Doña Rosita the Spinster
and the Language of Flowers
(Doña Rosita la soltera
o el lenguaje de las
1935
A Granadine poem of the 19th Century, divided into several
gardens with scenes of song and dance
Act
I
A. S. Kline © 2008 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Permission to perform this version of the play, on stage or film, by amateur or professional companies, and for commercial purposes, should be requested from the translator, mailto:tonykline@yahoo.com.
(Ten years later. A ground floor
room: its windows with green shutters looking onto the garden. The stage is
silent. It is afternoon. A clock strikes six. The Nurse crosses the stage with
a suitcase and a bundle. The Aunt appears and sits on a low chair centre stage.
Silence. The clock again strikes six. Pause.)
NURSE: (Entering)
The clock’s struck six for the second time.
AUNT: And Rosita?
NURSE: Upstairs in the tower room. And you, where
have you been?
AUNT: Removing the last pots from the conservatory.
NURSE: I haven’t seen her all morning.
AUNT: Since my husband died the house feels so
empty it seems twice the size, and we have to go searching for one another. When
I cough in my room some nights, I hear an echo as if I was in church.
NURSE: It’s true the house has proved too large.
AUNT: (Almost
in tears) And then….if he were alive, with that clear mind of his, with his
ability…
NURSE: (Singing)
Tra-la-tra-la-tra-la…. No Señora, I won’t let you
cry. He’s been dead six years and I don’t want to see you as you were that day.
How we cried! Be strong, Señora! Let the sun shine in the corners! Let us hope
for many years of cutting roses!
AUNT: (Rising)
I am an old woman. We are living amongst ruins.
NURSE: There’s nothing wrong with us. I’m old too!
AUNT: If I only had your age!
NURSE: We’re a little worn, but since I’ve worked
hard, I’m well-oiled, while you, in using the armchair, your legs have withered.
AUNT: You think I haven’t worked?
NURSE: With your fingertips, with thread, with stalks,
jam; but I worked with my shoulders, knees, fingernails.
AUNT: So to run a household is not working?
NURSE: It’s harder work scrubbing floors.
AUNT: I won’t argue with that.
NURSE: Why not? It passes the time. Go on. Answer me
back. But we’ve ended up like mutes. Before, there was always shouting. ‘What
about this, what about the other, what about the custard, why aren’t there more
sheets?’…
AUNT: I’m resigned…..one day it’s soup, the next
only crumbs: with my glass of water and my rosary in my pocket, I’ll await
death with dignity…But when I think of Rosita!
NURSE: That’s what hurts!
AUNT: (Excitedly)
When I think of the wrong he did her, and the terrible
deceit he practised and the falsehood in that man’s heart, who is no longer my
family and not worthy enough to be part of my family, I’d like to be twenty
years old and board that steamboat, and go to Tucumán,
and take a whip…
NURSE: (Interrupting)
….and take a sword, and cut off his head, and crush it between two stones, and
cut off that hand that wrote those false promises and those lying words of
affection.
AUNT: Yes, and let him pay with blood for the blood
he has cost, even if he is of my blood, and then….
NURSE: …scatter his ashes over the sea.
AUNT: Resurrect him, and bring him here to Rosita,
to obtain satisfaction for my family’s honour.
NURSE: So now you agree with me.
AUNT: I do.
NURSE: There he met that rich woman he was seeking and married her, but he should
have told Rosita at the time. Because who will love the girl now? Now she has
faded! Señora, couldn’t we send a poisoned letter that would kill him when he
opened it?
AUNT: The things you say! Eight years of marriage,
and only last month the wretch writes to tell me the truth. I knew it from his
letters; the proxy never arrived, an ambiguous tone….he didn’t dare, but in the
end he did. Of course it was after his father died!
And that
creature….
NURSE: Hush…!
AUNT: And take those two jars.
(Rosita appears. She is dressed in
bright pink in the fashion of 1910. Her hair is done in curls. She has aged
greatly.)
NURSE: Child!
ROSITA: What are you doing?
NURSE: Grumbling a little. And you, where are you
off to?
ROSITA: I’m going to the conservatory. Have you
removed the pots already?
NURSE: There are a few left.
(Rosita goes out. The two women
wipe away tears.)
NURSE: And now what? You sit here, and I sit here?
And keep silent? And not seek justice? And not have the courage to make a
fuss…?
AUNT: Be quiet, don’t pursue it!
NURSE: I have no power to endure these things
without my heart pounding in my chest as if I were a dog being chased. When I
buried my husband I felt it deeply, but deep down I felt a great happiness…happiness
no…a thrill to realise that it was not I who was being buried. When I buried my
little girl…you understand? When I buried my little girl it was if my guts were
being trampled on, but the dead are dead. They are dead, we mourn, we close the
door, and we go on living! But all this to do with Rosita is worse. It is to seek
a corpse and not find it; it’s to weep without knowing what you are weeping
for; it’s to sigh for someone you know, who shouldn’t deserve sighs. It’s an
open wound that bleeds an endless trickle of blood, and there is no one, no one
on earth, who can bring the swabs, or bandages for it, or a precious lump of
snow.
AUNT: What do you want me to do?
NURSE: Let the river carry us away.
AUNT: In old age everyone turns their back on us.
NURSE: While I have arms nothing is lacking.
AUNT: (Pause.
In a lower voice, as if ashamed.)
I cannot pay your wages! You will have to leave us.
NURSE: What! What breeze is that blowing through the
window! What…! Or perhaps I’m going deaf? Well…do you want me to sing? Like the
little girls going home from school! (Children’s
voices are heard) Do you hear, Señora? My Senora: more my Señora than ever.
(She embraces her.)
AUNT: I hear.
NURSE: I’m going to cook something. A dish of mackerel fragrant with fennel.
AUNT: Listen!
NURSE: And for dessert a meringue, a Monte Nevado! I’ll make a Monte Nevado with coloured dragees…
AUNT: But, woman!
NURSE: (Loudly)
Is Don Martín there! Don Martín,
come here a moment! Here! Entertain the Señora a while.
(She exits quickly. Don Martín enters. He is an old man with red hair. He uses a
crutch which supports a withered leg. A noble individual, of
great dignity, with a certain air of sadness.)
AUNT: Bless my sight!
MARTÍN: When is the final departure?
AUNT: Today.
MARTÍN: Where will you go?
AUNT: Our new house is not like this. But is has
good views and a little patio with two fig trees where you can grow flowers.
MARTÍN: That’s not so bad. (They sit down.)
AUNT: And how are you?
MARTÍN: The same as ever. I came here to give my tutorial.
It was truly hellish. It was a beautiful lecture: ‘The Concept and Definition
of Harmony’ but of no interest to the youngsters at all. And what youngsters! I,
whom they consider a waste of time, they show a little respect to; sometimes a
pin or something in the backside or a puppet on one’s shoulder, but they do
terrible things to my colleagues. They’re the children of the rich and, since
they pay, they can’t be punished. Or so the Headmaster always tells us. Yesterday
it involved poor Señor Canito,
the new Geography professor, who wears a corset, because his body is a little
distorted; when he was alone in the courtyard, the older boys and the boarders stripped
him to the waist, tied him to one of the pillars along the walk, and drenched
him with a jar of water over the balcony.
AUNT: The poor creature!
MARTÍN: Every day I tremble as I enter the college,
waiting for what they might do to me, though, as I say, they respect my
misfortune somewhat. There was a huge scandal a while ago when Señor Cosuegra, who is an
admirable teacher of Latin, found cat excrement on his class list.
AUNT: They are like enemies!
MARTÍN: They are the one that pay, and so they behave
accordingly. And believe me the parents laugh at their pranks, because as we
are only like tutors, and are not about to examine their children, they
consider us as men devoid of feelings, as people situated in the lowest class
of society, who nevertheless still wear a decent collar and tie.
AUNT: Oh Don Martin! What a world it is!
MARTÍN: What a world! I always dreamed of being a
poet. They said I had natural talent, and I wrote a play which was never
staged.
AUNT: ‘The
Daughter of Jephthah’?
MARTÍN: That was it.
AUNT: Rosita and I have read it. You gave us a
copy. We have read it four or five times!
MARTÍN: (Anxiously)
And what did you think…?
AUNT: I liked it a lot. I’ve always said so. Especially when she is
going to die, and thinks about her mother and the flames.
MARTÍN: It is strong, right? A true
drama. A drama in shape and concept. I was
never able to have it performed. (He
starts to recite.)
‘Oh
sublime mother! Turn your gaze
on one who sunk in vile torpor lies;
Welcome
all the glittering rewards
and the fearful tremor of my struggle!’
Is that bad? Are not the stresses and the caesura fine in that line:
‘and the fearful tremor of my struggle?’
AUNT: Beautiful! Beautiful!
MARTÍN: And when Glucinius
goes to meet Isaiah, and lifts the hanging of the tent….
NURSE: (Interrupting)
Through here.
(Two workers entered dressed in
corduroy.)
FIRST WORKER: Good afternoon.
AUNT AND MARTIN: (Together)
Good afternoon.
NURSE: This is the one! (She points to a large sofa at the back of the room.)
(The men carry it out slowly as if
carrying a coffin. The Nurse follows them. Silence. We
hear two chimes of a church bell as the men leave with the sofa.)
MARTÍN: Is that the Novena for Saint Gertrude the
Great?
AUNT: Yes at the
MARTÍN: It is very hard to become a poet! (The men exit.) After that I wanted to be
a pharmacist. That’s a tranquil life.
AUNT: My brother, who is in glory, was a
pharmacist.
MARTÍN: But it was not possible. I had to help my
mother and became a professor. That’s why I envied your husband so much. He was
what I wished to be.
AUNT: And it caused his ruin!
MARTÍN: Yes, but it’s worse
to be me.
AUNT: But you are still a writer.
MARTÍN: I don’t know why I write, because I’ve no illusions
about it, yet it’s the only thing I enjoy. Did you read my story yesterday in
the second edition of the magazine, in ‘Mentalidad Granadina’?
AUNT: ‘Matilda’s
Birthday’. Yes, we read it; it was beautiful.
MARTÍN: Is it so? There I wanted to renew myself by
creating something with a present-day atmosphere; I even have an aeroplane in
it! I must be truly modern. Of course what matter most to me are my sonnets.
AUNT: To the Nine Muses of
MARTÍN: To the Ten, the Ten. Don’t you remember that
I called Rosita the Tenth Muse?
NURSE: (Entering)
Senora, help me fold this blanket. (They
fold it between them.) Don Martín, with the red
hair! Why have you not married, man of God? You would be less lonely in life!
MARTÍN: I’ve never wanted to!
NURSE: It’s because now it doesn’t please you to.
Speaking in that precious way of of yours!
AUNT: Let’s hope you fall in love.
MARTÍN: Little chance of that!
NURSE: When he lectures in the room downstairs in
the college, I go to the boiler-room to listen: ‘What is an idea?’ ‘The intellectual representation of a thing or an object.’
Is that right?
MARTÍN: Listen to her! Marvellous!
NURSE: Yesterday he shouted: ‘’No, it’s a
hyperbaton, an inversion of words’ and later…. ‘the epinicion, a song of
victory’…I wanted to understand it all, but since I couldn’t I wanted to laugh,
and the boiler-man who is forever reading a book called The Ruins of Palmyra, echoed my grimaces as though we were pair of
rabid cats. But though I laugh, like an ignoramus, I know Don Martín has great merit.
MARTÍN: No one today grants merit to Rhetoric or
Poetry or the university culture.
(The Nurse exits rapidly with the
folded blanket.)
AUNT: What can we do? There’s little time left to
us here.
MARTÍN: We must employ it in kindness and sacrifice.
(Voices are heard.)
AUNT: What is that?
NURSE: (Appearing)
Don Martín, you must go to the college because the
students have split a water pipe with a nail, and all the classrooms are
flooded.
MARTÍN: I must go. I dreamed of being a Parnassian
and I must act as a plumber and mason. As long as they don’t
push me, and I don’t slip… (The
Nurse helps Don Martín to his feet.)
(Voices are heard.)
NURSE: Off you go, now! Oh for a little peace and
quiet! Let’s hope the water rises quickly and there’s not a student left alive!
MARTÍN: (Leaving)
Blessed be the Lord!
AUNT: Poor man, what a fate is yours!
NURSE: Look in that mirror. This very person irons his
collars and darns his socks, and when he was sick, and I took him some custard,
he had only a bed with sheets as black as charcoal, and four walls and a little
washbasin…ay!
AUNT: As do others, plenty of them!
NURSE: That’s why I always say: ‘Cursed, cursed be
the rich! Nothing shall survive of them, not even their fingernails!
AUNT: Forget about them!
NURSE: But I’m certain they go headlong to Hell.
Where do you think Don Rafael Salé is now, that
exploiter of the poor, whom they buried yesterday, God forgive him, with all
those nuns and priests and all that chanting? In Hell! And he cries: ‘Take my
twenty million pesetas, but don’t squeeze me with the pincers! I’ll give you
two hundred thousand if you’ll take those coals from my feet!’ but the demons
burn here, and burn there, struggle how you may, strike you in the face, till
your blood is turned to charcoal.
AUNT: Every Christian knows that the rich can’t
enter the
NURSE: To Hell, me? With the first kick I give Old
Nick’s cauldron, I’ll supply the whole world with hot water. No Senora, no. I
will go to Heaven for sure. (Gently)
Like you. Each of us sitting in our very own rocking-chair upholstered with heavenly
silk, holding a red satin fan. Between us, on a swing twined with jasmine and
rosemary, Rosita will be swinging away, and behind her your husband, covered
with roses, just as he went in his coffin from this house; with the same smile,
with the same pale brow as if made of glass, and you there rocking away, and I,
and Rosita swinging, and behind her your husband throwing roses, as if we were
all three on a float, one made of mother-of-pearl and covered with candles and
flounces, in the Holy Week procession.
AUNT: And may the handkerchiefs for our tears be
left behind down here.
NURSE: Let them. A heavenly spree for us!
AUNT: Because now there’s not a single one left in
our hearts!
FIRST WORKMAN: You must tell us what you want us to do.
NURSE: Come. (They
exit. From the doorway.)
Courage!
AUNT: God bless you! (She sits down slowly.)
(Rosita appears with a packet of
letters in her hands. Silence.)
AUNT: Have they taken the chest of drawers already?
ROSITA: Just now. Your cousin Hope sent a lad to
fetch a screwdriver.
AUNT: They’ll be setting up the beds for tonight.
We must leave soon and make sure everything is as we want it. My cousin will
have arranged the furniture any old how.
ROSITA: But I’d prefer to leave here when the streets
are dark. If only I could quench the street-lights. Whatever happens, the
neighbours will spy on us. All day long, with our moving house, the doorway has
been full of little children, as though someone had died here.
AUNT: If I had known I would never have allowed
your uncle to mortgage the house, furniture and all. What we are taking is
barely enough, a chair to sit on and a bed to sleep in.
ROSITA: To die in.
AUNT: A fine trick he played on us! Tomorrow the
new owners arrive! I wish your uncle could see us. The old fool! Cowardly in
business! Mad for his roses! A man with no concept of money! Ruining
me, day by day. ‘Here is Fulano’; and: ‘Let
him come in’; and he would enter with empty pockets and leave with them full of
silver, and it was always: ‘Don’t let my wife find out.’ Extravagant and weak!
And there was no disaster but he must remedy it…no child but he must help,
because…, because….he had a bigger heart than anyone…the purest of Christian
souls…; no, no, hush old woman! Be silent, chatterbox, and respect God’s will!
Ruined! Well then, silence! But I look at you…
NURSE: Don’t think of me, aunt. I know the mortgage
paid for my furniture and my trousseau, and that is what grieves me.
AUNT: It was well done. You deserved it all. And
everything we bought is worthy of you, and will be beautiful the day you come
to use it.
ROSITA: The day I come to use it?
AUNT: Of course! The day you are married.
ROSITA: Don’t let’s talk about it.
AUNT: That’s what wrong with the decent women in
this world. We don’t talk! We don’t talk and we should talk. (Loudly) Nurse! Has the post arrived?
ROSITA: What do you suggest?
AUNT: Watch how I behave, and you will learn.
ROSITA: (Embracing
her.) Hush.
AUNT: Sometimes I have to speak out. Get away from
these four walls, my child. Don’t give in to misfortune.
ROSITA: (Kneeling
before her.) For many years I grew accustomed to living beyond myself,
thinking of things that were far away, and now those things no longer exist I
go on giving more and more to that cold emptiness, seeking an escape I have
never found. I knew everything. I knew he had married; he had charged a kind
soul with telling me, and I went on receiving his letters, embracing an
illusion, so full of sighs that I even deceived myself. If no one had said
anything; if you had not known; if no one had known but me, his letters and his
lies would have sustained my illusion, just as in the first year of his
absence. But everyone knew, and I was met with pointing fingers that mocked my
chastity as a fiancée, and made my spinster’s fan appear grotesque. Every year
that passed was like a secret pledge that withered my flesh. One day a friend
marries then another and another, and tomorrow has a grown-up child, and comes
to show me its school report, and they make new homes and new songs, and I am
the same, with the same emotions, the same; I am the same as before, cutting
the same carnations, gazing at the same clouds; and one day I’m out walking and
I realise I no longer know anyone; the boys and girls leave me behind because I
bore them, and one says: ‘Oh, that’s the old maid’; and another, a handsome
boy, with curly hair, comments: ‘No one will have her now. ’ And I hear him and
I can’t say a word, only walk on swiftly, with a mouth full of poison, and an
enormous desire to run away, to throw off my shoes, and rest and not move
again, ever, from my corner.
AUNT: Child! Rosita!
ROSITA: Now I am old. Yesterday I heard Nurse say
that I might still marry. There is no way. Don’t think it. I have lost hope now
of having him whom I loved with all my heart, whom I loved….whom I love.
Everything is finished…and yet, with all illusions gone, I still wake with the
most dreadful of feelings, the feeling of nursing a hope that is dead. I want
to run, I want not to see; I want to be left calm, empty… (Doesn’t a wretched
woman have the right to breathe freely?) Yet hope pursues me, circles me, bites
me, like a dying wolf snapping its teeth for the last time.
AUNT: Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t you marry
someone else?
ROSITA: I was promised, and besides, what man ever
came to this house truly overflowing with desire to win my affection? None.
AUNT: You never took any notice of them. You were blinded
by a deceitful lover.
ROSITA: I have always been a serious person.
AUNT: You clung to an idea without seeing the
reality, taking no heed for your future.
ROSITA: I am what I am. And I can’t change. The one
thing left to me is my dignity. What I have within I keep for myself alone.
AUNT: That is not what I wish.
NURSE: (Entering
swiftly) Nor I! Talk to us, unburden yourself; then
we can be filled with tears the three of us, and share our feelings.
ROSITA: And what should I talk of? There are things
that can’t be said because there are no words in which to say them; and if
there were, no one would understand their meaning. You would understand if I
asked for bread or water or even a kiss, but no one can understand or remove
this dark hand, that freezes or burns my heart, I don’t know which, whenever I’m
alone.
AUNT: That is talking at least.
AUNT: For everything there is consolation.
ROSITA: It’s a never-ending tale. I know my eyes will
stay young always, while my back will curve more each day. After all what has
happened to me happens to thousands of women. (Pause.) But why am I speaking of it?
(To the Nurse) Go and arrange our
things, because in a short while we’ll be leaving this house and garden, and
you, aunt, must not think of me. (Pause. To the Nurse)
Go on! I don’t like being looked at that way. That gaze like a faithful dog’s
annoys me. (The Nurse goes out.)
Those looks of pity disturb me and anger me.
AUNT: Child, what do you want me to do?
ROSITA: Treat me as a lost thing. (Pause. She walks about.) Already I know you will be thinking of your
sister the spinster….a spinster like me. She was sour and odious to children
and every woman who put on a new dress….but I will not be like that. (Pause.) I ask forgiveness.
AUNT: What nonsense.
(A boy about eighteen years old
appears at the back of the room.)
ROSITA: Let’s go.
BOY: Are you ready?
ROSITA: In a few moments.
When it
grows dark.
AUNT: Who is this?
ROSITA: It’s Maria’s son.
AUNT: Which Maria?
ROSITA: The elder of my three former girlfriends.
AUNT: Ah!
‘Who
go to the
three or four alone.’
Forgive my poor memory, child.
BOY: I have only met you a few times.
AUNT: Of course! But I liked your mother very much.
How witty she was! She died at the same time as my husband.
ROSITA: Earlier.
BOY: Eight years ago.
ROSITA: And he has the same face as hers.
BOY: (Cheerfully)
Not so pretty. It’s taken a bit of a hammering.
AUNT: And the same wit, the same personality!
BOY: Of course, I resemble her. At the Carnival I
wore my mother’s dress…one from the old days…in green…
ROSITA: (Sadly)
With black bows, and puffed out with green
BOY: Yes.
ROSITA: And a broad velvet ribbon at the waist.
BOY: That’s it.
ROSITA: That hangs down on either side of the skirt.
BOY: Exactly! What a ridiculous style. (He laughs)
ROSITA: (Sadly)
It was a lovely fashion!
BOY: You don’t say! Well I nearly died laughing
dressed in that old thing, filling all the hallway of the house with the smell
of camphor, and suddenly my aunt started crying bitterly because she said it
was like seeing the very image of my mother. I was upset, of course, and I left
the dress and the mask on my bed.
ROSITA: There is nothing more living than a memory.
They can make life impossible. That is why I have a profound understanding of
those old drunken women who wander through the streets trying to erase the
world, who sit and sing on the benches in the avenue.
AUNT: And your aunt is married?
BOY: He writes from
ROSITA: Are there any children?
BOY: Four.
(Pause.)
NURSE: (Entering)
Give me your keys to the cupboard. (The
Aunt gives her them, for the Boy.) This lad here was with his girlfriend
yesterday. I saw them in the Plaza Nueva. She wanted
to hide in a side street but he wouldn’t let her. (She laughs.)
AUNT: Ha, look at him blush!
BOY: (Embarrassed)
We were just fooling about.
NURSE: Don’t blush then! (Exiting)
ROSITA: Hush, let’s be going.
BOY: What a beautiful garden you have!
ROSITA: We had!
AUNT: Go, and cut some flowers.
BOY: Take care, Doña
Rosita.
ROSITA: Go with God, my lad!
(He leaves. Dusk is falling.)
Doña Rosita! Doña…Rosita!
When
it opens in the morning,
It
glows as red as blood.
In the afternoon it’s white,
White as the white salt spray.
And
when the night falls
It
begins to fade.
(Pause.)
NURSE: (Entering
with a shawl) Away with us!
ROSITA: Yes, I’m going to put a coat on.
NURSE: Since I’ve taken the hangars, it’s hooked
over the window catch.
(The Third Spinster enters,
dressed in black, with a mourning veil over her head and face, which she has
worn for twelve years. She speaks quietly.)
THIRD SPINSTER: Nurse!
NURSE: We only have a few minutes left.
THIRD SPINSTER: I’m here to give a piano lesson nearby, and I
came to see if you needed anything.
NURSE: God bless you!
THIRD SPINSTER: What a terrible thing!
NURSE: Yes, yes, but don’t trouble about me, don’t lift
your veil for me, because I’m the one who should give encouragement in the
midst of all this mourning with no death that you are witnessing.
THIRD SPINSTER: I would like to speak to them.
NURSE: It’s better that you
don’t see them. Go out the other way!
THIRD SPINSTER: Perhaps, it is better. But if you need
anything, if there’s anything I can do, I am here.
NURSE: Now bad weather’s coming! (They hear the sound of the wind.)
THIRD SPINSTER: The wind is rising!
NURSE: Yes. Perhaps it will rain.
(The Third Spinster exits.)
AUNT: (Entering.)
With this wind blowing there won’t be a single rose left. The cypresses on the
circle are almost brushing the walls outside my room. It seems as if something
wants to make the garden ugly so that we won’t feel the pain of leaving it.
NURSE: It has never been so beautiful, so beautiful.
Put on your coat. And this shawl…There, you are wrapped up well. (She puts it round her.) Now, when we
arrive, I have a meal ready. A flan; like a golden carnation. (The Nurse speaks in a voice clouded by deep
emotion.) (A loud bang is heard.)
AUNT: It’s the door of the conservatory. Why didn’t
you close it?
NURSE: It won’t close because of the damp.
AUNT: It will make that banging noise all night.
NURSE: Well we won’t hear it…!
(The stage is in gentle evening
shadow.)
AUNT: I will. I will hear it.
(Rosita appears. She is pale,
dressed in white, with a coat covering her to the edge of her dress.)
NURSE: (Courageously)
Let’s go!
ROSITA: (In a
faint voice) It’s begun to rain. So there’ll be no
one on their balcony to watch us leave.
AUNT: It’s for the best.
ROSITA: (Swaying
a little, she leans on a chair and falls into it, supported by the Nurse and
the Aunt, who prevent her fainting completely.)
ROSITA: ‘And
when the night falls
It
begins to fade.’
(They leave, and the stage remains
empty after their exit. The door is heard banging. Suddenly the door to a
balcony opens at the rear of the stage, and white curtains are seen blowing in
the wind.)
Curtain