johnny darling. I always saw through you straight away.

JUAN: (Still concentrating on the waves) That time you caught me with Maritza, you scratched my face so savagely the mark lasted for two whole weeks.

KATHIE: Every time you were unfaithful to me, I felt as if I’d been branded with a red-hot iron. Lying awake at night, weeping, I thought the world was coming to an end, I used to grind my teeth with the humiliation of it all. I began to lose weight; I started to get bags under my eyes; I made scenes.

JUAN: How they laughed at me at the Waikiki when they saw those scratches!

ANA: If, instead of trying to live up to your anti-bourgeois principles, I’d paid more attention to my mother, you might never have gone off with Adèle.

SANTIAGO: (Pensively) And what advice did that petit-bourgeois social climber from Santa Beatriz give you? Always hobnobbing with the smart set in Orrantia.

KATHIE: (Lecturing ANA, as if she were her small daughter) You’ve got to be quite ruthless with men, Anita. You’ve got to use a bit of cunning. Your husband may be an intellectual or what have you, but what really counts in life is sex. Now I may not know the first thing about intellectuals, but I know quite a lot about sex. If you don’t want to lose him, if you don’t want him to go out with too many other women, keep him in suspense, and don’t ever let him take you for granted.

ANA: And what do I do to keep Santiago in suspense, Mummy?

KATHIE: Keep him on a tight rein then give him his head from time to time. You play the perfect lady by day and the degenerate whore by night. Perfume, music, mirrors, every kind of luxury, the more bizarre and decadent the better: let him drown with joy! But not every day: only when you decide and when it suits you. Keep him on a tight rein. From time to time the whore can turn frigid; for a week or so, the courtesan may wear a veil. And, as a last resort, there’s always jealousy. The sudden exit, the mysterious phone call, ostentatious little whispers to friends at parties, contrariness, sighing. Let him suspect all he likes, let him be consumed with jealousy! It may cost you a knock or two but so what? There’s no such thing as love without the odd blow! Keep him in suspense and you’ll have him all over you morning, noon and night!

ANA: You trusted me blindly and that’s what finished it. But that Adèle, she really put you through the hoop, and you ran after her like a dog, Mark Griffin.

JUAN: Jealousy is fantastic, Pussikins! I only say that for the closeness one feels after it. You know, for all you say, you’re very attractive when you’re jealous. The best love-making we’ve ever had has been after a row. Like in Hawaii, when you caught me with that Eurasian girl on the beach. You were so vicious to her, Kathie. But how exquisite it was afterwards, how exquisite! We made love on the sand, and then in the sea, then on that artificial lawn, remember, and then in the sea again. Wasn’t it fabulous, darling?

KATHIE: Not that fabulous really, no.

JUAN: Well, if you really want to know, Kathie, you’re not that good at it, you’re not exactly what one might call a sexual athlete. In fact you’re quite … uninteresting really. You yawn, you fall asleep, you get embarrassed, you burst out laughing. The trouble is, darling, you don’t take sex seriously! And it’s the most serious thing in the world! It’s like surfing, Kathie!

KATHIE: Some people have happier recollections of my talents, Johnny darling.

(JUAN and ANA disappear.)

SANTIAGO: (In a slightly aggressive, sarcastic tone of voice) The prurient perfume-seller of Cairo, for instance?

KATHIE: What exactly are you trying to say, Mr Mark Griffin?

SANTIAGO: You know very well, you poor menopausal little rich girl, you neurotic millionairess, you pseud, you exploiter of progressive intellectuals. You know very well, Kathie Kennety.

KATHIE: (Without being the slightest bit perturbed) What do I know very well?

SANTIAGO: (With ferocious aggressiveness, as if baring some old wounds and feelings of festering resentment) You don’t go travelling to all these exotic places just to satisfy your aesthetic curiosity and your spiritual hankerings, but so that you can trull around without fear of what people might say. You can go on luxury holidays, full of memorable experiences, exotic perfumes and seductive music; you can indulge in outlandish, elaborate love affairs, at a safe distance from your society friends in Lima. Black men, yellow men, Arabs, Eskimos, Afghans, Hindus! Every cock in the world at your disposal! I wonder, did they charge, like I do, by the hour? How much did the amorous perfume-seller from Cairo charge for putting on his little act, for pretending to lust after you, you depraved woman?

KATHIE: (Who has been listening to him amiably, faintly amused) Aren’t you overstepping the mark, Mr Griffin? Aren’t you infringing the basic laws of common courtesy between an employee and his boss? You’re asking me questions I can’t possibly answer without seeming ill-bred or improper. (SANTIAGO’s anger starts to abate. He sounds demoralized.)

SANTIAGO: No, I haven’t forgotten you’re the boss, you cheap writer of trash, you would-be literata; you can’t even spell properly. I hate you. If you didn’t pay me, I’d merely despise you, I might possibly pity you. Because it must be tedious, mustn’t it, to take trips round the world over land and sea, travelling about from continent to continent, squandering a fortune in the process, and writing books which you don’t actually write at all, and which nobody reads anyway, just so that you can indulge in a bit of casual love-play from time to time. It must be extremely tedious, isn’t it, Kathie Kennety?

(He has positioned himself behind his tape-recorder again and started to dictate, moving his lips in silence. KATHIE looks at him now with wistful admiration. The Parisian music heard at the beginning of the play starts to be heard again in the distance.)

KATHIE: The tedious thing about it is having to shut myself up day and night in this little attic, and deprive myself of all the marvellous things Paris has to offer, which are just there on my doorstep. All I have to do is go through that door and down the hotel staircase. Whereas you, Mark Griffin, you must really appreciate the bright lights of the city when you leave this room. If I didn’t have to work on this book on Black Africa and the Far East, would you let me go with you? I wouldn’t say a word, I’d be no trouble at all. I’d learn so much, going to art galleries, libraries, theatres, concerts, lectures and bistros with you. Of course I’d feel ignorant and small, listening to you converse with all those brilliant friends of yours who’ve read every book and know everything about everything. (SANTIAGO carries on dictating, as is clear from the movement of his lips, but he is obviously enjoying listening to her.) Because that’s your life, Mark Griffin, apart from the two short hours you spend here, isn’t that so? Sauntering along the banks of the Seine, browsing in second-hand bookstalls, going to every concert, ballet and opera, attending symposia at the Collège de France, keeping up with the latest foreign films and never missing a private view. How wonderful it must be to sit up all night discussing philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre, feminism with Simone de Beauvoir, anthropology with Lévi-Strauss, theatre with Jean-Louis Barrault, and fashion with Pierre Cardin! I’d listen to them, fascinated, awestruck at such intellectual wizardry. How marvellous your life must be, Mark! How rich and full! Whereas mine, incarcerated here in this attic, seems so petty and insignificant by comparison. But our two hours are nearly up. Let’s carry on. Let’s return to Cairo, to the ancient city, to that little street with the perfume shop …

(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 …

KATHIE: It was pitch dark. You couldn’t see a thing. But I realized by the noises they were making that it was a ferocious struggle.

SANTIAGO: (More and more enthusiastically) Prehistoric, massive and lumbering with their enormous heads, their huge bulbous bodies and their ridiculously small feet, I can just make them out through the thick dark shadows, fiercely biting each other on the flank.

KATHIE: The female waited skittishly, all of a twitter, as she coyly watched to see which of the males was going to win her.

SANTIAGO: Meanwhile, the coveted prize — she, who had provoked such pachidermal hatred and lust — the hippopotama — moves about, swinging her hips, aroused by the spectacle, as she waits eagerly to see who will win the combat. Will the victor have the right to … possess her? Attack her? Penetrate her?

KATHIE: Attack her is best. A German, or a Dutchman or someone, who was staying at Murchison Falls, an academic or a scientist, something like that, said the hippopotamus was a very strange animal.

SANTIAGO: (In a strong German accent) This primitive roughskinned wrinkly creature which you see before you, Frau Katharina, the hippopotamus, has such a delicate throat that it can only swallow little birds, flies, bumblebees and flutterbies who, mistaking it for a tree trunk, settle on it. But it’s an animal with an unquenchable sexual appetite, a lustful beast with a seismic potency. It’s not unusual after her first encounter for a hippopotama to be completely put off the idea of sex, rather like Adèle Foucher for instance, since even the most effete of hippopotami easily outdo the record established for the human species by Victor Hugo whose nine performances on his wedding night … (Resuming his normal voice, carrying on dictating) The Prussian zoologist was quite right: for the whole of the rest of the night we heard the hoofed victor and the contented hippopotama copulating with such a deafening report that it drowned the noise of the cataracts.

KATHIE: (Laughing) That bit about ‘copulating with such a deafening report’, I wonder what my children will say to that?

(ANA and JUAN, who have now become KATHIE’s children, rush towards her.)

JUAN: What exactly are you writing, Mama? A travel book about Black Africa and the Far East, or a pornographic novel?

ANA: Do you want everyone to laugh at us?

(SANTIAGO stops dictating.)

SANTIAGO: Have your children got many hang-ups?

KATHIE: Yes, I suppose they have. At any rate they appear to in front of me. I wonder what they’re like when they’re alone. Or with their friends, or with their lovers? I wonder if my children have lovers.

JUAN: We’ve got a surprise for you, Mama, which you’re going to love.

SANTIAGO: You don’t talk much about your family, you know.

ANA: Can’t you guess what it is, Mama? The tickets! For your tour of Black Africa and the Far East!

KATHIE: This is a travel book, not an autobiography, that’s why I don’t mention them.

JUAN: Forty-two countries, and over eighty cities.

ANA: Every race, religion, language and landscape under the sun. You’ll hardly have time to turn round, Mama.

SANTIAGO: Did it take a lot to persuade them to let you go on such a long trip?

KATHIE: It didn’t take anything at all, quite the reverse in fact. (Turns towards her children.) Of course I’ll have time to turn round. Why were you in such a hurry to buy the tickets? I haven’t even decided if I’m going yet.

JUAN: Because you’re dying to go — you just needed a little push. So we gave you one.

ANA: You’re going to learn so much, Mama. All those different countries, all those exciting foreign places. All that experience and think of all the adventures you’ll have. You’ll be able to use them in your book.

JUAN: Of course, you’ll be travelling first class and staying in five-star hotels, and you’ll have a private car and personal guide on every excursion.

ANA: You deserve it, Mama!

KATHIE: (Mocking) Aren’t you going to miss me?

JUAN: Of course we are. We’re doing all this for you, so you can enjoy yourself, so you can write that book you’ve had on your mind for so long.

ANA: Aren’t you always telling us how fed up you are with life in Lima, with its constant round of tea parties, luncheon parties, and weddings all over the place? That you never have any time for the really serious things in life what with all the social razzmatazz? Well, there you are then, for eight months of the year you can concentrate entirely on getting a bit of culture.

JUAN: You’ll be travelling on a diplomatic passport, so you won’t have any difficulties with the customs.

KATHIE: What wonderful children I’ve got; you’re both so good and kind. (Changing her tone of voice) You’re just a couple of cynics, aren’t you? You’re glad to be getting rid of me.

JUAN: But how can you talk such utter nonsense, Mama? It’s pointless even trying to make you happy. You’re impossible. And we thought you’d be so thrilled with these tickets, we wanted to give you the time of your life.

ANA: You twist everything round so. Why should we want to get rid of you?

KATHIE: (Rubbing her thumb and forefinger together) Money, my little love, money. Who’s going to be in charge of my affairs while I’m away? I’d have to give you carte blanche so you could do anything you wanted. Now wouldn’t I?

JUAN: Of course you wouldn’t. Honestly, you’ve got such a suspicious mind! I suppose this had to come up sooner or later.

KATHIE: Because you’re brassed off with me poking my nose into everything, questioning everything. Do you think I don’t know how it irritates you to have to get my permission for the least little thing?

ANA: It was unfortunate Johnny came up with that suggestion about the power of attorney …

KATHIE: Which would entitle you to share out everything I possess before I’m even dead.

JUAN: No, no, no. It was to save you any unnecessary worries, Mama, to save you spending your time in lawyers’ offices, with boards of directors, in banks, and so on.

ANA: You’re so paranoid, it’s beyond belief, Mama!

KATHIE: I may be paranoid, but I’m not signing that power of attorney — I’m not dead just yet and I don’t want to feel as if I am. You haven’t managed to get your own way, so now you’re sending me off round the world instead …

ANA: That’s not fair, Mama!

JUAN: You were the one who wanted to go on this trip, we’d never even have thought of it.

ANA: (To JUAN) She’s so ungrateful, it’s incredible. Take back the tickets, Juancito. I wouldn’t go to any more trouble on her account, if I were you.

KATHIE: The only trouble you went to was buying them, dear, and in case you’ve forgotten, I was the one who paid for them in the first place.

JUAN: All right, all right. Don’t let’s quarrel about it. We’ll take back the tickets and there’s an end to it.

KATHIE: No, don’t. I’ve decided to go, and I’m going to write my book after all. But don’t get too excited, I’m not going to get myself eaten by a tiger or squashed by an elephant, I’ll be coming back all in one piece, to find out exactly what you’ve been up to with my money — my money, don’t forget — while I’ve been away.

(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.

SANTIAGO: Ah, I’d understood that … But what about that gentleman I pass in the doorway of the street, or on the stairs, the one who we see in the newspapers, isn’t he your husband? I’m sorry, I didn’t know.

KATHIE: There’s no reason why you should. Or for you to be sorry either. Aren’t there thousands, millions of women in the world who have been widowed? There’s nothing unusual about that.

SANTIAGO: Of course there isn’t. It’s as commonplace and natural as it is for a marriage to break up. (Looks at ANA.) Aren’t there thousands, millions of women in the world who are separated from their husbands? They don’t all make a Greek tragedy out of it though.

KATHIE: I’m not keen on Greek tragedy. But it turned into one in this case because Johnny darling didn’t die of natural causes. Actually … he killed himself.

(SANTIAGO appears not to hear her, concentrating as he is on ANA who has burst out laughing again.)

SANTIAGO: Why are you laughing? Out of spite? Jealousy, is it? Envy? Or just plain stupidity?

ANA: Curiosity, professor.

SANTIAGO: Oh, go and do the cooking, clean the house, look after your daughters, do those things a woman’s supposed to do in life for a change.

ANA: First, just clear up one little point for me. I’m dying to know why that pupil of yours, Adèle, left you. Ha ha ha …

(African tom-tom music bursts out suddenly, as if willed by SANTIAGO to escape a painful memory. He quickly takes hold of the tape-recorder; he is quite stunned.)

SANTIAGO: I’ve no time now, I’m very busy, the two hours are nearly up. Go away. (Dictating) And finally, after travelling for countless hours in the stifling heat and sweat through lush vegetation burgeoning with bamboo, ebony and breadfruit, the rickety old bus jolts to a halt in a small village between Moshe and Mombasa.

KATHIE: Then, there in a little hut we saw something quite, quite unbelievable.

SANTIAGO: (Dictating) Then we witness a spectacle so unimaginable that it makes our blood run cold.

KATHIE: Some little boys, completely bare, their bellies bulging out in front of them, were eating pieces of earth, as if they were sweets.

SANTIAGO: Some naked children, their stomachs swollen by parasites, were satiating their hunger with some pieces of suspiciously white-looking meat. What am I seeing? Can I believe my eyes? Petrified, I realize what these ravenous little creatures are devouring: one of them is eating a little hand, another a foot, that one over there, a shoulder, which they’ve torn from the carcass of another child.

KATHIE: (Disconcerted) Do you mean they were cannibals? (SANTIAGO stops dictating, discouraged by ANA’s sardonic look.)

SANTIAGO: It gives it more of a sense of drama. It’s more original, more shocking. A few children eating earth isn’t going to surprise anyone, Kathie. It’s something that happens here in Peru as well.

KATHIE: (Astonished) Here in Peru? Are you sure?

SANTIAGO: Peru isn’t Lima, Kathie. And Lima isn’t San Isidro. Here in this district you won’t see it, but in certain less well-off areas and in a lot of places up in the mountains, what you saw in that African village is really quite common. You’ve been round the world twice, or three times, is it? Yet you give me the impression that you don’t really know your own country properly.

KATHIE: I went to Cuzco once, with Johnny. The altitude made me feel awful. You’re right, you know. Here in Peru we know more about what goes on abroad than we do about our own country. We’re really such snobs!

ANA: (Killing herself with laughter) Yes, we are, aren’t we …? Particularly if we happen to be multi-millionaires.

(SANTIAGO resigned, abandons the tape-recorder and looks at ANA.)

SANTIAGO: All right have it your own way, you spoilsport!

ANA: How ridiculous you are, Mark Griffin! You leave your wife, and your daughters, you run off with some stupid little Lolita of a girl, you make yourself the laughing stock of the entire university. And all for what? The vamp abandons you after a few weeks and you come limping home to say you’re sorry with your tail between your legs. (Very sarcastically) Might one be allowed to know why Adèle left you, Victor Hugo?

KATHIE: (Changed into an irate Adèle, to SANTIAGO) Because I’m young, my life’s just beginning, I want to enjoy myself. Why should I live like a nun? If I had the vocation, I’d have gone into a convent. Do you understand?

SANTIAGO: (Contrite, intimidated) Of course I do, my little Persian kitten. But don’t exaggerate, it’s not that important.

KATHIE: You know very well I’m not exaggerating. You spend the whole day telling me how desperately in love with me you are, but when it comes to the point, when it come to the actual love-making, pssst … you’re just like a pricked balloon.

SANTIAGO: (Trying to make her speak more quietly, to calm her, so that no one hears) You really must try to be a little more understanding, my little Persian kitten.

KATHIE: (Getting more and more annoyed) You’re nothing but a fake, Mark. You’re all façade, a hippopotamus who looks quite terrifying but who only eats little birds.

SANTIAGO: (Terribly uncomfortable) I have a lot of worries, my little Persian kitten, that wretched Ana — she’s constantly scheming behind my back, it nearly drives me up the wall. And then there’s those lectures I’m giving at the moment on the Spanish mystics, their theories and sermons on asceticism, they really have quite a special effect on the psyche, you know, they anaesthetize the libido. Shall I explain to you what the libido is? It’s very interesting, as you’ll see. A gentleman called Freud …

KATHIE: I don’t give a damn about the psyche or the libido. It’s all a lot of excuses, a pack of lies, a load of rubbish. The truth is you’re weak, spineless, cowardly and, and …

ANA: Impotent, is that the word?

KATHIE: That’s it, that’s it, impotent. That’s exactly what you are, Mark Griffin: you’re impotent!

SANTIAGO: (Who doesn’t know which way to turn) Don’t say that word, Adèle. And don’t talk so loud, the neighbours will hear us, how embarrassing. During the holidays, when the pressure is off, you’ll see how …

(ANA listens to them; she’s killing herself with laughter.)

KATHIE: Do you think I’m going to wait till the summer before we next make love?

SANTIAGO: But we made love only the other night, after that film, my angel.

KATHIE: That was three weeks ago! No! A month! Do you think I’m going to saddle myself with some feeble old fuddy-duddy, who can only manage it once a month after seeing a pornographic film? Do you really think so?

SANTIAGO: (Wanting to disappear from sight) Passionate love, based on animal copulation, isn’t everything life has to offer, my little Persian kitten. Nor is it even advisable. On the contrary, it’s ephemeral, a castle made of sand which falls down at the first gust of wind. A loving relationship, on the other hand, based on mutual understanding, on a striving for common goals, ideals …

KATHIE: All right then, go and look for some other idiot who you can share your loving relationship with. What appeals to me is the other sort. What’s it called again? Passionate love? The dirty sort, the animal sort, that’s the one that interests me. Ciao, professor. I don’t want to see you again, ever. Ciao, Victor Hugo!

(She goes to applaud JUAN, who is showing off his prowess on the surfboard in rough waters.)

SANTIAGO: (Dejected, crushed, to ANA, who looks at him sympathetically) You made a mountain out of a mole hill. You never had a sense of proportion, or balance between cause and effect. You can’t kick someone when he’s down.

ANA: No doubt another of my middle-class failings?

SANTIAGO: All marriages go through crises. The sensible thing to do is to split up without making a fuss. And make it up again later. But you had to turn the whole thing into a Greek tragedy.

ANA: It’s all that education you gave me. That’s probably the trouble. Weren’t you the one who ‘rescued’ me from the middle classes? Didn’t you teach me to view everything not from an individual standpoint but from a moral, social, revolutionary one? Right, when judged on that criterion you behaved abominably. (Approaches him lovingly.) But these are your problems, not mine. I let you go, I let you come back. We separated and we made it up again when you wanted to. I put up with you telling me all about the psyche and the libido, and your theory of love based on mutual co-operation, and the fact that you only made love to me once in a blue moon. But it really isn’t my fault if you happen to like Greek tragedy, Mark Griffin.

(SANTIAGO leans against her and ANA strokes his head, as if he were a little boy.)

SANTIAGO: It’s true, I’m an incorrigible romantic, but wouldn’t it be nice for once in one’s life to play the lead in a Greek tragedy?

(They both look at JUAN, who has finished surfing and is now strutting about like a peacock: an imaginary crowd of people congratulate him and pat him on the back. He exhibits the cup he’s won at the surfing championship. He looks happy and a little intoxicated.)

JUAN: (To KATHIE) Why didn’t you come to the party they gave for me, darling? You’re never there when I need you. Everyone was asking for you and I didn’t know what to say to them. Why didn’t you come? It was in honour of the cup-winner, Kathie! And that cup-winner happens to be your husband! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

KATHIE: Absolutely nothing, Johnny darling. I’m fed up to the back teeth with your championships, your surfing and your celebrations. That’s why I didn’t go to the party and that’s why I’ll never go to anything to do with surfing again. Because I’ve never seen quite so much idiocy or quite so many idiots as I have among surfers.

JUAN: I know what the matter with you is. You’re envious.

KATHIE: Of you?

JUAN: Yes, of me. Because I go in for championships and I win them. Because I’m lionized and photographed, and parties are given in my honour. Not only in Peru, but in Hawaii, Sydney and South Africa as well. Oh yes, you’re envious all right. Because you’re a famous little nobody, whose only claim to fame is the fact that you’re my wife. That’s why you knock surfing the whole time. Pure envy.

KATHIE: (Laughing) I quite understand why you think I’m envious of you, Johnny darling.

JUAN: And you’re jealous too. Don’t try and deny it! You’re desperately jealous of all the young girls who are constantly coming up to me. Because there are dozens of them, hundreds of them in Lima, Hawaii, Australia and in South Africa — all feeding out of my hand.

KATHIE: It’s quite true. They’re bowled over just because some halfwit can keep his balance on a surfboard …

JUAN: And there you are — eating your heart out. The only reason you didn’t go to my party was so that you wouldn’t have to see all the pretty girls that were there, flirting with me. Because they’re young and you’re getting old. Because they’re pretty and you’re getting ugly. Because you’re eating your heart out with jealousy.

KATHIE: Not any more. I ate my heart out to begin with. Those first few months, those first few years.

JUAN: You still do. Every time a girl takes my fancy, your face becomes all contorted, and your voice starts to quaver. Do you think I don’t notice?

KATHIE: (Lost in her memories, not hearing him) I couldn’t believe it. Every time I found you out, I nearly died. Were you with Adelita? Yes, you were. Were you with Julie? Yes, you were. With Jessie? Yes, with Jessie. With my closest friends, with my worst enemies. I felt humiliated, hurt, knocked sideways. It is true, I was eating my heart out with jealousy. I felt the world was coming to an end, I was the most helpless creature on earth. How could you go around making love here, there and everywhere while at the same time telling me you loved me?

JUAN: (A little confused, trying to call a truce) And what on earth’s that got to do with it? Love is one thing, making love another. Of course I loved you. Don’t I still? Even though you didn’t come to my party. You let me down, silly. That’s all. But all this business about making love, I’ve already explained it to you: it doesn’t mean anything. It really doesn’t count. I take all these girls to bed with me and pssht, I forget about them. Like going out for a drink, or changing my shirt. It’s a physical necessity. To keep the old dicky bird happy. I don’t put my heart into it, silly. That’s reserved for you. It’s like when you were my girlfriend, remember? ‘I can’t go out with you tonight, because I’m going out with a floosie.’ I ask you: Whoever heard of a girl getting jealous just because her boyfriend goes out with a floosie? Well, it’s the same thing, don’t you understand?

KATHIE: I understand perfectly. That’s why I’m not jealous any more. It wasn’t out of jealousy I didn’t go to your party.

JUAN: (Conciliatory) All right, I said that because I was in a temper. I’m over it now. I’ll let you off this time. But just this once, mind. Don’t ever play such a dirty trick on me again. (Smiling) Now whisper in my ear, so that no one can hear you, do I or do I not drive you wild with jealousy?

KATHIE: You never drive me wild with jealousy now, Johnny darling.

JUAN: (Playing, and making a great show of affection) Tell me I do, that I drive you wild, go on, I like it. Does your little husband drive you wild with jealousy?

KATHIE: One gets jealous when one’s in love. I stopped loving you some time ago now, Johnny darling.

JUAN: Are you being serious?

KATHIE: When I began to realize what a nonentity, what a fool you were …

JUAN: Have you any idea what you’re saying?

KATHIE: … when I saw how empty your life was, and what a mess you’d made of mine. It was then I stopped being jealous.

JUAN: So you want an argument, do you? You desert me when I most need you and then you give yourself the luxury of insulting me into the bargain.

KATHIE: It was when I started to despise you — then, my jealousy began to disappear. There’s not a trace of it left now. So you can give your heart as well as your dick to all the pretty girls you want, Johnny darling.

JUAN: Ah, it must really have hurt you, what I said. I was ready to make it up with you, silly. We’d better talk about something else, I’m sick and tired of hearing the same insults over and over again. You’re like a long-playing record.

KATHIE: No, let’s carry on talking about jealousy. After all, you started it. How many times have you been unfaithful to me? How many pretty girls have there been?

JUAN: (Furious again) More than you might think.

KATHIE: Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? It can’t be much more than that. (Calculating) Let’s see now, we’ve been married ten years — a hundred would make about ten a year, practically one a month. You’re right, it could be more. How about a hundred and fifty? Two hundred?

JUAN: I had all the women I bloody well wanted.

KATHIE: You’ve lost count. But I haven’t, Johnny darling. I know exactly how many times I’ve been unfaithful to you.

JUAN: Don’t play games like that, Kathie.

KATHIE: Eight, to be precise. There were even a few surfers amongst them, just imagine. And the odd champion, I think.

JUAN: You’re not to make jokes like that, Kathie. I won’t have it.

KATHIE: There was Bepo Torres, in the summer of ’57, on Kon Tiki beach. In Bepo’s little bungalow, next to the lighthouse. His wife had taken her mother to the States, for a facelift, remember?

(Only now does JUAN appear to start believing her.)

JUAN: Are you being serious? Are you telling the truth?

KATHIE: And then there was Ken, the Australian, the first time we went to Sydney. Nineteen fifty-eight, wasn’t it? The one you admired so much, the one who used to get right down into the tunnel of the wave. You were having an affair with that friend of his, Sheila, weren’t you? Well, I had one with him, Johnny darling.

(His consternation becomes anger, his incredulity fear.)

JUAN: Do you want me to smash your face in? Do you want me to kill you? What are you trying to do?

KATHIE: Then there was Kike Ricketts, the one who was mad about cars. In 1960, in Hawaii, there was your friend Rivarola, who used to go skin-diving. The following year, in South Africa, there was that German we met on safari, the one who took us to the ostrich farm in Wildemes. Hans, whatever his name was, remember? And then last year, there was Sapito Saldívar.

(He puts his hand over her mouth. He seems about to strangle her.)

JUAN: Are you telling me the truth, you bitch?

KATHIE: (Offering no resistance) Don’t you want to know who the other two are?

(He hesitates, releases her. He is sweaty, panting and exhausted.)

JUAN: Yes.

KATHIE: Harry Santana. And … Abel.

JUAN: (Nearly out of his mind) Abel?

KATHIE: Your brother Abel. He’s the one that hurts most, isn’t he? That makes eight. (Looks at him hard.) Who’s jealous now?

(JUAN is completely destroyed. He looks at KATHIE, stupefied.)

JUAN: Things can’t go on like this, you’ll pay for this, you’ll be sorry. And those swine are going to be even more sorry still. No, this won’t do, it just won’t do.

(He sobs. He buries his face in his hands as he weeps. KATHIE looks on indifferently.)

Why did you do this to me?

KATHIE: (Deeply depressed) To get my own back for all those pretty girls you took to bed with you under my very nose. Because I was bored, I wanted somehow to fill the emptiness in my life. And also because I was hoping to find someone worth while, someone I could fall in love with, who could add colour to my life …

JUAN: You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to blow your brains out.

KATHIE: You don’t have to do that, Johnny darling. It’s a bit extreme. One bullet in the heart will do the trick, provided you shoot straight. I probably told you all this for that very reason. I’m sick of myself too.

JUAN: And your children? What about them?

KATHIE: Yes, I’m sick of them as well. They didn’t change anything. And I’m not even interested in watching them grow up, in waiting to see what they’re going to do in life. I know perfectly well already. They’re going to turn into idiots, like you and me.

JUAN: You’ve got no feelings at all; you really are a monster.

KATHIE: I wasn’t when I married you, Johnny darling. You see, I wasn’t just a pretty girl. I was restless, and curious too. I wasn’t just rich, I also wanted to learn, to improve myself, to do things in life. Admittedly I was rather ignorant and frivolous. But I still had time to change. You put paid to that, though. Living with you made me become like you. (Turns towards SANTIAGO.) I should have met you when I was young, Mark.

(Throughout the following scene, JUAN gradually gets drunk.)

SANTIAGO: Can you imagine what I was like as a young man, Kathie?

KATHIE: As clearly as if I were seeing it now.

SANTIAGO: (In eager anticipation) What was I like, Kathie? Tell me, please.

KATHIE: You were born in the dirty, disorderly world of the suburbs, you were an orphan and you went to a state school. You eked out a living by working as a shoeshine boy, minding cars, selling lottery tickets and newspapers.

ANA: (Stroking his head sympathethically) In fact you went to the Salesian Fathers. Your parents weren’t poor, they just weren’t very well off. Yet you didn’t get a job till you were twenty.

KATHIE: You didn’t go to the Catholic University, you didn’t have the money, and besides, you were an atheist. So you went to the National one, to San Marcos. You were a brilliant student from the very first day. Always the first to arrive at the faculty and the last to leave. How many hours did you spend in the libraries, Mark?

SANTIAGO: A great many, a great many.

ANA: And how many playing pool in the bars on Azángaro Street? Did you ever get to the lectures on philosophy? Or Ancient History? Because you were a terrible lazybones, Mark Griffin.

KATHIE: How many books a week did Victor Hugo read? Two, three, sometimes one a day.

ANA: But you never really did much work; you’d neither the patience nor the perseverance. Did you understand Heidegger? Did you ever get round to translating a single line of Latin verse? Did you learn a foreign language?

KATHIE: As you were poor, you couldn’t afford the luxuries the boys from Miraflores or San Isidro had: you’d no car, you couldn’t buy yourself clothes, or become a member of the Waikiki, or go surfing, or even let your hair down on Saturdays.

ANA: And what about those beer-drinking sessions at the Patio or the Bar Palermo. Didn’t that count as letting your hair down? And those visits to Señora Nanette’s brothel on the Avenida Grau, which preyed so relentlessly on your socialist conscience?

KATHIE: But what did the gay social whirl of Miraflores, or the petty snobberies of San Isidro matter to Victor Hugo? His days and nights were devoted to deeper, higher things: assimilating the ideas of the great so as later to achieve greatness himself.

ANA: Why then did you abandon your studies? Why did you cheat in the exams? Why didn’t you do the work? Why did you miss lectures?

KATHIE: What did you care about the feats of a few surfers on the Pacific Ocean? For you, all that existed was the spirit, culture and the revolution. For you also devoted your life to stamping out social injustice, didn’t you, Karl Marx?

SANTIAGO: (Entranced) It’s true. Those Marxist study groups …

ANA: … which bored the pants off you. Did you understand Das Kapital? Did you ever read Das Kapital? Did you finish The Dialectic on Nature? And what was the name of that other book — the one with the unpronounceable title? Materialism and Empirio something or rather?

Empirioclassicism? Empiriocriticism? Empiriocretinism? Oh, how absurd.

SANTIAGO: (With a melancholy smile) And then there were the Party militants — there weren’t many of us, but we were real diehards.

KATHIE: The militants, yes, of course. Teaching the poor to read, forming charities, distributing alms, organizing bazaars, strikes, revolutions, planting bombs.

ANA: You mean gossiping ad nauseam in university corridors, or seedy little cafés in the centre of town. Accusing Maoists of being Trotskyites, Leninists of being Stalinists, socialists of being revisionists, and anyone who didn’t agree with you of being Fascists, Nazis or secret police.

KATHIE: (Exultant) This was life, Victor Hugo! This was youth, Karl Marx! Culture, politics, books, charities, prisons, revolutions, executions. Never a dull moment! You didn’t feel empty for a single second, did you?

SANTIAGO: I’d no time for that, Kathie.

KATHIE: (Taking him by the hand) And all those girlfriends you had …

SANTIAGO: ‘Girlfriend’ is a petit-bourgeois expression. It’s quite inappropriate. Those of us in the Party involved in the struggle call them comrades.

KATHIE: (Eager, hopeful) And your comrades, who followed you, copied your manuscripts for you, brought you meals in prison, supported you and co-operated with you, simply because they were your comrades — they too became affected and enriched by that wonderfully varied life you led, did they not?

ANA: (Still affectionate and sympathetic) No, they didn’t. Well, they didn’t, did they, Mark Griffin?

KATHIE: When you lead such a life when you’re young, you go on to do great things.

(A doubt crosses her mind. She looks at SANTIAGO suddenly, disconcerted.)

And yet …

ANA: And yet, Mr Mark Griffin, Mr Victor Hugo, Mr Karl Marx, you still haven’t done any of those great things. Why not?

SANTIAGO: (Distressed) Why, after all that preparation for doing great things …

ANA: … you only succeeded in doing paltry little things …

SANTIAGO: What happened to all those books you were going to write?

ANA: What happened to those political parties you were going to join?

SANTIAGO: What happened to all those strikes you were going to organize, those revolutions you were going to mastermind and incite?

ANA: What happened to those women you were always dreaming about, those affairs you were going to have, that life of luxury you were going to lead?

SANTIAGO: What happened to those intellectual, social and sexual tours de force you were going to bring off?

KATHIE: What happened, Victor Hugo?

ANA: What happened, Karl Marx?

KATHIE: What happened, Mark Griffin?

(SANTIAGO looks to right and left, searching desperately to find an answer.)

SANTIAGO: I married the wrong woman. She was no help to me, she never understood me. She dragged me down by her ignorance, pettiness and stupidity. That’s what happened! I married a miserable idiot who thwarted me, ruined me, and finally emasculated me.

KATHIE: (Radiantly, embracing him) I knew it. I knew it. So it happened to you as well. We’re so alike, we’ve so much in common. Neither of us knew how to choose. Our lives would have been so different, if we hadn’t married the way we did. But isn’t it wonderful we know each other, that we’ve so much in common, Mark?

SANTIAGO: (Embracing her as well) You’re the comrade I should have had. You’d have understood me, you’d have been my stimulus, my strength, and my spur. I needed someone to believe in me, someone to be my bulwark against apathy and despair, someone to …

(A little laugh from ANA forces SANTIAGO to look at her.) And I didn’t just make a mistake the first time! I made one the second time too. Adèle was no help to me either, she demanded things I didn’t have, or couldn’t give. She upset all my values, caused havoc in my life, she humiliated me …

ANA: (Pulling a face at him) Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

SANTIAGO: That’s what happened. My wife administered the poison, and my lover delivered the coup de grâce.

KATHIE: That’s exactly what happened to me with Bepo, Ken, Kike, Rivarola, Hans, Sapito Saldívar, Harry and Abel. We didn’t choose our lovers very well either, did we! None of them understood us, none of them stimulated us, inspired us or spurred us on. All they did was thwart us, ruin us and emasculate us.

SANTIAGO: (Looking into her eyes, full of excitement) Ah, isn’t it wonderful we know each other, that we’ve so much in common, Kathie?

KATHIE: Then you’ll rescue me from the skating rink, the barbecues and the parties, you’ll deliver me from that infernal surfing.

SANTIAGO: With me, you’ll read books, you’ll see every exhibition, and attend every concert.

KATHIE: I’ll bring food to you in prison, I’ll copy out your manuscripts — for you, I’ll learn to plant bombs, to kill.

SANTIAGO: We’ll criticize novels, poetry and drama. You’ll be my strength, my inspiration, the antidote to all my doubts. I’ll read you whatever I write and you’ll give me ideas, words and subjects for theses.

ANA: And who’ll wash the dishes, scrub the floors and change the nappies? Who’ll do the cooking?

KATHIE: Together we’ll learn Chinese, Greek, and German …

SANTIAGO: … Russian, Japanese.

ANA: And will your cock crow every two months? Three months? Six months?

KATHIE: A life of love and art …

SANTIAGO: Revolution, and ecstasy.

KATHIE: Ah! Ah!

SANTIAGO: And when I hold you in my arms naked, we’ll be like emperors in paradise.

ANA: Isn’t that one of Victor Hugo’s expressions?

KATHIE: I love you, I love you. Oh Mark, say you love me too.

SANTIAGO: I do, I do. And tonight my cock will crow nine times, Adèle.

(He kisses her passionately. ANA laughs, but her laugh is stifled by the voice of JUAN, who is going back home, drunk as a lord, with a pistol in his hand.)

JUAN: I’ll kill all nine of them. First the eight samurai, then you. Then myself. Christ Almighty! Things can’t go on like this. (Catches sight of his reflection.) What are you looking at, you cuckold? Cuckold, cuckold, cuckold. Because that’s what you are, Johnny darling! A bloody great cuckold with horns like a billy-goat. A cuckold! (His voice breaks off into a sob.) How can I go on living? What have I ever done to you to make you behave like this, you bitch? Was it because I was a surfer? Did it exasperate you that much? And yet you have the nerve to call me a fool. Do I do anyone any harm with my surfing? What’s wrong with liking the sport? Or is it preferable to get plastered, or to smoke pot, or give oneself a fix? I’m a pretty wholesome guy in case you hadn’t realized. You think I’m a drunk? I drink just enough to have a good time. You think I’m a junkie? Well, I’m not. I smoke the odd fag. I roll myself a joint at times to give myself a lift. But you’d rather I was a drunk, or a drug addict or even a queer — anything but a surfer, wouldn’t you, you bitch? You were envious of me, you couldn’t stand the success I had, in Lima, Hawaii, South Africa, Australia. Yes, you bitch! I was riding waves nine feet, twelve feet, twenty feet high, while you were busy having it off behind my back. So you even did it with Abel. You thought I’d be really cut up about that, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong, he’s the one I’m least worried about, because at least with him it stays in the family. I’d have had his wife years ago if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t, because she’s got hair under her arms and I can’t stand women who don’t shave under their arms — ugh, they make me throw up! Things can’t go on like this! Dear, oh dear. (His voice breaks into another sob, as he gradually becomes more and more fuddled.) You’ll never be able to look people in the face again, Johnny darling. How are you going to walk down the street, you great cuckold, with those enormous antlers crashing into the walls and knocking people over? The weight of them will drag you to the bottom of the ocean. You can win all the championships you like now, Johnny, you can ride the most treacherous waves. But what good will it do? You’re a marked man. And you’ll never live this down till the day you die, even after you’re dead, people will still be talking about it. Johnny. Johnny? Which Johnny do you mean? Ah yes, him. The one whose wife was always deceiving him. It’s worse than original sin, worse than cancer. I’d sooner go blind, catch leprosy, or syphilis. I’d sooner burn in hell. Eight times, Johnny! What a whore! What a whore! (Sobs.) What if she lied to you? What if it’s all a story, just to make your life a misery? She hates you, Johnny, she hates you. And do you know why? Because she’s got no charm, whereas you’re simpático, you’re a real darling, you’re everybody’s favourite, and women go crazy about you. Why do you hate me so much, you whore? Is it because I didn’t spend my life in the bank, like my old man and Abel? What on earth for? Just to make more money? What do I need more money for? I prefer to make the most of life, while it lasts. If people want to work, let them. Let them go on coining it in, wearing themselves out. When the old man dies, I’ll blow every last cent he leaves me. Just like that — in next to no time. Do you want me to waste my life, slogging my guts out so I can die a millionaire? And leave a fortune to my children — when they aren’t even my children anyway? (Sobs.) Or are you going to try and tell me they are now, you whore! How could you, how could you! What a daft, what an idiotic thing to do — sleeping around like that just because you’re jealous of my prick. None of those women ever meant anything to me, anyone would have seen that except you. I just did it to pass the time of day, I often did it out of politeness, out of consideration, I didn’t want to appear rude or ungracious. You ought to feel proud of me not jealous, you bitch.

(He’s come to the end, tottering to where KATHIE is standing.) I want to know right now, if my children really are my children or if in fact they belong to the eight samurai. (KATHIE looks at him impassively, without showing the least bit of concern about Johnny’s revolver.)

KATHIE: Alexandra is yours, there’s no question about that. As for little Johnny, I’m not so sure. He could be Ken the Australian’s. I’ve always had my doubts about him. Now that’s something we’ll share.

JUAN: (Tottering about, exhausted) You’re lying. Now you really are bluffing, you must be. It’s all been an elaborate hoax, a joke in bad taste. All that about little Johnny and the eight samurai. You made it all up, didn’t you? You invented it, just to get a rise out of me? (His voice breaks off. He falls to his knees, imploring.) Darling, Pussikins, for the love of God, I beg you, tell me it’s not true you were unfaithful to me, tell me little Johnny is my son. I ask you on my knees, I beseech you, I’ll kiss your feet. (Drags himself along, groaning.) Even if it is true, just say it was a lie. So at least I can go on living, Kathie.

KATHIE: (Looking him slowly up and down) Everything I told you is absolutely true, Johnny darling. That’s something you’re going to have to live with from now on. The worst of it is, I don’t feel in the least bit remorseful, even when I see you in a state like this. I’m too bitter for that. Maybe I am a monster — I must be, I suppose. Because I’m not at all sorry for you, I’ve no pity left.

JUAN: (Getting up with his revolver in his hand) You’ll pay for this, you bitch.

KATHIE: Aim straight. Here, at the heart. You’re shaking, come closer so you don’t miss. You see I won’t run away, I’m not frightened. My life came to an end some time ago now. You saw to that. Do you think I mind dying? Go on, finish the job off.

(But JUAN doesn’t manage to fire. His hand shakes, his body shakes. He collapses at KATHIE’s feet. He puts the revolver to his own temple and shuts his eyes. He is sweating, and trembling like a leaf. He still can’t bring himself to fire. KATHIE now seems sympathetic.)

If you can’t kill me, with all that hatred you must have for me inside you, you certainly won’t be able to kill yourself. It’s harder to commit suicide than to murder someone. It takes more courage than it does to ride twenty-five-foot waves. It requires nobility of character, a sense of style, a flair for the tragic, and a romantic soul. You haven’t got any of these things, Johnny darling.

JUAN: (Sobbing, the revolver at his temple) But you have. Help me, Pussikins, help me. After what you’ve done, after what you’ve told me, I can’t go on living, knowing what I do. Help me, help me.

(With his free hand, he makes KATHIE put her hand on top of his, over the trigger.)

Go on, squeeze. Get your own back for all those things you say I’ve done to you. Get your own back for the surfing, for Waikiki, for all the emptiness. Now’s your chance, go on, free yourself …

(With a sudden decisive gesture, KATHIE squeezes the finger JUAN is holding over the trigger. The shot rings out loud, and JUAN rolls on the floor. Everything freezes for a few moments.)

SANTIAGO: What do you do with yourself here in Paris, Kathie, when you’re not writing your book on the Far East and Black Africa?

KATHIE: (Tired and discouraged) I go to the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, the Orangerie, the Grand Palais, the Museum of Modern Art, or the galleries on the rue de Seine. I walk for hours, I stand for hours, I get very tired and my feet swell up. I try to make up for lost time.

SANTIAGO: (To ANA) She tries to make up for lost time. While you carry on just the same as when I first met you.

ANA: I never had time to improve or be any different. We couldn’t afford a servant, what with the pittance you got from La Crónica. And when you landed yourself that teaching contract at the university, you said, ‘I’m sorry, Anita, we can’t possibly have servants, my principles won’t allow it.’ They didn’t seem to balk at your wife becoming one though, did they? You’re right, I carry on just the same. But what about you? Have you changed much? Yes, I do believe you have. Are you sure it’s for the better though?

(She helps JUAN get up and the two of them exit, arm in arm, as if they were ghosts.)

KATHIE: It’s just that … all that about it never being too late to learn — I don’t believe it. Sometimes it is too late for certain things. One has to learn to recognize them, and enjoy them while there’s still time.

SANTIAGO: Do you mean modern art? Modern music? Avant-garde literature?

KATHIE: I mean classical art, classical music, and reactionary literature as well. I get bored. I don’t understand. I’ve no critical judgement. I can’t tell if a painting is good or bad. And it’s the same with music, plays and poetry. It’s the truth, Mark. I know one should never admit it to anyone but it’s true none the less.

SANTIAGO: Modern art is very obscure. You can’t see the wood for the trees. We all get lost in that particular jungle, I assure you.

KATHIE: I’m going to let you into another secret. You know that frivolous, meaningless world I used to inhabit? Well, I always used to crave for something different — something I felt I was missing, a life full of things that would satisfy the mind. I wanted to immerse myself in the world of the intellect, the arts, and literature. But now when I make the effort to read or to go to exhibitions, concerts, and lectures, I get so bored, I wonder if the artistic world isn’t basically as false and meaningless as the one I left.

SANTIAGO: We both seem to be swimming against the tide: we’re not satisfied with what we’ve got, and we’re always yearning for what we haven’t got.

KATHIE: The worst of it is — I don’t really know what I do want any more. Maybe I’m realizing I’ve lost my illusions. Could it be old age, do you suppose?

SANTIAGO: How gloomy you’re becoming these days! I don’t believe a word you’ve been saying. If you really were that disenchanted with life, you wouldn’t be writing that book about Black Africa and the Far East.

KATHIE: Am I really writing it? Or are you?

SANTIAGO: I’m only your scribe, I put in the full stops and the commas and perhaps the odd adjective here and there. But the book is entirely yours from beginning to end. (The alarm clock rings, indicating that two hours have passed.)

KATHIE: Heavens, our two hours are up, and we’ve hardly done any work at all. Can you stay another half-hour?

SANTIAGO: Of course I can. And I won’t charge you overtime either.

KATHIE: Bah, overtime’s the least of it. A few soles more or less isn’t going to make any difference to Johnny. He won’t go bankrupt. He can surely spend a little bit on art, at least.

SANTIAGO: In that case, I will charge you for the extra half-hour and I’ll take Ana out to the pictures. She’s always complaining I never go out with her.

KATHIE: So your wife is called Ana? You must introduce her to me. Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for some time now. Don’t you think it’s odd I’ve never invited you to the house outside working hours? SANTIAGO: Not at all. I realize what a hectic life you lead. I read about it in the newspapers. Every day a dance, a drinks party or some reception or other.

KATHIE: They’re Johnny’s engagements. It would look bad if I didn’t go with him. And quite honestly, it’s the least I can do, since he is so good to me. No, that’s not the real reason. You’d get very bored with him. You’re both so different. Johnny has a heart of gold. He’s the kindest man in the world, but he’s also the most philistine.

SANTIAGO: He can’t be that much of a philistine, to have reached his position in life.

KATHIE: He is, he says so himself. As far as Johnny’s concerned, the arts just get in the way of doing good business. ‘Culture, the arts, I leave all that to you, Pussikins, and you leave the practicalities of life to me.’ When you get to know him, you’ll see what a philistine he is.

SANTIAGO: As a matter of fact, I do know him. I’ve met him several times on my way in and out of the house. He always looks at me as if I were some strange animal. Have you told him what sort of work I do for you?

KATHIE: Yes, but I’m sure it went in one ear and out the other.

SANTIAGO: (Returning to the tape-recorder) Shall we carry on then?

KATHIE: (Pensive, doubtful) Yes … On second thoughts, I don’t think I will.

SANTIAGO: You don’t think you will what?

KATHIE: Ask you and your wife here for tea or supper with Johnny and me.

SANTIAGO: As you wish. But you’ve already whetted my curiosity. May one know why?

KATHIE: Don’t take it the wrong way. (Looks tenderly at the little Parisian attic.) But it would be like mixing oil with water. I’m not talking about you and Johnny, though both of you together would be like oil and water too. No, I’m talking about myself. When I come up the little staircase which leads to this terrace, I leave behind San Isidro, Lima, and Peru, and I feel as if I really am entering a Parisian attic, where one only breathes art, culture and fantasy. I leave behind the woman with the busy social life, the banker’s wife. Because here, I am Kathie Kennety — spinster, widow, happily married woman, saint, or mischief-maker — someone who’s experienced everything life has to offer and who only lives to enrich her soul. This little corner of my life in which you play such a vital part makes all the rest bearable. You help make my dreams a reality, and my reality a dream. I don’t want the two to overlap. I don’t want our friendship to go beyond this little room of lies. That’s why it’s better if you don’t meet my husband and that’s why I don’t want to meet your wife. I’d rather they stayed behind down below. You do understand that, don’t you?

SANTIAGO: Of course I do. And I’ll tell you why. Listening to you talk, I think I understand why I never felt like bringing Anita up here.

KATHIE: Have you told her about my little Parisian attic?

SANTIAGO: I told her you’d had a little playroom built on your roof. You know how inquisitive women are, she’s always nagging me to bring her here to see it. It nearly drives me mad. I keep fobbing her off with the excuse you wouldn’t like it, but I don’t think that’s the real reason at all.

KATHIE: What is the real reason?

SANTIAGO: The same as the one you gave me — to stop me meeting your husband and coming to your house — the downstairs one, I mean. Without realizing it, Kathie, I’ve entered into the game myself. After teasing you so mercilessly, I’ve let myself be captivated by this little room too.

KATHIE: I always suspected you were laughing at Kathie Kennety and her little Parisian attic.

SANTIAGO: Of course I was. I thought you were crackers — a middle-class woman with more money than sense, playing a very expensive game. I found you ridiculous. I used to believe it was just for the money you paid me that I came up here for those couple of hours each day. But that’s no longer the case. For some time now, I’ve been enjoying the game myself: these two short hours in which lies become truths, and truths becomes lies, help me tolerate the rest of the day as well.

KATHIE: It does me good to hear you say that. It lifts a weight off my mind. I trusted you from the moment I first saw you. And I’m so glad I did. My instincts didn’t let me down. Thank you, Mark, very much.

SANTIAGO: I’m the one who should be thanking you. When I come up to this little attic, I begin a new life too. I leave behind the journalist who works on La Crónica writing mediocre articles for an even more mediocre salary. And the second-rate little lecturer with his undistinguished pupils — yes, he stays behind as well, for up here Mark Griffin is born — author, intellectual, creative genius, visionary, innovator, arbiter of intelligence, and epitome of good taste. Here, as we work, I can have those love affairs I never really had, I can live through Greek tragedies I hope never actually to experience. And here, thanks to you, I not only travel through the Far East and Black Africa but through many other places no one would ever suspect.

KATHIE: You said mediocre — mediocrity. Isn’t this a very mediocre game as well?

SANTIAGO: Maybe it is, Kathie. But at least we’ve still got our imagination, our ability to dream. We mustn’t let anyone take that little toy away from us because it’s the only one we’ve got.

KATHIE: How well we understand each other. And what good friends we’ve become.

SANTIAGO: Friends and accomplices, Kathie.

KATHIE: Yes, accomplices. That reminds me, shall we start again?

SANTIAGO: Let’s. Whereabouts in Black Africa were we? (He returns to his tape-recorder. We hear some exotic music, a mixture of Arab and African — sensual, seductive and mysterious.)

KATHIE: (Looking through her papers) Let’s see now … On the island of Zanzibar. The small aeroplane landed at dusk.

SANTIAGO: The shadows are falling, as I alight from the little aircraft midst shrubs and coconut palms which murmur with the sounds of the island of Zanzibar, confluence of every race, language and religion, the land of a thousand adventures.

KATHIE: The small hotel where I had a room booked was a ramshackle old house full of flies and Arabs.

SANTIAGO: The mystical aura of palaces, minarets and whitewashed fortresses gradually takes hold of me, as a coolie trots slowly through half-empty streets, pushing the rickshaw which bears me to my lodgings — a lofty Islamic tower which stands watch over the city.

KATHIE: I asked for a cup of tea which I gulped down, then I did a quick change, and though the proprietress advised me not to, I dashed out to explore the city. Its name sounded like something out of a film.

SANTIAGO: Swarthy Swahili-speaking servants, who practise animism, offer me a herbal potion and my exhaustion vanishes. My strength and courage return after a Turkish bath and a massage from native women with deft hands and pert little breasts. Though they warn me that robbery and rape are rife, and tell me of every sort of crime that befall lone women in the Zanzibar night, out I go regardless to explore the city.

KATHIE: The streets were very narrow, there was a smell of animals and plants. Natives in local costumes were passing by. I walked on and on until I eventually arrived at a building that looked like a palace …

SANTIAGO: I lose myself in a labyrinth of narrow little lanes, an interminable maze of steps, terraces, balconies and stone pediments. Wild horses whinnying in the woods serenade me, and the scent of the clove tree drives me wild with desire. What is this building with its lattice windows of finely carved tracery, bronze studded gates and dancing columns? It’s the sultan’s palace! But I don’t even pause — I carry on forward midst beturbaned Muhammadans, wailing beggars, hissing whores as shrill as piccolos and ebony-skinned youths with dazzling smiles undressing me hungrily with their eyes, until I reach a little square, where I have a funny feeling the slave market once was …