For this scene, the factory owner was told to carry the murdered servant girl across the threshold into the chamber where Harp Toni sat, his fingers plucking the strings of his harp. There he would lay Ludmilla down, gently, ending the shot. Finding it unnecessary, and for reasons of safety, Herzog forsook hypnosis this time. It was a prescient stroke, because the factory owner picked up Ludmilla, staggered forward several steps, then dropped her hard onto the floor. Ludmilla was hurt, but she asked Herzog to proceed with another take. Again the clumsy factory owner let her crash to the floor. And again Ludmilla shook it off and insisted she was all right. To everyone’s amazement, Ludmilla was dropped like a rock a third time. The French psychoanalyst tossed aside his cigarette in disgust and picked Ludmilla up, then carried her around the room to demonstrate how a man is supposed to carry a woman. Someone suggested that Ludmilla carry the factory owner. After several near misses caused several more takes to fail, the factory owner finally succeeded in bringing the servant girl into the next room and laying her gently on the floor.
Later Herzog and I spoke about his character the servant girl.
“I feel warmth for the character Ludmilla,” said Herzog. “I feel warmth for her because I like her. I like her face, I like her movements, how she speaks. And I feel sympathy for her because she is slaughtered like a sheep in a slaughterhouse.”
Werner Herzog, Castle Walchsing, Lower Bavaria.
Herzog in Italy, demonstrating a trick he learned from Luis Buñuel.
Josef Bierbichler (Hias, the visionary herdsman) on the Forlorn Bluff.
Herzog overlooking Czechoslovakia.
Herzog with hypnotized actors. Left to right: Herzog, Stefan Güttler (factory owner), Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein (cameraman).
Sepp Müller (Ascherl) in the inn.
Brunhilde Klöckner (Paulin), holding actor.
Herzog directing Heart of Glass.
Egmont Hugel (Harp Toni).
Herzog listens to replay.
Herzog filming visions, Ballinskelligs, Ireland.
On the Irish Sea near Skellig Rock.
The Scenario
DEATH ROOM
Ascherl is stretched out in a narrow room. The room is painted in a green oil color about shoulder high, and the paint is beginning to peel away. The floor is covered with wet flagstones, which have apparently just been wiped with a pail of water that still stands on the floor.
Paulin puts two candlesticks on each side of the dead man’s head and replaces the candles. Paulin hums a foolish song.
She lights the candles. They stand against a small window through which gray daylight penetrates.
Paulin leaves through the door by the feet of the corpse, taking away the bucket and the rag.
The door is closed from without.
The door.
INN
The innkeeper polishes some glasses behind the counter and is very fussy about it. He watches his guests. They keep still. The door beside the counter opens. The guests don’t take note of him; they just stare at each other.
TONI
Here I am.
INNKEEPER
Jeez, Toni! I think this time you’ve brought us funeral music.
TONI
God, am I thirsty.
INNKEEPER
A wheat beer first, as always.
Toni sits at the table where Wudy and Ascherl always sit. The guests are very oppressive in the way they stare at each other unflinchingly. The innkeeper returns and serves Toni his wheat beer. He takes his seat across from him.
INNKEEPER
They buried Muehlbeck yesterday, our top workman. Now they don’t know what to do.
TONI
Hias already predicted that.
INNKEEPER
Then you also know the thing about the Ruby.
TONI
The thing with the Ruby is the master’s malady.
MANSION
Ludmilla takes the Ruby mug off the carpet, the factory owner having taken it from the case in the office. Apparently he just left it there. Hias steps behind Ludmilla without making a sound.
HIAS
Ludmilla.
Ludmilla is frightened and drops the mug. We cannot tell if it is broken.
HIAS
Leave it; there is more to break today.
Only Ludmilla’s face; she looks waxen. Very softly she shows her joy with Hias’s presence.
Hias carefully places his massive, bandaged arm around her shoulder.
HIAS
Go away from the mansion. The master could very well slip and end up sitting on your face.
A view of the display case in the adjacent room. Hias is attracted by the case. He steps close and stares at the glass.
Ludmilla, alone. She has a flushed face.
OFFICE
In the office, there now stands a larger table, not far from the desk, packed with books. The factory owner sits behind the untidy heap. We look at him with the eyes of Ludmilla, who stands before him.
The factory owner has something distracted and nasty about him. He looks up.
FACTORY OWNER
What does that whining mean?
Ludmilla sobs.
He lifts his big sackcloth. Boundless weeping.
FACTORY OWNER
It is better for the servants to pray that we rediscover the law of the Ruby than to blubber.
LUDMILLA
So much will happen. Hias is outside, you know.
Startled, the glass-factory owner goes to the door of a small adjoining reception room and sees stacks of old files and exhibition pieces. Hias stands with his back to us, scratching his head.
FACTORY OWNER
He is here—he knew it! He didn’t need a messenger!
Hias revolves clumsily. He speaks overly calm and slow, like a threat.
HIAS
The master may send for a hunter to shoot the bear. The bulls are frightened, and Sam and I can’t guarantee that he won’t rip a bull to pieces while the others escape. On the Day of the Bear, a bull runs as far as Mainz.
FACTORY OWNER
Muehlbeck has died, taking the secret with him, but you must find the ingredient for the Ruby glass. Muehlbeck has forsaken us.
HIAS
I don’t know the ingredient.
FACTORY OWNER
You’d know it for ten florins.
Hias lapses into reflection. He shakes his head.
FACTORY OWNER
Then you’ll know it for a thousand.
In the background we can hear Ludmilla cry. The factory owner lapses into trance.
FACTORY OWNER
Do you want our people to have to eat oat bread again, which only gives them a headache?
Hias shakes his head.
FACTORY OWNER
Then tell me the secret so we can produce the Ruby glass again and so you can be master of the factory. I shall carry a millstone to Trier.
HIAS
I am here only as a hunter.
FACTORY OWNER
I want to see the Ruby again! I want the red glass, understand? I need a glass to carry my blood. Or else it will trickle away.
The factory owner has seized Hias by the throat and shakes him.
FACTORY OWNER
The sun is hurting me.
Hias pushes the factory owner away with a jerk.
HIAS
You will never see the sun again. The rats will bite your earlobes.
SHOP
It is a kind of grocery or, rather, a small store that apparently belongs to the inn. A simple counter, chests and stacks. Sacks filled with grain on the floor. Through the open door in the background, we recognize an oven.
The innkeeper’s wife shovels flour into Hias’s sack from a chest. She sets the sack on the counter and ties it.
HOSTESS
Ascherl’s dead in the closet.
HIAS
That’s the beginning.
HOSTESS
Will you be going up to the w
oods again?
Hias starts; a vision overcomes him.
HIAS
Wait. I don’t need the flour anymore.
HOSTESS
Then I’ll pour it back into the chest.
She unties the string and pours the flour back into the chest. She stops.
HOSTESS
And Sam, doesn’t he need any flour?
HIAS
You can see it, too: he is lying under a tree, slain.
The wife dusts the sack and folds it.
Close-up: the sack lying on the counter.
OFFICE
In the office, the factory owner sits at the reading table; we look at him from the position of Adalbert, who stands in front of him. Meanwhile the factory owner seems to be pulling some books to pieces, to search the bindings. Numerous disemboweled and mangled volumes are lying about.
ADALBERT
The davenport is here.
FACTORY OWNER
Carry it in!
He stiffens. Adalbert holds the door. Two workmen carry in a green davenport. They deposit it in front of the factory owner.
I am delighted about this letter. Adalbert, give me the opener.
Adalbert takes it from the table where it’s still stuck in the binding of a thick old volume.
FACTORY OWNER
Let’s read the message.
The factory owner pokes into the velvet and cuts it. He does the same to the sackcloth. Then he gives the letter opener back to Adalbert. The factory owner rips out the seaweed and rummages the entrails of the davenport until it heaps upon the floor beside him. Adalbert pokes into it with great caution.
FACTORY OWNER
Can you decipher that? If a letter reaches someone with the words scattered around, it should make you think.
Theatrically the factory owner raises his gaze toward Fate, which he tries to find on the ceiling.
FACTORY OWNER
You are sending me letters I don’t understand. But everything I need can be had for nothing; only the superfluous things cost money.
GARDEN
Again the picture unravels with light, as in old films. We see an image that has the tranquility and harmony of very old photos. Hias is resting beneath a fruit tree; we overlook the countryside with him. It is autumn. If we look closer, the idyllic scene seems chilly.
Hias sings softly and out of tune while gazing distantly.
HIAS
(in dialect)
Koa Huettenmadel mog I met,
Die hot koa dicke Wadl net,
I suach mir a Madl aus der Stodt
Die wo dicke Wadl hot…
GLASS FACTORY
A long, moving view around the furnace. The glassblowers work again and perform a wonderful and mysterious ballet. The furnace glows. The glass lumps dance, trailing white blazing traces in the room. The masters blow on the pipes as on the choicest musical instruments. An enormous activity, always under the pressure of time to finish the piece before it has cooled too much to be molded properly. They drink beer in heavy drafts. The men are sweating; the hands work with their wooden molds. With a pair of tongs, someone pinches a glass lump held by the master; a handle appears. The glass is a wondrously pliable matter; it is sheer delight to watch it. Hasty movement between the cooling furnace and the platform. Magic shadows stray along the walls. The glowing holes glow. A master blower blows a still-shapeless little balloon into the closing mold in his hand; it is steaming; the master blows, turns it, and examines it. In a whitish blue, a mug is forming. We see Agide going around the platform.
AGIDE
(shouting) Lunchtime, men! Take ‘em off!
The activity slowly subsides, flickering away. Some heads turn toward the entrance to the hall. We see the factory owner entering the factory. In the doorway he wrings his hands. He holds his hands up to his face, as if he were hiding something joyous. He bursts into the factory. Not all of the glassblowers have seen him yet. Some of them are just finishing their last pieces, and the bearers carry them to the cooling oven.
FACTORY OWNER
(wriggling) I have it.
He spreads his arms.
FACTORY OWNER
All of us
His hands travel all over his body.
FACTORY OWNER
It’s there inside. (touching his forehead) There, too!
He strokes his calf. He makes a far-reaching gesture, and all of a sudden he runs forward a little, leaps into the air, and falls down in the dust. Whitish remnants of potash whirl up. They help him get up; they surround him. Everyone presses in on him.
Hias is among them.
FACTORY OWNER
(out of breath) I’ve sent for the oven builders at Ploessberg.
ALL
Hurrah!
The factory owner is carried out in triumph; only a few stay in the factory. We see Agide together with Gigl.
AGIDE
The mistress will be surprised when she returns from her trip.
Abruptly Hias comes between them; his vision sounds hoarse.
HIAS
You will see nothing intact when she comes back.
GIGL
Lunatic!
HIAS
When the mistress jumps from the carriage, she will fall into the mud, because there’s no one there to meet her, and you will be on a big boat, puking.
GIGL
(sarcastically) Anything else?
AGIDE
How about a free beer today?
HIAS
Yes.
ANAMIRL’S HOUSE
Anamirl is standing at the door of her little wooden house. A small flower bed of asters in front of it. At a window, a wooden box with withered fuchsias.
Hias goes toward her.
HIAS
Your son has died.
Anamirl goes into the house. Hias follows her.
Inside. We see from the hall into the living room. It is a narrow, cozy room with tiny windows. A tiled stove with a bench. Everything is arranged in a rather cluttered manner, with the exception of a distinct gap where the davenport used to be.
HIAS
They have carried away your davenport.
In the room, Hias sits down at the table. Anamirl keeps still, a sustained, friendly silence. From her manner toward Hias, we gather that she’s known him a long time. From a sideboard near the chimney, Anamirl takes out two pieces of a broken pottery bowl. She sets them on the table below the Lord’s Corner. From the table drawer, she takes a crust of bread and puts it beside them.
HIAS
That bowl, there; that was them, too.
Hias grabs a piece and takes a bite from the crust, chews the bread, and sticks the chewed bread into the crack.
Anamirl stands opposite, propping herself on the table with one hand, watching Hias. Both sink into mute reflection.
After Hias has glued the entire crack with bread, he puts the two broken pieces together, holds the bowl against his body, takes a burnt wire from his pocket, and puts it around the bowl. He takes a pair of tongs from his pocket, ties the wire, and cuts off the ends. He puts the rest of the wire and tools back into his trouser pockets.
Anamirl winds the end of the wire into her other hand, carries it to the stove, and throws it into the logs. It is like some work that they’ve always done together. Anamirl takes a pan of milk from the cupboard and sets it on the table in front of Hias, who meanwhile has started to eat up the bread crust. Hias broods; he chews; his jaws are moving slowly.
Every Night the Trees Disappear Page 10
