Ivana Sajko

RIO BAR

8 Monologues on War for Eight Actresses in Wedding Gowns

(2006)

 

 

2. MONOLOGUE

Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. No no no I won’t run. No no no that’s not the way I try to survive in these situations; you have the advantage, you caught me off guard, and now you’re standing in front of me with a loaded Kalashnikov M.70, 7.62 calibre machine-gun and a heap of spare ammunition.
Just take aim – I’m calm. Go ahead, point blank. At my forehead, between the eyes, between the breasts, at my back, at the back of my head – wherever you want, because I know you won’t shoot. I’m not yelling, not wailing, not threatening. When I tell you not to shoot, I’m in fact seducing you.
Don’t shoot, because I have nothing to do with this. The war began on my wedding night, and if there are still any pure and innocent people in this shit, I’m among them. Unblemished. Unarmed. I give up. Don’t shoot, I’m telling you, don’t shoot because I’m looking at you innocently, with absolute trust. I’m wagging my tail, licking your hand, and bringing you your slippers in my mouth. Like a dog, I’m glad to see you; you’re glad to see your loyal pet. You’ll put on those slippers, pat my head, and no bloody rifle will help you, because you’ll fall for the story of the forlorn bride, left at the altar. I’m even wearing the wedding gown with the embroidered flowers, five layers of tulle, the lace bodice, the pungent odour of fire under the skirt, and a Swiss army knife hidden in its romantic flounces, the knife hiding in panic like an ace up my sleeve, and I’m willing to play it. But you’re not looking at my hands, you’re fixated by my pupils, that pair of little limpid pools; you see only a slimy stare, as guileless as a field of wildflowers. You’re letting me blink and shed a tear, a huge tear that will rain all the way down to my lips, trickling all the way down to this wet and warm whisper: don't shoot.
You're being seduced by my calf-like meekness. I’m slimmer than the weapon you’re holding. I’m tinier than the bullet you plan to put in me. I’m not biting, I’m not struggling, I’m whispering sweet nothings, cooing, and embracing you with my white wing. Don’t shoot, I’m the dove of peace; it was hunger that forced me to eat the olives, together with the branch.
You haven’t been this calm and relaxed in a long time. Even now, as you take dead aim at me, you imagine yourself in charge of your own life again. You see yourself coming home after a rough day at work, putting on your slippers, and sinking into your armchair. You could press that unshaven cheek against these breasts, clad in a meadow of lace, and fall asleep… you gullible twat, I want to repeat.
Don’t shoot, I’m whispering, as if we’ve been acquaintances for years and years, certain that you’ll appreciate that gesture of femininity. Especially when I piss myself with fear, and when that small stream of ingratiating horror spatters the tops of your boots, in which you’re standing like a rock. Huge. Hard. Cold. Fucked by everything that’s happened to us, we couldn’t have imagined this in our wildest dreams; we could hibernate like this for years, without any hope of thawing out to fulfilment.
This isn’t happening, so don’t shoot, this isn’t happening, Jesus, help me, Jesus, tell me that this isn’t happening – this is not reality, just another unfortunate result of the propaganda machine. You’ve been told that I poured motor oil into your relatives’ mouths, and made them drink drink drink until their bulging eyeballs turned black. You’ve been told this is no exaggeration, you’ve been supplied with believable details: the oil came from the tractor, the tractor came from the mine field, and the mines came from my pantry (there is a whole arsenal of illicit arms in it), the same huge pantry in which you plan to dry my relatives’ innards, yes, you you you Mr. Warrior, because that’s what we’ve been told: they’ve sworn on the TV and radio that you make sausages with those guts, that you eat newborns like sarma and that you stuff minced baby meat back into their parents’ intestines. We’ve been shown pictures, horrible, hooorrible, and we both believed, we fell for it – shit. Or did we? Maybe we were just waiting for this lonely confrontation since we’re… we’re coping so well, and you have to admit that we are, given that conditions are so completely fucked and flambéed. You, hard as a rock, I, quivering like jelly.
I begin to make jokes at my own expense: it’s perfectly clear to me that you won’t shoot, but I’m still acting, and believe me, it’s a worthy performance. You’d probably applaud if you knew. As it is, you’re completely taken in; you can’t conceive of the little knife hidden in my dress and the cutting it’s about to do.
I shine in the role of a flower as delicate as the ones torn from my own gown; yet I can also play the part of a daisy with a wasp hiding under its petals. I’m simulating panic, fear, and desperation every day: when I’m staring down the barrel of your gun, at your mouth, at your eyes - looking straight into your pupils - they really but really ought to give me an Academy Award for this stare, I’m conjuring up the same panic, fear, and desperation NOW! Right now now now while I’m ramming the blade straight into your face, while I’m cutting your eyes out just as they’re widening with surprise, while I’m puncturing you with that knife faster than you’d puncture me with a machine-gun burst, while I’m sawing through your ears throat fingers cock and I’m whining and stabbing and wailing and gouging and puking and chopping and slicing and ploughing and screeeeeeeeeeaming, as the fillings in my teeth begin to sizzle from the bile that fills my mouth. I shouldn’t have been here.
I play a confused bride whose wedding-party is dispelled by a mortar attack, and her new husband is called up before she even gets a chance to bury her fingernails in his back. I play a woman down on her luck, and I am, and that’s why my anger is so convincing: because I want to get back to that wedding at any cost, I want to put on white gloves and lead the dance, wave the flowers under my bridesmaids’ noses, wrap my elbows drunkenly around my husband’s neck and whisper: yes, yes yes! I’ve already said YES to him, I’ve already promised him, and I won’t give up. I pretend I don’t believe this is truly happening, but it is – it’s true – here I am, with a bloody knife, crouching in the undergrowth among some broken bricks. I walk into the frame and wipe the blade on the hem of my wedding gown. Here I am, in the foreground, with no lines whatsoever; there are none in the script. This is a silent film. I’m playing the part of an abandoned woman who is searching for her groom when some plonker gets in her way, but she has to be at the church on time, she has to be happy and she has to be beautiful. She has to dance at that wedding, and she mustn’t stain her dress; she must be immaculate when she gets there, and she doesn’t know how she can manage that.
I know I’m in a bad movie, but I’m trying nevertheless.