India Song

The woman, Anne-Marie Stretter, wife of a French Ambassador to India and now dead—her grave is in the English cemetery in Calcutta—might be said to be born of this horror. She stands in the midst of it with a grace which engulfs everything, in unfailing silence—a grace which the voices try to see again, a grace which is porous and dangerous, dangerous also for some of them.

Stillness. Stillness enveloped in music.

G. CRAWN: Why Calcutta? Why did her journey stop there?
GUEST: Perhaps because she can lose herself there. She's always been trying to lose herself, really, ever since her life began . . .

It must have been not just one journey, as we might think, but hundreds, thousands, every day, each one the last . . . Hunger always driving her on, farther and farther . . . She must have followed roads, railways, boats . . . but what's strange is that she always went toward the sunset . . .

VOICE 2 (slow) : Is he looking for something? . . . Or walking at random? . . . Aimlessly?
No answer.
VOICE 2: Is he looking for something he's lost?
No answer.
VOICE 2: Something in common that he's lost too?
No answer.
VOICE 2: The love of her?
VOICE 1: Love. Yes.
Silence.
VOICE 2 (yearning, desire): How far away you are . . . from me . . .
No answer.
Silence.

VOICE 3: What's he shouting?
VOICE 4: Her name.
Pause.
VOICE 3 (slowly): Anna Maria Guardi.
VOICE 4: Yes. All night, all through Calcutta, he's been shouting that name.

V.-CONSUL (shrieking): Once! Just once! I've never loved anyone but her!

V.-CONSUL: So that something should happen between us. In public. Shouting is all I know. Let them at least find out a love can be shouted.
No answer.

V.-CONSUL (heart-rending): What's this pain? Mine?
Pause.
A.-M. S.: Knowledge.
V.-CONSUL (terrible laugh): Of you?
No answer.
Silence.

I wanted to know the smell of your hair—that's why I . . . (He stops. A sob.)
Silence.