Out of the Wings

Carícies (1991), Sergi Belbel i Coslado

Caresses : SCENE ONE , SCENE TWO , SCENE THREE

Caresses (1999), translated by Nara Mansur

SCENE ONE

Edition

Belbel, Sergi. 1999. 'Caresses', trans. John London. In Spanish Plays, eds. Elyse Dodgson and Mary Peate. London, Nick Hern Books

Context:

This is the beginning of the play. A young man and young woman have a very strange conversation, a mixture of everyday talk and acts of violence towards one another.

Sample text

Living room of a flat in the city centre. Armchairs. YOUNG MAN and YOUNG WOMAN.

YOUNG MAN:

It’s strange.

YOUNG WOMAN:

What?

YOUNG MAN:

All this.

YOUNG WOMAN:

What do you mean?

YOUNG MAN:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed.

YOUNG WOMAN:

No. Noticed what?

YOUNG MAN:

I’ve got this feeling that …

YOUNG WOMAN:

Go on.

YOUNG MAN:

This strange feeling …

YOUNG WOMAN:

What’s wrong?

YOUNG MAN:

It’s as if …

YOUNG WOMAN:

As if what?

YOUNG MAN:

As if we …

YOUNG WOMAN:

We, what?

YOUNG MAN:

As if we didn’t have …

Pause.

YOUNG WOMAN:

What?

YOUNG MAN:

Anything to say to each other any more.

Pause.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Yes.

YOUNG MAN:

Yes, what?

YOUNG WOMAN:

Yes we do have something to say to each other.

YOUNG MAN:

Oh yes?

YOUNG WOMAN:

Yes.

YOUNG MAN:

What?

Pause.

YOUNG MAN:

Go on, what?

YOUNG WOMAN:

I can’t think of anything, now.

YOUNG MAN:

You see?

YOUNG WOMAN:

No. I don’t see.

YOUNG MAN:

You don’t want to see.

YOUNG WOMAN:

But, see what? What? Come on: would you be so good as to tell me what the bloody hell I should see?

YOUNG MAN:

Do you want me to tell you again?

YOUNG WOMAN:

No. If you’re only going to repeat what you’ve already said, you’d better shut up.

YOUNG MAN:

Okay, then, if I’d better shut up, I’ll shut up.

Pause.

YOUNG WOMAN:

We have plenty of things to say to each other, even now, you know very well. I know there are things you think and keep quiet because you don’t want to say them, or you don’t want to say them to me, yes, say them to me, to me, because of some problem of yours I don’t know about, which even you yourself don’t know about, and that hurts me, you know?, it hurts me, it upsets me, and it upsets me to see you like this, to see me like this, to see us like this, filling all these idle moments of silence with idle words, and with insults, your insults, because what you’ve just said is an insult, you’re insulting me, you’re insulting me when you say you don’t have anything to say to me any more.

YOUNG MAN:

Excuse me. Just a minute.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Why are you interrupting me!! You always interrupt me when I start … start building up a … a coherent argument which goes beyond the … the monosyllables which are so characteristic of our daily conversation!! You’re just like my mother, and if I left home it wasn’t exactly to go and live with somebody identical to her or even worse!! None of this excuse me just a minute!! I was the one who was speaking and I’m the one who’ll carry on speaking!! And we’ll see if things don’t start changing in this shit-hole, at least in this one!!

He slaps her violently in the face.

YOUNG MAN:

When somebody says ‘Excuse me’ you react, you shut up and you listen, do you understand? And I said ‘Excuse me’ to make a passing comment within your … marvellous, ever so coherent and ever so explicit argument, and I intend doing so, do you hear?, I intend doing so, I intend doing so, I intend doing so!!

He slaps her again in the face, even more strongly.

I didn’t say I don’t have anything to say to you any more, do you hear?

He slaps her for the third time, savagely.

I said we don’t have anything to say to each other any more. Not me. Not you. I said we.

Silence.

YOUNG WOMAN:

What do you want for dinner?

YOUNG MAN:

I don’t know. What is there?

YOUNG WOMAN:

There’s meat, eggs, salad. I can do you spaghetti if you want.

YOUNG MAN:

No, no, pasta at night, no, afterwards I get heartburn. One of those salads with lots of different things and a good pudding.

YOUNG WOMAN:

We’ve got lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, sweet corn, olives, celery, onions.

YOUNG MAN:

No, no, onions, no, it repeats on me afterwards.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Yes, and what’s more your breath stinks and afterwards there’s an unbearable stench in the bed.

YOUNG MAN:

We could mix in bits of apple and pineapple, if we’ve got any, of course.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Ooh, yes. A tropical salad. That would be lovely. There’s only tinned pineapple, I’m afraid.

YOUNG MAN:

That’s okay.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Good. Come on, the. Ooh! I don’t know if there’s anything for pudding.

YOUNG MAN:

Isn’t there any crème caramel?

YOUNG WOMAN:

Oh, yes. I forgot. How silly of me. I bought a couple of tubs at lunchtime. Oh, and we’ve got yoghourts as well.

YOUNG MAN:

I’d prefer crème caramel.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Well I’ll have a yoghourt.

YOUNG MAN:

I’ll have a crème caramel.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Okay then, you have a crème caramel and I’ll have a yoghourt, there’s no problem.

YOUNG MAN:

There’s no problem. Shall I help you make the salad?

YOUNG WOMAN:

Yes. We’ll be quicker together. Shall we go into the kitchen?

YOUNG MAN:

Yes.

They make as if to exit. She stops.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Excuse me. Just a minute.

YOUNG MAN:

What?

She punches him in the stomach and knees him in the groin. He falls to the ground.

YOUNG WOMAN:

We’ve run out of oil.

YOUNG MAN:

Oh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

You’ll have to ask the neighbour for some.

YOUNG MAN:

Oh. I can’t brea …

YOUNG WOMAN:

Come on, get up, we mustn’t waste time.

YOUNG MAN:

Oh. Oh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Come on, hurry up, get up, grab a glass and while I soak the lettuce, go and ask the neighbour to fill it up with olive oil. But make sure it’s olive oil, okay?, I can’t stand salads with sunflower oil or corn oil, they’re tasteless.

YOUNG MAN:

You nasty snake.

YOUNG WOMAN:

You’re repulsive.

She kicks him in the face.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Are you getting up or aren’t you getting up?

She kicks him again right in the face.

Are you coming to the kitchen or aren’t you coming to the kitchen?!!

She kicks him in the face again.

Are you going to ask the neighbour for oil or aren’t you going to ask the neighbour for oil?!!

Another kick in the face, this time much stronger.

Do you want a tropical salad … or don’t you want a tropical salad?!!

Silence.

YOUNG MAN:

Oh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

What?

YOUNG MAN:

Ooh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Oh dear, I can’t understand you.

YOUNG MAN:

Oooh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

I’m sorry, if you can’t articulate more clearly …

YOUNG MAN:

Ooooh.

YOUNG WOMAN:

Do you perhaps, want to say something to me?

YOUNG MAN:

Mmm … yes …

YOUNG WOMAN:

You see? You see how you’ve still got something to say to me?

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Caresses (1999) by Nara Mansur is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

SCENE TWO

Edition

Belbel, Sergi. 1999. 'Caresses', trans. John London. In Spanish Plays, eds. Elyse Dodgson and Mary Peate. London, Nick Hern Books

Context:

In the park, the young woman from scene 1 meets her mother in the park. There is clearly a large degree of tension between both.

Sample text

A park. A stone bench. YOUNG WOMAN and MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN
YOUNG WOMAN:: What do you want?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Listen to this.
YOUNG WOMAN:: What are you going on about? Listen to what?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Just let me read it out. You know … it’s very difficult for me to speak. And what I want to tell you … but no. Listen carefully.
YOUNG WOMAN:: What is it?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who wrote it. It doesn’t matter how it’s written. The words are what matter to me. It’s meant for you and for me. I hope you understand it. I’m doing this so you understand me.; She picks up the book on her lap and reads:; “Now that night is coming, silence is frightened away, because it is not true that silence is night. It’s one of those clichés: thinking that everything stops when everybody stops, and then everybody thinks … eventually stopping after all that routine, means stopping time and entering into rest, and they think that is night: a soldier’s rest, a boring piece of theatre, a prelude to sleep, a hollow interval, a much needed nothingness. Now that night is coming, a new time denies time; fuels desire, fosters excess: moments become eternal, unconfessable secrets are … brutally revealed, pretences collapse, some mad gesture can make everything explode, unusual passions, unsuspected desires … Night is the engine of eloquent silence, where time is not time, where place is no place at all, where darkness is radiant and nothingness is impossible …”
YOUNG WOMAN:: That’s enough, mother, put a sock in it!
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: What?
YOUNG WOMAN:: Just fucking well shut up. Shit what a pain! What the bloody hell are you trying to tell me, if you’re trying to tell me anything? You haven’t made me come so far so late to give this lecture full of nonsense, to spew up, just because, as casual as you like, this load of still births and pedantic sentences, sublime pieces of pretentiousness written by an idiot for a bunch of morons who don’t know what they really are?! As if I didn’t know you … Stop all this rubbish. Tell me quickly what you want, I don’t have much time, I’m having dinner with somebody. I can’t waste time like a crazy old woman …
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Go, then.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Don’t start!
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I’m just asking for a short moment, that’s all. I’m so lonely, my child, and I think so many things. Since you left, the place isn’t what it used to be. Before it was hell, a constant battle: rows, sour faces, shouting, worrying, nerves, stress. I know, I admit it: perhaps it was my fault, war had broken out between us, a little hostile war made up the slightest gestures and slightest words and eternal silences. The cruellest war is war between women, and it’s crueller still if it’s between mother and daughter. But now that you’re not there I need it so much …
YOUNG WOMAN:: Have you gone mad?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Yes.
YOUNG WOMAN:: You admit it?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Yes.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Is that why you made me come here? Is that why you’ve bothered me and begged me to come and see you and listen to you? To tell me what I already know? To tell me you’re mad?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: No. To tell you the time has finally come.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Which time?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: The time.
YOUNG WOMAN:: To put you in a home?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: To tell you the truth.
YOUNG WOMAN:: If you feel so lonely living on your own, if you’re frightened of growing old and not having anyone whose head you can fill with your stories, with your obsessions, you can live in a home, there are some very good ones now.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: It wasn’t my fault.
YOUNG WOMAN:: You’d get to know people, somebody would take notice of you, you’d enjoy it, they’d listen to you there. I’ve been told they’re beautiful, apparently they’re not like prisons any more, they’re more like … a kind of hotel, for old people but really clean, you can go and come back when you want to and they do outings.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I’m sorry I waited so long.
YOUNG WOMAN:: I’ve been telling you for some time now and you won’t take any notice of me.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I’m not your mother.
YOUNG WOMAN:: It’s a good place for you, the home.; Silence.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: What time is it?
YOUNG WOMAN:: It’s very late.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Daughter.
YOUNG WOMAN:: What?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I thought this was the best place to tell you that I’ve finally taken a decision about this obsession of yours for getting rid of me and stop being a burden for you and the world. I know I’m still young, but I’m aware of my illness and I’m aware that I can’t live alone and I’m aware that everything chokes me and that I tell lies, I tell you lies, I tell myself lies to kill time or to make up for it, and that’s why I’m asking you …
YOUNG WOMAN:: You’re speaking like a book.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: … I’m asking you to take all the steps and spare me problems and paperwork and legal hassle and phone calls and visits and don’t pay any attention to what I say, to what I’ve said to you.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Yes, you’re right. It’s the best place. It’s such a peaceful park. So secluded, mother. So secluded.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I don’t understand you.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Thanks.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Mother.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: What?
YOUNG WOMAN:: You should have had an abortion.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I’ll like it, I’m sure. I’ll like the home.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Goodbye. And stop reading those things. They’ll drive you insane.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Call me.
YOUNG WOMAN:: Even more.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Caresses (1999) by Nara Mansur is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

SCENE THREE

Edition

Belbel, Sergi. 1999. 'Caresses', trans. John London. In Spanish Plays, eds. Elyse Dodgson and Mary Peate. London, Nick Hern Books

Context:

The middle-aged woman is now in a home. She talks to the old woman about her past, about her unwanted pregnancy and the trouble it caused her. The old woman has her own memories. Gradually, the two women get closer, and it appears they know each other of old.

Sample text

Lounge in an old people’s home. A sofa. MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN and OLD WOMAN.
OLD WOMAN:: I used to like dancing the tango.; Pause.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I liked rock-and-roll.; Pause.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I always danced rock-and-roll every Saturday, every Sunday, and I sneaked out through the courtyard window, my parents didn’t know, and he used to wait for me in the back alley, behind the courtyard, it was at the back of the house, and we grabbed each other’s hand: his hand was always warm, mine was cold, and he warmed mine up, and we used to run off to the north of the city. There, you could already hear the music from the main street: real rock-and-roll, and we danced like mad, and it was like that for a whole year, maybe longer, our hands stuck together and our bodies stuck together, each weekend until … until … that little girl came along, that stupid little girl, you can’t imagine how much I hated her, my disgusting daughter: she stopped me from dancing!, and my parents had put bars on the back window and I sat rotting inside and my stomach got more and more swollen every day; but one day, to get it all out of my system, I was so frantic I escaped and went there all by myself, to the main street, to the dance-hall on the main street, all by myself, he wasn’t there any more and he never came back and I never saw him and I still remember him, muscular arms and strong legs, a bronze stomach and burning hands, he ran away, but that night I danced like never before, it was a drug, I couldn’t stop and everybody looked at me and I danced by myself, the stupid thing had already spent seven months of lethargy rotting inside me, sucking my blood, the food of my insides, here inside me, implausibly inside this belly which is now flabby, and she bounced up and down, she must have been bumping against my intestines, into my stomach, into my bones, into my liver and kidneys; I wanted to shake her, make her dizzy, puke her up; my revenge: almost six months, since the first bouts of nausea, six months that she’d stopped me from dancing rock-and-roll, that moron, that untimely monstrous creature! Because you need two to dance to rock-and-roll and he ran away and they shut me up; but that evening I danced by myself like a mad woman in front of everybody and when my favourite song was played the blood flowed right down to my ankles …; Pause.
OLD WOMAN:: I liked dancing the tango because I hate men as well, I hate them as well; and when we danced, that little idiot didn’t even notice. And he was happy, the poor wretch, thinking that he was controlling me … they always say … men are in control with the tango … and I knew that wasn’t right, and there and then I chucked him, in the dance-hall, when he wanted to put his hand in between my legs after we’d danced him favourite tango (which was the one I liked least). Poor boy, I can’t even remember his face, only his hairy hands like black caterpillars and that horror between his legs. Poor boy. The only man in my life, luckily, the only man. I never danced again with any other man and … and I liked the tango. It’s a funny world. I liked the tango …; Pause.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I didn’t know you were here …
OLD WOMAN:: Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it …; Pause.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Doesn’t time fly.
OLD WOMAN:: That’s what they say.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: You look great.
OLD WOMAN:: That’s not true.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Really.; Pause. The MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN stares at the OLD WOMAN, grabs her by the hand and goes up to her. They have a long French kiss. Suddenly, some soft, sentimental music is heard. The sound quality is slightly defective.
OLD WOMAN:: Shall we dance?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Let’s have a go.; They get up. They clutch each other. They dance.
OLD WOMAN:: It’s unbearable.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: It’s horrible.
OLD WOMAN:: Oh, that’s enough.; They stop dancing.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: How awful.
OLD WOMAN:: Stop it!!; The music stops.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Is it always like that?
OLD WOMAN:: Stupid old nurses.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Always like that?
OLD WOMAN:: I’ve told them hundreds of times, but it’s no use.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: How terrible.
OLD WOMAN:: If that music equipment were mine …
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: If it were ours …
OLD WOMAN:: No way. No way. Old people’s music, old people’s music, the bloody nurses like old people’s music, they love it, they’re crazy about it, and they won’t understand that I hate it and I’m not the only one. No way, no way, I’m going to complain again!
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: That’s it, let’s complain.
OLD WOMAN:: Yes, the two of us together, it’ll be better with the two of us together.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Don’t worry, I’ll help you.
OLD WOMAN:: We’ll have to be very firm.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Well, let’s be firm.
OLD WOMAN:: And take drastic measures.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Such as?
OLD WOMAN:: A hunger-strike. A hunger-strike.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: That’s it. Until they play the music we want.; Pause.
OLD WOMAN:: Maybe they’ll let us die.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: Maybe they will.
OLD WOMAN:: I’ve only got a little time left.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: No.
OLD WOMAN:: Yes.; Pause.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: We’ve got each other.
OLD WOMAN:: Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.; Silence.
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: It’s lucky you’re here.
OLD WOMAN:: Why?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: It’s lucky we met up again.
OLD WOMAN:: What do you mean?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: I thought I’d lost you.
OLD WOMAN:: What do you mean?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: You taught me so many things.
OLD WOMAN:: What?
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN:: About life. In such a short time.
OLD WOMAN:: Sorry.

Copyright