Background: Telenovelas are Spanish TV dramas. Like TV dramas worldwide, they involve over-reactions, uncomfortable eye contact, and tons of assumptions.
One morning, I woke up inside an episode…
Scene 1: The arrival
I hear the front door click. A small patch of light falls onto the floor. It’s barely sunrise.
A slender silhouette sways in the kitchen.
It’s a young man in jeans and a black puffy coat. I’d never seen him before.
“Maria, donde esta?” Maria, where is she? He demands without niceties.
There’s no “Good morning stranger, sorry to wake you. Have you seen Maria?”
Just “Tell me now.”
I was sleeping in the living room across from Keith, a burly New Zealand friend.
“No se, no esta aca,” I don’t know, she’s not here. Who is this guy?
Part of me hoped he’d leave, but by the way his eyes and whole body twitched, he seemed pretty revved up.
He jabs his finger in my direction.
“You were with her last night… she went home… in her room… you know!” I catch a few words.
Rapid fire, angry Chilean Spanish bounces off of my brain. A second language, especially this dialect, is hard enough to process first thing in the morning — even more so before coffee.
“She wasn’t with us and she’s not here now,” I say.
Scene 2: The search
He smirks with wild eyes. He’s caught me in a lie.
As if to prove it, he cuts across the room to her door and throws it open.
Silence. No one is there.
“La verdad! La verdad!” The truth, the truth! Now, he’s yelling at me.
“Hey, she’s not here OK?” Keith stands up. His Spanish and height are a level above my own.
The young man’s eyes dart back and forth, from me to Keith to me to Keith.
In a fast swoop, he snatches a black backpack out of her room and storms from the house. He flings the door and gate open without closing them.
They bounce on their hinges.
“Well, I guess we’ll have a story for Claudia,” I say. We’re staying with Maria’s roommate but honestly had not spent two minutes with Maria herself.
Scene 3: Not as they seem
I make coffee in case of any future attacks in Chilean Spanish, and sit outside in the yard with the llamas. Llamas make anything better, but one of them seems… different.
There’s an impostor! A sheep has infiltrated the llama gang today. Or, perhaps it’s a llama in sheep’s clothing.
Out the corner of my eye I catch movement across the field. Leaning out from behind the property owner’s house — it’s the guy!
He appears to be hassling the owner who caught him trying to keep watch on Maria’s house.
I go back inside.
“Morning Claudia,” I tell give her the dramatic wake-up we’d had.
“Sorry that’s her ex. He parties all night and ends up here once in a while, desperate,” she says shaking her head.
Scene 4: Over it
Keith returns from the yard.
“That guy just threatened to steal all of our things the moment we leave,” he says.
“Also, he’s mouthing off to your landlady.”
A moment later an elderly, and quite unimpressed, woman is outside chatting with Claudia.
“We just moved in and it doesn’t look good on us. But, the landlady is on our side. She asked if she should let out her dogs,”
Claudia laughs and pours cereal into a bowl. She begins humming a song.
“Don’t worry about the ex. He’ll calm down and leave like always.”
Always? She seems more bored than bothered by the storyline.
For me, this was the most dramatic morning I’d had before coffee.
“La verdad! La verdad!” I’ll never forget the ex’s desperate outburst for “The truth!” Little did he know, he got it.
The whole show lasted about twenty minutes: the same as most TV dramas.
Sadly, we never see the landlady’s dogs chase the ex over the fence while he cries out at the sky “Maria! Maaaa-riiiiii-aaaaa!”
I guess he had to save something for the season finale.
END SCENE
