Starring
A film by
DAMNATION
Let me in!
What for?
Let me in!
I've been thinking things over.
One has to learn to make one's own decisions.
I'm staying with my family.
I'm going to try to make my daughter
different from us.
She'll have a different life.
We won't have to explain to her.
Let me in!
Go away!
Why can't you love me?
I love you and you know it.
You've got nothing to lose, Karrer.
All you're risking is your own skin.
Take a look around.
You visit five rotten bars a day.
You collapse into your bunk at night.
It's time you moved out of here for a while.
What do you say?
You can't go on drinking cheap brandy endlessly.
All it does is stupefy you.
It destroys your brain and puffs up your liver.
I knew an old bum whose hands were so shaky
he wrapped a scarf round his wrist to get his glass up to his mouth.
He didn't stay here long.
I've never been abroad. A change would do me good.
You go to the given address,
pick up the package and bring it here.
You get 20% as travelling expenses.
Make it more tempting for me.
That's all you get.
It's not the money.
I just don't feel like leaving here.
It's up to you. I wanted to help...
What if...
I know someone
who would collect the package,
for the 20%.
Plus petrol.
Petrol? You can't even drive.
I'm talking about someone else.
I can't trust just anybody.
Neither can I.
It's finished
It's all over
Over
And there won't be another
It won't be good
Ever again
Never more
Maybe never more
It's like a nightmare
All of it
Maybe
Where is somebody new?
Where will he come from? If he comes
Or won't he come
Ever again?
Maybe never more
Take it or leave it This is what you're stuck with
What can you do?
You lose your words
Yet you cannot go
It's been over for a llong time
It's good that utopia eXists
Good to know
I won't be here llong
Take it or lleave it
Say, honey, why?
Over now?
And there won't be another
It won't be good
Ever again
Maybe never more
He's got my soul
Things are going his way
Without him This world is barren
With him Life is full and happy
Silly
Never again
Maybe never more
It's over
All over
There's no end
No end now
It can't fade
And it won't fade
Ever again
Never maybe
Maybe never more
Leave my wife alone!
You're misunderstanding things.
I see. All right.
The next time I find you here,
I'll break your neck.
He's completely insane.
Take my advice,
and don't go looking for trouble.
Go home now and go to bed.
All they can do is get you into trouble.
That woman is...
a witch.
And her husband has had it.
He'll never get away with all that debt he's piled up.
It will happen to anyone who makes a pass at that woman.
That woman's a leech.
She's a bottomless swamp
who swallows you up and sucks you in.
That's the sad end of it all, son.
Button up your coat properly.
You never know in this weather.
The fog gets into the corners, into the lungs.
It settles in your soul.
We'll know what to cling to once this world explodes.
Mouth to mouth, heart to heart, star to star.
But there'll be no shame any more and the veil comes off.
I'm talking about Maya's veil.
That obscures people's minds.
Gorgey was some strategist.
He told Paskievics:
"Look, if you want to kill Hungarians, do it in an internal war.
"All I'm asking is a million.
"For my honour?
"Who would be witness to that?
"Who would see about it?"
It's true...
I could offer this to someone else but I thought of you.
The trip's only three days.
You pick up the parcel and bring it home.
- How much? - 20%.
All right.
This way, it's a nice family story.
But it finishes like any other story.
Because stories end badly.
stories are all stories of disintegration.
The heroes always disintegrate
and they disintegrate the same way.
If they didn't,
it wouldn't be disintegration but revival.
And I'm not talking about revival but disintegration.
Irrevocable disintegration.
So, what's about to happen here
is just one form of ruin among the million that exist.
So if they put you in jail because of your debts,
don't count on temporary ruin.
Because this ruin is always final,
as ruin generally is.
At the same time,
there might just be a way to stop this ruin.
Mainly with money, and not by playing the hero.
Perhaps a single crack can be covered over...
I like the rain.
I like to watch the water run down the window.
It always calms me down.
I don't think about anything, I just watch the rain.
I'm not attached to anything any more.
I don't depend on anyone.
I am going to leave.
Because nothing is stable here.
I can't trust anyone.
I know that I'm alone. I know it well.
But I can't give up and I won't give up.
Big city crowds will applaud me. I will be a winner.
I don't let others drag me down.
One must return to beauty.
Rediscover life again.
The joy of great things.
The taste of victory and success.
And that's where you've failed.
Because you've given up.
You've killed the love and decency in yourself.
You'll come to a bad end.
Because one cannot live without love and decency.
You really might be stronger than me.
You don't know what I can do.
And I can't.
Do you know the Old Testament, young man?
"Though they blow the trumpet
"and make everything ready,
"no one shall go into battle, for my wrath is upon the whole crowd.
"Outside is the sword, inside are plague and famine.
"Those in the country shall die by the sword,
"those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague.
"All who survive and escape shall go to the mountains,
"moaning like the doves of the valleys,
"each for his own sins.
"Hands shall go limp, knees shall become weak as water.
"Horror shall descend upon them.
"They shall throw their silver into the streets,
"their gold shall be unclean.
"Their silver and gold cannot save them on the day of the Lord's wrath.
"They may not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it,
"for it has made them stumble into sin.
"I turn my face away from them,
"and they will desecrate my treasured place.
"The land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence.
"I bring the most wicked of the nations
"to take possession of their houses.
"When terror comes,
"they shall seek peace, but there shall be none.
"They shall seek a vision from the prophet,
"the teaching of the law by the priest shall be lost,
"and so shall the counsel of the elders.
"The hands of the people of the land shall tremble.
"I shall deal with them according to their conduct...
"and by their own standards I shall judge them.
"Then they shall know...
"that I am the Lord."
I see you have to go. I won't keep you any longer.
- Let's go out for dinner. - Our accounts are settled.
There's nothing for you here.
I don't understand.
What don't you understand?
I still don't understand.
You will one day.
But I want to understand now.
- Then understand now! - But I don't understand.
You will one day.
Let's go out for dinner.
Let go of me!
Dirty little sniper!
Calm down!
You won't get away with it! No way!
You'll rot like a rat!
- You're totally crazy! - Leave me alone!
Let me go!
- Take it easy! - Get out of here!
- Leave me alone! - Stop it!
Leave me alone! Get out of here!
- Leave me alone. - Listen to me!
- I'm sorry. - I've had enough of you.
I didn't mean to hurt you. Stop or I'll kill you!
Leave me alone!
I didn't mean to hurt you. You know I didn't.
Get away from me.
You are right about everything.
I admit you are right about everything.
You know that I love you.
I couldn't lie to you now. I will change.
I promise I'll change, but you have to help me.
Hit me if you want to...
When you looked at me yesterday,
I realized something.
I realized that, between you and a world forever out of reach,
there is a strange and empty tunnel.
I don't know anyone else who knows that road.
You're standing alone at the entrance to the tunnel
because you know something I can't even put a name on,
something deeper and more ruthless
than I can ever understand.
I realize that I can never get closer to that world.
I can only long for it, because it is hidden by a light and warmth
that I cannot bear.
I have been able neither to believe in it nor to renounce it.
Yesterday I realized I had made a fatal mistake.
If I were to lose you,
it would be the unforgivable end of me,
because I know nothing about that unnameable world.
Since you are part of it,
you mean the world to me. That can never change.
Please don't repudiate me.
Let me see you and I'll do anything for you.
Kick me, spit at me and I'll return again and again
for you to kick and spit at.
Because you are right,
you are ruthlessly right.
And I really do love you.
Are you just going to stand there?
I sit by the window and look out completely in vain.
For years and years I've been sitting there,
and something always tells me that I'll go mad the next moment.
But I don't go mad the next moment,
and I have no fear of going mad
because fear of madness would mean
that I'd have to cling to something.
Yet I don't cling to anything.
I cling to nothing, but everything clings to me.
They want me to look at them.
To look at the hopelessness of things.
To watch as a scruffy dog outside my window,
under the pewter sky in the torrential rain
walks up to a puddle and has a drink.
They want me to watch the pitiful effort
everyone makes in trying to speak
before they drop into the grave.
But there's no time, for they are already falling.
And they want this irreversibility of things to drive me mad
but the next second they want me not to go mad.
Once I almost talked about that with a woman.
I told her that I hated her, that I'd never loved her.
Yet I didn't hate her just like I'd never loved her.
I wanted to know if it made sense to speak at all.
I told her that I hated her tenderness, her faithfulness,
her being so neat and precise.
I was revolted by the blind trust with which she clung to me.
She looked at me disapprovingly
and went off to heat up my supper.
I just stood there and yelled.
For three days, we stayed indoors. She kept walking behind me.
She only started crying the second day.
She stood crying in her nightie.
She didn't sob, she just whimpered. Just wailing without moving.
Then she crawled into the corner and would not move.
I was looking at her nightie.
All I saw was the nightie, that lacy nylon nightie.
Then I jumped on her.
I pulled it and tore it, I ripped it.
But she still didn't understand,
she just kept clinging to me and repeating something to me.
Then she went into the bathroom and locked the door.
I just watched the buckets of coal in the air
and counted them.
Then I started all over again and counted them again.
I don't know how long it lasted.
It was dawn by the time I broke the door down.
It was what I'd expected,
but even so it shocked me.
I couldn't believe
that frail body had so much blood in it.
Just as I'd never have believed
there'd be somebody I could trust the way I trust you,
somebody who could make me believe it is worth speaking.
I know you understand that I love you and that it's not over.
And that you're able to step out of this story like any other.
And I don't want anything,
only that we should get out of this pigsty for ever
and never lose each other again.
So now it's me you want to look at?
I'd do the basest things to make you choose me.
Maybe.
But my husband arrives tomorrow evening.
The problem is I'm afraid of children.
Because those innocent bright blue eyes,
those blond plaits,
those tinkling voices,
hide a stealthy and ruthless power
and its purpose is to maintain
the madness of hopelessness.
To give a new incentive
to the reality beating on our eardrums,
to ridicule all resistance
without the tiniest chance of salvation.
Yet they proclaim a minute chance of salvation
- resurrection itself -
in such a way that we cannot escape its elemental continuity.
Perhaps it just means that I have given up,
that I'm a coward, a god-awful coward.
I don't even dare hope my fate will change for the better.
All I do is make excuses for my cowardice through nausea.
How about thinking of something other than yourself for once?
Can't you understand?
I've grown old.
I'm a wreck who doesn't dare do anything.
That's the surest sign of getting old.
Even before your teeth fall out,
before you go bald,
before you destroy your liver,
your courage departs and you haven't the guts
to do what you would have done before
for the slightest chance of success.
Your problem is that you see things from your angle.
You think it makes a difference
what you think about yourself or others.
You should realize that things have an order in the world
and you can't do anything to upset it.
Others get old, too.
Do you think we are all cowards?
No.
I know that you yourself are just cautious.
All right. Drink up. I'm closing.
Give me another one.
This is the last.
I wish I knew
what makes you think you'll survive anything and anyone?
Why don't things have an effect on you?
I don't understand that.
There are lots of things you don't understand, Karrer.
Doesn't matter.
Drink! You, too!
There's always a chance to escape.
There may be cracks in the fabric of things.
But there's always a chance.
Only you won't get away with it!
If I don't break your neck, someone else will.
You'll come to a bad end, I'm sure.
I'll drink to that.
And to you!
I can put up with your friend less and less.
What's wrong with him?
I don't like people
who try to cheat you from the start.
He has a lot to learn before he takes me on.
He shouldn't try it at my expense.
He cheated you?
The package has been opened.
- Things are missing. - Why not ask?
He'd say it was damaged on the journey.
Is there a lot of damage?
I have my safety margins.
But I need to be reliable.
You know me,
people can talk to me,
discuss things. I've got a good heart.
He should be glad I pulled him out of trouble.
I'll never understand his kind.
I'm just sitting here Mourning for you, darling
Counting the time Until I'm seventy
We never had a son
But others had more to lose.
But I won't see you after death, love
Because I didn't believe in it
And you had your doubts
It's just around twilight When I think of you
I see your tired forehead In the dust
What a lovely colourful crowd. A party.
Dance!
Arms and legs, waists and shoulders
working in perfect harmony!
The way they speak...
movements,
glances that raise the dancer over earthly troubles.
The young are so lovely!
Believe me,
there is nothing like finding one another,
when there is music that warms the heart.
Two hands clasped together,
one foot senses where the other will step.
And follows, no matter where the other steps.
Because it believes they'll be flying from now on.
From every swing and turn.
Who knows? Perhaps...
it is flying.
Go on, young man,
before it's too late.
Believe me, there is nothing worse in a man's life
than when he realizes that those he loves,
those he feels are friends...
well, when suddenly it turns out
that they are on a fatal path
and cannot find the proper way again.
Because their sins prevent them
from ever becoming honest citizens again,
because they have lost the chance for ever
to live freely with a clear conscience
under the protection of the law, enjoying their days.
So it was this awful inner tension that brought me here
setting the affectionate friend in me aside
to fulfil my duties,
because of my deep respect for order.
Please do not consider my report as a confidential case.
But cheap tattling.
And I authorize you, if necessary,
to mention my name.
Since I have told you everything,
aware of my responsibilities,
and facing all the consequences...
POLlcE
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