Just recently, I came across the play After the Rain (Després de la Pluja) by Sergi Belbel. It was lying on the desk in the office of our little theatre. Bored and having run out of something to do, I grabbed the three essential Cs – a chair, a cigarette, a coffee – and started reading.
Employees meet on the roof of their company’s tall building to enjoy their at-work cigarette. The sky is leaden, it has not rained in years. Smoking is prohibited – almost everywhere – and so it has become a vice to be given in to secretly. Every so often, the staff’s clandestine pleasure is disrupted by others stepping outside, others who have come to relish in the blue smoke as well – a fact unknown to those now hurriedly hiding the evidence of their trespass. In time, however, the word spreads and the secret order of smokers gets to know, hate, love, fancy, fuck each other. Everything – the leaden skies, their antipathies, their affections, their secrecy, their fear of being given away – is a further strain on their already frayed nerves. Everyone is on edge. Ready to blow his top. Anytime. No release, but the cigarettes. No release, but the smoke. No release.
Forceful. Cruel. Enticing. Nothing stays as it is, and in the end nothing is in its right place. Fighting, bitching, fucking, meditating, mourning, their lives go the dogs. The is no up, down, left, right, wrong, or centre. And then comes the rain.
And after the rain, I was left with a strange feeling in my guts and a page titled Epilogue. Otherwise empty. Simply
Epilogue
I turned. Another otherwise blank page but for
(The Sun.)
Two words. But two words. And yet... Once I can put it into writing, I will.
