Escenario 0 (2020–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Todo el tiempo del mundo - full transcript
STAGE 0
SISTERS
(BÁRBARA E IRENE)
You can't show up here.
I've tolerated you.
-Tolerated?
-Since you were born.
-Interesting.
-Very interesting.
So take your stuff and get out,
do you hear me?
I'm especially fragile at the moment.
-Especially fragile?
-Yes!
-Don't you think I...?
-What?
Didn't it occur to you that I...
Why not?
I could also be very fragile like you.
Or only you can
and must naturally, legitimately...
-Legitimately...
-Legitimately, yes.
Haven't you always proclaimed that,
broadcasting your total legitimacy,
since you were a kid?
Your rather horrible way of showing off
everywhere and every second,
your ever recurrent way
of planting your body in space,
in each word, in each action,
your sensible actions,
such perfectly-timed actions, strutting
like a peacock in front of Dad.
Get out!
Get out!
What right do you have to come here?
How did you find me?
Coming here, covered in sweat,
mouth oozing venom, suitcase in hand!
Have you stuck a marker in my back
and sunk your teeth in?
You've wanted to since you were born.
This obsession with hating me,
deciding that no one could live
before you.
You were the first,
incapable of coming second.
This impossibility of coming second,
of being second,
this impossibility of being,
plain and simple. That's it,
you've never known how to be.
That's your problem. You burden
the whole family with your problem.
I don't fancy grabbing
a survival blanket when I see you.
My life is not about being on guard,
laying traps to protect myself from you.
I don't work as much as I do
to pay bodyguards.
My life isn't about
having bodyguards
in case my little sister
breaks into my workplace.
So take your things and get out.
-Are you done?
-Don't provoke me.
What do you mean? Who's provoking
who? Who's behaving like a despot?
A despot? What do you mean
by despot?
Where in your head
does the word despot come from?
Be honest, do you believe that I'm
the one behaving like a despot
when you've spent your life,
ruling me from below, from beneath,
as you grew up, you went against me.
You said, "I go against everything
you do, I reprove your choices.
I'm younger, but I'm your big sister,
because your life is a disaster.
It will be a disaster when you reach
adulthood, if you ever will.
You might, but don't bank on it.
You'll take care of yourself,
not others."
-You've devoted enough time to that.
-To what?
To other people. For a long time,
other people, well not all others,
not all those included in other people,
a certain part of other people,
for you other people
is certain other people.
Other people that's something else,
meaning me, your family, Mom, Dad
and Felipe, no mention of that.
That doesn't come out of your mouth.
You've no time for them.
You're in a rush
when it's those others.
-That's what you say.
-I do, what's the problem?
You have a problem
with people asserting themselves,
or rather me asserting myself over you.
-In this case, if you could...
-Stop!
If you could have strangled me
in my cot...
In fact, Mom told me several times that
she had seen you on tiptoes at my cot.
-She saw you on the bathroom stool.
-What?
The white stool
that you dragged like an insane person.
Yes, it's possible to be insane
at the age of three.
You'd drag it from the bathroom
all along the hallway,
the hallway of death, that dark hallway
where you hid for years,
between the kitchen
and the door to the living room,
in the storage room, the closet,
the cubbyhole, that cubbyhole,
that frightening organ you enjoyed
that was exclusively yours
and from which you jumped on me,
screaming and dragging the stool,
that stool
that looked like those hospital stools,
the ones they put in showers,
in bathtubs,
when people like Mom, when people
who are on the verge of death, like Mom,
when people who can't take anymore,
who scream, "Kill me, I can't take it!"
People running in hospital gowns,
their asses wrinkled, covered in shit,
screaming, "Kill me, please!
I'll hurl the drip against a window.
I'll use it like a battering ram
to shatter your damn security windows
and jump.
Let me jump. I don't want
to sit on the stool like a thing,
I'm not a thing.
I'm not a cow, a horse you brush.
I'm a human being! You objectify me."
Yes. Everyone says objectify.
What does objectify mean?
Dragging the stool like an insane
person toward my cot to climb into it.
"What are you doing, honey.
Don't climb into your sister's bed.
What's that in your hand? Show me.
My God, Miguel,
look what Bárbara has in her hand."
Miguel doesn't answer. He's in his
office reading a fifth-century text.
As far as he's concerned, Bárbara
can't have anything bad in her hand.
"Bárbara, come here, honey.
What was in your hands?"
And you poke your head around the door
to get a kiss on your forehead
like in prints in which old men
kiss children on the forehead,
a real Shirley Temple,
my little Shirley Temple.
How cute.
With your curls and your bows.
And I'm screaming
and suffocating in my cot.
How many times did you squeeze my
neck? Mom said, "She'll accept her,"
Dad said, "She won't.
Children can sense these things."
What things?
What Dad would go on about every
dinner, during summer on the terrace.
-What terrace?
-The one over the treetops.
He would say, "Children sense it.
They know. They understand."
He would say,
"Here women have ten children.
There's no problem.
Older ones look after younger ones.
None of them would demand
any kind of status.
As for us, we have to face a curse."
Dad never used the word curse.
Dad used the word curse when
it came to my presence in this world.
Your presence, you're joking!
My presence, Dad always said that.
-Dad never said that.
-When it meant questioning...
Yes, questioning, questioning.
Dad questioned.
But presence in this world, no way.
You're dreaming, girl.
And don't ever bring this up again.
You're obsessed.
You've always been obsessed with this.
When will you finally decide to grow up?
You reproach others for what
you're unable to see in yourself.
Your work is related, this is something
Dad said, to your deepest nature.
Your deep sensitive nature.
"She has a sharp deep nature,"
he would say while ruffling your hair.
"Her sharp sensitive nature
which later she will judge.
She will be prescriptive,"
as they say.
There we have it,
your miserly nature for comments.
Your pressing need to tell others
where beauty, justice and goodness lie,
with everything,
that the world awaits your opinion
and rushes to read
your latest articles.
This sensitive supposedly sharp nature
but which is ultimately empty
knows nothing about itself,
or how to exist.
It exists thanks to the talent
of others and produces nothing.
You do not know how to live, Irene.
You know it as well as I do.
You heard Dad say,
not in Tanzania, on the terrace,
above the treetops,
but here in our big apartment,
in Atocha, after grading exams.
Dad would say,
"Limited language, limited world,
if you want to expand your world,
expand your language."
But you didn't hear that, did you?
You'd remain dumbstruck,
more flattered by his hand
on your silky hair,
that of a young girl
with an allegedly sharp inner world,
than by revelations in Dad's words,
what it meant in terms of commitment.
You preferred looking at the finger
like in the Chinese proverb.
-Take back what you just said.
-I won't take anything back.
You never take anything back.
You never took back
any of those darts you threw
at my body in our youth,
later as young women,
then women, and now enemies.
-Enemies.
-Enemies, yes.
Whether you like it or not,
we're enemies.
Who shows up with her nasty tongue,
suitcase like a bomb,
in her sister's professional circle just
before something important? I mean me.
Sister.
Do you realize what we've come to?
Do you realize we've reached the point
where the word sister rips my lips?
It cuts my lips.
It is dragged to the esophagus
causing food poisoning,
a powerful rejection of the word,
a desire to bring it back up.
Yes, bring it back up.
Associate whatever meaning you want,
it's true that your schoolteacher side
always prevented you from making
any slightly wild association of ideas,
original, daring associations.
One only has to read your articles,
nothing, no excess,
zero connection to poetry.
Just a weighty apathetic balance,
an insipid aftertaste, yours.
But you developed it with talent
and you gloated about it in front
of Dad when you were well paid.
That's why you're not worth much.
I'm not worth much?
You're so hurtful, Bárbara.
You can do so much harm.
It hurts so much to listen to you.
You're the one
who has become a monster.
It's your profession, like Dad said,
that makes you blunt and harsh.
-Harsh?
-Yes, harsh.
Your job, dealing with poor people,
your famous manner
dealing with poor people,
one that must instantly cut down to size
anyone who doesn't do what you do,
that must shut the mouth
of anyone who dares to say...
Look, there's no need to give you
a medal every ten minutes
just because you help the poor.
Your relatively modestly
paid profession, unlike mine,
which means, incidentally, I must say,
that you still sponge off,
as they say, sponge off the remainder
of what parents leave their children,
not to mention, we'll come
to that later... dividing the estate.
The notary's documents
aren't on your desk,
but everything relative to the death,
as is often the case,
will soon come out.
Say it!
Say whatever you want! I'm ready.
Without realizing it, you've prepared
me to be a wall, a fort.
I'm a fort.
You can attack me, humiliate me
with all the words from that body
placed like a scalpel in space
and you cause so much harm.
You're the one who harms, not me.
You're the one.
No one wants to suffer so much.
No one would ever envisage...
the word is well chosen,
that evil has the face of she
who came from the same vagina as you.
That's hard to take. Why are you
disgusted at the word vagina?
People don't want to associate
the word with the thing.
Why is it terrifying?
What stupefies and disgusts us?
Us covered in blood,
in skin, liquid that disgusts us,
upside down, then right side up,
heads twisted, the fear of suffocating?
What's it like for me seeing you follow
me like a killer follows his victim?
I'm first. You follow three years later,
a knife between your teeth, is that it?
You come out of the same hole
with a knife,
your mouth tight, suitcase in hand like
a bomb. Is it time to settle scores?
Have you come to make me pay
for being loved more?
You're the one who was not wanted.
Cliché!
Cliché!
You're saying
that my suffering is a cliché?
Is that what you're saying, Bárbara?
You are, aren't you?
Say it again.
Say it again.
My suffering a cliché...
Evenings sitting on the high back chair
in the dining room,
watching Dad's hand
slide under your chin
and you saying,
"Look at the smile I'm giving you."
Is that a cliché? His way
of not looking at me, not even once,
your nervous laugh when you see
he doesn't look at me, not even once.
Aren't those the things between fathers
and daughters that remain in your heart?
"But now we have to face a curse,
in this hemisphere,
at least we could've deflected things,
but you couldn't hold back.
You weren't precise about the days
and look what's come of it."
He threw his napkin on the table,
violently pushed his chair back
and yelled, "Mind your own business.
Come, Bárbara, show me
your project on the Roman Empire,
your cretin of a history teacher
gave you an A minus.
Not one spelling mistake, a clear
and methodical vision of the facts.
An A minus, hell, what a loser!
My eldest daughter
must get perfect marks.
My eldest daughter is perfect and
should be graded accordingly, cretin!
What? Don't bother me,
I'm with your sister."
You take me by the arm the way, years
later, the plain-clothes cops in Atocha
grab illegal hawkers by the arm
to take them away without a fuss.
You take me by the arm and you slam
the door to Dad's office in my face
and I stand facing the closed door.
Is that a cliché of pain?
Then the time comes
when I'm facing the closed door.
The air entered my lungs,
my blocked lungs.
My body is blocked too.
Everything in my body blocked,
except that enigmatic sentence,
"But we must face a curse,
something we hadn't anticipated
or wanted came upon us.
We hadn't wanted it."
I begin to analyze the phrase,
wanted it or wanted her?
Something they didn't want
or is it me he's talking about?
What is he talking about?
What must I convince myself
he's talking about?
What does the language say?
Why is orality a veil thrown
over my life as I face the closed door?
What must I convince myself of
between then and now
when you throw cliché in my face?
What must I convince myself of to be
able to live? I've lived so far, right?
You could say, "You've lived, written
little articles and adapted to life.
You haven't suffered as much as you
say in your letters to Mom.
You haven't suffered so much.
Stop pestering us.
Go back to your room
and leave us alone.
Go play with your doll.
We're working."
You grab my arm,
like the cops do to avoid a fuss,
but I free my arm like this...
You see?
Like this...
The door you slam in my face
that blocks my entire body,
my period, my young girl's chest
which fails to develop,
"She's not very developed
for her age."
Everything gets blocked.
Now I'm stood facing you,
I'm going to unblock everything.
I've come to unblock everything,
to free my arm and kick up a fuss
20 years later in your workplace.
No, Irene!
I don't want you kicking up a fuss!
I can't psychically cope with the fuss
you kick up, your tantrums,
putting forward your deepest self,
shaping, through screams and attacks,
the limp cockroach of your unconscious.
We don't want your unconscious here,
or your painful inner play-acting.
We don't care about your primal scene.
We don't give a damn
about your scenes.
You're looking for a stage
to exist like everyone else,
so you look for a stage
to climb onto and exist.
You come here to openly reveal,
as you say,
your afflictions, wounds
and supposedly sharp nature.
You've turned your articles,
your features,
into a stage on which to exist,
but your stage is empty.
When you talk of others you only speak
of your contemptible and empty self.
Get out!
There's no way I'm leaving, Bárbara.
No way.
Now that I'm here, I'm staying.
In fact you would have loved it
if I hadn't come, if I'd never come.
All you wanted to do was push me aside,
to ensure that I never would.
It was always clear that you had to be,
like when we went swimming,
the one to touch the wall first
in the 100-yard freestyle race,
in the 200-yard freestyle race.
Your shoulders,
your famous swimmer's shoulders.
"Look at those East German shoulders,"
Dad would say.
"That fierce strength, the way she kicks
her feet, the power in her legs
and that swaying underwater at the start
that brings her out first in her lane,
while you, my darling,
yes, you have long arms,
but you will always be amongst the last,
it's unbearable.
You train as much as she does
but it's exasperating,
so much dogged effort
for a mediocre result.
I would never have succeeded in
biochemistry as I have in archaeology.
At some point you have to be aware
of your place in the world, Irene.
Imagine if I'd tried to be a biochemist
when I was clearly made
for archaeology.
What image would you have had
of your father?
The image of a bad biochemist, when
your father's a great archaeologist.
Think about how
your children will see you.
Why follow your sister
in a field where you're sure to lose?
Why insist,
when you come home from training,
you're in tears every time you come
home from a competition.
Accept that you won't be a great
swimmer like your sister and father.
As far as I know,
swimming is not hereditary.
Focus on something else."
That's how it was,
how everything was with you too.
That's how everything went until today.
But just like you,
I have become a tower, a wall,
a fort, as they say,
I have built myself in adversity,
I've learned to suffer without a word,
to prepare, to give as good as I get,
to open a kind of military arsenal
where grenades, bullets, mortar shells,
have been under lock and key for years.
I'm going to open the arsenal and
everything will blow up in your face.
You see? Bursting in here,
I've put everything by the door,
in the hall, on the stairs.
I've turned it into a minefield,
as they say,
so listen to me, otherwise
the whole building will blow up.
-What was all that about swimming?
-What?
-What?
-Yes, what?
-Shut up!
-Me?
-Yes, shut up. Stop!
-No.
-I can't stop. I won't stop!
-That's enough, okay.
Shut up! You're driving me crazy.
Can you grasp it?
You're in my life to drive me crazy!
I can't accept my family driving me mad.
-I was family.
-Okay, you were. You're not anymore?
-No, clearly, I'm not family anymore.
-Great, at least that's clear.
Exactly.
You reel off that story
about swimming again.
You must be insane, totally insane.
You've spent your life imitating me
in everything, clothes, poses...
Poses?
Yes, poses.
I'd stand in front of the mirror
in the hallway that traumatized you,
you poor little thing,
I'd stand with my hand
on my hip like this
and you'd stand in front
and strike the same pose
with your hand on your hip like this.
You've always exasperated me.
You never understood that human beings
are individuals, not a collective.
We needn't be like each other to live,
follow each other like sheep. That's it.
You're a sheep that activated its mirror
neurons toward me its whole life.
I never, never wanted your empathy,
never.
I never wanted
to share anything with you.
And honestly,
that story about swimming...
Come on! Her major swimming trauma.
I'm not responsible
for your physical weakness.
You were always weaker than me,
admit it.
-It's true.
-So then. One-nil.
Open your eyes and look at yourself.
You're lucky you have that suitcase
to hold onto or you'd fall over.
-Do you want a chair?
-No, thank you.
You had the same problem
with swimming. You take off too fast.
You make yourself nervous.
You could never pace your effort.
You must structure your race,
but you never structured anything,
neither in a training pool,
nor in your life. Take Felipe.
Yes, you persisted
in clinging to Felipe.
Felipe was a good swimmer
but too average, but you clung to him.
It was unbearable.
Your tears, after practice,
or competitions, just said "I'm weak."
I copy my sister because I've no
inner strength. I have nothing within.
I love a loser.
Admit it, Felipe was a loser.
Dad was horrified at Felipe,
Mom said dreadful things about him.
What are you on about?
Mom adored Felipe.
What? Mom never loved Felipe.
How can you compare
Mom's intellectual strength
with Felipe's dreadful statements
about art and culture?
Felipe boasted
because you encouraged him.
You were so empty you had to flatter
him to aggrandize him and yourself.
You aggrandized
one other like two dwarves.
But Felipe was nothing.
He was empty like you.
To exist you chose
to get your hooks into him, as always.
What? I've never done that.
You got your hooks into my friends.
Mónica, Alexandra...
What a name, you can keep her.
Nadia, Sonia... You always had
to make friends, as they say.
As soon as you saw
Felipe was after me...
Boom!
You jumped on Felipe in the pool.
I remember it well.
You couldn't stand Felipe talking to me.
I remember after
the Spain-Italy episode,
Felipe came up to me saying,
"That's lame, I bet everything on Spain
and Italy just won, I got it all wrong,"
Felipe's legendary instinct.
That's why, years later,
Mom raised her eyebrow
just remembering Felipe's name.
Saying Felipe in front of Mom
brought her out in an emotional rash.
Mom never understood how you became
besotted, that's the word, with Felipe.
She'd say, "My younger daughter
is besotted with a fool.
There's not one single area
where Felipe shines."
And Dad, who was meaner than Mom,
would say, at the dinner table,
"Yes, here,"
pointing at Felipe's shiny bald head.
We'd all burst out laughing,
except you, of course.
Anyway, after his adolescent years
Felipe went bald
and he looked like a bonze,
an ignorant, egotistical and smug bonze.
As soon as he opened his mouth
about culture, it made you want to say,
"Look, you're a great guy,
but I have more interesting things to do
than listen
to your pretentious bullshit!"
That's what Dad thought.
That's what Mom thought.
Irene, take those earphones out!
Having the two of you over
was agony for them.
Felipe was sure
to give a recap of everything,
the latest play,
the latest film, the latest expo.
Mom said,
"Felipe, I like you very much,
but your habit of abbreviating words
gets on my nerves.
Words have their expanse,
their duration, their dimension.
If you shorten them, where do we end
up? Imagine I called you Fe or Lipe.
Felipe. What would you think?
So please, say, "I saw an exhibition,"
rather than, "I saw an expo."
And we'll be good friends.
Have some more cake."
That was a typical dinner
at home with Felipe,
but poor Felipe
was kind of abducted by you.
He wasn't much of a bright spark
at first, by no means.
Unlike you, I realized
right after the Spain-Italy episode.
The Spain-Italy episode
should have been illuminating
for any normal person, but unlike me,
you were seduced by Felipe's
blindness to everything,
or rather as the little dog in front,
me, had sniffed Felipe first
and I turned away, you came
and sniffed to copy what I had sniffed,
to mark your territory by urinating
on Felipe, at the Spain-Italy moment,
jealously monopolizing
what I had marked, as you always did.
It's a personality trait, what Felipe
pompously called your living signature.
You haven't taken your earphones out?
I don't know what I was saying...
Yes! If at first Felipe,
who was not a bright spark, far from it,
could show a degree of curiosity,
fickleness, a glimmer of hope.
You quickly stifled that hope.
You inflated him and cut him down,
in a perfectly calculated move
you had already tested on me,
"You're so pretty and I hate you."
You often made me cry
with your harsh words.
You always had harsh words, always,
since you learnt to use language.
Since you bored us to tears
with your advanced literary studies,
your grant to study in Cambridge.
Since you went to schools that teach
you to have an opinion on everything,
those schools that immediately sterilize
anyone's creative potential.
You used language as a weapon
and you fired at will.
You were in your element, the unbridled
criticism of other people's work,
whilst I was in another element,
that of international swim meets.
But you loathed all of that, right?
You'd say to Dad,
"How can she still swim?
You never see her with a book.
The one you chose as more brilliant
relieves her unhappiness
in 50-yard pools. Magnificent!
Stop moving those damn chairs around.
You're like a madwoman!
You're crazy! I only have to listen
to you 30 seconds to see you're crazy.
-You've always been crazy over...
-Over what?
Let me speak!
Yes, a madwoman, forever tidying up.
Your fear of disorder,
your panic, your weeks of tidying up.
Dad had the right to have
a totally chaotic office
and Mom an office
that was hard to enter.
What?
The door to Dad's office only
opened halfway. You had to push it.
Getting through between Mom's books
was mission impossible.
But you, the tyrant, you said,
"How can you live like this?
Look at your bedroom, it's dreadful.
Your bedroom is like your brain,
a disaster.
She should see a shrink.
She is manic-depressive.
Her room is like a junkie's,
a heroin addict's. Her hair is greasy.
Being a teenager is complicated
but this is going too far."
You're the one
who sent me to a day hospital,
who made an appointment
for me to see a psychologist.
You're the one who said,
"Look at my sister."
I said, "It's my order. What is order?"
I would scream with my greasy hair
and my wrists bound, "What is order?"
I'm perfectly aware that for you,
for people like yourselves,
like you,
everything has to be impeccable.
In line.
Dead.
Death.
It's the madness in your brain,
Bárbara.
You won't leave
the bloody chairs alone, will you?
You tortured me with your insinuations,
your instructions, your threats.
It was awful.
You made my childhood a nightmare.
The best solution was to cover my ears,
use earphones so I wouldn't hear you,
so I'd never hear your comments
on how I dressed, talked or behaved...
You act like you're Mother Teresa now,
but you were the worst sister
in the world,
a perverse sister who pretended
to be nice for our parents
but who'd pinch me
during the night and say, "Die!"
Can sisters wish each other dead?
Yes. That's the kind of sisters we are.
-You're totally crazy...
-Quiet!
I'm talking, didn't you get it?
That's it, go on. Put your chairs out.
Get your trivial conference ready,
which everyone will rush to
to hear your good soul talk
about those who have nothing,
those who have lost everything,
who are suffering...
Yes, I'll come to that, don't worry.
I'm hurt.
So hurt.
No one will ever give
a conference about me.
You hurt me so much,
your madness hurts so much.
Look at yourself, you're crazy.
You've developed a craziness
about everything,
I've been helplessly witnessing
your madness for years.
You have to get help, Bárbara.
You can't carry on like this.
Mom was crazy, yes.
Mom also developed a kind of madness
that made daily life crazy.
We had a wonderfully
crazy kind of childhood.
It wasn't the hours spent on all fours
under the sun in Syria or Egypt,
nor the full backpacks or the walks
at dawn that drove us crazy,
rather that thing hiding inside of you,
that waiting, that way of lying in wait
like an animal or a hunter...
You were the animal and the hunter.
The animal
that was always waiting to jump on me
and the hunter ready to shoot me.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Go on, Bárbara.
Shoot.
Go on, shoot.
By coming here.
I probably came to die once more.
You've killed me so many times
that maybe I'm already dead inside.
You can throw shovelfuls of soil
on me
and we'll be done
with this sister story,
this way of saying that I love you
even if I hate you,
even if I hate you with all my being.
As for me,
I'm not as physically strong as you
and now I've fallen into your trap.
I'm the one who has come, the one
who has admitted her weakness...
...weakness of body, weakness of soul.
Of course, Bárbara,
I have a broken heart.
Me too.
Irene.
-Mom...
-Don't talk about Mom, please.
I'm tired.
I feel like dancing.
Come here.
-You know where I've come from?
-No.
And I don't care.
From...
What?
Nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Why didn't you let me know?
I let you know.
Did you?
Well...
-What?
-Nothing!
You see? I don't know what's better,
staying calm or letting it all out?
Unleashing the flamethrower on you
and your shitty conference.
Waiting for everyone to arrive,
screaming,
"She didn't let me know,
this woman didn't let me know.
She's telling you about
Lagos, Tripoli, Benghazi,
with her ridiculous presentation
and she didn't let me know.
Her nervousness isn't due to shyness
or lack of preparation.
Her father raised her
to love a job well done.
You'll get your fill of spectacle,
your fill of the world's suffering.
It's going to be... great.
She has become a specialist.
She rides several migratory waves,
the new arrivals.
That's the life she has.
Everyone lives however they can.
But... she didn't let me know.
She's nervous
because she knows she's done wrong.
She knows why I'm here.
Look, her hands are shaking.
If I started now, her bone structure,
her charming bone structure
that made so many guys stagger,
nice guys, of course,
not guys like Felipe.
Felipe was a loser, a nobody.
When I think about Dad
and I compare him to Felipe
it makes my hair stand on end.
Something in my body
rejects that comparison.
But I loved him. The important thing
is not who you love,
but to feel within yourself
that you are loving.
I loved Felipe
in the way you can love a log...
...a stool...
...a dog, whose master's hand
is replaced by a toy.
If someone had taken Felipe away
I would have loved...
...his jacket hung on a chair.
I needed my heart to beat because,
you see, it has never beaten.
For God's sake, that's enough, Irene!
I'm warning you, no threats or blackmail
about your heart that doesn't beat,
that has never beaten...
Control your language, please.
You spent too much time with Felipe,
with his loser-like vision and behavior.
Felipe was a complete loser.
The day of your wedding he made
a speech that got us all on a downer.
A wedding is a happy day,
yet Felipe wanted to raise the bar.
What bar could he imagine
he could raise with Dad and Mom there?
Was Felipe ever able to raise
any kind of bar?
When he was a school teacher
everyone laughed at him
behind his back.
When he wanted to set up a meeting,
his colleagues hid in the playground.
When he organized
a cultural outing for his children,
those were his words,
his naïve and clinging words,
referring to youngsters
who scorned him,
as any child rightly scorns an adult
wanting to be a buddy.
But he didn't see that. You blinded him
with your compliments.
It was obvious you couldn't admit
that you loved an imbecile,
a log, as you say, the younger
daughter, who had studied at university
and would tell the world what was what,
could not love an idiot.
Well this idiot, this school teacher
got it into his head to write
an absolutely horrible speech
for your wedding day.
It was so pompous,
endless and pedantic,
he, who was so harsh on his blog
about any play, film or music,
when he himself
had to write something
before an audience less captive
than his pathetic blog's,
he was unable to produce a text
in the slightest bit original or moving.
Nothing! Yes, a stool, a log,
a literary girder that drove Dad crazy
and drove Mom deeper into the abyss.
As for you, you didn't say anything.
You smiled. You were radiant.
We don't know why, by the way.
You probably thought a day
spent in a white dress, on his arm,
was obviously the peak of your life.
It's because of all that,
because of all those words,
that language of sisters,
a sister tongue. Yes, it exists.
If there's a mother tongue,
there's a sister tongue.
That's why I'm here,
to attack it, to destroy it.
If I destroy your language,
I destroy you and I destroy your world.
I listened to Dad's lessons,
unlike you.
You wiggled about looking at yourself
in the mirror when he spoke.
You talk about destroying language
when your daily activity
consists of simplifying, shortening,
thinking,
"Drop it,
nowadays the reader is a consumer.
Give people what they want."
You're the one who destroys the world.
You neglect language
and thus destroy the world.
The world, which you describe
as a collapsed world,
is the result
of you abandoning language.
Due to your work, abandoning language,
you abandon the world,
whose loss you deplore.
It's the world you created.
You come to lecture me on the violence
of my language toward you?
My language will never be violent
enough to fight you and those like you.
It's a fight then?
Yes.
Okay.
You see, after... no, during the song
I thought to myself, "We can do it.
We'll manage to talk to each other."
I said, "I don't know what's better,
staying calm or..."
In fact, I was for choosing calm,
but it's impossible,
even silence,
silence with you is a sheer threat.
When I couldn't hear you,
I'd ask myself,
"Where is she? Why is she quiet?
When will she attack?"
Being calm was always a problem
for me, totally impossible.
You taught me to be an animal
that only attacks,
thinking of one thing,
tearing flesh apart to survive.
I want to survive
so I'm going to tear your flesh apart.
Goddamn it.
-You know what, Bárbara?
-What, Irene?
I would have preferred
to go back to our teenage bedroom
when we were in Deir ez-Zor
and wrapped ourselves in mosquito nets.
We were silkworms...
wild animals swimming in the Euphrates.
Remember?
There were those octagonal
glazed floor tiles.
You would lie down
and I'd settle next to you
and we'd play at physically describing
the one we would choose to deflower us.
You liked Ahmed.
I didn't like him at all,
because I didn't like his stomach.
But you loved his stomach.
Once you lifted his T-shirt and said,
"Wow, your skin Ahmed,
look at your muscles, let me see..."
You put your index finger on his abs
and when you pulled it away
it left a white atoll on his skin...
...and you said, "See?
It's the island
where I'll make love to you, Ahmed."
Of course, Ahmed laughed and said,
"Me not Spanish."
You said,
"I know you don't speak Spanish,
but I just love saying sex stuff to you
that you can't understand."
I remember that he smelled
of perfume...
...like all the boys in Syria.
You'd say, "Ahmed, why do you
wear gel? It's ridiculous.
You smell so good without it."
He'd open his hands, like this,
and you'd say, "It's no big deal."
You put your fingers in his mouth
and you said, "You're so handsome,
so handsome, Ahmed."
That may be the only thing
we ever had in common,
a liking for Arab boys.
I had chosen Zuhair.
He was tortured to death
at the beginning of the war.
I was the first girl to pleasure him.
The afternoon we had to move
to go back to Damascus.
We went
to the wooden suspension bridge...
...and walked to the banks
of the Euphrates.
I jerked him off in his jeans
with this hand.
It's funny what our hands do.
This hand pleasured a boy who died,
a victim, against his will,
of 90 years of absurd geopolitics.
He came in this hand.
Without those absurd geopolitics,
this hand would have carried on
jerking him off.
There would have still
been sperm here...
...on these fingers.
After he came, Zuhair cried...
...like girls do the first time.
-I didn't cry.
-I'm not surprised.
I always liked sexual activities
without speaking the language.
At the Baghdad museum, in the
department of Sumerian antiquities,
when I was waiting for Dad
in the evening, I would meet a boy.
I would close my eyes
and move my body forward slightly.
That meant kiss me.
To say stroke me, I would turn
my forearm toward his fingers and...
...both of us would
become a community...
of skin divers, deaf-mutes...
...speaking a liquid language,
a blurry... super sexy language.
Maybe you and I should have kept
our mouths shut more often
and... looked at each other
more often.
Maybe, yes.
Is it too late?
Probably, yes.
What if I started now?
Your bone structure...
your charming bone structure,
I'd have to face it
with my famous physical weakness
and face the thousands of miles
you swam like a madwoman.
Who thinks that it's good to spend six
hours a day doing four times 100-yards,
-two times 400-yards, eight times...
-Please!
...six times 100-yards butterfly,
ten times 50-yards backstroke, who?
You. Because it drives you crazy.
You detach yourself, to suffer,
but in your bubble.
You had to build your protection.
I was studying at elite schools.
You developed the antidote,
physical strength to beat me.
You've survived
thanks to your selfishness,
so logically, you could only succeed
at high-level competitive swimming.
If you ask me, you hated swimming,
but you prepared your revenge.
You relished the thought that you could
pin me against the wall any time.
-I never hit you!
-You'd grab me by the hair!
You split it in two
to grab like handlebars
and you would drag me down
the long hallway.
You pinned me against the wall,
your fists on my intestine saying,
"Can you feel my strength? Should I
strangle you and squeeze your throat?
I'd be rid of you.
You do everything I do."
You'd push me
to the ground like this!
Sorry, I didn't do it on purpose.
Once I banged my head so hard,
just like you now,
that I bled all night in the bathtub,
because you didn't want me
to stain the sheets.
You are a profoundly perverse being.
In ten minutes you'll be
the Good Samaritan with an audience
when you don't care about bodies
falling off rafts.
You're like the rest. It's all a show.
You launch diatribes...
what an expression.
On the web you monitor your likes,
sign petitions,
but in real life you're an abject being
who loves no one, who spends her time
tearing people down.
You know...
You tell me about Felipe.
Do you want me to tell you
about Anabel?
Anabel can't stand you anymore.
-When I talk to her...
-You talk to her?
Yes, yes.
I had no choice but to talk to her
at a certain point.
Anabel can't stand you. She calls me
in tears. Life with you is impossible.
You make her life impossible.
I'll grant you, Anabel,
unlike Felipe, is a luminous being.
I saw her once in Mom's photos
and she was a luminous being.
Mom said, "Look, it's Anabel,
your sister's friend."
In Mom's mouth, in her intonation
friend meant colleague,
acquaintance, a person with whom
you share a certain activity, shopping.
But I could see in her eyes
that you didn't go shopping.
It was clear you were neither
colleagues nor college friends.
Mom is right. The habit of abbreviating
everything is exasperating.
Not college friends,
but you were together.
It was also clear
that your love, that way of living,
was your own kind
like everything else,
a love confined to a bubble
with nothing coming in or out.
You killed Anabel,
like you killed me and Mom!
-Stop it!
-Like you killed Anabel, yes!
"I can't take anymore! Get me out
of this psychological prison.
I believed in your sister's love,
but it has become a prison.
Her love is a cell, I'm losing my mind.
Nothing is good enough!
Her comments on what I say and do
are so violent I can't take it,
I'm thinking about suicide.
Your sister's psychological pressure
on my life is unbearable.
One day you'll find me in the street,
in a pool of blood
I'll jump from the 7th floor screaming,
-'I'd rather die than live in hell!'"
-You're totally crazy!
-How dare you step into my private life.
-Get your hands off me!
You're sick! Leave me alone!
-You leave me!
-Are you mad?
You're mad!
What's got into you? Don't touch me!
What the hell!
Anabel loves me, Irene.
Anabel is an exceptional being.
She doesn't phone you
because I speak badly to her,
but because it's impossible
for a sensitive person like Anabel
to deal with the pressure
of everything that just happened.
I've had to do everything.
Everything!
Everything was down to me.
Do you understand?
At the onset of Mom's illness
I'm the one who organized everything.
I'm the one
who stayed with Mom night and day.
Mom's illness drove
half the family completely crazy.
That disease makes people crazy.
You can't come out of it unscathed.
The people with you
become completely crazy too.
Everything we know is nothing
compared to what that illness causes
in the immediate circle.
The periphery is affected.
It has an impact on everything.
Whether you like it or not,
yes, it had an impact on the person
I live with, a serious impact.
The madness of Mom's situation
penetrated Anabel,
because Anabel accompanied her, Irene.
Yes, accompanied.
She did what probably
few beings in the world do,
accompany a person
into the depths of their madness,
into the depths of their misfortune,
entering their misfortune
the way we send molecules into bodies
with a specific mission,
to relieve and cure. Anabel...
Anabel took on a specific mission,
Irene,
to attempt to relieve Mom
by entering into her body.
These are things
that you can't understand.
Sympathizing with someone in pain,
feeling empathy.
Thinking someone else's pain
is in part my own, it concerns me,
that I'm not alone in the world,
that fighting for something that doesn't
concern me is a political attitude.
Helping others to obtain rights
that don't concern me
is a political attitude.
Rejecting this trend of only fighting
for your own interests
is a political attitude, Irene.
But you're too busy with yourself
like the majority of the population.
You try not to get involved,
rejecting anything collective.
You snigger about it saying
it's unfashionable and out of date.
We've entered the famous period of
free movement, mobility and Narcissus,
in which everyone defends their own
pen, their share of water, land and air
and doesn't care
whether it sinks or swims
as long as
it doesn't throw my life off balance.
As for you,
your mad-dog attacks on me,
your shameless distortions of the past,
of our bodies in Atocha,
your insane descriptions of me
lifting you up,
your delirium about my shoulders,
this delirium where you come
to my professional circle to explode.
It doesn't help you understand
what I'm doing with my life,
with my structure
that puts teams together,
-prepares budgets, goes on missions.
-I don't care!
-I'm not here to talk about...
-Shut up! You've hurt me enough!
-With your damn energy!
-Don't touch me!
-Shut up!
-Don't touch me!
Enough! I can't take anymore!
You're sick!
What the hell is this?
That's enough! I'm at the limit
of what I can take. Shut up.
You shut up!
-You hurt me when you pushed me.
-You hurt me too, dammit!
Goddamn it! Shut up! Shut your mouth!
I've got a headache,
my elbow hurts...
I want to get out of here.
Who'd imagine being taken down
like this, like a legitimate trial?
You're illegitimate in everything.
Your presence in the world
is illegitimate.
Everything you make us endure
is beyond the legal framework
that guarantees a space
in which to live.
You don't leave space.
You crush everything.
You stifle everything you touch,
Dad, Mom, Felipe...
-Don't talk about Mom!
-I'll talk about Mom.
You crush everything! You're a parasite
living on the beauty produced by others.
You're incapable
of making a contribution!
With your job you make the world yield
to a pile of opinions,
fanciful criticism and other nonsense.
Does all that really make you feel
like you exist? Fine.
But what a waste
for the way of the world,
but you don't give a shit
about the way of the world.
With your airs of "I don't give
a damn," keeping your distance.
With your critical eye
giving good scores and bad scores,
thumbs up, thumbs down,
always sure of what you say.
Never the slightest glimmer
of surprise or questioning.
You were trained to know how to give
your opinion about everything,
to crush everything in your way,
so don't come around asking me
for what you are incapable of giving,
a little bit of benevolence.
I have no desire
to treat you with benevolence.
Do you show benevolence
towards the state of things,
to how I try to improve things,
which makes you snicker?
Never.
I swear, you'll leave as you came,
your suitcase closed,
nothing vented.
Your secrets, your padlocks that lock
your life up will open nothing at all.
You'll leave alone in a straitjacket and
cry over what life hasn't shown you,
because in order to receive, Irene,
one must show curiosity.
Have you ever taken an interest
in what I do?
Never. In your circles you'd say,
"This is my sister. She's a bit weird.
She takes care of poor people,
the type of girl who goes off at night
to help the homeless.
It's a good thing,
but it's over the top.
You can tell she's a girl
looking for forgiveness,
some kind of Joan of Arc for poor
people, it can be embarrassing.
She rants about principles, accusing
people of sitting on their asses.
If we heard her
we'd have to grab a lifejacket
and dive into the sea
to save the planet, it's unbearable.
All the blaming,
she was always a master at that.
If my mother had one of her fits,
she always found a way to blame me.
It was my responsibility.
You said,
"Bárbara always considered me
responsible for our mother's collapse."
She'd corner me whilst doing the dishes
to look me in the eye and say,
"Do you see how you treat Mom?
You're insane.
I hope they lock you up not Mom.
Mom is sane compared to you,
Mom and her literary genius crush you.
Mom's writings crush what you write.
You couldn't bear
Mom's literary genius."
During Sunday lunches,
in a mocking breath, you'd say,
"No, I will not pronounce myself
on the literary genius of our mother."
Of course, Irene.
Your excessive self-regard
blinded you to the talent of others.
If you could have written
the harshest article in your paper,
as you used to say,
"I'm harsh but fair,"
the vilest article, under a pseudonym,
you would have done it.
Your contained violence would've
emerged, exploded for all to see,
saying to your mother
what you secretly thought,
when the entire profession
you scorned
would undoubtedly
shower her book with praise.
You'd say,
"Here we go, another praise-fest.
They'll rush like sheep to write
the best article, find an angle.
How totally pathetic.
If they knew the woman, the mother...
but they only see the writer.
If they knew the madwoman
who crushed all I did her whole life,
who left me no room.
If they knew her they would vomit
like I vomit during family dinners
where my sister is the one
everyone worries about.
She's the center of attention,
because she's in the real world.
Her stories come from
the so-called real world.
My mother turns her crazy yellow
doe eyes to my sister and says,
"Honey, you'll ruin your health."
No way!
"You're going to wind up like them,
you'll get mistaken for them."
She thinks my sister could get mistaken
for those she helps from the rafts.
"You're too involved.
It's the way of the world, Bárbara.
You can make human chains, lie on
the floor, paint a cross on your body,
handcuff yourself
to government office gates,
nothing will stop capital
from condemning the massive influx
while organizing it to make a profit.
That's the meaning of things.
It's always been this way.
It won't change.
Have some more cake.
Look at your sister.
Your sister understood that
a long time ago.
She's at the service of cynicism
and she makes a very good living,
whereas what do you get
from playing the kind soul?
Not to mention that you're always broke.
It's worrisome at your age." Yes!
Now it's you speaking, Irene,
"Bárbara, Mom is right.
What's this new fancy?
Fancy, yes! What does it mean?
What are you trying to express?
Emptying 2,000 balls
in front of the National Assembly?
Hanging from cranes?
What are you trying to express?
What do you have against us?
What disgusts you about our education?
We brought you into this world.
Can't you find your place here?
You're becoming strange.
I don't recognize you anymore.
Mom is worried sick.
What's going on in your head?"
In my head, Irene? In my head?
You want me to tell you
what goes on in my head?
The nights, the yells in the corrugated
iron buildings in the hot sun,
the skin coming off the old people's
feet when you hose them down?
The power of the hose
knocks the women over.
It was designed for strong men's bodies,
and there are more women with babies!
Babies that we've pulled out
of petrol tanks surrounded by saltwater.
Their umbilical cords
were cut with rusty knives.
People crying,
people who have lost their voice,
their skin marked with a branding iron
to be identifiable in the pens.
Old men who no longer know their name.
Old women who can no longer speak,
who repeat, "My daughter, there."
But there is nothing there.
They point to an empty corner.
Young girls on the floor
holding their bellies,
spitting and saying names
in Arabic, Dari, in Hausa,
children walking in circles banging
their heads, looking for their mother.
They mutilate themselves on the fences.
They cut their veins on the fences
suffocate themselves with plastic bags
and suck men off
to buy powdered milk
from people who give them plaster
scraped off walls.
Stinking children with scabs, women who
stink, who no longer get their period.
Their vaginas bleed,
hemorrhages between their legs
that they stop with their hands.
People with their teeth
covered in blood,
tongues covered in blood,
who sell their sex organs.
They mutilate their sex organs.
Infections in anuses
from putting money in,
infections on their torso,
in their mouths noses, eyes,
shit everywhere, flies everywhere.
Mom, Dad! Where are you?
Where are you, God, where are you?
There's nothing left. I'm going to die.
Mom, Dad, I'm going to die!
Absurd geopolitics are killing me.
I'm going to die! Where are you?
You went through this too!
Your parents went through this
and your parents' parents.
But you've forgotten everything!
Your poets, your writers said,
"This can never happen again.
After this,
how will we ever say something again?
How will language
ever say something again?
And then language started again
and then you forgot! Stand up, dammit!
Stand up! Open your eyes! Have you
seen what's going on out there?
Have you seen it? There is screaming
and fear everywhere!
Get off your damned asses!
That's what I'm going to tell them with
my ridiculous PowerPoint!
That's what I'll say
during my trivial conference!
That's why I'm organizing
these damn chairs and this shit lectern.
Get out, Irene!
Get out!
Is that it?
Are you done now?
Do I have the right of reply?
It turns out
you're worse than I thought.
You remind me of these moviemakers
who pretend to denounce violence
by making ultraviolent films.
A question of morals, Bárbara,
really?
Did you really need
to inflict this on us?
Your clear conscience?
Well, thanks a lot!
You know where I come from?
No, you don't, do you?
Talk to the hand.
The face doesn't give a damn!
Why did I just say
talk to the hand?
Why did I say talk to the hand?
We used to say talk to the hand
because the face doesn't give a damn
and we'd go like this...
...to shut each other's trap.
Do you have a tissue?
I've just used it.
-I've just used it.
-I don't care.
-Thanks.
-You're welcome.
I loved you so much.
I admired you so much.
I wanted so much for you to love me.
You're right, I copied you all the time,
but I wanted to be like you.
That's normal
for a little sister, right?
It would have bugged me, too.
We're interchangeable.
I could have felt what you felt...
...and vice versa.
Is this why we've been screaming
at each other for the last hour?
For the last 20 years, Irene.
-For the last 20 years, Bárbara?
-Yes.
-Seriously?
-Yes.
Goddamn it!
You never drop your guard.
Fine. We'll battle it out.
The structure,
the bones, the torso, Bárbara.
That violent mass
that would say in the dark,
"I heard Mom and Dad talking in bed.
Dad said, 'Children sense these things.'
Mom was saying, 'What do you mean?
Irene knows nothing.'"
Why tell me this 20 years later?
I don't expect an answer,
but it's still going around in my head
and piercing my heart.
My heart is pierced.
I'm a real mess, right?
Well, I'll start.
Why you didn't let me know?
I did let you know.
-No, you didn't.
-I did.
-Why didn't you let me know?
-I did. I sent you a message.
-A message?
-Yes.
-Really? How?
-A text message.
-That's weird I didn't get anything.
-Talk to your service provider.
Are you joking?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Let's take a look.
We'll look and see.
Let's see. We'll see.
Right...
Nothing! Right, Bárbara? Nothing!
So, aren't you going to tell me?
So, Bárbara,
why didn't you let me know?
Why?
What's the matter now?
Why didn't you let me know?
Answer me!
Mom was everything to me, you hear?
Everything!
You tore Mom out.
You tore her out of my life.
You uprooted her from my heart
and you took her away for yourself,
like an ocelot, deep into the forest,
out of my field of vision.
Who doesn't let her sister know?
Who says nothing, keeps quiet, lies?
You lied to me
all down the line, Bárbara.
The location, the timing, everything!
All your messages were ambiguous.
I couldn't understand
a word of what you wrote.
You did that exasperating thing
with texts,
what people do who
don't want to be bothered with you
and answer after three days saying,
"Sorry, I didn't see your text."
Unbearable!
But I knew you'd seen my texts.
You spend your life on the phone!
If you don't post something
every three minutes, a tantrum,
a cat video, two seconds of an AGM,
a photo of yourself... you die!
So don't lecture me on a world in flux
and all your emotional twaddle!
You live
under the command of the emotional,
with your alarmist, uncontrolled texts
you feed our despondency,
our supposed numbness
to the suffering of others.
It's easy to make great speeches,
right?
To take a stance,
to express your anger, your shame,
appearing in all the media
that you spit on at every opportunity.
You may have noticed
I haven't lifted a finger for you
and I probably never will.
You're counterproductive.
These issues can't be handled
your way.
I took a quick look at three videos
in which you appear shouting out
slogans about protecting bees.
It made me nauseous.
Anyway... the great causes, yes,
but the small cause
of letting your sister know by saying,
"Mom isn't well.
Come. It's the end.
Mom is going to die.
She's asking for you, she's saying,
'I want to see Irene.
Irene is my favorite.'"
"Bárbara, I love you very much
but you're always here.
While Irene, God only knows
where she is in the world.
Her job and passion for the destitute
sends her all over the world.
Always between flights,
between catastrophes,
between population displacements,
always suitcase in hand."
"Mom, what are you saying?
What are you talking about?
I know Anabel. She's a pretty girl."
"Dad and I went hiking
with her yesterday."
"Mom, stop, please."
"Why is Felipe outside?
You kicked him out.
You never liked him,
although Felipe was brilliant.
Felipe was probably
Dad's most brilliant assistant.
When we were in Tanzania
and we drank tea on the famous terrace
above the trees.
You were both so cute.
I dressed you the same.
Felipe served the lemonade
and Dad laughed with him.
They laughed so much.
You were both so good.
One in a yellow dress and one in pink,
people mixed you up.
They'd get your names mixed up.
It was natural."
"Mom, please, look at me."
"Are you trying to make me seem crazy?
I know who you are. You'll laugh.
I mistook your father for an Arab nurse.
Someone in the hall commented
we can't go on like this,
or it'll be a disaster."
"Mom, please,
Dad couldn't have visited."
"What do you mean?
He's fit as a fiddle.
Look at the cookies on the night table
he brought.
At my age
I have the right to get up if I want.
What's this they've put on me?
My God, what is this?
What are these straps?
What's all this? Help!
What are you talking about!
Do you know,
I moved tons of soil, in Basra,
with the father of these young women,
to excavate the temple of Ishtar,
before the deluge came from the sky.
We treated hundreds of Iraqis,
fed them, housed them
at the archaeological mission.
The evenings in the desert
had the most beautiful skies.
They were a magnificent community
crushed by a government fist
and then by a deluge, that's the truth.
These people haven't had
any respite in how long?
How many children have died
so you can take your SUV joyrides
on Arizona's beautiful roads?"
"Ma'am calm down."
"Mom, calm down."
"So, for pity's sake,
spare me your comments
on the nursing staff's ancestry,
what does that mean?
What are you insinuating?
Do you think I'm sick?
I'm not sick. It's your way
of seeing the world that's sick.
So get out of my room!"
"Mom, go back to bed."
"No! See the drip there?
I'll ram it into their guts
and throw it through the window!
You think I'm losing it? Your sister
is scared I'll jump out the window
and I'll jump soon enough.
The pain is so intense!
The pills no longer have any effect!
I can't take it. Let me die.
Tell your sister
you can't treat a mother like this.
My daughters always hated me,
two of a kind.
There comes a point you're faced
with shit over your buttocks
and urine running all over the place.
That was the world.
That was my life.
That was what
I fought for my whole life?
I fought for lofty principles
my whole life.
All the books I wrote
tried not to abandon the world.
I raised you and your sister
in the love of language,
because if you abandon language,
everything falls apart.
One daughter writes idiotic articles
in a dying newspaper.
The other is more delirious than I am
and leads a new crusade for good.
We won't make it.
I can't continue suffering.
I'll kick up a fuss
and scream till I lose my voice.
I want the nurses.
I want to be treated like a human.
I'm not an object about to die.
The world is not a dying thing!
It wants to be treated. I want to go out
and walk the streets and yell.
"Mom, calm down."
"No! I will not calm down!
The sun has deserted the earth!
We are plunged into darkness!
Irene, and you...
...you...
...you didn't get here on time.
My own daughter,
the one I washed, powdered, perfumed
when she was just a little pink thing on
a baby-changing table, my daughter..."
"Bárbara, Mom's leaving."
"My daughter didn't get here in time."
"Mom, say your name. Call the doctor."
"No one will come at night.
They're short-staffed.
You spend the night gritting your teeth,
howling in silence, bones break, blood
vessels burst, the blood system boils
and overflows in your mouth,
and you cry out...
You cry out...
Let death come.
Let death come.
That was all? This perpetual pain,
this perpetual madness.
We work our guts out our whole life
for this perpetual madness,
so for the love of God,
I beg, let me go.
Let me return to the shadows.
Let me go back to the beginning of time.
I want to enter into the night.
Let me enter into the night."
SISTERS
(BÁRBARA E IRENE)
SISTERS
(BÁRBARA E IRENE)
You can't show up here.
I've tolerated you.
-Tolerated?
-Since you were born.
-Interesting.
-Very interesting.
So take your stuff and get out,
do you hear me?
I'm especially fragile at the moment.
-Especially fragile?
-Yes!
-Don't you think I...?
-What?
Didn't it occur to you that I...
Why not?
I could also be very fragile like you.
Or only you can
and must naturally, legitimately...
-Legitimately...
-Legitimately, yes.
Haven't you always proclaimed that,
broadcasting your total legitimacy,
since you were a kid?
Your rather horrible way of showing off
everywhere and every second,
your ever recurrent way
of planting your body in space,
in each word, in each action,
your sensible actions,
such perfectly-timed actions, strutting
like a peacock in front of Dad.
Get out!
Get out!
What right do you have to come here?
How did you find me?
Coming here, covered in sweat,
mouth oozing venom, suitcase in hand!
Have you stuck a marker in my back
and sunk your teeth in?
You've wanted to since you were born.
This obsession with hating me,
deciding that no one could live
before you.
You were the first,
incapable of coming second.
This impossibility of coming second,
of being second,
this impossibility of being,
plain and simple. That's it,
you've never known how to be.
That's your problem. You burden
the whole family with your problem.
I don't fancy grabbing
a survival blanket when I see you.
My life is not about being on guard,
laying traps to protect myself from you.
I don't work as much as I do
to pay bodyguards.
My life isn't about
having bodyguards
in case my little sister
breaks into my workplace.
So take your things and get out.
-Are you done?
-Don't provoke me.
What do you mean? Who's provoking
who? Who's behaving like a despot?
A despot? What do you mean
by despot?
Where in your head
does the word despot come from?
Be honest, do you believe that I'm
the one behaving like a despot
when you've spent your life,
ruling me from below, from beneath,
as you grew up, you went against me.
You said, "I go against everything
you do, I reprove your choices.
I'm younger, but I'm your big sister,
because your life is a disaster.
It will be a disaster when you reach
adulthood, if you ever will.
You might, but don't bank on it.
You'll take care of yourself,
not others."
-You've devoted enough time to that.
-To what?
To other people. For a long time,
other people, well not all others,
not all those included in other people,
a certain part of other people,
for you other people
is certain other people.
Other people that's something else,
meaning me, your family, Mom, Dad
and Felipe, no mention of that.
That doesn't come out of your mouth.
You've no time for them.
You're in a rush
when it's those others.
-That's what you say.
-I do, what's the problem?
You have a problem
with people asserting themselves,
or rather me asserting myself over you.
-In this case, if you could...
-Stop!
If you could have strangled me
in my cot...
In fact, Mom told me several times that
she had seen you on tiptoes at my cot.
-She saw you on the bathroom stool.
-What?
The white stool
that you dragged like an insane person.
Yes, it's possible to be insane
at the age of three.
You'd drag it from the bathroom
all along the hallway,
the hallway of death, that dark hallway
where you hid for years,
between the kitchen
and the door to the living room,
in the storage room, the closet,
the cubbyhole, that cubbyhole,
that frightening organ you enjoyed
that was exclusively yours
and from which you jumped on me,
screaming and dragging the stool,
that stool
that looked like those hospital stools,
the ones they put in showers,
in bathtubs,
when people like Mom, when people
who are on the verge of death, like Mom,
when people who can't take anymore,
who scream, "Kill me, I can't take it!"
People running in hospital gowns,
their asses wrinkled, covered in shit,
screaming, "Kill me, please!
I'll hurl the drip against a window.
I'll use it like a battering ram
to shatter your damn security windows
and jump.
Let me jump. I don't want
to sit on the stool like a thing,
I'm not a thing.
I'm not a cow, a horse you brush.
I'm a human being! You objectify me."
Yes. Everyone says objectify.
What does objectify mean?
Dragging the stool like an insane
person toward my cot to climb into it.
"What are you doing, honey.
Don't climb into your sister's bed.
What's that in your hand? Show me.
My God, Miguel,
look what Bárbara has in her hand."
Miguel doesn't answer. He's in his
office reading a fifth-century text.
As far as he's concerned, Bárbara
can't have anything bad in her hand.
"Bárbara, come here, honey.
What was in your hands?"
And you poke your head around the door
to get a kiss on your forehead
like in prints in which old men
kiss children on the forehead,
a real Shirley Temple,
my little Shirley Temple.
How cute.
With your curls and your bows.
And I'm screaming
and suffocating in my cot.
How many times did you squeeze my
neck? Mom said, "She'll accept her,"
Dad said, "She won't.
Children can sense these things."
What things?
What Dad would go on about every
dinner, during summer on the terrace.
-What terrace?
-The one over the treetops.
He would say, "Children sense it.
They know. They understand."
He would say,
"Here women have ten children.
There's no problem.
Older ones look after younger ones.
None of them would demand
any kind of status.
As for us, we have to face a curse."
Dad never used the word curse.
Dad used the word curse when
it came to my presence in this world.
Your presence, you're joking!
My presence, Dad always said that.
-Dad never said that.
-When it meant questioning...
Yes, questioning, questioning.
Dad questioned.
But presence in this world, no way.
You're dreaming, girl.
And don't ever bring this up again.
You're obsessed.
You've always been obsessed with this.
When will you finally decide to grow up?
You reproach others for what
you're unable to see in yourself.
Your work is related, this is something
Dad said, to your deepest nature.
Your deep sensitive nature.
"She has a sharp deep nature,"
he would say while ruffling your hair.
"Her sharp sensitive nature
which later she will judge.
She will be prescriptive,"
as they say.
There we have it,
your miserly nature for comments.
Your pressing need to tell others
where beauty, justice and goodness lie,
with everything,
that the world awaits your opinion
and rushes to read
your latest articles.
This sensitive supposedly sharp nature
but which is ultimately empty
knows nothing about itself,
or how to exist.
It exists thanks to the talent
of others and produces nothing.
You do not know how to live, Irene.
You know it as well as I do.
You heard Dad say,
not in Tanzania, on the terrace,
above the treetops,
but here in our big apartment,
in Atocha, after grading exams.
Dad would say,
"Limited language, limited world,
if you want to expand your world,
expand your language."
But you didn't hear that, did you?
You'd remain dumbstruck,
more flattered by his hand
on your silky hair,
that of a young girl
with an allegedly sharp inner world,
than by revelations in Dad's words,
what it meant in terms of commitment.
You preferred looking at the finger
like in the Chinese proverb.
-Take back what you just said.
-I won't take anything back.
You never take anything back.
You never took back
any of those darts you threw
at my body in our youth,
later as young women,
then women, and now enemies.
-Enemies.
-Enemies, yes.
Whether you like it or not,
we're enemies.
Who shows up with her nasty tongue,
suitcase like a bomb,
in her sister's professional circle just
before something important? I mean me.
Sister.
Do you realize what we've come to?
Do you realize we've reached the point
where the word sister rips my lips?
It cuts my lips.
It is dragged to the esophagus
causing food poisoning,
a powerful rejection of the word,
a desire to bring it back up.
Yes, bring it back up.
Associate whatever meaning you want,
it's true that your schoolteacher side
always prevented you from making
any slightly wild association of ideas,
original, daring associations.
One only has to read your articles,
nothing, no excess,
zero connection to poetry.
Just a weighty apathetic balance,
an insipid aftertaste, yours.
But you developed it with talent
and you gloated about it in front
of Dad when you were well paid.
That's why you're not worth much.
I'm not worth much?
You're so hurtful, Bárbara.
You can do so much harm.
It hurts so much to listen to you.
You're the one
who has become a monster.
It's your profession, like Dad said,
that makes you blunt and harsh.
-Harsh?
-Yes, harsh.
Your job, dealing with poor people,
your famous manner
dealing with poor people,
one that must instantly cut down to size
anyone who doesn't do what you do,
that must shut the mouth
of anyone who dares to say...
Look, there's no need to give you
a medal every ten minutes
just because you help the poor.
Your relatively modestly
paid profession, unlike mine,
which means, incidentally, I must say,
that you still sponge off,
as they say, sponge off the remainder
of what parents leave their children,
not to mention, we'll come
to that later... dividing the estate.
The notary's documents
aren't on your desk,
but everything relative to the death,
as is often the case,
will soon come out.
Say it!
Say whatever you want! I'm ready.
Without realizing it, you've prepared
me to be a wall, a fort.
I'm a fort.
You can attack me, humiliate me
with all the words from that body
placed like a scalpel in space
and you cause so much harm.
You're the one who harms, not me.
You're the one.
No one wants to suffer so much.
No one would ever envisage...
the word is well chosen,
that evil has the face of she
who came from the same vagina as you.
That's hard to take. Why are you
disgusted at the word vagina?
People don't want to associate
the word with the thing.
Why is it terrifying?
What stupefies and disgusts us?
Us covered in blood,
in skin, liquid that disgusts us,
upside down, then right side up,
heads twisted, the fear of suffocating?
What's it like for me seeing you follow
me like a killer follows his victim?
I'm first. You follow three years later,
a knife between your teeth, is that it?
You come out of the same hole
with a knife,
your mouth tight, suitcase in hand like
a bomb. Is it time to settle scores?
Have you come to make me pay
for being loved more?
You're the one who was not wanted.
Cliché!
Cliché!
You're saying
that my suffering is a cliché?
Is that what you're saying, Bárbara?
You are, aren't you?
Say it again.
Say it again.
My suffering a cliché...
Evenings sitting on the high back chair
in the dining room,
watching Dad's hand
slide under your chin
and you saying,
"Look at the smile I'm giving you."
Is that a cliché? His way
of not looking at me, not even once,
your nervous laugh when you see
he doesn't look at me, not even once.
Aren't those the things between fathers
and daughters that remain in your heart?
"But now we have to face a curse,
in this hemisphere,
at least we could've deflected things,
but you couldn't hold back.
You weren't precise about the days
and look what's come of it."
He threw his napkin on the table,
violently pushed his chair back
and yelled, "Mind your own business.
Come, Bárbara, show me
your project on the Roman Empire,
your cretin of a history teacher
gave you an A minus.
Not one spelling mistake, a clear
and methodical vision of the facts.
An A minus, hell, what a loser!
My eldest daughter
must get perfect marks.
My eldest daughter is perfect and
should be graded accordingly, cretin!
What? Don't bother me,
I'm with your sister."
You take me by the arm the way, years
later, the plain-clothes cops in Atocha
grab illegal hawkers by the arm
to take them away without a fuss.
You take me by the arm and you slam
the door to Dad's office in my face
and I stand facing the closed door.
Is that a cliché of pain?
Then the time comes
when I'm facing the closed door.
The air entered my lungs,
my blocked lungs.
My body is blocked too.
Everything in my body blocked,
except that enigmatic sentence,
"But we must face a curse,
something we hadn't anticipated
or wanted came upon us.
We hadn't wanted it."
I begin to analyze the phrase,
wanted it or wanted her?
Something they didn't want
or is it me he's talking about?
What is he talking about?
What must I convince myself
he's talking about?
What does the language say?
Why is orality a veil thrown
over my life as I face the closed door?
What must I convince myself of
between then and now
when you throw cliché in my face?
What must I convince myself of to be
able to live? I've lived so far, right?
You could say, "You've lived, written
little articles and adapted to life.
You haven't suffered as much as you
say in your letters to Mom.
You haven't suffered so much.
Stop pestering us.
Go back to your room
and leave us alone.
Go play with your doll.
We're working."
You grab my arm,
like the cops do to avoid a fuss,
but I free my arm like this...
You see?
Like this...
The door you slam in my face
that blocks my entire body,
my period, my young girl's chest
which fails to develop,
"She's not very developed
for her age."
Everything gets blocked.
Now I'm stood facing you,
I'm going to unblock everything.
I've come to unblock everything,
to free my arm and kick up a fuss
20 years later in your workplace.
No, Irene!
I don't want you kicking up a fuss!
I can't psychically cope with the fuss
you kick up, your tantrums,
putting forward your deepest self,
shaping, through screams and attacks,
the limp cockroach of your unconscious.
We don't want your unconscious here,
or your painful inner play-acting.
We don't care about your primal scene.
We don't give a damn
about your scenes.
You're looking for a stage
to exist like everyone else,
so you look for a stage
to climb onto and exist.
You come here to openly reveal,
as you say,
your afflictions, wounds
and supposedly sharp nature.
You've turned your articles,
your features,
into a stage on which to exist,
but your stage is empty.
When you talk of others you only speak
of your contemptible and empty self.
Get out!
There's no way I'm leaving, Bárbara.
No way.
Now that I'm here, I'm staying.
In fact you would have loved it
if I hadn't come, if I'd never come.
All you wanted to do was push me aside,
to ensure that I never would.
It was always clear that you had to be,
like when we went swimming,
the one to touch the wall first
in the 100-yard freestyle race,
in the 200-yard freestyle race.
Your shoulders,
your famous swimmer's shoulders.
"Look at those East German shoulders,"
Dad would say.
"That fierce strength, the way she kicks
her feet, the power in her legs
and that swaying underwater at the start
that brings her out first in her lane,
while you, my darling,
yes, you have long arms,
but you will always be amongst the last,
it's unbearable.
You train as much as she does
but it's exasperating,
so much dogged effort
for a mediocre result.
I would never have succeeded in
biochemistry as I have in archaeology.
At some point you have to be aware
of your place in the world, Irene.
Imagine if I'd tried to be a biochemist
when I was clearly made
for archaeology.
What image would you have had
of your father?
The image of a bad biochemist, when
your father's a great archaeologist.
Think about how
your children will see you.
Why follow your sister
in a field where you're sure to lose?
Why insist,
when you come home from training,
you're in tears every time you come
home from a competition.
Accept that you won't be a great
swimmer like your sister and father.
As far as I know,
swimming is not hereditary.
Focus on something else."
That's how it was,
how everything was with you too.
That's how everything went until today.
But just like you,
I have become a tower, a wall,
a fort, as they say,
I have built myself in adversity,
I've learned to suffer without a word,
to prepare, to give as good as I get,
to open a kind of military arsenal
where grenades, bullets, mortar shells,
have been under lock and key for years.
I'm going to open the arsenal and
everything will blow up in your face.
You see? Bursting in here,
I've put everything by the door,
in the hall, on the stairs.
I've turned it into a minefield,
as they say,
so listen to me, otherwise
the whole building will blow up.
-What was all that about swimming?
-What?
-What?
-Yes, what?
-Shut up!
-Me?
-Yes, shut up. Stop!
-No.
-I can't stop. I won't stop!
-That's enough, okay.
Shut up! You're driving me crazy.
Can you grasp it?
You're in my life to drive me crazy!
I can't accept my family driving me mad.
-I was family.
-Okay, you were. You're not anymore?
-No, clearly, I'm not family anymore.
-Great, at least that's clear.
Exactly.
You reel off that story
about swimming again.
You must be insane, totally insane.
You've spent your life imitating me
in everything, clothes, poses...
Poses?
Yes, poses.
I'd stand in front of the mirror
in the hallway that traumatized you,
you poor little thing,
I'd stand with my hand
on my hip like this
and you'd stand in front
and strike the same pose
with your hand on your hip like this.
You've always exasperated me.
You never understood that human beings
are individuals, not a collective.
We needn't be like each other to live,
follow each other like sheep. That's it.
You're a sheep that activated its mirror
neurons toward me its whole life.
I never, never wanted your empathy,
never.
I never wanted
to share anything with you.
And honestly,
that story about swimming...
Come on! Her major swimming trauma.
I'm not responsible
for your physical weakness.
You were always weaker than me,
admit it.
-It's true.
-So then. One-nil.
Open your eyes and look at yourself.
You're lucky you have that suitcase
to hold onto or you'd fall over.
-Do you want a chair?
-No, thank you.
You had the same problem
with swimming. You take off too fast.
You make yourself nervous.
You could never pace your effort.
You must structure your race,
but you never structured anything,
neither in a training pool,
nor in your life. Take Felipe.
Yes, you persisted
in clinging to Felipe.
Felipe was a good swimmer
but too average, but you clung to him.
It was unbearable.
Your tears, after practice,
or competitions, just said "I'm weak."
I copy my sister because I've no
inner strength. I have nothing within.
I love a loser.
Admit it, Felipe was a loser.
Dad was horrified at Felipe,
Mom said dreadful things about him.
What are you on about?
Mom adored Felipe.
What? Mom never loved Felipe.
How can you compare
Mom's intellectual strength
with Felipe's dreadful statements
about art and culture?
Felipe boasted
because you encouraged him.
You were so empty you had to flatter
him to aggrandize him and yourself.
You aggrandized
one other like two dwarves.
But Felipe was nothing.
He was empty like you.
To exist you chose
to get your hooks into him, as always.
What? I've never done that.
You got your hooks into my friends.
Mónica, Alexandra...
What a name, you can keep her.
Nadia, Sonia... You always had
to make friends, as they say.
As soon as you saw
Felipe was after me...
Boom!
You jumped on Felipe in the pool.
I remember it well.
You couldn't stand Felipe talking to me.
I remember after
the Spain-Italy episode,
Felipe came up to me saying,
"That's lame, I bet everything on Spain
and Italy just won, I got it all wrong,"
Felipe's legendary instinct.
That's why, years later,
Mom raised her eyebrow
just remembering Felipe's name.
Saying Felipe in front of Mom
brought her out in an emotional rash.
Mom never understood how you became
besotted, that's the word, with Felipe.
She'd say, "My younger daughter
is besotted with a fool.
There's not one single area
where Felipe shines."
And Dad, who was meaner than Mom,
would say, at the dinner table,
"Yes, here,"
pointing at Felipe's shiny bald head.
We'd all burst out laughing,
except you, of course.
Anyway, after his adolescent years
Felipe went bald
and he looked like a bonze,
an ignorant, egotistical and smug bonze.
As soon as he opened his mouth
about culture, it made you want to say,
"Look, you're a great guy,
but I have more interesting things to do
than listen
to your pretentious bullshit!"
That's what Dad thought.
That's what Mom thought.
Irene, take those earphones out!
Having the two of you over
was agony for them.
Felipe was sure
to give a recap of everything,
the latest play,
the latest film, the latest expo.
Mom said,
"Felipe, I like you very much,
but your habit of abbreviating words
gets on my nerves.
Words have their expanse,
their duration, their dimension.
If you shorten them, where do we end
up? Imagine I called you Fe or Lipe.
Felipe. What would you think?
So please, say, "I saw an exhibition,"
rather than, "I saw an expo."
And we'll be good friends.
Have some more cake."
That was a typical dinner
at home with Felipe,
but poor Felipe
was kind of abducted by you.
He wasn't much of a bright spark
at first, by no means.
Unlike you, I realized
right after the Spain-Italy episode.
The Spain-Italy episode
should have been illuminating
for any normal person, but unlike me,
you were seduced by Felipe's
blindness to everything,
or rather as the little dog in front,
me, had sniffed Felipe first
and I turned away, you came
and sniffed to copy what I had sniffed,
to mark your territory by urinating
on Felipe, at the Spain-Italy moment,
jealously monopolizing
what I had marked, as you always did.
It's a personality trait, what Felipe
pompously called your living signature.
You haven't taken your earphones out?
I don't know what I was saying...
Yes! If at first Felipe,
who was not a bright spark, far from it,
could show a degree of curiosity,
fickleness, a glimmer of hope.
You quickly stifled that hope.
You inflated him and cut him down,
in a perfectly calculated move
you had already tested on me,
"You're so pretty and I hate you."
You often made me cry
with your harsh words.
You always had harsh words, always,
since you learnt to use language.
Since you bored us to tears
with your advanced literary studies,
your grant to study in Cambridge.
Since you went to schools that teach
you to have an opinion on everything,
those schools that immediately sterilize
anyone's creative potential.
You used language as a weapon
and you fired at will.
You were in your element, the unbridled
criticism of other people's work,
whilst I was in another element,
that of international swim meets.
But you loathed all of that, right?
You'd say to Dad,
"How can she still swim?
You never see her with a book.
The one you chose as more brilliant
relieves her unhappiness
in 50-yard pools. Magnificent!
Stop moving those damn chairs around.
You're like a madwoman!
You're crazy! I only have to listen
to you 30 seconds to see you're crazy.
-You've always been crazy over...
-Over what?
Let me speak!
Yes, a madwoman, forever tidying up.
Your fear of disorder,
your panic, your weeks of tidying up.
Dad had the right to have
a totally chaotic office
and Mom an office
that was hard to enter.
What?
The door to Dad's office only
opened halfway. You had to push it.
Getting through between Mom's books
was mission impossible.
But you, the tyrant, you said,
"How can you live like this?
Look at your bedroom, it's dreadful.
Your bedroom is like your brain,
a disaster.
She should see a shrink.
She is manic-depressive.
Her room is like a junkie's,
a heroin addict's. Her hair is greasy.
Being a teenager is complicated
but this is going too far."
You're the one
who sent me to a day hospital,
who made an appointment
for me to see a psychologist.
You're the one who said,
"Look at my sister."
I said, "It's my order. What is order?"
I would scream with my greasy hair
and my wrists bound, "What is order?"
I'm perfectly aware that for you,
for people like yourselves,
like you,
everything has to be impeccable.
In line.
Dead.
Death.
It's the madness in your brain,
Bárbara.
You won't leave
the bloody chairs alone, will you?
You tortured me with your insinuations,
your instructions, your threats.
It was awful.
You made my childhood a nightmare.
The best solution was to cover my ears,
use earphones so I wouldn't hear you,
so I'd never hear your comments
on how I dressed, talked or behaved...
You act like you're Mother Teresa now,
but you were the worst sister
in the world,
a perverse sister who pretended
to be nice for our parents
but who'd pinch me
during the night and say, "Die!"
Can sisters wish each other dead?
Yes. That's the kind of sisters we are.
-You're totally crazy...
-Quiet!
I'm talking, didn't you get it?
That's it, go on. Put your chairs out.
Get your trivial conference ready,
which everyone will rush to
to hear your good soul talk
about those who have nothing,
those who have lost everything,
who are suffering...
Yes, I'll come to that, don't worry.
I'm hurt.
So hurt.
No one will ever give
a conference about me.
You hurt me so much,
your madness hurts so much.
Look at yourself, you're crazy.
You've developed a craziness
about everything,
I've been helplessly witnessing
your madness for years.
You have to get help, Bárbara.
You can't carry on like this.
Mom was crazy, yes.
Mom also developed a kind of madness
that made daily life crazy.
We had a wonderfully
crazy kind of childhood.
It wasn't the hours spent on all fours
under the sun in Syria or Egypt,
nor the full backpacks or the walks
at dawn that drove us crazy,
rather that thing hiding inside of you,
that waiting, that way of lying in wait
like an animal or a hunter...
You were the animal and the hunter.
The animal
that was always waiting to jump on me
and the hunter ready to shoot me.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Go on, Bárbara.
Shoot.
Go on, shoot.
By coming here.
I probably came to die once more.
You've killed me so many times
that maybe I'm already dead inside.
You can throw shovelfuls of soil
on me
and we'll be done
with this sister story,
this way of saying that I love you
even if I hate you,
even if I hate you with all my being.
As for me,
I'm not as physically strong as you
and now I've fallen into your trap.
I'm the one who has come, the one
who has admitted her weakness...
...weakness of body, weakness of soul.
Of course, Bárbara,
I have a broken heart.
Me too.
Irene.
-Mom...
-Don't talk about Mom, please.
I'm tired.
I feel like dancing.
Come here.
-You know where I've come from?
-No.
And I don't care.
From...
What?
Nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Why didn't you let me know?
I let you know.
Did you?
Well...
-What?
-Nothing!
You see? I don't know what's better,
staying calm or letting it all out?
Unleashing the flamethrower on you
and your shitty conference.
Waiting for everyone to arrive,
screaming,
"She didn't let me know,
this woman didn't let me know.
She's telling you about
Lagos, Tripoli, Benghazi,
with her ridiculous presentation
and she didn't let me know.
Her nervousness isn't due to shyness
or lack of preparation.
Her father raised her
to love a job well done.
You'll get your fill of spectacle,
your fill of the world's suffering.
It's going to be... great.
She has become a specialist.
She rides several migratory waves,
the new arrivals.
That's the life she has.
Everyone lives however they can.
But... she didn't let me know.
She's nervous
because she knows she's done wrong.
She knows why I'm here.
Look, her hands are shaking.
If I started now, her bone structure,
her charming bone structure
that made so many guys stagger,
nice guys, of course,
not guys like Felipe.
Felipe was a loser, a nobody.
When I think about Dad
and I compare him to Felipe
it makes my hair stand on end.
Something in my body
rejects that comparison.
But I loved him. The important thing
is not who you love,
but to feel within yourself
that you are loving.
I loved Felipe
in the way you can love a log...
...a stool...
...a dog, whose master's hand
is replaced by a toy.
If someone had taken Felipe away
I would have loved...
...his jacket hung on a chair.
I needed my heart to beat because,
you see, it has never beaten.
For God's sake, that's enough, Irene!
I'm warning you, no threats or blackmail
about your heart that doesn't beat,
that has never beaten...
Control your language, please.
You spent too much time with Felipe,
with his loser-like vision and behavior.
Felipe was a complete loser.
The day of your wedding he made
a speech that got us all on a downer.
A wedding is a happy day,
yet Felipe wanted to raise the bar.
What bar could he imagine
he could raise with Dad and Mom there?
Was Felipe ever able to raise
any kind of bar?
When he was a school teacher
everyone laughed at him
behind his back.
When he wanted to set up a meeting,
his colleagues hid in the playground.
When he organized
a cultural outing for his children,
those were his words,
his naïve and clinging words,
referring to youngsters
who scorned him,
as any child rightly scorns an adult
wanting to be a buddy.
But he didn't see that. You blinded him
with your compliments.
It was obvious you couldn't admit
that you loved an imbecile,
a log, as you say, the younger
daughter, who had studied at university
and would tell the world what was what,
could not love an idiot.
Well this idiot, this school teacher
got it into his head to write
an absolutely horrible speech
for your wedding day.
It was so pompous,
endless and pedantic,
he, who was so harsh on his blog
about any play, film or music,
when he himself
had to write something
before an audience less captive
than his pathetic blog's,
he was unable to produce a text
in the slightest bit original or moving.
Nothing! Yes, a stool, a log,
a literary girder that drove Dad crazy
and drove Mom deeper into the abyss.
As for you, you didn't say anything.
You smiled. You were radiant.
We don't know why, by the way.
You probably thought a day
spent in a white dress, on his arm,
was obviously the peak of your life.
It's because of all that,
because of all those words,
that language of sisters,
a sister tongue. Yes, it exists.
If there's a mother tongue,
there's a sister tongue.
That's why I'm here,
to attack it, to destroy it.
If I destroy your language,
I destroy you and I destroy your world.
I listened to Dad's lessons,
unlike you.
You wiggled about looking at yourself
in the mirror when he spoke.
You talk about destroying language
when your daily activity
consists of simplifying, shortening,
thinking,
"Drop it,
nowadays the reader is a consumer.
Give people what they want."
You're the one who destroys the world.
You neglect language
and thus destroy the world.
The world, which you describe
as a collapsed world,
is the result
of you abandoning language.
Due to your work, abandoning language,
you abandon the world,
whose loss you deplore.
It's the world you created.
You come to lecture me on the violence
of my language toward you?
My language will never be violent
enough to fight you and those like you.
It's a fight then?
Yes.
Okay.
You see, after... no, during the song
I thought to myself, "We can do it.
We'll manage to talk to each other."
I said, "I don't know what's better,
staying calm or..."
In fact, I was for choosing calm,
but it's impossible,
even silence,
silence with you is a sheer threat.
When I couldn't hear you,
I'd ask myself,
"Where is she? Why is she quiet?
When will she attack?"
Being calm was always a problem
for me, totally impossible.
You taught me to be an animal
that only attacks,
thinking of one thing,
tearing flesh apart to survive.
I want to survive
so I'm going to tear your flesh apart.
Goddamn it.
-You know what, Bárbara?
-What, Irene?
I would have preferred
to go back to our teenage bedroom
when we were in Deir ez-Zor
and wrapped ourselves in mosquito nets.
We were silkworms...
wild animals swimming in the Euphrates.
Remember?
There were those octagonal
glazed floor tiles.
You would lie down
and I'd settle next to you
and we'd play at physically describing
the one we would choose to deflower us.
You liked Ahmed.
I didn't like him at all,
because I didn't like his stomach.
But you loved his stomach.
Once you lifted his T-shirt and said,
"Wow, your skin Ahmed,
look at your muscles, let me see..."
You put your index finger on his abs
and when you pulled it away
it left a white atoll on his skin...
...and you said, "See?
It's the island
where I'll make love to you, Ahmed."
Of course, Ahmed laughed and said,
"Me not Spanish."
You said,
"I know you don't speak Spanish,
but I just love saying sex stuff to you
that you can't understand."
I remember that he smelled
of perfume...
...like all the boys in Syria.
You'd say, "Ahmed, why do you
wear gel? It's ridiculous.
You smell so good without it."
He'd open his hands, like this,
and you'd say, "It's no big deal."
You put your fingers in his mouth
and you said, "You're so handsome,
so handsome, Ahmed."
That may be the only thing
we ever had in common,
a liking for Arab boys.
I had chosen Zuhair.
He was tortured to death
at the beginning of the war.
I was the first girl to pleasure him.
The afternoon we had to move
to go back to Damascus.
We went
to the wooden suspension bridge...
...and walked to the banks
of the Euphrates.
I jerked him off in his jeans
with this hand.
It's funny what our hands do.
This hand pleasured a boy who died,
a victim, against his will,
of 90 years of absurd geopolitics.
He came in this hand.
Without those absurd geopolitics,
this hand would have carried on
jerking him off.
There would have still
been sperm here...
...on these fingers.
After he came, Zuhair cried...
...like girls do the first time.
-I didn't cry.
-I'm not surprised.
I always liked sexual activities
without speaking the language.
At the Baghdad museum, in the
department of Sumerian antiquities,
when I was waiting for Dad
in the evening, I would meet a boy.
I would close my eyes
and move my body forward slightly.
That meant kiss me.
To say stroke me, I would turn
my forearm toward his fingers and...
...both of us would
become a community...
of skin divers, deaf-mutes...
...speaking a liquid language,
a blurry... super sexy language.
Maybe you and I should have kept
our mouths shut more often
and... looked at each other
more often.
Maybe, yes.
Is it too late?
Probably, yes.
What if I started now?
Your bone structure...
your charming bone structure,
I'd have to face it
with my famous physical weakness
and face the thousands of miles
you swam like a madwoman.
Who thinks that it's good to spend six
hours a day doing four times 100-yards,
-two times 400-yards, eight times...
-Please!
...six times 100-yards butterfly,
ten times 50-yards backstroke, who?
You. Because it drives you crazy.
You detach yourself, to suffer,
but in your bubble.
You had to build your protection.
I was studying at elite schools.
You developed the antidote,
physical strength to beat me.
You've survived
thanks to your selfishness,
so logically, you could only succeed
at high-level competitive swimming.
If you ask me, you hated swimming,
but you prepared your revenge.
You relished the thought that you could
pin me against the wall any time.
-I never hit you!
-You'd grab me by the hair!
You split it in two
to grab like handlebars
and you would drag me down
the long hallway.
You pinned me against the wall,
your fists on my intestine saying,
"Can you feel my strength? Should I
strangle you and squeeze your throat?
I'd be rid of you.
You do everything I do."
You'd push me
to the ground like this!
Sorry, I didn't do it on purpose.
Once I banged my head so hard,
just like you now,
that I bled all night in the bathtub,
because you didn't want me
to stain the sheets.
You are a profoundly perverse being.
In ten minutes you'll be
the Good Samaritan with an audience
when you don't care about bodies
falling off rafts.
You're like the rest. It's all a show.
You launch diatribes...
what an expression.
On the web you monitor your likes,
sign petitions,
but in real life you're an abject being
who loves no one, who spends her time
tearing people down.
You know...
You tell me about Felipe.
Do you want me to tell you
about Anabel?
Anabel can't stand you anymore.
-When I talk to her...
-You talk to her?
Yes, yes.
I had no choice but to talk to her
at a certain point.
Anabel can't stand you. She calls me
in tears. Life with you is impossible.
You make her life impossible.
I'll grant you, Anabel,
unlike Felipe, is a luminous being.
I saw her once in Mom's photos
and she was a luminous being.
Mom said, "Look, it's Anabel,
your sister's friend."
In Mom's mouth, in her intonation
friend meant colleague,
acquaintance, a person with whom
you share a certain activity, shopping.
But I could see in her eyes
that you didn't go shopping.
It was clear you were neither
colleagues nor college friends.
Mom is right. The habit of abbreviating
everything is exasperating.
Not college friends,
but you were together.
It was also clear
that your love, that way of living,
was your own kind
like everything else,
a love confined to a bubble
with nothing coming in or out.
You killed Anabel,
like you killed me and Mom!
-Stop it!
-Like you killed Anabel, yes!
"I can't take anymore! Get me out
of this psychological prison.
I believed in your sister's love,
but it has become a prison.
Her love is a cell, I'm losing my mind.
Nothing is good enough!
Her comments on what I say and do
are so violent I can't take it,
I'm thinking about suicide.
Your sister's psychological pressure
on my life is unbearable.
One day you'll find me in the street,
in a pool of blood
I'll jump from the 7th floor screaming,
-'I'd rather die than live in hell!'"
-You're totally crazy!
-How dare you step into my private life.
-Get your hands off me!
You're sick! Leave me alone!
-You leave me!
-Are you mad?
You're mad!
What's got into you? Don't touch me!
What the hell!
Anabel loves me, Irene.
Anabel is an exceptional being.
She doesn't phone you
because I speak badly to her,
but because it's impossible
for a sensitive person like Anabel
to deal with the pressure
of everything that just happened.
I've had to do everything.
Everything!
Everything was down to me.
Do you understand?
At the onset of Mom's illness
I'm the one who organized everything.
I'm the one
who stayed with Mom night and day.
Mom's illness drove
half the family completely crazy.
That disease makes people crazy.
You can't come out of it unscathed.
The people with you
become completely crazy too.
Everything we know is nothing
compared to what that illness causes
in the immediate circle.
The periphery is affected.
It has an impact on everything.
Whether you like it or not,
yes, it had an impact on the person
I live with, a serious impact.
The madness of Mom's situation
penetrated Anabel,
because Anabel accompanied her, Irene.
Yes, accompanied.
She did what probably
few beings in the world do,
accompany a person
into the depths of their madness,
into the depths of their misfortune,
entering their misfortune
the way we send molecules into bodies
with a specific mission,
to relieve and cure. Anabel...
Anabel took on a specific mission,
Irene,
to attempt to relieve Mom
by entering into her body.
These are things
that you can't understand.
Sympathizing with someone in pain,
feeling empathy.
Thinking someone else's pain
is in part my own, it concerns me,
that I'm not alone in the world,
that fighting for something that doesn't
concern me is a political attitude.
Helping others to obtain rights
that don't concern me
is a political attitude.
Rejecting this trend of only fighting
for your own interests
is a political attitude, Irene.
But you're too busy with yourself
like the majority of the population.
You try not to get involved,
rejecting anything collective.
You snigger about it saying
it's unfashionable and out of date.
We've entered the famous period of
free movement, mobility and Narcissus,
in which everyone defends their own
pen, their share of water, land and air
and doesn't care
whether it sinks or swims
as long as
it doesn't throw my life off balance.
As for you,
your mad-dog attacks on me,
your shameless distortions of the past,
of our bodies in Atocha,
your insane descriptions of me
lifting you up,
your delirium about my shoulders,
this delirium where you come
to my professional circle to explode.
It doesn't help you understand
what I'm doing with my life,
with my structure
that puts teams together,
-prepares budgets, goes on missions.
-I don't care!
-I'm not here to talk about...
-Shut up! You've hurt me enough!
-With your damn energy!
-Don't touch me!
-Shut up!
-Don't touch me!
Enough! I can't take anymore!
You're sick!
What the hell is this?
That's enough! I'm at the limit
of what I can take. Shut up.
You shut up!
-You hurt me when you pushed me.
-You hurt me too, dammit!
Goddamn it! Shut up! Shut your mouth!
I've got a headache,
my elbow hurts...
I want to get out of here.
Who'd imagine being taken down
like this, like a legitimate trial?
You're illegitimate in everything.
Your presence in the world
is illegitimate.
Everything you make us endure
is beyond the legal framework
that guarantees a space
in which to live.
You don't leave space.
You crush everything.
You stifle everything you touch,
Dad, Mom, Felipe...
-Don't talk about Mom!
-I'll talk about Mom.
You crush everything! You're a parasite
living on the beauty produced by others.
You're incapable
of making a contribution!
With your job you make the world yield
to a pile of opinions,
fanciful criticism and other nonsense.
Does all that really make you feel
like you exist? Fine.
But what a waste
for the way of the world,
but you don't give a shit
about the way of the world.
With your airs of "I don't give
a damn," keeping your distance.
With your critical eye
giving good scores and bad scores,
thumbs up, thumbs down,
always sure of what you say.
Never the slightest glimmer
of surprise or questioning.
You were trained to know how to give
your opinion about everything,
to crush everything in your way,
so don't come around asking me
for what you are incapable of giving,
a little bit of benevolence.
I have no desire
to treat you with benevolence.
Do you show benevolence
towards the state of things,
to how I try to improve things,
which makes you snicker?
Never.
I swear, you'll leave as you came,
your suitcase closed,
nothing vented.
Your secrets, your padlocks that lock
your life up will open nothing at all.
You'll leave alone in a straitjacket and
cry over what life hasn't shown you,
because in order to receive, Irene,
one must show curiosity.
Have you ever taken an interest
in what I do?
Never. In your circles you'd say,
"This is my sister. She's a bit weird.
She takes care of poor people,
the type of girl who goes off at night
to help the homeless.
It's a good thing,
but it's over the top.
You can tell she's a girl
looking for forgiveness,
some kind of Joan of Arc for poor
people, it can be embarrassing.
She rants about principles, accusing
people of sitting on their asses.
If we heard her
we'd have to grab a lifejacket
and dive into the sea
to save the planet, it's unbearable.
All the blaming,
she was always a master at that.
If my mother had one of her fits,
she always found a way to blame me.
It was my responsibility.
You said,
"Bárbara always considered me
responsible for our mother's collapse."
She'd corner me whilst doing the dishes
to look me in the eye and say,
"Do you see how you treat Mom?
You're insane.
I hope they lock you up not Mom.
Mom is sane compared to you,
Mom and her literary genius crush you.
Mom's writings crush what you write.
You couldn't bear
Mom's literary genius."
During Sunday lunches,
in a mocking breath, you'd say,
"No, I will not pronounce myself
on the literary genius of our mother."
Of course, Irene.
Your excessive self-regard
blinded you to the talent of others.
If you could have written
the harshest article in your paper,
as you used to say,
"I'm harsh but fair,"
the vilest article, under a pseudonym,
you would have done it.
Your contained violence would've
emerged, exploded for all to see,
saying to your mother
what you secretly thought,
when the entire profession
you scorned
would undoubtedly
shower her book with praise.
You'd say,
"Here we go, another praise-fest.
They'll rush like sheep to write
the best article, find an angle.
How totally pathetic.
If they knew the woman, the mother...
but they only see the writer.
If they knew the madwoman
who crushed all I did her whole life,
who left me no room.
If they knew her they would vomit
like I vomit during family dinners
where my sister is the one
everyone worries about.
She's the center of attention,
because she's in the real world.
Her stories come from
the so-called real world.
My mother turns her crazy yellow
doe eyes to my sister and says,
"Honey, you'll ruin your health."
No way!
"You're going to wind up like them,
you'll get mistaken for them."
She thinks my sister could get mistaken
for those she helps from the rafts.
"You're too involved.
It's the way of the world, Bárbara.
You can make human chains, lie on
the floor, paint a cross on your body,
handcuff yourself
to government office gates,
nothing will stop capital
from condemning the massive influx
while organizing it to make a profit.
That's the meaning of things.
It's always been this way.
It won't change.
Have some more cake.
Look at your sister.
Your sister understood that
a long time ago.
She's at the service of cynicism
and she makes a very good living,
whereas what do you get
from playing the kind soul?
Not to mention that you're always broke.
It's worrisome at your age." Yes!
Now it's you speaking, Irene,
"Bárbara, Mom is right.
What's this new fancy?
Fancy, yes! What does it mean?
What are you trying to express?
Emptying 2,000 balls
in front of the National Assembly?
Hanging from cranes?
What are you trying to express?
What do you have against us?
What disgusts you about our education?
We brought you into this world.
Can't you find your place here?
You're becoming strange.
I don't recognize you anymore.
Mom is worried sick.
What's going on in your head?"
In my head, Irene? In my head?
You want me to tell you
what goes on in my head?
The nights, the yells in the corrugated
iron buildings in the hot sun,
the skin coming off the old people's
feet when you hose them down?
The power of the hose
knocks the women over.
It was designed for strong men's bodies,
and there are more women with babies!
Babies that we've pulled out
of petrol tanks surrounded by saltwater.
Their umbilical cords
were cut with rusty knives.
People crying,
people who have lost their voice,
their skin marked with a branding iron
to be identifiable in the pens.
Old men who no longer know their name.
Old women who can no longer speak,
who repeat, "My daughter, there."
But there is nothing there.
They point to an empty corner.
Young girls on the floor
holding their bellies,
spitting and saying names
in Arabic, Dari, in Hausa,
children walking in circles banging
their heads, looking for their mother.
They mutilate themselves on the fences.
They cut their veins on the fences
suffocate themselves with plastic bags
and suck men off
to buy powdered milk
from people who give them plaster
scraped off walls.
Stinking children with scabs, women who
stink, who no longer get their period.
Their vaginas bleed,
hemorrhages between their legs
that they stop with their hands.
People with their teeth
covered in blood,
tongues covered in blood,
who sell their sex organs.
They mutilate their sex organs.
Infections in anuses
from putting money in,
infections on their torso,
in their mouths noses, eyes,
shit everywhere, flies everywhere.
Mom, Dad! Where are you?
Where are you, God, where are you?
There's nothing left. I'm going to die.
Mom, Dad, I'm going to die!
Absurd geopolitics are killing me.
I'm going to die! Where are you?
You went through this too!
Your parents went through this
and your parents' parents.
But you've forgotten everything!
Your poets, your writers said,
"This can never happen again.
After this,
how will we ever say something again?
How will language
ever say something again?
And then language started again
and then you forgot! Stand up, dammit!
Stand up! Open your eyes! Have you
seen what's going on out there?
Have you seen it? There is screaming
and fear everywhere!
Get off your damned asses!
That's what I'm going to tell them with
my ridiculous PowerPoint!
That's what I'll say
during my trivial conference!
That's why I'm organizing
these damn chairs and this shit lectern.
Get out, Irene!
Get out!
Is that it?
Are you done now?
Do I have the right of reply?
It turns out
you're worse than I thought.
You remind me of these moviemakers
who pretend to denounce violence
by making ultraviolent films.
A question of morals, Bárbara,
really?
Did you really need
to inflict this on us?
Your clear conscience?
Well, thanks a lot!
You know where I come from?
No, you don't, do you?
Talk to the hand.
The face doesn't give a damn!
Why did I just say
talk to the hand?
Why did I say talk to the hand?
We used to say talk to the hand
because the face doesn't give a damn
and we'd go like this...
...to shut each other's trap.
Do you have a tissue?
I've just used it.
-I've just used it.
-I don't care.
-Thanks.
-You're welcome.
I loved you so much.
I admired you so much.
I wanted so much for you to love me.
You're right, I copied you all the time,
but I wanted to be like you.
That's normal
for a little sister, right?
It would have bugged me, too.
We're interchangeable.
I could have felt what you felt...
...and vice versa.
Is this why we've been screaming
at each other for the last hour?
For the last 20 years, Irene.
-For the last 20 years, Bárbara?
-Yes.
-Seriously?
-Yes.
Goddamn it!
You never drop your guard.
Fine. We'll battle it out.
The structure,
the bones, the torso, Bárbara.
That violent mass
that would say in the dark,
"I heard Mom and Dad talking in bed.
Dad said, 'Children sense these things.'
Mom was saying, 'What do you mean?
Irene knows nothing.'"
Why tell me this 20 years later?
I don't expect an answer,
but it's still going around in my head
and piercing my heart.
My heart is pierced.
I'm a real mess, right?
Well, I'll start.
Why you didn't let me know?
I did let you know.
-No, you didn't.
-I did.
-Why didn't you let me know?
-I did. I sent you a message.
-A message?
-Yes.
-Really? How?
-A text message.
-That's weird I didn't get anything.
-Talk to your service provider.
Are you joking?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Let's take a look.
We'll look and see.
Let's see. We'll see.
Right...
Nothing! Right, Bárbara? Nothing!
So, aren't you going to tell me?
So, Bárbara,
why didn't you let me know?
Why?
What's the matter now?
Why didn't you let me know?
Answer me!
Mom was everything to me, you hear?
Everything!
You tore Mom out.
You tore her out of my life.
You uprooted her from my heart
and you took her away for yourself,
like an ocelot, deep into the forest,
out of my field of vision.
Who doesn't let her sister know?
Who says nothing, keeps quiet, lies?
You lied to me
all down the line, Bárbara.
The location, the timing, everything!
All your messages were ambiguous.
I couldn't understand
a word of what you wrote.
You did that exasperating thing
with texts,
what people do who
don't want to be bothered with you
and answer after three days saying,
"Sorry, I didn't see your text."
Unbearable!
But I knew you'd seen my texts.
You spend your life on the phone!
If you don't post something
every three minutes, a tantrum,
a cat video, two seconds of an AGM,
a photo of yourself... you die!
So don't lecture me on a world in flux
and all your emotional twaddle!
You live
under the command of the emotional,
with your alarmist, uncontrolled texts
you feed our despondency,
our supposed numbness
to the suffering of others.
It's easy to make great speeches,
right?
To take a stance,
to express your anger, your shame,
appearing in all the media
that you spit on at every opportunity.
You may have noticed
I haven't lifted a finger for you
and I probably never will.
You're counterproductive.
These issues can't be handled
your way.
I took a quick look at three videos
in which you appear shouting out
slogans about protecting bees.
It made me nauseous.
Anyway... the great causes, yes,
but the small cause
of letting your sister know by saying,
"Mom isn't well.
Come. It's the end.
Mom is going to die.
She's asking for you, she's saying,
'I want to see Irene.
Irene is my favorite.'"
"Bárbara, I love you very much
but you're always here.
While Irene, God only knows
where she is in the world.
Her job and passion for the destitute
sends her all over the world.
Always between flights,
between catastrophes,
between population displacements,
always suitcase in hand."
"Mom, what are you saying?
What are you talking about?
I know Anabel. She's a pretty girl."
"Dad and I went hiking
with her yesterday."
"Mom, stop, please."
"Why is Felipe outside?
You kicked him out.
You never liked him,
although Felipe was brilliant.
Felipe was probably
Dad's most brilliant assistant.
When we were in Tanzania
and we drank tea on the famous terrace
above the trees.
You were both so cute.
I dressed you the same.
Felipe served the lemonade
and Dad laughed with him.
They laughed so much.
You were both so good.
One in a yellow dress and one in pink,
people mixed you up.
They'd get your names mixed up.
It was natural."
"Mom, please, look at me."
"Are you trying to make me seem crazy?
I know who you are. You'll laugh.
I mistook your father for an Arab nurse.
Someone in the hall commented
we can't go on like this,
or it'll be a disaster."
"Mom, please,
Dad couldn't have visited."
"What do you mean?
He's fit as a fiddle.
Look at the cookies on the night table
he brought.
At my age
I have the right to get up if I want.
What's this they've put on me?
My God, what is this?
What are these straps?
What's all this? Help!
What are you talking about!
Do you know,
I moved tons of soil, in Basra,
with the father of these young women,
to excavate the temple of Ishtar,
before the deluge came from the sky.
We treated hundreds of Iraqis,
fed them, housed them
at the archaeological mission.
The evenings in the desert
had the most beautiful skies.
They were a magnificent community
crushed by a government fist
and then by a deluge, that's the truth.
These people haven't had
any respite in how long?
How many children have died
so you can take your SUV joyrides
on Arizona's beautiful roads?"
"Ma'am calm down."
"Mom, calm down."
"So, for pity's sake,
spare me your comments
on the nursing staff's ancestry,
what does that mean?
What are you insinuating?
Do you think I'm sick?
I'm not sick. It's your way
of seeing the world that's sick.
So get out of my room!"
"Mom, go back to bed."
"No! See the drip there?
I'll ram it into their guts
and throw it through the window!
You think I'm losing it? Your sister
is scared I'll jump out the window
and I'll jump soon enough.
The pain is so intense!
The pills no longer have any effect!
I can't take it. Let me die.
Tell your sister
you can't treat a mother like this.
My daughters always hated me,
two of a kind.
There comes a point you're faced
with shit over your buttocks
and urine running all over the place.
That was the world.
That was my life.
That was what
I fought for my whole life?
I fought for lofty principles
my whole life.
All the books I wrote
tried not to abandon the world.
I raised you and your sister
in the love of language,
because if you abandon language,
everything falls apart.
One daughter writes idiotic articles
in a dying newspaper.
The other is more delirious than I am
and leads a new crusade for good.
We won't make it.
I can't continue suffering.
I'll kick up a fuss
and scream till I lose my voice.
I want the nurses.
I want to be treated like a human.
I'm not an object about to die.
The world is not a dying thing!
It wants to be treated. I want to go out
and walk the streets and yell.
"Mom, calm down."
"No! I will not calm down!
The sun has deserted the earth!
We are plunged into darkness!
Irene, and you...
...you...
...you didn't get here on time.
My own daughter,
the one I washed, powdered, perfumed
when she was just a little pink thing on
a baby-changing table, my daughter..."
"Bárbara, Mom's leaving."
"My daughter didn't get here in time."
"Mom, say your name. Call the doctor."
"No one will come at night.
They're short-staffed.
You spend the night gritting your teeth,
howling in silence, bones break, blood
vessels burst, the blood system boils
and overflows in your mouth,
and you cry out...
You cry out...
Let death come.
Let death come.
That was all? This perpetual pain,
this perpetual madness.
We work our guts out our whole life
for this perpetual madness,
so for the love of God,
I beg, let me go.
Let me return to the shadows.
Let me go back to the beginning of time.
I want to enter into the night.
Let me enter into the night."
SISTERS
(BÁRBARA E IRENE)