(SIRENS WAIL)
(MARCHING FOOTSTEPS, INDISTINCT SHOUTING)
(MEN SING) ♪ Why are we waiting?
♪ Why are we waiting?
♪ Why are we waiting... ♪
Professor, sorry to throw you out of your office, but we need to shit.
Yeah! (ALL YELL APPROVINGLY)
Perhaps the professor think that,
er, peasants deserve to shit in a hole in the ground, huh?
Huh? Huh? (ALL YELL)
Well, tell me how long!
(ALL YELL)
How long?
(ALL SING) ♪ Why are we waiting? Why are we waiting? ♪
(ALL CONTINUE SINGING)
FORS YTHE: Alright, alright!
Can we have a bit of order, please?
Shhh.
Is there any necessity for this?
He won't come out. He won't even answer me.
What exactly seems to be the problem?
(YELLS ANGRILY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Great evil one in hell!
Rot his guts in the bubbling well.
Full of sulfur, full of slime.
Let him die in slow, slow time.
Whoa... Mihaly, troppo caldo. Hey, cool down.
(ALL LAUGH)
Too late! I've already put an evil eye on the prick.
(LAUGHTER CONTINUES) FORS YTHE: Quiet!
Frankly, just because the toilets are having a few teething problems,
there is absolutely no reason...
(SPEAKS ITALIAN)
What?
He said that the toilet no have the teeth.
Well, that's true. They don't. I simply mean...
But the Dutchman here doesn't have teeth neither.
(ALL LAUGH)
Er, that is quite enough.
What do you reckon's wrong with the professor?
Mmm? Er...
You'd know.
PIETER: How to explain --
Anna would laugh, and perhaps I, too --
that all the prunes and dried fruits in the world are useless.
Do such laxatives exist for the spirit, I wonder?
Mohammed won't come to the river! (LAUGHS)
No. No.
Pieter, it's cracked!
Why didn't you say something?
Let me see. No. No.
It must've been pinching like mad. Come on.
No.
I...
I appreciate the thought.
May I...ask you something?
Mmm.
Am I...
Do you think that I've become old before my time?
(CHUCKLES) Pieter.
You were born old before your time.
But it's alright. We can put you back together with Tarzan's Grip.
PIETER: How to explain.
But explanation is not possible.
And so you, Diary,
after her, my dearest friend,
must become a note from the underground.
Before the spring I'm gonna build an irrigation scheme --
from river to garden.
I will grow everything --
paprika, okra...
Sì, sì -- carciofi, melanzane,
broccoli, zucchini...
What's wrong with a turnip, then?
Who needs turnip? We have Nino there.
(NINO LAUGHS)
(SPLASH !)
(QUIETLY) Mmm? Mmm.
Ah.
Mihaly! Hey, Mihaly!
Mihaly!
You did this!
Evil eye!
PIETER: How to explain.
Pieter, we really must...
It goes without saying, Mrs Van Leeuwen,
you have our deepest sympathy.
Now, um, I think it's important that we all keep focused.
Now, we can't seem to ascertain any cause of death.
I assume you have no objection to a medical examination.
(BEV CLEARS THROAT)
Colonel, perhaps we could discuss this later.
His, er, watch is stopped at two o'clock.
That may be an indication of the time of death.
It hasn't worked since 1945.
He dropped it in champagne on VE Day.
(MOURNFUL OPERATIC MUSIC)
Professore?
Ask Professore. Ask me what?
He wanted to know why the Dutchman died.
Oh, why does anybody die?
(SIGHS) I suppose the place would get a bit crowded
if we all hung about, wouldn't it?
You do wonder, though... (WOMAN SINGS OPERATICALLY)
..if there's a way in which we choose when to say, "Goodnight, Vienna,
"city of a million melodies."
What...what...why...? What cause did the Dutchman die of?
Oh, wouldn't have a clue. They're giving him the once-over now.
What is that caterwauling?
Is dumpling-shaped woman.
(SINGS) ♪ Still all my song shall be
♪ Nearer my God to thee... ♪
She not bad.
We have the, er, certificate for you.
No cause of death?
No apparent cause of death.
All external indicators normal.
But people don't just die.
Yeah, as a rule they don't, no.
But, um, God, you do see some strange things sometimes -- in battle.
P.O.W.s -- blokes fighting fit one minute, fade and pop off the next.
Who knows why your man went.
You won't fool me, Pieter.
You won't hide from me.
Whatever language it's in, whatever you've hidden, I'll find you.
(KNOCKS)
Chef's special.
Mahily said you wouldn't eat it, but I thought...
Broiled sheep's stomach.
I wouldn't eat it either.
Oh, you can help me. I can't do it alone.
Ah.
OK, now, you start with these ones.
I think they're in English. And this one too.
Um, I think I might have something.
January 5.
"This place, all featureless, barren dust --
"Anna likes it.
"But perhaps she better understands oblivion.
"She is, I think, attracted to the resident Italian r...
Roue. "..roue.
"To be expected -- after all, she is a young woman.
"I've indicated that she might well enjoy more freedom.
"I'll never know, God willing, if she took it."
Oh, God.
I shouldn't have asked you.
I'm not a baby, you know?.
You don't have to hide stuff from me.
Anyway, you can't do it on your own.
You'll go mad.
You'd be running round like sodding mad Ophelia
whimpering about rosemary and stuff.
Perhaps...
(CLOCK TICKS)
(MAN COUGHS)
PIETER: November 1942.
Exam time.
The one time of the year when I change from a dry old bore
to a visionary charging through the desert of ignorance
to the Valhalla of high distinctions.
(MAN COUGHS)
Not again.
Thank you, sir.
I wish you a pleasant Sabbath.
If that is possible.
(MAN COUGHS)
PIETER: Of course, we knew it was happening.
We all knew.
And so we looked down and away
and avoided the eyes of others
for fear they would read in our own cowardice or, worse, complicity.
Louise. Huh?
(BELL RINGS)
(WHISTLES)
(CAT MEWS) Hello.
To be or not to be, Socks, that is the question.
Hamlet and me, we are like this.
(MEN SPEAK GERMAN)
(GLASS SHATTERS)
(OBJECTS CRUNCH UNDERFOOT)
MAN ON LOUDSPEAKER: Achtung!
(MARCHING FEET)
(DOG BARKS)
(KNOCKS)
Adrianna.
Everyone's gone and the shop is ruined.
The neighbours won't speak.
I didn't know where else to go, s...sir.
Come in.
This will do for a nightdress.
You will stay, obviously.
I often sit up, working and fall asleep in the chair.
Wasting no time forming the habits of old age.
Er, the bathroom is down the hall.
No.
The, er, chamber pot, it's quite clean.
A family heirloom from some cousin twice removed
in the court of Queen Victoria, I think.
(DOGS BARK, WHISTLES BLOW)
(MEN YELL, GUNFIRE)
(DOGS BARK)
My papa hates the English.
He once made a clock for a rich Englishman that went backwards.
He said it was his revenge on them for Greenwich.
He would say to me,
"Anna, each time we set our clocks by Greenwich Mean Time,
"we are kneeling down in worship to the poker-up-his-bum
"god of the Anglicans."
He thought that if everyone in the world
moved their clocks and watches by just one minute
that there would be a revolution
and the Greenwich god would be toppled
and fall on his fat face into the Thames.
He...he considered this a sensible preoccupation,
making clocks go backwards?
I think he meant it as a joke.
I see.
(ANNA WEEPS)
(ANNA WEEPS AND GASPS)
(INSECTS CHIRRUP)
Signora!
Please. Don't do it.
It is a sin to do this.
Come on, what about me? You no think of me.
I find you here in the mud all blue.
The fish come out of your mouth.
(LAUGHS)
Giuseppe --
you're being a hero?
(LAUGHS)
Come on. Don't tell nobody.
(ANNA LAUGHS)
ANNA: He liked these trees.
He said the bark falling off them
made him feel better about growing old.
He knew about you and me, you know, it's in his diary.
Now I'm sure he's not gonna beat me up.
Tell me something funny.
Funny? I can tell you funny.
(SIGHS)
I've fallen in love.
That is funny. Yeah, it's not funny for me, though.
She don't want me.
So stupid, you know?.
I think of nothing but her.
It's like your professore, how he love you.
If he loved me that much, he wouldn't have just gone.
Un...
Unless he thought I didn't love him.
Unless there's something...
Maybe he go because he love you.
See I know one man who suffer for love like this -- my papa.
For your mother? My mother? No.
Are you crazy? No.
It's for the madam of the bordello near where I live in the village.
He was crazy for her.
But she die virgin.
They check her out before they bury her -- everything intact.
(CHUCKLES)
Poor Papa.
See, but your professore is like that.
You see, every minute that he love you
he carry with him on his back.
It becomes so heavy.
That's what he used to do.
Signora --
you must learn to be Italian.
Learn to...to live light.
La vita leggera --
it mean "to live light'.
See, you leave all your pain, all the guilty feeling,
everything underneath,
and then you just float.
(BLOWS)
Up.
Above the tree.
Up into the sky, just a light.
La vita leggera.
You understand?
(KNOCK AT DOOR)
You're working very late, sir.
She wants to bury him in the camp.
Under one of the blessed paperbarks.
I'm not running Kinsela's Funeral Service here.
I haven't got a licence, apart from anything else.
Gets worse.
A Jewish funeral?
Yep. Told you. But he's not.
His form said "atheist'.
"Due to certain wartime circumstances,
"I was unable to bury my father.
"I would like to now lay both finally to rest."
Mmm. Certainly put the cat among the flurry pigeons, hasn't it?
(SIGHS)
(PEOPLE CHAT QUIETLY)
Adrianna...Adri...
Ad...
Guten tag. Guten tag.
Oh, God.
(SPEAKS GERMAN)
Danke schoen.
PIETER: I find myself surprised by my own ingenuity.
At the laundry I said her smalls belonged to my maiden aunt.
The chap was jealous.
"Ooh, " he said. "I would like to meet this aunt. "
Phwhoo. I would like to meet this aunt.
Ingenuity, yes.
Indeed, even the courage of which I seem capable,
now another human being has come to depend upon me.
Adrianna, some food.
(DISTANT SIRENS WAIL)
(DOG BARKS)
Mustn't mix them up, must we?
It was a joke.
Ah.
You have one of your headaches?
A little.
Julietta says it's because your bite's crooked.
Her father's a dentist.
You really should do something about your false teeth.
You have discussed my false teeth in class?
We did a survey.
2% believed they were real.
I see.
I'm sorry, sir.
Could it be that I have come to care for this girl?
There have been certain stirrings of the body.
But surely not.
It was simply a matter of company.
The doc was prepared to do it, but I thought...
..well, mark of respect, you know?.
I just need to plug the leaky bits.
I'll give you a hand.
I can't keep him here. Not in this heat.
In town, to the cemetery, is best.
Tomorrow.
She'll understand when you explain.
Poor blighter.
They're all soft, you know?. Even the battle-scarred ones.
Half-starved with malaria and the like.
(SQUELCHING) (GRUNTS)
They're all so soft.
PIETER: My inquiries about her family have been fruitless.
And risky.
The SS were at the university today looking for a radio transmitter.
(WAGNER'S "LIEBESTOD' FROM "TRISTAN AND ISOLDE' PLAYS)
(DOOR OPENS)
I am aware of her empty desk in my classroom.
I can't breathe tonight.
Please, could I stay down here for just an hour?
And your silly laundryman has shrunk my blouse.
(SIGHS)
Dreary Dickie again.
Tragic, yes, but not dreary.
It is Isolde singing a song of grief over the dead Tristan.
A song of love and death.
You see, Isolde is fighting the death --
she's angry at it.
You can hear it in the dissonance of the English horn.
But here is the most ravishing thing.
In the final phrase, "dreary Dickie" allows the horn to fall away.
He removes the instrument of struggle, of yearning,
leaving at the last no battle, no...no wounds.
Only rest and peace.
And forgiveness.
Of course there are other... other interpretations
pertaining to the rhythms of the sexual act,
but...I do not care for those.
Well, a new blouse tomorrow.
Downstairs will think I've become a fashion plate.
(CHUCKLES)
(FOOTSTEPS APPROACH, MEN SPEAK GERMAN)
(KNOCK AT DOOR)
(MAN SPEAKS GERMAN)
(WOMAN YELLS IN DUTCH)
(PEOPLE STRUGGLE)
(DOG BARKS)
Kangaroos, huh?
Possums. Nah.
The Dutch mantis.
Once I see before in Chianti.
Signor, he want revenge.
Dante, you got rigatoni in your head.
This kangaroo. Kangaroo.
Kangaroo bite like this? Huh?
Where are they? They were there when I went to sleep.
What are you talking about? They can't have just vanished.
Inanimate objects don't just up and go.
Someone must've taken them.
Taken what? They're all I have left of him.
Signora, what?!
My husband's teeth.
(DOG BARKS)
Signor, he want revenge.
Do you really think it's true?
In Italy once I see
whole village have pains of dying man.
We must give Professore what he wants.
What does he want?
You wanted to see me?
Look, you've given us a bit of a headache here.
I dunno about where you come from, but here there is a law
that says you can't just bury someone wherever you want.
Otherwise there'd be mums and dads under Hill's hoists
all over the country.
It'll have to be the cemetery in town.
And that is the end of it. He chose to die here.
I don't know why. But this is where I want him to rest.
Adrianna, you know, the town cemetery's really quite nice.
No!
What would you do if it was someone you loved?
Joe. Come in.
Please, I need your help.
I need a big...chain.
Chain? What chain?
I got chain for dog, bike chain...
Daisy chain. Shut up, Nino.
Oh, chain.
Um...no. No, no. This one.
Yeah. Yeah, and the strongest padlock you've got.
Colonel.
Oh.
She'll have to be moved.
Well, that's not part of my brief.
BEV: Colonel, I think you should wait.
This is her way of, I don't know, staving off the inevitable.
Maybe it's an opportunity to show some compassion.
Compassion?
Actually, she's right.
If I was her, I'd do the same thing.
PIETER: Anna?
Anna!
Anna.
PIETER: Today it happened.
My fault.
For the fleeting and terrible mistake of hope, my fault.
(MEN ARGUE IN GERMAN)
(QUIETLY) Anna. Anna!
I brought you some water.
Well, you look...you look tired.
Sit down. Sit down. Take a seat.
Yeah. Yes.
Lady, I... N...no.
What am I doing?
Is he changing his mind?
They're letting you sweat it out.
What if it isn't here?
What if there's no reason?
I don't know.
I don't know what to say.
(SPEAKS GERMAN)
Ja.
PIETER: I had known, of course.
I had always known that he would come.
And here, in this haven, he found me.
And I thought, "They have sent Mephistopheles to me
"in the form of a boy with bitten fingernails. "
Auf Wiedersehen, Professor.
Auf Wiedersehen.
Anna...
(SOBS) Anna, I miss you.
Where are you?
(SOBS) Oh, God.
FORS YTHE: Corporal, I've had enough of this. Get me some bolt-cutters.
Hey. He-hey...
Presto, presto... The... They-they come.
The Colonnello, he come with grosso snip-snip.
See, I hear...I hear them for to take away Pieter.
(SPEAKS ITALIAN)
(SPEAKS ITALIAN ANXIOUSLY)
Bravery is not really my thing, you know?.
Shut up.
Hey, hey, hey.
Oh, Christ.
Let me pass.
Well, you do it, then.
I don't understand you people!
We live and we die. That's it.
B, call the police.
Well, I don't really think that... Do it.
(MAEVE SINGS TO TUNE OF "O CHRISTMAS TREE' OVER P.A.)
♪ Oh, bless the free Oh, bless the free... ♪
Forgive my frankness, but under the circumstances,
what is behind that door will very soon, if it's not already,
become a serious health hazard.
Then bury it.
Aiuto! Help! Help!
There is a flood. Il gabinetti haunted.
Colonel, come quick. Il gabinetti haunted.
The Dutchman give gabinetti. Now he take away.
It is dead man's revenge.
It is the second flood.
Plumbing's not part of my brief either.
I told you. The Dutchman take away.
The Dutchman didn't give the damn toilets. The Department did.
Will one of you get me a blasted plumber?
(GASPS) If they're hurting -- oil of cloves.
(CHUCKLES)
(LAUGHS)
PIETER: I should have told her it was not lack of care or decay
but a moment of childhood abandon on the seesaw which destroyed my teeth.
I should have told her many things.
No-one saw me.
I didn't mean to frighten you.
I thought I'd be back before you, that you'd never know.
I wanted to walk in the street.
I could beat you until you are raw.
Come.
(CLOCK TICKS)
It's a joke.
(BOTH LAUGH)
(DISTANT SIREN WAILS)
L-I think perhaps not. A little embarrassing.
Why?
There's a war on.
You haven't done this before, have you?
I...
Not with someone else.
(SIREN WAILS)
Whatever it is, say it.
I...
I wished your husband dead.
(SIGHS)
He reminded me I was a...peasant.
So I cursed him.
If any penance would bring him back, I would do it.
So would I.
But it won't.
Adrianna?
I've found them.
PIETER: Collaboration.
It sounds like a game for children --
'Monopoly', 'Ludo', 'Collaboration'.
(KNOCKS AT DOOR)
(DOOR OPENS)
(WOMAN LAUGHS)
(PARTY HUBBUB)
The short-wave at the university is being used to organise the saboteurs.
I will help you find them.
Und in return?
You will not search my house.
Tick. Tock.
(SMASH !)
(GUNSHOT)
(SOBS)
(GUNSHOT)
He must've loved you a whole lot.
Shhh.
Truce. We've averted the flood.
Seems the drain was blocked.
Senora, mi scusi. I...I make mistake.
But teeth make senora sad, so I take.
And...I play silly game with pomodori.
But then I drop in toilet so make no more sad.
Perdono me.
These were lodged in the drain,
with all manner of curiosities.
For a man who didn't laugh, he's come a long way,
don't you think?
His best joke.
Perhaps.
Pieter himself described this as a, er, barren and featureless place,
an odd place, you would think, for a man like him to rest.
But, er, it is my hope now
that Baringa's dust will be made more fertile.
Or perhaps a little kinder
by someone with whom we've walked, with tolerance and without,
through these turbulent and...and yearning times.
(CLEARS THROAT) Amen.
ALL: Amen.
(READS IN HEBREW)
Amen.
(CONTINUES SPEAKING HEBREW)
Amen.
Shalom.
Shalom, Pieter.
PIETER: How long? How long will the clock keep ticking?
And she put out her arms,
wide, like a child showing the size of the universe,
and spun slowly around.
This long. As long as this.