All language subtitles for Sestra.2008.DVDRip.XviD-SCHWEiK.eng

SISTER

We were the People of the Secret.
And we were waiting.

Then David lost his mind. Maybe
it cracked because it was the best,

sending out the signals that
moved the whole community forward.

That's what we told ourselves,
that we were going forward,

but we soon lost all concept
of where we were headed.

Maybe some of us noticed
we were turning in a circle.

It also often struck me that
time was fading in the pale light,

losing its color and taste again,
and I was horrified by that.

Sleep you don't gotta, die you do,
you say to yourself

it says softly into your brain.
But even that isn't for sure.

Shadows shift slowly
along the walls

and the moon's been there
for hours. Like past lives.

If you went into the city
you'd feel all its shards.

That can be managed.

A trash can creaks in the wind
like a living thing.

"Now go in peace," the cassock man
told the crowd of Christmas people.

I saw the words: Freedom or death.

I made them up. They're sisters.

As the Ghost strode up
the stairs toward me

I got a cramp in the elevator
down in my guts.

I'm thoroughly awed,
brother: Life.

Hey - I say
And my life's like ABC.

I don't do a thing,
I organize verbal matter

just what my cells tell me.

Singed brain.
My mafia.

I said: Freedom or death.

I wanted and searched.
And now I know they're sisters.

I sleep with them.
In the same flat.

In this smallish sorta room.

On a sleepless night
faces swim in the dark

here and there one pops out,
someone you used to know.

Then they disappear
with the morning trams.

Every madman knows how it is.

Tonight again in this home
full of Czechs,

in our very own state.

I guess it's better than bombing.

I had a dream. We were high in the air,
like on a flying carpet.

David sat in front,
watching out for clouds,

Micka stood at the helm,
Bohler was meditating,

Sharky tried hooking up to some
waves to find out where we were,

and I tested the wind.

We knew we were safe,
drifting in the stream of time,

so we flew on in that friendly time,
enjoying our heavenly journey,

and then in the distance
we spotted a sign,

so we made a beeline for it,

O my brothers and chiefs,
and it said: OSV�TIM, Auschwitz,

and it was too late to turn back,

and suddenly our heavenly mobile
started to plunge, O my brothers.

And then we landed.
And we landed softly, brothers,

the ground there was so soft
we even bounced back up a little.

And when we dropped down
from that bounce, dear buddies,

we were in ashes up to our waists
or ankles, depending on how we fell.

The ashes of the cremated,
my brothers, of Jews.

Any last hope of a mixup,
that at least we were

in some slightly cosmopolitan,
wicked old gulag, was lost.

And the ashes stuck to our shoes
and made it hard for us to walk.

And where there weren't ashes,
there was an endless ghastly sea of bones.

We were afraid cause
the skulls were watching us,

looking at us,
and we asked ourselves:

Why are we here? Why us?

And the skulls seemed to answer:
Why not?

The skulls peered blankly at us,
jaws twisted into a grimace of pain,

cause they'd got it the hard way,
brothers, and heavy-duty, alive.

We kept plunging into the bones
so we tried to swim our way through,

we tried to crawl
and shove our way through.

But crawling didn't work either
because the bones kept caving in

and we were afraid we'd suffocate
under the weight of all that death.

So then we started to jump, trying
to boost each other's courage.

Who ever said Jews stink?

There's no appetizing
aroma of garlic, fuck!

Yeah, a fuck, at least
if we had one! Said one of us.

But David said: Nah, there's
no way to get this wasted.

This is reality,
a pretty dumb one if you ask me.

Right then, knights and gentlemen,
we heavily detested David.

And one of us biffed him with
a shinbone and said: Shut up!

I felt the friction of the future,
and in your face my own, love.

Fate, its weight. Waves of life,
true happiness, and so on.

B-O-G willing,
before the year is out I'll be

an averagely agile dealer
of used cars fast as an eagle

as a pig, as someone else.

A guy's gotta live off something
if he wants to.

I'm also someone else.

My sister is Firewater

I tell her: Honey

she tells me: Tenderness

and we tell each other:
I love you.

And we drink Firewater.

Today the moon protects me
from danger at my sister's head.

I'll swim in the water
in the power of fire till I get up

and split down the dark hallway,
by memory down from the top floor.

My sister is Firewater

she's got messy hair and in
the morning she says: Go to work

I think: I take what I want
and give what I can

and we tell each other:
I love you.

The moon blazes and the two of us
are here in Firewater night

skin on skin.
And everything is important.

Sister.

Now, at night. You're next to me
in my dream and after.

Sound of breath and touch of a nail
to the rhythm of blood in my brain.

You.

Be with me.
Closer still.

My Firewater.

Be with me.
Closer still.

My Firewater.

And in this dream, Bible in hand,
Bohler prowled the city scrap heaps,

blessing the runaway brats
who came to lick out cans.

A few times they chased him off

with bolts cast with fiendish
accuracy from homemade slingshots.

Loitering around supermarkets,

Bohler observed the little thieves
whose tricks he knew so well.

And they came to know him too.

Rabble, I bring you God's word,

Bohler would begin
when he managed to grab a few.

Shuddup and fork over the dough,
the grins, the jingle,

you old vampire, Nosferatu!
Hurling film lore in his face.

He gave them the cash every time.

But instead of buying soup, they'd
get smokes, toyfils, or toluene.

I force charitable acts
of baptism on them, said Bohler,

like with the Apaches.

But another thing
about the scamps disturbed me,

and that was their toys.
I mean those weird toys of today.

Abominable toyfils, space spiders
and all those goddam mutants.

Time flew by so fast that suddenly
there were totally different toys...

I shook my head in disbelief
and we reminisced about childhood.

Once Bohler and I broke
into Toy Central for a look around.

We found the last Cheyennes there.

And of course we also roughed up
a toyfil or two along the way.

Then Bohler rigged up something,

and by the time he lit the fuse
we were moving pretty fast.

Our took off before
we heard the soul-soothing blasts

as the sources of toyfils' evil
power crackled in the blaze,

or so, dear Lord, I firmly hope.

We took the Cheyennes out back
and set them free.

Two little birds
perched on branches

like in prehistoric times.

Even the blood looks the same

maybe thicker.

Luggage jiggled in a threaded cage
by the lightbulb over our heads.

Up under the spider's web.

It was in my brain.

In the concourse were
newspapers, fliers,

flowers, rags, a whore

and I recognized the devil

a man who wants to kill,
who's going he doesn't know where.

And I couldn't hide among the trash
cans or even in the elder bushes.

I slowly began to love the spider.

I knew:
He's got something going.

That time in the bar
over spinach pizza

I told the most beautiful woman
my innards, my everything

and the vein in my brain, that link
to the universe nearly burst.

She smiled because she knew what
life does: That's the way it is.

On the walls were faces of singers,
actors and boxers, some we knew.

We smiled,
the shine threw light on our faces.

Had I turned my palms up
they'd have been full of light

but there was no need.

I touched her hips and was gentle.

We groped each other.

I said the worst in me and grinned
toward where we'd been standing.

It was all behind glass.
And it was secret.

With a movement
BOG could cancel theater and actors.

Or leave them in their colors
writhing, crawling, pacing;

let them speak.

At home. With the others.

In a room with walls.

Where there's air.

Where there's love like a plant.

MASSAGE PARLOR

With a movement
BOG could cancel theater and actors.

Or leave them in their colors
writhing, crawling, pacing;

let them speak.

At home. With the others.

In a room with walls.

Where there's air.

Where there's love like a plant.

I sang it and I said it.
The sun shone in a winter of war.

I had my own religion.
People were fodder for death,

I held it in my hands
and stroked it. And I was afraid.

Monsters were born in blood.
Blotches grew in the soil.

Water washed over the dirt
and the bones.

Two black birds,
licked by a whore, hissed

as she drooled on the ground.

I came to a city
and found the place,

my love was there

with a white dress on, laughing
and she was dead.

Shards hold the time
of those days too,

she, my dark star,
took me and stood me in this room.

In outer space.

There's a mirror.

She turns me toward it,
I'm in it alone, just my face.

That woman left me in it.
At the bottom of solitude.

A solitude more deep and awful
than I ever imagined.

Until I felt the chill
blowing from stars,

I knew nothing about life.

Sharky said: "I had a dream
about what the earth is.

Hold out till the end,
O fibbers and squealers,

then I'll give you a Possibility..."
Sharky lectured us...

part of my bastard Prague being
comes from the People of the Book...

they tiptoed out of G-night through
the holes between the hinges

it was nothing short
of a miracle...

but these People of the Book
have an old and amazing alphabet,

and they compiled what happened,
and so it exists today,

so it's real and isn't forgotten.

But there's another people here
trained in the art of survival,

whose only chronicles are scars,
sometimes on other peoples' skins...

no one can name its dead,
like they never existed...

they're not written on the walls
of any bloodstained house of prayer,

cause this people's blood
gushed without anywhere to pray...

this people lives in rough
coexistence with the state,

and for them the state's a killer,
they're the People of the Pack,

a family who don't mind a bit
of lice from time to time...

and none of them was ever so
fatuous as to invent a mobile wheel

so people could scrape away
at the lie of progress nonstop...

or the unnatural telephone, which
shorterns life and distances...

this people wages its miniature
war with pockets and shivs,

and what is that next to genocide...

a very unusual people they are,
never marched into the field

or destroyed another tribe,
cause they lack organization...

never dug a pit for another tribe,
cause shovels don't interest them...

quicklime gives them the hiccups,
makes them fling up their arms...

they well know how important it is
to daydream and slack off,

that it's true art when a dream
and a color fill in the spots

where once the menacing lions
of the subconscious roared...

and Goliath said:
Who is not with us is against us

and will be killed
or reeducated...

and David said: Live and let live...
gimme a break aready, why doncha!

And he let his slingshot fly.

You rec-room dwellers know
not only the state has rules

with its markets advertising
duper-super cookie-cutter freaks

of the near-distant
homogenized future...

and Gs don't look like ads,
not even from far away...

even the pseudopit of the Meediya
can't help but spit up the Gs...

they're too often drunk and noisy,
and don't look good on the Grainy...

Iock up the beast with the rest...

the earth couldn't take
being a pit for another tribe...

you know what comes next...

it's starting again,
literally every day.

Every G-day was yesterday
and goes on smoldering...

but there's various things here,
many paths, dear brothers' sisters,

and dear sisters' brothers,
and it's not a pretty sight.

The earth is entirely overburdened,
but there's one more possibility,

said the mythomaniac Sharky...

then Dolphin the brujo storyteller
darted off into the heavy tide,

plowing through the surf
and surfacing near the sandy beach,

he fixed us with emerald eyes
and said... you know...

there's possibilities here,
and one of them is hope.

My hero, that fella
l-Killed-a-Rat,

killed a man,
yeah right, another time

another place lying in the sand
of an island beach with naked woman.

The fella laughs
and then someone forgives him

maybe

we've lost more
and is B. Here at all?

Anymore? He wondered that
morning and thought of the court.

The one that sits nonstop
from the very first second

from the very first cell
from the dawn of the Earth.

Today he sleeps under his dream,

can't bear it anymore,
truck wheels, gravel,

animals, knives, sickness.

But he's in her, he's with her

they're together
they'll protect each other.

Strong feelings.
And he's battling in the arena

for his grandpas
in the crematorium too.

It was B. That dragged them out
on the ramp.

How did it happen?

Were they too weak?

Let me be a Hun, be a Devil-killer
he says to himself.

Sometime later Sister gets up
on her elbows and says:

Hey it's light out!
And it is.

It's day, night is done.
That's the thing anyone can see.

A day with people like any other

and if it's summer
something's growing.

It's January and still the same
old dirty street of whores.

Business.
That's all there is now.

Maybe the city'll change tonight
like a brain written off by a dose.

Just to be safe, he's quickly
relearning the old words of love.

And I had my... wolf dream.

We ran off, Raksha squealing
with joy... me too,

we knocked the lock off the cage
and it rattled through the zoo,

the chain fell, and then we ran

over hard snow, through woods,
over stones, claws clicking,

and we didn't worry about our tracks
because we were running... away.

Her eyes glowed like coals...
she nipped me, licked me...

on the scar from my collar,
the bald patch on my nape

where the fur hadn't grown back...

she touched her snout to my ribs
where the barbwire once cut me,

where pieces of wire
had grown into me...

I nipped at her too,
her scars were inside...

the drill
where they'd taught her to beg

and hold out her paw
and pout her lips,

where they'd dressed her in ribbons
so she'd grow into a good girl,

a well-mannered little woman...

always at attention,
like a snowman, but sexy...

where they showed my little sister
to wiggle her ass for the bosses...

to live with idiots in exchange
for makeup and food and a flat...

consuming energy
to learn how to ooh and aah

whenever the fucking bosses
lay down the gospel...

but now we were running...

and the only trail we left
was the fast frozen breath

that fell from our fangs...

and the earth turned beneath us,
running, leaping across graves

avoiding the glassy stares and
empty eyesockets... of wolf skulls...

and avoiding snares, falling
stakes and poisoned meat...

we made it
through the red pack's territory...

and met the last white wolves;
they were wracked with disease...

and the big black wolves
chased us, but we escaped...

we gray wolves of the Carpathians,
had an age-old war with them,

they were surprised we fled,
their jaws snapping at empty air,

they sensed it was their turn next,
the helicopters were on the way...

we ran side by side,
bodies touching...

running over the turning earth
with the wind whistling in our ears

like a lament
for every dead pack...

and the clicking of our claws made
the earth's motion accelerate...

we ran over the earth,
a mass grave, running away...

then we stood on the final cliff,
and nothing was left but to jump off

and plunge into the surface
where it all began...

and Raksha, my sister,
shrank back...

Akela nudged his snout in her flank
but she snapped at him...

come on, Sister,
we can't go back now...

come on let's jump... let's fly,
we can be together forever...

I slash my back
so I'll know that it's me.

If it hurts he's not an actor,
his walk altered by band-aids.

On the riverbank were trees,
dampness settling into their tops

now there's just a hole.

Is this still the same city,
the walls and streets, my turf?

Would I tell the child myself
Hi, Take care, Good night,

pass him by, key around his neck
in a raggedy sweater with a puppy?

Would I bring him home?
Or is that brat still there?

And are pedestrians passing him by?
Nasty faces? Yes.

He's still standing there
and he's alone. He's lost.

For me he's changed into B.

I call him BOG
and think of hearts and of skin.

Someone was casually kissing,
caressing, thinking of nothing

and someone was walking alone
into a tunnel of corpses

B. Is all I've got now and
some words aren't at all pretty.

Dreams can be horrible, someone
screams and he's in a bayonet dream

and some live life
and it's totally theirs.

Some thing you watch,
find out from others

some things are already
written down. It's obvious.

You gotta believe a bit in it all.
So you don't get lost

so the big dogs don't catch you,
the wheel doesn't run you down

the black widow bastard
doesn't get you at home

at the end of the world
in the dark.

Back at the outset of it all,

he bent down over me sleeping,
parting my ribs, took one,

removed my heart from its cage
and gave part of it to her.

She left me in the room
with the mirror,

every path was in there too.

And when I looked,
bending over the shiny surface,

I saw her face.

Translated by Alex Zucker
Subtitles edited by John Brent