BELISARIO: What rude words, my child?
MAMAE: I hardly like to say, Father Venancio.
BELISARIO: That may be so. Now don’t be proud.
MAMAE: All right, I’ll try, Father. (
Making a big effort
) Bugger it all! You shit! You shit! You snotty little shit!
BELISARIO: What other sins, my child?
MAMAE: I confess that I lied three times, father.
BELISARIO: Serious lies?
MAMAE: Well sort of, father.
GRANDMOTHER: (
From the table
) What are you talking about, Elvira?
MAMAE: We’ve run out of sugar. (
To
BELISARIO) There was a whole packet, but I hid it. I wanted Carmen to give me some money. So I told another lie.
GRANDMOTHER: And why should you be going to buy sugar? Let Amelia go.
MAMAE: No, no. I’ll go. I want to take some exercise. (
To
BELISARIO) It wasn’t true, I have great difficulty walking. My knees ache, and I’m not very steady on my feet.
BELISARIO: And why all those lies, my child?
MAMAE: So I could buy myself a bar of chocolate. I’d been longing for some for days. That advertisement on the wireless for Chocolate Sublime made my mouth water.
BELISARIO: Wouldn’t it have been easier to ask Grandfather for five
soles?
MAMAE: He’s very hard up at the moment, father. He’s living off his sons and they’re going through a difficult patch. He makes do with the same razor blade for weeks on end, poor man, sharpening it up for goodness knows how long every morning. It’s ages since anyone bought any clothes in the house. We wear what Amelia and the boys hand down to us. How was I going to ask him for money to buy chocolate? So I went to the shop, bought a bar of Sublime, and guzzled it in the street. When I got home, I put the packet of sugar I’d hidden back in the kitchen cupboard. That was the third little piece of deception, father.
BELISARIO: You are too proud, my child.
MAMAE: There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not a sin to be proud.
(
In the course of the conversation the physical relationship between them has gradually been changing. MAMAE is now in the position she habitually adopts when she tells stories to
BELISARIO
as a young child
.)
BELISARIO: I think it is, Mamaé. Brother Leoncio said the other day in the catechism class that pride was the worst sin of all. That it was Lucifer’s favourite.
MAMAE: All right, perhaps it is. But as far as the young lady from Tacna was concerned, it was pride that made her life bearable, you see? It gave her the strength to put up with the disappointments, the loneliness, and all that privation. Without pride she would have suffered a great deal. Besides, it was all she had.
BELISARIO: I don’t know why you rate pride so highly. If she loved her fiancé, and he asked her to forgive him for being unfaithful to her with the wicked woman, wouldn’t she have been better off just to forgive him and marry him? What use was all this pride to her? After all, she ended up an old spinster, didn’t she?
MAMAE: You’re very young and you don’t understand. Pride is the most important thing a person can have in life. It protects you against everything. Once you lose it, whether
you’re a man or a woman, the world tramples on you like an old rag.
BELISARIO: But this isn’t a story. It’s more like a sermon, Mamaé. Things have got to happen in stories. And you never give me nearly enough details. For instance, did the young lady have any nasty secret habits?
MAMAE: (
Frightened, getting to her feet
) No, of course she didn’t. (More
frightened still
) Nasty … what did you say? (
Horrified
) Nasty what? Nasty whats?
BELISARIO: (
Ashamed
) I said nasty secret thoughts, Mamaé. Didn’t the young lady ever have any nasty secret thoughts?
MAMAE: (
Sympathetically, as she slips awkwardly back to her armchair
) You’re the one whose head is full of nasty secret thoughts, my little one.
(
She curls up in her armchair. The
GRANDPARENTS
and
AMELIA,
unaware of what’s happening
,
carry on eating.
BELISARIO
has started to write again. He talks as he makes notes on his papers.
)
BELISARIO: Yes, Mamaé. It’s true. I can’t help thinking that, underneath that unworldly façade, behind that serene expression, there was an infinite source of warmth and passion which would suddenly well up and make demands on the young lady. Or was there really nothing else besides the austere routine of her daily life?
(
He stops writing. He turns to look at
MAMAE.
He addresses her with a certain pathos
.)
When I was a child, I never imagined you could ever have been anything other than a little old woman. Even now, when I try to picture you in your youth, I can’t. The young girl you once were always gives way to the old woman with the wrinkled face. In spite of all these stories, I’m still all at sea about the young lady. What happened to her after she burnt her wedding dress and left the Chilean officer in the lurch?
(
As
BELISARIO
finishes his speech,
GRANDMOTHER
gets up from the table and goes over towards
MAMAE. GRANDFATHER
and
AMELIA
carry on eating, unaware of
what follows. From time to time
GRANDFATHER
throws salt over his food in a sort of frenzy
.)
GRANDMOTHER: Why haven’t you packed your suitcases, Elvirita? Pedro wants to leave at dawn so that we arrive at the docks before it gets too hot. We don’t want to catch sunstroke, specially you, with that fair skin of yours. (Pause.) You know, deep down, I’m glad we’re leaving. When my mother died after that dreadful illness, it was almost as if Tacna were starting to die too. And now what with my father’s death, I find this town really has quite a disagreeable effect on me. Let’s go and pack your suitcases. I’ll help you.
MAMAE: I’m not going to Arequipa with you, Carmencita.
GRANDMOTHER: And where are you going to live? Who are you going to stay with in Tacna?
MAMAE: I’m not going to be a burden to you all my life.
GRANDMOTHER: Don’t talk nonsense, Elvira. My husband is perfectly happy for you to come with us. You know that. After all, we are practically sisters, aren’t we? Well, you’ll be a sister to Pedro too. Come on, let’s go and pack your suitcases.
MAMAE: Ever since you were married, I’ve been waiting for this moment. Every night, lying awake, thinking, until morning came with the sound of the bugle at the Chilean barracks. I can’t live with you and Pedro. He married you. He didn’t bargain for your cousin Elvira as well.
GRANDMOTHER: You’re coming to live with us and that’s that. There’s no more to be said on the subject.
MAMAE: You’d find it a bore in the long run. A whole source of problems. You’d argue because of me. Sooner or later Pedro would throw it back at you that you’d saddled him with a hanger-on for the rest of his life.
GRANDMOTHER: But it won’t be for the rest of his life, because soon you’ll forget what happened with Joaquín, you’ll fall in love and you’ll get married. Please, Elvira, we’re going to have to get up at crack of dawn. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.
BELISARIO: (
Delighted with what he’s discovered, jumping up in
his seat
) Long, very tedious and extremely complicated. Train from Tacna to Arica. Boat from Arica. Then two days sailing as far as Mollendo. Going ashore there, was like something out of a circus, wasn’t it, Grandma? They lowered the ladies off the boat into the launch in hampers, didn’t they, Mamaé? Just like cattle. And then there was that three-day ride across the mountains on horseback to Arequipa – with the additional hazard of being attacked by bandits on the way. (
Starts to write enthusiastically
.) Ah, Belisario, that’s what you used to criticize the regionalist writers so much for: their use of local colour and extravagant effects.
GRANDMOTHER: Are you afraid of bandits, Elvira? I am, but at the same time I find them quite delightful. These are the sort of things you should be thinking about, instead of all this nonsense.
MAMAE: It’s not nonsense, Carmencita.
GRANDMOTHER: You know very well you can’t stay in Tacna. We’ve nothing left here now. Not even the house – the new owners are moving in tomorrow.
MAMAE: I’ll stay with María Murga.
GRANDMOTHER: That old nanny you once had? Really, Elvira, the things you come up with!
MAMAE: She’s a good-hearted woman. She’s offered me a room in her house, in La Mar. I could share with her youngest son, my godchild. I’ll help out with the housekeeping. Then there’s always my embroidery. I’ll make tablecloths, veils, lace mantillas. And sweets and cakes too. I’ll take them to Máspoli, the confectioner’s. That nice Italian will sell them and give me a commission.
GRANDMOTHER: Like something out of a novelette by Xavier de Montepin … I can just see you living in a Tacna slum, surrounded by Indians and negroes. You, who are always so squeamish about everything; you, the finicky little filly, as father used to call you.
MAMAE: I may be finicky, but I’ve never felt rich. I’ll learn to live like a pauper, since that’s what I am. At least María Murga’s little house is clean.
GRANDMOTHER: Are you going completely out of your mind, Elvira? Stay here and live in La Mar! What’s got into you? What’s all this about La Mar? First you want to go to Mass there, then it’s sunsets you want to look at, and now you’re going to live there with María Murga. Has some Negro put a jinx on you? It’s getting very late and I’m tired of arguing. I’m going to pack your suitcases and tomorrow Pedro will put you on the Arica train, by force if necessary.
(GRANDMOTHER
goes back to the dining room. She sits down and resumes her meal.
)
MAMAE: What difference does it make whether I stay here or go to María Murga’s? Isn’t this miserable hole quite as squalid as any shack in La Mar? (
Pause
.) All right, there the people walk about barefoot and we wear shoes. There they all have lice in their hair, as Uncle Menelao keeps reminding us, and we … (
Puts her hand up to her head.
) Who knows, that’s probably why I’m scratching.
(GRANDFATHER
stands up and goes forward towards
MAMAE. GRANDMOTHER
and
AMELIA
carry on with their meal
.)
GRANDFATHER: Good afternoon, Elvira. I’ve been looking for you. I’d just like to have a few words with you if I may.
(MAMAE
looks at him for a moment. Then she looks up to heaven as she says:
)
MAMAE: It’s so hard to understand you, dear God. You seem to prefer rogues and lunatics to ordinary decent folk. Why, if Pedro was always so fair and so honest, did you give him such a miserable life?
(BELISARIO
gets up from his desk and goes forward towards
MAMAE.)
BELISARIO: Wasn’t it a sin for the young lady to reproach God like that, Mamaé? He knows what he’s doing and if he gave the gentleman such a hard time, there must have been some good reason for it surely. Perhaps he was going to make up for it by giving him a nice big reward in heaven.
GRANDFATHER: You’re like a sister to Carmen, and I think of you as my sister too. You’ll never be a stranger in my
house. I’m telling you, we’re not leaving Tacna without you.
MAMAE: That may be so, my little one. But the young lady couldn’t understand it. She worked herself up into a fever thinking, ‘Dear God in Heaven, was it because of the Indian woman in the letter that you put the gentleman through so much misery? Was it all for that one little indiscretion that you made the cotton in Camaná get frosted the very year he was going to get rich?’
BELISARIO: (
Sitting at
MAMAE’
s feet
,
adopting his customary position while listening to stories
) Had the gentleman committed a sin? You never told me about that, Mamaé.
GRANDFATHER: I know how much help you’ve been to Carmen, both as a friend and a confidante and I’m very grateful to you. You’ll always be part of the family. Do you know I’ve left my job at the Casa Gibson? I joined when I was fifteen, after my father died. I’d like to have been a lawyer, like him, but it just wasn’t possible. Now I’m going to manage the Saíds’ estate in Camaná. We’re going to plant cotton. Who knows? In a few years’ time, I might be able to branch out on my own, buy a little land. Carmen will have to spend lengthy periods in Arequipa. You’ll be able to keep her company. You see, you won’t be a burden in the house, you’ll be an asset.
MAMAE: There was just one little sin, yes, in a life that was otherwise so pure and noble. But only one, which is nothing really. And it wasn’t the gentleman’s fault either – he was led astray by a depraved woman. The young lady couldn’t understand the injustice of it. (
Looks up to heaven
.) Was it because of the Indian woman in the letter that you made the cotton fields in Santa Cruz get blighted as well? Is that why you made him accept the prefecture so that he ended up even poorer than he was before?