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

GRANDFATHER: They’ve been stolen.

GRANDMOTHER: Gracious me, how did it happen? (AMELIA and GRANDMOTHER take GRANDFATHER to the armchair and sit him down. )

GRANDFATHER: As I was getting off the tram. One of those vagrants that loaf around the streets of Lima. Threw me to the ground. He also snatched my … ( Searching for the word ) my thingumajig.

GRANDMOTHER: Your watch? Oh, Pedro, they didn’t steal your watch as well!

AMELIA: You see we’re right, Papa. You’re not to go out alone, catching buses and getting on to trams. Why won’t you listen? I’ve told you so many times not to go out in the street, I’m quite hoarse.

GRANDMOTHER: Besides, you’re not well. What if you have another blackout? I don’t know how you haven’t learnt your lesson after such an awful shock. Don’t you remember? You were wandering about for hours trying to find the house.

GRANDFATHER: I’m not spending the rest of my life cooped up here, waiting to be carted off feet first, my dear. I’m not going to let this country do away with me just like that …

GRANDMOTHER: Did you hurt yourself? Where did you get hit?

GRANDFATHER: Because people who want to work are wasted here in Peru. It’s not like that anywhere else in the world. Here, it’s a crime to be old. In civilized countries. Like Germany. Or England. It’s quite the reverse. Elderly people are consulted, their experience is put to good use. Here they’re just tossed on the rubbish tip. Well, I don’t hold with it because I know I could do a better job of work than anyone half my age.

(BELISARIO stops writing.)

BELISARIO: ( Lost in recollection ) Always rabbiting on about the same old thing; it really got under your skin, didn’t it, Grandpa? It was something you never forgot.

( He tries to carry on with his writing but after scribbling a few lines, his mind starts to wander and he becomes increasingly interested in what is going on in his grandparents’ house. )

AMELIA: You won’t solve anything by getting so worked up. You’ll only ruin your nerves.

GRANDMOTHER: You’ve got a weak head, Pedro dear. Do try to understand. The doctor’s warned you, if you don’t take things more calmly you’ll have another attack.

GRANDFATHER: My head’s perfectly all right now. I promise you it is. I haven’t been feeling the slightest bit dizzy lately. ( With a mournful expression ) I don’t care about the hat and the … the thingumajig. But I do about the watch. I’d had it for more than fifteen years and it never went wrong once. Anyway, let’s change the subject. Did you listen to the eight o’clock serial?

GRANDMOTHER: I heard it, yes. Amelia missed it though because she was doing the ironing for our budding little lawyer here. Imagine, Sister Fatima has left the convent to marry the composer.

AMELIA: Oh look, you’ve got a cut on your wrist.

GRANDMOTHER: Attacking an old man, really, what a cowardly thing to do.

GRANDFATHER: He came up behind me and caught me off guard. If he’d come at me from the front, it would have been a different story. I may be old, but I’ve got my pride and I know how to look after myself. ( Smiles .) I was always good at fighting. At the Jesuit School, in Arequipa, they used to call me ‘Sparky’, because I’d challenge anyone at the slightest provocation. No one dared trample on my heels.

MAMAE: ( Turning towards them in alarm ) What’s that you said, Pedro? You’re going to challenge Federico Barreto for writing that poem? Don’t! Don’t be so hot-headed. He was only being gallant; he didn’t mean any harm. Anyway, you’d better not chance it, he’s supposed to be an excellent swordsman.

GRANDFATHER: Oh, is he indeed? All right, then I won’t. Besides, it was a very inspired piece of poetry. You know you’ve got to hand it to him, that poet Barreto certainly had good taste. ( To GRANDMOTHER) He used to flirt with you too, the dirty old man!

GRANDMOTHER: That Elvira, really, the things she comes up with … Come, I’m going to put some mercurochrome on you, so you won’t get infected.

AMELIA: Let it be a lesson to you, Papa. I’m warning you, I won’t ever let you go out alone again — my brothers have strictly forbidden it. At least, not at night. Go for your walks during the day, if you must, but don’t go too far, just round the block. Or wait until I can go with you, or Belisario.

GRANDFATHER: ( Getting up ) Very well, Amelia. ( To GRANDMOTHER) You realize, Carmen, the country must be in a pretty poor state for people to rob an old beggar like me? Fancy risking prison for a rickety old walking stick and a moth-eaten hat that’s going yellow round the edges.

GRANDMOTHER: ( Taking him to the inner part of the house ) You were given that watch by the High Court Judges in Piura, when you were Governor there. What a shame, it was such a lovely memento! Oh well, I expect your grandson, Belisario, will give you another one, when he wins his first lawsuit …

( They leave, followed by AMELIA. The stage goes dark. )

BELISARIO: My first lawsuit … You too, Grandma, used to have these flights of fancy. ( Flying into a rage ) And what, may I ask, is Grandmother doing here? And are you seriously going to put Grandfather Pedro into a love story when there hasn’t even been a kiss yet? You couldn’t write it, Belisario. You can’t write. You’ve spent your whole life writing and it gets worse each time. Why is that, Grandpa? A doctor can remove fifty appendixes, cut out two hundred tonsils, trepan a thousand craniums, and then do all these things practically blindfold, isn’t that so? Why, then, after writing fifty or a hundred stories is it still just as difficult, just as impossible as it was the first time? Even worse than the first time! A thousand times more difficult than the first time! Grandfather, Grandma: just disappear, will you! Stop distracting me, stop interrupting me, get out of my way. To hell with the pair of you! Let me write my love story! ( Becoming pensive ) Grandfather might have been a character in a novel. One of the lives of the century: from gradual ruin to irrevocable decline. Governor of Piura in Bustamente’s Constitutional Government. Former cotton entrepreneur in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Bolivia. Before that, an agricultural administrator in Camaná. And before that, an employee of a British firm in Arequipa. But you’d have liked to have been a lawyer and a poet, wouldn’t you, Grandpa? And you might have been too, if your father hadn’t died when you were fifteen. That’s why you were destined for the bar, Belisario, to carry on the family legal tradition.

( From the expression on his face, it is clear that a new idea has started to form in his mind — in connection with what he is writing. He picks up his pencil, turns it round, adjusts his papers. )

Yes, it might work. Come back here, Grandpa, I’m sorry I told you to go to hell. I love you very much, you know

I do, you’re an obvious fictional character. That’s why you always featured in Mamaé’s stories. You were the prototype of all those splendid specimens she was so fond of, those magnificent, improbable creatures akin to unicorns and centaurs: gentlemen. ( Writes now with great enthusiasm. ) But there was nothing mythical about Grandfather’s life. He had to work like a mule, because he not only had his own children to feed, but also those people who Grandmother Carmencita — surely the most charitable woman ever born — kept bringing in from all over the place. Whether they were the children of nincompoops who’d blown out their brains playing Russian roulette to win some bet or other, or eligible young ladies with no father or mother, such as Mamaé.