From Darkness

This memory from Kapuscinski's childhood is chilling in its details.

At night, he and his younger sister are made to sleep fully-clothed because their mother fears they may be deported at any time.

What follows is an excerpt from Imperium, where, in few words, Kapuscinski conveys the nocturnal panic that grips a family, whose only fault was to live in the wrong place at the onset of World War Two.

He makes us see and hear the "slowly rolling" deportation "wooden wagon" that his mother (like "other mothers") spies behind drawn curtains.

A caravan of Death that pierces through darkness and becomes a poignant metaphor for war.

For all wars.

Alberico Collina


"Even if we do sleep, we're on pins and needles. We are asleep, but we hear everything. Sometimes near morning we hear the rumble of a wooden wagon. The noise swells in the darkness, and by the time the wagon passes our house, the racket is like that of some infernal machine. Mother walks to the window on tiptoe and carefully draws aside the curtain. It is possible that at this very moment other mothers on Wesloa Street and doing the same thing. they see the slowly rolling wagon, on it the huddled figures, the Red Army men walking behind it, and - behind them - darkness once again. The neighbour ... tells Mother that it is as if these wagons are rolling over her. The next day she aches everywhere."

from Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski (translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska)

Just Once


The opening lines of Maintains Pereira, a novel by Antonio Tabucchi, here translated by Patrick Creagh, foreshadow a resurrection of sorts.

In the bloody days of Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal, two young and desperate lovers enlist the help of Pereira.

Pereira is an unlikely protagonist, a conservative widower, obsessed by death and his obesity, who will find the will to live again, by changing the desperate couple's fate.

And putting his life on the line, Pereira will taste youth and drink adventure in the shadow of military oppression.

And he'll learn what it's like to have something worth dying for.

Just once.


Alberico Collina


"Pereira maintains he met him one summer’s day. A fine fresh sunny summer’s day and Lisbon was sparkling. It would seem that Pereira was in his office biting his pen,the editor-in-chief was away on holiday while he himself was saddled with getting together the culture page, because the Lisboa was now to have a culture page and he had been given the job. But he, Pereira, was meditating on death. On that beauteous summer day, with the sun beaming away and the sea-breeze off the Atlantic kissing the treetops, and a city glittering, literally glittering beneath his window, and a sky of such a blue as never was seen, Pereira maintains, and of a clarity almost painful to the eyes, he started to think about death. Why so? Pereira cannot presume to say. Maybe because when he was little his father owned an undertaker’s establishment with the gloomy name of Pereira La Dolorosa, maybe because his wife had died of consumption some years before, maybe because he was fat and suffered from heart trouble and high blood pressure and the doctor had told him that if he went on like this he wouldn’t last long. But the fact is that Pereira began dwelling on death, he maintains. And by chance, purely by chance, he started leafing through a magazine. It was a literary review, though with a section devoted to philosophy. Possibly an avant-garde review, Pereira is not definite on this point, but with a fair share of Catholic contributors. And Pereira was a Catholic, or at least at that moment he felt himself a Catholic, a good Roman Catholic, though there was one thing he could not bring himself to believe in, and that was the resurrection of the body. Of the soul yes, of course, for he was certain he had a soul; but all that flesh of his, the fat enveloping his soul, no, that would not rise again and why should it?, Pereira asked himself. All the blubber he carted around with him day in day out, and the sweat, and the struggle of climbing the stairs, why should all that rise again? No, Pereira didn’t fancy it at all, in another life, for all eternity, so he had no wish to believe in the resurrection of the body. And he began to leaf through the magazine, idly, just because he was bored, he maintains,and came across an article headed: ‘From a thesis delivered last month at the University of Lisbon we publish this reflection on death. The author is Francesco Monteiro Rossi, who graduated last month from the University of Lisbon with a First in Philosophy. We here give only an excerpt from his essay, since he may well make further contributions to this publication."

from Maintains Pereira by Antonio Tabucchi (translated by Patrick Creagh)

Three Stories in Three Films

What these three stories have in common is their function. The scriptwriters employ these brief narratives to create short-cuts, which add meaning but avoid lengthy digressions, while lending unity and depth to the plot.

1. The Mice and the Cream Story
"Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse."
source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/quotes

In Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, this brief story is part of a speech made by Frank Abagnale Sr. at a NY rotary club. It tells us much about the conman protagonist Frank Abagnale Jr., by showing us how his fraudster father transmitted his survivalist view of the world, and his gigantic ambition to his son.

2. The Scorpion and the Frog Story

"Scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can't swim. Goes to the frog, who can, and asks for a ride. Frog says, 'If I give you a ride on my back, you'll go and sting me.' Scorpion replies, 'It would not be in my interest to sting you since as I'll be on your back we both would drown.' Frog thinks about this logic for a while and accepts the deal. Takes the scorpion on his back. Braves the waters. Halfway over feels a burning spear in his side and realizes the scorpion has stung him after all. And as they both sink beneath the waves the frog cries out, 'Why did you sting me, Mr. Scorpion, for now we both will drown?' Scorpion replies, 'I can't help it, it's in my nature.' "
source: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/cg.html

In Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, Aesop's fable of the Scorpion and the Frog is told by Jody, the kidnapped British soldier, to Fergus, his IRA terrorist captor. It can be viewed as Jody's attempt to convince his captor that it is not in his nature to kill him. However, this is an odd choice since it doesn't end well for the frog. It may therefore just reflect the soldier's dire realisation that he may soon follow the same fate.

3. The White Horse
"There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, 'how wonderful. The boy got a horse' And the Zen master says, 'we'll see.' Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, 'How terrible.' And the Zen master says, 'We'll see.' Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs are all messed up. and everybody in the village says, 'How wonderful.' Now the Zen master says, 'We'll see.' "
source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472062/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu

In Mike Nicols's Charlie Wilson's War, this tale is told by Gust Avrakotos, the shrewd intelligence officer. He uses it to explain that it may be premature to judge certain actions and events by their immediate effects, since these, in turn, set a chain of consequences in motion that are forever evolving, defying all prediction.


Alberico Collina