...of a performance

The program then includes an entr'acte in Grand Guignol style, which is called "Ritual Murders" and draws heavily on fake devices: knives with swing blades, red ink spread on white flesh, screams and contortions of the victims, etc. The setting has remained the same as for the first scene (a huge vaulted dungeon into which a stone staircase descends); it requires only a few accessories such as wheels, racks or trestles; the dogs, on the other hand, play no part in it. But the high point of the evening is indubitably a long monologue spoken by Lady Ava herself, alone on stage throughout the number. The term monologue is not, moreover, quite suitable, for few words are spoken during this little dramatic fragment. Our hostess plays herself. In the costume she has been seen wearing during the party, she makes her entrance, now, at the rear (through the large double door), in an extraordinarily realistic setting which perfectly reproduces her own bedroom, located like the rest of her private apartments on the fourth - top - floor of the huge house. Greeted by sustained applause, Lady Ava bows briefly to the footlights. Then she turns back toward the door, whose handle she has not released, closes it, and remains there a moment, listening to some sound from outside (imperceptible to the audience), one ear toward the decorated panel, but without pressing her cheek against the wood. She heard nothing disturbing, probably, since she soon abandons this posture to approach the audience, which she henceforth no longer sees, of course. Then she takes a few increasingly uncertain steps to the left, seems to think twice, to change her mind, turns back to the right, heads obliquely toward the rear of the room, to return almost at once toward the audience. She is evidently in distress, her face is tired, worn, older, all the party's urbanity suddenly vanished. Having stopped near a small round table covered with a green cloth that falls to the floor all around, she begins mechanically removing her jewelry: a heavy gold necklace, a charm bracelet, a ring with a large stone, earrings, which she sets one after the other in a crystal cup. She remains there, standing despite her fatigue, one hand on the edge of the table, the other arm hanging alongside her body. One of the young Eurasian servant girls then enters noiselessly from the left and stands motionless some distance from her mistress, whom she contemplates in silence: she is wearing bronze silk pajamas more clinging then is usual in the case of such garments. Lady Ava turns her face toward the girl, a tragic face with eyes so exhausted that they seem to rest on things without seeing them. Neither woman speaks. Kim's features are smooth and inscrutable, Lady Ava's so weary that they no longer express anything. There may be hatred on either side, or terror, or envy and pity, or pleading and scorn, or anything else.

[La Maison de Rendez-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of an encounter

She climbs to the second floor without seeing anything, or to the third. She knocks softly three times at a door, and immediately goes in without waiting for an answer. It is not the agent who is here to receive her today, it is the man she knows only by a nickname: the "Old Man" (though he is probably only sixty), whose real name is Edouard Manneret. He is alone. His back is to the door by which she has closed behind her, still leaning against it. He is sitting in a chair, at his desk. He is writing. He pays no attention to the young girl, whose arrival he does not even seem to have noticed, although she has not taken any special precautions to avoid making noise; but her movements are naturally silent, and it is possible that the man has really not heard anyone come in. Without doing anything to indicate her presence, she waits for him to decide to look toward her, which probably takes some time.

But she is then (immediately afterward or a little later?) facing him, both of them standing in a dark corner of the room, motionless and mute; and it is the servant girl who is standing with her back to the wall, as if she had slowly retreated there out of mistrust or fear of the Old Man who, two steps from her is at least a head taller. And now she is leaning over the desk from which he still has not moved; she has rested one hand on the green leather top whose worn surface disappears almost entirely under a clutter of papers, and with the other hand - the right one - she holds onto the brass rim that protects the edge of the mahogany surface; in front of her, the man, still sitting in his chair, has not even raised his eyes toward his visitor; he stares at the delicate fingers with their red lacquered nails resting on a manuscript page of business stationery only three-quarters covered with a very small, close and regular handwriting without erasure or mistake; the word which the servant girl's forefinger seems to be pointing to is the verb "represents" (third person singular of the present indicative); a few lines lower, the last sentence has remained unfinished: "would tell, upon his return from a trip"... He has not found the word that came next.

[La Maison de Rendez-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of blind man's buff

At the fifth door, she finds herself in another room without any furniture, so that it is still not hers, yet which must be since it overlooks in the same way the courtyard surrounded with high fences of a girls' school, moreover the same one probably. The students are at recess; however there do not seem to be very many today: six in all, playing some kind of blind man's buff. These little girls - as usual, with rare exceptions - are all blacks, about twelve to fourteen years old. It is one of the youngest who is wearing the white silk bandage over her eyes and who moves about uncertainly, timidly, her arms extended in front of her, exploring the air like the antennae of a blind insect, and her lips parted. The other five who surround her are each furnished with a long steel T square which doubtless is part of a drawing-kit they must use to produce geometrical figures in their class notebooks. But their function her is actually that of banderilleros in the bull ring. As they advance and retreat to remain two or three steps away from their unarmed playmate, which is to say out of reach of her hands which are nonetheless timorous rather than threatening, they slowly perform around her a kind of wild dance, taking great silent steps, making broad gestures with their arms above their heads, sweeping and ceremonious salutations which, without any apparent or even symbolic meaning, seem nonetheless to belong to the ritual of some religious sacrifice. From time to time, one or the other comes up and roughly touches, with the end of her T square, the defenceless girl vulnerable to their blows, choosing the sensitive points carefully enough to make the victim stagger and even, on occasion, rub the wounded place as though to assuage the pain.

All this happens without outcry or turbulence of any kind: it is a mute, mild, almost muffled game, and the rubber-soled tennis shoes do not make the slightest sound on the cement of the courtyard, across which the group moves as it circles the victim.

[Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of an intruder

Meanwhile, Laura is still huddled under her sheets and blankets, pulled up over her mouth. But her eyes are wide open, and she is listening hard, trying to figure out what is happening overhead. Yet there is nothing to hear, so heavy and ominous is the silence of the whole house. At the end of the hallway, the murderer, who has quietly climbed up the fire escape, is now carefully picking up the pieces of broken glass which he found broken when he reached the window; thanks to the hole left by the little triangle of windowpane which had already fallen out, the man can grasp one by one between two fingers the sharp points which constitute the star and remove them by pulling them out from their groove between the wood frame and the dry putty. When he has, without hurrying, completed his task, he need merely thrust his hand through the gaping rectangle, where he no longer risks severing the veins in his wrist, and turn the recently oiled lock without making any noise at all. Then the window frame pivots silently on its hinges. Leaving it ajar, ready for his escape once his triple crime has been committed, the man in black gloves walks silently across the brick tiles.

[Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of a building

And now he is silently coming back upstairs to catch the disobedient girl red-handed: creeping up to a windowpane exposed to all eyes, and this moreover at precisely the moment when the justification for the prohibition is particularly obvious.

After having laid his key as usual on the marble table top, near the brass candlestick, he slowly mounts the steps, one by one, leaning on the wooden banister, for the excessive steepness of the stairs makes him feel once more the accumulated fatigue of the last several days: several days of watchfulness, expectation, of prolonged meetings, of errands by subway or on foot from one end of the city to the other, as far as the most outlying districts, far beyond the river... For how many days?

Having reached the first landing, he stops in order to listen, ears cocked for the faint creaks throughout the building. But there is neither a creak, nor the sound of material tearing, nor breath caught; there is nothing but silence and closed doors along the empty corridor.

[Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Grillet, A.]

...of the ice

Sometimes I wake from the dream and hear what passes for silence about me. It is the sound of a car in the street, cats yowling in the garden at the back. I remember the silence of the ice, that desolate country so firm in my imagination. Oblique images fill my mind. I used to feel they were a reflection of his thoughts, a strange hurried flash as if he was thinking of me at that moment and sending me what he could see before him. It is dark and troubled under the night sky but the ice glows with the reflection of the stars. If you have ever seen a moonpath on the sea you will know what I mean. There is a feeling that if you could just follow it it would take you to the end of the world.

[Index, Penney, B.]

...of interrupted life

Night. The stillness of this street, surrounded by busy roads, always amazes me. This experience is common to city dwellers. We shut ourselves off from noise during the day. At night, the silence is almost harsh, its restlessness coming from the sense of interrupted life.

[Index, Penney, B.]

...of insubordination

The crying of the two babies makes him impatient. He is aware of the noise men make passing about them, the words and laughter on the wind which they too could be conscious of. He stares at the silhouette of the man who is to look after them. Standing in the prow of the boat, hands in his pockets, head turned towards the island, the man is unable to hear or speak. He was born deaf and his vocal cords have been cut by the order of the king. The children must be totally free from outside influence. Yet the deaf mute makes the king uneasy. He feels that, lacking the ability to communicate, the man is somehow outwith his control.

[Index, Penney, B.]