ACT TWO
Luca and Luciana each stand in a square of light. As in Act One, each is in their own space, facing the audience. Behind them the rest of the characters stand in shadows.
Writing a Farewell Letter
LUCA: Dear Sister . . .
LUCIANA: Dear Brother . . .
LUCA: Dear Blue Parakeet, When shall I see you, how and where?
LUCIANA: You think I don’t feel how much you want to see me!
LUCA: Dearest Sister, Dear Monkey Face, Can you sense that I’m writing about you?
LUCIANA: Can you sense that I’m writing about you?!
LUCA: Dearest Sister . . . My Summer Moth . . . Because once we were brother and sister . . .
LUCIANA: Because we are brother and sister!
LUCA: Because once we were mother and father to each other . . .
LUCIANA: Dear Brother, Dear Dark Bird of My Heart . . .
LUCA: Dear Sister . . .
LUCIANA: Because I can only love you best when you’re far away, I’ve chosen to love you in the distance.
LUCA: Dear Sister, My Blue Parakeet, Because we’ve never spoken of the past . . .
LUCIANA: Because we’ve never spoken of the past! Because I looked for the meaning of our love in dictionaries, encyclopedias . . . Because it’s wrong! It’s wrong!
LUCA: Dear Sister, Dark Love, I’ve tried to subtract you from my being. But what’s left if I subtract you from my blood? A half sky . . .
LUCIANA: Less summer . . .
LUCA: A half moon . . .
LUCIANA: Less June and July . . .
(Luciana walks out of her square of light.)
LUCA: My Dear Sister . . .
The Possibility That It’s All a Dream
LUCIANA (To audience): Why is it that I can’t close my eyes, that I can’t sleep? Or am I already sleeping? Am I dreaming all this? When I walk by the seawall in Havana, I see people sitting there waiting for the last of the light to end, like moths that gather around a light bulb. They search for whatever light the sea can illuminate. Whatever dimness is left before they enter the night without electricity. I just want to turn off the light in my mind, in that room I can’t get to.
If Only It Could Be
Sound of the Tibetan bell. Hortensia is holding a green dress, a 1950s-style hat and a paper bag. She places the dress in front of her body and looks into an invisible mirror.
HORTENSIA: If I wear Zoila’s dress, I’ll have to wear a girdle. But it’s too hot to wear a girdle. And if I wear this old hat I might look too elegant, sort of like Queen Elizabeth . . . But why not? I’m meeting an important bishop . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Samuel and Basilio standing in front of a telescope. Basilio is trying to focus the lenses.)
SAMUEL: Do you see anything yet?
BASILIO: I can see the moon.
SAMUEL: I know you can see the moon . . . but can you see inside her room?
BASILIO: I’m trying to see how the lenses work!
SAMUEL: This shit doesn’t work. (Walks away from the telescope)
BASILIO: Of course it works. We just have to figure it out. This is for looking at things that are real far away, like the moon . . .
SAMUEL: Then, why don’t we go up to the mountains and look from there?
BASILIO: Why don’t we go up to the mountains, he says! Should we go to the moon, too! . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Luciana holding her journal by the light of the kerosene lamp.)
LUCIANA: If I tell Hortensia I was interrogated by the militia she might get upset. I mustn’t tell her anything . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Luca and Tio Lalo.)
TIO LALO: Why hasn’t your sister come by to visit me?
LUCA: She’s working, Tio. She’s dealing with the pope.
TIO LALO: And this pope never sleeps, never eats, never has any time off?
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Delita tying a shoelace around a red piece of cloth.)
DELITA:
A red candle,
two dead lizards tied together with his shoelace,
a red-and-black ribbon tied around
seven needles dipped in my blood.
This is how I’m going to make him love me.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Samuel and Basilio standing by the telescope.)
SAMUEL: And if we take off some of the lenses?
BASILIO: Then we’ll see less, stupid . . .
SAMUEL: Isn’t that what we want?
BASILIO: You know, you’re a real knucklehead!
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Luciana reading her article.)
LUCIANA: “Pope John Paul II is expected to arrive in two days. Workers have been hanging thousands of posters. Communist Party activists ripped down pictures of the pope in one Havana neighborhood.”
(Lights up on Hortensia in front of the invisible mirror. She’s trying on the dress to see how it fits.)
HORTENSIA: If only I had those earrings I traded for a pair of shoes . . . but then I wouldn’t have Sunday shoes. I’ll have to tell Samuel to paint two lines behind my legs, like the women did in the forties, so the bishop thinks I’m wearing stockings.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Luciana.)
LUCIANA: Little by little I realize why I’m playing this role, why I can’t face myself . . . why I am living a lie . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Luca.)
LUCA: By the seawall I sit on one place and another . . . Perhaps in some terrible way I can be your brother like this in the distance.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Delita.)
DELITA:
A hair from his chest
and my eyelash
wrapped in rose petals and cinnamon powder.
I repeat his name three times . . .
Luca, Luca, Luca . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
HORTENSIA: Oh, Mamá Rita, if you could look down from the sky and see that it’s finally happening. Just any day now, I’ll be sitting with a bishop showing him all the miracles. I never thought I’d live to see the day. I know the bishop is going to be surprised when he sees the miracles. I’m even going to show him the one, about a woman who levitated . . . Imagine if that happened to me in the meeting . . . me, with my bag, in the middle of a meeting levitating . . . That would get the pope’s attention . . . he’d make the museum a public building immediately . . . and I’d be famous like Matías Pérez, the balloonist who disappeared in the sky . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. The lights come up on Samuel and Basilio and the telescope. Basilio is looking through the lenses. He moves away from the telescope.)
BASILIO: Forget it! Piece of shit.
SAMUEL: Who gave it to you?
BASILIO: Elisa the widow . . .
SAMUEL: When did you become her friend?
BASILIO: I saw her bathing in the river yesterday . . .
SAMUEL: I don’t think I’ve seen her leave her house since her husband died . . .
BASILIO: Well, I have. She took off her clothes and swam naked . . . She was holding a paper boat full of flowers.
SAMUEL: What for?
BASILIO: Her husband who drowned out at sea.
SAMUEL: Some people say she’s gone to hell with herself.
BASILIO (Looks through the telescope again): She’s just in pain. When she came out of the water, she slowly got dressed and walked to her house. I followed her. When she got to her house, she left her door open, so I could come inside.
SAMUEL: And you did?
BASILIO: Yes . . . Then, she left the room and came back with some clothes, and she signaled for me to wear them . . . They were her husband’s clothes . . .
SAMUEL: You wore the dead man’s clothes?
BASILIO: Sure. She wanted for me to be Juan Jose Silvestre . . . to make love to her as her husband . . .
SAMUEL: And you did?
BASILIO: I pretended she was Luciana María . . .
SAMUEL (Looks in the direction of Luciana’s room): She’ll leave soon, Basilio . . . She’ll forget about us . . . and we’ll be left alone in this miserable town, without a train station. Then everything will be the same. The house. The streets.
BASILIO: I feel strange, Samuel . . .
SAMUEL: I’m sure, after having sex like a dead man.
BASILIO: No. Sad. I don’t think you and I have really known what it’s like to have someone . . .
SAMUEL: You mean love?
(Samuel looks in the direction of Luciana’s room. She has turned off the light from the kerosene lamp, and sits on the floor by the light of a candle.)
BASILIO: Yes. Those two, Juan Jose Silvestre and the widow must’ve loved each other. She started crying when we were doing it. I couldn’t make her stop . . . at one point I felt like she wasn’t there, as if she had gone somewhere else to meet him . . . She asked me to hit her, and I didn’t want to but I did . . . then I got afraid . . . I thought something bad had happened to her . . . that I had—
SAMUEL: Killed her?
BASILIO: Yes.
SAMUEL: Is that what it’s all about, to love until you feel that you’re dying?
BASILIO: Maybe.
The Future of the Museum
LUCIANA: January 15th: Midday. A meeting with General Viamonte.
(General Viamonte enters. Luciana covers herself with a shawl. A desk and two chairs are brought on. Luciana and Hortensia sit to the left of the desk. General Viamonte walks around as he interrogates Luciana and Hortensia.)
GENERAL VIAMONTE: When I heard from my daughter, Melva, that you were going to help with the museum, I thought to myself we seem to have an important foreigner in our town.
HORTENSIA: She’s not a foreigner, Viamonte . . . she was born here.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: She’s a foreigner to me! When did you leave the country, señora?
LUCIANA: 1961.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Ah! The Pedro Pan flights. The 14,000 children that were shipped away to the States . . .
HORTENSIA: Compañero Viamonte . . .
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Don’t interrupt me, compañera. I’m talking to Luciana María. So, the Pedro Pan project, they called it, like the children’s book about the boy who runs away to never-never land and never grows up . . . That’s a young age to have a child fly alone on an airplane . . .
LUCIANA: I wasn’t alone. I was with my brother.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Even worse—two children.
LUCIANA: I thought we were going to talk about the museum!
GENERAL VIAMONTE: We are—it’s very Christian of Hortensia to think that you could do something for this museum . . . it shows that we haven’t managed to abolish the colonial mentality of having foreigners taking care of our problems—
LUCIANA: I think you’re mistaken. I took it upon myself—
GENERAL VIAMONTE: No I’m not mistaken. When Hortensia came to us with the idea of this museum, it appealed to us. Anybody would want to finance a Museum of Dreams . . . But then—
HORTENSIA: You funded the Museum of Humor that was opened down the road! I’m sure it took plenty of money to build it.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: We need to laugh, compañera. We need to laugh at how we live despite all the difficulties imposed on us . . . It’s what keeps us going, our humor.
HORTENSIA: Our faith, compañero . . . faith. Go to the river . . . go to the seawall in Havana and you’ll see how many oblations have been offered to the Virgin of Regla . . . there’s the Procession of Miracles every year.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: That’s once a year, compañera . . . and it involves a few locals celebrating an old tradition . . .
HORTENSIA: Tradition! It has to do with people who pray who have dreams.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: But it has nothing to do with tourists coming from afar.—It’s certainly not about exposing things which tend to be overdrawn, like those silly miracles that have been documented in books.
HORTENSIA: You know well my miracles are simple acts—
GENERAL VIAMONTE: All miracles have an element of exaggeration! In every religion: Buddha making five hundred elephants grow out of a lotus flower, Mohammed cutting the moon in two pieces . . .
LUCIANA: For a man who doesn’t believe in miracles, you know more about them than I do.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: I read about things I dislike, compañera, so I can understand why I feel resistance and aversion. (Pause) We live in an age of reason, of natural science. We take pride in the real. Our system gave me a pair of shoes, a home, a refrigerator. If Compañera Hortensia wants to call our accomplishments miracles, then these are the miracles that need to be exhibited in her museum . . .
LUCIANA: Those are not miracles.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Then what are miracles?
HORTENSIA: It’s a pity, compañero, but I don’t think you will ever understand.
LUCIANA: It has to do with faith, compañero.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Faith. Faith. And what do you know about faith? You come from a so-called religious land, dollar bills that read: “In God We Trust.” What devil do they worship there? It can’t be in the name of God that your country has tried to blockade and starve a small island like ours for years.
LUCIANA: I didn’t come here to talk about politics.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: But you certainly have opinions! How did you get involved in all this religious hysteria? (Picks up her passport) Your visa is strictly for journalistic purposes. Why aren’t you in Havana following the pope?
LUCIANA: Well, I got a letter from Hortensia.
HORTENSIA: My letters, compañero . . . she responded to one of my letters . . .
GENERAL VIAMONTE (To Luciana): You’re lying!
HORTENSIA: The letters we sent abroad when we found out the pope was coming.
GENERAL VIAMONTE: What letters? All the letters you tried to send never left this country.
HORTENSIA: What do you mean?
GENERAL VIAMONTE: We weren’t going to have any commotion around here, compañera. Did you actually think we were going to have the pope in this town?
HORTENSIA (Looks at Luciana in disbelief): What are you talking about, compañero?
GENERAL VIAMONTE: You live in a world of fantasy, with angels and spirits, and you don’t want to face reality . . .
HORTENSIA: No. What happened to my letters! What happened to my letters!
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Don’t get emotional.
HORTENSIA: What happened to my letters!
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Maybe one letter slipped by, but most of them are in our possession. We have a democratic process in this country, Luciana . . . A meeting was held in this town as to whether this museum should be made into a public building and most people voted against it.
HORTENSIA: Lies . . . lies . . . that’s a bunch of lies . . .
GENERAL VIAMONTE: She knows well that we’re not interested in tourist attractions.
LUCIANA: But her museum—
GENERAL VIAMONTE: Nobody wants tourists in this town. You can see what’s happening in Havana—prostitution, corruption. That’s why we voted against it.
HORTENSIA: It’s a bunch of lies. You passed around a few papers. Who knows how many were signed! Who knows how many were kept away—like my letters . . .
GENERAL VIAMONTE: You see? Hysteria. That’s all . . . religious hysteria . . . (Lights a cigar)
HORTENSIA (Gathers her strength and rage): All these years you’ve tried to sink me down, to bury me alive. A few days from now all the ceremonies of the pope will end. Luciana will leave and the two of us will have to live long after all of this is over, in this small town, on this little island. But let me tell you something, compañero, for thirty years I’ve wanted to spit in your face. Thirty years building up the courage . . . this froth, and bitter spit in my mouth . . . But now that I face you, I believe my spit is too clean for your face. If ever I curse anybody in my lifetime then let it be you, Agusto Viamonte. (Trying to show his indifference, he smokes his cigar) May those cigars you smoke burn a hole on your tongue and in your lungs, and may those holes fester. Death I don’t wish you. I leave that to God. May you continue to breathe the same simple beautiful air I breathe in this town. Good day, compañero!
(Luciana and Hortensia exit. General Viamonte follows.
The sound of Luciana’s voice reciting articles she has written about the pope becomes a cacophony of journalistic writing mixed with Gregorian chants.
The panel opens to reveal the museum’s miracles. Luciana enters. She starts looking through the miracles. Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
Another Miracle
GUSTAVO: Gustavo Soto is my name. I am a clerk at the post office on Center Street. At approximately 6:30 in the morning I dreamt that there was an eclipse and my ears had grown down to the floor . . . and I didn’t know why this was happening to me . . . The only thing I could think in my dream was that God was going to speak to me and I needed enough room in my being to house his voice . . . and sure enough a sacred voice whispered something to me and I was told to wake up and run out of the house, which I did. My house was up in flames from the pot of milk my wife had forgotten on the burner . . . I tell people that was no ordinary dream, that was Santa Candelaria who leaned over me and whispered my salvation.
The Museum and Luciana
HORTENSIA: Reading the miracles?
LUCIANA: Yes. Each one is like a little story.
Are you prepared to go to the city today and meet with the bishop?
HORTENSIA: No, I’ve decided not to go.
LUCIANA: Are you going to let that miserable bastard Viamonte dictate what to do with the museum?
HORTENSIA: I’m not closing the museum.
LUCIANA: Then do something!
HORTENSIA: The spirits came to me last night and told me that it wasn’t the right time . . .
LUCIANA: And do you believe that is the right thing to do? HORTENSIA: Yes.
LUCIANA: Hortensia, why don’t—
HORTENSIA: I’m not giving up, Luciana.
LUCIANA: Then fight. You’re strong. I’m sure you can appeal your case in court. Don’t let him stop you.
HORTENSIA: Waiting is a form of fighting.
LUCIANA (With contained anger): It seems like this whole island is always waiting! Waiting! Waiting for something to happen. And nothing ever happens. Who’s going to be the first one to stop waiting! Who’s going to be the first!
HORTENSIA: You have your ways . . . You come from a different world.
LUCIANA: No, I come from the same world.
HORTENSIA: The pope coming here means nothing. It’s all about bringing money to the island.
LUCIANA: You don’t know that.
HORTENSIA: I do. I live here. Nothing will change. (Points to the patio) You saw those three white pigeons in the patio this morning when you were hanging your clothes—they were three ladies with large purses who visited my dreams. Messengers who came to me last night.
LUCIANA (Losing her patience): Oh, Hortensia, I’m sorry, I can’t live my life that way! Just give up the museum! Give up on the whole thing! Go ahead and put it in his hands . . .
(The panel opens. The altar rumbles. A few of the relics fall to the floor.)
HORTENSIA: That is Elegua, the trickster—the opener of the ways—making noise . . . He will tell me when to move forward with the museum. Mamá Rita always said, “You must learn to endure what you can’t change.”
(Luciana realizes that Hortensia and the museum possess higher powers.)
LUCIANA: You know, Hortensia, all of this sort of fell in my lap—you, the museum, Basilio and Samuel—I never got any letters from you. One day I just stumbled into this place. Samuel said, “Are you here to see my mother?” And those words must’ve rung true . . . It was by coincidence . . . (Catches herself)—No, like you say, there’s no coincidence.
HORTENSIA: Why did you choose to stay with us?
LUCIANA: Because for the moment I needed a sense of place, to belong. And wouldn’t you like to live in a place called the Museum of Dreams?
HORTENSIA: I live here. I’m asking you.
LUCIANA: I need to believe that miracles exist. I’ve been running away from myself . . .
HORTENSIA: You don’t have to tell me . . . I saw it on your face the first time we spoke.
LUCIANA: I need to believe there is a miracle for me.
HORTENSIA: Miracles are the obedience of dreams . . . they take their time making their way to the world. They have their own system of making their way to us.
Love is a grave matter, Luciana. Just remember that, from the beginning, everything in life is trying to find its place but also its absence. And already from the beginning the absence had begun . . . Go find your brother. Find him.
LUCIANA: How do you know . . . ?
HORTENSIA: Find him. And when you see him, send me a note like this one, and I’ll hang it in the museum.
The Danzón of Unbearable Urges
Luciana alone. A danzón plays. Basilio and Samuel enter dancing. Basilio takes Luciana to dance.
BASILIO: Come on Luciana . . .
LUCIANA: I don’t know how to dance.
BASILIO (Dancing with her): A Cuban who doesn’t know how to dance. This is how Mami and Papi used to dance. Was it like this, Samuel?
SAMUEL (Takes Luciana away from him): No, like this . . . like this . . .
BASILIO: That’s not the way you dance danzón. You’re moving your hips too much . . . it’s more on the feet. Like this . . . (Demonstrates on his own)
LUCIANA (Breaks away): You two dance . . . I’ll watch.
(She brings them together to dance. The two brothers dance.)
BASILIO: You’re moving your hips too much . . .
SAMUEL: And you’re moving your arm as if we learned to dance in the fields . . .
BASILIO: That’s it! Slide your feet . . . if you mark the step and slide your feet . . .
SAMUEL: You dance with him, Luciana . . .
(Suddenly the electricity goes out.)
BASILIO: Ah, fuckin’ electricity . . .
SAMUEL: Just as we were getting the steps . . .
BASILIO: Every night the same thing . . . the electricity. We have to go to bed early like birds . . .
SAMUEL: Now what do we do?
LUCIANA: We go to sleep, each one to his own room. Tomorrow will be another day.
BASILIO (To Luciana): Stay up a while longer . . . I want to know more about you.
LUCIANA: Let’s go for a walk.
Entering the Night without Electricity
LUCA: What do you do when the power gets cut off?
DELITA (Holding a candle): I come here to the seawall and sit under the moon or I sit by a candle and bite my nails.
It’s a sad silence, like a crime took place somewhere. Can you hear it now?
(The dialogue takes place in different spaces, but the conversations converge:)
LUCIANA: It’s a dark night, as if somebody stole the light from the world.
SAMUEL: How old were you when you left the island?
LUCIANA: Eleven.
DELITA: You must not remember much about this place.
BASILIO: You’re almost American . . .
LUCA: Are you saying that I’m American?
BASILIO: You were so young when you left.
LUCIANA: But I don’t feel American.
DELITA: I always wanted to go.
SAMUEL: You know, big cities frighten me.
DELITA: There’s so much I want to do.
SAMUEL: So much happening . . .
DELITA: So many places I’d like to go.
SAMUEL: I get something in my throat.
LUCA: And why don’t you leave?
DELITA: Easy for you to say.
LUCA: Do you want a cigarette?
DELITA: Yes.
BASILIO: Our father always said, “If you have a nice shirt, you should have a tie. If you have a tie, you should have a jacket. If you have a jacket, you should have a hat. And if you have a hat, that means you could go somewhere.” And those are things we don’t have.
LUCIANA: All you need is to just want to go.
BASILIO: You must not remember much about this place.
LUCIANA (Goes somewhere else in her mind): I do. My brother and I at the airport . . . my mother combing my hair . . .
DELITA: Who took care of you over there?
LUCA: At the beginning we were placed in a foster home.
LUCIANA: Hundreds of children . . .
LUCA: Every day this fury that our mother had abandoned us.
LUCIANA: Our mother was supposed to meet up with us.
LUCA: Everything seemed like a lie.
LUCIANA: Weeks passed. Months.
LUCA: All the flights stopped.
LUCIANA: The Missile Crisis.
LUCA: Our mother couldn’t leave, and we couldn’t come back.
DELITA: I never thought that life would be difficult up there.
LUCA: It was. I remember it as if it was yesterday. A cold town in Ohio. An old building falling apart . . . children and more children. The stench of urine.
LUCIANA: In Ohio I learned to speak English. In Ohio I discovered snow and winter. In Ohio my heart was circumcised.
LUCA: The only thing I liked about that place was a yellow bus taking us to school. The bus driver selling perfume . . .
LUCIANA: I remember buying a little bottle of perfume, putting it on my skin . . .
LUCA: They smell so pure those perfumes, so clean . . .
LUCIANA: I remember my brother smelling me, telling me I had stopped smelling like his sister.
LUCA: I used to jump the fence that separates the boys from the girls to see her.
LUCIANA: I used to spray a cloud of fragrance all around us, to erase every trace of who we were—
LUCA: Until one night we sense the smell of our skin.
LUCIANA: Then it happened, they separated us.
LUCA: They put me in a dump with drug addicts and drunks.
LUCIANA: From then on, all the girls at the home called me a whore . . . they’d pull up my dress and point to my parts. They’d say, “That’s where he was, the brother.”
LUCA : If only we could’ve stopped the world! Destruction, a war.
LUCIANA: The only way back to my brother was to close my eyes.
(Luciana walks toward her brother.)
LUCA: Eyes closed I began to float . . .
LUCIANA: Eyes closed I began to meet him in my mind . . .
LUCA: She’d become a playground as large as Africa . . .
LUCIANA: Day after day I’d meet him . . .
LUCA: I’d see her on every window . . .
LUCIANA: when I’m twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . .
LUCA: when I’m twelve, thirteen . . . one day I’m twenty.
LUCIANA: One day I’m nineteen.
LUCA: I call her up.
LUCIANA: He tells me he’s bringing our mother with him.
LUCA: When I see my sister, I still see the little girl with the suitcase.
LUCIANA: He brings me Mamá as a present, like a doll from my childhood.
LUCA: Mamá makes us stand in front of her.
LUCIANA: She cooks.
LUCA: She can’t stop cooking for us.
LUCIANA: With each meal she wants to fill the hunger, the absence.
LUCA: We eat and swallow the ten years of distance . . .
LUCIANA: Mamá wants us to become her children again . . .
LUCA: She sings. She wants to put things in order . . .
LUCIANA: I know what she means by order . . . I know . . . (The pain rises. Her eyes are full of tears) Oh God, one day I cry, I don’t think I even know that I’m crying . . . (She’s lost in the memory) I talk and talk and I don’t even know that I’m talking. (She shouts. She can’t keep from shouting) It’s wrong! It’s wrong! I tell Mamá to marry me off . . . to marry me off to the first man I find . . . I tell her this like a criminal who decides to turn himself in. I do it for her . . . I do it for him, because I can’t do it for myself.
DELITA: It’s starting to rain.
BASILIO: The rain has started to come down.
(Luciana looks up at the rain. She lets her face be bathed.)
DELITA: Let’s go back inside.
(Luciana’s mind returns to Samuel and Basilio.)
LUCA: No. Let’s sit here and watch it come down.
(Delita stays looking at the gentle rain. Her eyes fill with tears. She looks at Luca, who is still immersed in the past. She turns back to the rain for comfort, and as a way of expressing her dismay.)
BASILIO: You love your brother.
LUCIANA: He was my mother, my father, my brother and sister, and also nothing. Nothing. So he could be everything. Everything.
(She starts to trace all the places she mentions on Basilio’s face) On his mouth the seaside. On his eyebrows my old school.
(Basilio embraces her. He kisses her. They exit. Samuel remains behind, alone and sad. The lights fade on him.)
DELITA: I want to go.
LUCA: Why?
DELITA: Because I have bad luck. I always seem to attract men who are sad or lost.
LUCA: Do you think I’m lost?
DELITA: No. Forget it. It’s moments like this I wish I could take my eyes and put them in my purse. (Swings her purse and makes circles in the air)
LUCA: Look at me.
DELITA (Gently): I don’t think we should see each other anymore.
LUCA: Why?
DELITA: Because.
LUCA: Am I that awful?
DELITA: No. It’s me. I was forewarned about this a thousand times.
LUCA: What?
DELITA: About meeting foreigners by the seawall.
LUCA: And why do you do it?
DELITA: Because for the moment one gets to live a little through them.
LUCA (Touches her face tenderly): Delita.
DELITA: I’m not good at the touch and go. (Tries to make light of the situation) My friend Chuchi told me I have a weak heart and lungs, and the secret to all this is to hold your breath, like this. (Holds her breath)
LUCA (Playfully): Stop that.
DELITA: No. Go. Leave. You don’t want to see me cry.
LUCA: I’m not leaving until you look at me.
DELITA: Is she beautiful, your sister?
LUCA: She is to me.
DELITA: I thought she would be. I feel like I’ve already met her through you.
LUCA: You know, I never like to talk about her.
DELITA: Why?
LUCA: Because this always happens!
DELITA: I’m sorry. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve ever met somebody with your story.
LUCA: Let’s go to your house.
DELITA: No. Let’s stop this.
LUCA: I just wanted to lie next to you.
DELITA: Sooner or later, you’ll go. It’s better if I don’t see you anymore.
LUCA: Delita . . . Delita . . .
Mercedita’s Miracle
The lights change, taking on an ethereal quality. Sound of the Tibetan bell. Mercedita wears glasses and holds a white sheet.
MERCEDITA: My name is Mercedita Perez. On the 1st of September, I was hanging some laundry to dry, and the face of San Cristobal appeared before me on this sheet. I had sent my children abroad, because my husband had been shot fighting the rebels, and I wanted them to be safe. San Cristobal came to tell me that my children were safe in a small town up North.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
Farewell to the Museum of Dreams
Music plays.
LUCIANA: January 20th: I write this as though I am claiming and taking back with me a box of embraces . . . a box of dreams . . . All that came my way on this trip . . . the miracles . . . the eyes of two men . . . a jar of fireflies . . . a jar of memories . . .
Little Memories
All the characters stand behind Luciana. Sound of the Tibetan bell. Reprise. Memories, moments from the journey return as simple dialogue from the text:
SAMUEL (Holds the jar full of fireflies): I was going to leave you this present in the room. In the old days people used to say that fireflies light the road to dreams.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
BASILIO (Brings the suitcase): Our father always said, “If you have a shirt, you should have a tie. If you have a tie, you should have a jacket . . .”
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
GENERAL VIAMONTE: This so-called Museum of Dreams, has no future in this town. All miracles have an element of exaggeration . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
HORTENSIA: Sometimes I’m asleep and old spirits wake me up . . . they come with invisible suitcases full of maps, pendulums . . . they tell me how I should continue to build the museum . . .
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
LUCA: I always thought that one day we would visit the island together, our old house, and that we would knock on the door and tell them we want to have a look.
(Luciana speaks to the audience, holding her suitcase. The rest of the characters slowly walk backward away from her.)
LUCIANA: I only had to close my eyes and take everything with me. Now it was time to find my way back to what I had left behind.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
Houses without Electricity
Hortensia, Basilio and Samuel enter the stage with kerosene lamps, papers and the files containing the miracles. Samuel and Basilio sit on the floor.
HORTENSIA: Our house seems strange without Luciana.
SAMUEL: Yes, as if a wave from the sea came and took something away . . .
BASILIO: It seemed like she had always lived with us.
HORTENSIA:—Here, you file this stack.
BASILIO: We got more miracles this month than last month.
HORTENSIA: Probably because of the pope’s visit.
BASILIO: It’s better that the pope never got to see the museum.
HORTENSIA: Why?
BASILIO: Keeps us looking forward to something.
SAMUEL: What?
BASILIO: Working.
HORTENSIA (Pulls out a file): I think all these miracles have to do with love.
BASILIO: I’ll take them.
HORTENSIA: These have to do with illness.
SAMUEL: I’ll take them.
HORTENSIA: I’m going to go rest. It’s late. Good night.
SAMUEL: Good night.
BASILIO: Good night.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
Life with You
LUCIANA: Tio Lalo . . . Tio Lalo . . .
TIO LALO (Entering): Who’s that?
LUCIANA: The door was open.
TIO LALO: Is that you, Luciana?
LUCIANA: Yes.
TIO LALO (Hugs her): I thought I was never going to see you. Let me look at you. You have your mother’s face. Where were you?
LUCIANA: I was in a town called Santiago de las Vegas.
TIO LALO: What for? Nobody lives there.
LUCIANA (Laughs): Is my brother here?
TIO LALO (Loudly): Luca! (Pause) He must be out in the patio.
(Loudly) Luca!
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. Lights up on Samuel and Basilio.)
BASILIO: What do you think this miracle is about?
SAMUEL: A gleaming chair.
BASILIO: We can’t call a file a gleaming chair.
SAMUEL: Reckoning then.
BASILIO: No.
SAMUEL: Affliction.
BASILIO: Affliction?
SAMUEL: Latitudes of pursuit.
BASILIO: What the hell is that?
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. Lights up on Luca)
LUCA: Luciana.
LUCIANA: Hello, Luca.
TIO LALO: Aren’t you going to give your sister a hug? Or people don’t give hugs in the States.
LUCA: Of course.
(He hugs her. It is a cold embrace. There is a pause.)
TIO LALO: You just arrived in time for lunch. I was about to start serving it.
SAMUEL: Put it in this file. I just learned this new word.
BASILIO: What is it?
SAMUEL: Estuary.
BASILIO: What does that mean?
SAMUEL: The arm of the sea.
BASILIO: Oh God! You better stop reading poetry books.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. Luciana moves away, as if the moment has become too much for her. She looks at the walls of the house.)
LUCIANA: The house seems smaller. In my mind it had higher ceilings and I always thought there was another room.
LUCA: That’s because you dreamed about it for so long. You didn’t want to come back . . .
LUCIANA: No. Not after all these years . . .
(Luca knows that the house is their old nest and she can’t go back there yet. He tries to be gentle with her. He knows it’s better to look at the place through the eyes of the two children they were when they left.)
LUCA:—Remember the lizard cemetery we made, and all the hearts we carved on the tree trunk? The hearts are still there.
LUCIANA: Some marks never go away.
LUCA: No, they don’t.
LUCIANA (Trying to avoid where the conversation is heading): It’s good that Tio Lalo stayed living here.
LUCA: Yes. But you seem tired.
LUCIANA: I am. I feel like I’ve aged ten years.
LUCA: No. You still look like a girl, like water that never ages. LUCIANA: It’s a malady, Luca. It’s all a malady.
LUCA: No, it isn’t. Look at me.
LUCIANA: My husband used to say I was sick, that I had gotten stuck in the past.
LUCA: Oh, he always thought we were fools. The whole family.
LUCIANA: No. There were some things that I kept. Childhood pictures of us. The old clothes. The red suitcase. He’d catch me opening it, and spreading the little clothes on the floor.
LUCA: And what did he want you to do, throw them away?
LUCIANA: He’d say he didn’t understand it.
LUCA: Forget him. Come on, jump on my back and let me take you for a horsey ride . . .
LUCIANA: And what would Tio Lalo say?
LUCA: That we were the children who used to live here.
(Luciana jumps on Luca’s back. He gives her a ride. They laugh. They are like children again. Then it happens—he stops and she embraces him. She kisses him on his forehead, remaining there on his back like a little girl. There is silence. Time has stopped. The laughter turns into tears.)
Do you regret our past?
LUCIANA: I regret nothing. But you and I . . . we have to find a way . . .
LUCA: I’m learning how to be your brother again.
LUCIANA: You never stopped being that.
LUCA: For a long time I had thought about this moment, when we would finally talk . . .
LUCIANA: Me, too. I thought I had to find a way to tell it to myself, like a children’s story that explains the world.
LUCA: And how would the story go?
LUCIANA: Two children dressed up in airport dreams. Two children who thought the world was going to end. Two children who only had each other.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell. Darkness, except for a shaft of light on Samuel and Basilio. Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
SAMUEL: Do you think when Luciana made love to you, she thought of her brother?
BASILIO: Yes, in my arms . . .
SAMUEL: In some ways we almost made love to each other through Luciana . . .
BASILIO: Maybe . . .
SAMUEL: You were full of light when she was here . . .
BASILIO: I felt like I had gone to the sky and back . . .
SAMUEL: Yes. Everything changed, didn’t it? It seemed like we were seeing this whole place with new eyes. It was almost like a miracle, wasn’t it?
BASILIO: Yes.
SAMUEL: You think we can file it as one?
BASILIO: I don’t know if I can find the words.
SAMUEL: This morning I was thinking that if you love a person you must wish them well in life, even if you are sinking in a hole.
BASILIO: You sound like Mamá. SAMUEL: No. I think I learned this from Luciana.
(Sound of the Tibetan bell.)
LUCIANA: Dear Hortensia, I’m sending you my miracle. My name is Luciana María.
LUCA: My name is Luca Manuel.
LUCIANA: I am a journalist living at 39 Forest Street, Providence, Rhode Island.
LUCA: I am a salesman living at 257 West 57th Street, New York. LUCIANA: In the month of September 1961.
LUCA: In the month of September 1961. My sister and I used to dress up in airport dreams.
LUCIANA: We’d spend endless afternoons looking for airplanes in the sky.
(The music swells. The lights fade to black.)
END OF PLAY