Becoming (stage one)

Paul Collard made his fame by playing the vampire in a play that originally evolved out of a creative collaboration with the grunge queen Nikita Virginblood. Virginblood was a writer and playwright known only to a few readers of the Gothic Daily. She preferred the darkness and the privacy of the wardrobe and the few times she ventured out into open spaces, she was accompanied by an entire cast of witches and blood-striped tigers, dancing bears and one-eyed eagles, androgynous vampires and multiplying spiders, talkative carcasses and decaying princesses – figments of her imagination which she wore like a heavy robe over her shoulders. Some thought that Virginblood and Paul Collard were brothers and sisters, others that they were lovers. Indeed, it was hard to imagine Virginblood form any ties with anyone other than those enforced through blood, but it was equally difficult to place Collard in a relationship that wasn't sexual.
Virginblood had originally written The Vampire as a series of encounters between a vampire and his victims of both sexes, but when it was time for Collard to find the budget for the project, it became clear that some essential rewritings had to be done, the crucial reason being that he hadn't been able to find any male actors who were willing to work for free. While the men were less charmed by this sorcerer, he had managed to seduce enough women into volunteering their services due to an abundance of charm and sex appeal. There was nothing else for Virginblood to do but to rewrite the script for an all female cast and so she grudgingly returned to the wardrobe to do her chore. The result of her work saw each scene graphically detailing Collard's seduction and destruction of a woman. After a series of bloody conquests, the vampire falls in the hands of a strong-minded journalist who sucks him dry as much as any vampire. Their encounter culminates in an electrifying moment of truth or dare as illustrated in the following dialogue:

The vampire: If you really want to know who I am you must do more than ask questions.
The journalist: I ask because that is what I do. My job is to ask questions. It's for others to give answers.
The vampire: To get something you must give something in return. That is the law.
The journalist: Is it right for me to assume that you have no answers?
The vampire: The answers are here. Right here. The vampire points to his own chest and the journalist draws closer to him. If you want to know, you have to become me.
The journalist: Gasp!

After the immediate success with The Vampire, Collard was only offered roles from the Gothic repertoire. While he began to tour around the world with his show "Collard the Fangs," Virginblood stubbornly refused to face the limelight. After a couple of years of playing various creatures of the Dark involving much blood splatter and many sets of false teeth, Collard had also had enough and decided to go subterranean, which is how he ended up in the North. Plenty of people worn out from the pressures of life come to the North to rest and the winter season, especially, is ideal for a retired vampire with its twenty hours of daily darkness and its closeted lifestyle. Collard, however, wasn't the kind of person who felt comfortable unless he was overworked. Within only a couple of weeks he grew listless and longed for a schedule beyond making it to the shop before its six o'clock closing time.

Our paths crossed when I instead of walking through the forest took the detour through the town. I was wearing a green velvet skirt, a white synthetic fur jacket, the red turban wrapped around my head that had become something of a trademark for me, as well as green sneakers and striped leg warmers. I still thought of myself as someone who had only recently returned home when in truth I had already been back for nine months. Collard rolled down the window to ask if I was interested in taking part of his amateur theatre group. We drove a couple of blocks to the local community centre and by the time I got out of the van I was convinced that my true calling in life was to become an actress.
"There's something about you. You have a very strong personality, but at the same time there's something indeterminate about you. It's not just that you're young, although that's part of it. That's definitely part of it," Collard closed the door from his assistant.
His assistant was a black-eyed girl in her mid-twenties called Mimi. She was also his fiancée. She had wavy dark hair with a fringe that had grown to her bushy eyebrows. Since most of her face was covered with hair, she had the appearance of a troll hiding in the moss. Her softness made you want to stroke her, but if you got closer and saw her smile you would invariably change your mind. She was so eager to give a pleasant impression that when she smiled her face was contorted as if she was about to have an epileptic fit. Apparently Collard had picked her up on his fangs tour. Like thousands of Goth chicks before her, she had gone backstage to let him sink his teeth in her pale neck, but at sunrise she had not whimpered away and subjected herself to the humiliating glare and rude comments of the stage guys – that was as close as they got to groupies. Instead, Collard had carried Mimi out on his shoulders like a trophy and indicated to the guys who were loading the trucks that they better make room for another passenger. What she had done to catch him in her web nobody knows. Some said she had used a love potion, others that her fangs were simply bigger than his, but what is sure is that from that moment she followed Collard wherever he went.
"I've never done any theatre before," I admitted.
"It's not about that. You have a different mask for every person you meet. Take right now, you're playing a role. That is theatre. You needn't know more. In fact, the less you know the better. Natural. I want natural."
"I have a friend, Mari," I volunteered, "she's an actress."
Collard had turned his back to me and was pulling his earring with one hand and lighting a cigarette with the other. He turned around and stood about a millimetre away from me, blowing smoke through his nostrils.
"You don't know who you are yet," he groaned miserably not able to contain himself anymore at my innocence. He took one deep puff from his cigarette before he threw it on the ground and crushed it with his heel. "You!" he thundered, "don't know where you belong! You think you are one person. You think you have one country. One friend. One boyfriend, one father, one mother – this is not true."
I stared at him thinking the best thing I could do was to run away from there after telling him to go to hell, but I was unable to move.
"The whole world belongs to you," he put his arm around my shoulder and kissed my forehead. "And you can be anything you want," he added.

Collard and Mimi were whispering to each other. It was the first meeting of the Amateur Theatre Company as we were called. I studied the people who came through the door, of which Esmer, a man in his late thirties going prematurely bald, was one. It turned out he was already a member of the Green Fingers, the Senior Ballroom Dancers, the Save the Cathedral Activists, and the University Film Buffs. Then there was Maria, a housewife with asthma. She had joined the group hoping to lose weight. Louisa was paralysed from the waist down and suffered from a speech defect. Martin seemed quite ordinary, apart from the fact that he would never shut up, and Ruth was only a kid. She had had her head pushed into the lavatories by the bullies at school. Linda was a girl my age and the one who aspired most of all to make it to Hollywood.
"For me," began Collard, "amateur theatre is where theatre is really at."
Mimi nodded seriously. Esmer took notes and Linda hung at every word that came out of Collard's mouth.
"I want it simple," Collard continued. "No costumes, no make-up, no props and, heaven forbid, no professional actors."
At this we all laughed self-consciously.
"You've come to the right place," said Martin the talker, "I don't think you're going to find a single professional actor in this part of the world. It's too cold to act."
"There's always the telly," said Maria and took a snort from her inhaler.
"Where are you from Mr Collard?" Linda dared to ask.
"I'm a descendent from a Walloon family in Central Europe, but I've been on the move ever since I can remember. I'm from everywhere," he said and looked at me with light blue eyes that shot out of his pale complexion like discuses. "Theatre is not about pretending," he continued. "No one will believe that you are really a tree when you stand with your arms protruding in strange directions dressed in brown and green felt – not even a kid will buy that. Costume is vulgar. You might as well be wearing a ballerina skirt with fairy wings on your back." He paused and then turned hastily around, pointing his finger at Esmer. "How would you be a tree?" he asked him.
"I would stand still and try not to move my eyes or anything," Esmer said.
"And you?" he pointed to Maria.
"Oh, I don't know. I never played a tree. I'd just breathe in I suppose," said Maria.
"What about you," he asked Ruth who looked petrified at him. She hadn't made a sound since the beginning of the meeting.
"I would disappear into the background," she whispered after a moment's silence.
"What about you Louisa?" Collard turned to the girl in the wheelchair.
"I couldn't be a tree because I am confined to this chair so I think I would have to play a bush perhaps a what are they called a rosebush or something," said Louisa.
Collard sat down on a chair with its back against his chest. He bared his crotch and the torn patches of his jeans. He looked at all of us individually. At last he spoke. "Have you noticed that all of you speak about the tree as if you're looking from the outside? You are looking at the world in a way that makes an object out of everything. As an actor you have to go inside the tree, you have to be it."
"Sir, you just said that wasn't possible," said Martin.
"I said it wasn't possible to pretend."
"But with all respect, sir, it's not possible to simply transform yourself into an inanimate object," objected Martin.
"It's no more difficult to be a tree than to be King Lear," said Collard. "But you have to believe and you have to show humility and respect. With belief, humility and respect you can be anyone and anything you want. Remember that!"

The theatre was a way of being in many places at once, and this it why it appealed to me. It was an extension of my letter writing but instead of being the writer of letters I was suddenly the postman. Words passed through me. Words that weren't mine, that only stayed with me for a short time until I delivered my lines. And then they were gone again. Words flowed through me.
I found a copy of The Vampire in the university library and began to carry it with me in the hope of finding the key to Collard's world within those lines. The vampire says that the only way to find out who someone is is by becoming that person. I read his urgent invitation to the journalist become me, become me over and over until it became my own private mantra. It became clear to me then and there that the reason why I wouldn't pay attention to the professors at university was not just because I thought I had heard it all before, but because they spoke of knowledge without experience. How would it be, I wondered, if the teacher in literature had lived a scene from Balzac or if the teacher in philosophy believed in Kant? How would it be if they instead of dividing thought and experience were to bring them together? Why this insistence on keeping two sources of knowledge separate from one another? I wanted to find a way to live a thousand years or more. To learn about men and women, old and young, and the attraction and repulsion that bring us together and pull us apart like the tide and the moon. I wanted to live and learn, to watch, love and hate. I wanted no stone to be left unturned. I wanted to be what I found, be that worm, feel the earth and breathe the light. I wanted to swim in a jar of cream until it turned to butter. I wanted to cross every ocean until I grew fins. I wanted to absorb every murmur, every whisper and the passing of time until I became time. And for those who wished to hear my song they had only to press their ear against my rock belly.

Linda and I were the most pious devotees of Paul Collard and although we never viewed the others in the group as serious competition for his attention, we were somewhat put off by the presence of Mimi. She was always nearby, quick to give Collard a hand or to soothe him whenever he threw a fit. Her love for him was utterly unselfish. She loved him unconditionally for what he was and she didn't expect anything in return. At times he roared at her as he did to everyone else, but she just smiled and went to fetch his cigarettes or made him a coffee. It was infuriating to observe. If only she had been not right for him or not good enough, not appreciative enough – how much easier it would then have been to hate her out of sight. As it were, we were forced to tolerate her existence while bitching about her foolish devotion to the man, her obvious lack of independence and her sickening willingness to be his servant – without getting the irony of what we were saying.
Linda and I saw a lot of each other over the weeks, but I held something back from her (I was always holding something back in those times, even when I was open and giving). At least I was a good listener, though, and I didn't give secrets away. When Linda spoke to me about how she would quit her secretarial job and follow Collard around the world, I fed her fantasises with bizarre and fantastical tales about changing destiny and beginning a new life. When she told me that Collard would transform her into a great actress, I spoke back to her in riddles and metaphors. I wasn't her friend, I was her storyteller. Although (or because) my language was like hieroglyphics to her, she loved to listen and weave her own dull life into the fabric of endless possibilities and good fortune. In short, although the stories were told by me, they became hers because she interpreted them whichever way suited her best. After a while I got so good at reading her mind that everything I said sounded like it was coming from deep within her self and she didn't even have to interpret anymore. I wrote a fairy tale about a shell that was found on a beach like that in El Capitan. It was a shell that reverberated with the sounds the listener most wanted to hear. Dona Selsa heard the sound of her son's voice, Mari the sound of her mother with the Finnish cheek bones, and Linda the promise of Collard's devotion. That's what I had become – her magic shell! And all the time I managed to conceal my own infatuation with Collard.

Dona Selsa or ‘why metaphors are embarrassing’

San Jeronimo is a sleepy collection of houses south of Acapulco. I walked into the hut that had an OPEN sign on it, looking for some information and something to eat. A woman eyed me up and down. Behind her loomed the display of lollipops and cigarettes and behind that were the private dwellings – open in the middle and quite empty except for a stove that stood directly on the dirt floor under the sun. There was corrugated roofing around the sides, part of it which made up the panel of a double bed which doubled as a wardrobe. A man was slouched in a torn armchair and some children were playing silently in the shadow under the roof.
After I had paid for a bottle of water and a packet of biscuits, I cleared my throat and said, "I'm looking for a writer. Julio Cortázar, you know him?" The woman was fanning away the flies from the lollies in silence. "He's a famous person," I added.
"No famous person here," the woman chuckled.
"What about the turtles?" I asked, remembering that there had been a mention of them in some text or interview with the author. "Do you know where I can find the turtles?"
"Ah yes, the turtles – not many left. They are very hard to find, very hard. But my husband will help you. Enrico! Enrico! Come here!" she called to the man in the armchair. "This lady wants to see turtles!"
For a small fee Enrico promised to drive me to the coast in his van. One of the young children came running after us and demanded to be taken along. The child slumped beside me on the passenger seat and after a short time of bumpy, hot driving on dirt roads he fell asleep on my lap as Enrico and I talked about the countryside while we passed villages smaller even than San Jeronimo. Most of them seemed completely deserted apart from a few forlorn-looking donkeys and some hens scattered here and there. Enrico stopped to talk to some men who stood in the shade of a tienda. When he was finished he informed me that the turtles had moved to another part of the beach further north. Since it was too long to drive there now, he said he'd take me someplace where I could stay the night.
We left the villages and the rainforest behind and Enrico let me off at the beginning of a small paved road. He pointed towards the direction of the water at the end of the road and said, "Just ask for Dona Selsa."
I extricated myself from the hot arms of the sleeping child, looked to where Enrico had pointed and said "hasta lluego."
The air was hot and sticky, but luckily I only had my small bag to carry. A couple of people were standing outside the sheds along the road. They were talking amongst themselves and didn't acknowledge their obvious surprise at seeing a foreigner in their village. Then a whistle blew and children stormed out of a building tucked away under the leafy trees. With the children it was different. They made no attempt at hiding their curiosity. A group of the more daring ones even trailed behind me, giggling and shouting things I didn't understand. At first I ignored them, feeling self-conscious and targeted but when they wouldn't give up, I at last turned around to face them. They cheered and, pointing to my face, started chanting ojos verdes.
A little girl broke out of the crowd and came over to me. "Dad will take you over the river," she said and pointed in the same direction that Enrico had pointed.

The little girl's father bared a toothless mouth and helped me with my bag. He rowed us over to a part of the beach where there were tables and hammocks and a roof made of straw. It was a strip of land that had broken off from the shore so that it now lay surrounded by water on both sides. A freshwater river divided it from the mainland and on the other side laid the Pacific. While the river was gradually pushing the land further away from the mainland, the ocean was chewing off bits from the other side, forcing more people to pack up and move inland.
A woman emerged from the shade. She was wearing a red scarf on her head, a soiled apron wrapped perfunctorily around her waist, and a blouse which had once been red but the sun had bleached pink.
"Bienvenida. Soy Dona Selsa."
She held my hand. Her skin was hardened by the salty air and her grey hair reflected in the sun. Behind her I glimpsed the ocean. I complimented her on her beautiful place, the peace and quiet. Apart from myself and Dona Selsa, there were only two other people – the man in the boat who, as I found out later, was her husband, as well as their young daughter. Dona Selsa showed me a hammock under the straw roof and after leaving me a mosquito net for the night, she retreated to her hut. Later, as I was walking along the ocean-side of the beach, I ran into her husband who was carrying a basket full of fish. Stray dogs were trailing behind him, undernourished and flea-ridden. He threw a fish at them which was caught by two of the less weak ones.
As a sign of hospitality, Dona Selsa had let me know that she could get hold of a chicken from the village, but she made the offer in such a way that left me no choice but to refuse. That night after a dinner consisting of tortillas and fried fish, I watched the silhouette of the man raking the sand against the moonlit sky. Dona Selsa was cleaning fish by the river and the little girl was pulling the tail of a skinny dog in the distance. I listened to the waves folding over the sand while watching the tall rainforest trees of the mainland sway gently in the night.

And so the days came and went. I was putting off leaving, suspecting that when I did, it would be for good. I wrote a lot and dozed in my hammock. Once or twice I thought about going for a swim in the ocean, but I only got as far as wetting my legs. No one else did any swimming there and so I stayed under the roof of El Capitan and resigned myself to watching the waves hammer down on the beach. The only times I ventured out of the shade was to accompany Dona Selsa on her walks to collect seaweed. She would then first apply a thick fruity mash on my skin to protect it against the sun, slapping it on my back in the same brusque manner that she rubbed the dirty clothes against the rocks by the river with red soap. In the evenings I ate fish, skin and bones and all, together with the tortillas that Dona Selsa rolled out with a Coca-Cola bottle.
When Sunday came the villagers gathered on the other side of the river and Dona Selsa's husband was hustling for customers. Dona Selsa herself had been preparing for the onslaught all morning with the assistance of her other daughters who had arrived the night before. One of them gossiped that they were getting a lot more guests than usual because everyone wanted to take a look at me, the foreigner.
"Don't you get a lot of tourists then?" I asked her.
"Well, once we had a bunch from the capital, but they didn't stay long. Mum doesn't like to have too many people here," said the young girl.
"But she must like the business?" I insisted.
"She wants to make a little money to pay for our education, but she doesn't want too many people to come. She says when we get electricity there'll be many more tourists and she doesn't want that. She says it's bad."

When the villagers left and took the rowdiness with them, El Capitan lay deserted once again and the sand was littered with bottles, cigarette butts and fishbone. The dogs were scavenging for pieces of leftover fish with their noses in the sand. Dona Selsa lit a paraffin lamp and sat down at one of the tables to count her money. The girls left one by one after a quiet chat with their mum who handed over carefully folded notes. I watched their father row them across the river, until I could see no more, only hear the splashing of the rows as they broke the surface of the black water. Dona Selsa murmured something and came over to my hammock, cigarettes in hand. We smoked in silence until her husband pulled up the rowing boat and returned to us. When she bossed him around about something or other, he playfully flicked the lit cigarette from her mouth and they laughed when it broke in half. While he cleaned up, she went to lie in the hammock beside mine. She put a pair of huge glasses on the tip of her nose and unfolded an old newspaper in front of her face. The fact that the paper was up side down was of no concern to her.

The girls returned only a couple of days later, in the middle of the week. This time they wore their best clothes because they were going to a wedding in the village and they offered to take me. My hair was in knots, I had sand all over my body and nothing good to wear, but one of the girls offered to apply make-up. We went into Dona Selsa's hut where she said there was a mirror we could use. As I was sitting on the ground in front of the mirror I noticed a small table with its legs burrowed deep into the sand in the corner of the hut. The table had been made into a shrine with a candle burning in front of an enlarged photograph of a man and a dozen figures of Virgin Maria in cheap plastic. It was one of those theatrical portraits that Mexicans love with an artificial background and various props surrounding the person. It was plain to see that the theme of the sea had seeped into the photographer's mind because gazing out of the photograph was the brown, serious-looking face of a man on a sailing boat. He was wearing a sailing cap and a blue marine costume a shade darker than the cloudless sky behind him.

Dona Selsa's husband took us over the river and we walked along a dirt road into the village. I barely recognised it although it was the same way I had arrived only some days ago. The girls bought soft drinks at the drinking stalls along the way and let themselves be admired by the drinkers who congregated there. I asked one of the vendors for a beer, but he shook his head and gave me a plastic bag with a clear liquid in it that burned my throat: mescal.

In the middle of the town square sat the bride in white looking as if she would burst into tears any minute. The bride sat against a tableau of clouds and thunder on a throne that was meant to look like it came straight out of the ocean. A large sheet of blue silk had been placed underneath her and children on either side were shaking it to make it look like waves slapping against her gown. There was a line of people queued up to pay their respects. I joylessly danced a couple of numbers of salsa with some of the village men. The mescal tasted inoffensive enough as it settled inside my skull like cotton wool. "The sea is everywhere," I thought as I watched the bride sink and rise in front of me.

Rather than wake up Dona Selsa’s husband who was crouched down and asleep in his boat, I swam across the river. It was only when I had got half-way between the mainland and El Capitan that I realised I couldn't tell what direction I was going. It was as if I was swimming away from the other side and out towards the ocean into nothingness. I panicked and stayed in one place, kicking my legs frantically to keep myself afloat. Then something long and slimy wound itself around my ankle and I yelled out. A voice called from the dark and I saw a small flicker of light ahead of me. I swam as fast as I could until I noticed that the light was coming from Dona Selsa's cigarette.

Dona Selsa later said that she heard my splashing and panting long before I had reached the beach. She called me a fool and a daredevil. Didn't I know there were crocodiles and drunken villagers around? She made me take my wet clothes off and wrap myself in blankets while she continued to scold me. She only paused to ask, "Where are you from, child?" as if the thought had just occurred to her that I wasn't a local because a local would never do something that silly.
I didn't know what to say. I thought about Mamma and Pappa. How could I explain to her where home was? How would she understand? What would the North mean to her?
"Oh, from far away," I said warily.
"From the city?" she queried.
I pointed to the ocean and further beyond to where the ocean and the sky meet, "from over there."
"But where's your home?" she wanted to know with the insistence of someone for whom home is everything.
"On the other side of the ocean," I specified.
She looked at me with amazement. Her eyes filled with tears and that's when she told me about the man in the photograph.

"One day," she began, "tough men from Mexico City came to the village. They liked my son. They made jokes with him and he laughed. He was just a village boy. He laughed at everything they said and in return they gave him drugs, made him feel like them, like city boys. Then one night, it was a night just like this after a fiesta in the village, he disappeared. My son walked straight there," she indicated with a nod behind her towards the ocean, "and he never came back."
I watched her lips move and the tears welling up in her eyes. I turned to look out at the black ocean to which I had only moments ago pointed. I wanted to curse it, hate it, but then I realised I had only myself to curse – my cruel, careless words. What did I know about what lay on the other side? What did I know about lighting a candle for my dead son? About keeping hope alive?
Dona Selsa pointed first at me and then at the photograph of her son and when she spoke, her face was turned to the ocean, the enemy.
"Now I know he must still be alive somewhere," she tenderly touched my cheek with the palm of her hand.