Evgenia
Belle and the Bus
(A play in one action)
Two men standing before a painting. Any gallery.
1st man: Good afternoon. I can see you are looking at my painting. How do you find it? Oh mon dieu, this was such a wonderful time…
2d man: Excuse me, are you nuts?! This painting was drawn by me!! Paris, the colours, the women…
1st man: What the hell are you talking about?!? This is ridiculous…wait, I will tell you how I painted it and then I will call for the security. All sorts of lunatics are walking around. So, back then, at that very same day, I was very hungry, all the painters in Montparnasse usually are hungry, waiting for bus N 133 calling at Gare du Norde, here it comes, it was coming, crowded, women with clammy faces and scarlet mouths, bald men with grey clothes, tormenting, such a wonderful Parisian morning. It is slowly moving its dirty body towards the bus station. Out of the blue, madly coming behind the turn, a car, a blue car, blue as the skirt of my neighbour, the psychologist, Belle. In the car, a woman, clammy face, scarlet mouth, the driver, a man, a bald man with grey clothes. Ooooh, an accident….heeelp, the people around, still smiling, still realizing the crash in the wonderful Parisian morning. They died, yes, all of them died in that day. I didn’t, I painted all of it. I painted it in grey, grey is the colour of fear.
2d man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all. I am afraid you are in a terrible mistake, you are terribly confused. This painting is my creation, it is the story of my life. Sit here, calm down, I will explain. I met her in 1959, fair, fragile, always wearing blue, Belle. Tres belle, indeed. She was attending my Experimental Psychology classes at the university…
1st man: Are you crazy or what, you say that you teach Psychology and at the same time you believe you are an artist. This is absurd.
2d man: Well, sir, painting is a vocation, it is not a profession, you couldn’t know that. Please, don’t interrupt me, I listened to all your nonsense. So, as I was saying, she was attending my classes, she would always sit at the front, always right against me, her blue skirt, barely covering her pointed knees (the knees of a real lady), was shining, shining with an azure light in my eyes. We fell in love in the third month, oh, these colours, these times, that Paris. She would look me straight in the eyes, hers were green, she admired me, she thought my authority at the university was very sexy. Until that day. I was travelling in the bus calling at Montparnasse, it was a tender violet Parisian evening, suddenly, on the pavement, I saw a familiar blue silhouette (she is the only person in the world to wear that specific blue colour). Ooooh, the terror…
1st man: Sir, please, don’t shout like this, we are in a gallery after all…
2d man: The terror of seeing her soft hand holding someone else’s, smiling at a stranger, a bald man, grey clothes. I haven’t seen her since that evening, quite a long time. You see, on the painting, this man in the bus, at the back, miserably looking, it is me, seeing the end of my happiness in a blue skirt. I painted it in brown. Brown is the colour of pain. The couple down there, in the middle, it’s them. Scoundrels…
3d man: Gentlemen, I am listening for quite some time to what you are talking about. This is insane. You both claim that the painting I drew, the work of my life is by some of you. What a disgrace, what a lie. I will tell you how it all happened, how it all began…
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'Belle and the Bus' Review by Snezhana
ReplyDeleteThe nature of the task this time and the requirement for dialogue make the choice of the play genre particularly convenient. The play here is the most trivial, straightforward and at the same time the most original interpretation of the task (original because, after all, it literally says 'write a story'). So the choice of genre gives the author big credit. Incidentally I would probably have done the same myself.
I like the absurdist atmosphere of the play. It is skillfully built through both characters’ speeches on several levels. The blue-psychology-Belle chain is the light motive of their stories. There is also this nice color-emotion parallelism – ‘gray-fear’ in 1st man and ‘brown-pain’ in 2nd man. So we have both men telling practically one and same thing; they both claim that they have painted the painting, they are both obsessed with the same woman. So far so good.
The woman, Belle, is definitely the central image in the story, even though she is physically absent. I'm quite intrigued by her because for me she is a representation of - how shall I call it - the curious charm of mediocrity (we'll see what the author thinks about that); she has the same 'clammy face and scarlet mouth' like all other Parisian women. Yet she is different. And here I find the image weak. What exactly is her magic, her little something that singles her out of the herd? Are we meant to know or is it meant to be a mystery? I’m a bit confused here and I feel like I need more details about her, besides her lovely 'pointed knees'.
I would also like to see more ‘stage directions’. The idea of a play is fascinating and I wish the author had gone deeper into her playwright alter ego and given us more details of the setting, the two men’s appearance and gestures, etc. In other words, I wish she had made the ‘stage’ element more prominent. It all starts great with ‘Two men standing before a painting. Any gallery.’ but unfortunately it never goes beyond that.
Last but not least I appreciate the subtle, delicate, elegant yet simple language the author uses. French indeed.