Original subtitles

I told you that you had to see.

That around noon the silence on Athens is such

with the increasing heat...

The city empties at siesta time

like at night everything closes

... you had to see the rising of silence...

I remember, I told you:

slowly one wonders what is happening

this fading of the sound

with the rising of the sun...

Then comes this fear.

Not the one of the night,

like a fear of the night in the light.

The silence of the night in the sunlight.

The sun at its zenith and the silence of the night.

The sun at the centre of the sky

and the silence of the night.

When the others arrived around 2 p.m. ,

we went back down to the city,

Athens,

then nothing else happened.

Nothing.

Nothing else than ever,

everywhere,

this emptiness

to love.

- At the Civic Museum of Athens,

the next afternoon...

- Yes... indeed...

I forgot...

typical...

...and then I told you about the "the other story",

The story of the other people...

It's a saturday.

At night.

In spring.

In the near of summer.

In the month of June.

He, the man in the film,

he works.

He is on duty in a telecommunications service.

He is bored.

Paris empty.

Spring.

Saturday.

He is 25.

Alone.

He has got some numbers of the telephone abyss. He dials them.

Two of them.

Three of them.

Then, here is.

Here it is.

The year is 1973.

He kept a private diary at that time of his life

and he says he wrote down many things.

But afterwards didn't.

He gave up.

A short time after it started,

it,

the story,

the love story.

Imageless story.

The black image.

Black images story.

Here,

it starts.

She calls at the same time as him in space and time.

They talk.

Talk.

- They describe themselves.

She says of herself being a young woman dark-haired.

Long.

- He says he is young too,

fair-haired,

deep blue-eyed,

tall, almost skinny,

handsome.

She says what she does.

At first she says she works in a factory.

Then another time

she says she has just come back from China.

She talks about a trip in China.

- And then another time

she says she studies medicine,

to join in the M�decins sans Fronti�res corps.

- And afterwards, no,

she doesn't change anymore.

It seems that she hold on to this last version,

that she was finishing her medicine studies in a Parisian hospital.

- He says that she speaks very well.

With ease.

That you cannot evade listening to her.

Believing her.

- He gives her his phone number.

She, no,

she doesn't give hers.

- No,

she, doesn't.

- A month goes by.

It's in those days that she names herself, her.

That she gives her a name how to call her

that begins with the letter

F.

- He says

she has a voice that one likes to hear

He says: rather bewitching.

They talk.

Tirelessly.

Talk.

- They talk endlessly.

Endlessly they discribe themselves.

One another.

To one,

the other.

They say the colour of the eyes.

The texture of the skin.

The smoothness of the breast

that fits in the hand.

The smoothness of this hand.

At this very moment

as she says it,

she is looking at it.

I look at myself

with your eyes.

- He says he sees.

Describes himself in turn.

He says he is following his own hand

on his own body.

Says:

it's the first time.

Says the pleasure in being alone.

that it offers.

Puts the phone on his heart.

Does she hear?

- She does.

- He says that all his body

beats alike to the sound of her voice.

- She says she knows it.

That she sees it.

Hears it,

eyes shut.

- He says:

I was another to myself

and I didn't know it.

- She says

she didn't know

before him

to be attractive

with a desire of herself

that herself

could share.

She says it's frightening.

- Did the story happen?

- Someone said having lived it for real.

Then it was told.

Then written down.

Then it was composed.

- At night she calls.

- Yes, she calls, with the night

- as the night falls, she comes.

" It's me F. I'm scared. "

- The conversations are getting very long.

Nights.

They last eight hours. Ten hours at a stretch.

They end up lasting to dawn.

- He still doesn't know her name,

or her address,

or her phone number.

He only knows this first name

with which she names herself

when he picks up the phone:

" It's me

F.

I'm scared. "

- He is at her disposal.

It's him who waits for the phone calls.

He has no means to reach her.

No indication of the place where she is held.

- He doesn't ask for it.

This for months.

Once she'll tell him some things.

- Once she'll tell him:

the place, it's Neuilly.

The place where she is held it's this,

Neuilly.

A private mansion.

Between the Seine

and the Bois. (de Boulogne)

- Neuilly endlessly around her...

- Around the black image...

- Neuilly endlessly around her.

- Around de black image...

- For nights and nights

they live on the phone.

Talk.

Keep quiet.

Sleep on the receiver.

Come one from the other.

- It's a black orgasm.

Without mutual touch.

Faceless.

Eyes shut.

Your voice,

only your voice.

The text of voices

said eyes shut.

- On the text of desire no image?

- Which one?

- I don't see.

- Then there is nothing to see.

- Nothing.

No image.

The Navire Night faces the night of times.

- Blind.

On the black ink sea.

It makes headway.

The Navire Night

has just entered

its story.

It is she

who first wants to see him,

to meet him.

She gives him two kinds of dates.

The ones that are cancelled.

The ones she doesn't cancel.

He goes to each date.

Each time

there are unforeseen circumstances

that prevent the meeting.

- The setback of the meeting doesn't surprise him.

He thinks it possible,

each time.

- He believes what she says.

He believes her.

- Very soon, he can do nothing to reroute the story.

It's F. who leads the story.

Stands up to it.

- Who avoids foolish actions.

And makes them

accustomed to, both of them

gradually.

She, she knows nothing.

She invents.

She,

the first one, to become out of her mind.

- Months go by.

A year.

- Three years.

- The story hollows with caves,

deepens.

The more its scenery grows,

the more it darkens.

- One day she tells him:

she is ill.

Leukaemia.

sentenced to death.

Kept alive thanks to continuous care,

money,

for ten years,

since she was sixteen.

She is now 26.

- Around her,

the Seine filthy.

- And this Bois. (de Boulogne)

This sad set

In its turn suffering

From death.

She says they will never meet.

That they will never see each other.

- She says she loves him to madness.

That she is madly in love with him.

That she is ready to leave everything

for him.

- For the love of you,

I would leave my family,

this house of Neuilly.

Everything.

But it's not necessary however

we see each other.

I could leave everything for you

yet without

joining you.

To leave because of you,

for you,

and precisely to join nothing.

To invent you this fidelity

to our love.

Benoit: She says she loves him to madness - That she is madly in love with him. That she is ready to leave everything for him -

Marg: - For the love of him, that she would leave her family, the house of Neuilly - But that it's not necessary however that they see each other -

Benoit: She could leave everything for him, yet without joining him -

Marg: Yes - To leave because of him, for him, and precisely to join nothing -

Benoit: To invent this fidelity to their story -

The territory of the night,

insomniac,

it is the sea on which goes through the Night.

This film.

This drift

that we named in this way:

the Navire Night.

Nothing in the day can be seen of the night this change.

Nothing.

Nothing in the day.

The moves of the Navire Night

should imply other moves

which would happen elsewhere

and would be of a different kind.

The moves of the Navire Night

should imply the moves of desire.

- He insists.

He wants to see.

Because the idea of seeing

is more and more frightening

he wants to see.

A way to rid of the story.

to put an end to it.

- They know it both of them

the distance is not measurable from now on

between this one

who cries at night,

fused to the general desire,

the one defaced of the abyss,

and that one

- who would she be? -

that he wouldn't recognize in the seeing,

that he would only recognize with his eyes shut

in the black of the world.

- He doesn't promise to shut his eyes at her approach

when she would come to light decent

covered with a white Chanel

at the corner of a street in Neuilly.

No

he didn't promise not to look.

- She gives in.

- It's Paris

in July 1973.

- This day the heat is intense.

The date should take place in a caf� at the place de la Bastille

at 3 pm.

- He waits for her,

he says

for one hour and a half.

Probably longer.

She doesn't come.

In the evening, she calls.

She says that she went to the date.

That she saw him.

- That he was wearing a summer skirt

light.

She says the colour.

The transparency.

She says she couldn't stop.

- He didn't see anything walk past him

which looks like her black image,

the one

given by her

the first day.

She drove by him in car.

Behind her

her father's chauffeur followed her,

this on her father's command.

That's what she will say.

She obtained from this father

to be allowed to see him

on condition that she doesn't stop.

- From now on, she cannot ignore anymore

forget this man she saw,

who was waiting for this woman,

she.

This flesh made out through the transparency of the shirt,

while she drove by,

this black trace of the breasts

on the thin chest

through the transparency of the shirt

fulfils her with sheer folly.

Henceforth, she, she has thus seen him.

For a few seconds.

but the image is

for ever.

I don't mean the one of your face

but the one of your body.

It crosses the mind that she could have been stopped

this day

of such heat,

because of the leukaemia,

from getting out of the car and walking to him.

Or that it was from an ambulance

hired for this occasion

to see you

that she saw him waiting.

- After the date of the place de la bastille

she enters a desire of every time,

of every night.

- Every night begs to die.

Every night asks to die from it.

People who cry at night

in the abyss

they all give dates to each other.

These dates are never followed by meetings.

It's enough that they are made.

No one goes there.

Never.

- It's the call into the abyss,

the cry,

that triggers the orgasm.

- It's the other cry.

The answer.

Someone cries.

Someone answers he heard the cry.

It's this answer

that triggers the agony.

- You said you remembered this man

who yelled at dawn.

- Yes I do.

He called.

He said he was the Cat.

I am the Cat...

Can you hear?

The Cat is calling...

Here is the Cat...

- The tone ordered.

- He ordered yes.

At the same time he implored.

- He said that the Cat was looking for someone.

That the Cat wanted to come.

- Yes.

- That he had to be answered.

- It's a man who answered.

The voice was very soft,

tender.

He said that he heard the Cat.

That he answered him to tell him this,

that he heard him.

- He told him to come.

Come.

Come on.

Come.

- Yes.

the Cat's voice calmed down in sobs.

It was in Paris in winter

around four,

at dead of night.

Another time. She tells him:

she has got two mothers.

She is bastard.

Her official mother is not her real mother.

- Her real mother is a previous servant of the mansion in Neuilly.

She is now retired.

She lives in the suburbs.

She is watched.

Around her

people are worried of these phone calls

so long,

at night,

because they wear her out a lot.

Orders are given

by the father

so that the damage of the story on F.'s health

would restrict to these phone lengths.

- So that nothing else happens.

Nothing

but these phone calls.

- It's the fathers's chauffeur who the first informs her of this watch.

He too, this chauffeur,

he wants her good,

her survival,

like everyone around her.

- One day all of a sudden

the house in Neuilly drifts away.

He believes she lies.

He doesn't believe anymore,

he doesn't see anymore

that one dies there.

He still sees this house,

this drift

frozen between the hedges, the parks,

where he doesn't see anymore that one dies there.

He doesn't see it holding this legend

of an heiress,

leukaemic

and bastard.

The one of the desire.

- He doubts suddenly one of the terms given by F.,

the illness.

He says to her that this is too much.

He talks about stratagem.

He says to her she lies.

That about that, she lies.

- Then she talks about a proof

irrefutable of leukaemia.

This hair that she has

so fair,

very long, very beautiful,

a huge mass, amazing, in which she sleeps.

If only he could see.

- She is surprised.

How could he be unaware of such an ordinary thing, very well-known?...

that leukaemia grows the hair very long,

very beautiful,

exceptionally fair?

- He reminds her that on the first night she described herself as black-haired.

She tells him that he misheard.

He doesn't withstand.

- Time becomes confused.

The diary is not kept as regularly.

Chronology is not guaranteed anymore.

Is left

only a global memory of the event.

So full,

that every single night,

gives evidence of the whole desire.

- Between the days,

the partitions falls.

She says she suffers.

Physically.

A lot.

More and more.

That she is very weak.

Weaker and weaker.

So weak that she falls,

and this very often.

And that she injures herself,

that she is marked all over her body

by the marks

and the wounds of her falls.

- And that her ecstasy

mingles with her pain.

She says:

the illness is getting worse,

is growing.

She says she keeps on working in the Parisian hospital

where she does her training years.

But more and more often she stays in bed,

on a drip.

To live only on theses drips, this transfusions.

Then, sometimes,

suddenly,

to spring up again,

to live again.

- This swaying

between life and death.

Vanishes

Dies

Disappears

Then comes back to life

He says

he begins to love her.

- Then in the house in Neuilly

they are scared.

He gets phone calls

from the father's wife,

the illegitimate mother.

She knows the phone number of the joung man from the Gobelins.

He will never know if it is F. who gave this number

or if it had been stolen while he was sleeping.

The illegitimate mother begs him to leave F. alone.

That the nights on the phone

exhaust her child,

kill her.

- He asks: how come,

how would he leave her alone?

He hasn't, himself, any way to reach her,

he doesn't know her address, her name or her phone number.

The illegitimate mother replies

that the way would be

to refuse to talk to her.

- He does it.

Hangs up

as soon as he recognizes her voice.

- She calls back.

She disguises her voice.

He recognizes her.

And then again

he doesn't resist to her.

Answers her.

- One day,

a woman calls in at his place

to bring him an envelope on F.'s behalf.

She says

to be the linen maid of the house in Neuilly.

Perhaps the chauffeur's wife.

- The envelope holds two pictures.

It's a young woman.

She has fair hair,

very long,

very beautiful.

She is rather tall.

Slim.

He says:

she has an ordinary face.

- She is photographed in a park.

It's a lawn between trees

and hedges.

- The envelope holds also a handkerchief embroided with her initials.

and a substantial amount of cash.

- The story comes to a halt with the pictures.

- Alone at night,

with the pictures

unrecognizable.

Trapped with them.

In despair.

The Navire night has come to a standstill on the sea.

He hasn't any course left.

No route.

- The desire is dead.

- Killed

by a picture.

- He cannot answer the phone anymore.

He is scared.

From the pictures

he wouldn't recognize her voice anymore.

Who is she to be so unpredictable?

It's too late for her to have a face.

He has to give these pictures back.

In no time.

He doesn't know how to give them back.

Nor to whom.

Then he remembers.

- The linen lady who came to bring the envelope

told him

to be in touch with F.'s real mother.

She said they both lived in the same council housing Estate

in the outskirts of Paris.

- The linen lady,

on F.'s order

gave him her own phone number.

" Miss

told me to give you my phone number,

here it is,

one never knows. "

- He dials it.

He rings the linen lady up.

A barrier is broken.

The real mother phones.

" What can I do for you, Mr? "

He says

I want to return you the pictures.

She doesn't ask which pictures.

She says it's all right.

The appointment is made.

He will go to her place.

It's by Vincennes.

Flat bought by the father

as a reward

for the child.

It's she who opens the door.

- Sixty years old.

The look

of a servant.

He says so,

she looks like a servant.

Exile.

Single on the thirteenth floot.

View on the East suburbs. Vincennes - Saint-Mand�.

- The flat is in a working-class style.

Plywood furniture

European making.

Fake fur on the bed.

Immaculate cleanliness the void.

- Smooth face, absent eyes.

She takes the pictures

without a word.

He doesn't ask

who is the woman in the park. Young. Fair.

She doesn't say it.

Doesn't ask why he gives them back.

He asks her to talk about F.

She says

she gave birth to F.

before the marriage of the father with the other woman,

the one who has the father's name.

That after the marriage

she was hired as nanny of the child in the house in Neuilly.

- When the child had grown up they kept her

as a maid.

That, on charity again, she says,

so as not to part her from her child,

all she has got in the world.

He will never know anything

on the relation between F.

and her real mother.

But this:

it's only late in her life

F. was already grown-up,

when she was told that her real mother

was the one who slept

in the basement in Neuilly.

- That the woman loved by the father,

the only one,

was this one.

- Several times he will see the real mother again.

On the orders of her child

she will come back and see him to bring him other gifts,

other amounts of money.

- The linen lady too, like the real mother, comes and sees him

on the orders of the young mistress of Neuilly.

They come and hand over envelopes which hold money and gifts.

- Here is a gold lighter.

A lizard wallet.

But they are not the main thing.

- The main thing is money.

They will never come by without a substancial amount of money.

He takes the money.

The amounts of money are for him considerable.

- She talks about giving him everything.

Giving him a car,

a flat.

Everything.

Never again will she give any pictures,

would they be from another woman or herself.

They never talk about the pictures.

They never will.

She knows he declined them.

She has never talked to him about it.

He says: I forgot the pictures.

It resumed

like before.

What is money given for?

What does the money pay?

The love story perhaps?

Something is paid in the story.

Thus, there is a price to pay for something in the story.

- He takes the money,

therefore confirms the payment.

Most likely the money is here like elsewhere,

like everywhere,

in its wage function.

- Always delivered by the same hands.

As it happens these ones,

those of the young mistress of Neuilly.

She pays him for giving her so much desire.

At first he doesn't find anything in common

between F. and her mother.

Then suddenly, as the mother phones

to announce him that she will come to bring him a gift,

he finds that their voices are alike.

The inflexions of their voices.

When she calls him, he mixes them up.

Often.

- It's she, who calls.

For his part he can only contact her through the linen lady,

the chauffeur's wife.

- Several times he asks her to give him the phone number of her daughter.

She doesn't turn it down.

- Each time she gives a phone number.

Each time says

this one is the right one,

the correct one.

He calls.

He comes upon theatres.

- She gives him dates.

She gives him ten dates.

He goes to each of them.

- These dates

are always made in public places,

so vast as to loose one's way.

The Bois. (of Boulogne)

The square of the R�publique.

The square of the Bastille.

The Champs-Elys�es.

At rush hour.

At night.

At day.

- At any time day or night.

He believes that she is not responsible

for this incapacity to come.

- That she is the prey of antagonisms stronger than herself

and that her own disposal to these antagonisms

is her very force.

That her desertion to these brutal forces

gives evidence of her.

- He always believes it possible that she might come.

As herself believes it possible,

till the last minute.

He says:

then, probably, she doesn't manage to get out of it.

This thickness.

This Bois. (of Boulogne)

She talks to him about the father.

She talks to him about the money.

Often.

The father.

He is fearsome.

He is revered.

Revered by all.

Feared by all.

His position is considerable.

He is the manager of a major organisation of the State.

Private financial adviser to the President of the French Republic.

It is he who is the money supplier.

Money

seems endless.

Ridiculous.

- A property by the Lake Maggiore.

- Another

at Sainte-Marie de Provence.

- Another in Bormes-les-Mimosas.

- And this house in Neuilly.

One heiress, her,

F.

the child doomed to death.

- The father, he, never calls.

He threatens through the women of the house in Neuilly.

The story must not spread

further than the phone calls.

- He thinks the story less harmful

to F.'s health

if it is not visible.

This backwardness of the father in comparison with his child

gives evidence of him.

Of his essential disability regarding desire.

- Once,

as she was calling him in the day,

he hears that someone calls a name in the house

and that she answers.

It's the illegitimate mother who calls her child.

It's by this way that he is told her Christian and civil name.

- She doesn't deny.

From now on he calls her with that name.

- The father's name,

his name,

that one,

she says that it's for him to find it.

That there are different kinds of investigations.

The secondary investigations.

And the main investigation.

- The main investigation should take place at the cemetery of the P�re-Lachaise.

She tells him how to go to the place of this main investigation.

It's there,

in the corner of the temple of death.

The place is not much visited.

The stones are green.

Monumental.

Unearthed.

Illegible for most of them.

- It is a bin of Empire marshals

ennobled on the great places of death from the early XIXth Century,

of dukes of Dalmatia and Austerlitz,

of France and of Waterloo,

of a villainious lineage of corrupted financiers,

of a riffraff emigrated in Neuilly on fear of the Commune,

and of the jumble of their wives and their children.

- It is there, this bin,

should be searched.

Her mother's name appears there too.

As she is a descendant of the great military chiefs of the Napoleonic army

and of the financiers of the reign,

her name is there too,

in this flea market.

- But it's also, in this same flea market,

mixed with her,

that appears the name of her grandfather on her father's side.

Therefore,

the name of her father.

therefore

hers.

- She doesn't explain why,

even before her birth,

the name of her mother and of her father

are already united

on the tomb stones of the P�re-Lachaise.

- No, she doesn't.

- Probably misalliances

later corrected by these marriages?

Who knows.

- The explanation is lost.

He doesn't go to the P�re-Lachaise.

- She, she believes he did,

that he made the investigations she pointed him out.

For some time

she thinks he knows who she is

from her name.

That with her name

he will find the house in Neuilly.

- He doesn't tell her he didn't go to the P�re-Lachaise.

- I told you where it was,

between two rooms,

the last ones

in this immensity of the city museum,

just before the room with the carcasses of copper horses

that were found

in 1960, in the harbour of the Pirareus.

It's by the wound of the face, I think,

that I was so stunned.

This wound contrasted

with the eyes...

full, you see...

I looked at her for a very long time.

You didn't find her in the museum?

- I didn't.

- Her name is written.

- Ath�na.

- Yes, that's it...

She must have the left side of her face torn off

like by a ploughshare,

by iron,

but her eyes are intact...

white almonds

without contours none...

Isn't there any reproduction?

- None.

- The head is very small, it would fit in the hand.

I told you

a child's head.

It is on a column lost between the tall steles,

the jumble of the last rooms.

Note, it is possible as they thought it was negligible,

because of this very wound,

the authorities of the Museum stored it in reserve in the basement.

But what surprises me

is that it happened between my visit

and yours, that is to say on the same day...

- Why not?

- That's right... Why not...

The wound on the face is dreadful.

It should contribute a lot to the depth of the eyes.

- Theses eyes

are at you...

- Yes, that's it,

eyes that look at you...

they are at the one who looks

but through him too...

and even a lot further...

beyond the end,

towards these distances... you see...

one cannot...

one doesn't know how to name them...

They are common to the whole story...

- I see

without seeing.

- Yes, that's it.

The next day, we left Athens,

and then nothing else happened.

Nothing.

But, still,

these cries.

Everywhere.

This common lack

of love.

In Paris,

love,

always. At night.

No way out.

Orgasm in sobs.

Between them, this impassable wall,

always

blind.

- Sometimes

they cannot manage without each other.

- Sometimes they cannot stand one another.

Quarrel.

Shout.

Split up.

- And one day,

jealousy breaks out.

Unforeseeable.

- Dreadful.

She wants to be the favourite one

to any.

To be the only one.

- She disguises her voice,

calls on behalf of other women.

- He always recognizes her.

- She has him followed.

Or she follows him.

He will never know.

- He won't.

He has never undestood

how it was possible.

How it happened.

- At night, she calls,

she tells him

the time he left his job,

the places

he went to,

the streets

he cycled

before going back home.

All his routes.

- He doesn't want to glance behind him.

He knows.

He knows to be caught under a surveillance

of every minute.

- He doesn't try and know

who is here,

behind him.

She challenges him to the game of death.

He falls in this game

as he could never have foreseen.

They know it both of them:

if he turns round

and sees who,

the story dies,

struck down.

- He knows,

it's she.

The details given at night on the phone cannot mislead him.

" And when you took the street of the Val-de-Gr�ce

there was a sunny spell

and you looked at the sky... "

He arrives at home.

He rushes into the corridor of the building.

He knows:

she is here,

watching him disappear.

He doesn't look back.

He waits,

out of his mind with desire

to tears.

- It is in this period

that he discovers the phenomenal power of his solitude,

the non-addressed violence of desire.

- It is then

that he refuses the deadly story

to stay in the one of the general abyss.

Now he says that he has never seen anyone following him.

- He also says

that he noticed, once,

a car with a chauffeur

stopped about his working place.

Empty.

- Once,

as she is calling him in the silence of Neuilly at night,

he hears a man's voice asking Mrs

" if he can clear the table ".

Thus, theres is a butler in the house in Neuilly.

- This trip to J. in Sa�ne-et-Loire.

He said to her it was there that he was born.

Travels in the region

till she finds the house.

Finds it.

Describes it to him when she is back.

Finds his mother's flat too

in a nearby town.

Phones her,

tells her

she is madly in love with him,

her child.

- Does he know if she is still alive?

- He says he doesn't, nothing.

- Can he know it?

- He could phone the linen lady, this other woman in the council housing estate.

But he can't do it now.

He hasn't her phone number by him.

He doesn't remember her name.

Thus, he can't ask for information.

- In his opinion,

is she dead?

- He says: perhaps,

that he doesn't know,

no clue...

But... most likely... yes...

she was so ill at the end.

- At the end?

- Yes,

when it stopped.

Several times she took the decision not to call him anymore.

- At some point she did it.

- Then, at some point she did it.

If she is dead,

if she is dead, her tomb is at the P�re-Lachaise.

In this case one could guess,

from the freshness of the cutting of the tomb stone

and from the one of the earth turned over,

one could guess it's she.

- The name, in this case,

that would be followed by the first name given at the end,

would be hers.

- He says: I was mad.

We were mad.

- With what was he mad?

He says he doesn't know exactly with what

he was mad.

That he couldn't have been mad

on her,

with desire for her.

How would it have been possible?

- With the image?

With sheer desire?

- He answers he doesn't know.

- Did she exist?

- Who?

Who would not have existed?

He says:

Yes, she did exist.

In any case.

She existed.

Whoever she was,

whoever she still may be

she existed.

Exists.

- Wherever she comes from,

she existed.

exists.

Even if she were the sixty years old woman in the council housing estate in Vincennes,

she would exist.

He says

the question is groundless.

- Three years.

The amount of hours spent on the phone:

months.

- There are periods, sometimes a month,

during which she doesn't get in touch.

Perhaps she is too ill in these periods to do it.

- And then she calls again.

The joint orgasm is arid.

Immense

Bare

Incomparable.

- One night, he asks her about it:

did she have lovers before him?

Did a man approach her?

He has from her only the smell of the banknotes

touched by her hands.

- She says yes.

She had a lover.

A priest

met on a train.

She made him madly in love.

She left him.

She gives away all the details.

She cries the details.

- Their orgasm reaches murder.

She cries as she tells the torture

of the priest madly in love

whom she left.

He cries he wants to know

more.

- They end up at dawn

in different beds.

They are silent.

Exhausted.

They cry.

- In the end,

she is in bed almost all the time,

dying.

She is continuously on a drip.

Sometimes she faints on the phone.

- He knows it because of her voice.

He distinguishes her voices

from her voices.

Her voice in bed.

Her dying voice,

trapped,

or childlike.

- Her voice when she tells about the adored father.

Her salon voice,

her liar's voice.

- Her twisted voice,

toneless with desire.

She cannot lie to him anymore.

- She gives him a clue on the house in Neuilly.

Right now a fountain is been built in the park.

Between the hedge and the lawn.

A whole day he searches the streets of Neuilly on his bike.

A whole day.

He searches, not the fountain in the park,

but further.

An unforeseen but convincing detail.

A hue of a wall.

Of a gate.

- A special layout of the windows of the bedrooms.

A distinctive hazy light

above everything.

A sign from the sky.

- He doesn't find anything.

He says he didn't see all the streets in Neuilly.

The next day

he does it again.

She lets him search.

She doesn't give him any further hint.

- But this one yet,

on the same evening,

that her bedroom can be seen from the street,

that the windows of her bedroom are never shut,

that this way her bed is always open

to every look.

- He says now

that he could have found the house in Neuilly

if he wanted to.

Did he have an image of her?

- He says that in the beginning, yes he did,

he would have had this black image,

of some woman with dark hair.

And then later

this image would have been replaced

by the one of the two pictures.

And later again,

when the pictures would have been forgotten,

he would have found back the black image

of the beginning,

given by her.

He says he hasn't now any image of her.

- Does he say he lied?

- No, he doesn't.

He says he has mixed up the times,

the days,

the places,

he has no chronology

he hasn't here a clear mind,

he doesn't make out any usefullness of it.

He says that she, as well, would have mixed up

her own image in the mirror

with the one of this young man she caught a glimpse of, on the square of the Bastille.

Living and dying.

Her body and his,

unknown.

The unknown of his and any unknown person.

She wouldn't have known

whether she was the one

of the story

or the one,

from outside,

who looked at the story.

- He says that perhaps she was this young boy

who at night when she said she was so hurt,

passed by under her windows

and watched her dying.

- A young man from Neuilly

who passed by at night

and stopped

and watched her dying.

- Once

she doesn't call for several days.

When she calls back again

she tells him the news.

- She tells him to be iller and iller.

And she has to die.

She tells him her marriage.

- Her husband is this surgeon who has been treating her for ten years.

Does he remember?

The one who has always known her, who saw her birth?

Who has always protected her, treated her?

- A little later a phone call.

A man.

He says he is the groom-to-be.

He demands that their relations stop.

He confirms the imminent death.

- He utters for the first time

the word

madness.

- For the first time the word is uttered:

madness.

- She calls

for the last time.

- Tells him the date of the wedding.

Not the place.

- Tells him she has had love only for him,

her only lover.

Regrets

to have to die.

The wedding is on a summer day, in 1975.

He isn't in Paris.

You talked about the sea as well.

- Yes, perhaps...

Dead rats along the quais of Thessaloniki...

the smell of anise, the one of ouzo...

the smell of the sludge too...

the end of the sea.

- You talked about a film too.

- I did...

the film...

the film hasn't been shot...

There would have been people, here.

We would have discovered them here,

immersed in a common thought

very absorbing...

- And suddenly would have stopped...

- Yes, that's it.

- Or that would have been stopped

by death

for example...

- Yes...

or by a doubt

suddenly...

of general order.

The End