ALFREDO AFONSO FERREIRA

Born: 1963, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Raised: Vancouver, Canada
Living: Tokyo, Japan
Alfredo published a sketch of this short oratorio play in Barscheit, out of Vancouver, in 1990, and is currently working on (and collecting ideas for) a video adaptation. He also paints and acts, appearing in the 2002 film Yesman/Noman/More Yesman, a Japanese language adaptation of Brecht’s He Who Said Yes/ He Who Said No by director Hiroyuki Matsumura.

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A VISIT BY THE MOUSE

Mouse: This Mouse has been sent, sold away, left behind during a vacation. Now I sniff my way back to my buried toys and spirit that bred my success. No screens or castles here. These tightly knit families wear each other warmly along the street. How reviving, to enter the Main Street of my youth and yet be here, on sidewalks of regulation gauge.

Boy: Grandmother, where is you apron? And how is that your dress is black? Where are the flowers, the little flowers in a pattern that I can follow? After I pick out the first flower, notice its petals and leaves, I ask if there is an order to our attachments. And then I notice the colour of the seedling things which I don't like. From there, I make out this flower that catches my eye is blue and yellow, that it must be the special one, that without my glance it would be lonesome and boring, touching only the other flowers with the tips of its leaves. I confess, grandmother, that I hope you'll get a rocking chair and pray that you wouldn't get sick on it. You can have a rocking chair, if one should come along. You see that dark haziness? That's the Mouse. He came along, you see, and I wished it. I wished it for your sake, grandma, or who knows where we'd still be. There. He is my gift.

Mouse: This is sitting by the fire with grandma. Leave the car behind, young mouse, and find the eagerness that sits around you. Oh! These faces are eager, but already knowing: when the sit around me they'll be surprized by the darkness of my felt ears; they'll recall their ancestors and note my ears; they'll look for gimmicks and breathing holes, ask, "How does he see?" and watch my mouth open and close, always smiling. "How can he be standing with my mother," the boy will ask, "and also be in my head? I close my eyes and a background of green hills repeats itself as that Mouse romps across the inside of my face." "I want more than this tall mask gesturing, more than this felt man careful of his ears and his cuffs as they brush the doorway," the woman will say, "because my husband refinished the molding and I can only find happiness in landscapes that are green and repetitious."

Woman: He is here. The children aren't screaming, and my parents stare from their frames. I will appear to him slowly, that we group evenly, moving along steadily with improvements. Along the coffee table to the new mantle, turning at the lamp, and with the sectional, turning out passing the screen door, turning through the windows and into mice with so much to build, like the protection of friends in the face of danger, anything, while he is here with us. But in the near future great wooden ducks appear on the horizon. They cannot be co-opted, they must be exalted. And on the lawn, exalted, He also arrives: the war is over. If now I'm in the washroom in front of the mirror, in the future I will proclaim peace as witnessed by the Mouse, before my family. "Here it is," I'll say. They are sitting semi-circle on the sectional. Posters have been signed. I won't forget mine is in my hand. Roll it up and I point with conviction as I speak of our peace, to my mother's glass swans, to my family, my people. Like me, they believe in harmony: "The Mouse is here with us in America." A moment of silence. We're a solid group. Even the children are quiet, but they are alert and will recall for generations, "The Mouse is here with us in America."

Mouse: Is there danger? I am a man who can at least feed himself. My only natural enemies are the predictable foibles of my freedom. I consume myself and that's the only danger. I don't need to sniff at the air to survive. Watch me thrive as careless as fire. This house is a forest in flames. Beyond it, all is darkness and conjecture. Until I go to work.

Woman: He's adorable.

Boy: They love him!

Mouse: Love me, yes, and lead that committee. But it's not easy: for how long, for how many hours? Where am I when you love me most? My love goes to the child playing in the yard. I like a yard like that one, strewn with the heavy equipment of his imagination.

Boy: Would you rather we just not talk? I would. The sky dragged away the clouds today: that was my gift.

Mouse: I'll close my eyes and see the leopard's eyes. The person I was most scared of is the person I'm becoming. The leopard is here. And so it appears to me, a leopard. These are my eyes now. I can see with them now, even in the dark. I lie on a branch and lick my paws knowing what I've learned. We can talk about what is seen and felt, but as I lick my paws and feel the wind draw the moisture from them, I realize that we relate more, we reflect more, we dream more.

Woman: He tells a story. We float away, but soon my finger will find between the cushions a sign of humiliation which they will explore indefinitely, even amongst the same crumbs and pennies. And away we go, but separately. My son will listen eagerly and fall into flattery and chuckling. But I have begun to spiral away smoothly. Only after launching do I see that I'm gone. The story is over. Is that a sign of emptiness? Wait, no, there's more here: tea, soft drinks, cake and straws and lacey, unbreakable china.

Boy: We hold hands at this time. My father carries a ledger of good and bad that he opens, proclaiming things are mostly bad. Tea with the Mouse is bad, and where's Dad, shouting "Everything is provided and still nothing grows!" That is my signal to rehearse my most embarrassing moments and fantasize the worst possible things. Then I can rest.

Mouse: More than a mouse, more than a man, I am a mouse with credentials. They are love letters that arrive daily. In them an empire is signed truly, signed with dedication, to me. Yet, they are signed on far away tables, I receive them days after the feeling, and I am alone.

Boy: I am the first to settle the problem of the yard. So much space and only a few explorers. No families. Most often, it is a forest where every imperfection has a hundred possibilities, each full of danger. The smooth mound is a struggle to climb; the hedge has spiders and cannibals; these strange flowers will wrap themselves around your ankles and drag you into the earth. But God is with us, except in our heads. We're most vulnerable when we start laughing. The fence is home, and you have to say, "I'm safe, I have all my enemies here with me."

Woman: In His presence, we huddle so close, yet, we credit each other with glances and barely touch. Any more of this and we'll never be the same. There will soon be ticklings on the skin of the spirit. Today this, tomorrow something else.

Boy: I feel an acceleration of movements and of sounds, like when things get broken during play, we spin forever. More turning: the longer I go in one direction, the more I feel the need to take another. But it's a constant turning now. When I think that this is here, I put it here, and I'm here, and when the Mouse comes to tea, I'm this way, I keep turning like water in a whirl.

Mouse: My childhood dream has begun and I'm tired. Main Street is bustling as its tiny perfections sparkle everywhere. All this magic has been mine. I bless these people and yet, I'm sleepy. Something here has not been touched: the Boy. He doesn't understand these welcoming gestures. He imagines my ears as great holes in the sky. He's looking for my dick. Now he looks at his mother and wonders why she let me in. He likes a yard full of rises and falls. He wants to tumble and gasp for air when he laughs: "So who is this felt man, Mom?" The boys next door understand about dodging the hose, about dolls needing a rest and only stealing what they must. The boy floats from here to there and wearies my magic. I'm sleepy but I'll stay awake to watch.

Woman: I turn to the flower pots on the window sill and ask why in such a large country I can't breathe deeply without risking misfortune to my husband's work. I met the visitor at the front door, and it's a discouraging waste, and see, my breath fails.

Boy: This house and everything in it stands on a hill. We put it on the ledge. Every morning we look past the curtain fringes and ask if by force of wind or by our own frailty we will fall from the rock, if we are sent along with our smells, our hand-peeled oranges and grandmother in black crashing to the forest below. Will we rise then? I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk: I am short and hairy.

Woman: Every morning, just a gasp and thank God.

Boy: I have to run, flee from things that have odours, anything from those cupboards, the house at dinner, the warm air leaking from my parents. Everything inside is too hot. I'm certain that the Mouse is cooking inside himself. Where is he?

Woman: He lives to please others so he is lost. Where are you Mousey? He lives to please others so he's lost himself. And our love letters, they're lost too. Where are you Mouse, and where is my husband?

Mouse: I stop walking when I see two cars moving towards each other, then I make sure I'm not seen absorbing the impact. Otherwise I am a laboratory animal. But I shouldn't be cut. I'm a crazy mouse not fit for their questions. The truth will be lost. I'm no animal, I don't need to sniff at the air to survive!

Woman: From here I could almost line up that curtain rod and the hook for the macramé, causing the roof to blow right off this house and the sparrows to signal that we could, like mice on vacation, breathe American air. My life has highs and lows which I draw together and call "The Mouse goes on without me." But wait, he is sad now and thinks. No he's dying. I feel his weight. His head tilts and sweet air is leaking into the house from his neck, and finds me. Now I can dance, and we hear singing

the Mouse went on
let him go
this visit was his last
as the immortal Mousey
'cause we changed our minds
about that felt hide.