Константин Воскресенский – Film Screenplay. The Adventures of Kesha the Russian Boy (страница 5)
Kesha opens his mouth to apologize. His lips move. No sound comes out.
He tries again. His jaw works. His tongue presses against his teeth. The words are there – he can feel them, piled up behind his teeth like cars in a traffic jam. But his mouth will not obey.
SOUND DESIGN SHIFTS: the world goes muffled, echoing, as if filtering through water. The old lady’s mouth keeps moving but her words are distorted, distant, like shouting through a wall of glass.
Kesha stands there, mouth open, paralyzed. His eyes fill with tears – not from the scolding, but from the horror of his own silence. His body has betrayed him. His words have abandoned him.
The old lady storms off, muttering about beetles and children and the decline of civilization. Kesha stands alone in the entrance. He tries to say his own name.
K-k-k-k.
He cannot.
ADULT KESHA (V.O.)
I started to stutter at the age of about five. It all happened very fast, like someone flipped a switch inside my head. Another new page in my life had begun. A new burden had been saddled on my soul and mind. One that would follow me everywhere, like a shadow with its own agenda.
CUT TO:
Scene 12. EXT. BUS STOP / ROAD TO SERTYAKINO – DAY (1990)
KESHA (5) and his friend ROMA (7) stand at a bus stop. Roma is the undisputed leader – taller, bolder, with a permanent scab on his knee and the confidence of someone who has been seven for years. Kesha looks up at him with total trust.
ROMA
There’s a pea field past the next village. Massive. You can eat as much as you want. Nobody guards it. It’s just there.
KESHA
Free peas?
ROMA
Free peas. Mountains of them. Come on.
They look at each other – two boys with nothing in their pockets and everything in their imaginations. The bus shelter is covered in graffiti: someone has written "Yeltsin = Thief" and below it, in smaller letters, "But we’re all thieves, aren’t we?"
KESHA
What’s that mean?
ROMA
It means grown-ups are weird. Come on, the bus is coming.
They board a rattling bus. The DRIVER glances at them – two small boys, no adults – but says nothing. This is Russia in 1990. Children roam.
They ride for twenty minutes, faces pressed to the dusty window, watching the suburbs give way to fields and birch groves.
Scene 13. EXT. PEA FIELD, SERTYAKINO VILLAGE – DAY
They get off at a village stop. Walk along a dirt road lined with dandelions. Turn a corner.
An ENORMOUS PEA FIELD stretches to the horizon. Green, endless, shimmering in the heat. The pods hang heavy, splitting open with ripeness. Bees hum. The air smells of earth and sunshine.
Kesha’s mouth falls open. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
KESHA
Roma. It’s so big. It goes forever.
ROMA
Told you. Come on!
They wade into the field. The pea plants come up to Kesha’s chest. He picks a pod, cracks it open – the peas are young, springy, explosively sweet. Juice runs down his chin.
MONTAGE: They eat with abandon. Green juice on their chins and shirts. Stuffing pods into their pockets for later. Lying on their backs between the rows, staring at the vast blue sky, bellies stretched and full. Two tiny figures in an ocean of green. The world is simple and generous and asks nothing of them.
ADULT KESHA (V.O.)
A rush of freedom, an impenetrable sense of excitement on the edge of a big adventure. That’s what a pea field can do when you’re five. That feeling – pure, irrational joy at something free and enormous – I’ve been chasing it ever since. And every now and then, I find it.
Scene 14. INT. FAMILY APARTMENT – EVENING
Mother stands over Kesha, arms crossed. His pockets are still bulging with pea pods. The evidence is overwhelming and, frankly, green.
A spanking follows. Then the corner. Kesha stands facing the wall, nose six inches from the wallpaper with its little blue flowers. His pockets have been emptied.
He is not sorry. He is already planning the next trip.
From her bedroom, he hears his mother talking to Stepfather in hushed tones. "He was on a bus. Alone. With a seven-year-old." Stepfather’s response is too quiet to hear. Then silence. Then the TV turns on – the evening news, Gorbachev, something about reforms.
Kesha traces the little blue flowers on the wallpaper with his finger. Each one is slightly different if you look closely. He wonders if the peas are still there, growing, waiting for him to come back.
CUT TO:
Scene 15. EXT. COURTYARD, APARTMENT BLOCK – DAY (1990)
KESHA (5) stands at the base of a large birch tree, looking up. The trunk is white and smooth, the branches spread wide. Three OLDER BOYS (8–9) stand around him, hands in pockets, radiating that particular confidence of boys who have already learned to be casually cruel.
OLDER BOY #1
Go on. Climb it. It’s easy. Even a baby could do it.
OLDER BOY #2
Getting down is the hard part. But you’ll figure it out.
KESHA
I can do anything if I put my mind to it.
He climbs. First branch – easy, his arms strong from playground bars. Second branch – stretching, his foot finding a knot in the bark. Third – his shoe slips, he catches himself, bark scraping his palm, keeps going. He reaches a crook about two meters up and sits, legs dangling. A wonderful view of the courtyard opens up: the playground, the garages, the khrushchyovkas stretching to the horizon.
He grins down at the boys. They are gone. Vanished. The courtyard is empty. He is alone in a tree, two meters above the ground, with no plan for coming down.
Time passes. His stomach growls. The sun moves. A dog walks by below and doesn’t look up. Should he shout? Absolutely not. He is a man, not an old lady at a market stall. He will wait. Someone will come. Probably.
His FRIENDS run by below, chasing a football.
FRIEND
Hey, crow! Where’s your piece of cheese?