Excerpt
Peter Pavlac

A FILM or THE FRESHWATER CISTERN IN THE HOLE

(Extract)

 

A FILM or THE FRESHWATER CISTERN IN THE HOLE

František Hromek is obviously under the influence. Of alcohol, Bob Wilson, his girlfriend Lucia, David Lynch and other significant circumstances.

Nostalgically thinking about alcohol, about his girlfriend Lucia, about David Lynch, but, and this is the most important, most decisive and most harrowing thing, he is trying to forget the main, undoubtedly most distracting idea, which has to do with his latest passion. As the script suggests, it is one of the most trivial desires: imagining fame, easy riches and an entry in the historical annals and encyclopedias. The thing is that he   would like to make a FILM.

            František is sitting at a bar in Pezinok, watching three Bratislavan beauties who came in a short time ago, pondering his desire and at the same time replaying in his mind several scenes from the past few days. These scenes concern unsuccessful attempts to pitch his proposal to any of the students of film direction at the Film School, VSMU. It is an idea that is certainly brilliant. It is an idea that would deserve an Igric Award at the very least. These are the thoughts of František Hromek, an educated individual, but in a completely different line of work than the movie industry. František Hormek is an engineer of water constructions. Despite that, he has recently been focusing on films. It truly is his new passion.

            František Hromek is trying to see things realistically. He is thinking about motivation, a word which he has learned to use in a new context. The thing is that each director who turned down his brilliant script always asked him about his urges and motivation. František Hromek doesn’t have an answer to this question yet. He doesn’t feel the need to have it at this time. For the time being, he is trying to resolve the contrast between what he knows, what he wants and what he is capable of. A boring topic at first glance. But behold! It should not be overlooked that certain things are hidden, never come to the surface and this is something that František Hromek, an engineer of water constructions, could tell us about. Things like various turbines or various segments, or supply and draft canals. But right now he would not want to tell us anything about it. Right now he is just thinking and pondering and sipping his red wine, just like that, no special reason, just for himself and his depression. Red wine. Ha! Motivation they say. They keep expecting motivation from him. Why? Why does he want to make a movie? That’s the thing. He knows. He just doesn’t know how to put it into words. And in the end why should anyone else know it?

            The three Bratislavan beauties probably came here to pick up some men. They take in the new surroundings which are typical of Pezinok. The whole world changes for them, they feel ‘above everything’, because nobody knows them here, because they are convinced that they are attractive. František Hromek, an engineer of water constructions with a brilliant script in hand, is not someone who would interest them. The three beauties have just been joined by the first threesome of your usual Pezinok leather jacketed guys. František is not sorry. At all. Not a chance. Despite him turning his head in their direction so as to see what they were up to. They want to have fun. Obviously at any cost.

            František ordered another spritzer and concluded that he would have to make it last for another two hours. The thing is he doesn’t have money for another one and the night is just beginning. Nobody notices him and he isn’t taking notice of anyone either. A total symbiosis in this noisy environment. The music is playing really loud. He turns. The bar stool is round. It turns. He blinks his eyes. A stroboscope. He covers his ears. A sound stroboscope. Perfect. He likes it. He‘ll use this effect in his film. Later. Now he turns back. STOP! He pauses, noticing something…

            Frantisek Hromek is staring at the entrance staircase. The person descending is way too familiar to him. He knows him. He‘s seen him around. In the end, the person who shows up here served him as a pre-picture of one of the four characters in his script. What‘s he doing here? It‘s definitely him. All he’s missing is the “Not Even 5,000 Truths Could Save Me” sign that he usually wears around his neck. He has a high forehead and an absent look in his eyes. He knew why he chose him to be the character of Peter. He chuckled. Unbelievable! He orders a beer. The waiter greets him. They know each other. Exactly! It’s his character. He made it up. But…

            He turns around again and again sees a person coming that he knows, someone who served him as a pre-picture of D-ano’s character, and right behind him!! Yes, right behind him in walk Jožo and Fero. Actually that’s just what he called them in his script, he doesn’t really know their names. František is amazed. Images and connections that he has been looking for all those months, the associations and contacts between them, the stories that he made up so he could put them together, everything that he discovered and could only be grateful to his attention and imagination for, appeared all of a sudden as constructions not at all imagined, like the truth that exists in a different dimension, and at the same time in the visible and tangible one. Great. All of his characters are meeting up here. D-ano, Jožo and Fero know each other. And Peter knows them too, because they are coming up to him and greeting each other. Just the way he thought it up. A coincidence… Overlapping of structures…. František is not an intellectual. He doesn’t understand their words. They sit down at a table together and talk. Once in a while one of them stretches and then they laugh. He doesn’t know what this is about. Some kind of a game or something like that. František focuses all his attention on them.

            Another threesome of Pezinok hicks with gelled up hair, reeking of cheap cologne, are now trying their luck with the Bratislava beauties.

            František isn‘t perceiving them any more. He‘s watching his characters and in his head going through his memories of how he discovered their primary templates. He made up D-ano when he saw him once lying in front of the Obzor movie theatre. He was on the ground with a bloody lip, embarrassed by his own wife, who was kicking him because he wouldn‘t buy her a beer. Despite all this he had so much dignity and looked so unbelievably peaceful and determined, as if he were bearing some extremely important message and the primitiveness of his wife couldn’t knock him off balance. A firm look in his tear-filled eyes. František was sitting on a tram when all this happened and was only watching from a distance but in any case he saw enough. He named him D-ano and made him the ‘Lord of the Cistern’. A mother with a child got on the tram at the next stop. He was shocked by what the child said back then: “Do we have to go? I want to see how the play ends,” and by that, the child meant D-ano being beaten up by his own wife. That is why he is not D-ano, but D-ano. Thick and bent over. His mind stopped… and that’s when he saw a person across from him, with earphones in his ears who hadn‘t heard what the child said. First he was thinking about the total lack of sensitivity of the child, at which the mother reacted with laughter and the other passenger with the uninvolved look of someone phlegmatic. František condemned him to death. One cynical person after another. It was only then that he noticed his earphones and had to reprimand himself. He had wronged him. The man was an innocent, as they say of children who disappear from this world. He had a book on nuclear physics and astronomy in his lap. Jožo. He named him Jožo and he made a painter of mathematical diagrams out of him, who had the role of a director in his film. (He decided on the form of a film within the film.) And that’s when Fero showed up. On that same tram. Everyone thought he was the ticket inspector, waiting for him to pull out his badge and start checking everyone, because his quiet appearance of a dreamy printmaker did not look right in this situation on the tram. In the end he turned out not to be the ticket inspector. Jožo didn’t notice him, and that is why František assumed that they didn’t know each other. And Peter? He saw him that day as well. He was walking down Laurinska Street with a tag around his neck and František was trying to figure out why. Why couldn’t he be saved by 5,000 truths? What does it actually mean? He didn’t understand it. That’s why he chose him for his film. The owner of the yellow dog. A real dog.

            And now all four of them are sitting here in the same bar talking to each other. Just the way František wrote it in his script. That is what František is thinking, because now nothing seems impossible to him any more. The boundaries of two worlds have been erased in a matter of few minutes and he‘s convinced that he‘s not drunk enough  for his mind to be filling in empty places which he himself was not able to fill. In the end he doesn’t care.

            He is watching them carefully, jerking when one of the Bratislavan beauties bumps into him. The ladies are now entertaining a third threesome of drink buyers in this short interval of self-fun. František watches their pack leader for a while. A sex machine with unnatural body language. She’s really getting on his nerves. The second one is kind of pretty, but she gives in to the Machine’s whims. The third one is trying to stack up to the other two and repeats everything with great exaggeration. No one is noticing her, but the poor girl is trying…

            František turns his head back to his characters. They just started playing Brighella. Even that he thought he had invented. They‘re really into it. František is enjoying it with them. However he notices that, once in a while, they glance at the three beauties. It seems as if they‘re getting on their nerves, too.

            Yes, everything is heading in the direction of the film being shot soon. František has already forgotten his depression, what he is interested in is whether everything will happen as he wrote it not too long ago. In the end, even the three beauties… even they appeared in the script somewhere. Or not? He can’t remember exactly, he is a little drunk.

            And that’s when it happens. His foursome of characters decide to entertain themselves in a new way. He hears their jubilant voices exclaiming that they are going to make a film. They are assigning roles, even though František has assigned the roles a long time ago. They‘re doing everything that he describes in the script. Ha! He laughs internally. They told him the script was too unrealistic for this day and age but they should see this. They should see what is reality and what is fiction. They can shove their magical realistic abstractions of intellectual character. This is where the genius of the new generation steps in. František has no doubt in his mind now that everything will happen as he has written it. That’s why it‘ll be best to insert an abridged version of the most important part of the script, so it‘s not necessary to react with unnecessary description and various stylistic-writer tricks to what is going on here. Here it is:

Theme

Author: František Hromek

Title: A Freshwater Cistern in the Hole

 

                                                                                    Translated by Viridiana Carleo

From Laughing Game / Hra na smiech, L.C.A. Publishers Group, 2001