Summary
Ian knocks twice, then the person outside knocks twice. He goes through different patterns, and the person on the other side of the door mimics them. Eventually, he opens the door and finds the Soldier standing there with a sniper's rifle. Ian tries to push him out, but the Soldier takes his revolver easily. The Soldier asks Ian what he is holding, and Ian notices he is holding bacon. "Pig," he says, and on the Soldier's signal, gives him the bacon.
The Soldier ravenously eats both of the breakfasts and acknowledges that he can smell Cate. He asks Ian if he's a journalist and wants to see his passport. The Soldier then looks at Cate's knickers and puts them over his face, smelling. He puts them in his pocket and goes to the bathroom door, forcing it open when he finds it locked. In the bathroom, he finds that Cate is gone, and Ian goes in to confirm that she has indeed disappeared.
"Taking a risk. Lot of bastard soldiers out there," the Soldier says, of Cate's departure. The Soldier looks at Ian's passport, and takes his keys and money as well. He sees that Ian is named Ian Jones and is indeed a journalist. The Soldier touches Ian's face, tells him "Our town now," then urinates on the pillows on the bed. The stage directions read, "There is a blinding light, then a huge explosion."
Scene 3. "The hotel has been blasted by a mortar bomb," and there is a large hole in the wall and dust covering everything. The Soldier is unconscious, but Ian is awake, lying very still. He calls out, "Mum?" and the Soldier wakes up, pointing his gun at Ian. He asks for the gin, but Ian informs him it's empty. Nevertheless, the Soldier drinks the last few drops, and when Ian lights up a cigarette, he asks for one for himself.
Ian tells the Soldier that he's Welsh, and goes on a diatribe about immigration. The Soldier stares at Ian for a long time, which makes Ian uncomfortable. Eventually, the Soldier says, "I/Am/Dying to make love, Ian," and asks if he has a girlfriend. The Soldier says he has a girlfriend named Col. He describes an incident in which he and some other soldiers went to a house outside town, killed and tortured a group of men and raped four women, one of whom was a 12-year-old girl.
The Soldier asks Ian if he's ever raped anyone and Ian tells him he's only ever had one girl at a time. When the Soldier asks Ian if he killed Cate, Ian makes a move for his gun, and the Soldier says, "Don't I'll have to shoot you. Then I'd be lonely." The Soldier then reveals that his girlfriend was killed by another soldier.
The Soldier asks Ian if he's ever killed anyone. When Ian does not answer, he asks him what he would do if he was ordered to, and Ian tells him he'd shoot in the back of the head, quickly. The Soldier taunts him about the fact that he's never killed anyone, then tells him, "I broke a woman's neck. Stabbed up between her legs, on the fifth stab snapped her spine."
The Soldier then says, "You never fucked a man before you killed him?" and Ian says he hasn't and that he's not queer. The Soldier tells him that the soldiers buggered his wife, cut her throat, cut off her ears and nose, and nailed them to the front door. When Ian doesn't want to hear anymore, the Soldier taunts Ian for not being a good enough journalist. "I'm here, got no choice," he says, "But you. You should be telling people." Ian replies, "No one's interested."
Ian tells the Soldier that those aren't stories that people want to hear, then picks up a newspaper and reads a story about a car dealer who had violent, kinky sex with two underaged girls.
Analysis
This section marks the arrival of the first new character, the Soldier. Little information is given about who he is or why he is there, and like many of the elements of the play, he seems almost archetypal, suspended outside of reality or the logic of realism. After disarming Ian, he takes his bacon and eats it, before inserting himself into Ian's affairs without a second thought. Like Ian, he is intrusive and aggressive, and represents an exaggerated masculine identity.
With the arrival of the Soldier comes the departure of Cate, who disappears from the bathroom during the Soldier's arrival. When the Soldier breaks down the door, he finds that Cate has escaped and left the water running. No sooner has the gentle female character left than a new brutish male has entered, an entrance which seems to mark the arrival of war itself. If the first two scenes have been violent by virtue of the violent sexual dynamics between Ian and Cate, a violence that is exacerbated by its enclosure in the hotel room, this third scene breaks down the door to the outside world, and lets in a new kind of violence from without.
It does not take long for the violence from without to take over the playing space. Not long after the Soldier enters, a blinding light and a giant explosion take place. The top of Scene 3 has the stage direction, "The hole has been blasted by a mortar bomb." The war outside the room is taking over the room itself, and a dust "which is still falling" is covering everything in the lavish hotel room. After all the pressure that built up in the dynamic between Ian and Cate, it is an outside pressure that finally blows up and disrupts the stage.
Sex and war are further conflated in the Soldier's account of his own libido as it has pertained to his service in the army. In a rather disturbing monologue, the Soldier narrates an instance in which he went to a house outside town and killed a number of men and raped four women, one of whom was 12. He then says that he hung the brothers from the ceiling by their testicles. In this story, sex and desire are laid over one another, almost indistinguishable. At times it is hard to tell whether the Soldier is talking about someone he raped or someone he tortured or killed.
While Ian has been the most shocking and despicable character throughout the play, the Soldier certainly has him beat when it comes to brutality. The Soldier narrates his various killings and horrible deeds with a kind of detached matter-of-fact-ness, and his anecdotes often have the effect of disturbing and disgusting Ian. In a way, the arrival of the Soldier gives Ian a taste of the brutality he has imposed on Cate. The Soldier has him captive, coercing him into staying in the room and creating a codependent but violent dynamic between them.
