...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.]