Original subtitles

I write to you all the time

always, you see.

Nothing else but this.

Nothing.

I'm writing maybe a thousand letters

you, to give to you

letters of my present life.

And you, you'll do with them what I'd like...

you to do with them

which is, whatever you want.

That's what I desire.

That this be delivered to you.

Where are you?

How to reach you?

How can we come close

in this love,

cancel this apparent fragmentation

of time

which separates us, one from the other?

Listen.

I'll never separate you from your body.

Never.

It's three in the afternoon

The sun is out behind the trees

the air is cool.

I'm in the big room where I spend the Summer,

Facing the garden.

On the other side of the glass there is a forest of roses

and for three days

there's been this cat

skinny,

white,

who has started looking at me

through the glass,

eye to eye,

he scares me

he cries

he is lost

he wants to belong

and I don't want to any more.

Where are you?

What are you doing?

Where are you lost?

Where were you lost while I cried that I was scared?

They say that you live on one of the islands next to France

and other places too

They say you're in an equatorial land

where you died

a long time ago,

in the heat,

buried in the charnel of a plague

or even in that of a war

or even that of a camp in occupied Poland.

To me,

it's all the same.

I see your eyes.

I see the sky in a river

is a blue

of the same colour, liquid

and blue as your eyes.

I see that it's not true

that while I write to you

nobody has died,

And that you are there, you too

in this empty continent.

It's Summer here.

Did you love the Summer?

I don't know anymore.

For myself I don't know any more.

I don't know any more if I loved it

outside of you.

Do you remember?

This word.

This country.

This dark land.

You used to say: nothing remains

but this path.

This river.

How to get back to our love.

How?

The light has sunk

it seems

behind the trees

there's a wind

It's turning cooler.

The garden is full of birds

and the cat

becoming crazy

with hunger.

And to me,

it's all the same.

The roses are going to die very soon now

It's fading out

on the other side of the glass.

The sky, above the river

will become dark.

Night is falling

on the cat, leprous

starving

frightening

On the garden so still around him

the night also falls.

I see it.

It spreads over you,

over me,

over the river.

Can you still see?

You can no longer see, perhaps?

They speak

They say that everything had been built on the land.

That it's all been lived in,

occupied,

by peoples,

by governments,

That there were palaces on the banks of rivers

and between the palaces, thickets of nettles,

brambles,

and swarms of running children.

And women,

starved thin.

That there were islands.

And temples.

That there was a forest.

I know nothing

of generalities,

of peoples

and of the world.

None of them

can stand in for you

for this preference

that I have for you.

None.

Listen,

under the arches of the river,

now, the sound of the sea

those of the dark cave

and the cries of that leprous cat

you know,

the one blind with hunger

and who calls out across time.

Do you hear it?

No?

Perhaps you hear nothing more?

No?

Keep listening. Try.

How to come to the end of our love?

Listen.

under the arches of the river,

this surge.

Keep listening.

This apparent fragmentation

that I just told you of

has gone.

Together we need to come closer

to the end.

To that of our love.

Don't be afraid.

It's strange,

this look that the river gets

sometimes

in the clarity of night

of going towards the sea

racing

to completely

lose itself...

But who are you?

But who?

How did this come about?

How will this come about?

Don't you still hear?

In London,

in the course of this plague?

You understand?

Or of this war?

In this camp of the German "East"?

In this Siberian one?

Or in these islands, here?

Here, you understand?

No?

Me, I don't know anymore.

I know only of this love

that I have for you.

Complete.

Terrible.

And that you're not here to free me from it.

Never.

Never,

do I separate you from our love,

from our story.

Many have been killed here.

It's said.

Killed,

yes.

Did you know that?

Nearly every day. For a thousand years.

Thousands and thousands of years.

Yes.

One time.

A thousand times.

A hundred thousand.

The river

all bloody.

They shed blood,

they imprisoned

they wounded.

A thousand years.

It's then,

yes, after,

that all this was produced -

for a very long time nothing.

And then, of a sudden, your eyes.

Your eyes on me.

First, the liquid and empty blue of your eyes.

And then, you saw me.

On this cat, skinny

and crazed,

night has now fallen.

On me,

your form.

You know, they say it was crematoria, near Cracow,

that your body was separated from mine...

as if that was possible...

They say anything... they don't know...

[they know nothing...]

Listen...

The cat, he's crying.

Hunger and wind

are eating him up

through the tears, the cat

in wind and hunger,

the dark garden

He cries in the dark cave...

Listen...

We say he complains...

As if he was speaking...

What?

What was he saying?

What word?

What designation,

senseless?

inept?

I do not separate you

from your body

I do not separate you from me.

You used to say: nothing remains

this city

our dark land

So temperate,

have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten everything?

You used to say:

the histories draw out

the length of the river.

You used to speak of their riverine monotony

so sweet

it calls you to lie down next it

and to leave with it.

Yes.

You've forgotten everything.

Everything

What to do

so that we shall have lived this love?

What...

to do so that this love has been lived?

A fog is gathering in the garden.

It spreads over the river.

I see.

The cat

no longer crying.

He is dead.

Cold

and hunger.

It's strange...

It's by way of that cat, skinny and crazed

now dead

by way of the garden

so still

around him

that I reach you.

By this white whiteness,

this infinite fog

that I reach your body.

My name is Aurelia Steiner.

I live in Melbourne

where my parents are teachers.

I'm 18 years old.

I write.