ACT ONE
It is the hour that the Italians call “prima sera,” the beginning of dusk. Between the house and the palm tree burns the female star with an almost emerald luster.
The mothers of the neighborhood are beginning to call their children home to supper, in voices near and distant, urgent and tender, like the variable notes of wind and water. There are three children: Bruno, Salvatore, and Vivi, ranged in front of the house, one with a red paper kite, one with a hoop, and the little girl with a doll dressed as a clown. They are in attitudes of momentary repose, all looking up at something—a bird or a plane passing over—as the mothers’ voices call them.
BRUNO: The white flags are flying at the Coast Guard station.
SALVATORE: That means fair weather.
VIVI: I love fair weather.
GIUSEPPINA: Vivi! Vieni mangiare!
PEPPINA: Salvatore! Come home!
VIOLETTA: Bruno! Come home to supper!
[The calls are repeated tenderly, musically.
The interior of the house begins to be visible. Serafina delle Rose is seen on the parlor sofa, waiting for her husband Rosario’s return. Between the curtains is a table set lovingly for supper; there is wine in a silver ice-bucket and a great bowl of roses.
Serafina looks like a plump little Italian opera singer in the role of Madame Butterfly. Her black hair is done in a high pompadour that glitters like wet coal. A rose is held in place by glittering jet hairpins. Her voluptuous figure is sheathed in pale rose silk. On her feet are dainty slippers with glittering buckles and French heels. It is apparent from the way she sits, with such plump dignity, that she is wearing a tight girdle. She sits very erect, in an attitude of forced composure, her ankles daintily crossed and her plump little hands holding a yellow paper fan on which is painted a rose. Jewels gleam on her fingers, her wrists and her ears and about her throat. Expectancy shines in her eyes. For a few moments she seems to be posing for a picture.
Rosa delle Rose appears at the side of the house, near the palm tree. Rosa, the daughter of the house, is a young girl of twelve. She is pretty and vivacious, and has about her a particular intensity in every gesture.]
SERAFINA: Rosa, where are you?
ROSA: Here, Mama.
SERAFINA: What are you doing, cara?
ROSA: I’ve caught twelve lightning bugs.
[The cracked voice of Assunta is heard, approaching.]
SERAFINA: I hear Assunta! Assunta!
[Assunta appears and goes into the house, Rosa following her in. Assunta is an old woman in a gray shawl, bearing a basket of herbs, for she is a fattuchiere, a woman who practices a simple sort of medicine. As she enters the children scatter.]
ASSUNTA: Vengo, vengo. Buona sera. Buona sera. There is something wild in the air, no wind but everything’s moving.
SERAFINA: I don’t see nothing moving and neither do you.
ASSUNTA: Nothing is moving so you can see it moving, but everything is moving, and I can hear the star-noises. Hear them? Hear the star-noises?
SERAFINA: Naw, them ain’t the star-noises. They’re termites, eating the house up. What are you peddling, old woman, in those little white bags?
ASSUNTA: Powder, wonderful powder. You drop a pinch of it in your husband’s coffee.
SERAFINA: What is it good for?
ASSUNTA: What is a husband good for! I make it out of the dry blood of a goat.
SERAFINA: Davero!
ASSUNTA: Wonderful stuff! But be sure you put it in his coffee at supper, not in his breakfast coffee.
SERAFINA: My husband don’t need no powder!
ASSUNTA: Excuse me, Baronessa. Maybe he needs the opposite kind of a powder, I got that, too.
SERAFINA: Naw, naw, no kind of powder at all, old woman. [She lifts her head with a proud smile.]
[Outside the sound of a truck is heard approaching up on the highway.]
ROSA [joyfully]: Papa’s truck!
[They stand listening for a moment, but the truck goes by without stopping.]
SERAFINA [to Assunta]: That wasn’t him. It wasn’t no 10-ton truck. It didn’t rattle the shutters! Assunta, Assunta, undo a couple of hooks, the dress is tight on me!
ASSUNTA: Is it true what I told you?
SERAFINA: Yes, it is true, but nobody needed to tell me. Assunta, I’ll tell you something which maybe you won’t believe.
ASSUNTA: It is impossible to tell me anything that I don’t believe.
SERAFINA: Va bene! Senti, Assunta!—I knew that I had conceived on the very night of conception! [There is a phrase of music as she says this.]
ASSUNTA: Ahhhh?
SERAFINA: Senti! That night I woke up with a burning pain on me, here, on my left breast! A pain like a needle, quick, quick, hot little stitches. I turned on the light, I uncovered my breast!—On it I saw the rose tattoo of my husband!
ASSUNTA: Rosario’s tattoo?
SERAFINA: On me, on my breast, his tattoo! And when I saw it I knew that I had conceived . . .
[Serafina throws her head back, smiling proudly, and opens her paper fan. Assunta stares at her gravely, then rises and hands her basket to Serafina.
ASSUNTA: Ecco! You sell the powders! [She starts toward the door.]
SERAFINA: You don’t believe that I saw it?
ASSUNTA [stopping]: Did Rosario see it?
SERAFINA: I screamed. But when he woke up, it was gone. It only lasted a moment. But I did see it, and I did know, when I seen it, that I had conceived, that in my body another rose was growing!
ASSUNTA: Did he believe that you saw it?
SERAFINA: No. He laughed.—He laughed and I cried . . .
ASSUNTA: And he took you into his arms, and you stopped crying!
SERAFINA: Si!
ASSUNTA: Serafina, for you everything has got to be different. A sign, a miracle, a wonder of some kind. You speak to Our Lady. You say that She answers your questions. She nods or shakes Her head at you. Look, Serafina, underneath Our Lady you have a candle. The wind through the shutters makes the candle flicker. The shadows move. Our Lady seems to be nodding!
SERAFINA: She gives me signs.
ASSUNTA: Only to you? Because you are more important? The wife of a barone? Serafina! In Sicily they called his uncle a baron, but in Sicily everybody’s a baron that owns a piece of the land and a separate house for the goats!
SERAFINA: They said to his uncle “Voscenza!” and they kissed their hands to him! [She kisses the back of her hand repeatedly, with vehemence.]
ASSUNTA: His uncle in Sicily!—Si—But here what’s he do? Drives a truck of bananas?
SERAFINA [blurting out]: No! Not bananas!
ASSUNTA: Not bananas?
SERAFINA: Stai zitta! [She makes a warning gesture.]—No—Vieni qui, Assunta! [She beckons her mysteriously. Assunta approaches.]
ASSUNTA: Cosa dici?
SERAFINA: On top of the truck is bananas! But underneath—something else!
ASSUNTA: Che altre cose?
SERAFINA: Whatever it is that the Brothers Romano want hauled out of the state, he hauls it for them, underneath the bananas! [She nods her head importantly.] And money, he gets so much it spills from his pockets! Soon I don’t have to make dresses!
ASSUNTA [turning away]: Soon I think you will have to make a black veil!
SERAFINA: Tonight is the last time he does it! Tomorrow he quits hauling stuff for the Brothers Romano! He pays for the 10-ton truck and works for himself. We live with dignity in America, then! Own truck! Own house! And in the house will be everything electric! Stove—deep-freeze—tutto!—But tonight, stay with me . . . I can’t swallow my heart!—Not till I hear the truck stop in front of the house and his key in the lock of the door!—When I call him, and him shouting back, “Si, sono qui!” In his hair, Assunta, he has—oil of roses. And when I wake up at night—the air, the dark room’s—full of—roses . . . Each time is the first time with him. Time doesn’t pass . . .
[Assunta picks up a small clock on the cupboard and holds it to her ear.]
ASSUNTA: Tick, tick, tick, tick. —You say the clock is a liar.
SERAFINA: No, the clock is a fool. I don’t listen to it. My clock is my heart and my heart don’t say tick-tick, it says love-love! And now I have two hearts in me, both of them saying love-love!
[A truck is heard approaching, then passes. Serafina drops her fan. Assunta opens a bottle of spumanti with a loud pop. Serafina cries out.]
ASSUNTA: Stai tranquilla! Calmati! [She pours her a glass of wine.] Drink this wine and before the glass is empty he’ll be in your arms!
SERAFINA: I can’t—swallow my heart!
ASSUNTA: A woman must not have a heart that is too big to swallow! [She crosses to the door.]
SERAFINA: Stay with me!
ASSUNTA: I have to visit a woman who drank rat poison because of a heart too big for her to swallow.
[Assunta leaves. Serafina returns indolently to the sofa. She lifts her hands to her great swelling breasts and murmurs aloud:]
SERAFINA: Oh, it’s so wonderful, having two lives in the body, not one but two! [Her hands slide down to her belly, luxuriously.] I am heavy with life, I am big, big, big with life! [She picks up a bowl of roses and goes into the back room.]
[Estelle Hohengarten appears in front of the house. She is a thin blonde woman in a dress of Egyptian design, and her blonde hair has an unnatural gloss in the clear, greenish dusk. Rosa appears from behind the house, calling out:]
ROSA: Twenty lightning bugs, Mama!
ESTELLE: Little girl? Little girl?
ROSA [resentfully]: Are you talking to me? [There is a pause.]
ESTELLE: Come here. [She looks Rosa over curiously.] You’re a twig off the old rosebush.—Is the lady that does the sewing in the house?
ROSA: Mama’s at home.
ESTELLE: I’d like to see her.
ROSA: Mama?
SERAFINA: Dimi?
ROSA: There’s a lady to see you.
SERAFINA: Oh. Tell her to wait in the parlor. [Estelle enters and stares curiously about. She picks up a small framed picture on the cupboard. She is looking at it as Serafina enters with a bowl of roses. Serafina speaks sharply.] That is my husband’s picture.
ESTELLE: Oh!—I thought it was Valentino.—With a mustache.
SERAFINA [putting the bowl down on the table]: You want something?
ESTELLE: Yes. I heard you do sewing.
SERAFINA: Yes, I do sewing.
ESTELLE: How fast can you make a shirt for me?
SERAFINA: That all depends. [She takes the picture from Estelle and puts it back on the cupboard.]
ESTELLE: I got the piece of silk with me. I want it made into a shirt for a man I’m in love with. Tomorrow’s the anniversary of the day we met . . . [She unwraps a piece of rose-colored silk which she holds up like a banner.]
SERAFINA [involuntarily]: Che bella stoffa!—Oh, that would be wonderful stuff for a lady’s blouse or for a pair of pyjamas!
ESTELLE: I want a man’s shirt made with it.
SERAFINA: Silk this color for a shirt for a man?
ESTELLE: This man is wild like a Gypsy.
SERAFINA: A woman should not encourage a man to be wild.
ESTELLE: A man that’s wild is hard for a woman to hold, huh? But if he was tame—would the woman want to hold him? Huh?
SERAFINA: I am a married woman in business. I don’t know nothing about wild men and wild women and I don’t have much time—so . . .
ESTELLE: I’ll pay you twice what you ask me.
[Outside there is the sound of the goat bleating and the jingle of its harness; then the crash of wood splintering.]
ROSA [suddenly appearing at the door]: Mama, the black goat is loose! [She runs down the steps and stands watching the goat. Serafina crosses to the door.]
THE STREGA [in the distance]: Hyeh, Billy, hyeh, hyeh, Billy!
ESTELLE: I’ll pay you three times the price that you ask me for it.
SERAFINA [shouting]: Watch the goat! Don’t let him get in our yard! [To Estelle.]—If I ask you five dollars?
ESTELLE: I will pay you fifteen. Make it twenty; money is not the object. But it’s got to be ready tomorrow.
SERAFINA: Tomorrow?
ESTELLE: Twenty-five dollars! [Serafina nods slowly with a stunned look. Estelle smiles.] I’ve got the measurements with me.
SERAFINA: Pin the measurements and your name on the silk and the shirt will be ready tomorrow.
ESTELLE: My name is Estelle Hohengarten.
[A little boy races excitedly into the yard.]
THE BOY: Rosa, Rosa, the black goat’s in your yard!
ROSA [calling]: Mama, the goat’s in the yard!
SERAFINA [furiously, forgetting her visitor]: Il becco della strega!—Scusi! [She runs out onto the porch.] Catch him, catch him before he gets at the vines!
[Rosa dances gleefully. The Strega runs into the yard. She has a mop of wild grey hair and is holding her black shirts up from her bare hairy legs. The sound of the goat’s bleating and the jingling of his harness is heard in the windy blue dusk.
Serafina descends the porch steps. The high-heeled slippers, the tight silk skirt and the dignity of a baronessa make the descent a little gingerly. Arrived in the yard, she directs the goat-chase imperiously with her yellow paper fan, pointing this way and that, exclaiming in Italian.
She fans herself rapidly and crosses back of the house. The goat evidently makes a sudden charge. Screaming, Serafina rushes back to the front of the house, all out of breath, the glittering pompadour beginning to tumble down over her forehead.]
SERAFINA: Rosa! You go in the house! Don’t look at the Strega!
[Alone in the parlor, Estelle takes the picture of Rosario. Impetuously, she thrusts it in her purse and runs from the house, just as Serafina returns to the front yard.]
ROSA [refusing to move]: Why do you call her a witch?
[Serafina seizes her daughter’s arm and propels her into the house.]
SERAFINA: She has white eyes and every finger is crooked. [She pulls Rosa’s arm.]
ROSA: She has a cataract, Mama, and her fingers are crooked because she has rheumatism!
SERAFINA: Malocchio—the evil eye—that’s what she’s got! And her fingers are crooked because she shook hands with the Devil. Go in the house and wash your face with salt water and throw the salt water away! Go in! Quick! She’s coming!
[The boy utters a cry of triumph.
Serafina crosses abruptly to the porch. At the same moment the boy runs triumphantly around the house leading the captured goat by its bell harness. It is a middle-sized black goat with great yellow eyes. The Strega runs behind with the broken rope. As the grotesque little procession runs before her—the Strega, the goat and the children—Serafina cries out shrilly. She crouches over and covers her face. The Strega looks back at her with a derisive cackle.]
SERAFINA: Malocchio! Malocchio!
[Shielding her face with one hand, Serafina makes the sign of the horns with the other to ward off the evil eye. And the scene dims out.]