Agatha and the Limitless Readings (1981) - full transcript

AGATHA and

the LIMITLESS READINGS

a MARGUERITE DURAS film.

It is a drawing room

in an uninhabited house.

There is a divan. Some armchairs.

A window lets in the winter light.

One hears the sound of the sea.

The winter light is dim and misty.

There will be no other light.

There will only be this winter light.

We see a man and a woman.

They are silent.

They seem to have spoken

at length before we see them.

They are impervious to our presence.

They stand, leaning against the walls,

the furniture, as though exhausted.

They don?t look at each other.

In the drawing room there are

two traveling bags and two overcoats

but in different places.

They have therefore

come there separately.

They are thirty years old.

One might say they look alike.

We have always spoken of leaving.

Always it seems.

already since the time we were children.

He?s a very young man.

He must be about the age

you were on that beach.

Twenty- three,

I seem to remember.

The sea seems to be sleeping.

There is no wind.

There?s no one.

The sea is smooth as in winter.

I can still see you out there.

You used to seek out the waves

and I would cry out for fear.

And you wouldn?t hear

And I would cry.

I used to think I knew every thing.

Everything.

Yes.

To have foreseen everything

Everything.

Everything, that might happen.

between you... and me.

Yes.

I thought I had considered everything,

Everything.

The pain, no.

That?s never possible.

That's it.

Never.

You think you know it,

as yourself.

And then...

No.

Each time it comes back,

each time miraculously.

Every time no one knows anything.

Each time

for example, with this departure.

You never know anything.

Yes.

And you?re going to leave.

Yes.

You must have lied, too.

When?

When you sent me

the telegram about the meeting.

"Come, come tomorrow.

Come because I love you.

Come."

I couldn?t say otherwise.

I didn?t lie.

You might have said:

"I?m leaving. Come.

I'm leaving.

Come, since I?m leaving.

Since I?m leaving you,

Since I'm leaving."

I didn?t want to say

that I was leaving you

No.

I wanted to see you, I think.

Nothing else. To see you.

And then...

Leave you afterwards.

Very quickly afterwards.

Like at the very moment I saw you.

Everything is so dark.

I think I?m leaving

because the force,

so powerful, of our love.

That we have for one another.

I couldn?t avoid this trip.

I feel I need to leave you

as much as I feel I need to see you

I yield to these things

without understanding them.

You?re leaving when, Agatha?

Tomorrow Very early.

At four in the morning.

In the dark of night.

You know those flights

The sun comes up after the Azores.

A woman...

took you there once.

You were very young.

It was in the spring.

I'm not sure.

It was before you.

I don?t remember.

So your body

will be carried off far from me.

Far from the frontiers of my body.

It will be irretrievably lost...

and I shall die.

Nothing shall remain.

No.

There'll be nothing

Neither living nor dead.

It shall be mine in that way.

Yes, it?s yours.

- That?s what you wanted to do to me.

- Yes.

- This suffering.

- Yes.

Agatha.

And to tell me so.

You wanted that too?

Yes.

It was important to me

to tell you I was leaving...

Just then.

Face to face.

Looking you in the eye.

What desire in your eyes.

But what?s to become of them?

But what?s left for me to see...

if you?re no longer there?

If you insist on this horror

of removing yourself so far away

from me?

It will be the same sky.

The East...

will stay where it is.

And death.

So you see

There will be no way out.

I see you at fifteen.

That you?re eighteen years old.

You?re coming back from swimming.

You?re coming out of the rough sea.

You?re stretching out,

always close to me.

You?re dripping with seawater.

Your heart is beating quickly...

from the hard swim.

You?re closing your eyes.

The sun is strong.

I?m looking at you.

I?m looking at you

after the horrible fear of losing you.

I?m twelve years old, I?m fifteen.

Happiness might be,

at this moment

having you still alive.

I speak to you...

I?m asking you, I'm begging you...

I?m begging you

not to keep swimming

when the sea is so rough.

Then you open your eyes,

And you look at me smiling.

Then you reclose your eyes

I shout,

that you must promise me.

And you don?t answer.

Then I fall silent.

I just look at you.

I look at your eyes

under the closed lids.

I can?t yet name this desire,

I?m feeling to touch them

with my hands.

I rid myself of the image of your body

lost in the shadows of the sea

Floating...

in the depths of the sea.

I see only your eyes.

You know,

I can?t stand the idea of you leaving.

I can?t stand it either.

We are equal before this departure.

You know so.

You had always said that it

would be later, in life

that this departure would come

That?s the word you used...

here...

during the winter past.

You always said so...

Always.

Always.

You?re lying again.

You're lying.

You know,

I can't.

I can't stand it.

That date.

You had predicted

it would be later on

Let it pass.

Come back to me.

Another departure would be possible

Postpone it only, one year.

I?m begging you.

No.

Help me,

I?m begging you.

At first,

I hadn?t foreseen it...

At all.

At all possibly happening

I used to speak of it

without ever truly envisioning it.

in all the irrevocable reality

of a date...

of a word.

Of a word naming the foreign city

you'd be absent from.

And then once...

It appeared to me,

that I could do it.

Say that name.

That word.

That however distant

might be that date

that destination,

I could nevertheless envision it

Catch a glimpse of it

separately from my death.

You could do that.

Think of it,

this departure,

Far from me.

Independently of your death.

You could do that,

a single time.

Once.

You could.

It happened, it?s true.

It lasted several seconds.

As I was saying to you...

just long enough to see.

The time to see you dead.

To see me alive...

next to you...

dead.

I don?t remember very well.

It must have happened

early in the morning,

just before the alarm.

I don?t know what was responsible

I no longer know what was responsible

for the death which struck you.

It seemed to have

something to do with the sea.

Always this childhood image

Of you...

going out to meet the waves.

And I looked at you...

But those few seconds...

however brief this time...

however slight

that difference

between yesterday and today

in your feeling for me.

As insignificant as it might seem,

you know very well

that it means it?s all over.

you know that...

you know it.

Don?t deny it, you know it.

I think we?re deceiving ourselves,

again.

We?re always deceiving ourselves.

It mustn?t have been a matter of,

a difference, as you say.

between loving you more,

or less

or still more or to the contrary already

a little less perhaps.

No...

No.

It must have been a matter

of still loving you.

With the end in view

of no longer loving you.

of doing everything in order

not to love you any more,

in order to forget you,

to replace you,

to leave you,

to lose you.

Look at me...

I?m screaming...

I?m screaming with you.

As you?re leaving

you still love me?

You?re leaving

so as to continue loving me?

I'm leaving...

So as to always love

In this grief...

so marvelous,

of never keeping you.

Of never

being able to

allow this love

to leave us...

for dead.

This man.

Does he know?

No.

You tell him so in the same way?

Yes.

Say it to me as if to him.

- I love you.

- Again.

I love you...

as I was unaware how much I could.

To whom did you say that?

I don?t know whom I?m speaking to.

You are Agatha.

Agatha, I?m seeing you.

I?m seeing you.

You are a little girl, at first.

And then you?re grown up.

Where is this?

On the beach.

There.

You are seven.

And then later on...

- In another place.

- Yes.

In a closed space.

- A bedroom.

- Yes.

- We?re alone in the villa.

- Yes.

Where is Mother?

Where are the other children?

They?re sleeping.

It's the siesta.

It?s summer.

Here.

In this place.

Here.

- The Villa Agatha.

- Yes.

It?s Agatha?s summer.

Ours, yes.

That's to say,

Summer.

It is morning, I come out

of the villa and I look at the beach.

I?m looking for my sister

among the people,

the bathers.

As far off as the sea might be,

as far off as she might be. Her.

I always recognize my sister.

I still can?t say

how I recognize her so well.

When I don?t see her right away

I'm afraid.

It?s a fear identical to hers,

which is the fear for Agatha,

for the sea.

Of her being swallowed up

by the sea.

She too, Agatha,

goes out into the waves.

and swims far out.

Beyond the markers.

Beyond everything,

and you no longer see her,

and you shout

Agatha doesn?t come back until

I beckon for her to come back to me.

She lies down next to me

I recover slowly

from my fright for Agatha.

She asks me to forgive her.

I don?t answer.

You know,

I can't stand this departure.

I know.

You can?t accept it.

In the same way

I wouldn?t accept it of you.

Never.

In no way.

And we are going to do it.

We are however

going to do just that.

Separate each other from our lives.

I never imagined myself

separated from you.

I can?t, do you understand?

I can?t without your eyes

framed within these confines.

Without your body here.

Without that...

You know?

That slight loss of presence

that comes over you,

when other people are

looking at you and when I?m there...

with them.

You know very well...

That shadow over your smile

that makes you so desirable

and which I?m

the only one to appreciate.

This departure, I can?t.

I can?t, you understand,

I just can?t.

I can?t, you understand,

I just can't.

Tell me more.

What do you want to know?

That walk, along the river.

In France.

Why?

To try to see what you saw.

You could never do it.

It was a long time ago.

You were still living with us.

We were together at

the Villa Agatha

during those years at vacation time.

There was this black piano,

which was in this kind of salon

facing the beach.

Afterwards this piano was sold

and the partition was removed

to enlarge a bedroom.

That was after you left

but you knew...

about it.

You must remember all that.

And then, a long time

after those first years

it happened elsewhere.

In another bedroom

facing

another river.

It wasn?t that

colonial river of our childhood.

No, it was afterwards.

Yes.

I think we had gone on a picnic,

the whole family

Father was still living.

It was towards this river.

It was in France.

It wasn't far from the Villa Agatha.

And after the picnic

we left, you and I.

We went to the river.

To see.

And then we found this hotel.

It was a long grey house

on the bank of the river.

You said that it was a ch?teau,

changed into a guest house.

We went inside.

I was about fifteen

and you were nineteen...

I think.

I think, we were still afraid

to go wandering about.

We did all the same.

Yes.

I think I remember.

At this hotel,

there was also a black piano.

The hotel was open,

all the doors were open.

There was nobody there

The piano was open.

We went through the hotel

and we found ourselves

on the bank of the river.

And then, on the river.

it was immense

Still.

And full of islands...

of poplars, everywhere.

on the islands,

on the banks.

Beyond the hotel

there was a bend in the river.

and it passed out of sight.

I said:

That?s the Loire,

it?s so broad, look.

The sea can?t be far away.

You said it didn?t look that way,

but that it was a dangerous river.

you explained the uneven bottom

and the whirlpools

and the eddies,

that carried off children,

in summer.

And buried them

in the sand shoals.

You also said

that those poplars there

on the Loire

at this moment

at the beginning of summer

had the same color as my hair

when I was a little girl.

You were very good looking

without ever trying to appear so.

Ever.

And that gave your beauty

the grace, both unrivalled

and intangible

of childhood.

And I saw it quite suddenly

We had rarely been alone.

It was perhaps the first time.

I drifted away from you.

I looked at you

and then I looked

at the bend in the river.

Then I came back

and I saw that you were still there,

and that you were still watching me

and I saw that you were

thinking the same thing

at seeing me

as I was, at seeing you

in this solitude.

Far from she

who had taught us

to keep ourselves

in this marvelous indifference

towards ourselves.

We didn't say anything about it.

We were like the other children.

We didn't say anything to each other.

Except, for sometimes because of the

difference in age between you and me.

Things like that.

Such as for example

ones about the river.

Afterwards, we inspected the hotel

each in a different direction.

You towards the bedrooms I think.

I don't recall very well.

And I towards the sitting rooms,

they were in rows,

beyond the dining rooms.

There was still no one.

The only thing that I heard

as I walked

were your steps

on the upper floor

in the bedrooms.

And then I found myself again

facing the river,

in front of the black piano.

I sat down and

I began to play the Brahms waltz.

Suddenly I thought I could play it,

and then, no.

I couldn't.

I stopped at the reprise, you know,

The one I could

never get past correctly.

You know very well.

Mother's disappointment.

After I finished

I heard you weren't walking any further

on the second story.

You're making it up.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

First I heard you stop walking

and then you began to walk.

And suddenly...

I saw that you were there.

Standing...

next to the door.

You were looking at me

As only

you do.

as though peering through a haze

to see me.

You smiled.

You spoke my name

twice:

Agatha, Agatha,

you?re exaggerating

You?re exaggerating, Agatha.

And I said to you:

You play it, the Brahms waltz.

And I started off

again into the deserted hotel.

I waited.

And in a moment or two

it came to pass.

You played

the Brahms waltz.

I was in a great drawing room

facing the river

and I heard your fingers

make that music

which my fingers,

which I,

never,

could never manage.

I was seeing myself in a mirror

listening to my brother

playing for me

alone in all the world

and I bestowed on him

all music

forever.

and I saw myself enthralled

in the happiness of resembling him

such that it was with our lives

as it was with that river flowing

together

there, in the mirror

Yes, that's right.

Yes.

then afterwards

a burning sensation in my body.

I lost the awareness of living

for several seconds.

Agatha.

Yes, I named myself

for the first time,

and by that name.

The one whom I saw in the mirror

I named as you did,

as you still do,

With that emphasis

on the last syllable.

You used to say

Agatha.

I love you

as it is not possible to love.

You remember nothing

of that afternoon?

I remember everything

you have just said.

I don?t remember having seen it.

The hotel door,

was it open on to the river?

That's right.

There were two parallel doors

facing the river.

Between the two doors

was the black piano.

Beyond was the river.

The drawing rooms

were to the left of the doors,

towards the bend in the river.

There, where it vanished.

Yes, that?s it. What you said:

Look.

The river vanishing,

There.

Vanishing.

Vanishing in the direction of Agatha.

Afterwards, you stopped playing.

You called to me.

I didn?t answer right away.

You called to me again,

this time with a certain alarm.

It was then that I answered that

I was there, that I was coming.

I came.

I set my hands next to yours

on the keyboard.

We looked at our hands

We measured them

to see by how much

mine were smaller.

I asked you

to tell her, our mother,

that I wished to give up the piano.

You accepted.

At that point she must have come in

through the garden door of the hotel.

We discovered her looking at us both

in the river?s light.

She smiled, she too,

she said that she was worried,

that we had been gone an hour already.

I remember,

I said to her:

Agatha doesn?t want to continue

studying the piano.

I told her she must accept

this decision, of Agatha.

That I, I would play for her,

for Agatha.

For the rest of my life.

She looked on her children

for a long time

with that same softness

that your glance sometimes takes on.

And then she said yes,

that she agreed.

that Agatha was freed of that

obligation to learn the piano,

that it was all over.

He lies down on the divan

in a suggestive and proper position,

but, which could suggest

the presence of her body next to his.

Then she turns away from him.

They have almost always turned their

backs to each other when they speak,

as if they were unable to see each other

without the risk of becoming lovers.

They have each remained

in the very infancy of their love.

Silence. Then they move,

always between replies,

and then they arrange themselves

along the walls, the furniture,

and remain standing where they are

speaking to each other.

- Tell me more.

- What do you want to know.

Silence. They stir as if asleep

and then they stir no more,

they remain fixed,

their eyes hidden,

closed or lowered to the floor.

As you?re leaving

You can?t.

You could never do it.

Silence. She gradually remembers.

She speaks slowly,

often stopping and

then she begins to remember.

It was a long time ago,

you were still living with us,

You tell him so in the same way?

Yes.

Long silence. They close their eyes as

though they have fainted away together.

- Say it to me as if to him.

- I love you.

- Again. - I love you as I was

unaware how much I could.

- To whom did you say that?

- I don?t know whom I?m speaking to.

- You are Agatha.

- Yes.

They keep their eyes closed.

Their voices cracked

and broken with an unbearable,

unplayable, inexpressible emotion.

Others who might know this story

might say this:

It is because

of this impossibility

that he felt

unable, him

to leave her,

which made her

think about

leaving him.

They would say:

He was the eldest,

older than her by five years.

Agatha was the second oldest.

So he was used to deciding

for the younger ones.

He could not have foreseen

that she would leave him

without leaving at least some hint.

Others might have asked:

Even in this case of a guilty love

Yes...

Still others would have answered:

Yes, even in that case.

Of this criminal affair.

Yes.

Your body, Agatha.

Your body, white.

My body.

White, yes.

White.

Yes, that's right, yes.

I think.

I think so too.

I'm not sure any more.

I'm no longer sure of anything.

She used to say:

They have the same frailness.

In the eyes.

In the skin.

The same whiteness.

I knew it, never.

You would never have left.

Never. I would never have done it.

I couldn?t ever.

We would have been stuck where we are,

with meeting at the Villa Agatha.

Yes.

We would have been

stuck in this place,

facing the sea.

How do you enter...

the Villa Agatha?

At night.

With the keys given by her.

The keys left by her?

No. Those given by her.

The night before she died.

To me, brother of Agatha.

She wanted to die here.

You come alone sometimes

to the Villa Agatha.

Yes, as you come here alone,

yourself.

What a stirring...

left by your sleep.

Your smell, Agatha,

that emptiness.

I?m begging you, help me.

I am helping you. I?m leaving,

I?m helping you.

It?s true.

Something else needed to be able

to happen between you and me.

Like a new development in the story.

- Like leaving perhaps?

- No.

Then the change would not be to leave?

No. You can?t be trusted as always

at one time or another.

You know that leaving

will be nothing more

than shifting Villa Agatha

to the other side of the sea.

Or elsewhere.

No, the change would not be to leave.

I would like to be able to tell you

what it might be, I don?t know.

- To make up some thing?

- what?

- A fear, for example?

- Yes.

Of the sea. Of the gods.

Yes, fear.

What then would the change be?

To still remain in this love.

How would you manage

without this pain?

without this separation...

this pain...

What would we do

without air...

without light...

What would we do with air...

with light

without that knowledge,

of being dependent upon it together.

My love...

Agatha

My sister...

Agatha

My body...

Agatha.

My child.

- What color were her eyes?

- Blue.

- Like his?

- Yes.

- Ah, what a coincidence...

- What happiness.

You were wearing that day

a blue dress, a beach dress.

You had thrown it on the floor

at the foot of the bed.

Wait...

I think, yes, navy blue..

It was one of Mother?s dresses...

an old one,

with white stripes.

She used to lend it to me sometimes.

You remember...

that color, that blue?

Yes, the blue spot on the floor.

After which I made out

the white of the naked body.

Listen to me.

Listen.

Sometimes a love dies.

If you loved him,

even for a short time.

Several weeks, several nights,

instead of still loving me,

even for several nights...

tell me so.

I love him.

I'm going to scream.

I'm screaming.

Scream.

I'm going to die.

Die.

Here once more is the

think obscurity, around us.

The calm of that ban,

which is our law.

So you've come to give me notice

of those decisions,

you've made, far from me.

To make this ban

more forbidding still.

Yes.

More dangerous.

More feared...

more fearful.

More frightening

More unknown...

Accursed.

Senseless,

intolerable.

Close as possible

to intolerable.

Close as possible to this love.

I see. I?m insane from seeing.

It?s strange, the weather

we?re suddenly having

This mildness...

Suddenly.

It?s almost fair...

Almost warm.

Like a return of summer.

I?m speaking to you.

I was speaking to you.

I hear you.

You were really innocent,

still so young.

Knowing nothing of the extent

of your sweetness,

of the incommensurable power

of your body.

You were beautiful,

people told you so.

And you were reading Balzac.

You were the splendor of the beach

and you knew as little of that splendor

as a child of her own madness.

Yes, the weather is extremely mild,

considering the winter coming on

and our love which is about

to embark on a voyage

of such pain

as to die from it.

The sea is lukewarm.

The sea is lukewarm.

Very calm.

- Some children are bathing

in front of the villa. - Yes.

Some children lie down

on the edges of the waves.

They let the sea cover them over,

they?re laughing, they?re screaming.

You turned eighteen a few days ago.

Suddenly, something new:

my sister is grown up.

My sister Agatha is eighteen.

Our mother tells me the news,

she writes to me:

You should come see her.

She is suddenly so beautiful.

You wouldn?t believe your eyes,

and you?d swear she doesn?t know.

You?d think you could almost say, she?s

a little bit slow in wanting to know.

As she used to withdraw from us,

sometimes, when she was little,

you remember,

she withdraws now from herself.

You are engaged

to a girl from Les Charentes.

You?re twenty-three.

You?re graduating from college.

You?re living alone.

You only come for a few days

during the summer

to the Villa Agatha.

That summer I come to see Agatha.

I stay longer than planned.

It is a wonderful summer.

It?s a summer day at Agatha.

A nap in the month of July.

The garden is on

the other side of the house,

on the side away from the sea.

Our parents are stretched out

under the awning.

I see them from the window of my room.

They?re sleeping

in the shade of the villa.

Our bedrooms face the garden.

There is nothing to fear.

No glances.

No indiscretion.

Nothing can disturb

the peace in this heat.

Our younger brothers and sisters,

that summer, are in the Dordogne

staying with our grandparents.

Our mother was ill

an unexpected depression

and she had asked to be alone

with you and father, that summer.

You can hear the sound of the sea,

calm and slow.

I lie down in the afternoon.

For two years this has been going on.

"She must rest."

Yes.

I?m sleeping near you.

Our bedrooms are separated

by an echoing wall.

You know that.

I didn?t know it

before that summer.

I come back into

the hallucinatory room.

I think she's asleep.

She is not asleep.

I?m looking at her.

Does she know?

She knows.

Perhaps she doesn?t

know who it is?

To the contrary,

she knew the sound of your step.

She knew who was

coming into the room.

My sister?s body in there,

in the darkened bedroom.

I didn?t know there was a difference

between my sister?s body

and that of another woman.

Her eyes are closed.

She knows however that I am coming.

Yes.

The difference is in this knowledge

I thought I had of her

and the discovery

of my ignorance of her.

In the huge disparity of this difference

between knowing her and not knowing

The sound of the sea enters the room,

dark and slow.

On your body

the negative image of the sun.

The breasts are white

and over the pubis there?s

the outline of the child?s bathing suit.

Her body?s indecency

has all the magnificence of God.

It?s as though

the sound of the sea covers it

with the sweetness of a deep wave.

I don?t see anything more than this,

that you are there, whole,

that the night out

of which you were drawn

is the night of love.

She is discovering it.

I sometimes used to hear you

through the echoing partition.

It sometimes happened

that we were alone in the villa.

Do you remember?

You used to bring girls home

and I heard

how you said you loved them.

and sometimes I would hear

how they wept

in the pleasure

you gave them.

I would hear some of the things

people say in cases like that,

those insults and those cries

and sometimes I was afraid.

Your bedroom was so calm, always.

until that time... that time.

you know, when somebody came

and took you, too.

He was one of my friends.

and you cried out with pleasure

and fear in the same way.

Pleasure was intense.

I seem to remember

that it was, yes.

It must have left for dead

my sister Agatha.

I think so.

But before that morning on the beach...

And after that afternoon

near the river

I don?t know very well

what happened to me.

I didn?t know there was a difference

between my brother?s look

at my naked body

and another man?s look at this body.

I didn?t know anything about that,

about my brother,

about those forbidden things,

nor how adorable

they were, you see.

nor how much they were

to such an extent

contained in my body.

Guide me towards the white body.

The eyes are not visible.

The body is closed up entirely

beneath the eyelids.

You are my sister.

The body is immobile.

The heart can be seen beneath the skin.

You touch the body.

You lie down next to it.

We remain silent.

The breasts, I think,

are within reach of my hands

of the kisses of my mouth.

Our parents are waking up.

I don?t know your name any more.

They married you off two years later.

Everything was covered up.

I love you as

the first moment of our love

that afternoon,

in the villa on the Atlantic.

I love you.

You had children,

a happy marriage they say.

Yes. They say; just as you did.

Yes.

We never got divorced.

We gave each other

the same faithfulness.

I gave it to you.

You gave it to me in return.

Until today.

- Where everything starts again.

- Yes.

No other love.

I had seen you

in the morning on the beach.

I met my sister

as I always did every day.

We swam together.

And then we lay down in the sand.

The weather was good.

Sunlight,

a steady wind.

And suddenly you said:

'Why aren?t the others here yet?'

We look towards the villa

at the white stairs.

Everything seemed normal.

And then I saw

the clock on the pergola.

I saw that we had mistaken the time

that we had come to the beach

an hour earlier than usual.

It was the next morning of that day

you know, of that evening

when that friend had just taken you

and that you had screamed.

I remember having spoken to you

of a first desire to kill you.

You didn?t answer.

It was on the beach.

We were an hour ahead of the world.

Just one hour.

And that was enough.

I spoke to you about

what had happened the night before.

I told you that there was,

on your white swim suit,

a slight stain of blood.

We looked at each other.

I called you by your childhood name.

You wept.

You asked me to forgive you.

Afterwards, I don?t remember

anything but that look

which dug into our body

a wound so large,

larger than him,

burning.

I'm begging you,

say something.

Speak.

Listen. I'll speak.

I'll say:

They married us off

in the next few years.

Everything has been hushed up.

Tell me, too,

I don?t remember.

Tell me,

I never knew...

No...

I don't think so.

No.

I don?t remember...

No, I only remember...

having seen you.

Nothing else.

Nothing else

than having seen you.

Looked.

Looked until I discovered

the phenomenal identity

of your perfection

that I am your brother

and that we love each other.

Listen to me.

Listen.

It also happens

that a love doesn?t die,

and that it needs to be destroyed.

On the beach, I asked you:

What?s happening?

Tell me. "

You were always

frightened like that.

Especially at night.

Scared of

you didn?t know what.

You were five years old,

seven.

Twelve.

We would find you

crying in the hall,

lost, shaking...

I must have answered

that day as always

that you mustn?t get upset,

that you needed to let go,

to yield,

to sleep.

No.

That day, you said that

you didn?t remember anything before

and you said:

Before today.

I asked what,

you didn?t remember.

I said:

Everything. You.

Yes, that?s right.

And down the white stairs

of the Villa Agatha

came our younger brothers and sisters

and our parents.

Everything got hushed up

for the first time.

Where are you going to go?

Far from you.

That?s the word.

With him far, from you.

- I shall come.

- Yes.

- And from there you will go away again?

- Yes.

- And I shall come again.

- Yes.

And again from there,

you will go away?

Yes.

I?m leaving to escape you

and so that you might

come join me there

too, in flight from you.

And then I?ll always leave

wherever you?ll be.

He is our age.

His body may be beautiful,

I couldn?t say.

Like yours, it seems to me.

Awkward,

as if not yet supple,

you know.

As if it were weak,

one could say.

And needed still to grow,

to still develop.

- And the eyes?

- Blue.

Very blue. Very bright.

I kiss the blue

beneath the closed eyes.

My brother?s eyes

have never been touched by me.

He says:

Look around us

at the land so vast...

as far as the confines of the oceans,

close your eyes

and look at the earth."

And then I see your child?s face

looking for it

with your eyes

half shut under the sun.

You were saying:

Look, Agatha,

look behind your eyes.

We were still on the beach.

You were putting your hands on my eyes

and you were pressing hard.

And I saw.

And I was telling you

what I was seeing

The red...

fires, and the night.

I was afraid.

And you were asking me

to keep telling you.

and I told you I also saw your hands

through the red of their blood.

Your hands.

So beautiful.

So long,

As though broken,

shattered.

Resting on the sand near me.

Agatha?s hands...

So similar.

Yes.

So long.

As though broken, your hands.

Broken.

That Brahms waltz...

She never learnt to play the whole piece

- Never.

- And Mother complained.

This little girl

who doesn?t want to work

with these hands she?s got,

who doesn?t want to have

anything to do with the piano.

Right up to that day at the river.

When she gave over all music to him,

forever

and when she was enraptured in happiness

as the river flowed.

Yes.

And she who couldn?t understand.

My first two children,

my eldest had the same hands,

made for music,

but the little one,

she didn?t want to.

She was the second oldest,

the first little girl,

the one who came after him,

the second child.

She was lazy.

I wouldn?t have said that,

I would have said...

as if it weren?t

worth the trouble for her,

you know...

to play... to live...

Since he did it

so marvelously,

she would say: just the way he had

of holding his hands above the keyboard

and waiting.

It takes your breath away.

She would say

that it wasn?t worth the trouble.

Since he... did it.

His body, you were saying...

Your size.

He's a very sweet man.

The name I cry out

is my own.

Agatha.

He isn?t surprised.

I told him:

that?s not my name.

I told him to call me by

another name,

Diotima.

He doesn?t know

anything about me,

he only knows about my marriage.

What do you tell him about Agatha?

That it was the name given to me

by a lover named Ulrich Heimer.

It?s not as though he doesn?t read,

but not that much,

not that kind of reading.

That you would call:

Limitless.

One might also say: personal.

You used to say in a playful way:

These stories, we wrote them.

That was in the garden

of the colonial house,

during those two years

in Gabon, I think.

When Father had brought along

his wife and his children.

It was along the other river,

during the siesta.

I don?t remember

how old we were at that time.

- You are seventeen.

- I don?t remember.

Remember, we are reading

that it?s summertime in Europe,

that the lovers are in the garden,

they?re lying down,

without stirring,

distant from each other

although quite close.

they are shut up

in this walled-in garden

all summer long.

they are hidden away

from the whole city.

We read that they?re lying down.

Immobile to the point

of losing awareness of their separation.

and that the slightest movement of one

is an unbearable

awakening for the other.

Remember, in that heat...

facing the river.

We read that it was

in a winter light

that the lovers bathed

during this twilight

when the temptation was so strong

that they wept

without noticing it.

Yes. We didn?t agree.

You were saying:

Agatha is the one

who would have dared to confront death.

You, you were saying that Agatha,

She...

couldn?t die,

that she, she faced death

without danger of dying.

I also said that he was mortal.

Him, yes.

That he could die

if he were deprived of her,

that he wasn?t protected

from those kinds of accidents.

- Mother was listening to us.

- Mother was listening to us.

We didn't know.

- She listened to our conversations

about Agatha. - Yes.

She heard also at a later date

that sudden formal tone of address

between her children.

We had decided to address each other

very formally after that day in July.

Remember...

that same evening.

As a game, we said,

and people thought it was funny.

Except her, perhaps,

that charming mother

who is dead now.

that woman...

our love.

Our love...

our mother.

I meant to tell you

She said something

the day she died.

She said that day:

My child, never leave him,

that brother I give to you.

She also said:

One day you?ll have to tell him so,

as I say it to you now,

that he mustn?t

leave Agatha.

She said as well:

You have the good fortune

to live an unalterable love,

and one day to die from it.

- You?re leaving tomorrow at dawn.

- Yes.

- Forever, isn?t that so?

- Yes.

Until your arrival

within the confines of the new continent

where nothing else will happen.

Nothing, once more.

Except this love.

Was that summer as beautiful

as we say it was?

Yes.

Yes, it was a remarkable...

summer.

The memory of it is stronger

than we who carry it with us.

Than you.

Than you and I together before it.

It was a summer

more powerful than we,

Stronger than our strength.

Than we.

Bluer than you.

More forthright than our beauty,

than my body.

Sweeter than this skin on mine

beneath the sun.

Than this mouth...

that I do not know.

Subtitles: Corvusalbus

from Howard Limoli's translation