India Song

A beggar woman.

- Mad?

- Yes.

Ah yes. I remember.

She follows the rivers.

Comes from Burma.

Not Indian.

She comes from Savannakhet.

Born there.

Walking...

For ten years.

And one day,

in front of her, the Ganges.

- Yes.

- She stays.

That's right.

12 children dead

while she walked towards Bengal?

Yes.

She leaves them.

Sells them, forgets them.

On the way to Bengal,

she goes barren

- Savannakhet, Laos?

- Yes.

At seventeen.

Pregnant... seventeen...

...thrown out by her mother,

goes away...

...asks the way to get lost.

No one knows.

In Calcutta they were together.

- She and the white woman?

- Yes.

During the same years...

- He had followed her to India.

- Yes.

For her, he left everything.

Overnight.

- The night of the ball?

- yes.

Michael Richardson was engaged

to a girl from S. Thala,

Lola Valerie Stein.

They were to marry in the autumn.

Then, the ball,

The ball at S. Thala.

She arrived late...

...in the middle of the night...

...in black.

That ball, such love...

such desire.

That light?

The monsoon.

That dust?

Central Calcutta.

What is that scent of flowers?

Leprosy.

Where are we?

The French Embassy, in India.

- That murmur?

- The Ganges.

When she died, he left India?

Yes.

Her grave is in the English cemetery?

Yes.

- She died out there?

- On the islands.

Found dead one night.

A black Lancia...

...speeds along the road

to Chandernagore.

It was there that she first tried?

Yes.

What are you afraid of?

Anne-Marie Stretter.

They would dance in the evening

They're dancing.

What are you crying about?

I love you...

...to the point of not seeing...

...not hearing...

...dying.

Lepers burst like sacks of dust,

you know.

- Don't suffer?

- No, feel nothing.

She's there by the Ganges,

under the trees.

She has forgotten.

- The French Vice-Consul from Lahore.

- Yes.

Sent to Calcutta in disgrace.

He's come back to the grounds?

Yes.

He comes every night.

The tennis court, deserted.

Anne-Marie Stretter's red bicycle.

Where is the one in black?

Out driving.

She comes back with the night.

The black Lancia

has just entered the grounds.

She hunts at night

in the depths of the Ganges.

For food.

Dead on the islands

- Her eyes pierced with light, dead.

- Yes.

Beneath that stone.

Around her, a bend in the Ganges...

Four o'clock.

Darkest night.

- No one's asleep?

- No one.

What heat!

Impossible.

Terrible.

Another storm...

...coming to Bengal...

...coming from the islands.

From the estuaries, inexhaustible...

- What's that sound?

- Her, crying.

- She isn't suffering, is she?

- No.

Leprosy.

Leprosy of the heart.

- Can't bear it?

- No, can't bear it.

India, can't bear it.

She's sleeping.

He loved her more than

anything in the world.

More than that.

Michael Richardson set up a marine

insurance business...

...in Bengal,

to stay with her in India.

Listen...

The Ganges fishermen.

What a night!

What heat!

All-embracing...

Deathly...

From behind the plants in the bar

she watches them.

Only at dawn...

...when the lovers went toward

the door of the ballroom...

...did Lola Valrie Stein

utter a cry.

Didn't hear anything else.

Didn't see anything else.

This crime in her past.

Yes.

Rain.

Yes.

Cool.

Her music,

that was Venice.

A promising artist.

- Never gave up playing?

- Never.

Ana Maria Guardi.

Yes.

The first marriage?

- The first post?

- Savannakhet, Laos.

To a French colonial civil servant.

She's 18.

Oh yes, a river...

...already...

...she's sitting by a river,

and she's looking.

The Mekong.

- She's silent? Crying?

- Yes.

They say:

"She won't get used to it".

"She'll have to be

sent back to Europe. "

- She couldn't bear it, already?

- Already.

Caught behind gates.

The government house grounds

- Those sentries?

- The guard.

- Already couldn't bear it.

- No.

One day,

a government launch stops...

...Monsieur Stretter is

inspecting the Mekong posts.

- Takes her away to Savannakhet?

- Yes, takes her with him.

For 17 years,

through the capitals of Asia.

You find her in Peking,

again in Mandalay.

In Bangkok...

you find her in Bangkok.

In Rangoon...

In Sydney.

You find her in Lahore...

17 years.

She's in Calcutta...

Calcutta...

She dies.

- Who's the other man?

- A friend passing through.

A friend of Stretter.

Whoever wants her, has her.

He gives her.

- Love.

- Yes.

Splendor.

"Anne-Marie Stretter"

written on the grave?

"Ana Maria Guardi",

but worn away.

Every night...

...looks at her.

- Has never spoken to her?

- Never.

Never approached any woman.

- The male virgin of Lahore.

- Yes.

- Those gleams over there?

- The burning ghats.

Burning those who died of hunger?

Yes.

It's dawn.

He had fired a gun in Lahore.

One night, from his balcony,

he fired on the lepers

of the Shalimar Gardens.

- Couldn't bear it?

- No.

- India, couldn't bear it?

- No.

What about India?

The idea.

There was a reception

at the French embassy?

Yes.

The park stretches down

to the Ganges.

The offices are on this side.

You see? Those grey buildings.

Farther away, the tennis courts,

deserted during the monsoon.

Almost no one is dancing?

In this heat,

how could you?

The only remedy, immobility.

Slowness...

Slow down the blood.

The smell of mud.

Insipid.

The Ganges, low tide.

The new Austrian attach.

Been here a month.

- He can't get used to India.

- His first time here?

Yes.

He'll come again.

- He'll go to the islands.

- How can you tell?

The anguish in his eyes.

She can't bear people

who get used to India.

The Ambassador asks people

to the islands for his wife.

She goes alone to the islands.

The Ambassador goes hunting

in Nepal.

They say her lovers are English,

don't mix with the embassies,

and that the Ambassador knows.

A friend of the Stretters'.

Unknown in Calcutta.

With this humidity

the pianos are detuned.

The French Vice-Consul

has just entered the park.

At the last minute

she sent him a card: "Come".

Just what did he do?

The worst... killed.

- In Lahore.

- The official version?

Nerves gave way.

Often happens.

- Easy to say.

- Yes.

His face... as if grafted.

Very pale.

She could have spared us

his presence.

An outcast in Lahore too?

There too.

He just escaped being dismissed.

The ambassador intervened.

Closed circles in India

make me think of leprosy.

- Perhaps he drank? - No. Drunkenness is

the same for us all here.

We talk about going home.

No, he didn't drink.

The Ambassador

asked the young attach

to have a word with him.

He tries.

He turns away.

Can't bear it.

Any of it.

He laughs.

As if he were suddenly

mad with joy.

Look...

Perhaps he's just seen

Madame Stretter... perhaps.

- You mean...

- I wonder... perhaps.

Did he talk about Lahore?

Only to her.

Near dawn.

He fired at night,

on the Shalimar Gardens...

...on lepers, dogs.

But they found bullets in the mirrors

in his house in Lahore, too.

Shooting at himself...

Roses arrived every day from Nepal.

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