Lypophrenia

HE: You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Nothing.

SHE: I saw everything. Everything.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial - Genbaku Dome, 2008

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park - Pond of Peace, 2008

SHE: The hospital, for instance, I saw it. I’m sure I did. There is a hospital in Hiroshima. How could I help seeing it?

HE: You didn’t see the hospital in Hiroshima.
You saw nothing in Hiroshima.

SHE: Four times at the museum…

HE: What museum in Hiroshima?

SHE: Four times at the museum in Hiroshima. I saw the people walking around. People walk around, lost in thought, among the photographs, the reconstructions, for lack of anything else.
The photographs, the photographs, the reconstructions, for lack of anything else. The explanations, for lack of anything else.
Four times at the museum in Hiroshima
I watched the people. I myself, lost in thought,looked at the scorched metal. The twisted metal. Metal made as vulnerable as flesh. I saw the bouquet of bottle caps.
Who would have thought? Human flesh, suspended,
as if still alive, its agony still fresh.
Stones. Charred stones. Shattered stones. Anonymous masses of hair that the women of Hiroshima, upon waking in the morning, would find had fallen out.
I was hot in Peace Square. 10.000 degrees in Peace Square. I know it. The temperature of the sun in Peace Square. How could you not know it?… The grass. It’s quite simple…

HE: You saw nothing in Hiroshima.
Nothing.

SHE: The reconstructions were as authentic as possible.
The films were as authentic as possible.
The illusion, quite simply, is so perfect that tourists weep.
One can always scoff, but what else can a tourist do but weep?
I’ve always wept over Hiroshima’s fate. Always.

HE: No. What was there for you to weep over?

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 2008

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 2008

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 2008

…
SHE: Listen to me. I know something else. It will begin all over again. Two hundred thousand dead. Eighty thousand wounded. In nine seconds. These figures are official. It will begin all over again. It will be ten thousand degrees on the earth. Ten thousand suns, they will say. The asphalt will burn. Chaos will prevail. A whole city will be raised from the earth and fall back in ashes…

Text is part of the script by Marguerite Duras for “Hiroshima mon amour“.
Photos by Skiour.