Peter Asmussen Brűlé par la glace direction Laurent Terzieff Excerpts (...) Sybille. - Four times. I called four times. Four times I had to call before you made up your mind to come. Did you light the stove? Maria. - Yes. Sybille. - How can it be alight if I'm cold? How can the whole house be invaded by the freezing cold if the stove is alight? It is im-poss-ib-le. If the stove is alight, the house should be warm. Maria. - I did light it. Sybille. - Light it again. I didn't bring you into this house for you to leave me in the cold. (Maria moves towards the stove.) You should have accepted my offer. You should have got rid of it while there was still time. Maria. - The baby is my insurance. Sybille. - Against what? Your insurance! It'll be in your way for the rest of your life. It'll make your life a misery. It'll dictate your every movement. It'll ruin every minute, every second. Maria. - The father will give me some money every month. Sybille. - I thought you'd done it in the dark. Maria. - What more can anyone ask? Sybille. - Light it, so I don't have to stay here in the cold. (Maria gets busy near the stove. It is obviously alight.) They were so kind. They loved me like their daughter. The old father showed me the garden, and the mother showed me the letters he had written to her in the passionate dawn of their love, and they always used to sit on the high veranda overlooking the sea, drinking tea from fine white cups. They were both dressed in white, in long, elegant white outfits, and they wore hats with large brims, and they were always smiling. Gentle smiles, full of melancholy and sensitivity. Their teeth were white in the middle of their pale faces. When the wind cradled the leaves of the trees, the branches gently brushed us. Everything was so beautiful, so perfect. That was before. Before it happened. Where was I? Maria. - The scent of camomile. Sybille. - The scent of camomile. The big, old garden with its big trees for playing hide-and-seek smelled of camomile. Always of camomile, and to tell the truth, it was strange, because there was no camomile in the garden. The scent of camomile. Camomile is a weed, and the garden was well-kept, with its beds of roses, the mauve shadows of rhododendrons and the white flowers on the cherry trees. Maria. - White flowers on the cherry trees. Sybille. - White flowers on the cherry trees, yes. But I'm forgetting the games we played, his sisters and I, before I even met him face to face. His pretty, gentle, haughty, stupid sisters took me into his room and showed me his clothes. They took out his trousers and his shirts, and it made us laugh. I don't know why it made us laugh. But that's the way it was. We put them on the bed, we made little people with the sheets and we put hats and shoes and silk scarves and glasses on them, and everything had his scent. Then we laughed, and we hugged each other. They had bad teeth. Suddenly I remember. They had bad teeth. That should have put me on my guard. Then we heard footsteps in the corridor and we put everything away and suddenly he came in and he was smiling like the others and our eyes met and I became aware of his scent. I might be getting confused. What time is it? (She takes out a watch and looks at it, then raises it to her ear.) What time is it? Maria. - I don't have a watch. (...) © 2001 "Théâtre-contemporain.net". Tous droits réservés.