Ornamental pool

The Ornamental pool transforms a briefly recognized feature of the landscape into the fixed center of a serial killing method. First glimpsed as an indistinct outline, it later becomes the setting where Bérenger sees the dead and where the Architect explains how the Killer draws victims close. The pool’s theatrical reappearances connect the play’s shifting perceptions to a routine violence that continues even while its mechanism is known.

Recognition and Appearance

Bérenger first identifies the distant shape as an ornamental pool while speaking of cities that resemble mirages. He has been describing such visions as real and consequential, and the pool enters the scene in that uncertain register: its vague outline appears at the back of the stage by means of the lighting just as he recognizes it. The Architect confirms that it is a pool, then consults his watch, making the glimpse feel both ordinary and pressed for time.

The pool returns more clearly when the Architect points it out again. Bérenger recognizes it as the same one they had already passed, while the Architect explains that he had wanted to show it earlier, when Bérenger preferred the hawthorns. That missed encounter gives the location a small but consequential history: the pool was already present, but Bérenger’s attention had moved elsewhere. The change from vague outline to clear view does not reveal a harmless landscape feature; it makes a hidden scene legible.

Bodies in the Water

At the Architect’s invitation, Bérenger looks into the pool and struggles to accept what he sees. One body is a boy of about five or six, floating in his hoop and still clutching a stick. Beside him lies the swollen corpse of an engineer officer in full uniform. The Architect points out a third victim. Bérenger first mistakes the red hair streaming upward from the water and caught against the marble edge for a plant; looking again, he recognizes it as a woman’s hair.

The bodies are visible, but their identities and relationships remain uncertain. The Architect says that one victim is a man and another a child, while acknowledging that they know no more than that. Bérenger wonders whether the woman was the boy’s mother, but the scene does not confirm his guess. The pool therefore holds not only evidence of killing but also the limits of what can be known from the dead: the victims are exposed to view, while their connections and individual stories remain largely inaccessible.

A Repeated Method

The Architect later describes how the Killer uses the pool as part of a deliberate routine. At a tram stop, the Killer approaches people getting off to walk home toward the gates. They cannot use private cars outside the Radiant City, so they continue on foot. Disguised as a beggar, he asks for alms and presents familiar excuses: he has just left hospital, has no work, seeks a job, or has nowhere to spend the night. This appeal is only an opening. He tests a likely victim, starts a conversation, and refuses to be easily shaken off.

The Killer also offers small goods from a basket: artificial flowers, birds, old-style nightcaps, maps, postcards, American cigarettes, obscene drawings, and other objects. Most people refuse and hurry on, but the interaction carries them toward the pool. There he offers to show the Colonel’s photograph. As it grows dark, the victim leans forward to inspect it; while attention is fixed on the image, the Killer pushes the person into the water. The pool is thus not merely where the bodies are found. It is the endpoint of a carefully staged approach, in which apparent need, petty commerce, and curiosity prepare the victim for the fatal moment.

Inattention and Recurrence

Bérenger is struck by the fact that people know about the danger and still fall for the approach. He proposes placing a plainclothes inspector permanently at the site, but the Architect rejects the suggestion: inspectors are overworked and have other duties. He adds that they, too, would want to see the Colonel’s photograph, and that five inspectors have already drowned in the same way. The attempt to make the pool safe through observation is therefore caught in the Killer’s method: looking closely at the bait can draw the observer into danger.

The play makes that failure immediate. During the conversation, a cry is heard, followed by the heavy sound of a body falling into water. Bérenger jumps to his feet, but the Architect remains seated, biting his sandwich, and says that the Killer has struck again. He attributes the ease of the attack to a turned back and a second’s inattention. The pool’s recurring function is sharpened by this contrast: Bérenger reacts to the sound as a new shock, while the Architect treats another drowning as an established pattern.

The Pool’s Dramatic Significance

The location’s meaning develops through repeated acts of seeing. At first the pool is a dim outline; then Bérenger sees bodies in its water, and the Architect explains the sequence that brings victims there. Yet increased visibility does not produce control. Bérenger can recognize the dead and understand the method, and the Architect can describe the Killer’s timing, but a cry and a splash still interrupt their discussion. Knowledge arrives alongside another killing rather than preventing it.

The pool also gives the play’s violence a deceptively ordinary setting: a place the characters pass, point toward, and discuss while eating sandwiches. Its marble edge, the floating boy, the officer in uniform, and the red-haired woman make the consequences concrete, while the repeated attack turns the site into part of a daily routine. The Ornamental pool is therefore both a visible landmark and a mechanism of concealment: it is plainly present, yet its familiar appearance and the distractions arranged around it help violence happen again.