JOÃO (a bit
constrained): This Maria Genista!...
FERNANDO
(who fetches the lamp and puts it in the middle of the table): That’s how she
is: when she likes someone she turns and spins more than any spinning jenny!...
TÓINO:
There’s nobody like Maria Genista: Last night… O Fernando, if you tell her
she’ll kill me and gnaw my guts!...
FERNANDO
(laughing): Speak, lad: you’re among men!
TÓINO: It
was about two o’clock in the morning… Well I got up and went out to leak in the
garden… D’you wanna know what I see?! Maria Genista herself, in her underwear
and barefoot, running like crazy down the hill! And it was so cold, everything
was covered in snow!...
FERNANDO
(laughing, manly pride): Is that true, Tóino?! (sits at the table) She’s crazy
like hell, your sister!...
TÓINO (sits
too): Well I’ll be blind! Don’t you remember that time with the billy-goat,
Fernando?
FERNANDO:
Don’t I?! (chocking with laughter) Oh João, I wanted you to see it…! Tell it,
Tóino, tell my brother!
TÓINO:
About a month ago, my mother told me to go buy some seeds… Get me some more
wine, Fernando!...
FERNANDO:
Drink, Tóino! Sit here João, have some wine, man… (João sits) Tell him, Tóino,
tell him…
TÓINO: So,
that morning who left with the cattle was Maria Genista… Oh, João, do you know
what Fernando and I saw when, at night, we came to meet her? My sister, fallen
all the ground, all raggedy…
FERNANDO:
…fighting the big billy-goat! The older one, the wild one, remember, João?
JOÃO
(interested): And you?
FERNANDO:
Well, my heart was tinier than an olive. Hell of a girl!... There, clinging to
the creature, she shouted, hit it, bit it… wouldn’t let go for anything in this
world! The billy-goat, of course, hit her with all he got. I was crazy to break
them apart!... And d’you wanna know, João? She even turned against me: that she
could handle it on her own, that I shouldn’t have messed with it…!
JOÃO:
You’re softer than your sister, aren’t you, Tóino?
TÓINO
(simple): I’m like my father, God have him: Maria Genista is more like my
mother…
FERNANDO
(who pours more wine for João): Drink up, João!...
JOÃO: I’ll
be drunk in a minute…
FERNANDO:
So what? Have some too, Tóino Genista… (pours for Tóino.)
JOÃO
(sweetly): Tóino’s still a lad…
TÓINO
(joy): But I drink like men!
FERNANDO
(who drinks): This wine is pure gold!... (he slaps João’s back) Eh, brother,
now we’re here by ourselves, with no female ears around…
JOÃO (who
interrupts, looking at Rosa): Grandma…?!
FERNANDO:
She’s asleep, man, she goes now on her first sleep!... Come on, do tell! Do
tell us of Lisbon!... (Another friendly slap on his back, drinks more).
JOÃO (right
away somber): I don’t know…
FERNANDO (a
bit drunk): What?! Look, bite here!... (offers him a finger) Then you think I’m
empty headed? Perhaps I didn’t hang around there too?! That’s a good one!...
TÓINO
(anxious curiosity of a teenager): Tell… do tell, João?!
FERNANDO:
Ah, Tóino, there’s some of them! And they pull a man, call him on the street,
offer themselves!...
TÓINO
(naïve, ardent): Who? Women?!...
FERNANDO:
Of course, lad, who should it be? Men, maybe!?... (malicious silence, great
laughter, mock) And look, men too… even men, Tóino, even them!
TÓINO
(mouth open): What?!... Men?! (Fernando laughs) And… yes… what for?!
(Outside,
the dog howls)
FERNANDO
(drunk, great gestures, croaking voice): What for? Well, well!... (elbows João)
Listen to this, João: what for?! (laugh) With your age I already… But you don’t
see anything yet, Tóino… nothing of this life! Then you, for sure, don’t know
there’s…? Jesus, did come from your mother’s belly yesterday?! (bending over
Tóino, ferocious, lowering his voice) The sissies, boy, the sissies! In Lisbon,
they’re like this (snaps his fingers)… making a line after us!...
JOÃO
(nervous, uncontrollable hand gestures): What sort of conversation…?! Don’t
tell the lad such things: don’t you see that…!? (drinks, shaking)
FERNANDO
(brutal, thick laughter): They’ve never made flour with me! One time… it was
close to Belém… one of the showed up all sweet and things and this and that…
Eh, João, I’ll just tell you I gave him one of those loads… look, I broke his
arm! (laughter) You should have seen him: running, all unwinged of an arm… and
he cried, he yelped like a puppy, the rotten-gut!...
(Tóino,
half drunk, laughs, interrupting Fernando’s line: João, crisp, stares at him
deeply with a terrible silent violence; then, with a sudden movement, he
angrily takes one of his wrists: Tóino, between scared and surprised, pulls
back)
TÓINO:
João, down… you’ll hurt me…!?
FERNANDO
(without understanding, laughing a lot): What’s that!? Are you drunk, João?
Well that’s no problem, brother: there’s a bed right over there… Go on, another
drop!...
(João lets
go of Tóino’s wrist, they stare at each other darkly: fear and surprise in
Tóino, pain and rage in João.)
FERNANDO
(while he pours the wine, always laughing): Eh, but there was a little soldier,
in my regiment, who lived at their cost: movies, nice suits…! (spitting on the
floor with despise) Pigs, lowly folk: they should be all killed, all hung!
(Involuntarily, he pushes the lamp towards João, who then is illuminated from
the bottom up, as if under focus) Race of lice! It was the same in your
quarter, right, João?... (João, stiff, numb, his lips trembling, his eyes wide
open) I know, I know!... (drinks more) And they say the wine kills your thirst,
the more a man drinks the more… All dead… their neck sliced up!... Chico MaltÊs
told me… Eh, João, do you remember Chico MaltÊs? He was from my regiment too…
(facing João) Chico, then one from the Upper Heath…?! Don’t you know who he
is?... (João motionless) Aren’t you listening to me, brother João?... Eh,
João?!... (he puts his hand on João’s arm, friendly, as if to wake him up)
JOÃO (for a
few seconds, stares his brother in the eye; then, with sudden violence, repels
him: Fernando falls down noisily): Leave me!...
(At the
same time, with his free arm, he brushes away the lamp, throwing it on the
floor: he stands, motionless, quivering. Almost complete obscurity: only the
light of the fire in the fireplace).
ROSA (who
woke up with the racket, reacts at first with fright, then softly, the yawns
like a child, messy, lit in red. Then, she gets up heavily. And always before the
fireplace, she dances while she sings with her mad voice)
Green the air,
Green the rose,
Green the song
That the birds
shall sing!
(The
curtains begin to come down slowly)
Green the blood,
Green the crying,
Green the sweat,
That the pregnant
mother sweats!
Green eyes… oh,
green eyes…
Green are the
eyes of the little boy!...
End
of Act I
