All language subtitles for Smuga cienia (1976)Eg

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THE SHADOW LINE

This is not a marriage story.

My action, such as it was,

had more the quality of divorce -
of desertion.

For no good reason
I abandoned my ship.

It was in an eastern port -

in Singapore.

I had been first mate on the Vidar,
an excellent ship,

And I had the highest regard
for her Master Captain Kent.

And he must have wondered
what ailed his first mate,

but he was a sailor and
he too had been young

and perhaps understood
what I found so difficult to express.

And so I left Captain Kent's ship -

like bird leaves
a comfortable branch.

One day I was perfectly alright,

and the next - everything was gone.

Glamour - flavour - interest -
contentment - everything.

It was that moment, you know,

when one sensed
ahead a shadow line warning,

one that the period of late youth
must be left behind.

The green sickness of late youth
descended upon me.

I was now a man without a ship,
with three days

to wait for the next homeward mail
boat a passenger.

I made my way
to the Officers sailors home

where I usually stayed.

Having broken away
from my home in Poland -

- removed by great distances
from such natural affections

that were still left to me -

I can safely say that the sea
was to be all my world.

The sole link with my homeland were the parcels
that my uncle sent from the Ukraine.

The letters and photographs
were a reminder of the world

I had left 13 years previously.

From time to time
he would enclose a copy

of the polish paper
"Wędrowiec" for me,

to contribute some impression
of my travels abroad.

"Because...

Because you do not forget Polish,
and for that...

...and for that God bless you,

it would be an exercise
in your own language,

that would connect you to your
Homeland and your compatriots,

and would honour the memory
of your father,

who imployed his pen
in the service of his country.

I send you photographs...
of myself -

- your grandmother and the remaining
members of our family -

the church in Berdyczów.

They may evoque your childhood
memories in the Ukraina,

schooling in Kraków,

and your thinking
about the future

and dreams about travels,

that you turn into reality.

To show that a man from
a country with no sea

could be as good a sailor
as anyone."

I felt myself to be the latest
representative of a dynasty.

Continuous, not in blood
but in experience,

training, conception of duty

and in the blessed simplicity

of its traditional view of life.

A composite soul
of previous captains.

Mr. Burns had signed a
charter-party

which assumed a degree of fairness
and gentlemanly conduct

which the other
had no intention of observing.

But this has only one episode

in the general problem of how
to get that ship, which was mine -

- with all her appurtenances
and her men -

with her body
and her spirit,

now slumbering
in the pestilential river...

how to get her to the sea.

Human nature is, I fear,
not very nice right through.

There are ugly spots in it,

and there is more
to being Master of a ship

than knowing
how to set her sails correctly.

People have a great opinion of the
advantages of experience.

But in that connection experience
always means something disagreeable -

- as opposed to the charm and
innocence of illusions.

I was losing mine - rapidly.

There is something in the sky,

like a decomposition,
like a corruption of the air,

which remains
as still as ever.

After all, mere clouds,

which may or may not
hold wind or rain.

Strange,
that it would trouble me so.

I feel as if all my sins
had found me out.

But I suppose the trouble is that

the ship is still lying motion-less,

not under command,
and that I have nothing to do

to keep my imagination

from running wild.

It seems to me that all my life before
is infinitely remote.

What's going to happen?
We may have all our sails blown away.

And that would be like a death
sentence on the men.

We haven't strength
enough on board.

It's like being bound hand and foot

before having one's throat cut.

And what appals me most of all

is that I shrink from going on deck
to face it.

Now I understand that strange

sense of insecurity in my past.

I always suspected
that I might be no good.

And here is proof positive,
I am shrinking it,

I am no any good.