Try it on. put it on. Come on, try it on!
- Oh, Nathan! - Come on!
Try it on. please, I want to see it.
- I'm not going to do that. - I just want to see it on you!
Hold it up.
- It doesn't have a top. - You're the top.
Nathan, it's beautiful!
- I've to get back to the laboratory. - Why don't you stay with us?
- Tonight we'll celebrate. - Look at all this.
I can't. I got to get back to work.
Tonight we'll celebrate. Make sure Sophie gets back home safe.
- Wear those clothes tonight. - Look at these shoes!
Tonight. Tonight I’ll look at it.
Oh, my darling. I'm so proud of you.
Tonight!
You were the one who gave me the idea to get it.
- I think it's like mine. - It's a beautiful watch, yes?
Dr. Kats, my boss, and his wife...
Her family is in the jewellery business, so he took me there...
- to get it engraved. - It opens at the top, like mine.
What? Don't get you fingers...
- You got your fingerprints all over it. - Nathan won't know.
- Anyway, do you think he will like it? - Sure, he will.
I think he'll be very pleased.
It... you know, it cost...
a great deal of money. More than I could afford.
Anyway, who cares?
Today, money doesn't seem very important.
Get the champagne!
I couldn't remember Nathan's brand when I went to the store.
- Yeah? What kind? - The guy at the shop says...
something Rose. He says it's very good.
- Surprise! - Surprise!
Is it your brand? I couldn't remember.
Stingo got you that champagne.
That's sweet.
It's beautiful. Look at you.
- Yeah! Do you like? - Very becoming.
That would become you more.
- What? - Haven't I told you...
that the only think I absolutely demanded of you...
the only single thing... is fidelity?
And didn't I tell you that if you ever were with this guy Kats...
ever again outside of work, and if you walk with this cheap schmuck...
this fraud, that I'd break your ass?
- Yeah, but. - This afternoon he brings...
you home again. You spent the whole fucking afternoon with him.
Or should, I say you spent the whole afternoon with him fucking?
- Nathan! - Did you try the new dress for him?
So he could strip it off in a cheap hotel room?
Did he line up your vertebra in a nice neat line...
while he was humping you? I bet he does quite a number.
Wait! Nathan!
How do you know he took her home? Did you follow her?
How did you find out Kats took her home?
You're going to feel like a fool when you find out why.
please, don't!
A baby southern artist defending a little Pollack whore.
To bad our celebration will be of more mundane stripe than I intended.
- I think you should go. - I'm not going to let you alone with him.
- You don't understand... - You don't have to take this shit!
Let’s just cut out all the ugly shit!
Yeah, poor this. Let's celebrate. You know why?
We're here to toast you. But what are we here to toast?
- You're right. I'm terribly sorry. - That's all right.
I don't know what's come over me. Here...
Here is to my best friend...
- and my best girl. - There you are.
Look what I got you, anyway.
I had the wrapping, you know, but I...
It's beautiful. Very beautiful.
- Do you like it? - If I like it? I love it.
Yes? She’s just like Stingo's.
It is?
- It has an engraving. - It's beautiful. Beautiful.
This toast is in honor...
my complete disassociation...
from you two creeps.
Disassociation from you...
the Coony Chiropractic cunt of King's County...
and you, the dreary dregs of Dixie.
You have not fooled me, young Stingo.
Since you so graciously allowed me to read your magnum Southern opus...
about your adolescent self-pity...
- for your poor dead mother. - Knock it off, Nathan.
However, look on it optimistically...
you might be on the verge of a whole new form...
the "Southern Comic Book"!
- And now, my sweet... - Stin...
I want to ask you one question that's been burning in my mind for so long.
Then maybe you can explain something to me.
The reason maybe of why you are here...
Wait...
walking the streets...
wearing this enticing perfumery...
engaged in syrup tissue's winery with not one...
but two, count them, ladies and gentlemen...
two chiropractors!
In short, making hay...
waiting the sunshine to employ an old maid...
while at Auschwitz, the ghosts of the millions of the dead...
- still seek an answer. - No.
Tell me...
Tell me Sophie. The same anti-Semitism...
for which Poland has gained such a worldwide recognition...
that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along...
protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule..
handful of people who lived... while the millions died?
Tell me. Tell me why.
Explanation, please!
Tell me why...
old lucky number 11379...
Tell me...
why you inhabit the land of the living?
What splendid little tricks and strategies...
is inside that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath...
the clear polish air?
What a multitude at Auschwitz choked slowly...
- on the gas? - No!
- Explain! - Stop it!
Explain!
- Lay off of her! - Get off of my way!
Get off of my...
Stay away! Stay out!
Stay out! Get out of here!
Go away!
I'm leaving the house, they're here. I come back, two empty rooms.
No Nathan, no Sophie and the last anybody knows he puts her in a cab..
and he runs off the other way. I can't tell how hard it is...
- Is this Dr. Blackstock? - Yes.
I'm a friend of Sophie Zawistowska's and you may have heard of me, Stingo
Oh, the writer! She's very proud of you!
- I'm trying to track her down. - But don’t you live in the same house?
She moved out last night.
She called in this morning and wasn't well. I was worried about her.
- She is such a tough girl. - Do you know how I could find her?
What about the boyfriend?
I think that's over.
Maybe she went to stay with a friend.
I don't know any friends of hers.
There's this Polish girl who work for a professor at Brooklyn College.
I remember her name. It was Sonja Wajinska.
Is a woman named Sonja Wajinska work here?
No, I'm sorry. She went back to Poland six months ago.
But if you like, I can give you her address.
Thank you. Do you know her friend Sophie Zawistowska?
Yes.
She came here once to visit Sonja, but she did not came back.
I recognized her from my days at the University of Krakow.
She is the daughter of professor Bieganski.
Were you student of his?
I heard him lecture once. That was enough.
I know he is very unspoken about the Nazis.
He was crazy about the Nazis.
I think because they hate the Jews as much as he did.
The Nazis killed him.
They came one day and made a clean sweep of all academics.
And they didn't stop to check their political views.
I think you have the wrong man.
Look, I shall show you...
Zbigniew Bieganki...
Look, Bieganski...
professor of Law at the University of Krakow...
from 1919 to 1939...
known for his anti-Semitic threats.
A major promulgator of the ghetto pension rule...
which made it illegal for Jewish students...
to seat on the same bench as polls.
So...
I told Yetta I was leaving.
A few weeks before I had received a letter from my father.
He had inherited a small farm and knowing I was running out of money
proposed that I'd come back South and live on it.
I could not bear to stay in Brooklyn.
Hello!
Sophie? You're back!
Oh, yes. Hello, Yetta.
I came to get the rest of my things, you know?
- Have you heard from Nathan? - No. Not a word.
He just came here this morning to take the rest of his things.
OK.
Stingo?
Yeah.
I'm sorry about what happened last night.
But I want you to know that Nathan...
didn't mean what he said about your book.
Well, you know that. Right?
I know he really loves your writing.
That doesn't matter anymore.
But I mean...
"we" will still be friends.
You know I'm leaving. I'm going home.
It should be a better place for me to write.
We've driven you away.
It has nothing to do with you.
I spoke with Dr. Blackstock today.
Oh, Stingo. Did you go looking for me there?
I would've left you a note where I went but...
I just didn't think of it. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you were worried about me.
I thought your friend Sonja might know where you were.
Sonja? Sonja Wajinski? But she went back to Poland.
I know that.
I went to Brooklyn College.
She used to work for a Language professor there.
Yes.
I think you met him once.
He knew your father.
Yeah, my father...
He heard him lecture once...
at the University of Krakow where your father taught.
He told you about my father?
Sophie, why did you lie to me?
I lied because, you know why?
I was so afraid...
I was afraid I'd left alone!
So...
Good bye... my friend.
Sophie, I want to understand...
I'd love to know the truth.
The truth?
It does not make it easier to understand.
And maybe you think that find out the truth about me...
and you'll understand me and then you'd forgive me for all those...
For all my lies.
I promise I'll never leave you.
You must never promise that.
No one... no one should ever promise that!
The truth? I don't even know what is the truth.
After all these lies I've told...
My father...
How can I explain how much I loved my father?
My father believed that human perfection was a possibility.
Every night I pray to God...
to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father.
And I pray to him...
to make worthy of such a great good man.
I was a grown woman.
I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman...
when I realized I hated my father beyond all words to tell it.
It was winter of 1938.
And my father was working for weeks on the speech he calls...
"Poland Jewish Problem".
Orderly I typed those speeches...
and I don't hear the words, their meaning, but...
this time I came upon a word that I have never heard it before.
The solution for Poland Jewish Problem, he concludes...
is "vernichtung".
Extermination.
I have not meant to go to the ghetto that afternoon...
but something made me go there.
I stood there I don't know how long...
watching these people that my father has condemned to die.
All these men, these women, these children would be "vernichtung".
Extermination.
I suddenly remembered that my father is waiting for that speech...
and I hurry home to finish the typing but...
in my rushing and my haste to finish that...
I make so many mistakes in the sentences and...
I run with it to the University and my father has no time...
to check that before speaking.
And he get up in front of all those people...
and he reads the speech and makes those mistakes...
and I see him getting so angry.
And when it was over, he came up to me...
I was with my husband, of course.
And in front of him and all his colleague he said:
Zozia...
your intelligence is pulp.
pulp.
I didn't have any courage to say: "Yes, but what about the Jews?"
The Jewish people, but...
After that he didn't trust me anyway.
And neither did my husband.
Afterwards in Warsaw...
I had lover...
who was very, very good to me.
Josef lived with his half-sister Wanda.
She was a leader in the Resistance.
Two weeks later...
the Gestapo killed Josef.
They cut his throat.
They had courage.
Oh, God, they had courage!
Not too long after that, they killed Josef...
I was arrested.
My children were sent with me to Auschwitz.
When the train arrived at Auschwitz...
the Germans made the selection.
Who would live and who would die.
Ian, my little boy...
Ian, my little boy, was sent to the "Kinderlogg"...
which was the children's camp.
And my little girl, Eva, was sent to crematorium II.
She was exterminated.
Thanks to my perfect German...
and my secretarial skills...
and the things my father had taught me...
so well.
I came to work...
for Rudolf Hoess...
Commandant of Auschwitz.
The day they took me to work for Hoess...
I was forced to walk pass block 25...
That is where they took the prisoners that were...
selected for extermination.
The people there were made to stand for, sometimes, days.
They were naked and they had no water.
And their hands reached out from the bars...
and they cried and pleaded.
But that night...
I kept repeating to myself...
"I have saved my son, I have saved my son".
"Tomorrow I can see him!"
"And I can tell him good bye".
"And he will have been saved".
Oh, my God, I had such happiness that night!
Such hope!
But Hoess did not keep his word.
I never did know what happened to my little boy.
So, you know, that's why I didn't want to...
to live no more.
Till Nathan came and...
he made me live for him.
Live for me, Sophie.
Live for me.
Oh, my God! What have we done to you?
Be careful!
Stingo!
Nathan, put down the chair! This is no time for fun!
- put down the chair! - put down the chair.
- Stingo! - Oh, telephone.
It's Dr. Landau, Nathan's brother.
Thank you.
Hello, this is Larry. - Nathan's brother.
- Yes, Larry! - Nathan has talked about you.
- I know you’ve been friends. - He has talked about you.
Is that possible for us to arrange a meeting?
Sure. Just tell when and where.
My brother thinks the world of you.
I've never met anybody more brilliant than Nathan.
- He's such a breath at knowledge. - You're right.
He is convinced you're going to be a...
major writer, something he wants me to be.
please, sit down.
Seems to me, he's got to do everything he chooses.
He's told you and Sophie that he is a research biologist.
At Pfizer.
This...
biologist business...
is my brother's masquerade.
He has no degree of any kind. All that is a simple fabrication.
The truth is, he's quite mad.
- Christ! - One of those conditions where...
weeks, months, even years go by without any manifestations.
He has a job at Pfizer in the company library.
an undemanding sinecure I got for him where he can do a lot of reading...
without bothering anyone and he does a little research...
for one the legitimate biologist on the staff.
I'm not sure Nathan would forgive me if he knew that I told you.
He made me swear never to tell Sophie. She knows nothing.
The cruelest joke is that he was born the perfect child.
He excelled in everything.
Even Nathan's teachers would speculate on what he would achieve.
See, he was the kind of child...
everyone is prepared to take the credit for.
When he was 10, we were told that the...
child genius was a paranoid schizophrenic
From then on, the only schools he attended were...
expensive funny farms.
What can I do?
If he could stay off the drugs...
he might have a chance.
Drugs? What is he on?
Benzedrine, cocaine.
- You didn't know? - No, I did not.
I want you to spy on him.
But if you could simply keep tabs on him...
and report back to me by phone from time to time...
letting me know how he's getting on.
I'm sorry to have to involve you this way.
I don't think you understand.
I love them both.
They're friends of mine.
Good morning, Mr. Stingo.
We were afraid something terrible might have happened to you.
Miss Sophie was all for having me institute a search.
- You indeed look ravishing - Thank you, very much.
So, what you all want to do this evening?
Come, darling.
This was Nathan's idea to surprise you with a Southern evening.
Your book has wet my appetite to know about the South.
And about the trip, too.
Miss Sophie and I have been discussing the possibility of...
taking a tour to your beloved Dixie in October.
And I've been thinking, if it's all right with Miss Sophie...
Sure.
...that maybe we could make a wedding trip...
and have you join us not just as our best friend...
but as my best man.
I have the honor...
to request your hand in marriage.
To have and to hold...
from this day forth...
till death us do part.
With this ring...
I be true myself to you.
Believe it, it's traditional for the groom to give a gift...
to the best man.
I told Nathan that you'd have to put that book away...
for a while to make money and that made him very said.
Nathan, I can't possibly accept this.
Stingo, don't reject this.
Don't waste your talent.
I don't know how to thank you.
Future Mrs. Landau...
give me the honor of this dance.
It's not really about Nathan.
What do you mean?
You don't know?
It's supposed to be a secret.
He confided in me that he and his team...
discovered a cure for polio...
in my house.
If only my Saul could have lived to see the day.
- The car is ready, Mrs. Zimmerman. - I'll be down.
What did Nathan say when he saw you?
I haven't seem him.
He and Sophie left here a couple hours ago.
He said he'd look for you and straighten things out once and for all.
- Wait, what? - I guess you just missed them.
Sophie said he was imagining things trying to soothe him...
the way she does when he gets like that.
God knows what was going through his mind now.
I told you to watch out.
Next time you'll listen to me.
I got better things to do.
- Do you know where he is now? - I don't know.
- Hello. - God damn you to hell forever.
Nathan?
- Are you all right? - Oh, yes. I'm all right.
- What's wrong with your arm? - He was breaking my arm.
I got frightened and I ran away. He has a gun, Stingo.
I think he's going to use it.
I shouldn't have left him there.
We should go find...
- Nathan? - Stingo.
Now you listen. Listen to me.
Is he good? Nathan!
- Oh, God! - Nathan!
My darling, will you forgive me?
- Get off that phone, you whore! - You know that I love you.
I don't want to speak to you again!
Nathan, we love you very much, all right?
We'd do nothing to hurt you.
Now you tell us where you are.
God damn you to hell forever for betraying me...
behind my back, you whom I trust like the best friend I ever had.
and that shit-eating grin of yours day after day?
Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth when you gave me your manuscript to read.
"Ah, gee, Nathan. Thank you so much". When not 15 minutes earlier...
you'd been in bed with the woman I was going to marry.
Marry! Marry!
I'd burn in hell before I'd marry a two-timing Pollack...
who'd spread her legs for a Southern shit-ass betraying me like that.
We're going to come get you. Where are you?
Don't come. Stay where you are. I'm going to come get you.
- Both of you. - Jesus?, Nathan!
Don’t go away. You know what am I going to do...
to you deceitful, unspeakable pigs. Listen!
- Now I'm going to get you. - Oh, God!
I called his brother's office.
Larry is in Toronto. They're going to try to reach him.
I should've stayed there.
Maybe I could've helped him.
He's never been this bad before.
I think he could've killed us.
- I think he could've killed us both. - I don't care that I'll die.
I'm afraid that he'll die without me.
Thank you.
Stingo.
Where are we going?
Well, I want to take you to see the Washington sights.
We'll go by the White House.
We may get a pick Harry Truman
I mean...
where are we going?
Where are we really going?
Well, I'm going to take you down to that farm...
that I told about, in South of Virginia.
I think once we get settled in there we can...
drive over to Richmond...
get a good phonograph and buy some records.
What do you mean "get settled in there?"
Well...
I love you very much, Sophie.
And I...
I want to marry you.
I want you to live in that farm with me.
I want to write my books, I want you to help me...
raise a family...
because I...
I love you very, very much.
Is it too much to hope you might...
you might love me too?
Listen, Stingo, I'm...
beyond 30 years now, you know?
What are you going to do with an old polish lady like me?
Manage!
Manage. "Old woman"...
Don't talk that way. You...
You're always going to be...
my number one.
Well, then yes. We could go down there. Sure.
We could live there for a while and then...
We're not getting married because we could decide that later.
Sophie...
In that little country place that we'd be living in...
we would have to be married.
Its full of Christians down there, you know?
Well... I don't know, I mean...
Getting married soon, I love you for a very long time.
I know you're fond of me.
Give this time. Just give this time.
We'll be fine.
It's not just the age difference, you know?
...between you and me, Stingo.
You should have another mother for your children.
Only you.
It would not be fair to your children to have me as their mother.
Sophie, that would be the luckiest children in the world.
I'm going to tell you something.
I'm going to tell you something I never told anybody.
Never, but I need a drink.
So won't you get me that first?
In the day that we went...
to Auschwitz, it was Spring, you know, and...
we only arrived there at night.
It was a warm night. It was a beautiful night.
So...
we'll go to that farm tomorrow.
But please, Stingo, don't...
talk about marriage...
and children.
It's enough that...
we'll go down there to that farm...
to live...
for a while.
I was 22 and a virgin...
and was clasping in my arms at last...
the goddess of my unending fantasies.
My lust was inexhaustible.
Sophie's lust was both a plunge into carnal oblivion...
and a flight from memory and grief.
More than that, I now see...
It was a frantic and orgiastic attempt to beat back death.
"My dearest Stingo...
You are such a beautiful lover. I had to leave and...
forgive me for not saying goodbye but I must go back to Nathan.
Believe me, you'll find some wonderful woman...
to make you happy on that farm.
But when I woke I was feeling so terrible and...
in Despair about Nathan.
By that I mean so filled with guilt...
and thoughts of death. It was like ice...
flowing into my blood.
So... I must be with Nathan again for whatever that means.
I may not see you again, but...
do believe me how much knowing you have meant to me.
You are a great lover, Stingo.
Sophie".
He worked in a pharmaceutical lab.
I think that's how he got a hold on the cyanide.
They found it next to the bed, you know?
- What lab, you know? - I'm not sure.
"Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe.
In it...
I'll wait till judgment break.
Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight.
Be its pillow round.
Let no sunrise yellow noise...
interrupt this ground".
And so ended my voyage of discovery...
in a place as strange as Brooklyn.
I let go the rage and sorrow for Sophie and Nathan...
and for the many others who were but a few...
of the butchered and betrayed and martyred children of the Earth.
When I could finally see again...
I saw the first rays of daylight reflected in the murky river.
This was not judgment day.
Only morning.
Morning: excellent and fair.