Out of the Wings

Como si fuera esta noche (2002), Gracia Morales Ortiz

As If It Were Tonight : ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 1 , ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 2 , ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 3 , ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 4

As If It Were Tonight, translated by Gwynneth Dowling

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 1

Context:

Clara reminisces about her mother, Mercedes.

Sample text

CLARA:: I remember how she would sit and sew. Her apron like a second skin. I remember how her hands smelt of bleach, her fingers stained with saffron… Always worried, feeling like there wasn’t enough time in the day for all the things she had to see to… Except when she was waiting for my father to come in from the street. Then, time seemed to stand still… Some Fridays, and some Saturdays, too… I’d come in from outside. From the doorway, I would hear her singing…
MERCEDES: (She stops singing at that moment.): Clara! Clara! Is that you?
CLARA:: She’d nearly always get mad at the sight of me. All sweaty.
MERCEDES: (To CLARA. Looking directly at her. Throughout this whole scene, CLARA does not try to act like a child. She is still the same person as before and her words are spoken like those of a woman who is nearly thirty.): Look at the state of you! All out of breath and as red as a beetroot.
CLARA:: My mother died when she was the same age as I am now.
MERCEDES: (Goes to some sheets hanging in the background.): Come, help me fold this. It’s dry now.
CLARA: (They start folding the sheets, as if in a sort of dance, passing by each other, one underneath the other, while they speak in normal voices.): I was a nine-year-old girl who liked to play in the yard. Jumping rope, playing hopscotch and tag.
MERCEDES:: It’s not good to tire yourself out so much. Something will happen to you, just when you least expect it.
CLARA:: It’s was a Friday, 25 July. Same day as today.
MERCEDES:: A fainting fit in the middle of the street… It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.
CLARA:: 25 July… I remember that night. She said the same things to me she said every night.
MERCEDES:: One of your grandmother’s cousins got out of breath and bam! That was it! Or at least that’s what they told me.
CLARA:: She was a young woman, but sometimes she seemed older. Like she was repeating phrases she’d heard a long time ago. Things she’d memorised.
MERCEDES:: I wish you liked school more and you liked playing in the yard with the boys less.
CLARA:: If I’d known that this would be the last time I spoke to her, I would have said other things… more important things…

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation As If It Were Tonight by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 2

Context:

Despite existing at different times, to some extent Clara and Mercedes seem to communicate. Mercedes gets her young daughter to write a shopping list, while the older Clara writes down numbers relating to significant moments in her life.

Sample text

MERCEDES:: Okay… Come here, get a pencil and paper. You’re going to write down what I’ve to buy tomorrow.; CLARA starts to note things down on a board, while MERCEDES speaks. She rights down ‘15’ and ‘Dad’.
CLARA:: At 15... Mum…. Dad’s out of prison. In any case Pablo and I will keep living with Aunt Encarna. I think Dad wants to move to another city.
MERCEDES:: Write carefully, now. Otherwise I won’t be able to read it later.; CLARA writes down ‘16’, ‘Mecano concert’.
CLARA:: At 16… Mum, a boy from my class kissed me today. At a concert. It made me feel a bit sick because he put his tongue in and moved it about. Is that what it’s always like? I don’t want kisses to make me sick…
MERCEDES:: Let’s see…milk. Four litres… 75 pence each…. How much is that?; CLARA writes down ‘17’, ‘Work in the clinic’.
CLARA:: I think I’m going to stop studying, Mum. I’ve been offered a job as a receptionist at a dental clinic…
MERCEDES:: Fruit… Let’s see if the bananas are going cheap – your father likes them best. Put that I’ll spend about… one pound…
CLARA:: I know you would like me to get a career and all that… But it’s a well-paid job. And I’ll have some time free…
MERCEDES:: Decaf coffee, two pounds ten…; CLARA writes down ‘19’, ‘Ernesto’.
CLARA:: I’m going out with a boy, Mum. It’s been five months already and I think it’s serious. But he’s a very sensitive boy, you understand? Everything upsets him and I’ve to be very careful with him. He’s called Ernesto.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation As If It Were Tonight by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 3

Context:

Once again the two woman seem to be able to communicate despite the years separating them. Clara desperately wants to change what happened in the past, when her mother was murdered by her father.

Sample text

CLARA:: Today… Well, today is unusual… Today is July 25, just like 18 years ago.
MERCEDES: (More agitated.): Potatoes… one pound…
CLARA:: Life is strange… Why just today…
MERCEDES:: Rice. No, I bought rice the day before yesterday. (Getting up, resolute.) Well, that’s us. Count it all up and tell me what it comes to.
CLARA:: Mum, I went to the hospital this afternoon….
MERCEDES:: I’m going out for a moment.
CLARA:: No, Mum. Not now. Let me talk to you.
MERCEDES:: I’m sure your father’s forgotten he has to work in the morning.
CLARA:: I need to speak to you now. Before Raúl gets here!
MERCEDES:: I’ll get changed and go down there. It’s just around the corner.
CLARA:: Please, listen to me. Can’t you see that I’m here?
MERCEDES:: I’ll come up with some excuse or other. That little Pablo’s not well or something like that.
CLARA:: Maybe we can change that night. Together. If you’d only listen to me…
MERCEDES:: Or I’ll just go like this. I’ll take off this apron and put my shoes on…
CLARA:: There might still be time. You hear me?
MERCEDES:: It’s early so he won’t have drunk too much. A few beers perhaps. But I’ll still be able to talk to him. How’s my hair? Do I look okay?
CLARA:: If you’d only go to bed instead of waiting up for him…

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation As If It Were Tonight by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 4

Context:

Mercedes and Clara remember Fernando’s good and bad points.

Sample text

MERCEDES:: He was normally kind, you know? That’s why I fell in love with him. You saw him differently…
CLARA:: What I liked most about Dad were his arms. His strong arms, his broad back. The way he used to scoop me up and run through the house with me, flying… Wheee! Wheee! High and fast…Wheee! And I felt safe, his Popeye muscles holding me… The first time I saw him hit you I was six. It was night. I remember I’d had a nightmare and I got up so you would let me into your bed, like other times. But when I came into your room I saw the bed all messed up. Then I heard you both in the kitchen. You were fighting. I heard something being struck. Like a very heavy chair had been knocked over.
MERCEDES:: When I found you in the doorway, all quiet, half-asleep in your little bear pyjamas… those pink pyjamas with the little bears on them, playing…
CLARA:: ’Clara! Go back to bed! Who said you could get up?’
MERCEDES:: I don’t like you walking about in bare feet!
CLARA:: I don’t like you walking about in bare feet. What a thing to say. To me it felt like everything had stopped. Like when you press pause to stop a film. And I stared a Dad’s arms. The wide and strong arms of Popeye the Sailor Man… Those arms that would never again carry me flying through the air.
MERCEDES:: He had a mole here, remember? On his right shoulder.
CLARA:: They say he stopped drinking in prison. When he got out of there, Aunt Encarna kept him at arm’s length. I don’t know if he would have wanted to go on living with Pablo and me… I never asked him…
MERCEDES:: And another on his ear… Really tiny, almost invisible.
CLARA:: He’s got old very fast, you know. This last year we’ve seen each other twice. I thought he was wasting away, minute by minute.

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