Composition

by Sergei Eisenstein, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

A Screenplay in Five Sequences

Leningrad, the Petrograd Side. Printing Works No. 6, a small shop off a side street, which prints the district daily Vperyod. Monday 22 to Thursday 25 December 1941.

CAST

MAKAR LUKICH SOLNTSEV, 61, hand compositor, at the case since 1894
NINA GUSAROVA, 16, apprentice compositor from the trade school
VOVA GUSAROV, 9, her brother
SEMYON ILYICH KOROVIN, 44, night editor of Vperyod
GRIGORY TIMOFEYEVICH OKUNEV, 52, pressman
DUSYA, in her forties, at the canteen hatch
THE PROOF-READER, THE ERRAND BOY, TWO FOLDERS, sisters
A WOMAN IN A SHEEPSKIN, THE BAKERY WOMAN, THE QUEUE
THE LOUDSPEAKER

SEQUENCE ONE — METRE

Black.

SOUND: a metronome. Slow. Each beat dry as a knuckle on a board, and between the beats a silence long enough to know it is a silence.

On the beat:

INT. PRINTING WORKS NO. 6, COMPOSING ROOM — NIGHT

A type case, tilted on its frame. A hundred small wooden boxes. In each, a heap of grey lead.

Beat.

A hand. Long fingers, the knuckles swollen into knots. The fingertips stick out of a woollen mitten cut off at the second joint. The thumbnail is cracked down the middle: an old crack, black in the split.

Beat.

The hand goes into a box without looking and comes out with one letter.

Beat.

The composing stick: an iron rule with a sliding jaw, held in the other hand. The letter goes in. Click.

Beat.

Hand. Box. Letter. Stick. Click.

Beat.

The face, last. MAKAR LUKICH SOLNTSEV, sixty-one. His eyes are not on the case. They are on the blacked window, where there is nothing. His lips move with the letters he sets.

Beat.

The next case along. Another hand: young, the wrist bone standing out like a knot in a rope, the cuff of a man's quilted jacket rolled back three times. This hand looks. It hunts across the boxes. It finds. It stops. It is not sure.

Beat.

NINA GUSAROVA, sixteen. A head scarf, the man's jacket, a face that is mostly forehead and eyes. She holds a letter up towards the light.

Beat.

The light: one bulb, bare, over the iron-topped table in the middle of the room, the imposing stone. It glows the colour of weak tea.

Beat.

Nina turns the letter in her fingers. Puts it in the stick. Takes it out. Puts it in.

Beat.

At the far wall, a telephone on a bracket, and at the telephone SEMYON ILYICH KOROVIN, forty-four, night editor, his glasses mended at the bridge with copper wire. Receiver at his ear. He writes nothing. He listens.

Beat.

Beside him, a tear-off calendar. The top sheet: 22 DECEMBER. MONDAY.

Beat.

On the wall above him, black, round, the size of a dinner plate, made of pressed paper: the loudspeaker. The beat comes out of it.

Beat.

The stove, a tin box on legs, its pipe going out through a pane of the taped window. A dull red seam round its door.

Beat.

Down, through the floor:

INT. PRESSROOM — CONTINUOUS

The Koenig. Iron. A flywheel taller than a man. A long flat bed under the great cylinder. Still.

Beat.

GRIGORY TIMOFEYEVICH OKUNEV, fifty-two, a big frame with nothing left inside it, coat to the ankles, wipes the inking rollers of the press with a rag. Slowly. Exactly. On the beat, which comes down to him through the floor.

Beat.

At the side wall, a wooden rack. On it, a long shape under a cloth.

Beat.

The rag. The roller. The rag.

SOUND: the beat doubles. Then doubles again. Fast: a clock that has lost its patience.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — CONTINUOUS

Now every shot is half as long.

Korovin hangs up.

Makar's hand: box, letter, stick.

Nina looks at the loudspeaker.

Makar does not.

Korovin looks at the stone, at the half-filled iron frame lying on it, at his watch.

Nobody moves towards the stairs.

Nina, faster now, reaches across for the small case of figures on the upper rack —

— her elbow catches its corner —

— the case tilts —

— slides —

— goes over.

SOUND: lead on boards, a hail of it. Then the beat again, fast, as if nothing had happened.

The floor. Hundreds of small grey pillars of lead, scattered into the dark under the frames.

Nina on her knees.

Makar on his knees beside her.

Korovin looks down at them. Looks at his watch. Says nothing.

SOUND: the beat, fast. Far off, a dull thud, felt more than heard. The bulb shivers on its wire.

Under the frame, nearly black. Two pairs of hands sweep lead into two palms.

Makar picks up one piece. He does not look at it. His thumb passes over its face: the cracked nail across the raised figure, once.

MAKAR
Two.

He drops it into its box without lifting his head. Picks up another. Thumb.

MAKAR
Five.

Box. Another. Thumb.

MAKAR
Nought.

Box.

Nina picks up one. Thumbs it. Thumbs it again. Holds it up to where the light should be. Under here there is none.

NINA
I can't.

MAKAR
Again.

She thumbs it again. Her lips are pressed white.

On the boards, side by side for one beat: his hand, broad at every joint; her wrist, thinner than two of his fingers.

A second beat.

Makar looks at the wrist.

SOUND: the beat slows. Slow. The all-clear.

Korovin reaches out, on the beat, and tears the top sheet off the calendar. 23 DECEMBER. TUESDAY. He folds the old sheet in four and puts it in his pocket. Paper is paper.

INT. CORRIDOR, CANTEEN HATCH — LATER

A square hole in a wall, a shelf under it. Behind it DUSYA, forties, shawl over shawl, a ladle in one fist, a pair of tailor's scissors hanging from a string round her neck.

SOUND: the beat, slow. It governs the hatch as it governed the case.

Okunev's hand, holding out his ration card. The scissors: snip. A coupon the size of a postage stamp drops into a tin. The ladle: grey soup into a tin bowl. A bay leaf turns in it.

Beat.

A woman's hand with a magnifying glass on a cord at the wrist, the proof-reader's. Card. Snip. Ladle. Bay leaf.

Beat.

A boy's hand, chapped to the colour of raw meat. Card. Snip. Ladle.

Beat.

Nina's hand. A tin mug. No card.

Dusya's scissors, open, waiting.

NINA
I've eaten.

Dusya's eyes go to the girl's face, and away. She takes the mug, fills it from the kettle on the back of the range. Hot water. Steam. That costs nothing.

Beat.

Makar's hand: his card. Snip. Ladle. His bowl.

He does not move from the hatch. His eyes on Nina's mug: water. On her other hand, hanging at her side: empty.

Beat.

Nina at the window ledge, both hands round the mug, drinking hot water slowly, a mouthful to each beat, the way the others are eating soup.

Makar at the hatch, eating his soup. A spoonful to each beat. He watches her the whole time.

The bay leaf, left in the bottom of his bowl. He eats that too.

INT. PRESSROOM — LATER

Dark. Cold enough to see breath. The Koenig a black mass.

A wick burning in a jar, carried in a hand. Makar's.

The rack. The cloth.

He lifts the cloth.

The spare roller: a long cylinder on an iron spindle, the colour of dark honey, the surface dull and faintly sticky in the flame.

He bends to it. His nostrils move.

His throat moves. He swallows.

His thumb. The cracked nail, set against the honey-coloured skin of the roller.

He presses.

It gives.

He takes the thumb away.

The mark stays: a small crescent, with the crack of the nail printed down its middle.

Beat.

The crescent does not fill.

Beat.

Makar lowers the cloth over it.

SOUND: the metronome, slow, from the loudspeaker upstairs, through the floor, through the dark. It goes on.

SEQUENCE TWO — RHYTHM

INT. PRESSROOM — DAY

Day is only a word in here. One corner of the blackout paper has lifted from a pane; through it, a strip of white sky no wider than a ruler.

The rack. The cloth comes off in one pull, right to left.

Makar's hand. In it, the KNIFE: short, the blade worn hollow by fifty years of string and paper, the handle black with ink.

He turns the spare roller on its spindle. Slowly the crescent of his thumbnail comes round to face him.

The blade goes in at one horn of the crescent.

He draws it towards himself. One stroke, long and even, the whole arm moving from the shoulder.

The stroke ends. Over the blade curls a strip of composition, honey-brown, two fingers wide. The crescent is on it.

Where the strip was: a shallow trough, clean, darker than the skin round it.

He turns the roller back. The trough goes under. The cloth comes down, left to right.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — DAY

The stove door swings open. Red.

A tin, once peas, the label long gone, packed with grey snow, set on the stove top. The strip dropped in.

The snow sinks into itself. Water.

A spoon goes round in the tin. Round. Round. The strip softens, loosens, goes to threads. The water darkens to tea, to beer, to treacle.

On the round of the spoon —

INT. PRESSROOM — CONTINUOUS

— the round of the flywheel. Okunev's palm on its rim, turning it by hand, a foot at a time. The bed slides out from under the cylinder. Stops. Slides back.

At each stop the oil can tilts. One drop on the bearing. The bed slides out.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — CONTINUOUS

Korovin at the telephone, receiver at his ear. His pencil taps the blotter: three, a rest, three.

The pencil stops. It writes, small:

INSERT — THE BLOTTER: 1 top — hold.

He tears the corner off. Folds it once, twice. Into the pocket, with the calendar sheet.

The pencil taps again: three, a rest, three.

The spoon in the tin, slower now. Slower. Stops.

Makar lifts the tin off the stove in a fold of rag, crosses to the window, reaches up and opens the little hinged pane at the top. A hand's breadth of white air pours in, and the steam from the tin climbs straight up into it.

He sets the tin on the outer sill. Shuts the pane.

The pencil: three, a rest, three.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

The pane opens. The tin comes in, furred with frost.

Makar runs the KNIFE round the inside. Turns the tin over a saucer. Taps the bottom once with the handle.

The jelly drops out whole: a squat brown cylinder with the ribs of the tin printed round it. It trembles. Then it is still.

He carries the saucer to Nina's case. Sets it on the edge, among the lead. Lays a spoon beside it.

Nina looks at the saucer. At him.

MAKAR
Joiner's glue. Mine. From before.

He goes back to his own case. His hand goes into a box. Letter. Stick.

The spoon goes into the jelly. Lifts. Goes to her mouth. Comes down.

His hand: box, letter, stick.

The spoon: in, up, mouth, down. She eats as slowly as he sets.

The spoon stops halfway up. Her eyes on his face, then on the edge of his case: no saucer, no spoon, nothing.

She holds the spoon out towards him, across the gap between the cases.

His head moves once, side to side. His hand does not stop: box, letter, stick.

The spoon comes back. She looks at what is left. Half.

She pulls a spoiled proof off the spike on the wall, a sheet of Vperyod with the type smeared grey, and folds the half into it, corner over corner, the way a chemist folds a powder.

EXT. YARD GATE — DAY

Snow to the knee, trodden into a trench between gate and door.

A sledge comes into frame on its runners: hiss — stop — hiss — stop. Lashed on it with rope, a milk can. Water has slopped down its side and frozen there in a beard.

Pulling the rope, VOVA GUSAROV, nine. A woman's fur hat down over his eyebrows. Every pull takes his whole body, forward and down, and the sledge comes after him the length of one step.

Nina at the gate. She holds out the paper packet.

Vova takes it in both mittens. Lifts one corner of the paper. Puts his nose to it.

EXT. OUTSIDE STAIR, FIRST-FLOOR LANDING — CONTINUOUS

Makar on the iron landing above the yard, the stove's ash pan in his hands. He knocks it against the rail. Knock. The ash goes off on the wind. Knock.

EXT. YARD GATE — CONTINUOUS

VOVA
Did they find your card?

EXT. LANDING — CONTINUOUS

The ash pan, raised for the next knock. It does not come down.

EXT. YARD GATE — CONTINUOUS

NINA
Pull steady. You're spilling.

She turns him by the shoulders towards the street. He leans into the rope. Hiss — stop. Hiss — stop. The can rocks; a slop of water goes over its lip and freezes on the runner.

EXT. LANDING — CONTINUOUS

Makar, the pan still raised. Below him Nina comes back up the trench, not looking up.

The pan comes down on the rail, once. Nothing left in it to fall.

He goes in.

INT. PRESSROOM — NIGHT

A lamp on the floor. Okunev on his knees beside the Koenig, his thumb pressed into the main inking roller. The thumb leaves no mark. It is hard as a board.

He breathes on the roller. Presses again. Board.

He gets up, joint by joint, takes the lamp, crosses to the rack.

The cloth off.

He sets the lamp on the rack and lays his palm flat on the spare roller, and turns it on its spindle under his palm, feeling the skin of it go by. The roller turns. The palm rests. The roller turns.

The trough comes round under his hand.

The palm stops.

He lifts it. Brings the lamp down close.

The scoop: clean-sided, two fingers wide, a hand's length long.

He turns the roller away, so the trough is underneath.

He turns it back.

He stands there with the lamp, and the roller does not move, and he does not move.

SEQUENCE THREE — TONE

INT. PRESSROOM — NIGHT

Frost on iron. The rim of the flywheel furred white, as if it had stood all night in the street.

Breath. Okunev's: a grey cloud that hangs where he left it.

The wick in its jar on the floor. The flame stands straight up. Nothing in here moves the air.

The main roller, in its place in the Koenig. The colour of a frozen puddle.

Okunev sets his palm on the flywheel. Leans.

The bed slides out. The roller rolls along the rails, over the empty bed.

SOUND: a crack. Short, dry: a stick broken over a knee in frost.

The roller stops turning. The bed slides on a hand's breadth and stops.

The lamp brought close. Along the roller, end to end, a line finer than a hair.

Okunev's thumbnail goes into it. The line opens. A flake comes away and drops on the bed.

He picks up the flake. Holds it to the wick. The flame shows through it, brown.

His eyes go across the dark to the rack. To the cloth.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — NIGHT

The bulb over the stone: a red worm of filament and no more. The current is low tonight.

What light there is comes from a wick lamp on the stone and the seam round the stove door. The shop at its places is a scatter of fragments: a cheekbone; a lens at a wrist; the knuckles of a hand at a case.

On the calendar, half seen: 24 DECEMBER. WEDNESDAY.

From the stairwell, first a cloud of breath. Then Okunev.

He stands in front of Korovin. Says nothing.

Korovin gets up.

INT. PRESSROOM — CONTINUOUS

The rack. The cloth comes off.

Okunev turns the spare roller on its spindle. The trough comes round into the lamplight: a shadow inside a shadow.

Korovin bends to it. His glasses take two small flames.

KOROVIN
You know what this is.

OKUNEV
I know what it is.

Korovin straightens. The cracked roller in the press. The gouged one on the rack. There is no third.

KOROVIN
Put it in.

He goes back up the stairs.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — CONTINUOUS

KOROVIN
Everyone. At the stone.

They come. Out of the dark, one at a time, to the edge of the light, and no further.

Korovin lifts the wick lamp off the stone and carries it along them.

The proof-reader. The lens at her wrist flashes; her face comes after it.

The errand boy. He holds out his hands before he is asked: chapped, raw.

The two folders, sisters by their noses. Four hands, blue at the knuckles.

Okunev, last up the stairs. Hands black from the press.

Behind the lamp, each face sinks back into the dark as the next one rises.

Nina. The lamp stops.

Her hands come out, palms up. Then over. Grey at the fingertips with lead, nothing else. The wrist.

The lamp moves on.

Makar. His hands out, palms up. Lead-grey; the cracked thumbnail. Over. Empty.

The lamp stays on him. Makar's eyes are on the flame, not on the man holding it.

The lamp on Makar's face. On Nina's face, a pace away. Back to Makar's.

SOUND: the stove, ticking as it cools. Under it, from the plate on the wall, the slow beat, turned low.

Eight breaths go up into the dark in eight small clouds.

The telephone rings.

Korovin sets the lamp down on the stone and goes to it.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

The clock over the door: five to eleven.

Korovin at the telephone. He listens. He turns his head.

KOROVIN
Makar Lukich.

Makar takes up his stick and goes to the case nearest the telephone.

Korovin speaks it as it comes down the wire to him, aloud, a few words at a time.

KOROVIN
(repeating)
From the twenty-fifth of December…
the daily norm of bread…
is raised.

Makar's hand: box, letter, stick. The words go into the iron upside down and backwards.

KOROVIN
(to the room, not lowering the receiver)
Open the stove.

The errand boy pulls the stove door wide. Red floods across the boards, up the legs of the frames, into the faces.

The proof-reader turns up the wick. The flame climbs the glass.

KOROVIN
(repeating)
Workers and engineering-technical staff…
three hundred and fifty grams.

Makar's hand goes up to the rack for the small case of figures. It is not there.

Nina is holding it. She has lifted it down and tilts it to him in the light, both arms under it.

His thumb. Three. Five. Nought. He says none of them. Into the stick.

KOROVIN
(repeating)
Employees, dependants and children…
two hundred grams.

Two. Nought. Nought.

Nina's eyes on the figures in the stick. Her lips move with them.

The faces now, round the open stove: every one lit from below, red. The folders hold their palms to the heat. The boy's raw hands go dark red, then darker. Above the stove, no one's breath shows any more.

Korovin hangs up. His hand goes into his pocket, and stays there, closed on something folded small.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

The lines slide from the stick into the space at the top of page one, held open since Tuesday. Wedges driven in at the sides of the chase.

Korovin takes the wooden block and the mallet himself, to level the type. Three taps, a rest, three.

INT. PRESSROOM — LATER

The forme lowered onto the bed of the Koenig.

The spare roller in the press. Ink worked out on the slab; the roller takes it, dark. Its scoop is underneath, where no one can see it.

The shop on the stairs, in a column going up into the dark. At the bottom, Okunev's lamp. At the top, the red of the open stove. Between them, faces in neither. Makar is halfway up.

Okunev feeds one sheet. His palm on the flywheel. He leans.

The bed slides out. The roller rolls over the type. The cylinder turns, and takes the sheet down, and gives it back.

Okunev lifts it off. Holds it out.

Korovin takes it by two corners, wet.

He holds it up between his face and the flame.

The light comes through the paper. The print stands dark in it, row under row.

Across the column, a band two fingers deep where there is no ink at all.

Above the band: From 25 December the daily

Below the band: is raised: workers and engineering-

Between them, only the paper, and the flame showing through it, whole.

SEQUENCE FOUR — OVERTONE

INT. PRESSROOM — NIGHT

The forme on the bed of the Koenig. At its sides, the wedges.

Makar comes down the last stairs. He kneels at the bed and his fingers find the first wedge, to knock it loose.

A hand comes down over his. Korovin's.

The shop on the stairs, watching. The two hands on the iron, one on the other.

KOROVIN
As it is.

The hand stays until Makar's hand comes away from the wedge.

KOROVIN
(to Okunev)
Run it.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — SAME

The calendar. Korovin's fingers tear off 24 DECEMBER. WEDNESDAY. Underneath: 25 DECEMBER. THURSDAY.

The old sheet folded twice, into the pocket, with the others.

INT. PRESSROOM — NIGHT

The switch. The motor takes hold with a whine. The flywheel goes from iron to a grey blur.

The bed: out, back. The cylinder takes a sheet down and gives it back.

On the frame of the press, a brass counter, its little wheels turning over one figure at a time. 0001. 0002.

Sheets lie down on the pile, one on another, each with its white band in the same place.

Down the stairwell, from the plate on the wall above, the slow beat. The press runs faster than the beat and does not keep time with it.

The counter: 0611. 0612.

The whine drops a tone. Drops again.

Upstairs, the red worm in the bulb goes out. The stairhead is black but for the stove.

The flywheel comes out of its blur into spokes. Into one spoke. It stops.

The beat goes on. It needs nothing from this building.

Okunev drags two iron handles out from under the bench and drives them onto the ends of the shaft, one at either side of the flywheel.

INT. PRESSROOM — LATER

Two at the crank. The sisters, one at each handle, facing each other across the wheel.

On the beat, a half turn.

The bed slides out on the beat, back on the next. The sheet goes down and comes back.

The wick on the floor. On the beat it leans, as the bed passes it and moves the air, and stands up again.

The pile of sheets is the brightest thing in the room.

The sisters step back. Two more step in: the errand boy, the proof-reader. The handles do not stop.

Korovin and a sister. His glasses slide down; he does not push them up.

INT. PRESSROOM — LATER

The proof-reader and Nina at the handles.

Half turn on the beat. Half turn.

Nina's body goes with the handle down, and comes up after it.

Down. Up later.

Down.

She lets go and sits on the floor beside the wheel, her back to the frame, her knees up. Not falling. Sitting, as a person sits on a step.

The handle goes on round without her and comes back.

Makar's hand meets it on the way up.

He turns it. He does not look at her.

The proof-reader, across the wheel, gives way: her place is taken by Korovin.

The two men face each other over the wheel. On the beat, a half turn. On the beat, a half turn. When one handle is down, the other is up.

The wick leans and stands. Leans and stands.

Nina, on the floor, watches Makar's hands go round above her head.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

The stove door half open, the fire low. The sisters folding at the stone: a sheet, a crease run down with the thumbnail, a second crease. Their thumbs are black.

Makar comes up the stairs between relays, slowly, with a hand on the rail.

He stands at the end of the stone. Takes the KNIFE out of his coat: short, the blade worn hollow, the handle black with ink.

He lays it on the iron, by the folded sheets.

Goes back down.

The sisters look at it. Then at each other. They go on folding.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

Korovin comes up for the string. A ball of it, grey, on the windowsill under the blackout.

He turns. The knife on the stone.

He looks at it. He looks at the stairhead, where Makar went.

He leaves it where it is.

INT. PRESSROOM — LATER

Makar and Korovin at the handles again. Half turn. Half turn.

The counter: 3998. 3999.

Okunev lifts the last sheet off and holds it out to no one. Korovin takes his hand from the handle. The flywheel goes on a quarter turn by itself and stops.

From above, the beat.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — NIGHT

The first bundle squared on the stone: folded sheets. On the top one, the band.

The sisters cross the string over it and knot it.

Korovin takes up the knife from the stone. One stroke: the string from the ball parts.

He turns the knife in his hand and holds it out to Makar, handle first.

Makar takes it. Puts it in his coat.

The clock over the door: twenty past six.

EXT. YARD — NIGHT

Black. The snow gives back what little light there is.

The errand boy pulls a sledge down the trench from the door to the gate. On it, the bundle, roped down.

At the gate he stops and looks back once at the dark building.

Then the sledge goes out into the street. The runners hiss on the packed snow, and the hiss goes on after the sledge has gone.

SEQUENCE FIVE — IDEA

EXT. SIDE STREET — NIGHT

A wall. On the wall, a board under a little tin roof. Frozen to the board, the corners of yesterday's sheet, torn.

The errand boy's hands, out of their mittens. A sheet of Vperyod. Four tacks.

His thumb drives in one tack, and goes straight into his mouth. The next tack. The thumb, the mouth.

Along the wall, from the board to a door with a blue lamp over it, a queue. It does not move.

Faces in it, one to a shot:

An old man in a woman's shawl, a kettle hanging from his wrist on a string.

A woman with her card held flat inside her glove, against the palm.

A man with one crutch, his free hand on the wall.

The fur hat: Vova. Behind him, Nina, her face half in the collar of the quilted jacket.

The boy pulls on his mittens and runs back the way he came. The sheet on the board is a grey square, and no one in the queue can read it from where they stand.

A WOMAN in a sheepskin steps out of the line and goes to the board. She puts her face close to it. Too dark.

Her mitten comes off. A box of matches. She slides it open: three.

She strikes one. Cups it.

In the cup of her hands, the column. The flame shakes, then holds.

WOMAN
(reading aloud)
From the twenty-fifth of December the daily norm of bread is raised.

Her finger under the line. It goes along the daily, over the white, along is raised, and does not stop.

Heads in the queue turn towards her, one after another down the wall.

WOMAN
(reading)
Workers and engineering-technical staff: three hundred and fifty grams. Employees, dependants and children: two hundred grams.

The flame reaches her fingers. She holds it there until she has finished the line. Then she lets it fall. It goes out in the snow.

She shuts the box on the two that are left. The mitten back on. She goes back to her place.

No one says anything.

The queue moves up one step.

INT. BAKERY — LATER

A counter. On it, a brass scale: two pans on a beam, and a pointer between them.

Behind the counter, the BAKERY WOMAN. Scissors.

Vova's card on the counter. Snip. The coupon into a tin.

A row of iron weights. Her hand chooses one.

On its top, cast into the iron: 200.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — SAME

The forme back on the stone, out of its chase. The wick lamp. Lead, row on row, every letter facing the wrong way.

In one row, the figures: 0 0 2.

EXT. SIDE STREET — SAME

The board. The sheet. In the column: 200.

INT. BAKERY — SAME

The iron 200 goes down on one pan. That pan drops. The pointer swings hard over.

A loaf, black, square, heavy as a brick. A long knife hinged to the end of the counter. The bakery woman brings the handle down. The blade goes through. A slab falls over.

The slab on the other pan. The pointer swings back, past the middle.

The knife again: a thin slice off it.

The pointer short of the middle now.

A small piece, a corner from another loaf, laid on top of the slab.

The pointer comes to the middle, trembles there, and stops.

EXT. SIDE STREET — LATER

The bakery door. Vova comes out holding the bread flat on his two mittens, arms stiff, his eyes on it.

Nina by the wall.

He holds it out to her.

Her mitten comes off. She takes the small piece from the top. Only that.

She lifts the flap of his coat, puts the slab inside against his chest, and does up the button over it, and the one above.

The small piece goes into her mouth. She does not chew. She holds it.

They go down the street, the big hat and the scarf, past the board. Neither looks at it.

INT. COMPOSING ROOM — LATER

The stove low. The wick lamp on the stone.

Makar at the stone, distributing. Five or six lines of type on the rule in his left hand; his right takes letters off the end of them, one, two, three at a time, and his hand goes to the case and the letters drop into their boxes without his looking. A small dry sound for each one.

Nina comes in from the stairs. She stands at the other side of the stone.

Then her hand goes out to the forme, and takes up one line.

She does not hold it to the lamp.

Her thumb goes onto the face of the type, at the right-hand end. It moves along it, slowly. Stops. Moves on.

NINA
Norm.

The thumb.

NINA
Of.

The thumb.

NINA
Bread.

Makar's hand stops above the case.

Then it goes on into the box, and lets go.

Nina breaks the line over her palm. She carries the letters to the case and sorts them into their boxes, one at a time, as he does, but slower.

The last letter, between her finger and thumb, over its box.

She lets go.

It falls in among the others of its kind and cannot be told from them.

SOUND: the metronome, from the plate on the wall. Slow.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, Kalendīs Octōbribus (1 October 2026), ā Sergiō Eisensteinō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Sergei Eisenstein, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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