I always expected that one day you would descend on me.
I waited for you calmly, with infinite patience.
Take me. Deform me to your likeness so that no one, after you, can understand the reason for so much desire.
We're going to remain alone, my love.
The night will never end.
The sun will never rise again on anyone.
Never. Never more. At last.
You destroy me.
You're so good for me.
In good conscience, with good will, we'll mourn the departed day.
We'll have nothing else to do, nothing but to mourn the departed day.
And a time is going to come.
A time will come. When we'll no more know what thing it is that binds us. By slow degrees the word will fade from our memory.
Then it will disappear altogether.
(This time he accosts her face to face—for the last time—but from a distance. Henceforth she is inviolable. It is raining. They are under a store awning.)
HE: Maybe it's possible for you to stay.
SHE: You know it's not. Still more impossible than to leave.
HE: A week.
SHE: No.
HE: Three days.
SHE: Time enough for what? To live from it? To die from it?
HE: Time enough to know which.
SHE: That doesn't exist. Neither time enough to live from it. Nor time enough to die from it. So I don't give a damn.
HE: I would have preferred that you had died at Nevers.
SHE: So would I. But I didn't die at Nevers.
(She is seated on a bench in the waiting room of the Hiroshima railroad station. Still more time has elapsed. An elderly Japanese woman is seated beside her. Another interior monologue.)
SHE: Nevers, that I'd forgotten, I'd like to see you again tonight. Every night for months on end I set you on fire, while my body was aflame with his memory.
(Like a shadow the Japanese enters and sits on the same bench, on the opposite side of the old woman. He doesn't look at the French woman. His face is soaked from the rain. His lips are trembling slightly.)
SHE: While my body is still on fire with your memory, I would like to see Nevers again . . . the Loire.
(Shot of Nevers.)
Lovely poplar trees of Nièvre, I offer you to oblivion. (The word “lovely” should be spoken like a word of love.)
Three-penny story, I bequeath you to oblivion.
(The ruins at Nevers.)
One night without you and I waited for daylight to free me.
(The “marriage” at Nevers.)
One day without his eyes was enough to kill her.
Little girl of Nevers.
Shameless child of Nevers.
One day without his hands and she thinks how sad it is to love.
Silly little girl.
Who dies of love at Nevers.
Little girl with shaven head, I bequeath you to oblivion.
Three-penny story.
As it was for him, oblivion will begin with your eyes.
Just the same.
Then, as it was for him, it will encompass your voice.
Just the same.
Then, as it was for him, it will encompass you completely, little by little.
You will become a song.
(They are separated by the old Japanese woman. He takes a cigarette, rises slightly, and offers the French woman the package. “That's all I can do for you, offer you a cigarette, as I would offer one to anybody, to this old woman.” She doesn't smoke. He offers the package to the old woman, lights her cigarette.
The Nevers forest moves past in the twilight. And Nevers. While the loudspeaker at the Hiroshima station blares: “Hiroshima, Hiroshima!” during the shots of Nevers.
The French woman seems to be asleep. The two Japanese beside her speak softly to keep from waking her up.)
THE OLD WOMAN: Who is she?
HE: A French woman.
THE OLD WOMAN: What's the matter?
HE: She's leaving Japan in a little while. We're sad at having to leave each other.*
(She is gone. We see her again just outside the station. She gets into a taxi. Stops before a night club. “The Casablanca.” Then he arrives after her.
She is alone at a table. He sits down at another table facing hers. It's the end. The end of the night which marks the beginning of their eternal separation. A Japanese who was in the room goes over to her and engages her in conversation.)
THE JAPANESE: Are you alone?†
(She replies only by signs.)
THE JAPANESE: Do you mind talking with me a little?
(The place is almost empty. People are bored.)
THE JAPANESE: It is very late to be lonely.
(She lets herself be accosted by another man in order to “lose” the one we know. But not only is that not possible, it's useless. For the other one is already lost.)
THE JAPANESE: May I sit down? Are you just visiting Hiroshima?
Do you like Japan?
Do you live in Paris?
(We can see day beginning to break [through the windows]. The interior monologue has stopped. This unknown Japanese is talking to her. She looks at the other. The unknown Japanese stops talking to her. And then, terrifying, “the dawn of the damned” can be seen breaking through the windows of the night club.)
(She is next seen leaning against the door inside her hotel room. Her hand on her heart. A knock. She opens.)
HE: Impossible not to come.
(They are standing in the room, facing each other, their arms at their sides, their bodies not touching. The room is in order. The ash trays are empty. It is now full daylight. The sun is up. They don't even smoke. The bed is still made. They say nothing. They look at each other. The silence of dawn weighs on the whole city. He enters her room. In the distance, Hiroshima is still sleeping.
All of a sudden, she sits down. She buries her head in her hands, clenches her fist, closes her eyes, and moans. A moan of utter sadness. The light of the city in her eyes.)
SHE: I'll forget you! I'm forgetting you already! Look how I'm forgetting you! Look at me!
(He takes her arms [wrists], she faces him, her head thrown hack. She suddenly breaks away from him. He helps her by an effort of self-abstraction. As if she were in danger. He looks at her, she at him, as she would look at the city, and suddenly, very softly, she calls him. She calls him from afar, lost in wonder. She has succeeded in drowning him in universal oblivion. And it is a source of amazement to her.)
SHE: Hi-ro-shi-ma.
Hi-ro-shi-ma. That's your name.
(They look at each other without seeing each other. Forever.)
HE: That's my name. Yes. Your name is Nevers. Ne-vers-in France.
THE END
*This exchange takes place in Japanese. Not translated in the film.
†This passage in English in the film.
APPENDICES
NOCTURNAL NOTATIONS
(Notes on Nevers)*
ON THE SCENE OF
THE GERMAN’S DEATH
Both of them, equally, are possessed by this event: his death.
Neither of them is angry. They are only inconsolably sorry about their love.
The same pain. Same blood. Same tears.
The absurdity of war, laid bare, hovers over their blurred bodies.
One might believe her dead, so completely has his death drained all life from her.
He tries to caress her hips, as he had caressed her while making love. But he cannot.
It is as though she were helping him die. She doesn't think of herself, only of him. And he consoles her, almost apologizes for having to make her suffer, for having to die.
When she is alone, in the same spot where a short while before they were together, pain has not yet taken hold of her life. She is simply utterly amazed to find herself alone.
ON THE SHOT OF THE GARDEN FROM
WHICH THE GERMAN WAS FIRED UPON
They fired from this garden as they might have fired from any other garden in Nevers. From all the other gardens in Nevers.
Only chance has decided that it would be from this one.
This garden is henceforth marked by the sign of the banality of his death.
Its color and form are henceforth prophetic. It is from here that his death began, for all eternity.
A GERMAN SOLDIER CROSSES A PROVINCIAL
SQUARE DURING THE WAR
Late one afternoon a German soldier crosses a square somewhere in the provinces of France.
Even war is boring.
The German soldier crosses the square like a peaceful target.
We're in the depths of the war, the time when it seemed it would never end. People no longer pay any attention to the enemy. They've grown used to the war. The Champs de Mars Square reflects a quiet despair. The German soldier feels it too. We don't talk enough about the boredom of war. Within this boredom, women behind shutters watch the enemy walking across the square. Here adventure is circumscribed by patriotism. The other adventure must be strangled. Nevertheless, people watch. There's no crime in watching.
ON THE SHOTS DEALING WITH RIVA’S MEETINGS
WITH THE GERMAN SOLDIER
We kissed behind the ramparts. Deathly afraid, but utterly happy, I kissed my enemy.
The ramparts were always deserted during the war. During the war Frenchmen were shot there. And after the war, Germans.
I discovered his hands when they touched the gates to open them before me. I soon wanted to punish his hands. I bite them after making love.
It was inside the ramparts of the city that I became his wife.
I no longer remember the gate at the end of the garden. He waited for mo there, sometimes for hours. Especially at night. Any time I could find a free moment. He was afraid.
I was afraid.
When we had to cross the city together I walked ahead of him, filled with fear. People lowered their eyes. We thought they were indifferent. We began to take more chances.
I asked him to walk across the square, behind the fence, so that I could see him once during the day. So every day he walked along the fence, letting me look at him.
In the ruins, in winter, the wind blows in eddies. The cold. His lips were cold.
AN IMAGINARY NEVERS
In my memory, Nevers, where I was born, is inseparable from myself.
It is a city a child can walk around.
Bounded on one side by the Loire river, on the other by the ramparts.
Beyond the ramparts lies the forest.
Nevers can be measured by a child's foosteps.
Nevers “exists” between the ramparts, the river, the forest, the countryside. The ramparts are imposing. The river is the broadest, the best-known, the most beautiful in France.
Thus Nevers is circumscribed like a capital.
When I was a little girl and walked all the way around Nevers, I thought it was enormous. Its shadows trembled in the Loire, making it still bigger.
For a long time I was still under the illusion that Nevers was enormous, until I was twelve or thirteen.
Then Nevers closed in on itself. It grew as one grows. I knew nothing about other cities. I needed a city the size of love itself. I found it in Nevers itself.
To say that Nevers is a small city is an error of the mind and heart. Nevers was enormous for me.
The wheat is at its gates. The forest is at its windows. At night owls come into the gardens, and you have to struggle to keep from being afraid.
At Nevers, more than anywhere else, they keep a close watch over love.
Lonely people await their death there. No other adventure except love can make them turn their attention from this vigil.
Thus in these tortuous streets the straight line of death's vigil lives.
Love is unpardonable there. At Nevers, love is the great sin. At Nevers, happiness is the great crime. Boredom, at Nevers, is a tolerated virtue.
Madmen walk in the outskirts. Bohemians. Dogs. And love.
To speak deprecatingly of Nevers would also be an error of the mind and heart.
ON THE SHOTS OF THE MARBLE
LOST BY THE CHILDREN
I screamed again. And that day I heard a scream. That last time that they put me in the cellar. The marble came toward me, taking its time, like an event.
Brightly colored rivers flowed inside it. Summer was inside the marble. And summer had also made it warm.
I already knew that one shouldn't eat things, eat any old thing, not the walls, not the blood of one's own hands nor the walls. I looked at it with tenderness. I placed it against my mouth, but didn't bite.
So much roundness, so much perfection, posed an insoluble problem.
Maybe I'll break it. I throw it, but it bounces back toward my hand. I do it again. It doesn't come back. It gets lost.
When it gets lost, something I recognize begins again. Fear returns. A marble can't die. I remember. I look. I find it again.
Children's shouts. The marble is in my hand. Shouts. Marble. It belongs to the children. No. They won't have it back. I open my hand. There it is, captive. I give it back to the children.
THE GERMAN SOLDIER COMES TO HAVE HIS
HAND BANDAGED AT THE DRUG STORE RIVA’S
FATHER OWNS
[In the middle of summer I wore (black) sweaters. At Nevers the summers are cold. The summers during the war. My father is bored. His shelves are empty. I obey my father like a child. I look at his burned hand. I hurt him as I bandage his hand. I raise my eyes and briefly meet his. They're light. He laughs because I hurt him. I don't laugh. ]*
AN EVENING IN NEVERS DURING THE WAR.
FROM THE SQUARE
THE GERMAN SOLDIER WATCHES RIVA’S WINDOW
[My father drinks and is silent. I don't even know whether he's listening to the music I'm playing. The evenings are deadly, but this is the first evening I realize it. The enemy raises his head toward me and smiles slightly. I feel as though I were witnessing a crime. I close the shutters as upon some loathsome scene.] In his armchair, my father is half-asleep, as usual. Our two plates and my father's wine are still on the table. Behind the shutters the square pounds like the sea, enormous. I go toward my father and from very close by—almost touching him—I look at him. A sleep induced by the wine. I hardly recognize my father.
A NEVERS EVENING
Alone in my room at midnight. From the Champs de Mars Square the sea still pounds beyond my shutters. He must have passed by again tonight. I didn't open my shutters.
THE MARRIAGE AT NEVERS
I became his wife in twilight, happiness, and shame. When it was over, darkness fell upon us. We didn't even notice it.
Shame had disappeared from my life. We were happy to see the night. I had always been afraid of night. That night was blacker than any I've ever seen since. My country, my city, my drunken father, were drowned in it. With the German occupation. In one fell swoop.
Black night of certainty. We watched it attentively, then seriously. Then one by one the mountains loomed up on the horizon.
ANOTHER NOTE ON THE GARDEN
FROM WHICH THE GERMAN WAS FIRED UPON
Love serves life by making dying easier.
This garden could make you believe in God.
This man, with his rifle, drunk with liberty, this unknown man of the end of July, 1944, this man of Nevers, my brother, how could he have known?
ON THE PHRASE:
“AND THEN, HE IS DEAD.”
Riva herself makes no further comment when this scene appears.
To give any manifest sign of her pain would be to degrade the pain.
She has just discovered him, dying on the quay, in the sunlight. It is for the rest of us that the scene is unbearable. Not for Riva. Riva has stopped talking to us. She has, simply, stopped.
He is still alive.
Riva, on top of him, is at the extreme limit of pain. Madness envelops her.
; To see her smiling at him at this moment would even be logical.
Pain has its obscene side. Riva is obscene. Like a madwoman. She is no longer rational.
This was her first love. This is her first pain. We can scarcely look at Riva in this state. There's nothing we can do for her. Except wait. Wait until pain assumes a recognizable, decent shape in her.
Fresson dies. It is as if he were bound to the soil. Death took him completely by surprise. His blood flows like the river, and like time. Like sweat. He dies like a horse, with unsuspected strength. It occupies him almost completely. Then, when she comes, she brings tenderness with her, and the realization that it is useless to struggle against his death. A softness in Fresson's eyes. They smile. Yes. You see, my love, even that was possible for us. Funereal triumph. Fulfillment. I'm so sure I can't go on living after you die that I smile at you.
AFTER THE GERMAN SOLDIER’S BODY
HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY IN A TRUCK
RIVA REMAINS ALONE ON THE QUAY
That day the sun was shining gloriously. But, as every day, twilight comes.
What remains of Riva, on this quay, is the beating of her heart. (Late in the afternoon it has rained. It has rained on Riva and on the city. Then the rain has stopped. Then Riva's head has been shaved. And on the quay, there remains the dry spot where Riva had been. Burned spot.)
It appears that she's asleep on the quay. She is scarcely recognizable. (Animals walk on her blood-stained hands.)
Dog?
RIVA’S PAIN. HER MADNESS.
THE NEVERS CELLAR
Riva still doesn't speak.
Summer wears on as if nothing had happened. All France is celebrating. Amid joy and confusion.
The rivers also still flow as if nothing had happened. The Loire. Riva's eyes flow like the Loire, but directed by pain, amid this confusion.
The cellar is small as it might be large.
Riva screams as she might remain silent. She doesn't know she screams.
They punish her to teach her that she is screaming. Like a deaf person.
Hiroshima Mon Amour Page 5