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

her, the young lady read it.
    (GRANDFATHER stretches out his hand and takes hold of SEÑORA CARLOTA, as she brushes past him. She pretends to be surprised and get annoyed, but after a brief, silent struggle, she gives in to him. GRANDFATHER sits her on his knees , caresses her, as he continues to recite the letter. )
    GRANDFATHER: ‘I’d sooner cause you pain than lie to you, my love. I could never live at peace in the knowledge that I’d deceived you. Yesterday, for the first time in five years, I was unfaithful to you. Forgive me, I beg you, on my bended knee. It was too strong for me. I was overwhelmed by an emotion which swept away all my principles, all my vows, like a hurricane rooting up everything in its path. I have decided to tell you this, although you may curse me. Your absence is to blame. Dreaming of you at night, here in Camaná, has been nothing but a torture to me, and still is. My blood starts to race at the very thought of you. I’m beset by notions of abandoning everything, jumping on my horse and galloping to Arequipa, to your
side, where I can hold your beautiful body in my arms again, and carry you to the bedroom …’
    ( His voice slowly fades away. )
    MAMAE: The young lady suddenly felt as if everything was starting to go round. The bathroom, where she was reading the letter, seemed to be turning into an enormous top that spun round and round – the house, Arequipa, the whole world became a giant wheel off which the young lady was falling, falling … as if from a precipice. She thought her heart and her head were going to burst. And her face was burning with shame.
    BELISARIO: ( Very seriously ) Did she feel ashamed because she’d read about the gentleman beating a servant girl?
    (GRANDFATHER and SEÑORA CARLOTA have now slid on to the floor. )
    MAMAE: ( Shaking ) Yes, she did, very. She couldn’t imagine how the gentleman could so much as lay a finger on a woman. Not even a perverse Indian.
    BELISARIO: ( Very moved ) Had she never read any novels in which men beat women?
    MAMAE: She was a well brought-up young lady and there were certain things she did not read, my little one. But this was worse than reading about them in a book, because she knew the author of the letter. She read it over and over again, but still she couldn’t believe that the gentleman would have done such a thing.
    GRANDFATHER: ‘Her name is not important. She was beneath contempt, one of those Indians who clean out hostels, a mere animal, an object almost. I wasn’t blinded by her charms, Carmen. It was you, the memory of you, your charms, your body – that was the reason for my nostalgia. Thinking about you, longing for you, that was what made me give in to such madness and make love to the Indian woman. On the floor, like a beast. Yes, you must know everything.’
    BELISARIO: ( Also trembling, now pronouncing the words as if they were burning him ) So the gentleman’s wife went as white as snow, all because of a few lashes he happened to give
the servant. Is that why the young lady felt the world was coming to an end? You’re not hiding anything from me, are you? The gentleman didn’t by any chance go too far, did he, and do the Indian woman in, Mamaé?
    MAMAE: Suddenly, the young lady started to feel something else. Something worse than dizziness. Her whole body started to shake and she had to sit down on the bath. The letter was so very explicit that she felt as if she were receiving the thrashing that the gentleman gave the wicked woman.
    GRANDFATHER: ‘And there in my arms, the little whelp lay whimpering with pleasure. But it wasn’t her I was making love to. It was you, my angel. Because I had my eyes closed, it was you I was seeing – and it wasn’t her smell, it was yours, that sweet rose-scented fragrance of your skin which intoxicated me so …’
    BELISARIO: But in what way did that letter make the young lady sin in her thoughts, Mamaé?
    MAMAE: ( Distraught ) She imagined that instead of