Act 1

Amidst the resonant notes of "India Song," a soulful blues melody emanates from a distant piano. In the ether, two ethereal female voices—Voice 1 and Voice 2—engage in a shared whisper of recollection. Their conversation touches upon Michael Richardson, once promised to a local maiden in the town of S. Thala. However, his heart was irrevocably captured by Anne-Marie Stretter at a dance, and he forsook his betrothed to chase Anne-Marie to Calcutta. Draped in elegant black, Anne-Marie reclines languidly on a couch, with Michael by her side and another man standing nearby. The voices narrate Anne-Marie's demise in India and Michael's subsequent departure.

Anne-Marie and Michael rise gracefully and begin to dance, their movements weaving a tapestry of forgotten stories murmured by the voices, who reminisce about the couple's scene at the French Embassy in Calcutta. The city murmurs in the background—a beggar woman's cries intermingling with distant laughter. The voices recall the beggar woman's tragic tale: a Burmese woman, cast out at seventeen, roamed the vastness of Asia for a decade before reaching Calcutta.

Stepping into the French Embassy, Anne-Marie stands at the heart of the room, tears tracing silent paths down her cheeks. Michael enters, cradling her in his arms before laying her gently upon the floor. He sits beside her, watchful as she slumbers. The voices reveal the tragic fate of his forsaken fiancée, who withered away in his absence. A guest of the Stretters, another man, joins them in repose next to Anne-Marie.

The voices begin the "ballad of Anne-Marie Stretter," a tale of a Venetian beauty who wed a French colonial officer at eighteen, only to leave him for Ambassador Stretter, her companion for seventeen wandering years across Asian cities.

As the voices weave Anne-Marie's saga, the vice-consul's cries echo from afar, burdened with despair. They recount his violent act in Lahore—firing upon the destitute from his balcony. Anne-Marie's own brush with death in Chandernagor surfaces in their tale. A distant glow on the horizon, a pyre consuming the starved, casts a somber light on their words.

Act 2

The French embassy in Calcutta hums with the energy of a party, where snippets of conversation float like wisps in the air, though not a single character on stage breathes a word. The fragments piece together the enigmatic lives of the main players.

Michael Richardson, Anne-Marie's devoted paramour, mingles among the guests, while whispers flutter about the French vice-consul's notorious antics in Lahore and his suicidal despair. A young French attaché, freshly arrived in India, mingles with curiosity. Guests murmur about Anne-Marie's intriguing life, her morning rituals of tennis and cycling with her daughters. They note her dancing with her husband, though their presence is a ghostly absence on stage.

In the garden, the vice-consul stands alone, a figure shunned by the revelers. The ambassador entreats the young attaché to engage him. With a friendly gesture, the attaché approaches, probing the mystery of the gunshots in Lahore. George Crawn's voice introduces him as an old friend of Anne-Marie's. In a secluded room away from the festivities, Anne-Marie twirls in Michael's arms.

Amidst the garden's shadows, the beggar woman conceals herself. Anne-Marie steps outside, glimpses her, then retreats. Guests whisper about Anne-Marie's island escapades with Michael and others, while her husband hunts in Nepal, unfazed by her romantic liaisons, their marriage now a camaraderie. Others recall her past acclaim as a Venetian pianist, before matrimony claimed her.

Anne-Marie shares a dance with the young attaché. When the vice-consul invites a woman to dance, her acceptance surprises all. As they sway, they discuss the menace...