-
After a thorough examination
of our conscience,
-
we've decided to eat you
because of your disobedience.
-
Wife, you and I are allies.
-
You, mother-father, I, father-mother.
-
Tenderness and harshness surround
our son from all sides.
-
My God, the Germany of today's Bonn,
is nothing like Hitler's Germany.
-
They make wool, cheese, beer and buttons.
-
Cannons are only made for export.
-
It's true, we know Hitler was a little female,
-
but we all know he was a female killer.
-
So our tradition has definitely improved.
-
So, she, the killer-mother
-
had obedient, blue-eyed children
full of great desperate love.
-
Whereas I... I, an affectionate mother,
-
have a son who is neither obedient
-
nor disobedient.
-
PIGSTY
-
Julian, we are two rich bourgeois.
-
The destiny which brought us together
is not two-faced.
-
It has smiled on us with great naturalness,
-
and we're here to analyse ourselves
because it's our privilege.
-
I won't talk about it.
It's painful to talk about myself.
-
How is it painful?
-
It's pain you can't even imagine!
-
Sure, today is the first day of spring.
-
It's your birthday and
the day we have some explaining to do.
-
What a bore. I feel like making a kite and
going to the beautiful fields of Godesberg.
-
You make me laugh!
-
You always find excuses
to get out of things.
-
Julian's lucky.
-
He always has an overpowering
and childish desire for fulfilment.
-
His reserves of happiness and freedom
are always at hand.
-
His purpose is always obscure.
-
My 17 years are 47,
the age your mother won't admit to.
-
I know what these brilliant ideas are for.
-
But today I won't continue being confused
and tremulous
-
and admire the dumbfounding prospect
of you running to Cologne with a kite.
-
No, I'll keep you here
to talk about the two of us.
-
If you were to die, my pretty, I wouldn't
even be curious where you were buried.
-
But you kissed me once,
did you or did you not?
-
I'm scratching my head.
-
His sex is male and his name is Julian.
You don't know who you are.
-
Don't you want to know yourself?
-
- No, I don't want to.
- Why not?
-
I like the way I am now.
It's the prerogative of my gender.
-
In your grandfather's Italianised temple,
as big as a world of a thousand souls,
-
and where, instead, an emperor lived alone
amid monochrome frescoes,
-
coloured like snow and yellow Indian ink,
you once were a child.
-
- What happened to you?
- What happened to you?
-
What has kept you here,
stunned and unable to leave?
-
In this immense Italianised villa,
just little things, of course.
-
A wandering leaf, a creaky door,
a distant grunt.
-
Why do you always kid around,
you, who are never the comic?
-
Because if you could see me
for just one instant
-
as I really am,
you'd run off terrified to get a doctor,
-
if not an ambulance! Hooray!
-
Leave them alone, Father.
-
- Don't worry, we have no secrets.
- Well, are you engaged or not?
-
Not on your life!
-
- That's a good one.
- Really, Ida, not yet?
-
We've decided
to take a trip to Sicily instead.
-
Taormina, an enchanting village.
-
- Have you been there, Mr Klotz?
- Yes, little Ida, during the war.
-
It's too bad you haven't made up
your minds.
-
Julian needs a kind, sweet woman,
one who truly loves him.
-
- Who says I'm in love with him?
- Well, it would be a good marriage.
-
If we combined our wealth,
I'd own half of West Germany for sure.
-
Wool, cheese, beer and buttons,
not to mention cannons.
-
- Hooray!
- I can see you two get along anyway,
-
a wonderful complicity.
-
- Coward!
- My best quality is remaining inalienable.
-
Since you're inalienable, you won't change.
Why don't you come with us to Berlin
-
to join in the first and maybe only
German march for peace?
-
Because today is a day in August of '67
and I don't have opinions.
-
I tried to have them, and so I did my duty.
-
I discovered that even as a revolutionary
I was a conformist.
-
But conformity leads to other worries,
-
for example, taking care of
your father's business.
-
Yes, but in return it protects me
from being afraid.
-
- You know exactly what you want.
- So do you.
-
The time has come. For the first time
the youth of Berlin are doing something.
-
Ten thousand of them are going to piss
on the Wall in protest.
-
The Communists on the other side
will watch them.
-
- You're missing that thing.
- I'm a girl-boy and I'll piss as well.
-
I've got something else to do.
-
- What?
- I'm not telling you.
-
- Please tell me.
- No.
-
- Tell me.
- No!
-
- I want to know.
- You'll never find out.
-
- Please!
- Give up.
-
- What are you going to do?
- I don't want to tell you.
-
- Why?
- You're not kidding around any more?
-
- I never kidded around.
- Do you really want to know?
-
- Yes, I want to know!
- Are you really going to cry?
-
- Yes, I'm going to cry.
- You're a fool.
-
But I never know what you're doing,
what you think, who you are. Never, never!
-
Regarding our march on Berlin, all I know is
you're a disgusting individualist.
-
Yes, partly, I grunt like my father, in fact.
-
But I won't let you say it.
-
But I'm going to say it.
You're on your father's side.
-
People like you who want nothing,
want power.
-
- Your father has power, too.
- I'd still love you even if you were black.
-
I'm scratching my head.
None of this interests me.
-
The 50 conformist parts of me are bored,
-
and my 50 revolutionary parts
are suspended.
-
Both of them want to stay here to enjoy...
-
- What?
- The infinite repetition of just one thing.
-
- What?
- What I said before.
-
What I'll do when you and your friends
are at the Berlin Wall
-
standing under stupid puritanical signs.
-
If you tell me what you're going to do
-
while the rest of those your generation,
the best in our country,
-
will be marching for the first time,
I'll be more heroic than my heroism, Julian.
-
I'll be disloyal and stay here with you.
-
Even if you were to betray
not just those of your generation,
-
but yourself and the truth,
-
you'll never find out what I'm going to do.
-
What right do you have not to tell me?
-
- It's just my right, that's all.
- What good will it do you?
-
If anything, to make you cry and suffer.
Tra-la-la.
-
And without fail I'll cry and suffer. Tra-la-la.
-
Just little things, a wandering leaf,
a creaky door.
-
A grunt.
-
What do you mean, Julian?
What do you mean?
-
Come on, don't cry, don't be a bore.
-
Of course I'll go with you
and piss on the Berlin Wall.
-
I heard that our son has plans
to go to Berlin
-
- with those Communist students.
- No. He didn't go after all.
-
- Where did he get such an idea?
- Ida.
-
- But Ida's only 17.
- That's right.
-
And he's 25.
And she's there waiting for him.
-
- Is he on my side or against me?
- Who knows?
-
The times of Grosz and Brecht
are not yet over.
-
I could easily have been drawn by Grosz
-
as a sad pig and you a sad sow,
at the dinner table, of course.
-
I with a secretary's bum on my knee
-
and you with your hands between
the driver's legs.
-
And Brecht could easily have us be villains
in a play where the poor are the good guys.
-
So what's Julian waiting for
to grow fat like a pig?
-
Or to give gifts to the poor and dance
a Tyrolean dance with them?
-
Or what's he waiting for to call me a pig?
-
And to call me a sow.
-
Did you do that thing while I was in Berlin?
-
Ida, I have a proposal for you.
-
What a strange tone of voice you have.
It's almost like mine.
-
A proposal? Yes, tell me, Julian.
-
I want to kiss you.
-
A kiss? Oh, Julian,
you don't know how that fills me with joy.
-
I could dance, sing. I could jump for joy
like a puppy and clap my hands.
-
It's a joy more spectacular than the sun
or the stars.
-
Who can I tell? Who can I open my heart to?
-
Who do I thank
while I'm crying and laughing?
-
Nevertheless, Julian, I won't let you kiss me.
-
- All right. How did it go in Berlin?
- Everything went well in Berlin.
-
What was written on your sign?
-
Nothing in particular. "Down with God."
-
- What do you care?
- But you care about it a lot.
-
I don't know.
-
So what about our kiss?
-
Ida, why don't you want me to kiss you?
-
Julian, my dignity!
-
What dignity? Tra-la-la.
-
Not that of a woman, or a girl,
but my freedom. Tra-la-la.
-
But if you love me, you're free.
-
I'm free to not let you kiss me
and suffer horribly. Tra-la-la.
-
- Ida, have pity on me!
- No!
-
Not on any condition?
-
Not on any condition?
-
I'll let you kiss me if you tell me...
-
The truth about what I did while you...
-
Yes, what you did while I was there.
-
What I always do while I'm alone.
-
You think I fly kites over the villas
in Godesberg.
-
What do you do, then?
-
I'm 25 years old and five months.
-
And do you know
I've never kissed a woman!
-
That's a big one!
-
With all my pacifism and polemics
about the wealth of Germany,
-
with all my anticlericalism,
and with all my devotion to free love,
-
with everything that unites me
to the hundreds of thousands of
-
the most progressive youth in the world,
-
Julian, you shock me
or even make me laugh.
-
Laugh, that's just what you ought to do.
-
That's why I want to be an SS
and massacre you with my secret!
-
Come on, kiss me.
-
I can't now.
-
Why not? I give up, you see. Tra-la-lera.
-
The desire to kiss you, as you can see,
made me want to kill you. Tra-la-la.
-
Do you think I wouldn't be up for that, too?
-
- You're asking me?
- I'm sure of it now.
-
I won't kiss you. I won't kill you.
-
- Because I love...
- Who?
-
There's no "who". There is only my love.
-
Dear guinea pig, you're free.
-
The last miserable experiment is over.
-
There he is. Like Christ on the cross.
-
- Does he recognise us?
- Who knows? No one knows.
-
- He's not looking at anything.
- He always stares blankly up in the air.
-
- Doesn't he move?
- No. He never moves an inch.
-
He's been lying there rigidly since August.
-
I left Godesberg in August
-
because he told me he was in love,
but not with me.
-
We know, my poor Ida.
-
- How was your trip to Italy?
- Wonderful.
-
We love Italy.
-
If we had won the war,
we would've bought a villa in Syracuse.
-
So, Ida, who is Julian in love with?
-
- I don't know. He didn't want to tell me.
- Why not?
-
I don't know, I don't know.
-
If he'd told me,
this wouldn't have happened.
-
Everything would have gone according
to plan. All he had to do was say the name,
-
that which he loved, and everything would
have been happily or unhappily resolved.
-
Why do you say "that" and not "woman"?
-
The only thing I know about that being
is that it exists.
-
Who is it that's in love with my poor son?
-
And above all, why won't he name them?
Is he ashamed? Can't he say it?
-
Ida, let me tell you this.
-
His father hired a detective
because of this mystery
-
to go to Heidelberg
and wherever else Julian went.
-
- And?
- Nothing.
-
He hasn't had a relationship with a girl.
I mean, true and long-lasting relationships.
-
- Did he make love to those girls?
- I think so, naturally.
-
Come on, don't start crying now.
-
Don't cry, don't cry. Why not?
-
He was proud.
-
Proud? On the contrary!
He was quick to be vile. Julian had no pride.
-
What are you saying? As a child
he never asked anyone for forgiveness.
-
But I heard him ask for forgiveness
thousands of times.
-
You're mad.
He never went back on his decisions.
-
He never made any!
-
He wasn't very smart,
but he clung strongly to his beliefs.
-
On the contrary, he was very smart.
I've never met a smarter boy.
-
He only did well in school
because he studied a lot.
-
He never studied. He always spent time
on the playing field, in dancehalls.
-
What are you talking about?
He was always a serious boy.
-
And always austere, like a saint.
-
Serious and austere? My God!
He was always so light-hearted.
-
Julian had no sense of humour whatsoever.
-
He was devoted to the army
-
and wanted to become a soldier
like his grandfather, my father,
-
- who defeated Kerensky on the Vistula.
- The army left him completely indifferent.
-
I don't think he knew it existed, though
he never joined in our anti-war protests.
-
He knew the flags of every country
in the world.
-
- Maybe. I did, too, as a child.
- But he never liked to travel.
-
That's not true!
His heart was always with distant peoples.
-
- The Mayans, the Dinka, the Irish.
- Maybe he saw them in films.
-
The only film he ever went to, and
by chance, was a retrospective of Murnau.
-
But he was crazy for spy films
and Westerns.
-
He didn't enjoy films,
but he reminded me of Charlie Chaplin.
-
Charlie Chaplin? But can't you see?
-
He's a mannerist St Sebastian.
-
Anyway, there he is, in catalepsy, in a coma.
-
If he could hear and understand us,
-
who knows what he'd say
about us poor women.
-
Because his prestige is unchanged.
-
He was always there
even when he was running away.
-
He gave himself prestige
by playing a bitter game
-
and his mysterious pain hangs over him
like a silent monument.
-
Mr Herdhitze. Mr Herdhitze,
my mysterious rival.
-
How troublesome our great fathers are.
-
They have filled our colony with majestic
industrial complexes like churches.
-
Smokestacks, smokestacks, smokestacks.
A cement Athens.
-
That's what it means be
so far ahead of others
-
thanks to the great... of our fathers.
-
While your factories...
There is no sign of them, Mr Herdhitze.
-
Might they be invisible?
Have they levitated?
-
Mr Herdhitze. Mr Herdhitze,
-
my mysterious rival who rose from nothing.
-
- May I come in?
- Come in, my dear fellow, come in.
-
- Good morning, Mr Klotz.
- Good morning, dear Hans Guenther.
-
How is your son?
-
My dear Hans Guenther.
You see, he wasn't an obedient son.
-
All in all, he wasn't a disobedient son either.
-
My dear Bertha and I have
democratically discussed this at length.
-
If he had obeyed me,
I would have taken him under my wing,
-
and together we would have flown over
the glorious smokestacks of our Cologne,
-
the furnace of our buttons and cannons.
-
If he had disobeyed me, though,
I would have crushed him.
-
But with a son who is neither consenting
nor dissenting
-
there was nothing I could do.
-
God took care of it.
What did God do with Julian?
-
Since he wanted to do nothing,
he let him die.
-
And because he wanted to do something,
he let him live.
-
Idleness, strikes and exile. I don't know.
-
Julian is lying there in his room
-
Julian is lying there in his room
-
like an embalmed saint,
neither dead nor alive.
-
- But let's talk about us.
- Good news, Mr Klotz.
-
I congratulate you, my dear Hans Guenther.
-
Thank you, Mr Klotz.
-
- Good news, then.
- Yes.
-
Mr Herdhitze is none other than Mr Hirt.
-
Hirt. Old Hirt.
-
My old school chum,
first in Essen then in Heidelberg.
-
Did he have plastic surgery?
-
Of course, Mr Klotz.
Plastic surgery in Italy is very advanced.
-
In Italy?
-
We should start at the beginning, Mr Klotz.
-
Yes, let's start at the beginning,
dear Hans Guenther.
-
Well, Mr Herdhitze, your political rival,
-
the bugbear of your industries,
the new face of West Germany,
-
is none other than Mr Hirt,
his face transformed by plastic surgery.
-
First of all, I imagine he's become
a professor of something.
-
Exactly. Of anatomy, in Strasbourg.
-
Good. And then?
-
All right. That takes us to Strasbourg,
precisely to February 9, 1942.
-
My rheumatism.
-
It's the date of a secret report
-
sent to guess who? Mr Himmler!
-
Crimes against humanity, hooray!
-
I congratulate you, I congratulate you,
dear Hans Guenther.
-
Do you know what that report was about?
Here it is.
-
The collection of skulls belonging to
Jewish Bolshevik commissioners
-
for scientific research
at the University of Strasbourg.
-
Skulls from who?
Jewish Bolshevik commissioners?
-
Forgive me if I laugh,
-
but these three words strung together
-
are irresistibly funny!
-
"Commissioners", "Bolsheviks",
and "Jews" as well.
-
So, the more you have,
the more you add on.
-
That's really funny!
-
It seems that Mr Hirt,
now known as Herdhitze,
-
complained that
-
even though almost every race possesses
a great number of skulls,
-
science only had a small number
of Jewish skulls available to them.
-
So the war in the East
would give them the opportunity
-
to make up for this serious gap.
-
That's where Jewish
Bolshevik commissioners come in.
-
Let's get to the point.
-
Well, these prisoners, in several lots,
were forced naked into gas chambers.
-
The salts were placed in the pipe.
-
The end of the pipe was closed with a plug.
-
This plug had a metal pipe and
it forced the salt to spray out.
-
The prisoners were able to breathe
for a half-minute more,
-
then fell to the ground
covered in their own excrement.
-
The corpses were still warm when
they arrived at the Institute of Anatomy,
-
their eyes wide open and shining.
-
They cut the left testicle off the men
to send to the anatomy lab.
-
Dr Hirt's, now Herdhitze's refrain
to his collaborators was,
-
"If you don't keep your traps shut,
you'll end up the same way."
-
Let's get to the point. The real point.
-
The war was ending
and the Allied front was nearing Strasbourg.
-
What should Dr Hirt do with
-
the 80 pieces in
his one-of-a-kind collection?
-
- Well...
- They were scientifically made to disappear
-
by meticulous cremation.
-
And their gold teeth were given to Dr Hirt
-
who disappeared with them.
-
- But then... There's no proof! No proof!
- No.
-
At this point an important character
in our story enters the picture.
-
- Who?
- A certain Mr Ding.
-
- Ding?
- Yes, Ding, Mr Klotz. Ding.
-
So he was a Confucian!
-
No. He was the purist of Aryans.
-
So what role did he play in our story?
-
He was no other than Dr Hirt's,
now Herdhitze's, assistant.
-
He, too, disappeared under the rubble
as his teacher did.
-
There's no doubt that,
along with exceptional abundance,
-
it should be noted that Germany
in those days
-
had an unusual shortage of corpses.
-
The ambiguity of evil.
-
Today Ding calls himself Klauberg. Right.
-
You realise, Mr Klotz, that thanks to
my short legs and big dark head
-
that among southern Europeans,
especially in Italy, I don't look like a tourist.
-
- So?
- Can it be easy to describe my excitement
-
when, obviously throwing caution to
the wind,
-
I heard, right in downtown Milan,
-
the clink of the monosyllable, "Ding"?
-
- Ding.
- Ding! Ding!
-
Like in a Chinese concert,
like rain on roofing-tiles. Ding.
-
So Mr Ding, now known as Klauberg,
let the cat out of the bag.
-
And Mr Hirt, now known as Herdhitze,
is done for!
-
A man wishes to see you.
-
- Who is it, my dear man?
- His name is Herdhitze.
-
- Mr Herdhitze?
- Yes, sir, Herdhitze.
-
Mr Herdhitze is here?
Show him in, show him in.
-
Mr Herdhitze!
-
Mr Herdhitze!
-
Marvellous, Mr Herdhitze, what a surprise!
-
I was in the area, my dear Mr Klotz,
-
coming from Cologne and on my way
to Bonn and I said to myself,
-
"Why not stop in to see
my dear old school chum?"
-
To tell you the truth,
I never would have recognised you.
-
Have you had plastic surgery on your face?
-
Yes. Plastic surgery, Italian style.
-
We haven't seen each other
for a long time, after all.
-
I think it was in '38.
-
Yes, good for you. Spring of '38.
-
What a wonderful spring.
-
Twenty-nine others have gone by since,
but the old fire never goes out!
-
Always such a jolly fellow, our Herdhitze.
-
Isn't it true, Hans Guenther,
that Herdhitze in our mother tongue
-
means "blazing fire"?
-
And what fire is blazing, may I ask?
-
The fire of the great Germany,
of course, Mr Klotz,
-
where it rises from under the ashes
to produce wool, cheese, beer and buttons.
-
You make me heave a sigh,
-
- my dear Herdhitze.
- Why, Mr Klotz?
-
Because you are new, brand new, while I...
-
What are you saying? You are...
-
You're a jet plane zooming towards
the future, Mr Klotz.
-
These exaggerated metaphors
remind me of Grosz.
-
Are you alluding to
your humanistic training, Mr Klotz?
-
Yes, and I'm envious of
your true scientific training, Mr Herdhitze.
-
You mean technical.
-
Yes, there's no contradiction between them
any more. Only in my head.
-
I feel so old.
I could be my son's grandfather.
-
Of course.
-
The good son.
-
The silent Julian.
-
We're the same age.
But I'm really an old fireplace
-
while you're a very modern radiator.
-
- A glass of beer, Mr Herdhitze?
- I'll have two, Mr Klotz.
-
To our youth, Mr Herdhitze.
-
To our renewed youth, Mr Klotz.
-
I'm sorry if I've stirred up feelings of
self-accusation and discouragement in you.
-
Those are only objective comments,
Mr Herdhitze.
-
Someone like you who rose from nothing
has only to reckon with the present.
-
- How is your dear Bertha?
- Well.
-
- I know that you're unmarried, Mr Herdhitze.
- No,
-
I have no heirs, Mr Klotz.
-
I'll leave my industries to the technicians.
-
The future doesn't lie in the hands
of individuals.
-
No trace of humanistic culture
will exist in the future.
-
And man will no longer have problems
with his conscience.
-
You've had some?
Sorry, but it all seems contradictory.
-
My past constructive experience tells me
-
that contradictions are
absolutely necessary.
-
Indeed. Indeed, indeed.
-
There comes a time when
my abjection of pigs,
-
whose bellies can hold
an entire social class,
-
is purified by regret of the past.
And that's where I'm wrong.
-
Instead... Instead, instead.
-
There comes a moment in time
when your abjection of pigs,
-
when you think about the future,
becomes even more cynical.
-
- And that's where you're right.
- The ambiguity of goodness.
-
Regarding the Jews...
-
I knew that's where you were headed.
Another glass of beer, Mr Klotz?
-
Of course, Mr Herdhitze.
-
So, to the health of the Jews, Mr Klotz.
-
To the health of pigs, Mr Herdhitze.
-
About pigs...
-
- Jews or pigs?
- Pigs, pigs.
-
Do you have any amusing stories to tell me?
-
I know all the amusing stories about pigs,
thanks to Brecht and Grosz.
-
No, just a minute ago
I remembered something about pigs
-
when we were talking about heirs
and inheritances.
-
Your technicians.
-
No. Like before, the farmers,
now technicians,
-
are innocent. You know they are.
-
Thanks to their productivity
and loyalty as consumers?
-
Just so. Going back to pigs...
-
Do you remember, Mr Klotz,
something that happened a few years ago,
-
let me think... In '59.
-
When you changed from Lambrettas
to household appliances?
-
- Exactly. Your son was 16 then.
- My son?
-
I can understand your distress,
but as a friend,
-
a friend from a long time ago,
but a friend nevertheless,
-
I asked myself,
-
"What's wrong with the son of
the great Klotz?"
-
My son's just sleepy. He's extremely sleepy.
-
Your son wasn't asleep in '59.
-
I'm referring to that small forgotten episode
I was telling you about.
-
Go ahead, tell me about it.
-
His great love for the countryside,
-
for German-style gardens,
full of untamed memories of Greece,
-
misty and sun-drenched, dear to Diotima.
-
That great love couldn't be
anything but fatal
-
because the fault lies with those
who think they're above their own past.
-
Let's not argue between ourselves,
-
it's not about us now, if I'm not mistaken.
-
The true protagonist, your son,
spent his entire life in the countryside,
-
surrounded by gardens,
an Hellenic paradise.
-
A farmer's house was just beyond it,
with stables,
-
manure heaps,
-
pigsties.
-
Germans consume great amounts
of sausage.
-
The story I was telling you about was this.
-
In '59, Julian stole a pig.
-
- That's all it is?
- Yes, that's all it is.
-
We laughed so much about it
around the fireplace.
-
Laughter that's now frozen in your throat.
-
Everyone has a cross to bear.
-
The protests of the farmers
were very amusing to you,
-
the ones who fattened up those pigs
for Christmas, that first time.
-
A little less the second time.
-
Sure, Julian enjoyed stealing those pigs.
-
What did he do with them?
-
Is that a rhetorical question?
-
No. It's one that comes from common sense,
-
and an annoying one for someone who
has common sense as well.
-
What did Julian do with the pigs?
-
My dear sir, he probably played with them.
-
He probably put a leash on them,
like he did with his Great Danes.
-
The thrill of spontaneity!
-
What do you think he did with them?
-
Again, I'm still your good friend
even though 30 years have gone by.
-
I just really needed
to understand something
-
that you refused to see.
-
Since I understood,
I wanted to demonstrate my love,
-
since you had so much of it for me.
-
So tell me what you understood.
-
Understood? Alas, nothing.
I just knew about it.
-
- What?
- After the two pig thefts, your son Julian
-
shut himself off in a long,
adolescent hermetic state.
-
If he rebelled, a hint of conformity
would show through.
-
If he obeyed, the fire of dissent.
-
It went on like that for years. A true enigma.
-
He went to school in Heidelberg, fell in love.
-
But I have good reason to think
his heart was here, in the countryside.
-
It's obvious, passion is passion.
-
Poor Mr Klotz. Another glass of beer?
-
Later, Mr Herdhitze. Let's continue.
-
You have such a thirst to know, Mr Klotz.
-
So all of a sudden you're so interested
in your son's unhappiness?
-
Haven't you ever asked yourself
how much that poor boy has suffered
-
to end up the way he has?
-
Now we've come to the moment in time
-
when no court could ever say
-
if you're speaking out of viciousness
or pity.
-
And if you feel real pain or not
in wanting to inflict pain on me.
-
Yes, I couldn't answer that myself.
-
I'm here as your rival to destroy you,
as I have to do,
-
so you won't be able to destroy me.
-
So we talked about pigs instead of Jews.
-
But there's something else.
-
Perhaps it's a taste of the truth.
Who knows?
-
In truth, the thought of that poor boy
on the cross brings a tear to my eye,
-
even if it would smack of the ridiculous
if I told it to others.
-
What?
-
You see, Mr Klotz, Julian's solitary walks,
-
those normal inspections of his,
-
had as its daily destination the pigsty.
-
- Well, then?
- That's it.
-
As soon as he got to the pigsty,
the measures Julian could've taken
-
so the farmers wouldn't notice him
-
weren't, of course, of any use
against my Hans Guenther,
-
namely, a certain Klauberg,
formerly known as Ding,
-
omnipresent like God and his truth.
-
And so we get to the point where it seems
-
impossible for you to say it,
-
and for me to listen to it.
-
Are you feeling better, Julian?
-
Yes, thanks to a little help from my father.
-
Your ambiguous friend
and ambiguous enemy.
-
Yes, his ambiguous conscience
merged with my pure existence.
-
Your father is going through
a wonderful period in his life.
-
I'm completely indifferent to it.
-
But all Germany is talking about it.
-
It's the main topic of discussion
in all the newspapers.
-
And all our clean-shaven bearded friends
have a new reason to feel they're right.
-
Herdhitze & Klotz or Klotz & Herdhitze.
-
It's been the topic of heated argument.
I think it was decided alphabetically.
-
And in your friends' indignation?
-
Of course Herdhitze, killer of Jews
and a new man, is at the top of the list.
-
- A small failure for my father.
- There must have been some bargaining.
-
Oh, yes. Of course there was.
-
A story about pigs for a story about Jews.
-
Fine, Julian. It's hard to talk to you.
-
I came to say goodbye to you, as they say.
-
Fine, Ida. Sooner or later...
How should I put it? It had to happen.
-
- I'm getting married.
- With a clean-shaven bearded fellow?
-
Don't laugh, Julian. How can you?
-
Perhaps my courage comes from
your happiness.
-
- My love for a certain Pubi Jannings?
- Why not? If you truly love him.
-
No, it's not from the happiness
Pubi gives me,
-
but from your indifference to my love
that became indifference
-
toward my estrangement.
-
Ida the judge. What's this Pubi like?
-
A good-looking boy. Two years younger
than you. Just got his degree.
-
His reformism is as clear as his eyes,
his morality as strong as his muscles.
-
He's on a sports team.
He's not anti-Communist.
-
He's tall, blond, but not blond
like a German, more like a Russian.
-
His respect for others is never servile.
I've never seen him lose his dignity.
-
- Does he grunt?
- Julian,
-
I didn't tell you about him
to get back at you.
-
I'm completely indifferent to it all.
-
No, you feel hate.
-
- Love, I'd say.
- Then why won't you be a part of it?
-
Why don't you ask one of your Jews
or blacks?
-
You're useless.
Perhaps it's because you don't exist.
-
You're only an apparition.
-
Your German is a joke
-
and even though you're here
it will always be questionable.
-
You already said that,
and I understood completely.
-
Let's leave each other with love, Julian.
-
Leave each other?
When were we ever together?
-
- Never.
- That's obvious.
-
But now that I love someone else,
unfortunately, the risk is to pity you.
-
Don't worry, I'll make you laugh,
even if you say I have no sense of humour.
-
Well, goodbye, Julian.
-
- Goodbye, Ida.
- Goodbye, Julian.
-
How strong and odd my love is.
-
I can't say I love you,
but that's not what's important.
-
The object of my amorous passion has
never been so worthless, to say the least.
-
What counts are the sensations I feel.
-
The profound change it made in me.
-
It's not degeneration,
let me be clear about that.
-
If it were, you'd have understood
and rightly felt disgust and pity.
-
Nothing has gone from my life.
-
I say that without pride,
-
but with wonder, or let's say
with a scholarly objectivity.
-
Now these sensations are so wonderful,
so exciting. They're unique.
-
I can't rid myself of them for an instant,
not even from my thoughts.
-
It doesn't happen just by being born
or living. No.
-
There's nothing natural about it.
-
So what do you want?
I think about it all the time.
-
The sensations this love produce in me
can be summarised into just one.
-
I was struck by a grace,
something also akin to a plague.
-
So don't be shocked,
if an infinite happiness came along with it.
-
It's no wonder
that I have horrible nightmares at night.
-
But they're the most genuine things
in my life.
-
I have no other way of facing reality.
-
The other night I dreamt I was
in a dark road, full of puddles.
-
I was searching along the edge of
the sidewalk, the puddles full of light,
-
like northern lights, a long Siberian sunset,
-
for something. What was I looking for?
I don't remember. Perhaps a toy.
-
And at the edge of one of these puddles
I see a pig, a young pig.
-
I get closer as if to catch him, touch him,
and he gleefully bites me.
-
He bites off four fingers of my right hand,
but they remain attached.
-
They don't bleed. It's like they were rubber.
-
I turn around with my fingers dangling,
upset about the bite.
-
Do I have the vocation of a martyr?
-
Who knows where the truth lies in dreams,
besides making us anxious about it.
-
To our merger, my dear Herdhitze.
-
To our merger!
To our merger, my dear Klotz.
-
You'll think I'm obsessed by it,
but I have to keep saying, Grosz is not dead.
-
The festivities for the merger
of Klotz and Herdhitze
-
are as natural as spring returning.
-
Light-heartedness, my dear Herdhitze,
light-heartedness.
-
Who says religion is dead?
-
Look at that wonderful rite.
-
My wife is opening her painted jaws
and slipping a cream puff into them.
-
God bless the appetite of our spouses.
-
Germany. What a capacity for digestion.
-
Shit.
-
And what a capacity for defecation.
-
No one defecates more than us Germans,
-
over the hearts of our puritan children.
-
Did you hear?
Minister Ribbentrop has grunted.
-
Good morning, master!
-
Hello, Maracchione!
-
- Good morning, master.
- Good morning. Hello, Gustava.
-
I...
-
I killed my father,
-
I ate human flesh, and I quiver with joy.
-
I killed my father,
-
I ate human flesh,
-
I quiver with joy.
-
I killed my father,
-
I ate human flesh,
-
I quiver with joy.
-
I killed my father,
-
I ate human flesh,
-
I quiver with joy.
-
Mr Klotz! Mr Klotz! I'm here with
my colleague Klauberg, the former Ding,
-
because of something very strange
that is happening.
-
Speak, my dear sir, speak.
-
A delegation of farmers are here.
-
I bet they're led by Italian farm-hands
with their Togliatti filling their empty heads.
-
Togliatti is dead.
-
Do they have signs? Are they waving flags?
-
Not really, Mr Hirt. I mean, Mr Herdhitze.
-
So it's not a demonstration.
They're not raising up red flags,
-
not shaking their hoes and shovels?
-
Why are they here, then?
No one invited them to the festivities.
-
Why don't you let them in?
-
It's because they don't want to talk to you.
-
Only with the toughest man in the company.
-
It's not very sensitive to make such
a distinction on the day of the merger.
-
But that's how it is. Farewell.
-
I feel a strong urge for a cream puff.
-
Okay, let's go. What are you waiting for?
Show them in.
-
Don't be afraid, come on. Step forward.
-
Well? Have you nothing to say now?
What's the matter?
-
They're embarrassed, Mr Herdhitze.
-
Come on, open your mouths!
-
- You, old Wolfgang.
- I can't talk, and it's not because I'm stupid.
-
Is it about Julian?
-
Come on, don't whine now, old Wolfgang,
or Wolfram, whatever your name is.
-
I don't have the strength, sir.
-
I'll speak if I may, sir.
-
Are you one of the Italian immigrants?
-
Yes, sir. My German is not too good,
but I can say what needs to be said.
-
Go on, then.
-
- You know that the pigsty...
- The pigsty?
-
Every day Mr Julian used to
-
take a walk down there.
-
Filthy boy.
-
He went there today, too,
along the same road.
-
Even though there were festivities
at the villa.
-
Right. To steal your innocence
and our conscience.
-
How can either of us condemn him,
-
if he only suffered by withdrawing
into himself.
-
By closing his eyes he watched us.
-
Julian wasn't one of those victims
who talk with their executioner,
-
and he didn't ask for a confessor.
-
He didn't confuse himself with anyone else.
His vileness was graceful.
-
He betrayed all of us without ever
promising to be faithful.
-
Am I wrong, or is this a funeral eulogy?
-
Yes, Mr Herdhitze.
Now that I listen to old Wolfram,
-
even though I don't understand
what he's saying,
-
I feel like crying, too.
-
Julian is dead?
-
He went down towards the pigsty.
-
That I got. Go on.
-
The child Gustava was always
the last to leave him.
-
Today she followed him
longer than usual and...
-
Talk, you boor!
-
She came back after a little while,
sobbing and screaming.
-
Oh, my! We thought she was dying.
She screamed,
-
"The pigs are eating Mr Julian!"
-
- And what did you do?
- Us? We said to ourselves,
-
"Why don't we go and see
what's happening down at the pigsty?"
-
So we left our work
and went down to the valley.
-
What did you see?
-
The pigs were all crowded together,
-
and how they were shrieking!
We could hear them at the top of the hill.
-
And as we were running downhill,
we realised...
-
You realised?
-
That the little girl, Mr Herdhitze,
was telling the truth.
-
Literally?
-
The pigs were eating a man and...
-
And what?
-
It really was Mr Julian. But by now...
-
By now?
-
By now the pigs were chewing
the last shreds of Mr Julian.
-
One had a hand in its mouth
-
and the others were trying to take it away
and eat it themselves.
-
Those disgusting beasts ate all of him.
-
Everything?
Not even a finger could be saved?
-
A tuft of hair?
-
No, nothing. Nothing.
-
Those pigs made a clean sweep of him?
-
Yes, sir. If you hadn't seen them
with your own eyes
-
eating a man, you wouldn't know
anything had even happened.
-
No sign of him was left?
-
A scrap of cloth, a sole from his shoe?
-
No, nothing.
-
A button?
-
No, nothing at all!
-
Then,
-
not a word to a soul.
-
THE END