Out of the Wings

El otro (1926), Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo

The Other : ACT ONE Scene One , ACT ONE Scene Four , ACT TWO Scene Two

The Other, translated by Gwynneth Dowling

ACT ONE Scene One

Context:

This is the beginning of the play. Don Juan and Ernesto are discussing the madness of Cosme, who is Ernesto’s brother-in-law.

Sample text

ERNESTO:: So there you have it, Don Juan. I would ask you, as our family doctor, and something of a psychiatrist on top of that, to investigate the mystery of my poor sister Laura – and the mystery of this house. Because there is a mystery here ... you can feel it pressing on your chest when you breathe. This place seems part prison, part graveyard, part ...
DON JUAN:: Asylum!
ERNESTO:: Exactly! And this mystery ...
DON JUAN:: A terror, Don Ernesto, a terror!
ERNESTO:: I never made his acquaintance ... they met and married while I was in America. On my return I found myself confronted with this, this madman.
DON JUAN:: Exactly! Your brother-in-law, poor Laura’s husband, has gone completely mad.
ERNESTO:: I had already noticed that, but what about her?
DON JUAN:: Her? She’s infected. Some terror unites them, yet also divides them.
ERNESTO:: Divides them?
DON JUAN:: Yes. Because ever since the start of the mystery, the day he went mad, they no longer sleep together. He sleeps alone. He shuts himself away so completely ... You couldn’t even hear him talk in his sleep! And he says to himself ‘the other’. When she, his wife, calls him by his name Cosme, he replies, ‘No, the other!’. And what’s most troubling is that this strange mania doesn’t seem to worry her … Laura. It’s as if all this ‘other’ business meant something to her. Something hidden from the rest of us. I didn’t know them until they came to live here. Until after they were married. In the beginning they got on well. They lived like any husband and wife. But ever since the fateful day, when she, Laura, returned from a trip, madness entered this house. And that madness, which will turn me mad, is called .... the other!
ERNESTO:: And what about her?
DON JUAN:: Her? Either she’s pretending not to notice what’s going on, or she really doesn’t notice.
ERNESTO:: And how long has it been ...?
DON JUAN:: Just over a month. It must have been building up. But, not that long ago, it all burst out into the open. But here she comes, and you, her brother, will sound her out better than I. (As he goes to leave LAURA arrives.) I leave you with your brother, so you can work it out together.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation The Other by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ACT ONE Scene Four

Context:

Cosme is now referred to as ‘The Other’ in the text. In this scene The Other explains his feelings of terror to Ernesto for the first time.

Sample text

THE OTHER and ERNESTO. THE OTHER goes to the door, locks it from the inside and keeps the key after anxiously taking it from the lock. He goes to ERNESTO and invites him to sit opposite him in a friar’s chair,[1] separated from his own by a small table. THE OTHER sits, leans his elbows on the table and rests his head on his hands. He says:

THE OTHER:

Well now you’ll hear my confession ... No, no, you’re quite safe ...

ERNESTO:

I’m fine ...

THE OTHER:

People are so afraid of being alone with those they believe to be mad ... always dangerous. Just as they fear being in a graveyard, alone, at night. A madman, they believe, is like a dead man. And they’re right. Because ... inside ... a madman carries a dead man.

ERNESTO:

Enough.

THE OTHER:

But I haven’t even begun!

ERNESTO:

Well then, begin!

THE OTHER:

I’m beginning. Let me see ... I don’t remember exactly ... Your sister, my wife, left to attend to some family matters. And I let her go on her own because I wanted to remain here alone – to look over some papers, to burn some of them as I burn my past, fertilising future memories with the ashes of the old ... I needed to put my accounts in order, make peace with myself. But one night at dusk, sitting where I am now ..., but ... Am I really here?

ERNESTO:

Calm yourself, Cosme.

THE OTHER:

The Other! The Other!

ERNESTO:

Calm yourself. You’re here with me ...

THE OTHER:

With you? With you? Well, like I said, I was here with me, when they announced The Other, and I watched myself enter through there, through that door ... No, no, don’t get upset, no need to be afraid. And in any case take the key. (He gives it to him.) Wait! Do you have one of those little mirrors on you? For fixing your hair and moustache ...?

ERNESTO:

Yes, here it is. (He takes it out and hands it over.)

THE OTHER:

A mirror and a key cannot meet ... (He breaks the mirror and throws it away.)

ERNESTO:

Okay, continue, I’m ...

THE OTHER:

Don’t be afraid. I saw myself walk in as if I’d just stepped out of a mirror. And I saw myself sit down there, where you sit ... There’s no need to pinch yourself; you aren’t dreaming ... you are you, you are yourself ... I saw myself enter, and The Other ... me ... he sat here just as I am, just as you are sitting now ... (ERNESTO shifts in his chair.) And I sat looking into his eyes and looking into my eyes. (ERNESTO, troubled, looks down.) And then I felt that I was losing consciousness, I felt my soul was melting away. That I was starting to live, or more exactly to unlive, backwards, back in time, like being in a film playing backwards ... I began living backwards, heading towards the past, in huge leaps, frightening myself ... And my life passed before my eyes and I became 20 again, then 10, 5, and I became a child. A child! And when I felt the taste of saintly mother’s milk on my saintly childish lips..., I was unborn ..., I died ... I died when I reached the moment I was born, when we were born ...

ERNESTO:

Trying to get up

THE OTHER:

Calm down? Calm myself already? But didn’t you tell me to get it off my chest? And how do you expect me to rest without doing so? No, don’t get up ... sit back down …. And hold on to the key. I am unarmed. Or are you upset about the little mirror?

ERNESTO:

It’s just that ...

THE OTHER:

Yes, it’s just that it’s dangerous finding yourself shut up here with a madman, with a dead man, isn’t that it? Well listen ...

ERNESTO:

Finish your story, then.

THE OTHER:

After a while I gradually regained consciousness. I came back to life. But, sitting there, where you are, and here, where I am, was my corpse ... Here, in this very seat, here was my corpse ..., here ... here it is! I am the corpse, I am the dead man. Here he was ... pale ... (He covers his eyes.) I can still see myself! Everything is a mirror! I can still see me! Here he was, pale, looking at me with his dead eyes, with his eyes ... seeing into eternity. With his eyes ... holding in them the image of my death, as if commemorated in them ... And forevermore ... forever ...

ERNESTO:

Please, try and calm down man!

THE OTHER:

Hah! I will never be at peace ... never ... not even dead. I lifted him and he was so heavy! So heavy! I brought him down there, to the cellar, and there I shut him away and there he remains ...

ERNESTO:

Okay ...

THE OTHER:

There is nothing okay about it! Because you’re coming with me right now, to the cellar, so that I can show you the corpse of the other, who died on me here! He is down there below, in the dark, dying in the dark ...

[1] A ‘friar’s chair’, sometimes called a ‘sillón frailero’ as it is in the Spanish, is an austere antique chair from the Renaissance period.

The above sample taken from the translation The Other by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ACT TWO Scene Two

Context:

Ernesto and Laura together. Ernesto has just discovered that Cosme has a twin brother, Damian. Laura is explaining how she met the twins during her trip to Renada. The suspicion emerges that Cosme is not in fact Cosme, but Damian.

Sample text

ERNESTO:: What's this?
LAURA:: Let me explain ... When I arrived at Renada with our father, God rest his soul, I met two twins, Cosme and Damian Redondo. They were so alike, it was impossible to tell them apart. Both so passionate! They fell in love with me, madly. That’s when their deep hatred was born – born out of jealousy. A brotherly hatred, a hatred that came from their very core. And since I could not tell them apart – not even one physical difference – I had no reason to prefer one over the other. And what’s more, the danger was that by marrying one of them I’d always have the other one close ...
ERNESTO:: You should have rejected them both!
LAURA:: It was impossible! They both won my heart! They courted me like two whirlwinds. The rivalry between them was ferocious. They began to hate each other with a passion. I began to fear, they began to fear that they would kill each other – a mutual suicide. And I feared that they would destroy my moral defences. They were irresistible. And their passion won me over ...
ERNESTO:: But which one?
LAURA:: Both ... one ... the other. So they decided that the one who did not marry me would disappear. I wasn’t there for that decision. It terrified me to see them together. It must have been an awful decision between them ...
ERNESTO:: No, but rather one full of infernal coldness and stillness ...
LAURA:: I don’t know. I never found out. I didn’t want to know how they decided. They had to be separated, forever. I married the one who stayed behind, Cosme ...
ERNESTO:: But, is he ... is he Cosme?
LAURA:: Well who else would he be?
ERNESTO:: The Other, like he says ...
LAURA:: Who? Damian? Unthinkable!

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