India Song Read online

  The wire netting round a tennis court emerges from the darkness. Against the wire a woman's bicycle—red.

  The place is deserted.

  The voices recognize these things and are afraid:

  VOICE 1 (smothered exclamation of fear): The tennis courts, deserted . . .

  VOICE 2 (the same): . . . Anne-Marie Stretter's red bicycle . . .

  Silence.

  A man has come into the garden. Tall, thin, dressed in white. He walks slowly. His footsteps make no sound.

  He gazes around him at the stillness everywhere. Gazes for some time. Tries to see into the house: no one there.

  Now what is he looking at? We don't know at first. Then it becomes clear: he's looking at ANNE-MARIE STRETTER’s red bicycle by the deserted tennis courts.

  He goes over to the bicycle. Stops. Hesitates. Doesn't go any nearer. Looks, stares at it.

  (The voices are low, scared.)

  VOICE 2: . . . he comes every night . . .

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: The French Vice-consul in Lahore . . .

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  . . . in Calcutta in disgrace . . .

  Silence.

  Slowly, the man in white moves. He walks. He goes along a path. He goes away.

  Disappears.

  After he has disappeared, everything remains in suspense.

  Silence. Fear.

  The song of Savannakhet, in the distance, innocent.

  Then, two shots.

  The first makes the light go dim.

  The second makes it go out.

  Silence.

  Blackout.

  The song of Savannakhet stopped when the shots were fired. As if they had been aimed at it.

  Silence.

  Blackout.

  The voices are very quiet, terrified.

  VOICE 2: Someone fired a gun under the trees . . . on the banks of the Ganges . . .

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: It was a song of Savannakhet . . . ?

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  Silence.

  By a strictly symmetrical inversion, and without passing through any intermediate stages, the light becomes the same as it was when the first shot made it go dim.

  This stands for night.

  It is night.

  The place, the stage, is still empty.

  The only movement—that of the nightmare fan.

  Time passes over the empty place.

  Silence.

  A Hindu servant dressed in white goes by, passing through the drawing rooms of the French Embassy.

  He has gone. Emptiness again.

  Far away, the song of Savannakhet begins again: the BEGGAR WOMAN wasn't killed.

  The voices are still low, frightened.

  VOICE 1: . . . she's not dead . . .

  VOICE 2: Can't die.

  VOICE 1 (scarcely heard): No . . .

  Silence.

  VOICE 2: She goes hunting at night beside the Ganges. For food . . .

  No answer.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: Where's the one dressed in black?

  VOICE 2: Out. Every evening.

  She comes back when it's dark

  Silence.

  A servant enters, lights a lamp, very faint, in a corner of the room. Does various things.

  Goes away (but remains visible).

  Comes back.

  Opens a window.

  Perhaps he lights some sticks of incense against the mosquitoes—in which case the audience will be able to smell it.

  Empties ashtrays.

  VOICE 2: She's back.

  The Embassy's black Lancia has just come through the gates.

  Silence.

  The servant goes out.

  The place remains empty for a few more seconds, and then the woman in black enters the darkness. She is barefoot. Her hair is loose. She is wearing a short wrap of loose black cotton.

  The scene is very long and slow.

  Slowly she goes and stands under the nightmare fan. Stays there.

  Puts up her hands and thrusts her hair away from her body in a gesture of exhaustion—someone stifling from the heat. Then lets her arms fall down by her sides.

  Through the opening of the wrap, the white of the naked body.

  She freezes. Head thrown back. Gasping for air. Trying to escape out of the heat.

  Touching grace of the thin, fragile body.

  Stays like that, upright, exposed. Offered to the voices.

  (The voices are slow, stifled, a prey to desire—through this motionless body.)

  VOICE 2 (smothered outburst): How lovely you look dressed in white . . .

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: I'd like to go and visit the woman of the Ganges . . .

  Held pause.

  VOICE 1: . . . the white woman . . .

  VOICE 2 (pause): The one who . . . ?

  VOICE 1: Her . . .

  VOICE 2: . . . dead in the islands . . .

  VOICE 1: Eyes dead, blinded with light.

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  There under the stone.

  In a bend in the Ganges.

  Silence.

  Still motionless before us, the dead woman of the Ganges.

  The voices are a song so quiet it does not awaken her death.

  Apparently nothing changes, nothing happens. But suddenly, fear.

  VOICE 1 (low, frightened): What is it?

  No answer.

  VOICE 1 (as before): What time is it?

  VOICE 2 (pause): Four o'clock.

  Black night.

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: No one can sleep?

  VOICE 2: No.

  Silence.

  Tears on the woman's face.

  The features remain unmoving.

  She is weeping. Without suffering.

  A state of tears.

  The voices speak of the heat, they speak of desire—as if the voices were issuing from the weeping body.

  VOICE 1: The heat

  Impossible

  Terrible

  Pause.

  VOICE 2: Another storm . . .

  Approaching Bengal . . .

  VOICE 1 (pause): Coming from the islands . . .

  VOICE 2 (pause): The estuaries.

  Inexhaustible . . .

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: What's that sound?

  VOICE 2 (pause): Her weeping.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: Doesn't suffer, does she . . . ?

  VOICE 2: She neither.

  A leper, of the heart.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: Can't bear it . . . ?

  VOICE 2: No.

  Can't bear it.

  Can't bear India.

  Silence.

  A man enters through the door on the left. He too is wearing a black wrap.

  He halts, looks at her.

  Then slowly goes over to her, a statue in her tears, under the fan, asleep.

  He looks at her—asleep standing up. Goes right up to her.

  Passes lightly over her face a hand outspread in a caress. Takes his hand away, looks at it: it is wet from the tears.

  VOICE 2 (very low): She's asleep.

  With infinite precaution, the man takes up the weeping woman and lays her down on the floor.

  He's the man we have already seen, the man she danced with at the dance in S. Thala: MICHAEL RICHARDSON.

  He sits down beside the outstretched body.

  Looks at it.

  Uncovers the body so that it is better exposed to the cool—imaginary—from the fan.

  Strokes her forehead. Wipes away the tears, the sweat. Caresses the sleeping body.

  Doesn't go close. Stays there watching over her sleep.

  The voices slow down to the rhythm of the man's movements, taking up again in a sort of sung complaint the themes adjacent to the main story.

  VOICE 1: He loved her more than anything in the world.

  VOICE 2 (pause): More even than that . . .

  Silence.


  VOICE 2 spoke as if of its own love.

  VOICE 1: Where was the girl from S. Thala?

  No answer.

  VOICE 1 (as if reading): “From behind the indoor plants in the bar, she watches them. (Pause.) It was only at dawn . . . (Stops.) . . . when the lovers were going toward the door of the ballroom that Lola Valérie Stein uttered a cry.”

  Silence.

  In the distance, a regular cry in Hindustani. Someone selling something again.

  It stops.

  Quiet.

  VOICE 2: At four in the morning, sometimes, sleep comes.

  Silence.

  The lover is still beside the sleeping body.

  He looks at it.

  Takes the hands, touches them. Looks at them.

  They fall back, dead.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: She never got over it, the girl from S. Thala?

  VOICE 2: Never.

  VOICE 1: They didn't hear her cry out?

  VOICE 2: No.

  Couldn't hear any more.

  Couldn't see.

  Pause.

  VOICE (pause): They abandoned her? (Pause.) Killed her?

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: And with this crime behind them . . .

  VOICE 2 (scarcely heard): Yes.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: What did the girl from S. Thala want?

  VOICE 2: To go with them

  See them

  The lovers of the Ganges: to see them.

  Silence.

  That is what we are doing: seeing.

  Slowly the man lies down beside the sleeping body. His hand goes on caressing the face, the body.

  Far away, distant sounds, oars, water. Then laughter, a zither, fading in the distance.

  Then it stops.

  VOICE 2: Listen . . .

  Ganges fishermen . . .

  Musicians . . .

  Silence again.

  The voices speak of the heat again. Of their desire.

  VOICE 2 (very slow): What darkness

  What heat

  Unmitigated

  Deathly

  Silence.

  A voice that is clear, implacable, terrifying:

  VOICE 2:I love you with a desire that is absolute.

  No answer.

  Silence.

  The hand of MICHAEL RICHARDSON—the lover—immediately stops caressing the body, as if arrested by what VOICE 2 has just said.

  It lies there where it is on the body.

  Silence.

  A second man enters the room. He stands in the doorway for a moment, looking at the lovers.

  MICHAEL RICHARDSON’s hand starts to move again, caressing the uncovered body.

  The man goes over to them.

  Like the lover, he sits down beside her.

  The lover's hand now moves more slowly.

  Then it stops.

  The newcomer does not caress the woman's body.

  He lies down too.

  All three lie motionless under the fan.

  Silence.

  Rain.

  Another storm over Bengal.

  The sound of rain over sleep.

  The voices are like breaths of coolness, gentle murmurs.

  VOICE 1: . . . rain . . .

  VOICE 2: . . . yes . . .

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: . . . cool . . .

  Silence.

  The sky gets lighter, but it is still night.

  Gradually, music: Beethoven's 14th Variation on a Theme of Diabelli. Piano, very distant.

  The rain slackens.

  In its place, a white light. Patches of moonlight on the garden paths. No wind.

  The three bodies, their eyes closed, sleep.

  The voices, interwoven, in a climax of sweetness, are about to sing the legend of ANNE-MARIE STRETTER. A slow recitative made up of scraps of memory. Out of it, every so often, α phrase emerges, intact, from oblivion.

  VOICE 1: Venice.

  She was from Venice . . .

  VOICE 2: Yes. The music was in Venice.

  A hope in music . . .

  VOICE 1 (pause): She never gave up playing?

  VOICE 2: No.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1 (very slow): Anna Maria Guardi . . .

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1: The first marriage, the first post . . . ?

  VOICE 2: Savannakhet, Laos.

  She's married to a French colonial official.

  She's eighteen.

  VOICE 1 (remembering): Ah yes . . . a river . . . . . . she's sitting by a river. Already . . .

  Looking at it.

  VOICE 2: The Mekong.

  VOICE 1 (pause): She's silent?

  Crying?

  VOICE 2: Yes. They say: “She can't get acclimatized. She'll have to be sent back to Europe.”

  Pause.

  VOICE 1: Couldn't bear it. Even then.

  VOICE 2: Even then.

  Silence.

  VOICE 1 (visionary): Those walls all round her?

  VOICE 2: The grounds of the chancellery.

  VOICE 1 (as before): The sentries?

  VOICE 2: Official.

  VOICE 1: Even then . . .

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  VOICE 1: Even then, couldn't bear it.

  VOICE 2: No.

  Silence.

  VOICE 2: One day a government launch calls. Monsieur Stretter is inspecting the posts on the Mekong.

  VOICE 1 (pause): He takes her away from Savannakhet?

  VOICE 2: Yes. Takes her with him.

  Takes her with him for seventeen years through the capitals of Asia.

  Pause.

  VOICE 2: You find her in Peking.

  Then in Mandalay.

  In Bangkok.

  Rangoon. Sydney.

  Lahore.

  Seventeen years.

  You find her in Calcutta.

  In Calcutta:

  She dies.

  Silence.

  The tall thin man dressed in white enters the garden.

  The voices haven't seen him.

  He stops. Looks through the screens on the windows at the three sleeping forms.

  Stops, looking at her, the woman.

  The voices still haven't seen him.

  VOICE 1: Michael Richardson used to go to S. Thala in the summer.

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  She didn't go often.

  But that summer . . .

  VOICE 1: He was English, Michael Richardson?

  VOICE 2: Yes. (Pause. As if reading:) “Michael Richardson started a marine insurance company in Bengal, so that he could stay in India.”

  VOICE 1: Near her.

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  The man goes away. We see him, from behind, going slowly along the path toward the deserted tennis courts.

  VOICE 1: The other man who's sleeping?

  VOICE 2: Passing through. A friend of the Stretters’.

  She belongs to whoever wants her.

  Gives her to whoever will have her.

  VOICE 1 (pause, pain): Prostitution in Calcutta.

  VOICE 2: Yes.

  She's a Christian without God.

  Splendor.

  VOICE 1 (very low): Love.

  VOICE 2 (scarcely heard): Yes . . .

  Silence.

  The thin man goes toward the red bicycle propped against the wire around the deserted tennis courts.

  The voices have seen him.

  They resume very softly, in fear.

  VOICE 1: He's back in the garden.

  VOICE 2: Yes . . . Every night . . .

  Looks at her . . .

  Silence.

  The man hesitates. Then goes up to ANNE-MARIE STRETTER’s bicycle.

  VOICE 1: He never spoke to her . . .

  VOICE 2: No.

  Never went near . . .

  Halt.

  VOICE 1: The male virgin of Lahore . . .

  VOICE 2: Yes . . .

  The ma
n is beside the bicycle.

  Puts out his hands. Hesitates.

  Then touches it.

  Strokes it.

  Leans forward and holds it in his arms.

  Stays clasping ANNE-MARIE STRETTER’s bicycle—frozen in this gesture of desire.

  Silence.

  Almost imperceptibly, a movement over by the sleeping bodies. It is she.

  As he bends over the bicycle, she, by a converse movement, sits up. In the same slow rhythm she sits up and turns toward the garden.

  ANNE-MARIE STRETTER looks at the man in white with his arms around her bicycle.

  Silence.

  Suddenly the man lets go of the bicycle. Remains with his arms hanging by his sides, his hands open, in an attitude of passion and despair.

  Sound of a man sobbing (the only sound heard directly).

  The woman still looks, sitting with her hands flat on the ground.

  The sobs cease.

  The man gets up.

  He stands facing the bicycle.

  Then slowly turns around.

  Sees her.

  The woman doesn't move.

  Silence.

  They look at each other.

  This lasts several seconds.

  Silence.

  It is the man who stops looking.

  First he turns his face away. Then his body moves.

  He walks away.

  She, still sitting, watches him walk away.

  Then, after he has slowly disappeared from sight, she takes up her former position, asleep under the nightmare fan.

  Silence.

  Stillness.

  Sobs of the VICE-CONSUL in the distance.

  Silence again.

  In the garden the light grows dim again, murky.

  No wind in the deserted garden.

  VOICE 2 (afraid, very low): The sound of your heart frightens me . . .

  Silence.

  Another stirring in the still mass of the three sleeping bodies: MICHAEL RICHARDSON’s hand reaches out to the woman's body, caresses it, stays there.

  MICHAEL RICHARDSON was not asleep.

  The light gets dimmer still.