Fabio Pisano
HOSPES-ĪTIS
Italian Playwrights Project 3th edition (2020/22)
excerpt translated by Thomas Simpson
Hospes, -ĭtis
s.m. guest, stranger, non-expert, host.
BEGINNING
It’s all colors.
Usually these places are white.
Or at least, in the memory – of man? –
I remember them white.
I don’t remember if I have been a man
that could be.
To be i-r-r-e-l-e-v-a-n-t.
It can be.
But as far as I can recall these places,
I’ve always found them white.
White and then they end up,
they end up dirty right away but then,
why white?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Sniff sniff I don’t smell it, no.
I don’t even smell the typical odor.
What odor, I’d ask myself,
if I was talking to myself?
But the typical, typical odor.
Of hospital.
I fear it. I’m afraid. Fear of the odor.
Of hospital.
It’s an actual nasal regurgitation.
Of the olfactory receptors.
Of the brain, even the brain.
I don’t know if I ever had a brain.
But if I had one, it regurgitated that odor.
For sure.
I don’t disdain the abyss.
Nor the disease.
Nor the recovery.
Nor the pain.
Nor acute pain.
Not even the chronic pain.
I don’t design them. No.
What I disdain of all this,
is the odor. The odor imposes itself.
Like a South American dictator, it imposes itself.
And I cannot accept it.
No.
It isn’t among my habits if I ever had habits.
Habits are a diamond one doesn’t choose for oneself.
They assign us this here and we,
yes,
we who once were men hold it tight to ourselves.
No questions.
That diamond those habits,
are assigned and one doesn’t return,
one can’t return.
One can’t return and one cannot shatter.
They can’t shatter themselves.
We aren’t in a game or in a piece of theatre.
No.
This is life.
And it’s truly difficult, to habituate oneself to it.
To the odor of hospital,
then.
It’s like the odor of gas.
You either hate it or love it.
I hate it but I love the odor of gas.
I didn’t choose it.
I didn’t choose it.
I didn’t choose it.
Neither did I choose
The furnishings in the director’s room.
Factotum: I’m sinking into the armchair in the director’s room. I feel tired today.
Director: As though it were all on your shoulders, the weight of an entire year.
Factotum: Yes. That’s so true.
Director: I look out the window but I don’t see much. It’s because days like these bring on, yes, bring on a great sadness.
Factotum: Not that I’m very interested in the matter, but just so I can stay another two minutes in this chair that’s swallowing me whole in a rarefied farewell I ask you why
Director: Because the sense of indefiniteness sucks me down.
Factotum: Exactly what sucks you down? I don’t understand.
Director: You don’t understand because you’re not paying attention at all.
Factotum: That’s so true.
Director: The grayish color of the sky sucks me down. And of the earth. When I can’t find a border, I get depressed
Factotum: Borders are depressing.
Director: Depends on who designs them.
The body becomes map,
A geo/graphic hiero/glyphic,
geriatro/depressing, trace.
There are jagged confines,
extended territories,
territories there is silence there is flatness
spreading terrain,
that you can’t see the end of,
in some bodies,
when one goes beyond the threshholds,
of the signs and the disdains.
The disdains are one of the principle ruins.
Un archetipo della fine.
Un archetipo di indizio.
Che porta al nulla.
Director: I sigh.
Factotum: You sigh. You’ve been sighing for days. Is something wrong?
Director: Are you a doctor?
Factotum: No.
Director: Are you a father?
Factotum: I hesitate, then no.
Director: Then everything’s fine.
