It was their final exam, last day after years of travail. They stood clearly in their boxes of their own making. His eyes caught hers, hers caught his. He knew from the halls that she was Italian and he never understood what she giggled to her friends. She, on the other hand, didn’t understand his syllabic Japanese. But today would be different in that silence which in no way was allowed to be disturbed by sound.

He looked at her and made in the air a large ‘R’ and then with the point of his finger he pointed at himself and made a bow. She smiled and winked with both eyes. She drew a ‘J’ in the air and pointed at herself and curtsied with a balletic bend to her knees.

He took his hands as if they were a mask, his index fingers and thumbs brought together for the holes for the eyes. Then with his fingers released he pulled the strings to tie them behind his head. He held out his hand across from him and she in her own space ten meters away lifted her hair in the air, lifted her legs to step into her fancy dress and then she pulled a mask across her face. They bowed to each other and each held out their arms, he: left curved right straight, she: right curved left straight. They twirled in a delicate ballroom dance. Never touching so many meters away. He stopped and drew a line around his heart and sent it away into the air over to her. She held out her arms palms wide and caught that heart and pulled it to her breast.

Next he circled his arms as if erasing a board, bowed again and walked leisurely around his self delineated square. He leant and smelled a rose that was not there and with one hand was careful to pluck it without the sting of a thorn. She saw him and moved her legs up and down as if she were trying to climb a stairway. Then she leant on her arms held by nothing but air and looked down and over to him from her balcony. He smiled as he looked up offering her the rose. He began to sing a silent song. Again their fingers traced a heart and sent it over to the other before the act was done.

Next they both held out their hands, too far away, but still as if they were folded one in the other. He held his fingers in a round ‘O’ and pretended her hand was there to receive the ring. She pulled her hands in, folded them onto her breast and tilted her chin to rest there. He made a motion as if to lift her chin and closed his eyes as his lips ripened into a pucker. Her lips like two petals of a rose unfolded and acted as if they had found his. Their eyes open, she circled her arms this time to clear the scene.

Her face became as hard as stone. Her fingers formed the shape of a glass phial. She placed it upon her lips and let her hands fall to her throat. Her body convulsed in agony and crumpled to the floor. He across from her saw that she was dead. His face a contortion of grief, he formed a glass bottle with his stuttering fingers and in one gulp he died. But she awoke just as he hit the floor. She screamed with her mouth but not vocal chords. She reached as far as she could and pulled back an unseen dagger plunging it into her breast.

A moment was held to expand their sorrow. Two silent corpses on the cheap carpeted floor. The applause was loud, the first sound to fall on those ears after the tense dialog. They stood and bowed to each other and turned to their examiners and bowed once again.

There in L’Ecole Dramatique du Silence there had never been an extemporaneous tale of such woe as that between silent Juliette and her voiceless Romeo.