A dry stone slope along a path.
A path that could be any path.
One of our paths.
A path of ours.
One of our stories.
Our story.
*
LIMBO
Water is heard dripping repeatedly onto a rock or into a small puddle. The sound is hollow and metallic, the kind we might hear inside a cave. We are inside a cave, in fact. The number of falling drops increases. We hear some thousand-footed insect scurry along the earth. Someone’s footsteps are heard dragging along the ground. In the dim light we can make out a group of people. Each of them is in a different part of this earthen, lunar world. One of the men climbs down and walks around the rock, looking for something. The sandy ground is crisscrossed with large, tangled roots bursting out of and into the dry earth. The inhabitants of this place wear clothes in muted colours, as dim as the light, faded by wear and the passage of time; perhaps one might say the passing of the wrong time. We see that some of their garments are missing buttons, shirtsleeves, collars, belts. One of the women hums or sings a melody—a melody that will be repeated, the same melody that always comes from her lips.
UF 3015/PURA: Like that shadow from the moon
That in the darkest night
With neither heed nor warning
Will close itself round me
Destiny’s cross
Has bound my fate
Since the day I was born
Like the shadow that roars
From all of my paths
Howling out my name
And coming for me now
Cursed stone hill
Where my star has fallen
Since the day I was born
UF 3017/PEPE: My glasses
(Pause.)
Where did my glasses get to?
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: The glasses again
UF 3014/MERCEDES: The glasses again?
UF 3017/PEPE: One always sees more clearly through a lens
Has anyone seen them?
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Seen? No one can see anything here
UF 3017/PEPE: Have you seen something?
UF 3015/PURA: (Suddenly stops singing.)
Watch, listen and keep quiet
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Touch . . .
UF 3015/PURA: And keep quiet . . .
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Smell . . .
UF 3015/PURA: And keep quiet
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: Taste . . .
UF 3015/PURA: And keep quiet
(Pause.)
And keep on keeping quiet
UF 3017/PEPE: Has anyone seen my glasses?
UF 3015/PURA: Waiting and hoping
UF 3017/PEPE: I’m only looking for my glasses. I haven’t killed anyone
(Silence.)
UF 3015/PURA: You haven’t
(Silence.)
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Nothing happens for those who wait
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: What could happen in this cold?
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Everything’s mixed up
UF 3015/PURA: Until something does happen
UF 3017/PEPE: Or something occurs
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Something will happen
UF 3015/PURA: Something has to happen
(Pause.)
Yes, it is cold here
It’s always cold here
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Well I feel hot
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: It’s freezing, not cold, not damp, freezing
So cold it’s freezing everything
UF 3017/PEPE: Even ideas
Even memory
Even scars
UF 3015/PURA: No, that doesn’t freeze
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Memory plays dirty tricks
Can anyone remember daylight?
Can anyone remember coffee at breakfast?
Can anyone here remember their mother’s hands?
UF 3015/PURA: I can
UF 3014/MERCEDES: The veins crisscrossing her palms?
UF 3015/PURA: I can
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Well forget them because they’re a lie
Everything’s a lie!
UF3015/PURA: I carry my mother’s hands within me!
As true as we’re rotting away in here!
(Pause.)
UF 3017/PEPE: Did I hear you singing a moment ago?
Don’t you sing?
UF 3015/PURA: No
UF 3017/PEPE: When we sing we look towards the place where we were happiest
Sing
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Everything seems calm when you look back
And when you look forward
(Silence.)
UF 3012/SALVADOR: It’s been a while since we heard any sound
UF 3015/PURA: A long while
UF 3017/PEPE: All we hear here is Pura singing
UF 3015/PURA: You’re lucky I am here
to cheer you all up a bit
UF 3014/MERCEDES: How long?
UF 3015/PURA: What would you do without me?
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Too long I’d say
UF 3015/PURA: You’d bore yourselves stiff like the stones in this vale of Josaphat!
You’re all so dull!
UF 3017/PEPE: A long time ago we used to hear lots of things
UF 3015/PURA: Dull, you’re all so dull!
UF 3017/PEPE: Do you remember?
UF 3015/PURA: Stuffier than Saint Perpetua
UF 3014/MERCEDES: We’re perpetually here
Like the roots
Like the rocks
Like the worms
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: Yes, I remember when we used to hear birds singing
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Birds?
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: Yes, I’ve heard birds
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Birds, what birds?
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: Swallows, greenfinches, goldfinches, blackbirds,
turtledoves, thrushes, starlings, sparrows,
magpies . . .
UF 3012/SALVADOR: You having birds in your head doesn’t mean you can hear birds
We’ve never heard birds here
Right?
UF 3015/PURA: I did think I heard one once
(Pause.)
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: See?
UF 3015/PURA: But then I realized I hadn’t
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: I’m telling you I hear them
I’ve heard swallows,
greenfinches, goldfinches,
blackbirds, turtledoves, thrushes,
teals, starlings . . .
UF 3015/PURA: I did hear one once
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: See?
UF 3015/PURA: And I hear it every night
I hear it every day
I hear it all the time
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Please stop saying the word “time”
You people talk about time as if you knew what it was
Do you know?
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Do I know what?
UF 3014/MERCEDES: What time is
UF 3012/SALVADOR: I know what time is
It’s wedged here inside me
Crushed, contained,
constrained, curtailed
UF 3014/MERCEDES: If you all knew what it was you wouldn’t talk about it so much
UF 3012/SALVADOR: I know I’m tired and we always have less time
We’ve already been here a long time
Which is too much time
UF 3015/PURA: Too much time?
How much time has it been?
UF 3017/PEPE: A long time
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: I’d say it’s been a short time
UF 3017/PEPE: A short time?
UF 3015/PURA: A very short time
UF 3017/PEPE: Is 28,000 days a short time?
Is 900 months a short time?
Is 80 years a short time?
Is 672,000 hours a short time?
UF 3014/MERCEDES: Stop talking about time!
UF 3012/SALVADOR: I still hurt all over, ever since that day
UF 3016/ÁGUEDA: Well I don’t hurt at all!
UF 3014/MERCEDES: I’m tired of time passing
of time lost
of not having time
of the hours, the days, the months
one year, five years, ten,
I’m tired of wasting time
seeing it slipping away under my nose
us draining away with it
losing ourselves in it
Please stop saying the word . . .
UF 3012/SALVADOR: Time
*
PURGATORY
. . .
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: So hot . . .! I can’t take any more.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Did you bring the court order?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: No matter how many times I come up here, I never get used to it. (Takes a swig of water.) No, I couldn’t find the mayor. All set for the documentation?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: Hadn’t we arranged to meet him?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Yes, but he wasn’t in his office. I waited for a while, he never turned up.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Really? I don’t believe this.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: That doesn’t sound good, him not being there.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Don’t worry; he’ll turn up, or he’ll come for the lunch. (Pause.) How goes it, Tomás? Enjoying the shade?
TOMÁS: Just pondering.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Don’t ponder too much . . . Look at these two: all this talk about the past, and all they do is project into the future, and negatively at that. It’s not good for you.
TOMÁS: So what is good?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2 (points to the grave. Takes a photo): This is good. What we’re doing here is good.
(Pause.)
ANTHROPOLOGIST: We agreed you’d pick the mayor up now because the court order was due.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: I know, but I couldn’t wait any longer.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Where’s Carmen?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Left her in the car. She’s coming up now.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Why didn’t she come up with you?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: She just said she needed a moment.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: It’s not easy.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: I looked back halfway up; I think she was sort of getting ready.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: Getting ready?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Yeah, sort of getting ready, fixing her hair . . .
ANTHROPOLOGIST: To come to the grave . . .?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Yes.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Will she know the way up?
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: You can’t get lost: there’s only one path.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: Did you get a chance to see the other graves?
TOMÁS: What graves? You can’t see anything there. Just a wall and a patch of earth. Just like here. There used to be an elm tree and a slope here; now there’s an elm tree, a slope and a grave.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: The grave was there before.
TOMÁS: I know; you don’t always need to see something to feel it. Get it done quickly, that’s what you need to do. Put it all back the way it was.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: You’re a farmer. When you move the earth, it breathes; you ought to know that; and when something breathes, it comes back to life. And nothing’s ever the same again.
(Silence.)
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: Los Chorrillos are famous for their suckling lamb, aren’t they?
ANTHROPOLOGIST: The suckling lamb at Los Chorrillos is famed throughout the region . . .
ARCHAEOLOGIST 1: Their trout’s really good too.
TOMÁS: Wouldn’t have trout at Los Chorrillos.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Aren’t they from the river?
TOMÁS: Exactly, they’re from the river. There’s an aluminium factory near here that the mayor saddled us with. There’s an outflow pipe hidden in the weeds. Some nights, when it rains or if there’s a storm, they open the hatch and release who knows what into the river. Nothing good. That’s for sure.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: I hope they’ll keep the table for us.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Did you book?
(They all look at each other.)
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Shit. No lunch for us today, then. There’s always a queue of people; the summer ’round here . . . it’s hell itself . . . They think they’re coming to paradise, but paradise here is in the winter.
TOMÁS: Only the dead and the old left here now. Only be the dead before long.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Tomás, you could come with us. And you know the mayor’s coming?—
TOMÁS: That idiot? No. Never eaten there before. Don’t plan to start now. My father and I used to eat out sometimes . . . But never in the village . . . Each to their own . . . You enjoy yourselves.
ARCHAEOLOGIST 2: Don’t go, Tomás. Carmen’ll be here soon, she really wants to meet you . . . And thank you for everything you’ve done—
TOMÁS: I’ve done nothing . . . ! Have you people got that? Nothing, nothing, nothing . . . You hear me . . . ? It was my father did all this . . . The one who’s nightmare it was . . . It was his terror; he was the one who wanted to talk to you people; I just fulfilled his last wish. I’ve done nothing, nothing. But it all passes down to us, more’s the pity. Parents leave their children everything: cholesterol, blood sugar, lumbago . . . and their nightmares.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: But you want this resolved more than anyone. You’ve been asking for justice more than anyone else.
TOMÁS: I killed a viper on the way to the farm yesterday . . . They like to come out at dawn, warm themselves up on the tarmac. (Pause.) They have black heads, triangle-shaped, and cats’ eyes, and their heads are covered in little scales. Have to be very careful with them . . . not disturb them; they hide in the wheat, rest under the stones . . . Like these bones . . . My father’s father died of a viper bite, reaping the wheatfields . . . But unlike the vipers, who work in summer and sleep in the winter, these poor souls never rest. Never. They tell me every day; I hear them every night; they repeat it to me every hour. They drill at me, hammer at me, stab at my thoughts, perforate my every day. Their voices are stuck inside me, here. All I want is to rest. I want them to rest, so I can rest too. Is that so hard to understand?
