Sophia: an opera in installments
Composed and performed by Ishmael Wallace
Today’s installment is Episode 14; as it represents a culmination, I include below the entire text thus far.
Episode 1
Scene: the consulting room of Sophia’s analyst, Küsnacht, Switzerland
Sophia:
It is nonsense, I know, but every night I hear
Something knocking at the door.
Episode 2
Sophia:
It is nonsense, I know, but as I walk in the Park,
Something is knocking underground.
Episode 3
Sophia:
As I left my hotel, a man was there.
He sat by the fountain in a folding chair,
On his head, a red beret,
On his neck, a scar.
Episode 4
Sophia:
As I look in the tray,
I see, reflected in its surface,
A face not my own.
Episode 5
Sophia:
At the border, the guard steps from his hut.
As I hand him my papers, I wonder,
Is it true that I am what the papers say?
Is it true I was born and will die?
Episode 6
Sophia:
My papers say I was born in Dubai,
But that, I don’t remember.
All I know is international schools
And Swiss hotels.
Episode 7
Sophia:
That man by the fountain in the red beret
Sprang up like a mushroom from the ground.
Something is going on underground.
Episode 8
Sophia:
There is darkness and there is light;I can live because I don’t look at the dark.
There is life and there is death;
I can live because the dead stay in the earth.
Episode 9
Sophia:
When I go shopping, I go in disguise,
One day a Goth, the next a girly-girl.
I don’t want anyone to see me as I am.
Episode 10
Sophia:
The king is feasting in his hall.
A finger writes upon the wall.
A mouse runs across the floor.
The mouse knows nothing of the king,
Knows nothing of his destiny:
She only wants to explore.
Episode 11
Sophia:
Where the condos stand around like long-legged girls,
A little house persists;
A lady lives there with her maid and driver.
I wonder what it would be like to have a house.
Episode 12
Chorus:
The man in the red beret has killed, I know,
And one day, will again.
He should be underground, but was buried
In too shallow a grave.
Like José Antonio, he is present;
Like Philomela, with tongue cut out, he still can speak.
Episode 13
Chorus:
The world of the singer is a pool of light;
What is not in the light, she cannot see.
The world of the chick is an oval egg;
God forbid that it should break!
Episode 14
Sophia:
I know little of my father, less of my mum;
They disappeared soon after I was born,
Somewhere in the sand outside Dubai.
They had met in Buenos Aires, she from Germany, he from Spain.
Perhaps it’s for the best I never knew them;
My father fought for Franco.
I have his picture, with a gun, in a red beret.
Sophia’s Analyst:
My dear, last night I had a dream:
You were standing with a banner; all around you, men in red berets.
Carlist Requetés, San Sebastián, 1936. Photograph by Pascual Marín (1893–1959)
Original title: Entrada de las tropas nacionales en San Sebastián (43/54)
Episode 14 Audio: