Original subtitles

THE WALL

Today, on the 5th November, I begin my report.

I will write everything as accurately as possible.

But I do not know even if today is the 5th November.

During the past winter, a few days have gone missing.

Even the day of the week, I can not tell you.

But I think this is not important.

I must rely on sparse notes.

Sparse, because I never reckoned to write this report.

I fear that my memory is very different from what I experienced.

So all my reports may be vague.

I am not writing for the joy of writing.

It just so happened that I must write

to avoid losing my mind.

There no one here to think and care for me.

I'm all alone, and I must try

to surivive the long dark winter months.

I have taken this upon myself, because it will save me

from staring into the twilight and being afraid.

Because I am afraid. From all sides fear creeps up on me

and I do not want to wait for it to catch up and overwhelm me.

I will write until it is dark.

And this new, unfamiliar work will make my mind

tired, empty and sleepy.

I'm not afraid in the morning, only in the long, gloomy afternoons.

I write on the back of old calendars

and aged business paper.

The paper comes from Hugo Rüttlinger, a great collector and hypochondriac.

Actually, this report should begin with Hugo,

for, without his acquisitiveness and hypochondria, I would not be sitting here today.

I probably would not even be alive.

It wasn't until three clock that we reached the hunting lodge.

After a snack, Hugo was just starting to doze off.

Louise suggested that he go with her back to the village.

Come now!

We won't stay long, we're going hunting tomorrow very early.

The car key is in the ignition if you want to meet us.

- Come now. - Yes.

Where is it Luchs? Luchs?

The dog's over there. The stupid dog doesn't listen.

Luchs? Luchs, come!

Heel!

Come, Luchs.

- Walk with us. Come, Luchs. - Don't be so strict.

Luchs, if you don't walk with us you stay up here. Go back!

Go. Go.

At nine clock, I decided to to go to bed.

I locked the door and took the key to my room.

So, Luchs? What's up?

They both must have stayed in the village. I was surprized by that.

Hugo hated the short inn beds.

And he would never been so inconsiderate

to leave me alone in the lodge overnight.

Then, I set off with Luchs to the village.

I couldn't imagine what had happened.

I barely noticed how cold and damp the canyon was

as I was wondering what had become of the Rüttlingers.

Maybe Hugo had suffered a heart attack.

As happens with hypochondriacs, we no longer took his states seriously.

I quickened my step and sent Luchs ahead.

I hadn't thought to wear my hiking boots

and stumbled awkwardly on the loose stones.

Luchs! Luchs?

Luchs, what is it?

What do you have? Are you hurt?

Did you bite your tongue?

Luchs come!

Come!

Luchs, what is it?

Come.

Then I heard a loud knocking sound and looked around, before realizing

it was my own heartbeat ringing in my ears.

My heart had sensed fear before I realized it.

Hesitantly, I tried once more.

And again, rested my hand against glass just like a window.

Suddenly I figured out what had been troubling me the whole time:

the road was completely deserted.

Someone should have sounded the alarm long ago.

It would have been natural

for curious villagers to accumulate in front of the wall.

Even if none of them had discovered the wall

Hugo and Louise would surely have run into it.

That not a single person was to be seen, was even more puzzling than the wall.

I tried again and convinced myself that, three meters in front of me,

there really was something, invisible, smooth, cool,

that hindered my path.

I thought it might be an illision, but of course knew that it was nothing of the kind.

I had to reconcile my own senses with a little craziness

at this terrible, invisible thing.

The first little farmstead, really just a cottage,

was just around the next bend.

Finally I could see the cottage.

It was very still in the sunlight. A peaceful, familiar picture.

Excuse me! Excuse me, I...

Come Luchs. Come.

We were caught in a bad situation, Luchs and I,

and we did not know at the time how bad it was.

But we were not completely lost, because we were two.

It couldn't be true. Such things simply did not happen.

And if they did happen, not in a small village in the mountains.

Not in upper Austria and not in Europe.

I know how ridiculous this idea was

but it is exactly what I thought and I will not hide it.

I awoke at six o'clock, as the birds began to sing.

Although I'd hardly moved Luchs knew I was awake

and came to my bed to greet me.

Suddenly it seemed quite impossible that I would survive this fine day in May.

At the same time, I knew I must survive

and there was, for me, no way out.

I must stay calm and simply survive.

It wasn't the first time in my life I'd had to survive.

The less I resisted, the more bearable it would be.

I do not remember what I did that morning.

Maybe the following hours were so bad, that I had to forget them.

Maybe I went into a kind of anesthesia. I do not remember.

I re-emerged at two clock in the afternoon,

and with Luchs went through the gorge.

This time I was better prepared. Also I brought Hugo's binoculars with me.

If the man at the well was dead, then I couldn't doubt that

all the people in the valley must be dead. And not only the people.

Everything that lived was dead.

If that was death, it came quickly and smoothly,

in an almost loving way.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to go with Hugo and Louise.

Luchs!

What's wrong? Luchs?

Here, Mr. Luchs!

Luchs!

Come.

Yes, come.

Presently, it become clear to me

that this cow was indeed a blessing but also a heavy burden.

This animal needs to be fed and milked, and also a stable master.

I was the owner and the prisoner of the cow.

Of course, I also thought of the cow.

If I were very lucky, she would be expecting a calf.

But I couldn't rely on that.

I could only hope my cow gave milk for as long as possible.

Still I thought of my situation as temporary

or, at least, I tried to do so.

I thought of a name for my cow and named her Bella.

Actually, she didn't need any name.

She was the only cow in the forest.

Perhaps, the only cow in the land.

Until tomorrow, Bella.

Ten days had passed, and nothing had changed in my situation.

For ten days I had worked stunned, but the wall was still there,

and no one had come to get me.

There was nothing left but to face reality.

I could kill myself or try to dig under the wall,

which would probably only be a strenuous form of suicide.

Of course I could stay here and try to stay alive.

To think seriously about suicide, I was no longer young enough.

What kept me from those thoughts were Luchs and Bella.

Thanks to Hugo's foresight, I had provisions to last the Summer,

a home, a lifetime supply of wood and a cow.

I resolved to wind the clocks every day

and strike off the days on the calendar.

This seemed at the time very important.

I clung to the almost scant remains of human order.

I don't know why I'm doing this.

It is almost an inner compulsion that drives me.

Maybe I'm afraid if I did otherwise

I would slowly stop being a person

and would crawl about dirty and stinking

and emit unintelligible sounds.

Not that I feared becoming an animal. That wouldn't be so bad.

But a man can never become an animal.

He rushes beyond into an abyss.

I do not want this to be my future.

Lately this has been my greatest fear.

And this fear lets me write my report.

On 30 May, it rained all day a warm, fertile rain,

that forced me to stay in the hut, if I did not want to be soaked.

That evening the cat came to my house.

We were then four. The cow, the cat, Luchs and me.

Luchs was the closest to me.

He soon became not only my dog, but my friend.

My only friend in a world of troubles and loneliness.

It's okay, Luchs.

Although I was confined by Bella to the cabin,

I wanted to take a little look around the area.

I remembered a path the led to a hunting cabin higher up,

and from there down into the opposite valley.

I wanted to go there.

Luchs! Heel.

Wait, Luchs.

Now I had researched the valleys that I could reach

without staying away for days.

I was able to ascend to the pasture and from there survey the land.

But further into the mountain range I did not dare.

Of course, someone would find me, if there were no wall.

I would have to say, they would have found me long ago.

I could calmly sit at home and wait.

But again and again I felt driven to do

something against the uncertainty.

At one o'clock in the afternoon I rested.

The forest laid misty in the midday sun,

and warm scent from the pines ascended to me.

It was now much quieter than in the moon-light,

as if the forest lay sleeping under the yellow sun.

A bird of prey circled above in the blue sky.

Luchs slept with twitching ears,

and the great silence descended like a bell over me.

I wished to sit here forever,

in the warmth, in the light,

with the dog at my feet and the birds above my head.

When I had to leave, it was with deep regret,

and slowly I changed back into the only creature

that did not belong, into a person,

whose chaotic mind and clumsy shoes broke the branches

and engaged in the bloody business of hunting.

It strikes me that I I never recorded in my diary

when I shot a deer.

Now I also remember I was simply too disgusted to write.

It was enough already, that I had to do it.

I called the cat Pearl, because she was so white and bright.

In a few weeks I realized that Pearl, the scruffy little thing,

was transforming into a beauty.

Pearl was a small miracle

but even then I knew that she was born in the wrong place.

A long-haired, white cat in the forest is doomed to early death.

She had no chance.

Maybe that's why I liked her so much.

When I think back to the first Summer,

it is overshadowed by concern for my animals

rather than my own desperate situation.

The catastrophe had taken away many responsibilities,

and, without me noticing it right away, imposed new burdens.

When I could finally comprehend the situation

I was unable to do anything to alter it.

I don't believe my behavior sprang from weakness or sentimentality.

I just followed a drive that was implanted

and I could not fight it, without also destroying myself.

I cannot see why it should be dishonorable,

to carry the load, like any animal,

to ultimately die like one in the end.

I don't even know what is honor.

To be born and to die is not honorable.

It happens to every creature and has no meaning.

On 20th July I started with the hay.

I spent three weeks reaping the meadow.

It was not only the weather to blame

but my clumsiness and physical weakness.

I was overcome with discouragement

and saw for the first time with full clarity what a terrible blow had hit me.

I do not know what would have happened if the responsibility for my animal

had not forced me to do the necessary things.

I look back only reluctantly on this time.

It took 14 days before I could finally rouse myself

and again start to live.

The Autumn was always my favorite time of year,

though I didn't feel very well.

By day, I was tired and yet watchful.

At night, I lay for hours in a troubled half sleep

and dreamt confusing and vivid dreams.

The flu did not spare me even here in the woods.

But I could hardly allow myself to succumb to it.

Maybe I did not have time to give it attention.

Luchs was exhilarated and happy,

but a stranger probably wouldn't notice any difference.

He was always cheerful.

I never saw him stay grumpy more than three minutes.

He could simply not resist the call to be happy.

And life in the forest was a constant lure for him.

Sun, snow, wind, rain.

Everything was a cause for excitement.

I couldn't stay sad next to Luchs for very long.

It was almost shaming that being with me made him so happy.

Perhaps man owes his great self-regard to the dog.

Sometimes I even imagined there was something special about me,

since Luchs became so overjoyed at the sight of me.

Of course, nothing was special about me.

Luchs was, like all dogs, simply addicted people.

Yes, you're my Luchs. Yes.

You're a good dog.

Sometimes now, when I'm alone walking in wintry forest

I speak to Luchs as I did before.

I don't realize when I do it

until something startles me and I fall silent.

I turn my head and catch sight of the glimmer of a reddish brown coat.

But the path is empty, bare shrubs and wet stones.

It does not surprise me that I hear branches crackling behind me

under the light tread of his soles.

Where else should his little dog soul haunt, if not my track?

It's a friendly ghost, and I do not fear him.

Luchs, beautiful, good dog, my dog.

Probably only my poor head make the sound of your footsteps,

the glimmer of your coat.

As long as I exist, you'll follow my tracks, hungry and yearning,

as I myself, hungry and yearning, follow invisible tracks.

We will neither of us catch our prey.

On 27th October came the first snow.

The onset of Winter lasted only a few days.

After that came warm winds, that licked the young snow from the mountains.

It became uncomfortably warm,

and the wind blew night and day snarling at the little house.

I slept badly and listened to the roaring of the stags

that, in the rutting season, descended from the heights.

Both cats were drawn out into the warm, damp forest.

I lay awake and worried about Pearl.

The roaring of the stags sounded sad, threatening and sometimes desperate.

I hoped only for the wind to not last too long

and the Winter to bring us a little peace.

The wind actually only lasted three days,

just long enough for Pearl to die.

Pearl was buried,

and the wind died overnight, as if it had fulfilled its task.

I have not forgotten Pearl.

Her death was the first loss in the forest.

Once, it must have been the first winter,

I saw a fox by the stream.

I could have shot it. I had the gun with me.

But I did not.

Pearl had to die because her forefathers were overbred Angora cats.

She was always destined to be a victim.

Should I therefore punish the beautiful vivid fox?

Pearl was dealt an injustice.

But this injustice was also dealt to her victims.

Should I again pass it on to the fox?

The only creature in the woods that can do right or wrong, am I.

And I can only practice mercy.

Sometimes I wish the burden of this decision would not fall to me.

But I'm a person. And I can only think and act as a person.

From which only death will free me.

Whenever I think of Winter, I see a tired fox by the snow-covered stream.

A lonely, adult animal, his path already laid down.

It's as if this image means something important to me.

It stands for something else.

But I cannot recognize the meaning.

So.

Yes, my Bella.

Yes, beautiful you are.

Bella had become rounded

but I could not tell whether she expected a calf.

After all we have experienced together,

Bella is, to me, more than my cow.

A poor, patient sister, who copes with more dignity than do I.

In the night I heard the wood crackling in the fire.

I refuelled, but I shivered under the blanket and could not sleep.

Sometimes a log crackled into flame and went out again,

and I felt ill.

I knew it was that I had to go and kill again.

I imagined what a person who enjoys killing may feel.

I did not succeed.

The hairs stood up on my arms,

and my mouth was dry in disgust.

One must be born like that.

I could bring myself to do it as quickly and skillfully as possible

but I would never get used to it.

Long I lay awake in the crackling darkness

and thought of the little heart

that froze in the room above me into a block of ice.

After the cold broke, a wave of humid, warmer air set in.

Bella was restless and I had see to her ten times a day.

On 11th January Bella was bleeding a little.

It was after the evening feeding

and I decided to stay the night in the barn.

Come on, Bella! Hard!

Hard!

Come on, Bella, come on!

So much had happened lately.

Pearl had been killed, a little bull was born into the world,

deer were frozen and the predators had a fat winter.

I myself had had a lot of excitement and now I was tired.

And when I closed my eyes, I saw snowy mountains on the horizon,

white flakes, which fell on my face,

in a vast, bright stillness.

There were no thoughts, no memories,

only the great, silent, snowy light.

I knew that these thoughts were dangerous for a lonely person

but I could not muster the strength to resist.

Luchs did not leave for long in peace.

Always he came and nudged me with his nose.

I sighed and stood up and went to my daily work.

Now Luchs is no more my friend and guardian

and the desire to step into the white, painless silence

is sometimes very strong.

I must look after myself and be stricter than before.

Luchs was my sixth sense.

Since he died, I feel like an amputee.

Something left me, and will always be missing.

It's not just hunting and tracking where I miss him,

and the long hours spent finding game.

That alone isn't it.

The worst is, without Luchs, I feel truly alone.

The idea of moving to the meadow occupied me more every day.

The undertaking seemed terribly arduous,

even if I only took the bare essentials

and lived primitively on the mountain.

After I realized that I'd already decided to move,

when I saw the first green meadows,

I became calm.

And on 25th May came the day of departure from the cabin.

The road was well maintained, but it still took four hours

for our strange procession to reach the pasture.

It was about noon. I was completely exhausted,

not so much from the physical effort but from nervous tension.

Something new had started. I did not know what it would bring.

But my homesickness and concern for the future slowly left me.

I began to see the beautiful pasture, strange and dangerous.

But, like everything foreign, full of allure.

It was a strange feeling unhindered by mountains and trees

a wide area to overlook.

And it was not immediately pleasant and liberating.

My eyes had to get used to the distance,

after a year that I spent in the narrow valley.

So long as I was on the mountain, I made no notes.

I had the calender with me and dutifully struck off every day,

but I was not even recording important events such as the harvest.

The memories of this time remain fresh

and it is not hard for me to write about it.

The Summer scent, the thunderstorms

and the star-filled evenings I will never forget.

For the first time in my life I was appeased.

Not satisfied or happy, but appeased.

It was as if a large hand had stopped the clock in my mind.

Sometimes my thoughts grew confused

as if the forest laid down roots inside me

and with my brain was thinking its old, eternal thoughts.

Back then, in the second summer, it was not so far along.

The boundaries were still strictly drawn.

It is difficult for me,

when writing my earlier and my new self, to tell them apart.

My new self, I am not even sure

that it isn't slowly being absorbed into a greater We.

But even so, the transformation has begun.

The pasture was to blame.

It was almost impossible in the buzzing stillness of the meadow

under the big sky stay to remain an isolated, separate self.

A small, blind, stubborn self,

that did not want to fit into the greater community.

Once it had been a source of pride that I lived such a life.

But on the mountain, it suddenly seemed to me pathetic and ridiculous.

An inflated nothing.

On 16th October, after I was back from the pasture,

I again made regular notes.

Almost throughout October the weather was beautiful.

I used the time well to double my wood supply.

All Saints day was suddenly warm, and I knew

that this heralded in the winter.

On 1Oth December I find a strange entry:

"Time goes by so fast."

I don't remember having written that.

I do not know what happened on the 10th of December

that led me to write under "New snow"

and "Fetched hay", to write

"Time goes by so fast."

Did the time pass so fast back then...

I cannot remember and cannot give an account.

It's not true. The time only seemed to pass quickly.

I believe the time stands still and I move around in it.

Sometimes slow and sometimes with furious speed.

I do something, things go ahead, and I forget the time.

And then, suddenly, it surrounds me again.

I'll have to get used to it. Its indifference and omnipresence.

Since Luchs died, I feel it more keenly.

I sit at the table, and time stands still.

I cannot see it, nor smell nor hear,

but it surrounds me on all sides.

Its silence and stillness is terrible.

ln fact, these thoughts are without meaning.

I pity animals and I pity people

because they were born, unasked, into this life.

Maybe people are more deserving

because they have just enough understanding,

to resist the natural course of things.

This makes them wicked and desperate and somewhat unlovable.

But it would be possible to live differently.

There is no impulse as rational as love.

It makes the lover's and the loved one's lives more bearable.

Only, we have to recognize in time,

that this is our only possibility.

Our only hope for a better life.

For an endless army of dead

have missed the only possibility forever.

Time and again I think about that.

I can not understand why we had to take the wrong path.

I only know that it is too late.

In this Autumn a white crow has appeared.

She always flies a little behind the others

and settles alone on a tree, avoided by her companions.

I can't understand why the other crows do not like her.

For me she is a particularly beautiful bird,

but for their kind, she is repugnant.

A sad absurdity that shouldn't exist.

A white crow.

She remains sitting, while the whole flock flies away,

and I bring her a little food.

She can not know why she is rejected.

She knows no other life.

Always she will be rejected, and so alone

that she will fear people less than her black brothers.

Every day I wait for the white crow and call.

And she looks at me attentively out of her reddish eyes.

I can do very little for her.

My scraps may prolong a life that should not be prolonged.

But I want the white crow to live, and sometimes I dream

that there is a second one in the forest and the two will find each other.

I do not believe it, I only wish it very much.

Gradually, I began to give up my past

and accept the new order.

By the time the weather really improved, it was May already.

Two years had passed in the forest, and it struck me

that I hardly ever thought that anyone would find me.

I decided to set off for the pasture.

In early June I was finally ready. I got used to the pasture.

But it was not the same as last year.

That first summer on the mountain was gone forever.

I did not want a weak imitation of it, and so held myself back

from falling for the old magic.

But the meadow didn't make it difficult.

It closed itself off to me and showed an unfamililar face.

I often sat, as I did a year ago, on the bench overlooking the meadow.

It was no different than before and smelled just as sweet

but I never got the old enjoyment from it.

I took no more long trips,

for I had set my limits last Summer.

It was irrelevant to me where the wall was.

In that Summer I quite forgot that Luchs was a dog and I a human.

I knew it, but it had now ceased to have any meaning.

Luchs also had changed.

Since I was with him so much,

he was calm and did not seem to constantly worry

that I would dissolve into thin air after five minutes of being away from him.

When I think about it today, I believe

that this was the only big fear in the dog's life:

to be left all alone.

I had learned a lot

and understood almost every one of his movements and sounds.

Now, between us, there was a tacit understanding.

I carried Luchs to the hut

and laid him on the bench.

He was suddenly small and light.

And then I heard, as if from afar, Bella roaring.

She was roaring in fear.

I tried to calm her down.

Only then did I think of the man again.

I knew that he must be dead.

He'd been such a large target I couldn't have missed.

I was glad that he was dead.

It would've been difficult to have to kill a fallen man.

And yet I couldn't have let him live.

Or maybe. I do not know.

I didn't want him lying in the meadow,

not next to the dead bull and on the innocent grass.

So I grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to a lookout point.

There, where the rock drops steeply to the scree

and the apine roses bloom in June, I let him roll down.

For Luchs I dug a grave that evening.

I made the hole deep, lay Luchs in it,

covered him with earth and trod down the grass above.

And then, I was very tired.

Tired as never before.

Then I sat down on the bench and waited for the long night.

It was a bright starry night,

and the wind blew down from the cold rocks.

But I was colder than the wind and felt nothing.

At first light I got up and with Bella left the meadow.

The next day I resumed my usual work.

October came, and I harvested potatoes and fruit.

The straw had to be mowed, but that took only a week.

Finally, physically beaten and broken,

I gave up the flight and stayed with my thoughts.

Nothing came to me.

I would like to know why the strange man killed my animals.

I'll never find out and maybe it's better so.

Now I am peaceful.

I see a little further.

l see that this is not the end.

Everything goes on.

The bull, Pearl and Luchs will never be again.

But something new will come and I cannot hide from it.

The memory the sorrow and the fear will remain

and the hard work, so long as I live.

Today, the 25th February is the end of my report.

There's not a sheet of paper left.

It's now about five clock in the evening and still so light

I can write without a lamp.

The crows have risen crying and circling above the forest.

When they are no longer in sight,

I will go into the clearing and feed the white crow.

She's waiting for me.