“He was the same
as everybody else in all his actions; but there was an appalling void within
him; he no longer felt any worries, any desires; he viewed his own existence as
a necessary burden…”
Büchner, "Lenz"
Kulterer
A FILM
Mošćenička Draga , Yugoslavia
We hear the
regular, precisely spaced footfalls of the guards on the square flagstones on
the bank of the dried-up riverbed, as the two guards patrolling the outer wall
of the penal institution move steadily away from each other; meanwhile we first
indistinctly and then gradually ever-more distinctly see the wall of the penal
institution and on that wall we see at three-second intervals and for no longer
than a second each time the title KULTERER; the title appears on the wall IN
CAPITAL LETTERS, and is visible first in the upper-left corner of the screen,
then in the upper-right one, then in the lower-right one. Little by little the wall becomes
recognizable as a wall, from which the camera now retreats with great rapidity. The camera is positioned directly facing the
wall, so that it begins by showing a piece of it no larger than a square meter,
and it pulls back all the way to the far side of the riverbed, from which spot
the penal institution in its entirety can be seen. The camera is now completely stationary;
between the two of them the patrol-guards have compassed all but the last third
of the perimeter of the institution; once they have completed the circuit, there
is a switch to a view of the ground beneath the camera, and from there the view
proceeds slowly along the ground towards and past the riverbed in a straight
line, until it pans upward to face Cell 38, in which Kulterer is incarcerated;
the windows of the cells along the outer wall of the institute and the numbers
under the windows are all clearly visible; through the open cell windows we
suddenly hear some institutional crockery breaking and some shouting. Then silence.
The actor doing the narration, who is also the actor playing Kulterer,
says, “The closer he drew to the day of his release from the penal institution,
the more Kulterer dreaded returning to his wife.” The camera suddenly cuts to the left-side patrol
guard, who is looking up at Kulterer’s cell, then to the right-side patrol
guard, who is looking up at Kulterer’s cell, then to a view from above of both
guards, who now turn around and head back towards the lookout tower, which is
sited at the midpoint of their circuit.
The camera now looks down from the roof of the institution at the guard
on the right; the junior baker is coming around the corner on a bicycle with a
bag full of rolls; the guard stops him, and, after a brief exchange of words
that we do not hear, points him back in the direction from which he came; the
baker gets back on the bicycle and rides off.
The guard resumes patrolling. Now
voices and the clatter of crockery can be heard from the open windows as the
camera motionlessly and all the while from high above them films the two guards
approaching each other; suddenly it is directed at a boy dressed in black who
is blowing a train conductor’s whistle; he gazes over at the hills, then blows
again and gazes over at the penal institution and starts running, the whole
time he is running along the dam spanning the riverbed; he runs for at least
seven or eight seconds, then stops and blows another short blast on the
whistle. His large, puffy face. The face of Kulterer, who is gazing out the
window of his cell. The inmates are
eating their breakfast. As though his
three fellow inmates had asked him something earlier, Kulterer pensively says:
yes, yes. After he has eaten a bit of
bread, he says: yes, yes, I know. The
camera shows the three inmates as they eat, shows Kulterer, as the narrator
says, “But he really never spoke unless he had just been asked a question, and
he would immediately stand to attention upon the appearance of the warden,
which was at first merely intimated by the clattering of his truncheon, which
seemed to echo through the corridors, then by his booted footfalls, which grew
ever louder and more portentous and finally overpowered the sound of the
printing-machines.” At first the images
on camera are not at all distinct or obviously correspondent to the state of
affairs being commented on; then, after the narrator has said “intimated,”
everything finally becomes distinctly visible and recognizable. Kulterer is standing at a printing machine
and counting forms, the camera shows a completely apathetic Kulterer who is performing
mechanical movements that are the mechanical movements of the printing machine,
as though Kulterer were a part of the printing machine; the camera is
stationary; the narrator says, “The warden was very well-disposed towards
Kulterer—who had to count, pack, and cord up the forms as they fell out of the
printing machine—because in contrast to the other inmates he was a quiescent
individual who, it seemed, had no aspirations of any kind and strictly followed
all rules and instructions and was even in actual fact quite satisfied with
everybody, apart from himself.” As the narrator
is saying the word “himself,” the camera cuts to Kulterer’s face, which is
looking into the face of the warden, who is suddenly standing next to him; Kulterer
is looking up at the warden; his manner of looking up at the warden makes it
plain that the warden is standing next to him even though the warden cannot be
seen. Kulterer: a letter and a
package? Warden, whose mouth is shown:
Not only a package, but also a letter.
Kulterer rests his hands on his thighs and says, “Yes, yes, I know, Mr.
Warden!” “All right!” says the warden,
whose mouth alone is being shown.
Kulterer, of whom one is now likewise being shown only the mouth: a
letter! The warden’s mouth: all right! The camera shows the warden from the mouth
downwards then pans down to the floor and up Kulterer’s body as far as his
mouth; once the camera has reached his mouth, Kulterer says: yes, yes, I know. The printing machines are now all making a
great deal of noise; the camera shows the head of the warden, who is now gazing
over and beyond Kulterer’s head into the spacious print shop, in which there
are inmates stationed at all the machines, inmates who are performing the same
movements as Kulterer; here everything is automated and quickly attains a
deafening volume. The warden passes by
one man after another, inspecting the work as he goes. Suddenly the machines shut down with a jolt;
the warden has drawn to a halt; he asks: who has been assigned latrine
duty? Three inmates at the back of the
room raise their hands. The warden notes
the identities of the men and strikes himself on the right calf with his
truncheon, as he has fallen into the habit of doing. Then he looks over the entire print shop one
more time and exits. The rattling and
stamping of the printing machines are once again deafening, the movements of
the inmates once again mechanical. The
camera cuts to the face of Kulterer, who is eating his breakfast. Narrator: “He led an existence that was
completely withdrawn and completely unheeded by his fellow-inmates, and during
his free time, which was often much too long, because in accordance with
regulations they worked only five or six hours a day at the printing machines,
he would write down his ideas, or as he termed them, trifling thoughts, which
preoccupied him almost uninterruptedly.
Out of boredom, and because otherwise he would inevitably have succumbed
to despair, he would often read aloud to himself tales and stories of his own
invention and composition—‘The Cat,’ for example, or ‘The Dry Dock,’ ‘The
Hyena,’ or ‘The Landlady of the Inn’s Manageress,’ or ‘The Death Bed.’” Beginning at the word “printing machines,” the
camera shows the hands of Kulterer and his cellmates as they perform the
movements involved in eating; this scene must be one of absolute tranquility
and continues until a good two or three seconds after the narrator has uttered
the word “deathbed.” Narrator: “The
ideas for these stories came to him mostly at night, and in order not lose them
he had to get out of bed in the dark and, while his cellmates were sleeping, to
sit down at the table, and, in the midst of that terrible darkness, to jot down
what had just occurred to him.” As this
sentence is being spoken the entire breadth of the cell underneath the table at
which the inmates are eating is shown, and specifically the camera pans from
right to left until it has arrived back at the inmates and is showing their
legs underneath the table. Upon the
re-stationing of the image, hence upon the stationary image of the inmates’
legs under the table-top, appears a caption reading: BUT OVER TIME HE HAD
DEVELOPED A METHOD OF GETTING UP FROM HIS PALLET AND SITTING DOWN AT THE TABLE
SO SOUNDLESSLY THAT THEY NO LONGER PERCEIVED HIM EVEN WHEN THEY WERE HARDLY
FAST ASLEEP. Once the text of the
caption has been read, the caption disappears; there is movement under the
table; Kulterer rises, but only the legs of the rising Kulterer are shown. The din attending the inmates’ ejection of
the remains of their breakfast through the windows of their cells is heard as
the camera gives a view from the window of Kulterer’s cell, a view of the
landscape on the other side of the wall of this cell. A truck driving by in the distance, at the
weir. The clamor of children, as though
they are flying a kite. The woods at the
horizon as the narrator says, “One could be transferred from one work group to
another. One could be conscripted into a
tougher or grubbier sector or a tougher and grubbier sector if
one were found wanting in some way, if one failed to fulfill the expectations
that had been set for one by the administration. But initially, on the day of admission to the
penal institution, everyone was always assigned to the more pleasant work
sectors.” As this passage is being
spoken the camera shows by turns one work group gathering potatoes on the far
bank of the river and another one sawing wood on a trestle in front of the
shed. Suddenly one sees the façade of
the church, from which eight or nine inmates are emerging with a warden. The church square is empty; the camera shows
the group of inmates first from the vantage point of the building across the
square from the church, then from above, from the church steeple. No sounds but those occasioned by this group
of inmates can be heard. The narrator: “It was owing less to his skill than to his sheer
incapacity to rebel or to participate in any of the plots, the conspiracies
against the administration, that everybody was pretty much constantly hatching,
that Kulterer had managed to keep working in the printing works from the very
beginning onwards.” The camera remains
stationed at the steeple after the group of inmates has crossed the square and
exited the frame, until the narrator has finished uttering the preceding
sentence. Kulterer’s face, as though he
were observing from the cell window a scuffle involving his fellow inmates on
the square below. Narrator: “When they
bandied blows, it seemed as though brutishness alone would prove viable, and
everything else turn out to be sickly and obscene. Then he would gaze into the profundities of
this bunglery that was hopelessly, in the most barbarous fashion, incapable of
coping with itself.” The camera now tracks
the footfalls, in other words, the trousered legs, of the guard patrolling the
right side of the outer wall of the penal institution; once the guard has
reached the end of the wall and hence the last flagstone, crows are heard
cawing; the guard turns around. The guard
on the left side turns around. The
left-side guard suddenly halts; the camera cuts to a young man in a butcher’s
outfit who has half a pig slung over his shoulder. The guard (both guards are wearing a black
fur cape) rebuffs the junior butcher; the young butcher turns around, vanishes. The two guards, now standing at the foot of
the lookout tower, simultaneously light a cigarette. Smoke, laughter, their profiles, the backs of
their heads. They crane their heads
skyward, but the camera shows nothing but a completely lifeless gray. Narrator: “It was remarkable, they treated
him as if he were not quite worth taking seriously, and at the same time they
felt a high regard for him whenever they came into contact with him.” The heads of the guards move away from each
other as the guards’ militaristic footfalls begin to be heard. The sound of crockery being eaten off of emanates
from the windows of the institution. The
boy dressed in black is standing on the church square and blowing into his
train conductor’s whistle. Two cyclists in
black Sunday clothes looking at the penal institution as they ride very rapidly
across the dam spanning the riverbed. An
inmate in a cook’s apron emptying refuse from a bucket into a large vat at the outer
wall of the section of the institution devoted to the kitchen. The director of the institution behind his
desk in his office, explaining something with upraised forefinger to an
off-camera warden, laughing. Denying
something with a gesture involving both hands.
Rising and explaining something about the map of the institution affixed
to the wall. Two nuns on the square
beneath the director’s office crossing the square, entering the church. The head of a peasant-woman on the dam
spanning the riverbed, turning in the direction of the institution, the head of
a boy, of a girl, both of them with schoolchildren’s rucksacks slung across
their backs, gazing over at the institution.
A tractor with a trailer in which five or six inmates are crouching. The striking of the clock in the lookout
tower within the sound of the tractor.
The left-side guard abruptly halts and looks up at the window of Kulterer’s
cell. In the cell one of the inmates
presses another violently down on to his pallet, while the third inmate is
washing himself at the washbasin and looking at the two brawlers. Kulterer in the opposite corner of the cell
observing the scene with wide-open eyes.
In contrast to the others’, his uniform is well-pressed and
spotless. As the camera remains pointed
at Kulterer, the narrator says: “All the while that amid their mentally
unhinged unconsciousness, amid the forgone certainty of their defeat, they were
impulsively scheming at the destruction of the elements, he would stand
[agonizing] on the sidelines.” The
inmate at the washbasin dries himself off and spits into the washbasin. A large black beetle on the floor is
shown. The inmate at the washbasin grins
ear to ear; he throws his towel into the washbasin and steps on the beetle; the
sound of the beetle being stepped on and crushed can distinctly be heard. Kulterer turns around and looks at the wall
underneath the cell window, climbs on to the bench under the cell window and
peers out. The camera shows him from
behind and then shows the landscape outside, which is drab and lifeless. The drabness and silence of the landscape is
suddenly broken by the screams of a sizable bunch of schoolchildren. The left-side guard polishes his shoes with a
piece of sackcloth, pockets the piece of sackcloth; the right-side guard with
abrupt hand gestures drives away the boy dressed in black, who runs away and
halts amid the bushes towards the weir and blows his train conductor’s whistle. The institution’s curfew bell rings, is
shown. A handcart full of institutional
laundry; the cart is being pulled and pushed by four inmates trailed by a
guard; the sound of a gate opening is heard.
The camera cuts to the cart disappearing into an open gateway. The director of the institution goes to the
window of his office and looks down at the courtyard. He takes a canister of pills out of his coat
pocket and hastily sticks three, four pills into his mouth. Then he takes off his coat and hangs it on
the coat tree in one of the corners of the room. He stretches his suspenders with his thumbs,
gives the suspenders a couple of tugs, lets them snap back into place,
etc. The boy dressed in black, who all
this time has been sitting in the grass amid the bushes, jumps up and runs
away. The left-side guard is shown, one
sees how precisely timed the footfalls of his patrol are, sees his fur cape
from behind; suddenly one hears the boy dressed in black blowing his whistle,
and the guard abruptly turns around, looks over at the boy, as if momentarily
transfixed, then resumes marching. The
camera cuts away from the rear-view of the guard to a pan from one end of the
institution to the other. Dogs, cars, a
train, can all be heard. It is striking
with what reposefulness the camera is handled; the locales and incidents of the
film are completely isolated from a surrounding world that is probably always
anything but reposeful. The film is an
incidence of reposefulness amidst the lack of reposefulness, as well as an
incidence of the lack of reposefulness amidst reposefulness. The film is not irritated by its
surroundings; those surroundings are not irritated by the film. From the steeple of the church the camera
shows the church square, which is completely empty; after four or five seconds
a group of inmates with a warden crosses the square from the left at the same
as a group of inmates crosses it from the right. As the inmates are crossing the square, the
narrator says: “In the last few days before his release, days that weighed very
heavily on his heart and on his intellect without managing to overwhelm him,
and that found their inhumane expression on his face, he tried to establish
contact with the inmates, and often in ways that were moving, as he wished to
make this contact firm and lasting, for ever and always.” Kulterer with the warden in the corridor en
route to the printing works; he addresses some unintelligible words to some
inmates who are cleaning the floor of the corridor. Kulterer sits down on his pallet and holds up
the four fingers of his right hand, as if he wanted to signify four of
something to his cellmates. He polishes
his shoes in a corner of the room. He
sits down at the table and writes. The
narrator says: “The invention of thoughts in the human mind seemed to him the
most precious gift in existence.” He
lies down on the pallet and pulls the blanket up over his face. The whistling of a train can be heard from
outside. One of the cellmates says: tell
us a story about somethin’; he says it in a menacing tone, but Kulterer does
not tell any stories; he has exposed his face and suddenly pulls the blanket
back over his head. Accompanied by the
warden, a barber in a barber’s coat enters the cell. The cellmates jump to their feet; the warden
points at all three of them, signs to the barber that their heads are to be
shaved clean, then, turning to Kulterer, the warden says: leave this ’un be. He’s goin’ home. The oldest of the cellmates sits down in the
chair in the middle of the cell, and the barber begins to shave his head while
Kulterer looks on. The
man being shorn by the barber, to Kulterer:
“’sfunny, your waya lookin’ at that.
Barber: what? The inmate: ’at
thar bit with the beer mug. The third inmate:
Ah don’ unnerstannit, but it’s gooood.
The second one: gooood? The
second one: the ape, what’d he do next?
Kulterer: he fell dead out of the tree.
The man with the half-shaved head, under his breath: dead. And again: dead. The narrator, while the camera shows the head
of the inmate who has just said dead: “He wrote only sad stories. Sometimes extremely happy ideas would occur
to him, ideas that he himself couldn’t help laughing at, but he was unable to
write them down.” The camera is centered
on the cell window, looking outwards. An
old man who could be a scissors-grinder standing on the dam with a wheelbarrow
and looking over at the institution.
Suddenly the printing machines, loud; the print shop; Kulterer counting
forms. The camera successively shows each
of the inmates stationed at the printing machines. The imposing figure of the warden standing in
the doorway of the entrance, surveying everything; suddenly he looks at the
clock. It chimes stridently. End of the work shift; the inmates coalesce
into a group at the center of the print shop and exit together. The camera remains centered on the group of
inmates until the entire print shop is empty, yielding a view of the darkened doorway
of the exit. The director in the
courtyard. He walks up to the branch of
a rose bush and plucks a rose and sticks it in the lapel of his coat. Looks up at the cells. All is calm.
Then he takes a couple of steps and suddenly pulls the rose out of his
buttonhole and throws it on to the ground; once the rose has fallen on to the
pavement, he picks it back up and flings it against the wall, from which it
falls on to the grass. He beckons the
warden over. The warden comes, and the
two of them exit the courtyard, discussing something as they walk. The camera shows them once from behind—they
both have their hands interlocked behind their backs—and once from the
front. The director hands the warden a
slip of paper; one realizes that it is in fact a list of names. The warden pockets the list. A sudden burst of laughter from two nuns who
are entering the courtyard; the director and the warden follow the nuns with
their eyes as the nuns traverse the entire breadth of the courtyard. The director and the warden draw to a halt. The director says: Wiesmayr, Neumann! Pauses, says: Kulterer. Kulterer also goes on Saturday. The warden says: a package, a letter. The director: a package, a package. Kulterer is sitting at the table in the cell
while the other three now shaved-headed inmates squat on the floor and play
chess; no chess pieces are visible, but it is clear that they are playing
chess, and three-handed chess no less.
Kulterer has paper with him at the table, but he is not writing. Slowly, sedately, and starting from the
center of the table, he traces circles on the table-top with his right index
finger. Once he has traced the seventh
circle, and hence the largest of seven circles of ever-increasing size, he
suddenly stands up looks out the cell window.
He goes to the washbowl, in which a towel lies, folds the towel, and
hangs it up. Blows into the washbasin,
from out which a butterfly takes wing.
The narrator says: “How clear to him in this darkness, in the middle of
this suppressed humanity that in virtue of its regimentedness scarcely dared to
breathe, were the contours of concepts!
How clear to him here were even the utmost limits of the remote, the
repulsive, the impulsive, the inconceivable!”
As the narrator is speaking these words, the camera shows the face of
Kulterer, who is observing the butterfly, which flits agitatedly about the room
and then flies out the cell window with Kulterer’s eyes still fixed on it. Kulterer sits back down at the table. A loud burst of laughter from his cellmates
on the floor signals the end of the chess game.
One of the three stands up and goes to the washbowl and spits into it. Takes his socks off and begins to wash his
feet. At the same time one of the others
is relieving himself in the lavatory, but this is not seen; the only sign of it
is the sound of the toilet flushing at the end.
Outside in the corridor several inmates run past in their shoddy shoes,
which arouses the attention of the inmates in the cell. The group of running inmates is not shown,
but one can hear them running along the corridor once in each direction. Kulterer has walked up to the door, is
listening out. Suddenly the cell door is
opened. The warden appears in the
doorway, calls out: Kulterer. Kulterer,
who is standing to one side of the doorway, snaps to attention. The warden hands him an envelope and says:
read it through carefully. Read it
through carefully. The warden exits,
shuts and locks the cell door. Kulterer
sits down with the envelope at the table.
The oldest of his cellmates says: his walking papers. Kulterer takes a large sheet of paper out of
the envelope, unfolds it, and begins reading it. The camera shows the dam spanning the
riverbed in its entirety; several nuns are walking along the dam towards the
right side of the frame, towards the hills.
From the right side of the frame emerges a truck carrying a pen of
livestock. Over this scene one hears the
oldest cellmate saying: study each and every word. Fill out each and every
blank. Kulterer repeats: fill out each
and every blank. Fill out each and every
blank. As Kulterer is saying fill out
each and every blank twice in succession, the camera shows in quick succession
the dam spanning the riverbed, the left-side patrol guard, the right-side
patrol guard blowing his nose, the left-side guard polishing the toes of his
shoes, the gardener in the garden, the butcher at work in the kitchen, inmates
peeling potatoes in the kitchen, inmates stirring large pots in the kitchen,
inmates scrubbing the kitchen floor. As
the oldest cellmate is saying: you must fill out every blank on the sheet, every
blank, do you hear me?, the camera shows the tailoring shop, in which inmates
are cutting fabric, stitching, sewing on buttons, stacking finished garments;
the paper bag-manufacturing shop, in which inmates are gluing paper bags. You must study each and every word and fill
out each and every blank, repeats the oldest cellmate. Someone is heard loudly spitting into the
washbasin. Suddenly the camera shows
Kulterer at the table, studying the piece of paper. The chess-players are gathering up the chess
pieces and throwing them into the box in which they are kept, but this is not
seen; the bodies of the cellmates are shown, but the chess pieces are not. Somebody’s always won, says the oldest
cellmate. A view of the back of Kulterer’s
head; he is becoming ever more deeply immersed in his perusal of the sheet of
paper. The narrator says: “All words had
the same signification for him, but a good many of them plunged him from the
very beginning into a mysterious gloom, into the paradise of a primary color
and into numbers and numerals, into a prerequisite for the written.” As this sentence is being spoken, the camera
shows nothing but Kulterer studying his walking paper. Suddenly, from the washbasin one hears the
second cellmate saying: fill it out, why dontcha. Fill it out. The sound of the toilet being violently
flushed. Kulterer’s face at the cell
window; the camera, filming from outside, shows the dam spanning the riverbed
as seen in the distance from the window; on the dam a wind-band is playing, as
if in celebration of some holiday; as the direction of the wind changes, the
sound of the band first increases and then decreases in volume. Over this scene the narrator says: “He was
afraid that once he had been set free and stripped of his prisoner’s uniform he
would no longer be able to write anything, no longer able to think anything; he
was afraid that in that savage state of imposed exposure, he would no longer be
able to exist at all.” A train
pulls into the railway station, stops; the ordinary passengers detrain and
board; only afterwards do the newly arrived inmates detrain from the carriage
at the very end; on the platform they are assembled and counted. Three
wardens lead them into the station, where they are handed over to three other
wardens; this second group of three belongs to the institution. The
camera shows the inmates en route to the institution. The newly arrived
inmates vanish into the gateway of the penal institution. Kulterer sits
down at the table and fills out the walking paper; the warden, heralded by his
loud footfalls, unlocks the cell, enters; Kulterer jumps to his feet and hands
him the filled-out sheet of paper. The warden quickly reads it through,
says: something’s still missing!, goes to the table, picks up the pencil there,
and corrects something. Right! he says
and goes to the cell door and turns around and says to Kulterer: to the
director’s office at eleven, exits and locks up the cell. Regarding Kulterer, the oldest cellmate says:
he done got a lucky break, gettin’ to go home lahk this.” Shrill laughter. Silence.
Footfalls in the corridor. New
guys, says the oldest cellmate. In front of the mirror Kulterer combs his
hair, parts it. The oldest cellmate says: we're goin’ bald, goin’ bald. While the camera remains stationed on
Kulterer combing his hair, the narrator says: “Not the least of
the benefactors of his thoughts, and indeed of every part of him, were the
deprivity and depravity of the penal institution’s system of deprivation.” Having combed and parted his hair he sits
down on his pallet and gazes motionlessly at the cell door. The narrator says: “Now he took leave of the
buildings. How beautiful and perfectly
obedient did he all of a sudden find the lineation of the walls, a lineation
much stronger than all those years.” The
entire time that the narrator is speaking his commentary, Kulterer is staring
at the cell door and paying no mind to the activities of his cellmates, who are
wholly preoccupied with cleaning and tidying up the cell. Behind a frontal view of Kulterer staring at
the cell door, photographs of various parts of the institution are
projected. The narrator says, “One can
see very distinctly that this is a cloister,” and a cloister is shown,
etc. The narrator says: “There is of
course no difference between a cloister and a penal institution, he thought;
the only difference perhaps is that the cloister is a voluntary and the penal
institution an involuntary prison; the cloister is something one imposes on oneself
and that one can leave whenever one chooses, whereas one is incarcerated in the
penal institution compulsorily and cannot leave it whenever one chooses.” As this text is being spoken, images centered
on the architectural beauties of the penal institution that was formerly a
cloister are projected behind Kulterer, whom one continues to see sitting on
his pallet and staring at the cell door.
The narrator comments on what is being projected: “He discerned the
harmoniousness of the irregularities in the masonry, the characterful antiquity
of the gables and ledges, the noble munificence of the stairways, the gentle
buoyancy of the edges of the windows,” says the narrator. And he says (as the thing he mentions is being
shown): “The chapel, which he had repaired to for mass every day of the entire
year-and-a-half, he now suddenly beheld with his new eyes.” Now, behind the Kulterer sitting on the
pallet and staring at the cell door, one is actually shown another Kulterer
casting his eyes around the interior of the chapel; this second Kulterer
catches sight of the other Kulterer; Kulterer observes himself, and the
narrator says: “And above all he noticed the work tools that hung on the walls
of the courtyard, that lay on the floor of the shed; the multitude of
old-fashioned rakes and gables and ledges!
He had always used to enjoy heading for the meadows and fields.” Now one sees Kulterer observing himself as he
heads for the meadows and fields, watching himself as he crosses the dam
spanning the riverbed, clad in only a pair of trousers, with a shovel and a
rake, his prisoner’s cap on his head, with several other prisoners. The narrator says: “But he always found the
warmer season here more oppressive than autumn and winter. One cuts too vile a figure under the warden’s
knout when the sun is out!” the narrator says and adds: “And the laughter of
the countrywomen that one hears wafting over from the farms is a terrible
abyss.” As the word “terrible” is being
spoken the background images vanish; by the time the word “abyss” is being
spoken the camera is showing nothing but Kulterer still sitting on the pallet
and staring at the cell door. The camera
looks through the cell window at the dam spanning the riverbed, on which a
large group of inmates can be seen walking from the right to the left side of
the frame. The narrator says: “He had
never worked in the woodcutting crew; he was too weak to do so. The young people were naturally always
worming their way into the woodcutting crew; they were hoping to escape.” In the background behind the Kulterer staring
at the cell door the other Kulterer descries a steel trap in the shed, and the
narrator says: “They’ve been catching beasts of prey with such steel traps for
centuries, he thought. How did this
steel trap get here?" While the
camera continues to show Kulterer sitting on his pallet, it also shows the
warden swinging his truncheon in the courtyard, in the center of the courtyard,
during the midday walk; he
shouts: “C’mon, c’mon, Kulterer!” which causes Kulterer to quicken his
pace. The narrator says: “The warden is
tall and fat and strikes as quick as a flash.
They all call him ‘the rubber sausage’ because he often uses his
truncheon to get attention, to get legitimacy.”
“C’mon, c’mon!” shouts the warden; all the inmates start to walk faster;
eventually they are running; the warden yet again shouts: “C’mon, c’mon!,”
whereupon the inmates run even faster; the camera is stationary, and the
running inmates are scarcely even any longer recognizable as running inmates. Yet again the warden shouts: c’mon! c’mon!, then the narrator says: “Short,
muttered utterances—that is his style.”
At the file of running inmates the warden bellows: incorrigible beasts!
and: this is a grave misunderstanding indeed, you bastards! Kulterer, still sitting and staring at the
cell door, now sees himself unpacking the package that has been sent to him by
his wife, and the narrator says: “these packages always contained the same
items—meat, butter, paper, socks, a letter. He always dreaded unpacking the
package, along with reading the letter; he had always been fearful of this,
fearful of the distressful state into which the unpacking of these packages and
the reading of these letters had always sunk him, fearful of this recrudescence
of shame within him.” He sees himself
arranging the contents of the package in front of him on the table. The narrator says: “During the night he had
surprisingly written a story entitled ‘Logic,’ a meditation. Now, as he was unpacking the package, he asked
himself, what sort of word is this word logic anyway?” The camera, stationed at the opposite side of
the square, is pointed at the church, at the church bell, which is being struck
by its clapper. From the clock a view of
the square below; an inmate with a music book, accompanied by a guard, enters
the church through the right-side door.
Then the two of them as seen from above, as they ascend the spiral
staircase. The inmate sits down at the
organ, places his hands on the keyboard, plays the beginning of Bruckner’s AVE
MARIA while the guard sits in profile in one of the pews and eats a snack. As if for fear of being observed by the
inmate, the guard turns to face the inmate.
The camera is pointed at the hands of the inmate, who is playing calmly and
in the manner of a trained organist. A
nun at the altar, watering flowers. In the right-side rear doorway of the
church appears the boy dressed in black with his train conductor’s whistle,
which he blows without making a sound that anybody hears. The camera is stationed on the church square,
at the imposing church gate, and is pointed at the slaughterhouse across the square,
where a cattle truck has just arrived.
Two patrol guards who are wearing white butchers’ aprons and white
butcher’s caps, but who are still immediately recognizable as patrol guards, yank
open the rear door of the cattle truck and goad the cattle that come rushing
out, four cows and calves, into the slaughterhouse; the sound of this cattle
being unloaded from the truck and goaded into the slaughterhouse is now audible
through the cell window; the camera is stationed at the cell door and pointed
at the cell window, below which Kulterer is standing and holding in his hands
the paper in which the package his wife sent him was wrapped. He folds up the packing paper and stuffs it
under his mattress. Read us something,
says the oldest cellmate, and the two of them, the oldest and the other one,
sit down on their pallets and wait for Kulterer to read something to them. Kulterer begins to read to them; he announces
the title of the story he is about to read to them: Logic, he says, and the
camera exits the cell and heads to the dam spanning the riverbed, moves far
into the countryside, and then, as if it has been away as long as the time Kulterer
has taken to read his story, it returns to the interior of the cell, where
Kulterer is now folding up the sheet of paper on which is recorded his story
entitled “Logic.” The moment Kulterer
has finished reading, the narrator says: “He did not allow himself to be
tempted into believing that they had been impressed, but he was very happy.” Kulterer looks up from his piece of paper and
says: there is absolutely no such thing as injustice! His cellmates curl up on their blankets on
their pallets. The narrator: “In his own
case no detectable injustice had been done.
He had done what one was not permitted to do, and he was being punished
for it. Where does the border of freedom
lie and whence is it arrived at? he asked himself.” The camera is now in the cellar; inmates
shoveling potatoes are shown. So are
inmates shoveling coals. A group of
inmates on the railway embankment. One
sees inmates cleaning a railway car at the freight station, from which the rear
façade of the penal institution is shown.
“He never thought of escaping,” says the narrator as the camera shows
the inmates cleaning the railway car and behind them the entire penal
institution. The cell door is slammed
shut; Kulterer is alone in the cell. The
narrator says: “Initially he had trembled whenever the door of the cell was
shut and locked behind him; although he had not had a rebellious bone in his
body, he nevertheless found himself in an enormously downtrodden condition on
every such occasion. On such occasions,
the word backtalk had used to be written all over his face as a matter of
course, but he never uttered it.” While
the narrator is speaking these lines, Kulterer is standing perfectly still at
the cell door that has just been slammed shut behind him. The sound of the door being locked and of the
warden walking away is distinctly audible underneath the narrator’s voice. Kulterer goes to the cupboard and takes out a
loaf of bread that his wife has sent him and breaks off a piece of it and puts
the loaf back into the cupboard and sits down at the table as he eats the piece
of bread. Now footfalls are heard; the cell
door is unlocked; the cellmates enter; behind them the door is immediately shut
and locked by the warden. The narrator
says: “In the penal
institution there were a large number of more primitive, much less endurable
work sectors. It was not quite clear
what the criteria were for assigning a person to one work sector rather than
another. His cellmates had suddenly been
assigned to work in the tannery.” While the
narrator is saying this, the newly arrived cellmates are taking off their
jackets, then their shirts. The narrator
says: “In all but a tiny minority of cases, the privilege of remaining in the
printing sector or in the kitchen could be but of the briefest duration.” The camera cuts to Kulterer, who observes the
three returnees from the tannery from his seat at the table as the narrator
says: “If it had ever occurred to him to reflect on the matter, he might have
realized that he was the only person who had survived as long as a
year-and-a-half at the penal institution’s printing works.” The camera cuts to the cattle truck in front
of the slaughterhouse. The two patrol
guards in long white aprons shut up the loading bed of the truck, jump into the
cab of the truck, and take it on one complete circuit around the
courtyard. As the truck is driving
around the church square, the organ begins to be played; it is the beginning of
Bruckner’s AVE MARIA. The camera cuts to
the hands of the organist, to his forehead, to a view of his prisoner’s jacket
that makes it easy to count the buttons on the jacket, to the forehead of the judicial
officer who is guarding him, to a view of his jacket like the one we have just
had of the inmate’s, a view that likewise makes it easy to count the buttons on
the jacket. The closed eyes of the
guarded man and of the guard in succession.
The camera cuts to a bird’s-eye view of the nave of the church. Suddenly the organist slams shut the keyboard
of the organ; the prisoner jumps to his feet in a mechanical fashion, as if he
has just received an order to do so. The
prisoner and the guard peer into the interior of the church; then they descend
in single file from the upper to the lower level; the camera follows the two of
them as they pass through the full length of the nave and through the vestry,
then across the church square, and then vanish into the same place that the cows
and calves were goaded into earlier. The
face of the director of the institution, who says directly to the camera: a
complete absurdity, this ordinance is a complete absurdity! As he is placing a document on his desk, and
speaking into the camera, addressing the warden: a complete absurdity. Reality is a different matter. The camera cuts to the warden, who is facing
the director. A close-up first of the
warden’s face, then of the director’s face, the of the warden’s face; a
close-up of the director’s face, as he says: intelligence knows nothing, my
dear man, intelligence knows nothing.
Infamy. Insecurity, my dear man;
as he says this, he leans back, taps his desk with his pencil. Interesting, very interesting, says the
director. Infamy, insecurity, absurdity,
you understand. After a pause he says:
ignore it, just ignore it, you understand.
The camera is always pointed at the warden’s face when the director is
speaking and at the director’s face when the warden is speaking. The organist’s permission to play was granted
by me, not by the Monsignor, you understand, says the director, and hands a document
to the warden. The warden stands up,
makes as if to leave. The director says:
next time you go to Steyr, bring me back some dog lard, so that I can use it as
an ointment, you hear me. Two large cans. He laughs.
The warden by way of reply: two large cans. Exit the warden; the director looks at the
door, which the warden has just shut.
Then he delves into Document No. 340697, which bears the heading of
KULTERER, FRANZ, and which the warden has self-evidently just delivered to him. The camera shows Kulterer naked from the
waist up as he washes himself at the washbasin; his cellmates at the table
observe him. As Kulterer stoops over the
washbasin, the narrator says: “Without knowing himself how it was possible, he
was often the one person who was capable of relieving the often considerable
tensions between the inmates and the administration, and indeed of subduing the
outright open hostility that would sometimes break out between the two power
blocs.” The camera cuts to the inmates,
who are playing a game on the floor. The
cell door is unlocked, yanked open; the warden enters and stations himself at
the door; he leans against the door and in alternation observes Kulterer
washing himself at the basin and the cellmates playing chess on the floor. Kulterer leaves off washing his upper body, dries
himself off, and says to the warden: yes, yes, I know, Mr. Warden. He puts on his shirt and goes up to the
warden, who along with him vanishes from the cell. As he watches Kulterer leave, the oldest of
the cellmates on the floor says: two mo days; then he goin’ home. The camera remains pointed at the cell door
as the footfalls of Kulterer, who is walking down the corridor with the warden,
grow ever softer, and as the narrator says: “During that entire time there had
not been a single complaint lodged against him, nobody at the penal
institution, among either the administrators or the inmates, had ever expressed
any grievances against him. Nobody had
ever been less than well-disposed or even rudimentarily ill-disposed to him.” The camera shows the waiting room of the
institution’s doctor, in which three inmates and one warden are sitting the
moment Kulterer enters with his warden.
The warden knocks on the door of the surgery, hands in a slip of paper,
and sits down with Kulterer on the one unoccupied bench. The camera cuts to a view of the dam spanning
the riverbed, a view extending all the way to the weir, as seen from the
waiting room; it is half-past five in the afternoon; the workers are heading
home along the roadways on the dam. The
camera cuts to a bird’s-eye view of the two patrol guards, who, having just
looked over at the homeward-bound laborers, are just beginning to move apart
from each other. The gardener stops
working. Two nuns enter the church. From two directions groups of inmates arrive
at the church square and enter the penal institution. The camera cuts to Kulterer who is now
jumping to his feet because he has just heard the nurse call his name; he
enters the surgery; the, warden, walking behind him, halts at the door of the
surgery. A train pulls out of the
railway station. As the camera shows the
departing train as seen from the roof of the penal institution, the narrator
says: “Despite the matter-of-factness that at the very moment of
his sentencing had come into being within him like an elemental transmutation
of the structure of his brain, that had set to work, had begun to dismantle and
assemble at a radical level, had begun meting out justice point-blank, he had
found it terribly difficult to submit himself to the new powers that be, to the
facts, to the state of being a prisoner, a lawbreaker, a fellow destined for a
well-nigh immeasurable stretch of time to be a criminal, a penitentiary
preparation.” Dusk. Four or five laborers are working in the
rubbish dump, unloading rubbish; the rubbish is visibly reeking; the car from
which the rubbish is being unloaded is of primitive manufacture; one can tell
that these are the last inmates who are still working today. Once the car has been unloaded, the inmates
remain standing amid the rubbish and button up their jackets, then they get
into the car and drive to the penal institution. As the camera is showing the corridors, in
which supper is being apportioned, cell doors are opening, troops of meal-distributors
busying themselves, distributing bread, a large refectory in the background, so
to speak, of this scene, is filling with inmates; these are evidently the prisoners
who have been assigned to the outside work crews. These two settings, the corridors and the
refectory, blend into each other, and masses of inmates are shown, masses of
inmates who are being fobbed off, a gray voracious crowd of men is shown, a
crowed that is in the midst of eating and that moves about in the corridors and
in the refectory and in the cells as it eats; eventually, hundreds of eating
inmates—their mouths, jaws, hands—are shown; eventually, there seems to be
nothing in the world other than eating, than the slurping and gulping of the
hundreds of inmates in these scenes.
Crowd shots of men eating and slurping, biting, guzzling, alternate with
close-ups of mouth and tongue and chin movements. The camera cuts to the two patrol guards at
the front exterior of the penal institution at the edge of the riverbed as they
both move away from the lookout tower and apart from each other; they halt;
look up at the cells, from which the sound of eating can be heard; the rubbish
dump is shown, the boy dressed in black is shown standing in it, and he blows
on his whistle; it emits a shrill, brusque tone; immediately afterwards the two
patrol guards at the edge of the riverbed turn around, they halt and turn
around and immediately resume walking; their black fur capes contrast starkly and
continuously with the gray evening landscape across the riverbed. A shrill chiming sound is heard in the
corridors, is heard outside coming through all the windows. The camera cuts to a hearse, which is driving
across the church square; it eventually crosses the dam spanning the riverbed and
drives past the weir. The doctor walks
across the church square in the company of the nurse. An old-fashioned stethoscope is stuffed in
the pocket of his doctor’s coat. An
inmate can be heard screaming in a cell in one of the upper stories; the nurse
turns to the doctor as she continues walking alongside him; the doctor takes no
notice of the screaming. Now the
immediate environs of the penal institution are shown; first the dam spanning
the riverbed and the landscape behind it in a single reposeful take; then,
moving to the left, the camera shows the town of Garsten; it soars over the
town’s roofs then descends into its streets and squares, which at this time of
day present a soothing aspect; shopkeepers are shuttering their windows, the
taprooms of taverns are filling with customers; laborers in boiler suits are
heading homeward. A few junior bakers
and baker’s apprentices are brawling in one street. Guild signs.
Windows. Portals. Suddenly one sees that the penal institution
is in a town that is a so-called heritage architectural site. A barman rolls a beer barrel into the doorway
of a tavern. Suddenly the camera cuts to
the wall of the institution facing the railway station, with its barbed wire
fence, then to the lookout tower, with the railway station in the background;
freight trains are moving this way and that.
Railway men whistle, tap on the brake blocks. Old women at the windows. A railway man hangs his uniform up on a nail
with a brisk, expert movement of his hand, stretches out his legs, takes a
footbath in a sheet metal washbasin.
These tableaux are shown quickly in succession, over a matter of
seconds, and indeed throughout the film all the scenes in which neither
Kulterer nor the reposeful landscape is seen must follow each other very
rapidly. Several railway workers, track
repairmen, go into the bar of the railway station; the barmaid is shown; she is
standing as if impaled on the two brass taps and staring into the barroom. A view of the crowded barroom, packed with
diners, drinkers; in the left corner, next to the bar, a table at which prison
officers in full dress uniform are seated.
A prison officer appears in the doorway of the barroom; those at the
table rise, exit to the street, climb into a Black Maria. The camera cuts to Kulterer, who is standing
completely naked beneath the cell window and drying himself off. The oldest of his cellmates says: he got skin
like a child’s. The three cellmates are
sitting on their pallets and drying themselves off. They slip into their prison uniforms as
Kulterer remains standing naked at the window all the while. The narrator says: “He was afraid that once
he had been set free and stripped of his prisoner’s uniform he would no longer
be able to write anything, no longer able to think anything; he was afraid that
in that savage state of imposed exposure, he would no longer be able to exist
at all.” The inmates walk across the
church square and into the church. The
church is barely a third full. The
occasion is the daily evening service.
In the first row of pews sit some nuns.
Sprinkled among the congregation of inmates, as if in strict compliance
with regulations, sit several surveillance officers. The organ is being played by the same inmate
who was shown playing it earlier. Down
below the inmates begin singing: Hail, star of the sea. At first the singing is faint and hesitant,
and then it gradually swells to a loud drone.
Dawn. The camera pans from right to left across the entire dam spanning
the riverbed, all the way to the weir; no people, nothing. Birdcalls.
The two patrol guards, standing alongside the portion of the wall of the
penal institution that faces the riverbed, are huddled together in
conversation. For this take the camera
is stationed at the dam. A view of the
cells, of Cell 38, looking upwards from the patrol guards’ perspective. As the window of this cell is being shown,
the narrator says: “Early on the morning of his release he was summoned to the
director’s office. He must now thank the
director for his residence in the penal institution, said the warden, who was
escorting him.” A shot of the director’s
office. The door is opened, Kulterer
enters. Before this scene there may be
interpolated one showing Kulterer being escorted all the way from Cell 38 to
the director’s office, a scene showing the angles and convolutions of the corridors
as the warden swings his truncheon; in accordance with the regulations the
warden will be walking one pace behind the inmate, behind Kulterer; he will
have his truncheon in his hand, not hanging from his jacket. En route to the director’s office they will
run into a so-called cleaning corps, equipped with rags and abrasive brushes
with wooden handles, at work. Or after
the scene in the church the viewer may be shown either the inmates in Cell 38
asleep on their pallets as the singing of the congregation of inmates in the
church continues to be heard, or Kulterer at the table writing a story, but in
either case there will be a shot panning across the entire riverbed-spanning
dam all the way to the weir, a shot imbued with the light of dawn, the perfect
reposefulness of the landscape, and birdsong; or on the third hand after the
church scene one may be shown the previously seen barroom, now filled with
drunken laborers, or the boy dressed in black with the train conductor’s
whistle, now standing behind the front window of his parents’ house not far
from the penal institution, or the boy dressed in black sitting at the kitchen
table of his parents’ house and doing his homework late at night; or one may be
shown some fairly or very old people standing behind various front windows in
Garsten, old men and women in nightdress drawing their curtains; or one may be
shown the porter’s lodge of the penal institution as one hears the chorus of
prisoners singing, droning, “Hail, Star of the Sea,” in each case one will hear
the chorus singing; in the same scene as that in which the porter’s lodge is shown,
one will see an officer shutting the drawer below the lodge’s window, a drawer into
which he will have just placed two revolvers; he will sit down in his chair and
stare out the window at the cobblestone pavement outside; several porter’s
caps, which are all prison officer’s caps, will be hanging on the wall; on the floor a police dog will be
lying or crouching. As the scene in the
director’s office begins, the chorus of prisoners abruptly falls silent. The camera is stationed behind the director
and pointed at the door; enter Kulterer, followed by the warden; one sees
Kulterer over the director’s head; the director has a head with a bald spot
atop which during this take Kulterer’s face is poised, and atop Kulterer’s face
the warden’s face is poised in turn; the scene must be filmed in such a way
that Kulterer’s face is precisely poised atop the director’s balding head, and
the warden’s face is precisely poised atop Kulterer’s face; this image is exemplary
and will subsequently be consulted as a reference standard if it is filmed in
an exemplary and precise way; when the director says: well, well, well, so now
it’s your turn!, the distance between the director and the two men
standing in the doorway, Kulterer and the warden, is at least four meters. Slowly the camera descends to the level of
the back of the director’s head, so that one can see that he is wearing a
dressing-gown trimmed with silk braid; the camera stops once it has reached the
back of the chair, and then one sees only the back of the chair and the
director’s shoulders, as the director says: where do I have your file? Where the hell do I have your file!; these
words are accompanied by the successive yanking open and slamming shut of
several drawers in his desk; the sound of the opening and shutting is loud,
irritatingly loud, as is the sound of the director’s voice, especially when he
says: where the hell do I have your file?, after which there ensues a pause
during which one hears nothing but the conspicuously loud opening and shutting
of desk drawers. A pause. Then: ah, here it is! The director says this dryly, curtly. All this time the frame is occupied exclusively
by the director’s back and the back of the chair. The camera re-ascends and shows the back of
the director’s head, as the director says: Franz Kulterer, born 1911 in
Aschbach, is that correct? Whereupon Kulterer, who at this point is completely
invisible, says: yes, yes. The director:
married, with no children, is that correct?
Kulterer: yes, yes. The director
says “is that correct?” as if it were a matter of habit for him to say “is that
correct?” at every opportunity, to say “is that correct?” to all and sundry. Then the director, of whom one has yet to see
anything but the back of his head, with continuous special emphasis on his bald
spot, says: there are no outstanding charges against you. Now the camera moves upwards to reveal the utterly
overawed Kulterer, with the warden standing behind him. Kulterer is completely motionless, with sunken
shoulders, behind him the warden is sweating; there is visible sweat on his
forehead. The director, who can no longer
be seen, says: you can actually take your breakfast outside your cell
today. Outside. The camera is motionlessly centered on
Kulterer and the erect figure of the warden behind him, as one once again hears
the irritating racket of desk drawers being opened and slammed shut. A
pause. Then the director says: so what are you going to do once you’ve been
released? Kulterer is unable to come up
with any immediate reply. The camera
cuts to the director’s face, which is expectantly awaiting a reply from
Kulterer. OK, fine, says the director,
you of course know how you’ve got to behave out there. The formalities have of course been taken
care of. But just because you’re now
being released, that doesn’t mean…says the director. At the word “released,” the camera suddenly
cuts to the director’s face (sic [either an indication of a cut to, for
example, Kulterer’s face, has been omitted, or, as the end of the sentence
suggests, for “face” we should read “mouth”] (DR)), just because you’re being
released, that doesn’t mean…says the director, speaking directly to the camera,
and only his mouth is visible. After the
director says the word “mean,” his mouth stops moving as Kulterer is heard
saying: yes, yes, I know. The camera is
once again pointed at Kulterer, the warden is now standing to Kulterer’s
immediate right with his hands folded in front of him as the director says: the
formalities have of course been taken care of.
By me personally, no less. The
director leans back; he is pondering something having to do with Kulterer;
then, gazing fixedly at Kulterer, he says: tell me…Suddenly: aren’t you the man
with permission to write? Stories
etcetera. Papers etcetera. In short, short stories etcetera, says the
director. The camera cuts to Kulterer,
who says yes. The warden casts his eyes
around the director’s office; the director’s office is visually itemized as the
narrator says: “Regardless
of the circumstances, he had always found it most beneficial to be
unassuming. Of course, like every human
being, he had often felt a deep-seated need to improve his existence, to
extricate himself from certain states of affairs that even he saw as
constricting; but he had no desire to exert himself however faintly at the cost
of the slightest impression of force, or to impel himself towards achieving
anything that he instinctively felt and hence believed was beyond his due. Throughout his life he had had at his
disposal a small and indeed to all outward appearances completely insignificant,
infinitesimal, ridiculous space; but he was forever painstakingly attempting to
fill this space, and eventually, over time, it was no longer merely with his
own intermittently sky-hung dreams that he was qualified to fill, and indeed devoutly
decorate, his personal space and time.”
As the narrator is speaking these lines, the interior of the director’s
office is shown; on his desk there are pictures of his family, photographs that
reproduce the stultified, petit-bourgeois atmosphere in which the director
feels at home; along the walls there are objects that assert this stultified
petit-bourgeois lineage and atmosphere and present existence. Once the narrator has finished speaking his
lines, the camera cuts back to Kulterer, who has all the while been standing before
the director in the same posture, with the palms of his hands flat against his
thighs, in accordance with prison regulations.
The camera is pointed at Kulterer as the director says: well,
well, that was a very rare perquisite you enjoyed. To grant permission to write to a
prisoner! Until he reaches the word
“prisoner,” the camera is pointed at the director’s face, and immediately after
the director has said the word “prisoner,” the camera briefly freezes. Over this frozen-frame shot of the director’s
face the narrator says: “Often it was merely the desire ‘for it to be about a
house’ that got him out of bed and sitting at the table; often it was not even
a thought of that kind, but rather merely a single word, the word ‘turnip,’ for
example, the word ‘altar,’ the word ‘hoof.’
All words had the same signification for him, but a good many of them
plunged him from the very beginning into a mysterious gloom, into the paradise
of a primary color and into numbers and numerals, into a prerequisite for the
written.” All the while that the
narrator is speaking these lines, the image remains frozen and centered on the
director’s motionless mouth. After the
narrator has finished, the director resumes speaking; he says: what have you
been writing all this time anyway?
Kulterer: oh, nothing to speak of; the camera is pointed at Kulterer as
he is uttering this sentence, “oh, nothing to speak of.” Stories, probably, as the camera continues to
show Kulterer; yes, yes, stories, says Kulterer, as the camera now shows the
director. You of course know, says the
director; the camera cuts to the walls of the director’s office, and it remains
trained on them as he continues speaking, thus: you of course know that
throughout your period of employment here the costs of your incarceration have
been deducted from your wages; you know that, of course. Yes, yes, replies Kulterer; the camera
unperturbedly continues its survey of the interior of the director’s
office. The government requires you to
pay taxes as well; you know that, of course!
Then: do you want to have the money right now, or would you rather have
it mailed to you? Where are you going to
live anyway? Are you going back to your
wife now? asks the director. Yes, yes,
says Kulterer. All right, says the
director, you surely must have been given our address as a reference. It will of course enable you to obtain a
position somewhere. Make sure you apply
for a job at a print shop; you’ve got really good prospects in that line of
work! The camera cuts to the director’s
face. It’s astonishing how much people
learn while they’re with us! It’s really
astonishing. A man like you will be
missed in our print shop. The camera
cuts to Kulterer; the director quips: so, even though you’re being let go, you
aren’t being fired, you’re getting your money.
All right, says the director; the camera cuts to him, and he hands Kulterer
a large gray envelope. Kulterer takes
the envelope; in order to do this he must step up to the director’s desk; he
hesitates, then he takes three or four quick steps forward, seizes the envelope
with a quick, awkward movement, steps back again; again he lays the palms of
his hands against his thighs, which he finds difficult to do while holding the
envelope; the camera films all this from the side, and it continues to film
from the side as the director says: you are to hand this envelope over to your
local police department. Everything
after that will happen automatically.
You of course know that you have to report to that department once a
week. Yes, yes, I know, says Kulterer. The director extends his hand to him;
Kulterer takes a couple of steps towards the hand and offers his own hand to
the director as the warden remains standing in place. The camera pans from left to right along the
walls of the director’s office as the narrator says: “Kulterer says he is much
obliged to him; he is, he says, saying this not in deference to any
regulations, but rather out of a genuine, sincere feeling of gratitude. He was ashamed of having not alighted upon any
better words. He had prepared a sentence
of leave-taking for the director, but at the moment when he was supposed to
deliver it the sentence had proved irretrievable. Very well, then, the director says, and he dismisses
Kulterer.” As the narrator is uttering
this last sentence, the camera shows the director saying “very well” and
dismissing Kulterer. The camera cuts to
a view of the end of the corridor, from which Kulterer, carrying his envelope,
is emerging, followed by the warden; as the two of them, walking along the
darkened corridor, approach the camera, the narrator says: “In the corridor
Kulterer had the feeling that the warden, who was walking behind him, was well
disposed to him. Oddly enough he had
never been afraid of the warden, in contrast to his fellow-inmates, who were
worried to the point of panic about being forced to be alone with that man in
the darkness of the corridors.” “Juhthank
him?” asks the warden as he prods Kulterer around a corner with his
truncheon. Yes, yes, says Kulterer. The camera now shows the dam spanning the
riverbed in the clear light of morning.
The guards on patrol along the walls of the penal institution. The junior baker rides past the patrol guards
on a bicycle with a breadbasket, veers into the church square. The camera cuts to the playground, to a scene
of children tossing a ball about, sliding down an iron slide. The boy dressed in black is cycling across
the dam spanning the riverbed and gazing over at the penal institution. The camera cuts to Kulterer’s cell; Kulterer
is sitting at the table with his face buried in his hands, which are resting on
the tabletop. He is now seeing the
things that are being projected behind him: inmates in kitchen aprons and
guards in the kitchen, inmates in the corridors, in the courtyard, in the church
square. A patrol guard gazes into a
large stockpot; somebody beating an inmate raises his rubber sausage; inmates are
taking off their shoes, washing themselves, pulling their blankets over their
heads on their pallets; a sheaf of paper falls through the window of the cell;
with his face still buried in his hands he sees himself jump to his feet and
pick up the sheaf of paper; all the while that he continues sitting at the
table, he sees himself laying the sheaf of paper on the table, he unwraps the
paper, smooths it out; he sharpens his pencil under the watchful eye of the
warden and begins to write; he writes as the narrator says: “How extensively
here did everything that elsewhere was ignobly throttled by insensitivity and
tribulation disclose itself! How
diffidently, amid this veritable landscape of darkness, which was completely
devoid of unnatural sounds and smells, could one think here! How trustingly could one feel everything in
the aggregate here! To think that here it is possible to say something
true that elsewhere would only amount to a lie! He thought: here I can
propound something that in the outside world is inhumane! And with what
daredevil discreetness! There is a relation
to light and to darkness here that can lay claim to truth only here. If I leave this place, it will die.” As these lines are being spoken, the camera
shows Kulterer with his head buried in his hands on the table, and at the same
time, in the projection behind him, it shows him sitting at the table and
writing. The narrator says: “And if he had not been the most
uncommunicative of individuals, the very most taciturn of all the inmates, he
might have been constantly muttering to himself, distinctly enough, in order to
offend himself and everyone else as deeply as possible, these words: I’m
leaving and killing myself, I’m stepping outside and killing myself. But this is preposterous, he said to himself.” Before the narrator has finished uttering the
words “offend himself and everyone else as deeply as possible,” Kulterer is
seen taking his leave of the buildings.
He enters the kitchen, but he does not approach any of the inmates
working there; he passes by each of them, looks at each of them, but he does
not offer any of them his hand. He enters
the tailoring shop. All the inmates who
are working here know him, and he knows all of them. They do not stop working; the camera shows
Kulterer entering the tailoring shop; once he has reached the center of the
room, of the tailoring shop, it shows him exiting the tailoring shop, in other
words, from behind; the same in the laundry shop; the same in the cobbler’s
shop. In the cobbler’s shop he stops in
the center of the room and offers his hand to one of the inmates working
there. Throughout this tour, Kulterer
has been on his own, without the warden, as if he had already been released. The equipment in all the shops is incredibly
primitive and without the slightest hint of modernity; for example, in the
tailoring shop the inmates are sewing by hand, and the shop contains only a single
oversized sewing machine; the same in the cobbler’s shop; the same in the
laundry shop, where from a large steaming copper boiler laundry is being
removed and thrown into a tub filled with cold water; like the scenes in the other
workshops, this one is reminiscent of the locales in Dickens’s novels. The camera shows Kulterer in the courtyard,
in complete solitude he walks the entire circumference of the courtyard; the
camera shows only brief snatches of this circuit, shows him glancing up at the
lookout tower two or three times and at the same time shows the guards looking
down at him from the lookout tower. Up
in the lookout tower Kulterer espies the warden with his rubber sausage. The narrator says: “They all call him ‘the
rubber sausage’ because he often uses his truncheon to get attention, to get
legitimacy.” Now the warden enters the
courtyard, in which Kulterer is standing.
The narrator says: “He loves to walk his beat in tight trousers; he is
tall and fat and strikes as quick as a flash.”
Kulterer is standing at the outer edge of the courtyard underneath the
lookout tower and looking at the ground, is if he is searching for something on
the ground. The narrator says:
“Rebellion inevitably leads to doubled pain.”
From over the walls one hears music being played on wind instruments, as
if a funeral were taking place. The
music is precisely metrical; in time with it, Kulterer takes a few steps of his
walk around the courtyard. Suddenly
behind one of the cell windows somebody screams; Kulterer looks up at the
window from which the screaming has emanated.
The camera shows the porter’s lodge, in which three guards are sitting
and doing paperwork; suddenly the Black Maria arrives and two policemen,
guards, leap out of it; they open its rear doors and two new inmates climb out;
each of them has a bundle of laundry under one arm. As Kulterer is walking in the garden, the
camera shows him sitting at the table in the cell and reading a story to his
cellmates. But his voice is inaudible as
the narrator says: “He wrote hundreds of stories in the penal institution. His cellmates marveled at the number of them,
and he always wrote them at night, while they were sleeping. In the course of time he had gotten used to
writing in the dark. To writing ‘The
Cat,’ for example, ‘The Dry Dock,’ ‘The Swimming Bird,’ for example. He asked them why it had taken them so long
to hit upon the idea of having his stories read to them,” says the
narrator. While he is now being shown
walking through the garden, one also sees his cellmates sitting on their
pallets and reading Kulterer’s stories; each of them is reading some stories to
himself. The narrator says: “Kulterer
was delighted that they were now taking an interest in his stories, whereas
earlier they had not evinced even the slightest interest in them; quite the
contrary.” As Kulterer is walking
through the garden, the camera first hazily and then more distinctly shows
Kulterer sitting at the table and writing while his cellmates sleep. He rises from the table and walks over to his
pallet and smooths and straightens out the covers and goes back to the
table. Now one of his cellmates is
observing him; Kulterer is peering into and leafing through a file folder; in
this folder he has placed a few of his stories.
He reads to himself the title “The Cat”; the title is shown; then he
leafs through some more pages and reads the title “The Dry Dock,” this title
also is shown, as are, after more spells of leafing-through, “The Warden,” “The
Deathbed,” and “The Director.” He shuts
the folder, pushes it aside, and slides a stack of blank paper into position
directly in front of him. The camera
shows him writing the word SOLITUDE on the first sheet. He pauses for reflection, looks around the cell,
in which everybody is either sleeping or pretending to sleep, and begins to
write. Shortly thereafter the warden’s
footfalls are heard in the corridor, and Kulterer jumps to his feet and clears
away everything from the table and lies down on his pallet; the warden’s
footfalls grow fainter, fall silent.
These shots are seen at the same time as, and are superimposed on, the
shot of Kulterer walking in the garden.
Now the shot of the cell vanishes; Kulterer is walking in the garden;
the camera shows Kulterer standing still and looking all around the courtyard. A sudden peal of bells, equally sudden
silence. The camera, now stationed on
the roof the penal institution, is pointed down, along the outer wall facing
the riverbed, at the two patrol guards, who are moving away from each other as
they measure out the steps of their patrol.
Outside, on the dam spanning the riverbed, roughly in the center of the
frame, one sees the boy dressed in black, who suddenly falls to his knees and
blows his train conductor’s whistle. The
patrol guards do not react to the sound of the whistle. The boy gets up and runs the entire length of
the dam from left to right. Moving from
right to left, a flock of birds flies past the weir and then over the entire
town. The camera cuts to the warden, who
is walking along the corridor towards Kulterer; only from their silhouettes can
one recognize the warden and Kulterer in the almost completely darkened
corridor; Kulterer is standing at one end, and from the opposite end the warden
is approaching him; the camera shows the two of them in alternation: Kulterer
standing perfectly still, and the warden approaching him, swinging his
truncheon, whistling curtly; all of a sudden, the warden’s gait has something buoyant,
cheerful, about it; the uncouth, militaristic quality his gait has always had
is suddenly gone; but just as quickly, a couple of paces away from Kulterer, or
better still as early as halfway along his approach to Kulterer, the buoyancy
and cheerfulness of his gait is gone, and he is walking in his usual manner; he
is holding the truncheon against the side of his leg; just before he reaches
Kulterer, he comes to seem even taller in juxtaposition with Kulterer than he
actually is, and he asks Kulterer: did you thank them? Yes, yes, says Kulterer. It is not clear what Kulterer is supposed to
have been thankful for, but Kulterer automatically says yes, yes, because he
has always said yes, yes; the warden expects nothing from Kulterer other than a
yes, yes, Mr. Warden, and it is quite remarkable that he is suddenly saying
just yes, yes, not yes, yes, Mr. Warden, which accords well with his release
from the institution. The camera shows
the warden and Kulterer from the side, their profiles; one can see that the
floor at the opposite end of the corridor is being scrubbed; inmates with
washrags and abrasive brushes with long handles have just come from around the
corner. Suddenly Kulterer says: I was
awkward! The warden asks: what do you
mean? Kulterer says nothing in reply; after
a pause the warden says: too stupid, and then: you haven’t had such a bad
experience with me, have you? Whereupon
he waits for a categorical reply from Kulterer.
He is impatient because the answer is not immediately forthcoming. Yes, yes, I know, says Kulterer. Now the electric lights suddenly come on;
everything is brightly illuminated; the camera shows the full series of cell
doors along the corridor—from one end, then again from the opposite end. An inmate in the cleaning corps pours lye out
of a bucket; another inmate immediately scrubs the floor with a brush. The warden raises his rubber truncheon up to
the level of Kulterer’s stomach and pokes Kulterer gently in the middle of the
stomach. As if to say: you’re a fine
fellow, but he does not actually say it; he says nothing; he turns around and
goes up to the cleaning corps: Bastards! Incorrigible beasts! This is a grave misunderstanding indeed! Bastards!
As the warden is saying this, the inmates are standing still in silence;
at a movement of the warden’s head in their direction they resume working, in
the course of which one of them knocks over the second bucket of lye directly
in front of the warden’s feet; but the warden ignores the incident; he fingers
his truncheon and vanishes. The camera,
stationed below the cell window, is pointed at the door of the cell, which is
yanked open; the four inmates jump to their feet; the meal corps is there with
the warden; the warden says to Kulterer: you’ll get back the envelope when you
leave. The meal-deliverers distribute
the meals. The warden says to Kulterer:
your farewell meal. To the inmates who
are distributing the meals he says: it’s certainly no perquisite, distributing
meals. He says this because the way they
are going about distributing the meals is too lackadaisical for his liking.
“Move! Move!” he orders them; they quicken their pace of work and scoop
lukewarm beverage rations out of a gigantic zinc bucket that two of the inmates
are holding by two large zinc handles.
From a cardboard box they distribute slices of bread. Each prisoner receives four pieces. The warden says to Kulterer: by this time
tomorrow our Kulterer will be sleeping in a nice, clean bed. Kulterer stands there, with his hands flat
against his thighs, and says automatically: yes, yes, Mr. Warden. Now, as the camera image stops, freezes, the
narrator says: “He was convinced that the warden had intended no malice by what
he had just said, that to the contrary he is well disposed to him. It would be out of the question for anyone to
bear me any malice, he thinks.” The
camera image is like a photographic snapshot as the narrator continues: “He had
of course always been impeccably punctilious, always the model of correct
behavior; he had never evinced so much as a trace of the apple-polishing
hypocrisy that some people might now be attributing to him. To the contrary! He admittedly never allowed himself to utter
even such words of praise as these, but he got the feeling that the warden had
always been satisfied with him.” Now the
camera once again shows the darkened corridor, shows the warden walking through
the corridor, for two, three seconds; then the word rubber sausage is yelled
out behind him from one of the cells, whereupon the warden turns around as
quick as a flash and dashes into the cell from which the word “rubber sausage”
was yelled. From this cell screams are
heard. The camera cuts to a view of
Kulterer in the courtyard; beside him, as one immediately sees, is the warden. The warden says: I’ll bring you a rope so
that you can tie your writings together.
Exit the warden. Kulterer slowly
lifts his head towards the sunlight.
Kulterer’s cell. The three
cellmates are sitting at the table and gazing at a silent Kulterer, who is
standing at and gazing out the window; then he turns around and gazes at them. The camera image is frozen, like a
photographic snapshot; the narrator says: “His cellmates were of the opinion
that he regarded this day as a day of celebration; they could not know and
could not conceive that this very day was the most terrible one in Kulterer’s
entire life.” The camera image begins
moving again; from off to the side, at the table where the inmates are sitting,
the oldest of them says: “Why the hell aren’t you telling us anything? Tell us just one more tale before you bugger
off! The camera image has once again
frozen into a photographic snapshot; the narrator says: “Now that he had only a
few more hours to spend with them, he was all of a sudden shutting himself off
from them. Why? They certainly had nothing against him, never
had had anything against him.” The film
begins running again; from off to the side at the table the oldest cellmate
says: Come on: let us keep a couple of your stories! The second-oldest rises and goes to his
pallet. Let us keep a couple of ’em!
says the oldest cellmate; Kulterer turns around and looks out the window. The camera image is a photographic snapshot
as the narrator says: “the things they were saying now had for him the air of
some mutually agreed-upon hearty sendoff of his corporeal self, whom they were
basically happy to be getting rid of.”
The film resumes running. They
curl up in their pallets. The camera
shows Kulterer in the office of the penal institution’s secretary; the
secretary is tall, lean, and one-armed; probably he lost his other arm in the
war. Kulterer hands him the envelope;
the secretary opens it; unfolds the large sheet of paper that he has pulled out
of it, stamps it, and hands it back to Kulterer. Kulterer bows. The secretary lights a cigarette, leans back
in his chair, pulls open a drawer in his desk, leaves the drawer open, and with
a motion of his hand signals to Kulterer that he should leave. Kulterer bows again and leaves the
secretary’s office; he looks around for the warden, but the warden, who has
always escorted him throughout the term of his imprisonment, is no longer
there; Kulterer is irritated by the warden’s absence, by the fact that he is
all of a sudden alone, bereft of the warden, by the fact that he can move about
the corridors and go into the penal institution’s workshops as if the warden
were present at his side to keep an eye on him; Kulterer leaves the secretary’s
office. The camera shows him walking
along the corridor, then going into the print shop, first from the corridor
looking into the shop, then from the front of the shop looking into the
corridor: the moment Kulterer enters the print shop the printing machines are
loud; the inmates at the printing machines look at Kulterer; the guards who are
sitting at the front of the shop immediately jump to their feet, but they sit
back down when they see that the person entering the shop is Kulterer; the
camera shows Kulterer taking his leave of the individual inmates in the
printing shop, shaking their hands; the whole thing is quite brief; he says
something, but what he is saying cannot be understood, because the printing
machines are so loud that nothing apart from them can be heard; while he is
shaking the hand of one of the inmates, the camera image suddenly freezes,
becomes a photographic snapshot, over which the narrator says: “Whether they
believe it or not he finds it hard to set off.
He would much rather stay. He
finds leaving ‘unimaginable.’ But you
can’t stay anymore when you’re being forced to leave, he says. Even if you were to make an appeal to the
courts, such an appeal would be rejected, he says.” The film resumes running; at this moment the
inmates at the printing machines burst out laughing; their laughter is so loud
that it can be heard even above the racket of the printing machines. Again the camera’s view of the print shop
freezes into a photographic snapshot, over which the narrator says: “Kulterer says he wants to give them a
present, something for them to remember him by.
Naturally, he says, he has no idea whether they will get even the
slightest amount of pleasure from the thing that he has decided to give them,
but they might find it useful later on. I
have written something for each of you, he says. An aphorism for each of you.” Now the film is running; Kulterer pulls out
of his jacket pocket some pieces of paper that he distributes among them one at
a time, but the camera shows only two, three of these sheets with which he is
preoccupied. The camera is in Kulterer’s
cell, in which all the cellmates are present.
Kulterer hands each of them a slip of paper, which they read straight
away; the reading of the slips instantaneously makes them thoughtful. The narrator says: “And for his cellmates he
wrote aphorisms, an aphorism apiece for each one of them.” Kulterer is consolidating his toiletries. The cell door is unlocked, and the warden
throws in a rope that Kulterer can tie his writings together with; the camera shows
this, or it does not show it; but it does show the cellmates helping Kulterer
pack up his things; they lay everything on the table and roll it up in a cloth,
and as they do so one cannot tell whether the cloth is a handkerchief or a
foot-rag. The oldest cellmate ties up
the package containing Kulterer’s writings, pulls the final knot taut, and briefly
lifts the package just once up to the level of the table, and says, see, tight
as can be, to Kulterer, and sets it down on the table. Kulterer tentatively lifts the package; the
others laugh at his test-lift. The
narrator says: “He felt a powerful sense of foolishness, because his tentative
lifting of the package possibly struck them as being funny.” What are you gonna do with your stories? the
oldest of his cellmates asks. Sell
’em! The newspapers snatch ’em up like
hotcakes! But will they print yours? ’Atsa tough question. Yes, yes, says Kulterer. The narrator says: “They were very sorry that
they would have to do without him from now on.”
The camera now shows the courtyard again, then the cell windows overlooking
the courtyard, then the cell windows on the side of the institution facing the
riverbed, then those overlooking the church square, which two nuns are crossing;
a baker’s boy is running across the church square; the butcher’s truck drives
past; on the dam across the riverbed a company of soldiers are marching,
singing a song; at the railway station a train is departing; the camera first
shows the train station from the penal institution, then the penal institution
from the train station; a woodcutting crew with hoes and saws are leaving the
premises of the penal institution; a truck with inmates who are engaged to work
at a nearby plant-nursery drives past, with the church square in the background. Kulterer enters the church, climbs up to the
gallery, where the organ-playing inmate with his guard is improvising on
something by Bruckner. Kulterer stations
himself next to the organist, which the guard initially is not inclined to let
him do, as one may gather from his briefly rising from his pew; but in the end
he does allow it; Kulterer listens to the organ-playing; now one sees him
peeking into the laundry shop, but not going into it; he gazes at the work-tools
that are hanging on the walls in the courtyard, at the baroque angel by the
staircase; then again at pitchforks, scythes, and sickles; he sits on the
stairs and through the open gate, towards the town, on the other side of the
porter’s lodge, he observes the boy dressed in black, who is blowing his
whistle, but nothing is heard; Kulterer sees the boy dressed in black running
away; two nuns enter through the gate, at whose threshold the boy dressed in
black was standing just a moment earlier; they approach and pass by Kulterer
and proceed to the church, from which the playing of the organ can be heard. While Kulterer is looking through the gate,
the narrator says: “But nobody has yet managed to escape, he thought.” The camera cuts to the porter’s lodge. To Kulterer’s cell. The camera, slowly panning from right to
left, now shows individual objects in the cell: the closet, the washbasin,
suddenly all the details that had been seen only indistinctly become clear; the
cell is empty; all the inmates are away.
As the camera is panning from left to right across the walls of the
cell, the narrator says: “There
was hardly ever a night, and in the past year-and-a half pretty much not a
single further night, in which he had not been awoken by an idea or at least by
a thought, by a hint of a thought.” The
camera also shows the floor of the cell, cockroaches, other beetle-like
insects, etc. The narrator says: “He
began his conversations mostly with ‘Yes, yes, I know…,” and he would say, for
example, ‘Yes, yes, I know, it’s hard…’ or ‘Yes, yes, I know that can turn out
badly…,’ or ‘Yes, yes, I know, Mr. Warden…’
But he really never spoke unless he had just been asked a question.” The camera shows the empty corridors, the
completely empty print shop, the completely empty laundry shop, the completely
empty cobbler’s shop, the empty courtyard; every place is empty; the church is
empty, the church square is empty, etc.
The camera cuts to the dam spanning the riverbed, which is completely
empty. To the penal institution as seen
from the dam. The two patrol guards are
standing at the ends of their patrol-paths, the one at the right end, the other
at the left end, motionlessly. The boy
dressed in black is crouching motionlessly in the center of the frame, in the
church square. During this sequence the
narrator says: “It was in prison that he had first come genuinely to reckon
with thoughts, as if with sums to be added and subtracted.” The camera now shows Kulterer sitting in the kitchen
and spooning up soup from a plate. Then
he stands up, then he walks through the print shop, then he walks through the
cobbler’s shop; he emerges from the church; he rises from the chair at the penal institution’s secretary’s desk; he is in a clerical office and being
handed a stack of banknotes, which he attempts to count, but he is incapable of
doing so. Yes, yes, says Kulterer and
leaves the office with the banknotes in his hand. The narrator says: “The invention of thoughts
in the human mind seemed to him the most precious gift in existence. From this decisive moment onwards, the world
was in his eyes purifying, and readily amenable to the researches of
concentration and precisely delimited consciousness.” Now, as Kulterer is shown sitting at the
table—he has his head in his hands, which are resting on the table, and his
legs stretched out under the table; he is alone in the cell; he has his
belongings in front of him on the table—the camera shows him arriving at the
penal institution, the moment of his incarceration; it shows him being shoved
out of the Black Maria, passing by the porter’s lodge, entering the corridors,
walking through the corridors; the warden appears before him; the warden shoves
him into the cell, in which his cellmates are lying on their pallets; over
these images the narrator says: “For the first time, from then onwards, there
had been solid ground beneath his feet, a sky above the earth, a hell, the
rotation of a global axis without precedent.”
As the narrator is saying “the rotation of a global axis without
precedent,” behind Kulterer sitting at the table the camera shows woodcutting crews,
laundry crews, in a confused heap, as if as he sits there at the table Kulterer
is once again having a nightmare about arriving at the penal institution. It shows the warden beating an inmate over
the head with his truncheon, the director grinning, the secretary crossing the
courtyard, several inmates standing huddled together, as if forming a
conspiracy, other inmates masturbating in their pallets, bursting into
laughter. Over these last two sequences
the narrator says: “Conjectures formed from perceptions were suddenly followed
by the rudiments of a singular objective.”
The camera shows Kulterer running through a long corridor; suddenly the
camera image stops moving; the shot of Kulterer running is brought to a
complete stop, so that the camera image again looks like a photographic
snapshot, over which the narrator says: “Anarchy was switching itself off
automatically, so he thought, on either side of his path.” The camera image resumes moving; the film is
suddenly running at an incredible speed; all the previously shown scenes, from
that of the empty print shop, the empty cobbler’s shop, onwards, fly by so
quickly that one can scarcely recognize them any longer, behind Kulterer as he
sits at the table. Once the succession
of images has attained its peak of rapidity, such that pretty much not a single
place is any longer recognizable as what it is, there is a short shout from
Kulterer, as though he is waking up from a bad dream. He raises his head, his entire upper body,
rises in stupefaction from the table, all of a sudden becomes aware of his
situation once again. He looks around
the cell. There is nobody there. The cell is completely empty; Kulterer
notices on the floor the cockroaches and other beetle-like insects that the
camera has already shown once before. The
narrator now says: “In the last few days before his release, days that have weighed
very heavily on his heart and on his intellect without managing to overwhelm
him, and that have found their inhumane expression on his face, he tries to
establish contact with the inmates, and often in ways that are moving, as he
had wished to make this contact firm and lasting, for ever and always.” Kulterer climbs on to the bench beneath the
cell window and looks out; the camera shows what Kulterer sees through the cell
window, namely, the completely empty dam spanning the riverbed, on which the
boy dressed in black is squatting; suddenly he jumps up and blows the train
conductor’s whistle; the sound of the whistle is so shrill that Kulterer covers
his ears; but it is clear that apart from Kulterer nobody has heard this
whistle-blast. Kulterer climbs down from
the bench and pulls out of the package containing his belongings a
pocket-watch; he polishes the watch on his jacket-sleeve and puts it back into
the package; earlier he held the watch up to his ear to check if the watch was even
still running. Standing rigidly in
place, Kulterer looks down at the tips of his toes, as if wishing to satisfy
himself that he is still wearing institutional shoes, that he is still wearing
institutional clothing at all. During
this sequence, the narrator says: “All initiatives and attempts from his side
were prompted by the word “farewell.”
The warden opens the cell door, enters with a bottle of spirits, which
he places on the table. They are all
expected to drink from this bottle in honor of Kulterer’s separation from them. They all sit down at the table and drink,
each of them taking one brief, spastic swig.
After they have all drunk, the warden takes the bottle away from them;
he sticks it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He has put the rubber truncheon down on the
table. Suddenly he stands up and says: I’ve
still got to go to the director, a formality, he says, exits, shuts and locks
the cell door. His footfalls can be
heard growing fainter, then suddenly louder again; he enters the cell and
tosses a small clump of clothes on to the table. “Come on, get changed!” he shouts at
Kulterer. He exits the cell, shuts and
locks the door; Kulterer sits down at the table, embraces the small clump of
mufti. His cellmates observe him from
their pallets. Come on, get changed! one
of them shouts in mimicry of the warden; then shouts once again, in dialect:
C’maawn, gitcherself changed!” Kulterer
crouches down and doffs his prison uniform.
The narrator says: “Now his cellmates are incessantly giving him
pointers, rules of behavior prescribing what he has to do after his release,
but he was unable to take in any of these rules, because the men were talking
all at once.” As the narrator is
speaking this sentence, there are gesticulations from the cellmates on their
pallets; two of them jump to their feet, walk up to Kulterer, signify something
to him, lie back down on their pallets, etcetera. The camera shows Kulterer standing completely
naked beneath the cell window; over this shot the narrator says: “He now
suddenly felt a horrible feeling of forlornness, a feeling that, because all
those terrible stares were being affixed to it from all sides, he soon found
unbearable.” The oldest cellmate says:
“You’re gonna ketch a cold!” And after a
pause, the second cellmate says: “His skin’s as white as a child’s.” Kulterer looks as though he feels cold as he
stands beneath the cell window. From
outside one hears the shrill blast of the train conductor’s whistle, which has
probably been blown by the boy dressed in black; the shrill blast is heard a
second time, whereupon the oldest cellmate jumps to his feet and, aiming for
his stomach, throws Kulterer his underpants, shirt, trousers; Kulterer catches
his garments in an anxious attitude. His
shoes are thrown at his feet by the oldest inmate. Put ’em on! shouts the oldest cellmate after
throwing himself on to his pallet. Kulterer
suddenly and quickly puts everything on.
He is nauseated by the alien smell exuded by his own clothes. He is trembling from head to toe, as though
he has just received a beating. Again,
the shrill blast of the train conductor’s whistle is heard; one more time. Go get nice and plastered when you git out!
the oldest cellmate says to Kulterer.
The second one says: How’d they nab you anyway? Huh?
The man who said this mimes the action of catching a hare from behind. Yes, yes, says Kulterer. Yes, yes, says Kulterer. Did they beatcha? asks the third
cellmate. And didja bleed? Didja, on the head, they beat everbawdy on
the head, you betcha. They got no
mercy. Kulterer shakes his head. And what aboutcher wife? asks the oldest
cellmate. What about her? What’d she
think? What’s she thinkin’? What’d she say? What’d she do? She know you’re comin’ home? asks the
second-oldest cellmate. Didja write
her? Eh?
The eh is drawn-out, gentle. Before
the second-oldest cellmate has finished emitting this “eh,” the camera image
freezes into a photographic snapshot, and the narrator says: “He would have a
nice train to catch at noon ,
they said. They asked him how much money
he had left. If he had any left at all.” The film starts running again; Kulterer says,
yes, yes. He sits down at the table and
writes something down on a slip of paper.
The narrator says: “He hastily writes down their addresses and asks them
to remember him kindly.” As the narrator
is saying, “to remember him kindly,” Kulterer is seen rising from the table and
saying something to his cellmates, but what he says is inaudible; then one
hears the oldest inmate again saying, you betcha, and as Kulterer is walking up
to the cell window and climbing on to the bench and looking out the window, and
the cellmates are watching him doing this, the narrator says: “They said to him
that it was no simple matter to step outside; that the world was cold and
unforgiving.” At this very moment the door is yanked open and the prisoners are
led away. The cell door remains open. As he continues standing under the cell
window, Kulterer can now hear all the printing machines, can hear the sound of
them wafting over from across the courtyard, into the room from the corridor;
the ever-increasingly loud sound of the printing machines drowns out all other
sounds for him; the rhythm of the printing machines grows so loud that it soon
becomes deafening, and Kulterer presses his hands to his ears. He goes to the table and bends down over his
still-warm prison uniform and weeps.
Then he makes sure he is not forgetting anything, he checks all the coat
hooks, the storage rack, looks under the pallets, runs the palms of his hands
over the walls. Suddenly the shrill
blast of the train conductor’s whistle is again heard from outside through the
cell window. Kulterer stows away his
package of writings, which had been placed on the table, and exits the cell. The camera shows Kulterer walking at normal
speed through the corridor, then walking progressively faster through several
corridors, then suddenly running through all those corridors; Kulterer’s flight
from the penal institution is shown in several brief, successive shots: he is
seen running past the print shop, past the laundry shop, past the bakery, past
the butcher’s shop, faster and faster and across the courtyard and across the
church square and out of the entire complex, past the porter’s lodge and into
the town and through the town, through its narrow and (to him) unfamiliar
streets and past its numerous (to him) unfamiliar people, more and more
quickly. Once he has reached the dam
spanning the riverbed, he takes one more look back at the penal institution;
the patrolling sentry guards are clearly recognizable; the building’s chimneys
are smoking; Kulterer is standing perfectly still on the dam spanning the riverbed;
then the shrill blast of the train conductor’s whistle is heard; the boy
dressed in black jumps up from a patch of grass and runs away, and Kulterer is
horrified by this event and walks as quickly as he can “away from the prison
and into the adjacent landscape, whose grayish-brown hillocks reek of
hopelessness.”
THE END
Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2014 by Douglas Robertson
Source: Der Kulterer. Eine Filmgeschichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), pp. 7-91.
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