NOW - 29.11.2015 - Rotten Heathens

 

“Behold a man who has commenced his run
Way back when dawn broke over the whole universe…”*

 

 

A corridor of a hospital.
It is not very clean and the interior is old.
Along the corridor a couple drift.
A boy warmly dressed in a sweater, 11 or 12 years old
Just behind — a man, with his head held unnaturally thrown back, with his face disfigured by burns.
He wears two dressing gowns.
And some hospital jacket on top
Pajama pants, dirty at the bottom, and completely barefoot.
At the exit door they are caught by either an orderly or a doctor.
He grabs the boy:
— Have you taken the rug?
The boy shows him a bundle under his arm.
The Burned looks somewhere above their heads, somehow through them…
They go down the steps and as soon as the man feels the ground under his feet he takes off and runs.
Apparently — it’s the hospital’s recreation park.
He runs along the wire fence.
The boy runs after him and it feels like this is their usual activity.

Dynamic shot.
But there must be a glitch:
Either the camera slows down or the fence grille becomes more aggressive, and the light flickers, gets dark

Snow cloud.

And the snow falls and melts on his face
And his cheeks flush, with death

Out of a hospital window a nurse with an unhealthy boy in her arms looks at the Burned and his young companion.
They sit on a bench.
The man’s feet are wrapped in a towel, under his feet the rug covering the snow.
He doesn’t notice it
There, far below

Very wide shot (Bruegel’s “The Hunters in the Snow”?)

There’s an almost finished snowman.
Instead of hands he has twigs. Many of them.
The urchins have conceived something and the Burned knows what.

— Take it to them

He gives the boy a box of matches,
The boy purses his lips and runs down.
He stumbles on the way. Falls slapstick in the snow. He gets up and turns around.
The Burned is lying awkwardly on his side on the bench.
The boy with a scream runs back from the bench directly to the hospital building.

The snowflakes on the face of the Burned do not melt any more.

The children down below somehow set fire to the snowman’s twigs.
Fire and snow.
The white Idol melts, a white toy!!
A carrot nose and button eyes!
This is forever!
He will burn — and take you with him!

A fool in the window:

— What rotten heathens!…

 

 

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Anna Bogodist, Elena Imamova, Elena Yarovaya
* from Bella Akhmadullina, Transl. by Gregory Freidin