Ghosts of Valparaiso: A Play in Two Acts (Plays Book 1) by Vltchek Andre

Author:Vltchek, Andre [Vltchek, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PT. Badak Merah Semesta
Published: 2018-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

BLACKOUT

Scene Seven

A dining room in an old house of Valparaiso, a long table and several seats, two chairs at the wall and one painting.

The sound of wind and rain at the beginning of the scene, then gradually all sounds disappear.

Niar enters the room, very neatly dressed. She sits down on one of the chairs, opens a book and starts reading.

Diego and his father and mother enter shortly after. Their overcoats are wet. They are cheerful.

Niar gets up abruptly, runs towards them and embraces Diego. Both mother and father greet her by touching her hands and shoulders.

DIEGO: I was such a fool. I was refusing to believe it until now… until I saw you…

NIAR: But I promised…

DIEGO: Forgive me. My faith…

NIAR: You didn’t trust me.

DIEGO: I never learned how to trust. For my entire life I was taught how not to trust anybody and anything. I had never any faith in religions, in all those words being constantly uttered by our rulers, no faith in the media…

FATHER: (laughing)

That’s why you are a journalist… a writer.

DIEGO: (confused)

I never lost faith in the language, in words, in the ability of words to express facts and innermost feelings. But I have no faith left for those who now use those words…

MOTHER: Until you met Niar.

DIEGO: Yes, until I met her.

FATHER: Now come, all of you. Let’s sit at the table. Let’s be together, we are a family.

(They all sit down at the table)

Niar lives with us, Diego. She became… like our own daughter. We did everything possible to make her feel comfortable here, with us. She has a Muslim background and your mother and I were always Marxists. We don’t know much about religions, but we tried… you know, we tried to talk. And we talked for many nights and we came to some conclusions.

DIEGO: What sort of conclusions?

NIAR: Well, for instance that people shouldn’t be left starving when there is plenty of food around. That people shouldn’t be allowed to die when there is plenty of medicine that can cure them…

MOTHER: We tried to understand each other. And we did, at the end.

DIEGO:

(Stands up, starts pacing up and down the room, worried)

But what will happen now? How long can you…

(He doesn’t finish his sentence)

FATHER: How long are we going to stay?

DIEGO: (With difficulty)

Yes.

FATHER: Everything will probably change tonight, Diego.

DIEGO: Tonight?!

MOTHER: Don’t be scared, my child. Everything will change for the better.

DIEGO: (Confused, frightened)

But how can anything change for the better? Now when you are all back… This is the first time that I feel I am really living…

FATHER: (Laughing)

Yes, we may be dead, but we are still much more alive then most of them… outside. More alive than those poor slaves and robots petrified by their mortgages, strangled by the jobs they hate…

MOTHER: (Mockingly)

Would you please stop your speeches, dear?

FATHER: I apologize.

DIEGO: (Doesn’t really follow the conversation)

You are still a big man, father, as big as I always remembered you. They took you away when I was still a child, in the middle of the night.

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