The Playwright's House, page 1
THE PLAYWRIGHT’S HOUSE
THE PLAYWRIGHT’S HOUSE
A NOVEL
Dariel Suarez
Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA
The Playwright’s House
Copyright © 2021 by Dariel Suarez
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book layout by Vivian Rowe
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Suarez, Dariel, 1983– author.
Title: The playwright’s house : a novel / Dariel Suarez.
Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021000793 (print) | LCCN 2021000794 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597091145 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781597098809 (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.U328 P57 2021 (print) | LCC PS3619.U328 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000793
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000794
Publication of this book has been made possible in part through the financial support of Jim Wilson.
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
To Ali & Nati
Andrea: “Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.”
Galileo: “No, Andrea: Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”
—Bertolt Brecht
For us, a revolutionary people in a revolutionary process, we value cultural and artistic creations in regards to how they serve the people, in regards to what they contribute to man, in regards to what they contribute to man’s vindication, to man’s liberation, to man’s happiness. Our assessment is political. There can’t be aesthetic value without human content. There can’t be aesthetic value against man. There can’t be aesthetic value against justice, against well-being, against liberation, against man’s happiness.
—Fidel Castro
CHAPTER 1
The show was a success.
It was no surprise to Serguey, who during the past decade had seen his father direct over a dozen plays to critical acclaim. Still, he was delighted to witness Felipe’s greatness come alive in Teatro Mella, one of Havana’s premier venues. The audience applauded and cheered, calling for him to be brought onstage. A smile materialized on his father’s lips as he took the last few steps up the side stairs. For a man of fifty, he moved sprightly. His graying hair shone elegantly above his thick, dark eyebrows. His eyes gleamed under the lights as if filled with tears. He stared at the crowd, saluting those he recognized. The cast held hands behind him, forming a human fence, and bowed in appreciation. He stopped for a moment and blew a kiss in Serguey and Anabel’s direction. Serguey gave him a thumbs-up. In the periphery of his vision, he could see that his wife had blown a kiss back at his father. She continued applauding with fervor, her whole body stirring the contours of her dress. Serguey smiled at the genuine thrill in her reaction, spurred by the fact that her sister, Alida, had just made her acting debut.
The actors and Felipe took one final bow. The curtain glided down, and his father placed a hand over his heart as his figure disappeared. The lights became brighter, illuminating the yellow banisters of the theater. Their undulating design mimicked the motion of waves rushing toward the stage. The murmuring crowd inched gradually up the aisles, leaving a sea of red chairs behind. Serguey and Anabel remained in their seats.
“Alida was wonderful,” Serguey said. He took his wife’s hands. They were exceptionally warm, as if heated by fire.
“I’m so proud of her.”
A couple in their late teens was attempting to pass them in order to leave their row. Serguey and Anabel stood, springs squeaking as they pushed up the foldable seats. The girl’s canvas bag snatched on the armrest of Anabel’s chair, abruptly yanking her shoulder. Anabel slid the strap off politely as they traded a demure look. The boy, already in the aisle, went to assist his girlfriend a little too late, resorting to a timid stroke of her shoulder. He did a double take at Serguey and hesitantly asked, “Do you know the director?”
Anabel gazed at Serguey in mock amazement, implying his connection to the director made him important.
Serguey chuckled and said, “He’s my father.” He pointed at Anabel, then at the stage. “Her sister played the Pedagogo in the first act.”
The couple bobbed their heads and brought up their hands—a recognition and a goodbye. They stuttered their steps until the girl shoved the boy and he got his feet fully in gear.
As if the interaction had been a mere daydream, Serguey turned to his wife and said, “Were you nervous when Alida came on?”
She sat again. He did the same.
“Nervous? I was dying!”
They waited until most of the venue cleared, both of them absorbing the relative calm that immediately follows the raucous collective experience that is theater. Now he could focus more easily on the details. Anabel had put on her favorite clothes for the occasion: a navy cocktail dress that accentuated her breasts and narrow shoulders. The silky fabric fell tightly over her body to the base of her knees. On the way over, Serguey had wanted to run his fingers down her back, rest them atop her curving butt, maybe a little lower. Instead, Anabel had looped her arm around his elbow.
With the seats now practically empty, he looked around and shouted, “Hello!” He listened carefully for his echo. “I used to love doing that when I was a kid,” he said to Anabel. “My dad would bring me to theaters during dress rehearsals, and at the end of the night, when everyone had left, we’d sit and scream our names at the ceiling. Dad said he’d done the same inside a few cathedrals in Spain when he traveled there.”
Anabel said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it during Mass.”
“I don’t know if he did, but he got kicked out of the one in Toledo.”
His father was a daring man, Serguey knew, and this was especially true of his work. THE GREATEST DIRECTOR OF OUR GENERATION? had been the headline of a recent article in El Escenario. It made the case that Felipe’s bold approach to his craft—his willingness to break away from the norm in the contemporary stage—had solidified him as an “innovator” and “artistic genius.” He’d decided to reject adaptations of Greek, Shakespearean, nineteenth, and twentieth-century classics to concentrate on the original work produced by his trusted playwright, Mario Rabasa. He’d incited a trend that, in some critics’ view, defied recent decades of Cuban theater. Serguey couldn’t help laughing at the praise, even if he agreed with it at some level. The article had been printed on the heels of the announcement that Felipe would be presenting Virgilio Piñera’s Electra Garrigó—the play they had just watched—a 1940s Cuban parody of Sophocles’ Electra.
So much for original material.
Serguey pictured his father pacing slowly around his living room, flaunting a copy of El Escenario at his friends. He’d be looking into each person’s eyes as he passed them, claiming that such academic and critical nonsense stood in opposition to art, that he was now doomed to personal failure and subsequent misery, since, when one thought about it (here he’d raise both his voice and the magazine in his hand), the focus had been placed on him and not what truly mattered: his creative work.
“No artist can receive such attention and remain pure,” he had likely said. “Not while he’s alive.” He might’ve paused and added, “And if they’re going to write such idiocy, why put a question mark? It’s insulting!”
Serguey also knew that a handful of those friends—the ones who had been around when his father was little more than a young, insecure playwright—would be fighting back smirks and chuckles. Felipe had been a playwriting professor for the better part of a decade. As a graduate of the Instituto Superior de Arte, he had written his share of reviews and critical essays for national publications, dissecting plays with a mixture of objectivity and flare.
His father was an exceptional artist, Serguey had no doubt, but he was also the most contradictory person he had ever known.
The heavy base of the curtain billowed in shifting shapes: the stagehands’ night wasn’t over. As a child, Serguey had helped clean after several shows, sweeping and placing props in their respective boxes. Occasionally, an actor would mount him on his shoulders and walk him to the front edge of the stage. Serguey felt as if he were floating over the chairs, his belly tingling like it did when he zipped down a slide. Seeing the inner-workings and aftermath of a performance didn’t detract from his enjoyment of the plays. On the contrary, it enhanced it: what to him seemed so commonplace during cleanup had the ability to create a spectacle, a fantasy that was as real and unforgettable as the parading Muñecones—giant, expressly hideous puppets—durin
g Carnival.
The few people left inside the venue had assembled in small groups at the end of the aisles. They spoke and gesticulated with passionate urgency. Even their grins and gazes were exaggerated, as if the characters in the play had taken possession of their bodies. A spurt of laughter with an infectious pitch spread from the back of the room. Heads began to turn toward a red-faced woman, her body bending under the weight of her own wild glee, as she tried, uselessly, to cover her mouth.
Anabel leaned her head on Serguey’s shoulder, unaffected by the noise, then straightened suddenly and scanned the seats. “I think Victor’s gone. Can we go?”
Serguey had already seen his younger brother exit the theater, though he’d dissimulated by pretending to inspect other faces for acquaintances. He took Anabel’s hand and led the way.
The lobby was packed with more of the same: animated conversations amalgamating into a dissonant choir. Serguey recognized some people here, but none that he felt obligated to greet. As he and Anabel squeezed their way through, he saw a lip-pierced young woman declare, “This is the best version I’ve seen.”
They emerged onto the sidewalk and decided to linger under the marquee. The night was humid and breezy. The traffic on Linea Street flowed with ease, as if propelled by the soft wind. The bottom of Anabel’s dress fluttered against her legs. For a moment he visualized himself lifting the hem, titillated by the thought of how his fingers might feel against the fabric, how they might glide across her skin.
She stared at him. He could tell she’d noticed something in his eyes, because she smiled and slid her own fingers across his hip. He turned away, feigning innocence. A bus was blocking the driveway that flanked the building. Beyond it, walled up in a parcel of land that had been unkempt for as long as Serguey could remember, trees rustled with an unhurried, cadenced harmony. He inhaled as if he’d just risen from underwater and looked to his right. Victor was standing against a column, lifting his cigarette in acknowledgement. Serguey nodded, his lungs slowly deflating. Victor took two deep drags, then discarded the cigarette butt and stomped on it.
“Please be nice,” Anabel whispered, pulling at Serguey’s cuffs.
Victor joined them. He was wearing a black V-neck T-shirt, the bottom of it fitted over an absurdly big belt buckle. The burnished vestiges of a recent shave coated his cheeks. “You didn’t have to wait so long,” he said. “I got out as soon as the curtain went down.”
“You’re still here.” Serguey dipped his eyes at the words engraved on the buckle: GUESS.
Anabel grazed Victor’s smooth cheek with hers, making a kissing sound. “How are you?”
“‘Not in jail,’ as my brother would say.”
Serguey shook his hand, more for Anabel’s sake than Victor’s. “So you finally came to one of Dad’s plays.”
“I’m becoming a cultured man.” Victor scratched his throat and grinned. “I actually helped finance the cost of materials to build the set.”
“Look at you, benefactor and everything.”
Anabel said, “If you two are going to be like this, I’m going back inside.”
Serguey interlocked his fingers with hers. “You’re right. This night is about Dad and Alida.”
Victor fished another cigarette out of his breast pocket but didn’t light it right away. “Your sister was amazing,” he told Anabel, glancing at the venue’s entrance. “Hopefully they’ll be out soon.”
Serguey stared at the glass doors of the theater, counting the seconds. As if telepathically summoned, Felipe and Alida appeared an instant later. The group exchanged hugs and kisses, their voices overlapping in lively hellos and congratulations.
Felipe said, “Isn’t this a miracle? My two boys together!”
“Yes,” Anabel said. “They’ve been singing each other’s praises.”
“Well, what did you all think of Alida?” Felipe asked. “‘Who needs ballet when you can act like that?’ is what I’d say.”
Alida bent her knees in a graceful bow. She was shorter and slenderer than Anabel, but had the same dark eyes, dark hair, plump cheeks, rounded nose. Serguey sometimes called them “teddy bear sisters.” Anabel absolutely abhorred it.
“We’re very proud,” Serguey said.
“It’s all thanks to Felipe,” Alida said. She ran one hand down his ribs, the other bracing the small of his back. “He’s a tough director, but there’s a gentle soul underneath.”
Felipe pretended to be annoyed. “No sentimentality, Alida. You’re a better artist than that.”
She laughed. “See what I mean?”
Anabel looked at Felipe. She stiffened her lips into a diminutive smile. “Are the other actors happy with her?”
Alida flushed with embarrassment. “Anabel!”
“They’ve been together a while, no? I don’t know how they feel about an outsider.”
Serguey was amused. Anabel was brazen. No hairs in her tongue, as the saying went. Victor was shaking his head emphatically, approving of her candor.
“Your sister’s grown up now,” Felipe said. “She can handle the drama.”
“He’s kidding,” Serguey said. “Of course they like her.”
Anabel grinned. She excused herself and snatched Alida away from the men, pulling her hand and inclining her face close to her sister’s. Serguey hadn’t experienced this kind of sibling intimacy with Victor, not even as children.
Victor said, “Dad, I’ll see you back at the house.”
“No, no. Let’s have a drink!”
Victor embraced him. “Some other time, viejo. I feel like walking.” He tapped Serguey twice on the arm, then walked toward Anabel and Alida and kissed them goodbye. Continuing across the road, he lit up his cigarette and blended momentarily into the shadows of Linea Street.
“Why don’t you talk to your brother?” Felipe asked.
Serguey sighed. “You know it’s not that simple.”
“We need to do something together. Maybe a lunch at the house. You haven’t been there in ages.”
Victor and I have barely spoken in eleven years, Serguey wanted to say. He let out, “I don’t think our problems can be fixed over lunch.”
“A father can hope.”
Serguey observed his brother again, now visible under the glare of a streetlamp. Victor hopped briefly into the gutter as four young tourists—blond-haired, pale-skinned, swank-clothed—walked in the opposite direction. His burning cigarette rose to his mouth as he swiveled his head and climbed back onto the sidewalk. He was, without a doubt, eyeing the ladies in the group.
“At least you got him to come,” Serguey said, still staring at Victor. “He even dressed up a bit.”
Felipe’s eyes, aimed at the distant shape of his youngest son, glinted with fatherly pride.
Serguey spotted Victor lifting his arm. A man on a small Suzuki motorcycle pressed his brakes and swerved across the opposite lane, pulling up to the curve. He put his feet on the pavement while the engine idled. The visible entrails of the motorcycle seemed covered in soot or rust. The man bumped Victor’s elbow, pointing with his other hand at a large bag attached to the luggage rack. The front wheel slid limply to one side, the headlight emphasizing a grin of recognition on Victor’s face. He peered into the bag, then saddled himself onto the backseat and knocked on the man’s helmet. The man bent forward and straightened the wheel, the engine revving and clanging as he accelerated in the direction from which he had come.
Serguey turned to his father. Felipe was looking at the lobby, his hands clamped and twisted together in front of his chest.
“So Electra Garrigó?” Serguey said. “I remember you saying you’d never do it.”
Felipe unlocked his hands and smiled. “It was out of respect for Virgilio, but I got over myself.”
“You might be the best director in the country. You can do whatever you want.”
“I’ve had my fun with that.”
“I suspected you would. In all seriousness, the play was spectacular. So much energy.”
“Thank you.” Felipe kissed his oldest son on the forehead. “Get the ladies. Let’s have dinner.”
