(She blocks her ears, in this café [at Hiroshima]. The café is suddenly very quiet. Shots of Nevers’ cellars. Riva's bloody hands.)
SHE: Hands become useless in cellars. They scrape. They rub the skin off . . . against the walls . . .
(Somewhere at Nevers, bleeding hands. Hers, on the table, are intact. Riva licks her own blood.)
SHE: . . . that's all you can find to do, to make you feel better . . . and also to remember . . . I loved blood since I had tasted yours.
(They scarcely look at each other as she talks. They look at Nevers. Both of them act as if they were somehow possessed by Nevers. There are two glasses on the table. She drinks avidly. He more slowly. Their hands are fiat on the table.)
(Nevers.)
SHE: The world moves along over my head. Instead of the sky . . . of course . . . I see the world walking. Quickly during the week. Slowly on Sunday. It doesn't know I'm in the cellar. They pretend I'm dead, dead a long way from Nevers. That's what my father wants. Because I'm disgraced, that's what my father wants.
(Nevers: a father, a Nevers druggist, behind the window of his drug store.)
HE: Do you scream?
(The room at Nevers.)
SHE: Not in the beginning; no, I don't scream: I call you softly.
HE: But I'm dead.
SHE: Nevertheless I call you. Even though you're dead. Then one day, I scream, I scream as loud as I can, like a deaf person would. That's when they put me in the cellar. To punish me.
HE: What do you scream?
SHE: Your German name. Only your name. I only have one memory left, your name.
(Room at Nevers, mute screams.)
SHE: I promise not to scream any more. Then they take me back to my room.
(Room at Necers. Lying down, one leg raised, filled with desire.)
SHE: I want you so badly I can't bear it any more.
HE: Are you afraid?
SHE: I'm afraid. Everywhere. In the cellar. In my room.
HE: Of what?
(Spots on the ceiling of the room at Nevers, terrifying objects at Nevers.)
SHE: Of not ever seeing you again. Ever, ever.
(They move closer together again, as at the beginning of the scene.)
SHE: One day, I'm twenty years old. It's in the cellar. My mother comes and tells me I'm twenty. (A pause, as if remembering.) My mother's crying.
HE: You spit in your mother's face?
SHE: Yes.
(As if they were aware of these things together. He moves away from her.)
HE: Drink something.
SHE: Yes.
(He holds the glass for her to drink. She is worn out from remembering.)
SHE (suddenly): Afterward, I don't remember any more. I don't remember any more . . .
HE (trying to encourage her): These cellars are very old, and very damp, these Nevers cellars. . . . You were saying. . .
SHE: Yes. Full of saltpeter.
(Her mouth against the walls of the Nevers cellar, biting.)
SHE: Sometimes a cat comes in and looks. It's not a mean cat. I don't remember any more.
(A cat comes in the Nevers cellar and looks at this woman.)
SHE: Afterward, I don't remember any more.
HE: How long?
SHE (still in a trancelike state): Eternity.
(Someone, a solitary man, puts a record of French bal-musette music on the juke box. To make the miracle of the lost memories of Nevers last, to keep anything from “moving,” the Japanese pours the contents of his glass into hers.
In the Nevers cellar the cat's eyes and Riva's eyes glow.
When she hears the music of the record site [drunk or mad] smiles and screams:)
SHE: Oh, how young I was, once!
(She comes hack to Nevers, having hardly left it. She is haunted [the choice of adjectives is voluntarily varied].)
SHE: At night . . . my mother takes me down into the garden. She looks at my head. Every night she looks carefully at my head. She still doesn't dare come near me. . . . It's at night that I can look at the square, so I look at it. It's enormous (gesturing)! It curves in in the middle.
(The air shaft at the Nevers cellar. Through it, the rainbowlike wheels of bicycles passing at dawn at Nevers.)
SHE: Sleep comes at dawn.
HE: Does it rain sometimes?
SHE: . . . along the walls.
(She searches, searches, searches.)
SHE (almost evil): I think of you, but I don't talk about it any more.
(They move closer together again.)
HE: Mad.
SHE: Madly in love with you. (Pause.) My hair is growing back. I can feel it every day, with my hand. I don't care. But nevertheless my hair is growing back . . . .
(Riva in her bed at Nevers, her hand in her hair. She runs her hands through her hair.)
HE: Do you scream, before the cellar?
SHE: No. I'm numb.
(They are cheek-to-cheek, their eyes half-closed, at Hiroshima.)
SHE: They shave my head carefully till they're finished. They think it's their duty to do a good job shaving the women's heads.
HE (very clearly): Are you ashamed for them, my love?
(The hair-cutting.)
SHE: No. You're dead. I'm much too busy suffering. (Dusk deepens. The following said with complete immobility:) All I hear is the sound of the scissors on my head. It makes me feel a little bit better about . . . your death . . . like . . . like, oh! I can't give you a better example, like my nails, the walls . . . for my anger.
(She goes on, desperately against him at Hiroshima.)
SHE: Oh! What pain. What pain in my heart. It's unbelievable. Everywhere in the city they're singing the Marseillaise. Night falls. My dead love is an enemy of France. Someone says she should be made to walk through the city. My father's drug store is closed because of the disgrace. I'm alone. Some of them laugh. At night I return home.
(Scene of the square at Nevers. She screams, not words, but a formless scream understandable in any language as the cry of a child for its mother. He is still against her, holding her hands.)
HE: And then, one day, my love, you come out of eternity.
(The room at Nevers. Riva paces the floor. Overturns objects. Savage, conscious animailty.)
SHE: Yes, it takes a long time.
They told me it had taken a very long time.
At six in the evening, the bells of the St. Etienne Cathedral ring, winter and summer. One day, it is true, I hear them. I remember having heard them before—before—when we were in love, when we were happy.
I'm beginning to see.
I remember having already seen before—before—when we were in love, when we were happy.
I remember.
I see the ink.
I see the daylight.
I see my life. Your death.
My life that goes on. Your death that goes on
(Room and cellar Nevers.)
and that it took the shadows longer now to reach the corners of the room. And that it took the shadows longer now to reach the corners of the cellar walls. About half past six.
Winter is over.
(A pause. Hiroshima. She is trembling. She moves away from his face.)
SHE: Oh! It's horrible. I'm beginning to remember you less clearly.
(He holds the glass and makes her drink. She's horrified by herself.)
SHE: . . . I'm beginning to forget you. I tremble at the thought of having forgotten so much love . . .
. . . More. (He makes her drink again.)
(She wanders. This time. Alone. He loses her.)
SHE: We were supposed to meet at noon on the quays of the Loire. I was going to leave with him. When I arrived at noon on the quay of the Loire, he wasn't quite dead yet. Someone had fired on him from a garden.
(The garden above the quay of the Loire. She becomes delirious, no longer looking at him.)
SHE: I stayed near his body all that day and then all the next night. The next morni
ng they came to pick him up and they put him in a truck. It was that night Nevers was liberated. The bells of St. Etienne were ringing, ringing . . . Little by little he grew cold beneath me. Oh! how long it took him to die! When? I'm not quite sure. I was lying on top of him . . . yes . . . the moment of his death actually escaped me, because . . . because even at that very moment, and even afterward, yes, even afterward, I can say that I couldn't feel the slightest difference between this dead body and mine. All I could find between this body and mine were obvious similarities, do you understand? (Shouting.) He was my first love . . . .
(The Japanese slaps her. [Or, if you prefer, crushes her hands in his.] She acts as though she didn't know where it had come from. But she snaps out of it, and acts as though she realized it had been necessary.)
SHE: And then one day. . . I had screamed again. So they put me back in the cellar.
(Her voice resumes its normal rhythm. Here the entire scene of the marble that enters the cellar, the marble she picks up, the warm marble she encloses in her hand, etc., and that she gives back to the children outside, etc.)
SHE: . . . it was warm. . . .
(He lets her talk, without understanding. She goes on.)
SHE (after a pause): I think then is when I got over my hate. (Pause.) I don't scream any more. (Pause.) I'm becoming reasonable. They say: “She's becoming reasonable.” (Pause.) One night, a holiday, they let me go out.
(Dawn, at Nevers, beside a river.)
SHE: The banks of the Loire. Dawn. People are crossing the bridge, sometimes many, sometimes few, depending on the hour. From afar, it's no one.
(Republic Square, at Nevers, at night.)
SHE: Not long after that my mother tells me I have to leave for Paris, by night. She gives me some money. I leave for Paris, on a bicycle, at night. It's summer. The nights are warm. When I reach Paris two days later the name of Hiroshima is in all the newspapers. My hair is now a decent length. I'm in the street with the people.
(Someone puts another bal-musette record on the juke box.)
SHE (as if she were waking up): Fourteen years have passed.
(He gives her something to drink. She drinks. She apparently becomes quite calm. They are emerging from the Nevers tunnel.)
SHE: I don't even remember his hands very well. . . . The pain, I still remember the pain a little.
HE: Tonight?
SHE: Yes, tonight, I remember. But one day I won't remember it any more. Not at all. Nothing.
SHE (raising her head to look at him): Tomorrow at this time I'll be thousands of miles away from you.
HE: Does your husband know about this?
SHE (hesitating): No.
HE: Then I'm the only one who does?
SHE: Yes.
(He gets up, takes her in his arms, forcing her to get up too, and holds her very tightly, shockingly. People look at them. They don't understand. He is overwhelmingly happy. He laughs.)
HE: I'm the only one who knows. No one else?
SHE (closing her eyes): Don't say any more.
(She moves even closer to him. She raises her hand, and caresses his lips very lightly. Then, as if she were suddenly very happy:)
SHE: Oh, how good it is to be with someone, sometimes.
(They separate, very slowly, he sits back down again.)
HE: Yes.
(Somewhere a lamp goes out, either on the river bank or in the bar. She jumps. She withdraws her hand, which she had placed again on his lips. He hasn't forgotten the passing time.)
HE: Tell me more.
SHE: All right.
(Searches, can't find anything.)
HE: Tell me more.
SHE: I want to have lived through that moment. That incomparable moment.
(She drinks. He speaks, as though divorced from the present.)
HE: In a few years, when I'll have forgotten you, and when other such adventures, from sheer habit, will happen to me, I'll remember you as the symbol of love's forgetfulness. I'll think of this adventure as of the horror of oblivion. I already know it.
(People enter the café. She looks at them.)
SHE: (hopefully): Doesn't anything ever stop at night, in Hiroshima?
(They begin a final game of mutual deception.)
HE: Never, it never stops in Hiroshima.
(She puts down her glass, smiles, her smiling concealing a feeling of distress.)
SHE: I love that . . . cities where there are always people awake, day or night. . . .
(The proprietress of the bar turns out a light. The record stops playing. They're in semi-darkness. The late but eluctable hour when the cafés close is fast approaching. They both close their eyes, as if seized, by a feeling of modesty. The well-ordered world has thrown them out, for their adventure has no place in it. No use fighting. She suddenly understands this. When they raise their eyes again, they literally smile “in order not to cry.” She gets up. He does nothing to restrain her. They are outside, in the night, in front of the café. She stands facing him.)
SHE: It's sometimes necessary to keep from thinking about these difficulties the world makes. If we didn't we'd suffocate.
(A last light goes out in the café. Both their eyes are lowered.)
SHE: Go away, leave me.
(He starts to leave, looks up at the sky.)
HE: It isn't daylight yet . . . .
SHE: No. (Pause.) Probably we'll die without ever seeing each other again.
HE: Yes, probably. (Pause.) Unless, perhaps, someday, a war. . . .
(Pause.)
SHE (ironically): Yes, a war. . . .
Part V
(After a further time lapse. We see her in the street, walking quickly. Then we see her in the lobby of the hotel. She takes her key. Then we see her on the stairway. Then we see her open the door to her room. Enter the room and stop short as before an abyss, or as if she had discovered someone already in the room. Then she backs out and closes the door softly.
Climbing the stairs, descending, going back up, etc. Retracing her steps. Coming and going in the hallway. Wringing her hands, searching for a solution, not finding it, returning to her room all of a sudden. And this time coming to terms with the room.
She goes to the basin, splashes water on her face. And we hear the first sentence of her interior dialogue:)
SHE: You think you know. And then, no. You don't.
In Nevers she had a German love when she was young. . . .
We'll go to Bavaria, my love, and there we'll marry.
She never went to Bavaria. (Looking at herself in the mirror.)
I dare those who have never gone to Bavaria to speak to her of love.
You were not yet quite dead.
I told our story.
I was unfaithful to you tonight with this stranger.
I told our story.
It was, you see, a story that could be told.
For fourteen years I hadn't found . . . the taste of an impossible love again.
Since Nevers.
Look how I'm forgetting you. . . .
Look how I've forgotten you.
Look at me.
(Through the open window we see the new Hiroshima, peacefully asleep. She suddenly raises her head, sees her wet face in the mirror—like tears—grown old, haggard. And this time, disgusted, she closes her eyes. She dries her face and quickly leaves, crossing the lobby.)
(When we see her again she is sitting on a bench, or on a pile of gravel, about fifty feet from the same bar where they had spent the evening together. The restaurant's light is in her eyes. Banal, almost empty: he is no longer there. She [lies down, sits down] on the gravel and continues to look at the café. [Now only one light is left on in the bar. The room where they had been a short while before is closed. The door into that room is slightly ajar, and by the dim light it is just possible to make out the arrangement of chairs and tables, which are no more than vague, vain shadows.]
She closes her eyes. Then opens them again. She seems to be asleep. But
she is not. When she opens her eyes, she opens them suddenly. Like a cat. Then we hear her voice, an interior monologue:)
SHE: I'm going to stay in Hiroshima. With him, every night. In Hiroshima. (Opening her eyes.) I'm going to stay here. Here.
(She looks away from the café and gazes around her. Then suddenly she curls up as tightly as she can, a childlike movement, her head cuddled in her arms, her feet pulled up under her. The Japanese approaches her. She sees him, doesn't move, doesn't react. Their absence “from each other” has begun. No astonishment. He is smoking a cigarette.)
HE: Stay in Hiroshima.
SHE: (glancing at him): Of course I'm going to stay in Hiroshima, with you. (She buries her head again and says, in a childish tone): Oh, how miserable I am. . . .
(He moves nearer to her.)
SHE: I never expected this would happen, really. . . . Go away.
HE (moving away): Impossible to leave you.
(We see them now on a boulevard. In the background, the lighted signs of nightclubs. The boulevard is perfectly straight. She is walking, he following. We see first one, then the other. Distress on both their faces. He catches up with her.)
HE (softly): Stay in Hiroshima with me.
(She doesn't reply. Then we hear her voice in an interior monologue, loud and uncontrolled:)
SHE: He's going to come toward me, he's going to take me by the shoulders, he's-going-to-kiss-me. . . .
He'll kiss me . . . and I'll be lost. (The word “lost” is said almost ecstatically.)
(A shot of him. And we notice he's walking more slowly to let the distance between them grow. That instead of coming toward her he's moving farther away. She doesn't turn back.)
(A succession of streets in Hiroshima and Nevers. Riva's interior monologue.)
SHE: I meet you
I remember you.
This city was made to the size of love.
You were made to the size of my body.
Who are you?
You destroy me.
I was hungry. Hungry for infidelity, for adultery, for lies, hungry to die.
I always have been.
Hiroshima Mon Amour Page 4
