Original subtitles

What is he talking about with that man from the club?

Childhood. And her, the French Ambassador's wife.

Why is he waiting to leave?

To be thrown out, probably.

- The mad beggar woman. - The one who laughs.

It is said she's from Laos

It doesn't seem possible...

- A beggar woman is in the grounds. - I Know.

The one who sings. Don't you know her?

But no, you're new to Calcutta.

She sings, I believe, a song from Savannakhet.

In Laos.

She intrigues us.

I keep thinking it can't be possible.

We're thousands of miles from Indochina.

How could she?

I've heard her in the avenue, early in the morning.

It's a happy song.

Children sing it over there.

She must have come down the river valleys.

But how did she manage to cross the Cardamoms?

She's completely mad.

Yes. But she's alive

She comes to the islands sometimes.

How?

No one knows.

Perhaps she follows you.

Follows the whites.

That happens. For food.

- Where is he? - By the bar.

Drinks too much. It'll end badly.

We could see him at night through the window of his room.

Pacing...

Pacing, day and night.

Day and night.

He'd call down death on Lahore.

And fire.

He shouted too.

Disconnected words.

And laughed.

Isn't there in each of us a chance, just one...

...of being like him in Lahore?

But one knows about leprosy before coming. One knows.

Perhaps he thought the gardens were empty. In that light...

...that fog...

Look at the sky... sick.

That thickness... that dirt, throughout the night.

He said he wanted leprosy.

He is anger itself.

Against whom? Against what?

Doesn't need a reason.

They're dancing. Look.

She's always loved dancing.

Some months ago, in Chandernagore, they were found in a cheap hotel.

Trying to die together.

Hard to believe.

An ambulance back to Calcutta.

The truth came out in the end.

For no reason, they say. "Indifference to life".

Or the opposite.

People confuse things.

No. There's a definite equivalence.

The same appearances.

People always talked about her...

...a great deal.

About that love.

And the islands.

The delta islands.

That's all they'll miss of India.

What would they have done without them?

About heat.

About fear.

Leprosy, and hunger.

About the Vice-Consul from Lahore...

...those dead...

About that sweetness...

We wondered:

All those books...

...those sleepless nights in the delta.

Those tears?

India Song...

On his way to the office, he whistled India Song.

He said to the club director:

"At home in Neuilly, in the drawing room, there's a black piano."

"India Song is on the music-rest."

"My mother played it."

"The score has been there since she died."

Day already. No one speaks.

They seem to be waiting.

The tennis courts were deserted.

A bicycle was there.

I noticed they were deserted,

after she'd gone.

The air was torn apart.

Her skirt, against the trees.

She looked at me.

I didn't know you existed.

Calcutta has become a form of hope for me.

I love Michael Richardson.

I'm not free of that love.

I know.

I love you like that, in that love.

It doesn't matter.

I sound odd.

Do you hear my voice?

It frightens them.

Yes.

Who is she?

I shot myself in Laos, but didn't die.

The others separate me from Lahore. I don't.

Lahore is me.

You understand too?

Yes. Don't shout.

Yes.

You are with me, with Lahore.

I know it.

You are in me.

I'll take you away inside me.

We shall fire on the Shalimar lepers.

You can't avoid it.

I didn't need to dance with you to know you.

And you know it.

I know it.

There's no need for us to go on.

We have nothing to say to each other.

We are the same.

I believe that.

Have love affairs with others.

We don't need that.

I wanted to know the smell of your hair.

That explains why I...

After the reception, your friends will stay on.

I wish I could stay with you once.

There's no chance.

They'd throw me out.

Yes. You are someone they have to forget.

Like Lahore.

Yes.

What will become of me?

You'll be posted far from Calcutta.

That's what you want?

Yes.

Very well.

When will it end?

With your death, I believe.

What's this pain? My pain?

Intelligence.

About you?

I'll ask them to let me stay tonight.

Do what you like.

To make something happen between you and me.

A public incident.

All I know how to do is shout.

Let them know love can be shouted.

They'll be uncomfortable.

Then start talking again.

I even know you'll tell no one you agreed.

Let me stay!

I'm going to stay here tonight! With her!

Just once, with her!

Do you hear?

- What is it? - Better do something.

How terrible.

Bound to happen.

I'm staying!

I'm going to stay in the French Embassy!

I'm going to the islands with her!

I beg you!

I beg you! Let me stay!

- Dreadful! - It's terrible.

And she just stands still.

Once!

Just once!

I've never loved anyone but her!

Do go home. You've had too much to drink.

He did it deliberately.

No sense of...

What happened?

How strange.

Indecent.

Impossible to understand.

It's terrible.

How dreadful!

They've got him.

He's not resisting.

He's outside. Locked out.

Laughing and crying. Did you see?

He's forcing the gate.

The beggars are afraid.

He's gone.

- Now all is clear. - What?

Lahore.

He's still shouting.

Where is she?

- In the drawing room. - With him.

In a way, everyone should cry.

- Don't you think? - But...

It's a manner of speaking.

Is that the Vice-Consul of France shouting?

Yes. Still shouting.

After the trip to the islands, he drops out of sight.

He tenders his resignation.

The file ends with his resignation.

Soon after?

A few days.

What's he saying?

Her Venetian name in deserted Calcutta.

The whole night he shouted that name.

That sound of wings, of birds?

Day.

Sunrise, here.

There... and beyond.

The air smells of mud. And leprosy.

And fire.

- Not a breath of air? - No.

Only very small movements...

...very slow wafts...

...of odour.

The sun.

What light! Awful!

Yes. Exile.

She's listless.

Yes. Deeply absent.

The heat is rust-coloured.

Above, smoke.

The factories.

This continent, suspended?

The monsoon. Below, Bengal.

Further.

Lower.

Beneath the sky.

Look...

In a bend of the Ganges.

That whiteness.

Over there.

The English cemetery.

A car is speeding along the straight roads,

by the Ganges.

They've left for the islands.

- Those junks? - Rice.

On the slopes, those dark patches?

People.

The highest density in the world.

- Those dark mirrors, thousands of them? - The rice fields of India.

The black Lancia has stopped.

The rain.

The roads are flooded.

They took shelter in a sala.

There, the young attach� said:

"I saw the Vice-Consul before I left".

He was still shouting in the streets. He asked if I was going to the islands.

I said I was going to Nepal with the Ambassador.

Did she approve of the lie?

She hardly ever mentioned the man from Lahore.

That green colour.

It's growing larger.

The ocean.

The islands.

Which one is it?

The largest.

The central island.

They've arrived.

That white palace?

The Prince of Wales,

an international hotel.

The sea is rough. There's been a storm.

In front, the piers.

Those ships sail the South Pacific.

Behind, berths for yachts.

Through the trees, the same flat horizon.

The islands are alluvial.

The mud of the Ganges.

Where's the French Embassy villa?

Beyond the hotel, facing the ocean.

She wanted to swim when she arrived?

Yes.

It was late, The sea rough.

It was impossible to swim,

Just let the warm waves break over her.

She bathed with him.

Those nets everywhere in the sea?

Against the delta sharks.

Where is she?

She'll come.

She's coming.

- That evening, was she the same? - Smiling.

Dressed in white.

Who comes to the hotel?

White India.

I can't quite remember.

Didn't she go to the Embassy villa?

She only slept there.

She dined at the Prince of Wales, when she went to the islands.

She had the villa's servants

sent back to Calcutta.

- How long ago? - A few weeks.

- India Song. - Yes.

- There's dancing in the lounge. - Tourists from Ceylon.

These birds?

Prisoners of the island, because of the storm.

They're in the mango trees.

They strip them.

They'll fly at dawn.

This sudden smell of death?

Incense.

He had come on the last boat?

Yes, the 7 o'clock boat.

He hadn't been home all day.

He never went back to Calcutta.

When the mist came, the wind dropped.

She had the blinds raised.

She wants to see the ocean, the sky

above the estuaries.

They are very tired, after last night.

She is looking outside.

I remember...

...a wall of mist comes in toward the islands.

Yes.

She says something about Venice.

Venice in the winter.

Yes, that's right.

- Venice? - Yes.

Perhaps certain winter evenings,

in Venice, the same mist.

She's saying the name of a colour.

Violet.

The colour of the delta mist.

It was a September evening...

...during the summer monsoon...

...on the islands...

...in 1937.

In China, the war went on.

Shanghai had just been bombed.

The Japanese were still advancing.

In Spain,

they were still fighting.

The Republic is strangled.

In Russia, the Revolution is betrayed.

The Congress of Nuremberg had just taken place.

Already, the beggar woman was hunting in the warm waters of the delta.

Michael Richardson and the young guest

had gone across the beach to the villa.

The other two had gone sailing.

She had wanted to go back alone,

along the inland paths.

Behind her, the Vice-Consul of Lahore.

He followed her to the park.

Michael Richardson and the young guest had arrived after her.

She had gone to meet them in the park.

They move toward one another.

They meet.

They seem to be talking.

They go toward the villa.

Once they had tried...

...tried to die together.

Without succeeding.

In a brothel,

in Chandernagore.

They'd been discovered.

At one point in the night, she brings them champagne.

Glasses.

She serves them.

It's still night

when Michael Richardson takes away the young guest.

Tears himself away from that place.

Leaves her there.

Later,

music was heard around the Embassy villa.

The lovers of the Ganges had promised to let each other be free,

if ever either of them decided to die.

The young guest came back to the villa during the night.

Yes. He saw her.

She was lying in the park,

leaning on one elbow. He said:

"She stretched out her arm and put her head on it."

"The Vice-Consul of Lahore was ten yards away."

They didn't speak to each other."

She must have stayed there a long time. Till daylight.

Then she must have taken the path.

On the beach they found the dressing gown.

And the heat was once more the heat of Calcutta.