It was 1947, two years after the war...
when I began my journey to what my father called...
the "Sodom" of the north: New York.
Call me Stingo, which was the nickname I was know by those days.
If I was called anything at all.
I've barely saved enough money to write my novel...
for I wanted to be and hoped or dreamed to be a writer.
But my spirit had remained locked...
unacquainted with love and a stranger to death.
Even back then cheap apartments were hard to find in Manhattan.
And so began my voyage of discovery...
in a place as strange as Brooklyn.
I know...
You're thinking about the pink. Everybody does.
See, my late husband Saul, he's got his bargain.
Hundreds and hundreds of gallons of this... navy surplus paint.
See, I guess they didn't have any use for pink on those boats.
Ok, I'll take it.
Walt Whitman.
"Yetta has heralded the arrival in the Ethnic Kingdom of the pink palace...
of a young novelist from the south.
Your neighbors invite you upstairs to dine with us in Sophie's room...
directly above yours tonight at eight.
The book is a token of welcome...
from one of Brooklyn's earliest bards to Brooklyn's newest.
Sophie and Nathan".
- Whore! - Don't go! Don't go!
Nathan, wait!
Wait! Believe me, Nathan!
I told you to get go away!
Stay away from my work!
Nathan, no!
- I'm not lying, you know! - You're Lying.
- I'm not! - You're Lying.
please, don't go! Don't go away from me, please!
You know we need each other! We need each other!
Me, need you? Let me tell you something!
I need you like a goddamn disease I can't name!
I need you like a case of Anthrax, hear me?
Like "triquonosys"!
I need you like a biliary calculus, palegra, encephalitis...
"Bright's" disease, for Christ's sake!
"parsinoma" of the brain!
I need you... like death!
- Hear me? Like death! - No, Nathan!
Go back to Krakow, baby.
Back to Krakow!
Well, good evening
Did you have a good time?
Did you enjoy our little show?
Do you get off on a little bit of eve's dropping?
My door was open. I just wondered what was going on.
Your door was open? You wondered what was going on?
Well, shut my mouth if it isn't our new literate figure from the South.
Too bad I won't be around for a little lively conversation.
We would've had great time shooting this shit.
We could've talked about sports...
Southern sports like...
lynching niggers, or coons I think you all call them there.
So long cracker. See you in another life.
Are you OK?
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm very sorry.
That's not the way he...
he really is, you know?
Don't apologize, all right?
I live downstairs here. If there's anything you want...
Thank you.
You're very kind.
- Come on downstairs here. - No, I'm all right.
I'm Stingo.
please... forgive us.
Yeah?
We had invited you to dinner.
That's very thoughtful of you.
Listen, I'm very often working and I type at night.
But if it's going to bother you, I don't want to...
Oh, no! When I was little girl my father...
type and I go to sleep to that sound.
It'll make me fell...
How do you say that? Secure. Secured.
- Your father was a writer? - You know, my father was...
my father was professor of law. He wrote articles...
warning college people of the Nazi threat...
and trying to get help for those Jews that "was" persecuted. So...
Yeah, that sound of typing will make me think of my father...
and of his goodness.
You wouldn't want to come in, would you?
Maybe some other time.
So, if you forgive me...
Good night.
So, "Stinko", yeah?
- "Stingo". - "Stingo", yes!
I never hear that name.
There's no "K" in there, though.
- I got it. - It's a "G".
Yeah, it's nice!
It's a friendly... you know, happy sound.
I like it.
Nathan!
Oh, Nathan!
Oh, God!
Why can't you see, Sophie? We are dying.
Rise and shine, honey child. Lift up your bones.
The grit is on the brittle, the corn is on the pone.
Hurry up.
You're going to have a picnic out and down by the seashore.
- Good morning, Stingo. - Good morning.
We wanted to make friends...
and to take you out on this beautiful summer day!
We want you to come up and to have breakfast with us.
- And then... - Yes.
- Coney Island. - Coney Island! Oh, boy!
Sorry about last night.
I know what you're thinking: "These people are strange".
On Sundays we like to dress up a bit differently and go out.
- OK. - OK?
I knew you'd understand!
You see, everybody out there dresses the same.
Look at those poor, pathetic people out there. Look at them.
Drones. All walking down the streets looking alike, wearing...
the same dread, boring uniform.
You're boring! "Good morning"!
Look at this God's gift!
Give me a kiss.
- One kiss. - All right, one kiss.
- That's all you deserve. - One more.
- I need one more. - No.
- I have to have one more. - Nathan!
Look where my hands have to go.
This is... No, Nathan Landau!
What do you think of that, Stingo?
Here I am, a nice Jewish boy...
pushing thirty...
I fall crazy in love with a polish Shiksa.
What is that? What is a Shiksa?
A Shiksa? Is a "goee" girl. A lady of a gentile persuasion.
She's a...
All right. I'd just assumed that she was not...
- Jewish, Jewish? - Yeah.
Jewish?
No, no, no... Sophie is Catholic.
That's OK. But I'm not anymore Catholic, so...
Catholic issue.
When I first met this one here...
she was a rag and bone and hank of hair.
That was 1 year and a half after the Russians liberated the camp she was in.
Yeah, it looked like something that...
scares the birds. You know, what is that?
Scare... scarecrow.
- I had "scurbut". - No, no, no!
She means scurvy. And typhus, anemia, fever...
It was a miracle she's emerged from that camp alive.
Right! I mean...
He thought that I had leukemia.
I thought I was dying.
But it was Nathan that see that it was only anemia.
- Are you a doctor? - No, no.
That's my brother's domain.
- But I'm a biologist. - Yeah!
I graduated in Science from Harvard.
And he made MA...
in Developmental and Cellular Biology.
- I do research now. - He works at Pfizer.
A big pharmaceutical house in Brooklyn.
Anyway, I took her to this friend of my brother's...
a doctor who teaches at Columbia Presbyterian.
- Yeah. - He confirmed my diagnosis.
And we put the little sweetie here...
on a massive doses of ferrous sulphate...
and she'd bloomed like a rose.
A rose.
A rose...
A beautiful fucking rose.
You're something!
Thank you for making me "to" bloom like a rose.
Not "to" bloom, just "bloom".
She's so good. It's about time she was perfect.
So what? I mean, this is a ridiculous language!
There's too many words!
The word for "velocity": OK, there's "fast", "quick"...
"rapid" and they all mean the same thing.
- "Swift", "Speedy"... - "Hasty".
- "Flit". - "Brisk".
- "Expeditious". - "Accelerated".
"Winged".
No, no! Stop it!
It's ridiculous!
Oh, in French it's so easy. You say: "vit".
Or in polish, "szybko" and in Russian, "bistroy"
It's only in English that it's so complicated!
How many languages do you know?
Well, my father was a Linguistic, so I mean, I...
He taught me German, French, Russian, Hungarian...
the Slavic Languages...
So, what language I'm butchering now?
English!
I bet your father was a very interesting man.
Yeah, my father was...
a civilized man.
- That's the word, yeah? "Civilized"? - Very good word.
Yeah? My father was a civilized man living in a non civilized time.
The civilized, they "was" the first to die.
Do you play the piano?
No. I used to play, but I...
I no longer play.
I don't, anymore...
My mother was a beautiful pianist.
Nathan surprised me with that piano on my birthday!
I love that piece.
When I was a little girl, I...
I remember, I'd lay in bed...
and I'd hear my mother downstairs playing the piano...
and the sound of my father's typewriter.
I think no child had a more wonderful father and mother.
And a more beautiful life.
Do you know that song, right?
Stingo, hit it!
Suddenly, I shivered violently.
I remembered Nathan's voice that night before.
"Don’t you see, Sophie? We 're dying".
I longed desperately to escape...
to pack my bags and flee.
But I did not.
I stayed at Yetta Zimmerman's...
and I helped fulfill Sophie's prophecy about the three of us.
We became the best of friends.
Here's an example of how emotionally evocative English can be
Sophie loved to tell how Nathan saved her life.
Their meeting was, for her...
a miracle.
Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.
The carriage held but just our selves and Immortality.
Rhymes, rhymes... It's not hard enough to understand the language?
Just everyday life talk. He has to read us rhymes!
...what the beauty of the language can be...
when written by artists.
I look forward to seeing you next week. And remember...
You must not get discouraged.
You'll see.
One morning you'll wake up and find you've been dreaming in English!
Excuse me. Who did he say wrote that poem?
Dickens.
- Emile Dickens. - Thank you.
Are you all right, Miss Zawistowska?
Yes.
Thank you, I'm very fine. I'm a little tired.
I noticed that you've been looking...
Well... a little delicate lately.
- I hope I'm not being too personal. - No! No, I...
Could you help me with that?
Thank you.
Thank you for your...
concern.
Good bye.
Excuse me, sir. Could you tell me what...
Where would be that listing in catalog file...
for...
19th century American poet...
- Emile Dickens, please? - In the catalog room on the left.
But you won’t find any such listing.
I won’t find that listing?
Why won't I... find it?
Charles Dickens is an English writer.
There's no American poet by the name of Dickens.
I'm sorry. No, that is, I'm sure, American poet.
- Emile Dickens. - Listen!
- "D-I... - I told you!
There's no such person. Do you want me to draw you a picture?
- I'm telling you, you hear me? - All right.
It's all right, it's all right...
Just lie still.
Let the doctor take care of everything.
You're so beautiful.
Yes! How did you get to be so beautiful?
I think...
I think that I'm going to die.
No, no, no...
No, your pulse...
Your pulse is fine. It's steady.
You're going to live to be a hundred.
Why I am so tired?
The doctor thinks you need to get some color...
in that beautiful white skin of yours.
I'm going to take you to see my brother.
He is the best doctor going.
- No, let you... - You thought I was a doctor?
No, I'm a biologist.
- You've been eating properly lately? - Yes! Oh, yes! I am...
I am six months in here, in U.S. and...
so I eat "more good" now than in my life.
You could've fallen behind with iron and never had a chance to catch up.
Look, I'm going to go now.
But may I come back later? Don't answer that. I'll be back.
OK?
Yeah, OK!
- How long you have been there? - Enough to get dinner started.
You look much better.
What did you do here?
It looks beautiful.
We're having calf's liver...
prepared "Veneziano" and special vinaigrette sauce...
loaded with iron.
And leeks... filled with iron.
Also will improve the timber of your voice.
You know, Nero had leek served every day...
- to deepen his voice. - I didn't know that.
So that he could croon while he had Seneca drown and squirted.
- Let me help you with that. - No! You're not to move.
The "madame" taste the wine?
"Chateaux Margoux de...
1937"?
My God!
Special day...
special wine.
You know, when you...
When you live a good life...
like a saint and then you die...
that must be what they make you "to" drink in paradise.
Thomas Wolfe!
It's written in polish!
Oh God! What does Wolfe sound like in polish?
a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.
Of a stone...
- The door. - The door.
- Of all the forgotten faces. - Forgotten faces.
God! This is a first...
hearing Thomas Wolfe read aloud in polish.
The first for me too, hearing Wolfe read in English.
If that poor bastard have heard you read this aloud in polish...
- he would've written in polish. - I don't think so.
Oh, yeah! Oh, yes!
You were... You were in that concentration camp?
Yeah, I can't...
- I can't talk about that, though. - I'm sorry.
I have a neck to stick my big nose where it's got no business.
I...
want so much to know you.
To be close to you.
Emily Dickenson?
That's the woman?
Oh, no!
"property of Nathan Landau".
- That's you? - That's me.
- It's your book? - No, it's yours.
Thank you!
Thank you.
"Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break...
excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight.
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise yellow noise...
interrupt this ground".
Nathan, my new and dear beloved friend...
introduced me to what seemed the answer to my relentless...
all consuming "hornyness".
Before I went into analysis, I was completely frigid.
Can you imagine? Now all I can do is think about fucking.
Wilhelm Reich has turned me into a nympho.
I mean, sex on the brain!
Her name still crawls across my tongue.
Lesley Lapidus.
The door is open, came in!
Hello!
- Boy, look excellent. - Thanks.
- What would like to drink? - I'll have a...
I don't know, let's see...
- I'd like a red wine. - Oh, my God!
Fuck!
Fucking fantastic fucking!
Wait! Just let it ring!
Hello, mother.
Fine, fine. I told you I'd be just fine.
Yeah, plenty. And I'll make sure that the plants are watered...
and that the dog is fed. Well, mother...
Yes, Daddy. Your little princess will be good.
OK. Bye!
They'll go away for the weekend and the maid is out sick.
And they care about how I will survive for a weekend in this...
apartment by myself. So they stocked the fridge, put a lock on every door...
and who knows what else!
Thus I realized that Lesley and I would be left to frolic here alone.
My cup ran over.
Oh, my cup turned into a spillway flooding across the spotless carpet...
out the door down Pierrepot Street...
across all the twilit carnal reaches of Brooklyn.
Lesley. A weekend alone with Lesley.
Have you ever read D.H. Lawrence, "Lady Chatterley's Lover"?
No.
He has the answer.
He knows so much about fucking.
He says...
He says that when you fuck you go to the Dark Gods.
Stingo, I really mean it.
To fuck is to go to the Dark Gods.
Let's go to the Dark Gods!
What is going on?
You don't understand...
I can't go all the way.
I've reached a plateau in my analysis.
Before I reach this plateau of vocalization I could never say...
any of those words.
those Anglo-Saxon four letter words that everybody should be able to say
Now I'm completely able to vocalize.
Lesley Lapidus could say "fuck" but she could not do it.
Nathan!? I'm so glad you're...
Yep, little Stingo.
- Stingo? - Yeah?
You want to come up and have a night cup with me?
Sure.
When Nathan gets involved he forgets all about the time...
Stingo, you look... very nice. You're wearing your "cock sucker".
My seersucker.
Oh yeah. Right, "seersucker".
I love it here.
I'm glad you couldn't sleep.
You hurt your mouth? You talk funny.
I bit my tongue.
- You want me to get you something? - No, please, no.
It just needs to be left alone.
You changed all the furniture around?
Yeah, you like it? I do that when I can't sleep, you know?
It's good, because then you don't have...
You don't have to think about anything.
- Well, then I'll try that. - Oh, no.
Stingo... You do not have to move furniture.
- You will move mountains. - I can't even move my tongue.
Maybe you moved it too much.
Why aren't all the women in the world like you?
You'd better thank God they're not. I see many women in your life.
Many beautiful women...
who adore you and that make all that love with you.
Sometimes...
I can see myself just being alone forever.
Oh, Stingo... I'm not fair with you.
I think Stingo is so young, he is a talented American.
He doesn't have any real, real problems, but...
You don't know if I'm talented.
You've never read anything I've written.
I don't ask about your work...
and what it is about because I know a writer likes to...
be quite about his work.
It's about a boy...
a twelve-year-old boy...
- And... - So it's autobiographical?
To a certain extant, maybe it is.
It takes places in a year, which is the year his mother dies...
I didn't know your mother died.
- When I was 12. - You loved her very much?
Not enough.
- What do you mean, "Not enough"? - I mean: "Not enough".
And that's what is so terrible about...
outliving those people that we love, I mean that...
- that quilt. - Your father?
My father, my mother, my husband.
You were married?
Yeah, I was married.
And I was very young. I was married to a...
disciple of my father.
Assistant at the University.
Your father was writing Nazi articles?
That probably got him into trouble.
One day I was at the Mass and...
they have a...
I had a...
"presentiment" and I...
have money for you and I...
I run out of the church and I go to the University...
and I see that the gate is locked and...
there were many Germans there...
and I saw the professors. They "was" loading them into the truck...
and this one part of canvas has moved away...
and I see my father's face and the face of my husband behind him.
And...
I looked and the...
But the Germans pulled that away and...
I never saw those faces again.
They took them to Sachsenhausen, but they shot them the next day.
- And your mother? - My mother...
My mother got...
t- t-tuberculosis. Tuberculosis and...
She is very sick, you know? She's dying. I can't do anything.
But I think if I could get that meet for my mother...
I would make her strong, so I go to the country and...
the peasants, they're selling... ham.
And I go with that black market money and I buy that and...
I bring it back. But it's forbidden for all the meet goes to the Germans
If you get caught...
So I hid the ham under my skirt on the train.
I'm pretending that I'm pregnant, you know?
I was so afraid!
I was shaking. And then that German...
who was in the front of the train and he saw me.
And I'm sitting there and he "come" up to me...
and he "take" under my skirt that ham and...
So they sent me to Auschwitz.
You were sent to Auschwitz because you stole a ham?
No. I was sent to Auschwitz because they saw that I was afraid.
- You know what that means. - Yeah.
You tried to commit suicide in Auschwitz.
No, it was after that.
After that, I was in...
- After liberation. - After you were safe?
Yes, safe, yeah.
I was safe, I was in Sweden. I was in that refugee camp.
I mean, that was good. They try to help you, you know?
They try... but...
I knew that...
Christ had turned his face away from me...
and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could...
kill those people that I love, but...
leave me alive...
with my shame? Oh, God. So I went to that church...
and I took the glass I knew was there and I...
I've cut my wrist.
But I didn't die, of course!
Of course, not.
Stingo...
there's so many things you don't understand.
There's so many things that I can't...
that I cannot... tell you.
I want you to trust me.
Just trust me.
Oh, God! There's Nathan!
Nathan!
- Sophie! - Astrid?
I'm working night duty at Brooklyn Hospital this week.
My patient is this old lady who's meaner than my mother!
Well, good night, Astrid. I'll go to sleep.
That was Astrid, you know.
Maybe I'll leave the door open in case he comes, we could hear him.
So you want another drink?
- Your bottle is empty. - Well...
I know where Nathan keeps another bottle.
Be careful, it's dark in here.
Oh, God.
You'll feel better if we just call him at the lab.
I can't do that. He doesn't like for me to call him.
You know, at work.
So, anyway...
I did it an hour ago!
And there was no answer, so...
I'm sure the switchboard just shot off.
Yes, I think that's right.
I'm sure of that. You know, sometimes when he can't sleep...
he goes and walks all over the city.
He goes into all these neighborhoods...
I don't know where he goes, but... Once he came back, he had a...
black eye and his jaw was all swollen there.
I thought it was broken!
You know, he could be hurt.
I don't know where he is, but I think we should call the police.
- Right now. - I think we'd better wait 2 hours.
Wait till someone is on the switchboard there.
We'll just call him then.
His working lady probably got tired and fell asleep there.
Yeah. She's probably asleep there.
- I'm sure. - I'm sure you're right.
Look at this. Nazi primer.
He must have everything written about the Nazis in those news.
He is obsessed with the Nazis who are escaping justice.
Do you suppose all this started after he met you?
Look, I know I shouldn't tell him about that place, but...
what could I do? I know it's not my fault that he...
I can understand. After all, he is a Jew.
Yes, but don't you think that I'm angry too?
That these men, these terrible Nazi leaving my father...
Such a good man who tries to help Jews is killed!
Don't you think that I am angry? But you don't understand Nathan.
You don't know...
...him. What he might do, you know?
- Sometimes I think... - What do you think?
- What do you think, polish baby? - Oh, Nathan!
- You're all right? - I am. What about the two of you?
I was so frightened, you know?
I was stupid!
I got so scared that something had happened to you.
I would've called but I didn't want to wake you.
We're on to something in our work. Something big. Very big.
That's wonderful, Nathan.
Yeah, wonderful.
But you were here...
with Sophie.
Stingo, you know, he... Stingo came home from his date!
So I heard the door and thought it was you.
So I run out, but...
Anyway, I called him and said why don't you come up for a drink?
Because I was worried and he was a very good friend...
and he was keeping me company.
So now you've seen my "sanctum sanctorum".
Now you know all of Nathan's darkened hours secrets.
Hardly.
You wipe out six million Jews...
and the world left them escape.
Enjoying our Lynching party southern boy?
I expect you might have a lot to teach me there.
I'm going to call it tonight.
Stingo, wait. Stingo is our best friend, why do you do that?
He is our best friend, he deserves only our thanks. Listen to me.
I was frightened, I didn't know what to do here.
It's true.
Forgive me old buddy. I'm sorry.
Of course my beloved Sophie is right
I must've got crazy with the work, you know?
- We're on to something big. - I know, darling.
I'm just another mad scientist.
I'm leaving.
Tomorrow.
Thank you.
- Thanks for taking care of Sophie. - All right.
- Ah, Nathan! - I'm sorry.
I said I'm sorry already!
Darling, I'm home.
- Right! - Are you all right?
- Are you sure? - Yeah.
Don't you catch things in the South?
- How's it going? - Fine. What's going on?
Think fast!
You came and wreck everything.
Yetta, you know, always provides the best...
the best you can find in Brooklyn!
Oh, shit!
Sophie should be taking a nap after work.
She just doesn't sleep anymore. Not since the war. How's it going?
- Fine. Thank you. - Let me take a look at those.
.- No. - Come on!
I won't interfere, I won't make any comments, I won't even...
Look, I'll show this to no one! No one is seeing this.
I'm not no one. I'm a friend. Don't you have those down South?
"Friend", a person attached to another by feeling and affection.
- A supporter. - I vowed to my self when I started..
this I was not going to show it to anyone 'till I finish it.
- Then I'd go for that comfort person. - Well...
OK. You’re just terrified that somebody don't like it.
Terrified as in filled with terror. As sharp over mastering intense fear
All right, all right!
- That will give you some idea. - Oh, my God!
- What about the page in the typewriter? - No, this is a...
Nathan! Stop!
All right.
Stingo! What is the worst that can happen?
I may discover you can't write!
- Bye! Shit! Fuck! - Nathan, get back here!
I'll give it back, old buddy!
Fine, right!
Stingo, wait a minute!
Wait! Nathan has ordered me to take you to the movies.
He made me your guardian while to read that.
Yes, so you can't do no violence to yourself now.
- Nathan must have finished that. - Yeah.
- Come on, let's go see. - I think I'll wait here alone.
- No, come on! - If he's got something to say...
- let him come down and tell me. - Don't be silly.
Bravo!
On this bridge on which...
so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words...
to give America its voice...
looking toward the land that gave them Whitman...
from its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words...
on this span of which...
Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote...
we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods...
whose words are all we know of immortality.
To Stingo!
How could I've failed to have the most helpless crush on such...
a generous mind and life enlarging mentor?
Nathan was utterly, fatally glamorous.
Sophie!
Where are you?
- Stingo! - Nathan!
- We did it! - What? What did you do?
Nathan!
Remember I told you we were on to something big? Today we cracked it.
What? What, what?
I can't tell you. You'll hear about it all tonight.
- No, what's a few hours make? - No, I can't tell you!
pretty soon the whole world will know...
one of the greatest medical advances of all time.
I can't tell you!
I'm talking about Stockholm. Next year, the three of us together.
I'm talking to go nobel-fucking-prize!
- All right! - Sorry, kid. I'm going to get there first!
Wait! I got something for you to celebrate!
Oh, Nathan! What's that?
- One for you. - What is it?
- These go with that one. - Oh, God!
- Oh, Nathan! What a beautiful dress! - Do you like it?