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ACT ONE
Scene One
A yellow room.
GROOM. Mother?
MOTHER. Son?
He waits.
GROOM. I’m off.
MOTHER. Where to?
GROOM. The vineyard.
MOTHER. Wait.
GROOM. What for?
MOTHER. Your lunch.
GROOM. Don’t bother, I’ll have grapes. Pass the knife.
MOTHER. Which knife?
GROOM. The jack-knife.
MOTHER. What for?
GROOM. Lunch!
MOTHER. Pass the knife, he says. Pass the jack-knife. Hell burn every knife to ashes. And the hoodlum who invented them.
GROOM. Mother.
MOTHER. And guns, and pistols. Rifles. Those tiny little knives you clean your nails out with. Hoes. Pitchforks.
GROOM. Alright.
MOTHER. Anything that can hurt a man. A sweet man, his flower in his mouth. When all he’s doing is out minding his olives, pruning his vines, watering his land because it’s his after all, he inherited it . . .
GROOM. No.
MOTHER. But one afternoon he doesn’t come back. Or he does, he does come back, so we can make him a palm-leaf cross and salt him up like a pig to stop him bloating in the heat.
Why do we keep this snake in the house? Where do you find the gall to pocket it like sugar lumps?
GROOM. Are you finished?
MOTHER. No. Stand there for a hundred years and I’d not be finished.
I had your father, his smell of carnations, for three years then he was gone. Then your brother. Why? How does a thing as small as a knife, do for a man who to me was a bull? Finished. Month after month it pecks at my eyes and eats at the ends of my weedy old hair.
GROOM. Can we stop now?
MOTHER. What do you think? Can you stop them being dead, your father and brother?
GROOM. Please, Mother.
MOTHER. And they offer us ‘prison’. Prison what? They eat, they smoke in there, they pick their guitars. My two turning to grass, not talking, just liquidating. They were flowers my men, two geraniums, and the killers sit in prison smelling of spring, watching the mountains change shape in the sun.
GROOM. Do you want me to kill them? Is that what you want?
MOTHER. No! I talk because. How can I not when you head for the door? I don’t like you with that thing in your pocket. I don’t want you going out to the fields.
GROOM. Is that all!
MOTHER. Why aren’t you a girl? You’d not be going anywhere. We’d sit here stitching pretties together, knitting dogs for children.
GROOM. Mother of mine. Shall I take you with me?
MOTHER. What kind of place is the vineyard for an old lady like me? What did you have in mind, a quick roll under the vines?
GROOM (lifting her up). You ancient old lady, ancient, ancient old lady.
MOTHER. That’s what your father would do. Anywhere he could! And your grandfather, he put a son in every corner, that’s the kind of stock you’re from. Suits me fine. Let the wheat be wheat and the men be men.
GROOM. What about me?
MOTHER. What about you?
A quietness.
Well.
GROOM. It grieves you.
Why?
MOTHER. I don’t know. It just does. She’s a nice girl, I know. Isn’t she? Well-mannered, hard-working, bakes her own bread, I know. But when I hear her name I feel like someone’s hit me on the forehead with a rock.
GROOM. Oh come on.
MOTHER. Come on, what? You’re the only one left and I have this feeling you’re going.
GROOM. Not without you.
MOTHER. Yes without me. I’m there every morning to mind your dad and brother. What if I wasn’t? And a Felix died? And someone buried him in the ground next to them? I’m not going to let that happen. I tell you now that’s not going to happen, cuh! I’d single-handedly dig him up with these fingernails and mash him to pulp against the churchyard wall.
I’m sorry.
How long’s it been?
GROOM. Three years. I’ve got the vineyard.
MOTHER. Three years.
She had somebody else once, didn’t she?
GROOM. I don’t know. Maybe. How else do you see who to marry?
MOTHER. What’s there to see? I saw your father, he was killed, then all I saw was the wall.
GROOM. She’s alright and you know it.
MOTHER. Who said I didn’t? What was her mother like though, I wonder to myself.
GROOM. Who cares?
MOTHER. Son.
GROOM. Mother.
MOTHER. Tell me.
When would you like me to ask for her?
GROOM. Ask for her? Sunday?
MOTHER. I’ll give her the bronze earrings. Antiques those are. And you, you need to buy –
GROOM. What? What do I need to buy?
MOTHER. Stockings.
GROOM. There’s so much I have to learn from you.
MOTHER. Embroidered stockings, and two new suits for yourself. Hell, make it three – you’re all the sons I’ve got.
He embraces her.
Away with you now, you’re too big for kisses. Save your kisses for your bride. After she is one.
GROOM. I’ll visit her tomorrow.
MOTHER. You do that. And see if you can’t just make me happy with six grandsons. However many you want. Being as your father didn’t have time for so many.
GROOM. The first one’s for you.
MOTHER. Girls too mind. I want to sit and embroider and make lace. Calmly.
GROOM. You’ll like my wife.
MOTHER. I’ll love her.
GROOM. I’m going.
MOTHER. And turn over the patch by the mill – it’s a mess.
GROOM. I know.
I’ve done it!
MOTHER. God be with you.
The GROOM goes. DEATH comes in. MOTHER half-sings a song she once knew.
(Singing.) She sways and sits
Upon her hips
NEIGHBOUR appears in the doorway.
DEATH (singing).
The ...
