The Story of Leidi Macbeth as Told by Marcia González at an Ungodly Hour

The Story of Leidi Macbeth as Told by Marcia González at an Ungodly Hour

Reflexio: it’s Latin, meaning reflection, turning away or back, to somewhere beyond the pleasure principle. This is act one. There’s only one kind of hour for Shakespeare, I think. The hour for prayer. Meaning some ungodly hour, usually. When the night casts out its arms, reaching so long that it never finds the day.
It was during this kind of hour that her brother took his own life. Pedro was two years older than her, he had hanged himself in his room at the asylum. Yes, asylum. That word sounds like Shakespeare, doesn’t it. I guess it’s not really, though. I just like to say it to exercise my mouth, work out my lips, which is important at this hour. But to put it that way betrays that this is not just a play, but a story, that is, the telling of a play.
So I'm just going to tell it, in four acts, and see what happens. Because even written words speak. Not a word that doesn’t. Is this acting? She raises her head abruptly. Looks at the roof, does this sort of vibrato thing with her mouth. She’s in a nightdress and over forty years old. Who? I, Marcia González. Think of this as a preview. A prayer. It’s six thirty-five in the morning, I woke up at six, to rehearse. I do my training until eight, then I leave for (at this point she is speaking very slowly, accentuating every syllable, and repeats) then I leave for work as an interpreter for the Ar-gen-tine Fish-ing Com-pa-ny.
I am Leidi Macbeth. Well. The chambermaid for now. But rehearsing as her from six thirty to eight is what’s getting me out of bed these days. Now that it’s warmer and the lighting resembles the blue dark of summer.
On one side is the window—the only window on set. It’s a supremely tidy room, with a table and painted chairs, some plants, a single room with a kitchen, living area, and bed. It’s not a depressing place, but feels compact, wound tight. Outside, we can still hear the noises of the animals of the night: a dog rubbing itself against the sidewalk, the cry of an owl on its post, roosters crowing. And the factories. A sea of them. The air always smells like barley, rising from all the chimneys in the neighborhood.
The scene, of course, is Quilmes, Argentina. The time, February, 2010.

Marcia González walks away from the window and returns to center stage. The light hits her sideways, and she raises her nightdress just a bit. Day will break, morning will come. The position of every inch of fabric counts. Clothing begets the unseen. Marcia begins to talk about how Pedro always remembered the clothing that she had on when he was heading out for the day. I don’t know, I liked the attention he paid me. And I’m not afraid for my wishes to come true. For the things that I want to happen to happen. Here (she points to herself). Unsex me here. Then, Marcia does something with her hands, and now she seems truly tired. Every day is both fair and foul, she says, but that’s not me saying that, she says, it’s Shakespeare.
*

I had never done anything like it, so I'm not sure why, after reading a little sign on the street, I immediately deposited six hundred pesos into the bank account of a witch doctor, who called me the next day. Okay, maybe I do know why: my translations at my job were coming out all wrong. I was saying to them dish instead of fish, reina instead of rain. Our Chinese exporters, who we sold hake to (Merluccius hubbsi, to be precise) all looked at me like I was batshit. I would try to explain how frech, koold, and frosen—she repeats each word, with emphasis, frehhch, kohhld, and fro-sen—everything is that we sell at the Argentine Fishing Company. I even made wild gestures at them with my hands, assuring them, No cow, no cow!

We spoke on the phone for almost an entire hour. I had auditioned for Leidi Macbeth at the Municipal Theater. I had memorized the whole speech and still ended up the chambermaid. A sidekick. During rehearsals I was the most loyal servant, at the heels of the sleepwalking lady, shouting with the doctor. And meanwhile there she was, Betina, the actress, as the Leidi—and what a role, a woman so profoundly ridden with guilt—but in her performance she was only good at one thing, the mindless sleepwalking. I burned in desire, babe. I gave my all just to be the chambermaid. All this passion and desire. And they let it go to waste. I always wanted to give myself more lines. Who shall we kill today, my leidi? The director thought it was too much. But no one ever gets whatever the director ends up doing. Would have been a hit.

The witch doctor calls again. Marcia fixes her gaze forward during the call, stays like that. There is an afterlife, one of them says. On the phone, I mean. I didn't know what to think of our talk: it’s not quite magic, but dialogue can feel like therapy. We talked about how hard my life had been (very, I told him), about all the weeping at twenty after I hooked up with a guy who was seeing two other girls, how lonely I had felt afterward (very lonely, I said), all the wasted efforts in endless casting calls (very difficult!), about going over lines again and again for hours only to mess it all up in the audition, and about the one time I finally made headlines—in an ad for motor oil, a poster with my face on it, somewhere on the Pan-American Highway. I lived off that for two months.
And then came more nothing (always hard), and I had to pay rent (hard and expensive), and I got so tired of starving that I became an interpreter for a company that exports fish.
Going on seven years. That’s always the choice, isn’t it, between career and groceries. I was done with acting for the time being, and just worked and worked and worked, until a friend of a friend of a friend had called about Macbeth at the Municipal Theater. I had memorized all the Leidi’s lines, one of them says to the other, and still ended up the chambermaid. And I began to mess that up too, showing up late to rehearsals, with my line suggestions, Who shall we kill today, my leidi, it wasn’t clicking, anything, I was desire itself, and I had started saying dish instead of fish and reina instead of rain and I kept telling them No cow, no cow!

Marcia González tells him all of this, nonstop, just like that. There is a silence from the other end of the line.
Steel yourself, he says. In the coming months. Harden. What comes after is going to be—he pauses, searching for the right words—hard.
Marcia groans, her voice low: Still? I pull myself together.
Incredibly so, he says.

Another silence. My turn to speak. Will I stop acting?
He seems uncomfortable. No, no, he manages to say. But it’s going to be hard, very hard.
 
Paying rent, the light bill, other utilities, splitting my grocery lists into separate trips (this time milk, next time yogurt), walking twenty blocks to rehearsals, rehearsing at home without heat, without a fan, staying up through the nights, going to flea markets to haggle for some cheap clothes to dress myself, going to the donation center for set pieces, rehearsing for months, not understanding what the director wants, fighting, befriending, fighting, opening. All this at forty-two, forty-three years old. (Did he just tell me I was going to stop acting? That the hard part would be giving it up?) Even at forty-three, no good role had come along to make me ever quit my job at the fishing company once and for all. And shiiine.
Shiiine. Marcia does something with her hands here. Shiiine, with three i’s.
Marcia González is a great name for an actress.

Nobody ever saw a chambermaid like mine. Been preparing for this since I was eight years old. During the summers, on my cousins’ farm, I stayed in the pool and played Miami Vice with Pedro. I would be Don Johnson, and Pedro would be Rico. We had ripped the sleeves off our T-shirts, and my arms were crossed as I leaned against the arbor and said my lines. What’s wrong, Rico. I need to know something, Rico. I had seen the picture of the actress, in La Pelo. A very pretty woman, with picturesque eyes and long eyelashes. I want to be like her, I thought to myself. I want to shiiine. Some other afternoon my aunt threw away all the torn shirts, and I threw a fit until Carla showed up, the oldest cousin, and gave me a slap in the face. To calm me down.
That was the afternoon that I decided.

That I wanted to shiiine.
Like something out of an oyster.

But I don't get called for Juliet Capulet anymore. Looks like they don’t call me for Leidi Macbeth either. But no one is stopping me from rehearsing in my own house, from six to eight in the morning, before going to work. No excuses, you know. Is this acting?
*

Marcia lifts a shoulder and lets it fall. She trills. She releases her neck. She looks at the clock behind her, on the kitchen wall. Looks out the window. She adjusts her nightgown and crosses downstage. Her voice is slower, clearer now. Some of Leidi Macbeth’s lines.
The raven, someone says. The same raven, someone says. Croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan—brief pause—under my battlements.
Come, you spirits.

She looks out at the audience and listens. She waits for the reaction of Macbeth, the astonished gaze of her husband, who stares at her, speechless. No matter. She says it again:
Come, you spirits.

She scans the audience again. Waits. Now what interrupts her isn’t Macbeth, but the voice of her brother:
Go ahead, Marcia, he says to her. I came.

She falters a little, her hand flutters, swatting away an imaginary moth. And continues: Come, you spirits that tend to mortal thoughts.
The voice again:
Go ahead, Marcia.

She lets her arms fall to her sides. A gesture of sudden boredom.

They won’t let me do it, someone says. Then she turns toward the source of the voice.

A chair, some ways away.

But what do you mean, Pedro.

I should be Leidi Macbeth, or I am Leidi Macbeth, if I say so. She has Pedro’s same terrors. Remains terrified. By her desire. Why is that? She brings a chair from the back of the room and places it center stage.

Do you remember the blouse that I had on? I remember your shirt, Pedro. You had the buttons by your neck wrong. If only I could rip this malice domestic out of me. Disastrous thoughts. You once told me about a time you were walking around a really long warehouse, do you remember that? I don’t know whether you dreamed it or had read this somewhere. The warehouse stretched far, and there were people praying in a line all the way down, each of them hunched over. Whispers floating through the room. It was dark, but not scary. You walked along slowly, while the line of people stayed like that, on their knees praying. No joke. Nothing seeming out of the ordinary. And you walked all the way down, until you came to a wall, where there was some kind of hole. And you put your hand there. In the hole in the wall of the warehouse. And what you touched, at the back of the hole, were the roots of a plant. Indian, you said. Black henbane, the insane root.
I was wearing a white blouse, no collar, the day you left. I asked our cousins when you’d come back.
...Never?

Are there plants in the asylum, Pedro? I went to visit you but I never found out if there were plants. A strange infirmity, which is nothing to those that know me.
*

Marcia González turns, but stays in front of her chair. She concentrates on the chair.

What she says next she says as if her brother were there with her, and with fear. There’s no one there, someone says to Pedro. Wipe that terror off your face and talk to me. No one’s there, she repeats. The very painting of your fear. Who are you talking to? She raises her eyelids. Her eyes scan the room. Already tired. Enough, Pedro. Stop fucking around. You look but on a stool.
Seriously, stop, cut the shit. It gets old, speaking to air. Fie, for shame. Don’t you see? You’re afraid of a chair.
Malice domestic, my inner demons, what fails in the face of victory. In the second act, there’s a chorus of young women. The voices of my cousins around the pool during summer. A splash, girls playing in the water. The blue light of summer is more potent here. There’s less room for the shadows cast against the wall. The girls scream something like a nursery rhyme (it goes like this): double / double / toil and trouble.
What’s wrong, Rico, Marcia asks. I need to know what’s wrong. She wears a bikini under her nightgown. Her back is straight, stomach sucked in. Now she raises her face toward the sun, calm and happy. She puts on sunglasses.
More splashing.
And just as suddenly, she sheds her desire, takes the sunglasses off and grows solemn.

In despair, she shouts, insisting, No cow, no cow!

Fish.

*

The amount of jobs, from the age of sixteen, that I (and we) did (and do) to survive, just to survive. Call center. Girl who stands next to the dart board to get you to play at the county fair in Haedo. Promoters in the street, handing out flyers. Any kind of server. Hostess at Tomo 1. Model for illustrators at an animation studio. Barista. Administrative assistant. Hotel check-in. Member of a foreign dance company. Working on Sundays. Offering pretty much any kind of class: yoga, acting, youth acting, senior acting. More call centers. A gig on TV: some bitch on a street corner, smoking, brief hold on her face, so no one forgets it, or that body, that expression, the puff of the cigarette, and someone comes running through, asks her if she saw the protagonist come this way. She takes another drag. Don’t know him, sweetheart, she finally says, and the camera’s already forgotten her. But TV isn’t acting. Is this acting? Or not? And then, of course, interpreting for the fishing company. Business meetings, heels and a short skirt, selling hake. Argentine hake. Eight hours a day, not including lunch, or the hourlong commute from Quilmes, or the commute back home. That was that. Career or groceries. Either this or kill for an annual salary and holiday bonus.

These are our most popular products. I act my way through the business meetings. I couldn’t translate half of the Spanish for the Chinese buyers if it weren’t for acting. Good for that, at least. Marcia, legs crossed while she sits, moves her head from side to side. Service. Partida número uno, someone says, order number one. El langostino con 200 toneladas,
someone says, the shrimp with 200 tons, and there’s 1200 millones de dólares in exports. 1.2 billion dollars. Filetes. Fish filets. Merluza. Hake. Surubí. Spotted catfish. Is this acting?
TV isn’t for me. They call you one day and record you for an afternoon. Then suddenly everyone recognizes you when you’re out getting pizza, associate you with your work, with the character, call out to you on the street, what are you doing, it was a gig, but how’s the character doing, but you barely acted for ten seconds and now you’ll die as this stupid ass character. Maybe TV is for me. You get used to it. But isn’t acting just for the theater, praying more than six people will show up in the house. Living with what I do, bah. At forty-two, forty-three? Will I stop acting?

Shakespeare’s verses are there, deep in her head: double /double / toil and trouble. Suddenly Marcia jumps up to her feet: as if she were watching the Leidi pass by.
There she goes, someone says. The sleepwalker.

Now she bounds about the sleepwalker, crossing from one point to another.

Who shall we kill today, my leidi? she says to her, and without an answer continues, are you terrified as well, my leidi? Are you, too, afraid of a chair? A little more serious, a little lower, and quicker, when desire is got without content, et cetera. Repeat, et cetera. The raven that croaks, that calls, someone says, the fatal entrance of—until Marcia stops dead in her tracks, as if the sleepwalker had woken up, or as if suddenly aware of something. Marcia opens her eyes wide. She steps back. Steps back. She repeats what the sleepwalker just said to her.
A great perturbation in nature, she murmurs. What a mess.
She steps back again, says, Yes.

She opens her eyes wide. Life is this, she thinks. And she is terrified. And who is she?
*

Unsex me here. I want to tear out this desire with my fingernails, or the economic issue of masochism. We’re in the third act now. The clock is about to strike eight. Marcia notices and starts. She moves to get dressed, and in the same fluid motion, puts a cup of coffee in the microwave. That part of the room, of the kitchen, is dark, only lit by the bulb above the stove.
She drinks her coffee while standing in front of the window, on the other side of the stage. The sunlight filters in, clean. The fact that there hasn’t been a big break yet, someone says, the kind of role that makes you shine, or shiiine, doesn’t mean things won’t change for you after forty-three. And if the witch doctor was right? About everything being hard, about what follows too. Extremely hard. Paradoxically, Marcia, as the tension of the act rises (she’s by the window, profile to the audience, et cetera), is still half naked. And what’s strange is that, when her brother finally appears, she will have to get dressed. When she finally hears his voice, and he comes forward, comes onstage and stops, just before the chair at center. Then, she—okay now, yes, the monologue.

As a solution to the fear: let go of desire, let go of frustration, let go. Never again. That poor thing, ruined. Who shall we kill today, my leidi. But what a waste. My body still grows, stretching toward the light that comes from beyond, from outside. All my youth, my body, they’ll both leave me, that’s what I want to say. To stretch, grow, aim for the light, hit the windowpane, and then what. I spend my days like a plant. Partida número uno, order number one. El langostino con 200 toneladas, the shrimp with 200 tons, surubí, surubí, fishing. Every day with orders until eight in the evening, come home, and then the exhaustion, I lie in a slump. The exhaustion beats me to a pulp. Exercise from six thirty to eight in the morning, then interpreting for the fishing company, practice blocking at lunch, then more hake and surubí, and then head home at six in the evening, arrive at seven, throw myself on the couch, and vegetate. Until my seventies. And finally realize that I was unhappy.
Is this acting?

The raven’s croak cuts her off, that bird of the night. She is silent. Then she speaks, then she announces—no, the raven croaks again.
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan, someone says. Slowly, because it’s time. And pauses, looks around her: under my battlements. Come, you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts. Another pause. She motions to her stomach:
And unsex me here.

The voice, from somewhere in the room, finally interrupts:

Enough, cut it out.

The voice of Pedro rips her away from the window. If the previous act was about Marcia talking with a chair, well, now Pedro is actually here, tall, thin, standing in the dark. Black henbane, one of them says. The insane root.
Don’t be so dramatic.

Then he looks at her and almost smiles.
Her face doesn’t change. She interrupts. Hold, hold!
I didn’t come to fight, Marcia.

She’s observed this for a while. Empty, since he appeared. She drops her shoulders.

She takes off the nightgown, looks through her closet for clothes, gets a dress, but turns toward Pedro before changing. Not fighting feels like a kind of prophecy, like fate, what is etched in fire and can’t be changed.
They found you in a room in the asylum, Marcia says. A distant room.

It was a madhouse, dear, he corrects her. And he keeps speaking. It was better than the house. I was lost at home. I was throwing away all the clothes I could find into the trash, tearing up the sofa with a boxcutter. It terrified Mamá, you remember. And she just couldn’t take it anymore.
He takes a step forward. He doesn’t sit, but rests his hands on the back of the chair and leans.

You had on a white blouse, no collar, he says. The last time I saw you in the house. Would you stop flirting with that chair already?
Finally they both laugh. They laugh genuinely, like someone just told an old joke, one they’d always known.
Hold, hold, in Quilmes, Marcia says, which she translates as Enough, cut it out. She laughs again.
He laughs again. Pause.
What happened, she says next. She starts changing and moving around the room.

You couldn’t breathe, Marcia says. You made a noose and hanged yourself. That’s what they told me. It’s so stereotypical, so commonplace, that I almost don’t believe it. But when we found you, we saw that you had marks on your wrists. Violet ones, I saw them. I swear my first thought was: did they do that to him? One day maybe you broke, you fought and screamed your head off, and they tied you up. They tied you up and it got out of hand. That’s what I thought. In an isolated wing of the ward. It seemed like an accident, something rare. I never figured it out.
He does something with his hands, slowly. A gesture that means, I have no idea. And who says the following: but then? What next?
But then nothing, Marcia says. The not knowing. Always repeats itself. Not knowing.

Not knowing. She pauses. She looks at him. The not knowing returns. I should have been Leidi Macbeth and they kicked me out of the play. I never figured out what the director wanted. They told me I was annoying everyone, that I was too intense. Now Marcia is speaking to him, and he, in turn, to the chair. Out of fear. An infinite terror about all to come. I would give anything to stop feeling, to rid myself of this desire, to tear it out of the flesh, to live without it, even if it hurt.
Now she recites. She acts: Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. Hold. Enough. Cut it out, he says.
Cut it out, he says again. Marcia watches him.
No exit, she says. She motions with her chin to the clock that hangs on the wall. Eight thirty. She shrugs her shoulders. She finishes getting dressed and goes out.
*

The night isn’t blue, it’s yellow, according to Idea Vilariño. She has another line that Marcia often quotes: “pensé, pensé, pensé, y no soy más que esta pobre cosa destrozada.” After her most dramatic pause yet, and the Cut it out of her brother, comes the fourth act, or the coda, that tries to retell the whole story in one go: there’s the witch doctor, who said this would be hard, incredibly so, who maybe said she would give up acting, is this acting, and her cousins in bikinis around the pool, splashing, and the toil and trouble that always doubles, and Marcia, always late, in more ways than one, what will she do with this desire to shine, and shiiine, that she’s had since she was eight years old, who for now spends all morning and all afternoon at work interpreting, the hake and surubí, no cow, no cow, at the Chinese buyers, and, with emphasis, feesh, and the cycle continues until the animals make their noises again (the dog on the sidewalk, owl on the post, and of course, the roosters), until the stage lights begin to move, reflexio, from the blue clarity of summer to the deep darkness of an ungodly hour, in which Pedro always returns, at twilight. And her wish does not come true, and she stays in that hour, in the eve of.

Translated from the Spanish by Derick Edgren Otero.