"You saw nothing in Hiroshima." "Nothing" "I saw everything." "Everything" "I saw the hospital, for instance." "That I know" "The hospital is there in Hiroshima" "How could I have avoided seeing it?" "You saw no hospital in Hiroshima" "You saw nothing in Hiroshima" "Four visits to the museum" "In Hiroshima... what museum?" "Four visits to the museum in Hiroshima" "I saw people walking round." "People walk pensively past photographs, reconstructions, since there is nothing else" "Photographs, photographs reconstructions, since there is nothing else" "Descriptions, since there is nothing else" "Four visits to the museum in Hiroshima" "I watched the people;" "I myself looked, pensively" "The iron, burned and twisted iron becomes as vulnerable as flesh" "I saw bouquets of bottle-tops..." "who could imagine such a thing?" "Human skin, floating loose, still bearing the fresh bloom of suffering" "Burned stones, shattered stones" "Anonymous tresses" "Awakening in the morning, the women found their hair had fallen out" "It was hot in the Place de la Paix" "Ten thousand degrees in the Place de la Paix." "That I know" "The temperature of the sun on the Place de la Paix" "How could one be blind to it?" "The grass... quite simply..." "You saw nothing in Hiroshima." "Nothing" "The reconstructions were made as conscientiously as possible" "The films were made as conscientiously as possible" "The illusion, quite simply, is so perfect that tourists weep" "People may be scornful" "But what can a tourist do, other than weep?" "I have always wept over the fate of Hiroshima." "Always" "No." "What did you have to weep about?" "I saw the newsreels" "On the second day, so they say..." "I didn't invent this on the second day certain animal species emerged from beneath the ashes" "Dogs were photographed, caught for evermore." "I saw them" "I saw the newsreels." "I saw them" "From the first day, the second day the third day" "You saw nothing." "Nothing" "The fifteenth day, too" "Hiroshima was carpeting itself in flowers" "There were cornflowers everywhere gladioli and morning glories and day-lilies, springing reborn from the ashes with a vitality unprecedented in flowers" "I have invented nothing" "You have invented everything" "Nothing." "Just as love has its illusions the illusion that you will never be able to forget so I had the illusion, faced with Hiroshima, that I will never forget" "I also saw those who survived and those being carried in the womb" "I saw the patience, the innocence the evident resignation with which these provisional survivors accepted a fate so unjust that the normally fertile imagination shrivels in their presence" "Listen..." "I know." "I know everything." "Life went on" "Nothing." "You know nothing" "Women might give birth to deformed children, monsters but life goes on" "Men might be stricken with sterility." "But life goes on" "The rain brought fear." "Ashes raining on the waters of the Pacific" "The waters of the Pacific killed." "Fishermen died there" "Food brought fear." "Food for a whole town was thrown away" "Food for whole towns was buried." "Anger stirred a whole town" "Anger stirred whole towns" "Who were whole towns angry with?" "They were angered, whether they knew it or not by the fundamental inequality imposed by some nations on others by the fundamental inequality imposed by some races on others by the fundamental inequality imposed by some classes on others" "Listen to me;" "like you I know what it is to forget" "No." "You don't know what it is to forget" "Like you, I am endowed with memory." "I know what it is to forget" "No." "You are not endowed with memory" "Like you, I have fought with all my might against forgetfulness" "Like you, I have forgotten" "Like you, I wanted an inconsolable memory, of stone and shadow" "Each day I fought with all my might against the horror of no longer knowing the reason for remembering" "Like you, I have forgotten" "Why deny the obvious necessity for memory?" "Listen to me." "I know this, too:" "it will happen again" "Two hundred thousand dead." "Eighty thousand wounded." "In nine seconds" "Those are official statistics." "It will happen again" "Ten thousand degrees on the earth..." "like ten thousand suns" "The asphalt will burn." "Profound chaos will rule" "A whole city will be raised and fall to earth in ashes" "New vegetation emerges from the sands" "Four students wait to be allied in a legendary death" "The seven branches of the River Ota estuary fill and empty themselves on schedule very precisely on schedule with fresh water, abounding in fish, grey or blue depending on the hour and the season" "People no longer watch from the muddy banks the tide rising in the seven branches of the River Ota estuary" "I meet you." "I remember you" "Who are you?" "You are killing me." "You are good for me" "How could I have known that this town was made for love?" "How could I have known that you were made for my body?" "You attract me." "How incredible:" "you attract me" "What langour, suddenly." "What sweetness" "You cannot possibly understand" "You are killing me." "You are good for me" "You are killing me." "You are good for me" "I have time." "I beg you, please consume me, make me hideous" "Why not you?" "Why not you, in this town and on this night so indistinguishable from any other?" "I beg you, please" "It's incredible what a lovely skin you have" "Me?" "Yes, you've seen for yourself" "Are you utterly Japanese, or aren't you utterly Japanese?" "Utterly Japanese, that's me" "You have green eyes... am I right?" "I think so;" "I think they're green" "You're like a thousand women in one" "That's because you don't know me" "Maybe that's not the only reason" "I don't mind being like a thousand women to you" "It's four o'clock" "I don't know who it is." "He passes every day at four, and he coughs" "Were you there, at Hiroshima?" "No, of course not" "Of course... how stupid of me" "My family was there, at Hiroshima" "I was serving in the war" "Lucky for you" "Lucky for me, too" "Why are you in Hiroshima?" "A film." "I'm acting in a film" "Before coming to Hiroshima, where were you?" "In Paris" "And before Paris?" "Before Paris?" "I was in Nevers" "You wouldn't know it" "Why did you want to see everything in Hiroshima?" "I was interested." "I have a theory about that" "You see, I think you can learn how by looking carefully" "Coffee?" " What were you dreaming about?" " I don't remember." "Why?" "I was watching your hands, moving as you slept" "Maybe that means you're dreaming without realizing it" "You're a beautiful woman, you know..." "that's what I think" "A little tired, maybe?" "A little homely" "I noticed that in the cafe last night... your way of being homely" "That and how bored you were" "Tell me more" "You were bored in the way that makes men want to know a woman" "You speak French well" "Don't I?" "I'm glad you noticed at last how well I speak French" "I hadn't noticed that you didn't speak Japanese" "Have you noticed that noticing things always works in the same way?" "No." "All I noticed was you" "Meeting someone in Hiroshima..." "That doesn't happen every day" "What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?" "The end of the war..." "completely, I mean" "Amazement that they dared, amazement that they brought it off" "The start of a new and unknown fear, too" "Then indifference, and a fear of that indifference" "Where were you?" "I'd just left Nevers." "I was in Paris, out in the street" "It's a lovely word in French..." "Nevers" "It's just a word like any other." "So is the town" "Have you met many Japanese in Hiroshima?" "Quite a few, yes... but not like you" "I'm the first Japanese in your life?" "The whole world rejoiced" "You rejoiced with the whole world" "It was a lovely summer's day in Paris that day or so I've heard" "It was lovely, yes" " How old were you?" " Twenty." "And you?" " Twenty-two" " The same age" "More or less" "What sort of work do you do?" "Architecture" "Politics, too" "So that's why your French is so good" "That's right; to read up on the French Revolution" "What's the film you're in?" "A film about peace." "What else would we be making in Hiroshima?" "I'd like to see you again" "By this time tomorrow, I'll be on my way back to France" "Is that true?" "You never told me" "It's true." "There wasn't any need to tell you" "So that's why you let me come up to your room last night" "Because it was your last night in Hiroshima" "Not at all." "That never even occurred to me" "When you talk, I don't know if you're lying or telling the truth" "I lie." "And I tell the truth" "But why should I lie to you?" "Tell me, do you often have adventures like this?" "Not very often... but it does sometimes happen" "I like men" "I'm morally suspect, you know" "What do you mean by morally suspect?" "Suspecting other people's morals" "I'd like to see you again" "Even if the plane leaves tomorrow morning and you're morally suspect" " Why not?" " Because" "Not talking to me?" "I'd like to see you again" "Where are you going?" "To Nevers?" "No, Paris." "I'll never go to Nevers again" "I was young in Nevers, younger than in all my life" "Young in Nevers" "Young in Nevers." "And once foolish in Nevers, too" "Nevers, you see, is the one place in the world the one thing in the world I dream about most often at night" "And it's also the one thing in the world I think about least often" "What was this foolishness of yours in Nevers?" "Foolishness is like intelligence, you know" "You can't explain it." "Just like intelligence" "It comes on you, takes you over, and you understand it" "Afterwards, you don't understand any more" "Were you bad?" "That was my foolishness." "I went mad about being bad" "I felt I could make a veritable career about being bad" "Nothing else mattered but badness." "Do you understand?" "Yes, you would understand that, too" "Did it ever happen again?" "No, it's done with" " During the war?" " Immediately after" "Something to do with the problems of postwar life in France?" "You could put it like that" "When did you get over it?" "It gradually faded... especially when I had my children" "What?" "I said it gradually faded, especially when I had my children" "I'd like to share a few days with you, somewhere, just once" "I'd like that, too" "Seeing you again today, so soon, wouldn't be the same." "Please..." "You know I'm leaving tomorrow" "Maybe there's that, too... but it's a good enough reason, isn't it?" "The idea that in a few hours I'll never see you again..." "You were easy to find in Hiroshima" "Is it a French film?" "No, international." "About peace" "Is it finished?" "For me, yes." "They're shooting the crowd scenes" "They do lots of soap commercials" "So maybe some day..." "Here in Hiroshima, films about peace aren't taken lightly" "Tired?" "Like you" "I thought about Nevers in France" "I thought about you" " Are you still leaving tomorrow?" " I absolutely must" "We're behind schedule;" "I was due back in Paris a month ago" "You very much make me want to fall in love" "Always ships that pass in the night..." "Me, too" "No, this is more than that, you know it is" "They say there'll be a storm before tonight" "If one atom bomb is worth 20,000 ordinary bombs and the H-Bomb is worth 1,500 atom bombs what are the 40,000 nuclear bombs stockpiled in the world worth?" "This impressive sum does credit to man's scientific intelligence but man's political intelligence being 100 times less well developed diminishes our admiration accordingly" "Stop thermo-nuclear tests" "I don't like to think of you leaving tomorrow" "I think I love you" "Will you go with me just once more?" "Answer me." "Are you afraid?" "Do sit down" "Are you alone in Hiroshima?" "Where's your wife?" "She's up in the mountains." "I'm alone" " When is she coming back?" " Any day now" "What is she like?" "Beautiful." "I'm a happily married man" "I, too, I'm a happily married woman" "It would have been too easy" "Don't you work afternoons?" "Yes, that's when I'm busiest" "It's a silly situation" "You gave up your afternoon for me?" "Tell me; what does it matter?" "Was he French, the man you loved during the war?" "No." "He was not French" "Yes, it was in Nevers" "We met in barns, at first" "Then in the ruins" "Finally in rooms." "The usual story" "Then he died" "I was eighteen, he was twenty-three" "Why talk about him rather than others?" " Why not?" " No, why?" "Because of Nevers." "I can only begin to get to know you" "And out of the thousands of things in your life, I choose Nevers" " At random?" " Yes" "It was no chance" "You have to tell me why" "It was there, as I understand it, that you were so young so young that you didn't yet belong to anyone specific." "That pleases me" "That's not it" "It was there, as I understand it, that I almost lost you that I risked never, ever meeting you" "It was there, as I understand it that you must have started to become what you still are today" "I want to get away from here" "All we have left now is the time to kill..." " Sixteen more hours until your plane leaves" "So long..." "No, you must not be afraid" "Does it mean anything else in French, "Nevers"?" "No, nothing" "Would you have been cold in that cellar in Nevers if we'd been in love?" "I would have been cold" "The cellars are cold in Nevers, winter and summer alike" "The town is built along a river called the Loire" "I cannot imagine Nevers" "Nevers. 40,000 inhabitants." "Built as a country seat" "A child could stroll around it" "I was born in Nevers" "I grew up in Nevers" "I learned to read in Nevers" "And it was there that I was twenty years old" "What about the Loire?" "It's a river devoid of shipping, always empty because of its irregular course and its sandbanks" "In France, it's considered a beautiful river mainly because of the light" "It's so gentle... if you only knew..." "When you're in the cellar, am I dead?" "You are dead" "How can I bear such pain?" "The cellar is so small" "La Marseillaise overhead..." "is deafening" "Hands become useless in cellars." "They scrape they claw at the walls until they bleed" "It's the only thing that helps, and it brings back memories" "I liked the blood, ever since tasting yours" "Society passes overhead, instead of the sky, of course" "I can see it walking by, society;" "quickly on weekdays slowly on Sundays" "It does not know I am in the cellar" "I am supposed to have died, a long way away from Nevers" "My father wants this, because I am disgraced." "My father wants this" "Do you scream?" "Not at first." "I call you, softly" "But I am dead" "I call anyway, dead or not" "Then suddenly one day I screamed very loud, as though deaf" "Then I was put in the cellar" "To punish me" "What did you scream?" "Your German name." "Just your name" "The only memory I have left is your name" "I promise not to call out again, so I'm taken back to my room" "I can't stand it any more, wanting you so" "Are you afraid?" "I'm afraid everywhere, in the cellar, in the room" " Of what?" " Of never seeing you again" "One day, in the cellar, I become twenty years old" "My mother says it's my birthday" "My mother is crying" "You spit in your mother's face?" "Drink this" "Afterwards, I don't remember" "Are the cellars in Nevers very old, very damp?" "Yes." "Saltpetre everywhere" "Sometimes a cat comes in and stares..." "not unkindly" "I don't remember." "Afterwards, I don't remember" "How long for?" "An eternity" "Oh, how young I was once!" "At night, my mother would take me to the garden" "She'd look at my head." "Every night she would study it carefully" "She didn't yet dare to come close to me" "At night I could look at the town square, so I'd look at it" "It was immense." "It dipped down in the middle" "It's at dawn that sleep comes" "Sometimes it rains" "Streaming down the walls" "I think about you, but I say nothing any more" "Foolish woman..." "My love for you makes me so" "My hair is growing again." "I can feel it with my fingers, every day" "I don't give a damn" "Nevertheless, my hair is growing again" "Do you call out, before the cellar?" "No, I feel nothing." "They are young" "They shear it off carefully, all of it." "They think it is their duty" "Are you ashamed for them, my love?" "No." "You are dead." "I am suffering too much to care" "Darkness falls" "I notice only the sound of the scissors on my head" "It distracts me a little from your death, just as how can I express it more clearly?" "...just as clawing the walls relieves the anger" "Oh, the pain of it... the terrible pain in my heart" "La Marseillaise is being sung all over the town." "Darkness falls" "My dead love is an enemy of France" "Someone says she should be paraded through the town" "My father's pharmacy is closed because of the disgrace" "I am alone." "Some people are laughing" "In the night, I make my way home" "And then one day, my love, eternity is over" "A long time..." "I'm told it was a very long time" "At six in the evening, summer or winter, the church bells ring" "It's true... one day I do hear them" "I remember having heard them before when we were in love, when we were happy" "I begin to see" "I remember seeing before when we were in love, when we were happy" "I remember" "I see the ink, I see the daylight" "I see my life, your death" "My life going on, your death going on" "And the shadows already reaching the corners of the room less quickly" "And the shadows already reaching the corners of the cellar less quickly" "About half-past six" "The winter is over" "It's terrible." "My memory of you is already fading" "Take the glass; make me drink some" "I'm beginning to forget you" "It makes me afraid, forgetting so much love" "We were to meet at midday on the Loire embankment" "I was going away with him" "When I got there at midday, he wasn't quite dead yet" "Someone had shot him in a garden" "I stayed beside his body all that day and the whole of that night" "The next morning they came for him and put him in a lorry" "That was the night during which Nevers was liberated" "The church bells were ringing..." "ringing" "Gradually he grew cold beneath me" "How long he took to die" "When?" "I don't know exactly" "I was lying holding him" "I didn't really notice the moment of his death" "Because at the time, and even afterwards yes, even afterwards I could see no difference between this dead body and my own" "I could see only the resemblance between this dead body and my own" "Screamingly obvious, you understand?" "He was my first love" "Then one day I screamed again" "So I was put in the cellar" "It was warm" "I think it was then that the foolishness went out of me" "No more screaming." "I behaved myself" ""She's behaving herself", they said" "One night, a holiday, they let me out" "On the banks of the Loire." "It was dawn" "A few people crossed the bridge, small groups" "Barely recognizable" "Not long after, my mother told me I must leave for Paris, by night" "She gave me money" "By night, I left for Paris on my bicycle" "It was summer... balmy nights" "The next day, I arrived in Paris." "Hiroshima was in all the newspapers" "My hair had grown to a proper length" "I mingled with people in the streets" "That was fourteen years ago" "Even my hands barely remember" "The pain I still remember, a little" "Tonight?" "Yes, tonight I remember" "But some day I'll remember nothing, nothing at all" "By this time tomorrow I shall be thousands of kilometres away from you" "Does your husband know that story?" " Only me?" " Yes" "Only I know..." "I alone..." "Don't..." "How good it is to be with somebody, sometimes" "Go on" "Some years from now, when I have forgotten you and other episodes like this one recur through sheer force of circumstances I shall remember you as love itself forgotten" "I know now that I shall think of this story as of the horror of forgetting" "Does the night never end in Hiroshima?" "It never ends in Hiroshima" "I like that towns where there are always people awake night and day" "One must avoid thinking of the difficulties this world presents" "Otherwise it would be unbearable" "Leave me now" "It is not yet dawn" "We shall probably die without ever seeing each other again" "Yes, probably" "Except, perhaps, that some day, war..." "Yes, war" "One thinks one knows, but one never does" "Her first love, in Nevers, was German" "We shall go to Bavaria, my love, and we will wed" "She never went to Bavaria" "Let those who never went to Bavaria dare talk to her of love" "You were not quite dead." "I told our story" "I betrayed you tonight with that stranger" "I told our story." "It could be told, you see" "Not for fourteen years had I experienced an impossible love" "Not since Nevers" "See how I forget you, see how I have forgotten you." "Look at me" "I shall stay in Hiroshima." "With him" "Every night." "In Hiroshima" "I shall stay here... here" "Stay in Hiroshima" "Of course I'm going to stay in Hiroshima with you" "I'm so unhappy" "I didn't foresee this at all, you see" "Go away" "I can't leave you" "Stay in Hiroshima with me" "He will come up to me, he will take me by the shoulders..." "He will enfold me in his arms, and I shall be lost" "I meet you" "I remember you" "This town was made for love" "You were made for my body" "Who are you?" "You are killing me" "I was hungry." "Hungry for infidelities for adultery, for lies for death... since forever" "I knew that some day you would find me" "I waited for you, calmly, with boundless impatience" "Consume me" "Refashion me in your image, so that after you no one will understand the why of such desire" "We shall remain alone, my love." "The dark will never end" "The sun will not rise on anyone" "Never, never again." "At last..." "You are still killing me." "You are good for me" "We shall mourn the departed day in good faith and goodwill" "We shall have nothing else to do, but to mourn the departed day" "Time will pass." "Only time" "And time will come, a time will come when we can no longer name what it is that unites us" "The name will gradually fade from our memory" "Then it will disappear entirely" "Perhaps it is possible for you to stay" "You know that it is ever more impossible than for us to part" "One week" "Three days" "Time for what?" "For living?" "For dying?" "Time to know" "It doesn't exist." "Time neither for living, nor for dying" "So, not a chance" "I'd rather you had died at Nevers" "Me, too." "But I did not die at Nevers" "Nevers, which I had forgotten, I'd like to see you again tonight" "I set fire to you each night for months while my body was consumed by his memory" "While my body was already being consumed by your memory" "I would like to see Nevers again, the Loire..." "Charming poplars of the Nievre, I consign you to oblivion" "Sad little novelette story, I consign you to oblivion" "One day parted from you, and I awaited the dawn as a deliverance" "One day away from his eyes, and she is dying" "Little girl from Nevers, little slut from Nevers" "One day deprived of his hands, and she believes in tragic love" "Little Miss Nobody, died of love in Nevers" "Shorn little lamb of Nevers I consign you to oblivion tonight" "Sad little novelette story" "Exactly as with him, forgetting will start with your eyes" "Then, exactly as with him, forgetting will start on your voice" "Then, as with him, it will gradually efface you entirely" "You will become a ballad" "Which nationality is she?" "French" "Is she ill?" "No." "She will leave Japan shortly" "As we love each other, it is sad for us to part." "We are both sad" "It was impossible for me not to come" "I'll forget you, I'm forgetting you already!" "See how I'm forgetting you!" "Hiroshima... it's your name" "It's my name, yes" "Your name is Nevers" "Nevers is in France"