Professional Documents
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Ethical
Ethical
FLORENTINO (SCRIPT)
Time: Afternoon
Scene: The interior of a squalid dwelling located on the edge of a cemetery in Manila. The walls and
roof—made of empty fruit boxes, tarpaulin, bamboo, and cardboard patched together—threaten to
collapse any minute. A door, upstage left, leads to the outside and another, right, to the kitchen. Upstage
center is a small window. At right corner is a cot placed diagonally across the room. Two fruit boxes,
standing on their sides, serves as seats, and another, flat on ground, serves as a table where an oil lamp
gives off the only light in the semi-darkness.
(Torio is lying on the cot, a manta blanket covering him to the waist. He is around 28 years old, with a
square jaw and well-developed body. He is sick, his eyes being closed as if in sleep.)
(Carding, a frail-bodied, slow-moving man, in dirty pants and T-shirt, enters. He crosses to taps him in
the shoulder.)
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Carding: (as Torio seems to wake up) Were you asleep, Torio?
Carding: (still standing) So you’ve been sick. I didn’t know it until Marina told me.
Torio: Damn that woman! So she insisted on seeing you. I told her not to bother you!
Carding: Oh….it isn’t any bother at all, Torio. I was even chiding her for not letting me know right away.
(Takes a seat at foot of cot) She was so excited when she showed up, at first I thought you were dead or
dying!
Torio: Don’t you let that woman alarm you again! There’s not a time when she doesn’t worry about
something. Sometimes, I even think she worries about what will worry her next! tries to laugh but end up
coughing)
Carding: But she has reason to be worried. You look very sick.
Carding: (leans forward and feels Torio’s temperature) Your whole body is on fire! How did you get that
fever?
Torio: I don’t know. I guess it’s the tiny wound on my foot. (exposes his right foot, bandaged in dirty
rags)
Carding: Maybe you didn’t go to the dispensary as I told you. It’s nothing serious. (pulls his foot under
the blanket)
Carding: Nothing serious! If it can put a man of your size and strength to bed, it is something serious!
But you need not worry. I sent Marina to the dispensary.
Torio: Are you dreaming? Do you think the doctor will come when we have no money to pay him?
Carding: But you don’t have to pay him anything. He’s the public doctor. He’ll treat you for free.
Torio: Maybe if I got there. But do you think he’ll take the trouble of coming to me? What do you think I
am, a congressman?
Carding: He must come. He’s paid to take care of the sick…wherever they are.
Torio: But will he come? Hell, no! (Mumbles to himself) Nobody comes to me… no body. Not even those
firemen…they did not come…
Torio: (with bitterness) do you remember the house we had before this that was burned to the ground?
Torio: When it was burning, did the firemen come to put the fire out? No! Oh, yes, the came—but only
up to there! (points through the window) When they found out it was only my house burning, they drove
away, pretending it was only a grass fire they saw…Now, why would they do that? Don’t I deserve to be
treated like any other citizen?
Carding: (jocosely) maybe they found out that you never once brought a cedula! (Laughs; rises and
paces about) Oh, Torio….try to forget that. Thinking about it will not make you feel any better.
Torio: Could you forget it if everything you had in the world went up in flames? I can’t forget that. I’ll
remember that to my dying day.
Carding: (pauses at the door, looks out, and turns around) Torio…why don’t you move out of this
cemetery? Maybe it’s the place that brings you bad luck. Why don’t you out up a house somewhere else?
Anywhere but here… You live all alone here.. among all these dead…
Torio: (continues to mumble to himself) Maybe, just because we live here with the dead, people think
we’re as good as dead…
Carding: (walks to foot of cot: tires to divert his thoughts..) If the doctor does not come, Torio, we’ll
move you to the hospital.
Carding: So what if it’s a free ward? You know very well we cannot afford to be choosy.
Torio: I was there once. Do you know how they treat you there? They will neglect you until you’re on
the brink of death. Then they send young doctors to practice on you… . Not for anything in the world
would I go there again.
Carding: (sits down and leans forward) Look, don’t you want some pretty nurses hovering about you like
butterflies? Oh, how I wish I would get sick just to be bear them. I would hate to get well.
Torio: Don’t try that kind of talk to me; I won’t fall for it. I won’t let those nurses or anybody else touch
me…If I’ll die, I’ll die in spite of all the doctors and pretty nurses in the world.
Carding: (rises and walks a little) My God, you should be in the hospital now…and not here, arguing
with me.
Torio: You’ve got a chicken’s heart. You’re just like my wife. I get a tiny wound and a little fever…and
she thinks I’m dying. Can you imagine me dying of a tiny wound like this (puts out his foot)—at this age
and with this body? During the Japanese Occupation I had a bayonet wound that deep. (demonstrates
with his fingers) Does it look as if I died of it? Is this a dead man’s ghost you’re talking to?
Carding: (looking out the window) We’re never sure of our fate, Torio. Strange things happen to us
when we least expect them.
Torio: I’ll bet you, in a few days I’ll be well and strong. Then we will continue our work. We’ll make up
for the time we lost since I got sick. You haven’t tried doing it alone have you?
Torio: It’s all right. I know you couldn’t do it. Not alone. You need me…But don’t get impatient. I’ll get
well sooner than you expect.
Torio: But why? Have you found an easier way of making a living?
Carding: I’m frightened, Torio. See what happened to you. Suppose it happened to me? I’m not even
half as healthy as you are.
Torio: Oh! So this little wound had you really scared huh? Why, it’s only a scratch! It did not even bleed
a drop.
Carding: You know what old folks say about those accidents!
Carding: They say…if one gets wounded—or even only scratched—by the bones of the dead….he will
die.
Carding: Of course!
Torio: (laughs) You’re just a child. Besides, it was an accident! A corpse did not rise from his tomb to
plunge one of his ribs into my foot! Nothing like that happened….so there’s nothing to be scared of!
Carding: Even then. You got that wound in a cemetery…(leans toward him) Torio. Let’s not offend the
dead any more. It’s so frightening. You’ll never know what they’ll do to punish us.
Torio: What can they do except haunt us? And who is scared of ghosts?
Carding: I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since we started that thing. It’s seems so mean and
ugly—just like stealing candy from an innocent baby.
Torio: Carding, if you start being sentimental in this world, you’ll starve to death.
(Marina enters, a plain woman of 25 or 26, sloppily dressed in a formless, tunic-like gray dress.)
Torio: (with a cynical triumph) See! I told you so I would have died in surprise if he came!
Marina: No, he was not. (feels Torio’s temperature) Your temperature is still rising.
Torio: Who says I can’t even sit up? I can! (tries to sit up as Marina cries out: “Don’t!” but he fails.) I
know I can… if I really try.
Torio: The doctor’s afraid that, instead of paying him, I would beg from him. If he came, I would have
really begged from him. (laughs)
Torio: You’re both afraid I might die. For all you know, I might outlive both of you. (smiles and starts
murmuring to himself)
Marina: (crosses to Carding downstage; speaks low) Listen to him. I’m afraid the fever has touched his
brain.
Torio: (notices them conversing) Hey! What are you two doing there…whispering like two lovebirds?
Carding: (loud enough for Torio to hear) You’d better go down to the street and get a jeep.
Torio: What do you want a jeep for? (sarcastic) Are you two eloping? Can’t you wait ‘till I’m dead?
Torio: But I don’t want it, I don’t need it! Don’t tell me I can’t refuse anything for myself.
Carding: Torio, listen to me. Be reasonable. You’re sick. If you refuse to go, we’ll drag you if we have
to.
Torio: Just try, Carding….just try! I’ll fight you with my last strength!
Carding: Torio—
Torio: Carding: you’re my friend. Don’t do anything I hate. And don’t worry, I’m in my right senses.
Carding: (irked) All right, all right, I won’t insist! (Sits down)
Torio: That’s not a silly question! Why should you worry that I might die? Haven’t you always wanted me
to die?
Marina: Torio!
Torio: You were never really happy with me, were you? I know you’ve grown tired of me.
Torio: So if you think I’m going to die, don’t take this all trouble of pretending you don’t want it to
happen. Just let me alone to die. This could be your chance to get rid of me and take another man.
Carding, for instance—
Marina: Torio!
Torio: Carding hasn’t taken a wife yet. And he’s quite a man too. Even before I’m dead and gone, he has
started to lay his hands on you—
Marina: Torio! He’s our only friend and you dare speak of him like that! (to Carding) Carding, you must
forgive him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
Torio: See? I’m not yet dead and you have taken his side against me!
Marina: Torio—
Torio: Do you think he can take care of you as I have been doing? He cannot even earn enough money
to support himself. He cannot take over our business when I get sick—
Torio: how much more if he had you take care of? He’d starve you to death.
Torio: So I’m mad huh? (to Marina) I’ll tell you what kind of business we have.
Carding; Torio!
Torio: It’s a business that requires no capital. All you need is a good, strong stomach—
Torio: (pushing him off) Why? Are you ashamed to let others know that the dead have been supporting
you all along?
Torio: really? (to Marina) Do you want to know where the money I bought home came from? Do you
believe I really earned it by breaking my back at the waterfront? I’ve fooled you so well you never
suspected, did you?
Torio: I robbed the dead people around us… (Carding, exasperated, sites at doorway and looks out)
Torio: I was one of those who force open the graves in the cemetery.
Marina: (hardly able to speak) And you stole from them? And you…sold what you found?
Torio: Yes! Why not? Rich people are always being buried with something valuable on them. Rings,
earrings, necklaces—even gold teeth! Why let such treasures rot under the ground…while above that
ground people like us are starving!
Torio: But I did! You can ask Carding. He was with me all the time. At first he was scared to death.—He
would tremble and perspire—but later on—
Torio: But he had to—because he had to eat—even from a dead man’s hand. When he tries to rob the
living, he always get caught. He’s too slow for them. But with the dead, once he got used to it, it was so
easy. The dead do not report to the police, they don’t fight back, they don’t even scream!
Marina: Stop it! How horrible! I can’t stand it! (sits down) Oh…the poor sacred dead…
Marina: (almost crying) Torio…we had nowhere to go, we moved into their place. We erected this house
on their land. They did not complain, they did not call us “squatters”, they did not drive us away. And
what did you do in return, what!
Marina: Hate them? What did they do to you? Did they ever try to harm you?
Torio: (pointing through the window) Look at them! Doesn’t that sight infuriate you? Look! Nothing
worries them. They lie there day and night, sleeping like babies, mocking our sufferings…
Carding: (at doorway) Marina, stop listening to him…if you want to keep sane. He used to tell me that
over and over again. Maybe that’s why he made me do what he did.
Torio: One night, as I was coming home, A strong rain overtook me. I ran for shelter to the nearest
tomb, that one near the road, belonging to a dead millionaire. It was so beautiful. It looked more like a
palace than a place for a dead. It had thick marble walls and a roof and festive lights. Inside it was a
dead body in a coffin. It was dry in the rain and comfortable even in death. Why should that dead
merchant have marble walls and a roof to protect him from the rain, while I was outside, soaked to the
bone and shivering, waiting to go home, to a dark, dank place, with a cardboard roof that leaks even in
the lightest rain! Why? He’s dead and I’m alive! I have more right to the things wasted on him, don’t you
think so? Don’t you think we need thick walls more than the dead?
Marina: it was God who saw you Torio. He keeps eternal watch over the dead.
Torio: Why should God keep watch over the dead? Why not you and me who are still alive?
Marina: Oh…what you did is a horrible sacrilege! If you die, heaven will surely not receive your
soul…Yes, if you die, even hell would refuse your damned soul!
Torio: (mad) Why do you always say “if you die” “if you die”? Do you really want me to die?
Torio: (vehemently) You really want to get rid of me, don’t you? (Marina, throughout, tries to
interrupt—in vain) Now I see that you two have been waiting for me to die so you could live together!
Maybe a little wound like this can put me into bed. You’re praying—praying that I will die. But I’ll
disappoint you both! I will live on and on if only to punish you by denying you the chance to live
together! I’m still young! I have hundred years before me! Not all the dead in the world can drag me to
the grave! (his raving rises in pitch) I dare them! Yes, I dare all the dead whom I offended to take me!
(raving mad, shouts through the window) Take me if you can! I despise all of you! Oh, that you were all
alive now and suffering in life! (suddenly collapses).
Carding: (at Torio’s side) Torio! (to Marina) Get some water quick! (Marina gets water as Carding tries
to revive him. Then makes him drink.)
Torio: (he comes to, sees Marina and speaks between gasps) I’m all right…They cannot take me…I’m
not willing to go yet. (looks around blindly) Where’s Carding? Has he gone?
Torio: I thought…. you had left… You are not mad at me…are you?
Carding: You don’t have to explain. I understand very well. Try not to talk…you need rest.
Torio: Yes, I feel tired…You two talk together…I’ll take a short nap… (to Marina) Wake me up when he’s
ready to leave, Marina…
(Torio closes his eyes; suddenly his head and his arm fall over the edge of the cot)
Marina: (screams, shaking him) Torio! Wake up, Torio! Wake up! (flings her body on him and cries over
the body for a time; later, Carding pulls her away and covers the body as Marina, now calmed, watches.)
-CURTAIN-