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Narrative Games in Alejandro Tantanián's Juegos de damas crueles Dios mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza. ¿Qué dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza De polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonías? (Borges, "Ajedrez") Questions of narrative and narrativity have come to the forefront of critical inquiry in the last two decades, the result, at least in part, of what has been seen as postmodernism’s challenge to narrative (particularly the master narratives) and its implicit thrust toward closure, telos. Somewhat more surprising, perhaps, is the fact that this focus on narrative has carried over into theatre and dramatic theory. Scholars of feminist theatre, for example, have questioned the use of narrative with its tendency to focus exclusively on Oedipal desire and naturalize the dominant ideology (see Forte, de Lauretis, Diamond, among others). Feminist theory not withstanding, questions of narrative in theatre have become particularly volatile in discussions of Argentine theatre in recent years. Critics, and perhaps even the playwrights themselves, have perceived a sharp division between those dramatists and plays that provide an anecdote (and the pleasure implicit in that narrative closure) and those that steadfastly refuse to allow the audience the comfort of a story line or closure. Juegos de damas crueles (1995) by Argentine Alejandro Tantanián, which is the focus of this study, participates in this denial of narrative and narrative closure. My analysis of this play forms part of a series of articles, in which I examine the function of narrative in theatrical works. My central concern is the manner in which contemporary theatre challenges what Jean-François Lyotard labeled metanarratives, master narratives and narratives of mastery. Specifically, the works I examine tend to undermine the mastery of the narrative gesture by focusing on the indeterminacy of those master narratives, their inadequacy to sustain themselves when carefully examined, their gaps, silences, and contradictions. Specifically, Juegos de damas crueles re-visits two sets of what I shall call, borrowing from Doris Sommer, foundational narratives: the creation story and that of Abraham's obedience to Yahweh's command to sacrifice his son, Isaac. By re-emplotting our historico-religious, foundational, master narratives, Juegos not only demonstrates that narrative participates in and dialogues with history as it has been internalized by the narrating subject(s); it also reminds us that history and perhaps even culture come to us as narrative. But, as this play further dramatizes, these foundational, historical narratives are marked by violence, a violence that is repeated by each successive narrator and then further reenacted as that narrator inevitably modifies the narrative to make it his own, and a violence that, as de Lauretis ("Violence") has argued, may be implicit in or even at the core of all representations and the narrative gesture itself. In Juegos de damas crueles the narratives that form part of Western culture's family history are placed within the context of games (themselves a form of narrative, mastery, and theatricality). Indeed, the play not only announces its emphasis on games in the title, it also employs some form of game in nearly every organizing structure. At the start of the work, characters are seated around a game board as the "game" and the play begin. At moments the stage itself becomes the playing board of a game whose objective seems to be to reach el casillero de llegada, with all that might represent. As the characters take their turns playing, still other games are incorporated such as "hide and seek," bingo, etc. Significantly, however, those games are predicated primarily on telling and performing stories, over and over again. The dual emphasis on games and narration serves to remind us that narratives (particularly historical narratives) implicitly have winners and losers: those who win the game, the struggle for narrative control and interpretative power, will be allowed to impose their version of events and (hi)story. Thus, narrative is examined from an optic that questions the authority behind and the authoritativeness of any final version along with the closure implied in that finality, and encourages us to ask, from whom and where does this version come and what hidden ends does it serve? What does the "winner" win? As obvious as it may seem, narrative is necessarily the product and reflection of some personal, vested interests, simultaneously imbued with and bestower of power. The play's cast of characters comprises three sisters, the ostensible players of the game, Ulrica, designated as "la vengadora del asesinato / vestirá de hombre" (36), Leopolda, "la que nunca ceja / cantará sin descanso" (36), and Juliana, "la envidiosa / se perderá en todos los reflejos de su imagen" (36), plus four brothers, all named Enrique but each dressed in a different color. Three of those Enriques are numbered, one through three, and labeled the muñeco (that is, playing token) of one of the three sisters; the other Enrique, without a number, is designated "el muñeco que sobra" (36). As the women play the game that frames the work, their words or thoughts seem to materialize on stage. For example, the first card Ulrica draws as part of that primary game grants her a wish. When she closes her eyes, Enrique 1 appears as if in answer to that wish, guessing immediately what that desire might be—a tale of an erotic encounter. Thus, it would appear that the Enriques are not only the game tokens of the sisters, but also projections of their fantasies and change according to the female to whom they "belong" at the moment, knowing, presumably from prior experience, which Enrique they are to play for which sister. Defined by context, they would seem to be a literal embodiment of performativity with apparently no subjectivity apart from that context. It is interesting, however, that while the narratives that result from the games are very similar to the master narratives that we have inherited (that inhabit us and that we inhabit), they are also, at the same time, strikingly different. The major difference lies in the fact that in these narratives the males are either dead (as in the case of the father and eventually the brother/son) or they are designated muñecos, playthings of the women, in an inversion of the popular script in which women are generally viewed as the "dolls," playthings of men. Thus, in this rendition, the "master" of the master narratives would seem to have been effectively written out of the script, victim of the damas crueles of the title. Or, so one interpretation of the narrative might read. But, as the play itself will demonstrate, given the prior conditioning (blinders?) with which we approach all narratives—that is, given the metanarratives or master narratives which inform our approach to narrative (see de Lauretis, "Violence")—the first reading of any narrative may well be inadequate or even misleading. By concentrating on the gaps, the contradictions, and the repeated violence of the play and its narratives, we shall discover that we might well read differently. Revealingly, the various tales told throughout the play/game are laden with violence, parricide, fratricide, and interspersed with eroticism, incest, and latent, or symbolic cannibalism and thus underscore the violence of our narratives and cultural foundations on several levels. Significantly, the dominant narrative that develops in the course of the play begins and ends with blood—that issuing from the wound of Enrique's mother on the occasion of his birth and that flowing from the wound of his father, whom he has slain, as well as the blood that presumably will stream from the wound Ulrica inflicts on him at the end of the play, which marks the end of his narrative. In this way, the narratives that unfold suggest that the narrative foundations of culture are predicated on and function precisely to conceal any number of deaths, even as they motive or at least reenact them. At the same time, the opening of the play/game reminds us that no one can escape our cultural narrative games. As Ulrica sets the stage for the ensuing game, she announces, "El siguiente juego es un juego activo, emocionante y divertido" (36). Later she will proclaim, "Sabés que no se puede dejar de jugar" (50), suggesting that all actively participate, whether they choose to or not. There is no escaping our cultural narratives; no one is left unscathed. This inescapability is overtly embodied in Juliana, who is the unwilling participant in the game, adamant that she does not want to play. At the beginning she states, "Yo no quiero contarles nada" (36), and later she repeatedly insists, "Yo no quiero jugar más" (40, 50). When Ulrica slaps her, however, she is forced to play. Eventually Juliana does leave the playing board and goes to the mother (where those who don't want to play go [54]). Nonetheless, even when she is "with" the mother (who, silent and invisible behind the closed door, seems to be out of the game), she continues to repeat and "play" out the master narratives while she peruses the family photo album. Thus, while she may think she is not playing, she certainly has not escaped. The fact that she tells the mother (who may or may not exist within the represented world of the play) that she visits her at the same time every day highlights both the repetitiveness of the game/narrative and the impossibility of escaping from it. Thus, in spite of Ulrica's opening assertion that the game is emocionante and divertido, it obviously is neither for Juliana. For whom, then, is it divertido? Whose game is this? It is also Ulrica who enumerates the rules of the game, rules, which of course always precede games and narratives (as well as life itself). The presentation of the rules here serves to remind us that "rules" are yet another form of narrative, but one with a privileged status insofar as not only do those rules control the game, but we seldom question their source or authority. Nonetheless, those rules in fact establish what is to count as part of the game. In this case those rules incorporate several significant features. First, the players must remain inside the house of one of the participants. In this respect, the play evokes the very closure towards which narrative strives and simultaneously reminds us that this is a closed society: our master, foundational narratives function to keep us inside our culture and distance us from other possibilities. Second, each player must draw a card that will assign an objective, to be known only by that player, thus proposing that all our acts and/or cultural role-playing (performances in the sense that Butler employs the term) are pre-scribed, re-enactments or repetitions of previous master narratives. Third, each player must select a playing token, "un muñeco que será el protagonista de la trayectoria personal" (36, emphasis added). The language here is particularly revealing and suggests a metonymic displacement that may well go unnoticed: contrary to initial appearances, the muñecos, males, will be the protagonists, not the females. The sisters may have been labeled the players, but they can act only through the brothers/agents. But once again we might well question the origin of these rules: who has established them and for what ends? These questions are not answered here just as they are not answered in our sociocultural life, and for me this exemplifies one of the principal thematic thrusts of the play: our lives are subject to rules and narratives whose origins and motives are unknown and perhaps unfathomable. This metonymic displacement proves to be more overt when we recognize that the game that follows begins specifically with the (narrative) birth of Enrique. Each sister proffers a version of that birth, narrated in the second person, thus making him both the subject of the narrative and its intended recipient, in what may well mark the circularity, self-serving nature of all of our foundational (master) narratives—stories of, from, by, and for him. In each case the women introduce themselves to Enrique and name him, as if narratively or performatively willing him into being, not unlike Yahweh in Genesis. In other words, although the females are the first to appear on stage and the play's title seems to promise a female focus, the narrative that unfolds in Juegos de damas crueles patently starts with his beginning, his birth, which overtly postdates other possible (although admittedly equally arbitrary) points of departure, such as the birth of the sisters or even that of the mother, etc. And, the end is clearly his also, be it the death of the father or that of the son. By reminding us just how arbitrary the designations beginning and ending are (arbitrary except perhaps to the master), the play encourages us to ask, who has chosen this particular beginning or end and why? It is significant, too, that each of the three birth narratives proffers a unique focus, one that may well reflect the narrator as much as the narrated, and one that reminds us of the power of the narrator to influence the perception of the interlocutor. Ulrica, for example, focuses on the pool of blood (the mother's) in which Enrique was born and his scream after the slap with which he was "welcomed" into the world. Leopolda does not use the term "born," but rather states that he arrived "Tan mansamente" and was "Tan dulce, tan bello" (37), perhaps echoing Genesis and Adam's ostensibly unproblematic, nonviolent, and asexual arrival into Eden, or perhaps merely sugar-coating the violence of birth evoked by the other characters. And, finally, Juliana speaks of the "notable" happiness of the father at the birth of a male child. As a result, the Enriques conceived via the sisters' narratives are significantly different, born on different dates, seen in different lights, so distinct that they must be embodied by three different muñecos, plus one extra, evoked/created we do not know by whom, but one who from the first moments of the play is not with the other three in the casillero de salida but already in the casillero de llegada—that is, the winner before the game even begins—not thanks to any special merit on his part but rather due to luck, the throw of the dice. Still, it is precisely this fourth Enrique who narrates the final version of his birth; in this sense we might say that he gives birth to himself. But, what stands out is the change of emphasis. The sisters have evoked his passivity: according to Ulrica, "Te arrojaron al mundo"; according to Leopolda, "Te pusieron en sus manos"; Juliana mentions the mother's hands on his head (37). He, on the other hand, paints the event differently, assigning far more active verbs to himself: "Me abrí paso. [. . .] Mi lengua recorrió. [. . .] Escupí. [. . .] Pasé la lengua" (37), an emphasis on tongue and mouth which we might associate with his later verbal dominance. Like the sisters, he too underlines the violence of the birth—the violence of the light, the slap, the blood—, but most of all he focuses on the wound. In his words, "Una herida es el comienzo. [. . .] Una herida que yo provoqué" (36), but revealingly it is a wound to which he attaches himself, physically, but perhaps also emotionally, for an unmeasured period of time, a wound that will prove to be a recurring motif in the subsequent narratives, and one that is later metonymically displaced onto the father, whom he has slain (and whom he elides completely in his version of the birth narrative) and eventually onto himself. I would propose that the wound in this play signals, among many other things, an original or founding violence as well as the fissures inherent to any foundational narrative, gaps that may lead to challenging those narratives as Tantanián does here. But, let's examine the game and the resultant narrative(s) in more detail. As I indicated, on the first draw Ulrica is granted a wish, one that Enrique 1 easily guesses—a story of an erotic encounter—specifically one that echoes a harlequin romance as it begins. Nonetheless, the violence that is often semi-buried beneath the surface of a harlequin romance erupts here: at the end of (and perhaps as a result of) the erotic games, the woman is killed, and the male buries her beneath the tablas del piso. But this story has apparently been told many times, for Ulrica stops Enrique 1 to correct him when he does not narrate acceptably, adding details or commentary herself, for example, replacing dificultosamente with con dificultad (in a move that suggests a certain power implicit to the words since the concept itself remains unaltered). It is also a tale with which she apparently identifies, for she will later reenact parts of it with Enrique 1 and Enrique 3 when the three of them share the same casillero of the game board, again underscoring the inescapable hold narrative has on us as it brackets our possibilities for future performances. When Enrique 1 continues the narrative in what appears to be an echo of Genesis and the eventual arrival of Eve, he states that, after the burial of the woman, time passes, the male protagonist is alone, and "Harto de su soledad, necesita compañía" (38). Thus, in what might be read as a gesture that redefines origins and imposes a new genealogy that erases her earlier history, he subsequently unearths her (in some sense then he literalizes the metaphor dar a luz and ostensibly gives birth to her); then, he cleans her up and dresses her. In this way, the play evokes the traditional image of women in the master narratives: passive, with no will of their own, creations by and for the male. Here, however, Ulrica intervenes again to add the detail, apparently new to this particular re-telling, that he dresses the dead woman in the clothes of his father, evoking what Diamond has referred to in another context as the absence of the female, who can be "included in the symbolic order only insofar as she is a male" (96-7). Furthermore, since Ulrica herself is dressed as a man, her intervention here underscores the curious position of this narrative as it is continually modified and adapted to serve the interests not only of the teller but also of the listener. But it is even more complicated in this case since, let us not forget, within the dramatic fiction Ulrica participates in a game whose objectives remain a mystery. Thus, it is impossible to tell the extent to which her efforts to modify the narrative are the product of some earlier (hidden, elided) narrative. That is, we cannot know which is the cause and which the effect, the extent to which narrative reflects life or, inversely, shapes/demarcates what counts as life. Within the tale of Enrique 1, the masculinely attired body of the dead woman is propped up on the bed next to the male protagonist; the narrative ends with the statement that the next morning he wakes up and writes the story—we may assume with his choice of beginning and ending. Thus, in spite of Ulrica's interventions, this is still a master narrative, written and re-told by a male both inside and outside the narrative itself. Now, while this may appear to be a far cry from the foundational narrative of Genesis, let us recall that one of the versions there emplots Eve as a gift from God-the-father to the companionless Adam, and she is specifically created from his rib. In some sense, then, she is him, that is, male—unearthed from Adam's body, cleaned up a bit, propped up, and expected to remain a passive mirror of Adam's desires and needs. The next story, also narrated as part of Ulrica's "turn," is the beginning of the tale about the slaying of the father and then the son, which will continue to develop through the end of the play and that seems to be the objective of the game. Essentially, it is the story of Abraham, but in this version the father is slain by the son he would have sacrificed, and that son in turn is killed by Ulrica (the sister dressed in male clothing) apparently because, rather than leaving him on the mountain, he brought the body home with the result that "el pacto ha sido violado y [. . .] hay un cuerpo que sobra" (56). By the time the play ends, this tale passes through the hands (or mouths) of all the characters, suggesting that perhaps Ulrica was correct each time that she insisted that one cannot refuse to play the narrative game. Interestingly, however, while the various characters assume the position of narrator as part of their turn in the game, other characters, even if on stage, are not always aware of them or their narratives, as if they existed in different narrative realms or worlds. Indeed, at one point the Juliana who narrates is not the character physically present on stage but the one reflected in a mirror, perhaps underlining the distance between the historical event and its narrative renditions, the fact that they are reflections of reflections. Thus, all the characters/players seem to have some part in developing and/or perpetuating the narrative(s), but because of the nature of the game, the repetition, the mirror images, it becomes impossible to distinguish original from reenactment, which of course is precisely the point. Nonetheless, although the narrative control appears to shift several times during the course of the game until the origin and the validity of the narrative(s) become problematic, it is ultimately that unnumbered Enrique (ostensibly the creation, projection of no one except perhaps himself) to whom much of the narrative responsibility falls, including the final rendition. Since our tendency toward teleology predisposes us to accept the last version (chronologically speaking) of a (hi)story as the authoritative, definitive one, generally we would be inclined to accept Enrique's version as the authorized and authoritative since it is the last one. Nonetheless, Juegos de damas crueles encourages us to reconsider this somewhat automatic assumption. Indeed, there are several reasons for us to re-examine both the final version and Enrique's authority. First, the interventions of the numberless Enrique are always soliloquies—he seems to be talking to no one and heard by no one. Again, it would appear that his words have a circular destiny: they are from him, by him, about him, and for him. At the same time, that numberless Enrique is always framed by the open door as he pronounces his soliloquies. Since the rules of the game require that the participants remain inside the house, and he on the contrary comes and goes through the door that opens for him, we might conclude that he is outside of the game. After all, he is already the winner, in the casillero de llegada; he no longer needs to participate. And, if he does not participate in that game, then he should logically have a less vested interest in it and the resulting narrative. Or, on the contrary, as already winner, perhaps, he has a more vested interest—that of maintaining his position of dominance. By positioning himself ostensibly outside of the game, he veils that investment and provides himself with a hidden advantage since he can operate "outside" of the rules of the game. In fact, among the various interpretations to which the play lends itself, one is that, within the dramatic fiction, the numberless Enrique narrates all he narrates with the specific goal of shoring up his position as already winner, indisputable authority, in order to be sure that no one threatens his dominance in the casillero de llegada. Let's consider his final monologue, which begins "El juego terminó" and concludes, referring to what happens when Ulrica kills him and buries him beneath the tablas del piso, "La sonrisa de Ulrica y la mirada sobre mi cuerpo y mis ojos sobre el cuchillo que aún humea en sus manos y la caída del filo de lleno sobre mi carne, ofreciendo al hijo el mismo destino del padre. Como debe ser" (57). First, his final words, which are also the final words of the play, "Como debe ser," once again return us to the questions: says who? who has established the rules of this life/game to be able to assure us that this is how it should be? Second, we do not know if the events, narrated in the present, belong to the past or to the future. Does his narrative report an event or create it? Again, from where is he narrating, and why? What interests are served by presenting himself as a victim of this dama cruel? Third, according to his narrative, he looks at Ulrica, the apparent active agent (the killer), and she looks at him. Nevertheless, as he actually pronounces those words on stage, she and Leopolda bicker, apparently unaware of him and his narrative. Are we to understand then that he is fantasizing? Is his presence an absence or is theirs? Or, are we witnessing two distinct temporal moments juxtaposed? The fact that we cannot answer these questions points to the instability of his authority as narrator and by implication evokes the possibility that other master narratives are based on equally shaky ground. Even more pertinent, within the representational economy of the work, we cannot be sure that the other characters are not merely his projections, his narrative creations, designed to give meaning to his own existence. Indeed, we might well argue that throughout the work he has been the metaphoric hand (the body part so often mentioned in the text) behind the game—the one that has controlled all, set the stage, chosen the game, delineated the rules, imposed the narrative—the hand of the god behind the game evoked by Borges in the epigraph with which I began this paper. But, as Borges proposed, there are still other gods and hands behind this one, those of the dramatist and/or the director, who choose and impose the metanarratives and foundational fictions. In this way, the play evokes the complicity of theatre with our master narratives and narratives of mastery and self-reflectively enacts the same narrative gesture it describes, underlining its own complicity in the power of the master narratives even as it paradoxically challenges that power. In conclusion, it seems clear that the repeated burials from the beginning of the Tantanián play to the end, all under the tablas del piso, which echo the casilleros of the game board, evoke the notion that we are all metaphorically buried under game boards, the foundational, master narratives and the role playing perpetuated by them. There seems to be no escaping the narratives or their games unless we learn to play very different games and tell very different tales. However, in order to give my narrative a happy ending, I would posit that perhaps we have already taken the first step toward new games and new narratives insofar as the presentation of narratives in this play begins to weaken the hold of those narratives on us. By converting history and narrative into spectacle, Tantanián moves in the direction of challenging, even deconstructing, the specter of (hi)story. By depicting struggles for narrative dominance, the play reveals narrative for what it is—a power play—and emphasizes the fact that it is precisely its relation to power that should lead us to question any narrative (be it historical, sociopolitical, or religious) and the theatre that supports that narrative. But, there is one more issue and perhaps the most important. Let's not forget that at the end of the narrative, the game, and the play, that numberless Enrique is silent, dead if we are to believe his words. He who has dominated the narrative, the apparent winner from the first moments of the game, is, in the end, also the loser. It all depends on where the hand of Borges's "god behind God" has chosen to place the words, "The End." Sharon Magnarelli Department of Fine Arts, Languages, and Philosophy Quinnipiac University Notes Works Cited
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E-mail: atantanian@argentores.org.ar Espacio cedido por ARGENTORES |