Константин Воскресенский – Film Screenplay. The Adventures of Kesha the Russian Boy (страница 6)
Beat. Kesha gets the joke – the Krylov fable about the crow who opens her mouth to sing and drops the cheese. He is the crow. The tree is his foolishness. The cheese is his dignity.
KESHA
Can you… can you get my mum?
MOTHER comes running, breathless. Behind her, a BIG NEIGHBOR (30s, the kind of man who opens jars for the whole building and fixes radiators without being asked). He reaches up and plucks Kesha from the tree like a ripe apple.
Mother sets Kesha down. Brushes bark from his jacket. Pulls a leaf from his hair. Looks at him. He braces for the scolding of his life.
She hugs him instead. Hard. Long. His face, pressed into her coat, shifts from fear to surprise to something warm and unnameable.
CUT TO:
Scene 16. EXT. VARIOUS LOCATIONS – DAY (1990–1996) – MONTAGE
A rapid-fire MONTAGE of Kesha’s injuries, scored to upbeat Soviet-era children’s music that grows increasingly ironic as the injuries worsen:
– Kesha falls backward off a metal playground ladder. His back hits dirt. He lies there, wind knocked out, staring at the sky. A cloud shaped like a rabbit drifts past. He gets up. Brushes himself off. Goes home for pancakes.
– Kesha spins off a carousel at maximum speed and lands on a board of nails. FIVE puncture wounds in his backside. His SCREAM echoes across the playground and sends pigeons scattering. Mother pulls nails from his flesh at the kitchen table while he bites a wooden spoon.
– Kesha falls from a tree – a different tree, a taller one. Dislocates his left arm. Hides the injury by keeping his arm inside his jacket, Napoleon-style. He maintains this disguise for THREE DAYS so he won’t be kept from summer camp.
– At a sanatorium, Kesha tries to impress three GIRLS by jumping over a gazebo railing. His foot catches. He slams down on his left arm. AGAIN. He wakes up in a plaster cast, surrounded by the same three girls, who now feel sorry for him. Not the attention he wanted.
– A GERMAN SHEPHERD grabs his left hand. Teeth sink in. A thick yellow thread of muscle sticks out of the wound. Kesha stares at it with scientific curiosity.
ADULT KESHA (V.O.)
My left arm was beginning to suspect I didn’t like it. In fairness, the arm had a point. We have since reconciled.
CUT TO:
Scene 17. INT. APARTMENT BUILDING ELEVATOR – DAY (1991)
An old Soviet elevator with large wooden folding doors. The paint is chipped in patterns that look like maps of imaginary countries. The light flickers. It smells of damp concrete, old cabbage, and someone’s Soviet cologne.
KESHA (6) and his FRIEND SASHA (7) step inside. They close the outer metal door but leave the inner wooden door OPEN. Through the gap, the concrete elevator shaft is visible – dark, endless, humming with invisible machinery.
SASHA
Arms out. Brace against the walls. Like this. Flat palms.
He demonstrates: palms pressed flat against the elevator walls. Kesha copies him, small hands barely reaching.
SASHA
Now lift your feet. Both of them. Same time.
Both boys LIFT THEIR FEET off the floor. They hang there, suspended, arms braced, legs dangling. The elevator’s weight sensor reads the car as empty. It waits, confused.
SASHA
KOLYA! PRESS THE BUTTON!
Somewhere above, a button is pressed. The elevator LURCHES upward. Metal bars, concrete walls, cables – all FLASH PAST inches from their dangling feet. A strobing, dizzying blur of grey and black. Wind rushes up through the shaft, whipping their hair.
The boys GRIN. Teeth showing. Eyes wild. The flickering light makes their faces appear and disappear like ghosts. This is the greatest ride in the Soviet Union and nobody knows about it except them.
The elevator stops. They drop their feet. Catch their breath. Look at each other.
KESHA
Again?
SASHA
Again.
They lift their feet. The sensor goes blank. Someone presses another button. The elevator DROPS. This time faster. Kesha’s stomach lurches into his throat. He laughs – a wild, uncontrolled, five-alarm laugh that echoes through the shaft.
They do it five more times. When they finally stumble out into the hallway, their arms are trembling and their grins could power the building.
ADULT KESHA (V.O.)
When these modern lifts with automatic doors came out, parents everywhere breathed a sigh of relief. The elevator game was over. But what I’d give for one more ride in that rattling, terrifying, magnificent machine. Just one more.
CUT TO:
Scene 18. EXT. TUNNEL UNDER HIGHWAY BRIDGE – DAY (1992)
A concrete tunnel runs under a highway. A shallow stream flows through it, carrying leaves and candy wrappers from the civilized world above. KESHA (7) and THREE FRIENDS wade in, water up to their knees, cheap Soviet flashlights in hand.
FRIEND #1
There are crayfish in here. Huge ones. My brother caught one the size of his hand.
KESHA
How do you catch them?
FRIEND #1
You just grab them. Fast. Before they pinch you.
They wade deeper. The tunnel narrows. Highway traffic rumbles above them like a never-ending thunderstorm. Their flashlight beams dance across mossy walls, picking out strange shadows and dripping pipes.
Kesha spots movement. A CRAYFISH, rust-brown and armored, backing into a crevice. He reaches in. It PINCHES his finger.
KESHA
OW!
He yanks his hand back, crayfish attached, dangling from his index finger like an angry ornament. The boys erupt in laughter. Kesha shakes his hand. The crayfish holds on. More laughter.
LATER: They sit in the tunnel, wet, cold, absolutely content, having built a small dam of stones across the stream. Tiny fish dart in the trapped pool.
Scene 19. INT. FAMILY APARTMENT – EVENING
Kesha walks in. Soaked from chest to shoes. Mud in his hair, on his neck, behind his ears.
MOTHER
Why are you wet?
KESHA
I fell in a puddle.