Bistro

Bistro is a neighborhood drinking place near a tram stop and a cemetery, but its importance lies in the collision it stages between everyday sociability and repeated murder. The Architect brings Bérenger there for a drink, urging him to face life and its ordinary comforts; within the same room, news of another drowning and the recognition of Dany make that advice sound like an accommodation to violence. Bistro is at once a refuge from distress and the place where Bérenger’s refusal to accept that refuge becomes action.

Setting and Stage Space

The Architect locates Bistro near the tram stop, just beside the cemetery, and notes that wreaths are sold there too. The setting therefore joins an ordinary pre-dinner stop to the signs and commerce of death. The contrast is not abstract: The Architect presents the drink as a sensible use of time, while the cemetery and wreaths make death part of the immediate surroundings.

The stage directions make the place deliberately flexible. The pair enter after The Architect pushes Bérenger through an imaginary door, accompanied by the sound of the door; they sit at a small table on two chairs, apparently beside the shop’s large windows. The directions allow this corner of the stage to be the same space that previously represented an imaginary greenhouse and The Architect’s imaginary office. The Bistro is thus a recognizable destination within the action, but its theatrical setting also shifts with the play’s transformations of space.

An Invitation to Resume Ordinary Life

Bérenger has put on his overcoat and tied his scarf feverishly when he is about to leave. The Architect stops him from going straight home, arguing that no one is expecting him and that he has time for a drink before dinner. When the Bistro sign lights up, he lays a hand on the handle of an imaginary door and proposes that they go in. Bérenger says he does not feel like it; The Architect persists, and their courteous exchange over who should enter first ends with The Architect pushing him inside.

At the table, The Architect urges Bérenger not to take human misfortune to heart. He lists children with their throats cut, starving old men, bereaved women, collapsing houses, massacres, floods, and other calamities, then insists that people must live and attend to the bright side. The list gives the scene its hard irony: suffering is not hidden from view, but rendered so extensive and familiar that The Architect can use its scale to counsel detachment. Bérenger answers that having been so close to the events and seen them with his own eyes, he cannot remain indifferent. Bistro becomes the immediate setting for a disagreement over whether witness should provoke action or be absorbed into routine.

Violence Enters the Room

The dispute is sharpened by a sound from outside. After Bérenger suggests keeping a plainclothes inspector permanently at the spot, The Architect dismisses the proposal as technically impossible: the inspectors are overworked, and they would also need to see the Colonel’s photograph. He adds that five people have already been drowned and says proof of the killer’s identity would establish where to find him. While The Architect remains seated and eats his sandwich, a cry and the heavy sound of a body falling into water are heard. Bérenger jumps up to ask whether he heard it; The Architect says the killer has struck again and describes how little time it takes for an attack to happen when attention turns away.

The Bistro’s table and windows do not shield the characters from the violence outside. Instead, the sound crosses the boundary between street and interior while the men occupy sharply different positions: Bérenger reacts physically, whereas The Architect continues eating. That staging gives concrete form to the contrast already present in their conversation. The Architect treats the murder as a familiar occurrence and an administrative problem; for Bérenger, hearing it is another demand that cannot be answered by looking elsewhere.

Dany and Bérenger’s Departure

The identification of the victim as Dany changes the scene from a debate about a series of killings to a personal shock. Bérenger nearly sobs, names her, and collapses into his chair. The Architect tells the Bistro’s owner to make the usual routine report, then telephones in the news: another young woman has been killed, Dany, who worked with them. He reports that no one was caught in the act and that there are only the same suspicions. The language of routine and suspicion places Dany’s death within the established pattern without bringing that pattern any closer to resolution.

Bérenger suddenly rises and insists that the killings must stop. The Architect tells him to control himself, observes that everyone must die, and urges him to let the investigation take its usual course. Bérenger runs out, slamming the imaginary shop door, and repeats that something must be done. Bistro therefore marks a decisive break in his response: the place where he was coaxed into a drink becomes the point from which he abandons passive witness and sets off to act.