The Tower of the Antilles
VOICE 3:
One.
VOICE 1:
What is your name?
VOICE 2:
You already know my name.
VOICE 1:
What is your name?
VOICE 3:
Cual es su nombre?
VOICE 2:
You already know my name.
VOICE 1:
What …
VOICE 2:
They went on like this, one with his line, the other with hers.
VOICE 3:
Como se llama?
VOICE 2:
You already know (overlap with VOICE 1) my …
(PAUSE)
VOICE 1:
… your name.
VOICE 2:
They coincided, not exactly in harmony.
VOICE 1:
One voice was a little reedy …
VOICE 2:
… though steady …
VOICE 3:
… the other
VOICE 1:
… flat.
VOICE 2:
The room was black and moist.
VOICE 1:
Things …
VOICE 3:
… may have been slithering about …
VOICE 2:
… small harmless things.
VOICE 3:
The faint cataphonics of carpentry whispered from the solitary window.
VOICE 1:
What is your name?
VOICE 3:
This time, silence.
VOICE 1:
What is your name?
VOICE 3:
His chair bumped along on the sandy floor. When he stretched …
VOICE 1:
… his body …
VOICE 2:
… distracted the lightest breeze from her face.
VOICE 3:
The wooden beat from outside continued, still dim.
VOICE 1:
A door opened …
VOICE 3:
… shut.
VOICE 2:
In between …
VOICE 3:
Entretanto …
VOICE 2:
… a vague rustle.
(PAUSE)
VOICE 1:
Two.
VOICE 2:
In truth, there’s only speculation about the formation of the island …
VOICE 3:
La isla …
VOICE 2:
… carved by lava and tides,
VOICE 1:
… how the tips of peaks became mountains …
VOICE 3:
… montannas …
VOICE 1:
… and islet after islet merged,
VOICE 2:
… thousands of them …
VOICE 3:
Mi-les …
VOICE 2:
… until they became an archipelago shaped like a curved cicatrix.
VOICE 3:
… como la curva de una cicatriz.
VOICE 2:
The island’s natives did not know how to cultivate land or use tools.
VOICE 3:
They picked fruit …
VOICE 2:
… chased crabs out of their sandy wells.
VOICE 1:
They grew root vegetables …
VOICE 3:
… usually in mounds of soil designed to retard erosion and lengthen storage
VOICE 2:
… and knew how to make bread from an otherwise poisonous tuber.
VOICE 1:
They fished, hunted rats and iguanas, and ate both turtles and dogs.
VOICE 2:
The men went naked …
VOICE 3:
… casi siempre …
VOICE 2:
… for the most part.
VOICE 1:
The women frequently wore short skirts but breasts were generally bared.
VOICE 3:
Se aplanaban las frentes amarrándose un plato duro antes de que estuvieran formadas.
VOICE 1:
They flattened their foreheads by binding them with a hard plate …
VOICE 2:
… before they were fully formed.
VOICE 3:
This way their heads slanted, reflecting light back to the heavens.
VOICE 2:
They were terrible, unambitious mariners …
VOICE 1:
… with no sense at all
VOICE 2:
… for navigation. For a while, in fact …
VOICE 3:
… many believed …
VOICE 1:
… the island
VOICE 2:
… was no island at all …
VOICE 3:
… sino una especie de balsa
VOICE 1:
… but a monstrous raft
VOICE 2:
… made of packed dirt and clay …
VOICE 1:
… impossible to pilot.
VOICE 2:
They had two supreme gods, each with a particular allegiance to water.
VOICE 1:
A lord of the sea …
VOICE 3:
… y una diosa de agua dulce y abundancia …
VOICE 2:
… and a goddess of rivers and abundance.
VOICE 3:
Como reverencia …
VOICE 1:
… these accepted prayer and platefuls of food:
VOICE 2:
… plump
VOICE 3:
… marlin filets …
VOICE 2:
… papayas …
VOICE 3:
… fruta bomba …
VOICE 1:
… bursting
VOICE 2:
… with pockets of gooey black seeds …
VOICE 1:
… buckets
VOICE 3:
… de leche de coco …
VOICE 1:
Before making offerings …
VOICE 2:
devotees had to cleanse themselves through absolution …
VOICE 1:
… fasting …
VOICE 3:
… and ritualized vomiting.
VOICE 1:
Hungrily …
VOICE 2:
… they put wooden spades down their throats …
VOICE 3:
… liturgical implements they lazily let slide from their lips.
VOICE 1:
Afterwards …
VOICE 2:
… they used a long, straw-like tube to sniff the pulverized bark of a local tree …
VOICE 3:
… which caused extreme hallucinations.
(PAUSE)
VOICE 2:
Three.
VOICE 1:
What is your name? …
VOICE 3:
… he asked.
VOICE 2:
Pine wood is best, easy to whittle …
VOICE 3:
… she thought to herself.
VOICE 1:
The island was dense with mahogany, cedar, and palm trees with feathery leaf bouquets.
VOICE 3:
Usted ya conoce mi nombre.
VOICE 2:
You already know my name …
VOICE 3:
… she said …
VOICE 1:
… through lips that were a little sore.
VOICE 2:
She coughed unintentionally.
VOICE 3:
She knew …
VOICE 2:
… even then …
VOICE 3:
… how important it was to choose wood without knots, blemishes or cracks.
VOICE 2:
She thought of nothing but the pulpy inner flesh of trees, of Madras muslin and hemp.
VOICE 3:
Cual es su nombre? Como se llama?
VOICE 1:
Her boat needed a brace.
VOICE 2:
About five centimeters thick …
VOICE 3:
un metro de ancho …
VOICE 2:
… and two and a quarter meters long.
VOICE 3:
In her head …
VOICE 2:
… she measured roughly 30 centimeters from one edge toward the center.
VOICE 1:
She marked the points,
VOICE 2:
… then drew diagonal lines across it.
VOICE 3:
Cual es su nombre? Como se llama?
VOICE 2:
She continued …
VOICE 1:
… counting off …
VOICE 2:
… intimate distances …
VOICE 3:
… her fingers designing on the tender canvas of her thighs.
(PAUSE)
VOICE 1:
Four.
VOICE 3:
Un buen día, una mulata grandota de ojos achinados trajo un botecito y lo dejó en la orilla de la playa.
VOICE 2:
One day, a very large brown woman with slanted eyes set a tiny boat on the island’s shore.
VOICE 3:
It was made from the languid leaves of a local flower, folded over this way and that …
VOICE 1:
… until the triangle in the middle signaled completion.
VOICE 2:
Only a few of the natives noticed …
VOICE 1:
— or cared —
VOICE 2:
… and when the tiny boat was found missing among the usual debris at dawn …
VOICE 1:
… everyone presumed the tide’s eager tendrils were to blame. That afternoon …
VOICE 3:
… la mulata grandota …
VOICE 2:
… returned …
VOICE 3:
… this time with a boat of balsa wood. Its skin was as smooth as a baby’s, pink and sweet.
VOICE 1:
Again, it vanished over night.
VOICE 2:
During that week, boats began to appear —
VOICE 1:
… canoes …
VOICE 3:
… canoas …
VOICE 1:
… and kayaks …
VOICE 3:
… y kayaks …
VOICE 2:
… floats made of driftwood …
VOICE 3:
… hollowed tree trunks …
VOICE 1:
… discarded refrigerators made buoyant with inflated tubes …
VOICE 3:
… car chassis with water wings. They piled one on top of the other …
VOICE 1:
… each decreasing in size as the structure ascended …
VOICE 2:
… so that they began to form separate stories.
VOICE 3:
Each level had its own peculiar color …
VOICE 2:
… usually …
VOICE 1:
… a variation …
VOICE 2:
… of whitewashed blue …
VOICE 3:
… or a smear of dense aquamarine. Later, the boats began to pivot …
VOICE 1:
… each one a little …
VOICE 3:
… so that soon there were prows of a sort …
VOICE 1:
… directed to the four points of the compass.
VOICE 3:
There was nothing between the vessels …
VOICE 1:
… each one perfectly balanced on top of the other …
VOICE 2:
…. so that they swayed …
VOICE 3:
… with the trade winds …
VOICE 1:
… waved …
VOICE 2:
… to the waters …
VOICE 3:
…. but did not fall.
(PAUSE)
VOICE 1:
Five.
VOICE 2:
Eventually …
VOICE 1:
… he stopped asking her name.
VOICE 3:
He would just come in and sit across from her for a while in the darkness.
VOICE 2:
She’d grown accustomed to the visits.
VOICE 3:
Her thighs were covered with ghostly designs for boats.
VOICE 2:
After a time …
VOICE 1:
… he’d scrape the chair backwards …
VOICE 3:
… get up and …
VOICE 1:
… disappear.
VOICE 3:
Then …
VOICE 2:
…. her lips would soundlessly form the words that followed him:
VOICE 3:
You already know my name.
(PAUSE)
VOICE 1:
Six.
VOICE 2:
On the island’s coast …
VOICE 3:
… algunos cuantos perros sarnozos, murciélagos, y una colmena o dos de abejas silvestres llegaron a descansar sobre la columna de botes.
VOICE 2:
… a few mangy dogs, bats and a tempest or two of wild bees came to rest on the column of boats …
VOICE 3:
Se hinchó con ranas que se colaron en las grietas y caracoles que se arrastraban por las paredes.
VOICE 1:
It swelled with frogs in its crevices.
VOICE 3:
Pájaros con plumas locas como cabellos despeinados se posaban y cantaban.
VOICE 2:
Snails crawled the walls.
VOICE 3:
Hubo días claros y días de neblina, noches en que los astros brillaban en el cielo y otras en que se negaban a dar luz.
VOICE 2:
Birds with feathers frazzled like uncombed hair …
VOICE 3:
… perched and called. There were clear days and days of fog, nights when the stars flashed across the sky and others …
VOICE 2:
… when they refused to shine.
VOICE 3:
That was usually when the boats …
VOICE 2:
… would moan …
VOICE 3:
… por el peso …
VOICE 1:
… from the weight …
VOICE 3:
… of the natives scaling the tower.
Otium
