Out of the Wings

El día que me quieras (c.1979), José Cabrujas

The Day You'll Love Me : ACT TWO

The Day You'll Love Me, translated by Gwendolen MacKeith

ACT TWO

Context:

The Ancízar Family have returned from the Gardel concert and are enraptured. What is more, he will soon be arriving to join them for dinner. This excerpt shows them preparing for this honoured guest.

Sample text

TUT-ANKH-AMON

The sitting room and the patio of the Ancízar family at midnight. ELVIRAturns on the sitting room light. MARÍA LUISAand MATILDE enter behind her. They’ve come from el Teatro Principal, after attending GARDEL’s grand finale.

MATILDE: (Shouts, from the entrance before turning on the light)

You’re not going to believe this! Gather the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem, and Doctor Fourtoul and Doctor Vallenilla and ask them about tonight’s story…you’re not going to believe it! What a magnificent country!

MARÍA LUISA:

(Alarmed by the shouting.) Matilde!

ELVIRA: (Giggly.)

I’ll be talking about it for another twenty years! We haven’t seen anything like it here! Round here even the wind stops when that man opens his mouth and speaks! Because it’s not his song or his repertoire, it’s him! And what radiates from him! Did you see his teeth? What did I tell you about his teeth? Has this earth ever before beheld such white porcelain? He’s got a mirror in that mouth of his!

MATILDE:

Someone comes along, right María Luisa? And he speaks to you in velvet, caramel, clear glass and teardrops, lustrous and deep. Just imagine …and you become lost for words, like a camel in the sand of the Nile. Tutankamón! Tutankamón!

MARÍA LUISA:

Matilde, keep your voice down…

MATILDE:

Why should I? I don’t want to keep my voice down! I want them to hear me! I want them to wake up! (Shouts) Tutankamón! Tutankamón! How magnificent is Tutankamón!

MARÍA LUISA:

You’re crazy!

MATILDE:

Drunk, like the burgundy in Paris! Drunk…! Absolutely and undeniably drunk! Tutankamón! When he sang Tuth-ank-amón, eh Elvira? I felt like I was a high priestess, chain and wolf! And he made me want to get up on the stage and rescue him from the water just like Moses’s mother in the book of Exodus. God of Sinai! That man’s a dish!

ELVIRA:

I want to see Bertorelli now, face to face! Tomorrow I’ll arrive at my counter at ten thirty, or perhaps eleven…and when that bloodsucker lifts his eyes above the cash desk and asks me why I’m late, I’ll say: I’m terribly sorry, Bertorelli, but yesterday Gardel was at my house and there are certain commitments which require one to be slightly late! I don’t believe that this beaurocratic hiccup will slow down national communications. And if it were to be so, may I be struck down and die of shame, honourable superintendent!

MARÍA LUISA:

I don’t think we’ve got enough glasses.

ELVIRA:

Why? It’s only him and Lepera coming.

MARÍA LUISA:

What if he invites someone else? There were so many people waiting for him.

MATILDE:

He was crystal clear, when he came in through that door at two thirty in the afternoon, as I swooned. (Immitating GARDEL.) Señora Elvira…

ELVIRA: (Correcting her.)

Señora Elvira, distinguished/most elegant lady…

MATILDE: (p

Playing along.)

May I have…?

MARÍA LUISA: (f

Finishing the historic words of GARDEL.)

…the honour of coming here tonight after my performance at Caracas State Theatre?

MATILDE: (Excited.)

No way! No way! No Way! (To ELVIRA.) And how did the distinguished lady reply?

ELVIRA: (Affected.)

I’ve already told you. I’m not going to repeat it again.

MATILDE:

Why not? Didn’t the nuns at school tell me about the converted soldier and the lance wound at least fourteen times?

MARÍA LUISA:

Tell us, Elvira…!

ELVIRA:

I replied…to what to I owe this honour, sir?

MARÍA LUISA and ELVIRA: (Whispering at the same time.)

La politesse… la politesse…

MARÍA LUISA: (Amused.)

My god!...we’re mad

ELVIRA: (To MARIA LUISA.)

Let’s celebrate such a prestige with four glasses of champagne. Sometimes I’d like you to lift your head and see the sky, María Luisa. On rare occasions, there are stars…

MATILDE: (Insisting.)

And to what to I owe this honour?

MARÍA LUISA:

Pío’s going to arrive any minute.

MATILDE:

I’m desperate to go for a pee.

ELVIRA:

Go, woman.

MATILDE:

but what if he comes? (To ELVIRA) Promise me you won’t say anything.

ELVIRA:

I promise.

MATILDE: (As she leaves.)

Talk to him about flowers…if he comes, talk about flowers.

(MATILDE leaves in a rush. A pause)

ELVIRA:

Is it true, you’re going to leave tonight?

MARÍA LUISA:

Yes.

ELVIRA:

And your clothes…?

MARÍA LUISA:

I’ll come back for them.

(A brief pause.)

ELVIRA:

María Luisa…

MARÍA LUISA:

Elvira, don’t tell me I’m wrong…Whatever you do, don’t tell me I’m wrong…

ELVIRA:

No.

MARÍA LUISA:

I’ve had ten years (promising me) with the scent of this day. I know about this Thursday like nothing else in my life. It’s like that. It’s today. We’ll live in one room, in the short term, and later…

ELVIRA:

And now? What are you going to do now? I’ve had the same ten years hearing you talk to Pío, about later…And I want to know about now…

MARÍA LUISA:

I don’t know…I’ll stay there…I’ll think of something…I don’t know…Tonight…I’ll think about that and nothing else…tonight…Ten years are going to end tonight…And it will be like everyone else…like you with Galarraga…Isn’t it like this?

ELVIRA:

Galarraga got drunk and recited poems and talked about doing business in electricity. Galarraga left the next day. And when that happened…inside…I had a thought. I’m not going to be able to bear it, I said to myself, because it was a dreadful pain, without relief, too raw…and in the end there was something…I never knew what exactly…there was something and it was just like that…I was twenty years old…What would I remember that?

MARÍA LUISA:

I’m thirty six, like Santa Ana.

ELVIRA:

Santa Ana gave birth to Maria, blessed be God.

(MATILDE comes in.)

ELVIRA: (Cheerful.)

It was the 11^th of June 1935 when Carlos Gardel arrived at this house and Elvira Ancízar divided her life into two stages or, better said, into two movements, and as simple as before and after.

MATILDE: (Like ELVIRA)

And to what do I owe this honour? (like GARDEL) Señora Elvira: I’ve come from New York and I’m exhausted. I can’t take one more reception.

MARÍA LUISA: (To MATILDE.)

Did you notice his hair?

MATILDE:

Among other things.

MARÍA LUISA:

It has such an incredible shine to it, as if the sun were reflected on his head. A Peruvian shine of midday in Lima. Who knows if the Uruguay story is true.

ELVIRA:

Tonight everything will become clear.

MATILDE:

Tonight!

ELVIRA:

And the truth will shine through! He was born in Toulouse, without a birth certificate, to a dubious Frenchman and the most wholesome Argentine mother. At three, as luck would have it, he arrived in Montevideo, and at five, seeking further horizons, he resided in Buenos Aires, where he was known by the nickname of the Dark Charmer.

MARÍA LUISA:

Isn’t his mother Indian?

ELVIRA:

White and blonde like the duchess of Dawn. That man does not belong to us.

MATILDE:

I want to hear what he said about the house!

MARÍA LUISA:

Don’t shout Matilde!

ELVIRA:

Then he cut to the chase…he looked at me…and said: Señora Elvira, my request will surprise you, but I would like, if it’s not too much trouble, to spend this evening with you and your family.

MATILDE: (Like ELVIRA.)

It would be an honour, Sir.

ELVIRA: (Like GARDEL.)

Because this house looks like my mother’s house in Buenos Aires, when we arrived from Montevideo.

MATILDE:

And what can you do to stop yourself screaming? Standing, on these tiles, the first Latin American since San Pedro Claver, declares that this house looks like his mother’s.

MARÍA LUISA: (Sharing the delight.)

It was so beautiful in the theatre…

MATILDE:

I was dying.

MARÍA LUISA:

…when he dedicated Tutankamón to us. It made we want to cry.

ELVIRA:

And nobody knew about it. That envy eating everyone up.

MARÍA LUISA:

There was a silence and the people thought that something very special was going to happen. And he waited and waited and waited…until all the coughing and whispering had disappeared, and he said: You’re a beautiful audience tonight…I feel happy in Caracas…

ELVIRA:

And there I welled up with tears, because I saw the planet as one whole world where Providence furnishes us with one little corner and a name…I feel happy in Caracas…

MARÍA LUISA: (Continues.)

…a city I always wanted to know and that I have carried in my heart for many years…

MATILDE:

Alleluia.

MARÍA LUISA:

Half the theatre cried at that moment, as if everything ended there. And then there was a silence…

MATILDE:

(Pause) And after the silence?

MARÍA LUISA:

He turned his head and looked at us…and said: This afternoon I met three lovely ladies who I will always remember…

MATILDE: (Narrating.)

Mary, Peggy, Betty. And we’re missing Julie.

ELVIRA:

Julie is your mother, and your mother is looking at us from the kingdom of heaven.

MATILDE:

Mary, Peggy y Betty, because Julie died in 1928, and since that day there are flowers on her tomb and minutes of silence.

MARÍA LUISA:

And to those ladies, good women, charming women, I want to dedicate to them an affectionate shimmy. It’s called: Tutankh-amón.

ELVIRA:

And he sang Tutankamón, as if happiness was his subject in that new Egypt. My God! How can we inscribe this date? I would need a pyramid.

MATILDE:

(Lucid.) And we haven’t laid the tablecloth.

MARIA LUISA:

Mary and Peggy go into the kitchen and bring the glasses. I’ll spread the tablecloth.

MATILDE:

Will he come, Elvira?

ELVIRA:

Any minute now. I know it. I can feel it.

ELVIRA and MATILDE leave. MARÍA LUISA looks for a tablecloth and with precision she covers as table which they have prepared for the transcendental occasion. A pause. Gardel comes in. Without making a sound he goes close to MARÍA LUISA.

GARDEL: