Lessons in Retranca

A Play in Search of a Title

Or

Lessons in Retranca

Lavinia is at a play being staged for the first time ever, in the Teatro Valle-Inclán on Rúa do Vilar. She’s with her friend Amanda, who has come to visit for a few days, but doesn’t know anything about Galicia. Amanda has been in Madrid, playing the ‘model tourist’, seeing all the sights possible in two weeks so she could check them off her list. After staying in Santiago briefly, she’ll be off to tour Sevilla and Granada. She’ll probably never notice that right now she’s in a place whose way of thinking, speaking, and acting has nothing to do with Spain. Of course, that’s a whole other story. Amanda will probably never care.

Lavinia explains that this is the first performance of a recently-discovered play written by the wife of a former city mayor who had died in 1936. It was unique in that few women had written plays, especially decades ago. This one had surfaced when an archivist had been placing the mayor’s papers in order. That too had taken so long because the papers had been thrown into a box by his wife, who had then disappeared. Nobody knew anything more, not even if she had written other things; just that she had tried to salvage a few items.

Boxes and old papers always seem to be showing up in Santiago, was Lavinia’s opinion. She had been wondering about that more and more.

The play was sure to be humorous, because it was said the author herself had been quite unique. Nothing reserved or wifely (in the traditional sense) about Concha Bóveda. She had loved getting together with groups, cooking up a storm, then eating and drinking up another storm. She even played the gaita, the Galician bagpipe, when female players were almost unheard of. Funny how so much was known about her life, although none of it had ever been recorded on paper.

The theater was a real classic and there was nobody in the city who had not attended a play there at one time or another. The whole seating area was dark, except for a few sparse spots of illumination that looked like candles (electric, or battery-run, so as not to create a fire hazard, probably). That was on the stage, though; the attendees had to grope their way to their seats.

The only thing discernible is a group of people sitting around a table, talking. The dim stage reveals nothing about where they’re supposed to be, and it’s even hard to tell how many there are. Everybody is waiting for the lights to go on, so the play can begin.

The lights do not go, but the play is definitely in progress. There is a conversation that centers a lot around food. All the words are washed down with bottles of the best Amandi and Barrantes wines, at least those are what they’re drinking, according to the group. A server replenishes as needed. Too bad it wasn’t really wine, but it was only a play and the actors couldn’t go around getting sloshed every time they performed. Some days they had two performances.

Still no lights, but the conversation continues.

This is going to be a lesson in retranca, Lavinia explains. That’s what this play is. This was not a good idea at all.

Amanda looks dazed when she hears the word. She will remain dazed, most likely, because retranca cannot be understood immediately, and maybe never if one is not native to the culture. It may seem like irony or possibly sarcasm, but has a spot of humor that dances around more than with ironic commentary. There is also a potential for something somber to be hovering around the words. Oh, and the retranca can pop up when completely unexpected. It’s not clear, though, how its presence is detected, if by total deadpan expression or a wrinkle around the eyes of the speaker. The eyes .are the first to tell you that what is being said is hardly what is intended

Narrator’s note:

For the benefit of the readers, the original Galician phrase appears first. Then Lavinia presents a directly-translated version in English. After that she translates the meaning and intention of the phrase. An exhausting experience, as Lavinia discovers.

There is silence in the theater as the focus of the spectators is drawn to a small area off to the right. Conversation on stage continues to be casual and in normal tones. There is still an indeterminate number of people involved, because the lighting simply veils their bodies. It’s like a painting by Goya, although that comparison might not be completely appropriate. Light and dark outlining something left unsaid.

The actors are really settled into the shadows, and as they talk around the table, the volume of their voices grows. Perhaps that can be attributed to the beverages they surely are imbibing.

Conversation Fragments 

with translations and glosses

“Here we are at the María Pita bar again, guys. I’ve sure missed this place. What an enchenta we’re going to have. I mean we’re really going to stuff ourselves tonight. I’m starved.”

“Malo será que no comamos ben.” [Lavinia’s translation: It’s going to be pretty bad if they don’t serve good food tonight.] [Lavinia’s gloss of the phrase: I’m sure they’re going to put on a feast for us.]

Someone says after a while that he doesn’t think he can handle any more broth. He points out that he has already had two big bowls and is therefore stuffed. He doesn’t think any more will fit in his stomach. Somebody, apparently his neighbor at the table, points out:

“Para o que non quere caldo, sete tazas.” [Translation: If you don’t want any more Galician broth, they serve you seven cups more.] [Gloss: We get what we don’t want in excess. That’s just the way life is.] [Gloss: Be careful what you wish for.]

“Estás de bon ano.” One of them is looking at a fellow across the table and tells him this. [Translation: You’re having a good year.] [Gloss: Putting on a little weight, aren’t you?] He might have added more to that observation, like: “Have you been eating your mother-in-law’s cooking?”

The conversation goes several rounds and lasts nearly an hour, as the group of friends are all drinking and eating, laughing, slapping one another on the back, calling for more rounds of everything. This might be the best night of their lives. One participant seems to be especially talkative, pontificating for the audience on stage and in the seats beyond it. At that point another speaks up:

“Mentras falas non comes.” [Translation: You know, while you’re talking, you’re not eating anything.] [Gloss: Shut your trap and eat.] Maybe he also means, “If you keep blabbing, somebody will walk off with your food.” 

After nearly an hour in the dim room, whose lack of light doesn’t deter the discussion, not in the least, one of the men puts his fork down. He apparently is full. One of his companions makes an astute observation:

“Seguro que quedaches con fame. Fágoche un bisté?” [Translation: You look like you’re still hungry. Shall I make you a steak? ] [Gloss: Want me to whip something more up for you?] This is very confusing to Amanda, whose concentration and comprehension of the scene were hanging by a thread. She leans over to Lavinia and whispers:

“What are you saying? How can he offer to cook something? This isn’t anybody’s house. You can’t just waltz into the kitchen and cook. It’s a bar, for heaven’s sake.”

Lavinia offers a better gloss, because she can see Amanda has gotten impatient. She was still trying to impose literal meanings on the scene and that goes completely against the use of retranca. [Gloss: Well, I was simply concerned you might still be hungry. There’s probably more food.] [Better gloss: You sure ate a lot. You stuffed your face.]

The scene is coming to an end, so the gradual process of saying goodbye begins. Amanda is more than ready for the play to be over. Her head is splitting from all the twisted phrases that don’t say what they mean. Lavinia’s head is splitting, not from the translation of Galician into English, but from finding glosses for the translations and glosses for the glosses. The language truly has nooks and crannies, gullies and ridges, all sorts of configurations. You stumble along the best you can, and gradually you start to comprehend what people mean.

Until the next conversation.

For now, the farewells:

“E que cho reparta o corpo.” [Translation: Hopefully your whole body can use the food.] [Gloss: Don’t let it all go to the same place.] Amanda gets that, because when she eats, it always seems to go to her belly. Other people worry about hips or thighs when they eat too much. [Well, time to get a move on. Places to go, things to do, right? Good thing I stocked up on calories tonight.] Lavinia adds this gloss, then realizes it’s not necessary.

About now, sone fellow, already on his feet, looks down at the table with the stacks of plates and sees one with Padrón peppers. The audience can’t tell what’s on the plate, to be honest, but he has pointed out that there are a couple of the peppers left. Everybody knows eating them is like Russian roulette, that some aren’t hot, but some can set a mouth on fire. He then says:

“Non deixedes a vergoña do galego.” [Translation: Don’t leave the Galician’s shame there.] [Gloss: Hey, somebody left some food on the plate. Don’t let it go to waste. Somebody come eat this!] Somebody does in fact appear to grab up the remaining peppers, unconcerned about whether they are hot or not. 

It is quiet for a few seconds. Somebody new seems to be present in the dark space, lit only by candles. The subtle movement is detected by the companions.

“Outra vaca no millo.” [Translation: There’s another cow in the cornfield.” [Gloss: Here comes another one, yep. The more the merrier.] [Another possible gloss: Oh no! Not another person!]

“Morra o conto,” is the response. It seems that everybody is done eating and can’t begin to think about ordering more food and drink. [Translation: Let the story die.] [Gloss: Stop already. Enough carrying on. Let’s change the subject.]

The audience wonders who the latest arrival is. The friends seem uninterested in finding out.

When they finish talking, and nothing more is said for an entire, long minute, the lights in the theater come on. The stage is fully illuminated. There are dark walls with some scribbling here and there. There are windows with bars that allow for a backlit sea. Maybe there is a lighthouse or a full moon that provides some visibility from the exterior world.

The audience does not applaud. They don’t feel they should.

The men are in a prison that is on the Illa de San Simón, the Island of Saint Simon. They are in a very famous prison, one known to everybody, regardless of their political loyalties. It is where many republicanos, the Republicans who supported democracy in the república that Spain had been before the civil war started in 1936, were sent. They were kept there prior to their execution by Franco’s fascist forces. After that, there was only silence, exile, and dictatorship. Darkness.

Everybody knew what was happening on the island and could do nothing. A great deal of history was written on the prison walls. People could only watch from the shore of the estuary and cry or pray.

The memory of San Simón is still very much alive in Galicia. The civil war is as well. Many pages of history and literature have been devoted to the war and its horrors. Amanda, as informed as she was about some things, was not up on her Iberian history, and Lavinia found she was becoming impatient, even short tempered with people who couldn’t be bothered with learning things about the places they went. Tourists just wanted good food and good weather. Better to stay home, save the money, order pizza, and just read about things on the internet. Amandas of the world, stay home.

The play has shown Lavinia, yet again, that the past is never really past in places like Galicia. It is just another huge room, maybe an attic or a basement, that holds things lived, lives lost, places seen and ruined. Compare that to putting up a plain stone monument on a town square, with a plaque engraved using the tiniest letters. Passersby had to get up really close, maybe five inches away, to read the plaques in most park monuments in the States. 

Lavinia could not get over the difference between carefully engineered statues of plain marble and the ones that, unplanned and sometimes unwanted, that one found all over Galicia. Like this one on San Simón. Nothing she had seen in New England could compare with standing on the shore of the ría de Vigo, the estuary of the largest city in the four provinces, and contemplating the monument to the slaughter of good people. 

She was learning the reason for that. Every day she was discovering the layers and layers of time in this part of the world, none of which had been erased. Perhaps that is because, Lavinia muses, the history of the buildings always included their other uses. In the case of the little constructions that had served first as a medieval monastery, then as a leper colony, and then as an orphanage. San Simón had also been home to the lauded troubador Meendinho, known for a single poem from the thirteenth century:

Sediam'eu na ermida de San Simón

e cercaronm'as ondas, que grandes son,

eu atendend'o meu amigo,

eu atendendo'o meu amigo...

I was sitting at the shrine of San Simeon

And the waves surrounded me, how high they were,

I was waiting for my friend,

I was waiting for my friend.

There was even some connection with Jules Verne’s work Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, something about the galleons that were wrecked in the area. There was even its classification as cultural interest asset by UNESCO. The things people knew about the site were many, but we’ll stop there.

What the audience that attended the play had not known, because the actors had been holding a dialogue in the best retranca style imaginable, was the play’s title. The title could only be discovered as they left the Teatro Valle-Inclán and a small piece of paper was pressed into one hand of the attendees.

The play was called “The Last Supper.’

Although there had been no supper and not even a glass of wine. 

Although the friends had not been in the María Pita bar they all knew so well.

They had gorged themselves on retranca, knowing they would never get the chance to do it again.

Maloserá que esquezamos. [Gloss: We will never forget.]