The Fever (2004) Movie Script

I'm traveling.
Something's wrong.
I don't feel right.
TITLU
I came back here a few days ago,
to this poor country.
There's a small war going on.
And the rebels keep blowing up
the electricity towers.
The hotel thoughtfully provides
candles.
I'm sitting on these cold,
square tiles.
On a cold night.
In a cold country.
And I can't stand up.
Suddenly, for a moment,
I see myself from the outside.
As if I were looking at myself.
From the outside I look like
so many other people.
For example, I am really quite
similar to my neighbor, Jean.
If you consider simply
the external facts about me.
Well, the point is that I've never
been interested in external facts.
I could easily fit all the facts about
my life into one slim book.
And it's a book
I would never want to read
because it would be too boring.
Chapter one, I was born.
I went to school.
Chapter two.
The rest.
I got married, had children.
Got divorced.
I worked.
Jobs. Furniture. Holidays.
Parties. I bought a car.
I bought a dress.
That isn't me. What matters
about me is my inner life.
What I think about things.
And feel about things.
What I love.
I love Beethoven.
I loved to see the bow of the
violin cut into the strings.
I loved to go out at night in the
cosmopolitan city
where I've lived all my life.
The city where I raised my children
and my children are raising theirs.
I loved the lights of the city.
The coffee shops, bookshops, theatres.
The things that have thrilled me all
through my life.
Now and thirty years ago.
And when I was a child.
You see, my parents loved me,
they raised me to think about people.
The world. Humanity.
Beauty.
And they read me a book about all the
people in so many different uniforms
who came to our house
to help our family.
The postman with the post,
the delivery man
from the grocer's shop,
all so kind.
Even on the very street
where we lived
there were so many fascinating
things to see.
And at the end of the street
there was the wonderful old woman
who worked in the bakery
who bent down and gave me
sugar covered buns.
My parents taught me
to love traveling.
I remember wonderful train trips.
And the magic of riding at night
through the farmland.
When I think of my childhood,
I remember Christmas,
how our presents were wrapped.
First, there'd always be a box
from the shop
that looked like it ought to have
a rocking horse or a tricycle inside
because it was just
so big.
And when you opened that box,
you'd find another box,
which was always tied up with
some shiny ribbon.
And eventually, you'd come upon
some tiny little object
and maybe it was really quite
an ordinary object,
but by the time it had been pulled out
of all that wrapping,
it seemed like the most shining,
sparkling thing in the world.
How delicate it seemed.
How breakable, how precious.
And my friends and I
were the delicate, precious,
breakable children
and we always knew it.
We knew it because
the way we were wrapped.
Soft underwear laid out on the bed,
soft socks to protect our feet.
I remember my darling mother
would say to us
"Now be very careful, don't go down
to play at the railway station,"
"that's a bad neighborhood."
Nice people had gathered
in our neighborhood.
A good neighborhood.
But down at the railway station and
in other areas,
rough people had gathered together,
and those were the neighborhoods
we had to avoid.
Frightening places.
I've always avoided
frightening places.
And yet, I have come back here.
Did I have to be cast down on a
bathroom floor in a poor country,
where no books are printed in my
own language
in order to finally be forced to read
that dull volume,
the story of my life.
I'm not sure why something started
happening to me a year or so ago.
I started to notice certain things
which I wouldn't have noticed before.
Maybe it all began that day
when I went to an art gallery.
There was a woman there.
She was obviously in a wild mood
and was making all sorts of
outrageous remarks.
You see, darling, the rich are pigs.
It's that simple.
- What, all of them?
- That's what I'm saying.
She kept talking about the rich.
I'm saying that in terms of the role
they play in society,
they're all the same.
Well, I know poor people who are
horrible.
And I know several rich people
who happen to be extremely nice.
I don't give a fuck if they're nice or
not,
what I'm saying is that what
they do in the world,
the role they play,
oppresses the poor.
Whether they're nice
to their servants,
or nice to their dogs, or nice to
their friends or nice to anyone.
The ruling class is the ruling class.
I'd heard about these words and
these phrases all my life,
but I'd never met anyone
who actually used them.
Then everywhere I went
I found myself encountering people
who said the same kind of things
which the woman at the gallery had
been saying.
Go for it. Get up and go world.
Seize the opportunity.
Land of opportunity.
What a joke!
But one day, of course.
One day, they're gonna get
what they deserve.
I started to think that
maybe I was crazy.
I thought I was insane.
Could this really be happening?
Was everyone now a Communist?
Apart from me?
Communism had been dead
for a long time.
And no one seemed to recall
any regrets about it.
So then, who were all these people
who kept grabbing hold of me?
One day there as an anonymous
present sitting on my doorstep.
A joke? Serious?
And who'd sent it?
Late that night
I leafed through it.
The beginning was impenetrable.
I couldn't understand it.
But, when I came to the part about
the lives of the workers
the child laborers...
and the factory workers...
I could feel myself suddenly
breathing more slowly.
How angry he was.
Page after page.
Then I turned back to an earlier
section
and I came to a phrase that
I'd heard before.
A strange, upsetting,
sort of ugly phrase.
"The Fetishism of Commodities."
I wanted to understand that phrase,
but I could tell that to understand it
your whole life would probably
have to change.
We say a coat has a certain value,
as if we believed that the coat,
even though made out
of pieces of cloth
had grown some sort
of inner soul.
As if the coat were a fetish
with a living spirit.
But what really determines
the price of a coat?
The coat's price comes
from its history.
The history of all the people
who are involved in making it
and selling it and all the particular
relationships they had.
And if we buy the coat,
we form relationships with
all of those people.
And yet we hide to those relationships
from our own awareness
by pretending we live in a world
where coats have no history.
Just fall down from heaven
with prices marked inside.
"I like this coat.", we say,
"it's not expensive."
As if that were a
fact about the coat.
Not the end of a story about all
the people who made it and sold it.
Two days.
I could see the fetishes and the
commodities everywhere around me.
It's a strange feeling.
Then on the third day...
I lost it. It was gone.
I couldn't see it anymore.
- Have you been waiting long?
- Almost half an hour.
I think maybe something's wrong.
- Those earrings. They're marvelous.
- Oh, thank you.
Is that writing on them?
What does it mean?
Well, I suppose
the closest translation would be...
"The people united will never
be defeated."
That's the simplest.
Where did you get them from?
They were given to me, they were a
gift from some friends in the village.
This country I just
got back from...
She told me they came from a country
she'd visited recently.
When I saw just, just the joy on the
faces of people rallying together
and really making something
wonderful...
It was a place I really didn't know
much about.
As she described it, a bus arrived.
These are made from coins from
the old regime,
which they can't use anymore,
so they make them
into something beautiful. Sorry.
But it wasn't my bus.
Bye. Here.
About six months later,
I went to a party.
I'd had a lot to drink.
- What are you doing here?
- Absolutely nothing.
Ah, finally.
- Are you going west?
- Yes I am, actually.
- Please, come.
- Thank you.
- Hey man, can I smoke?
- No, sorry.
Okay. Okay. One can burn
without fire.
Like this.
I have been trying to place your
accent, where, where are you from?
I'm from a small country.
He revealed that he came from
the same country
where the girl at the bus stop
had been given her earrings.
Doors open, but old friends...
A few years ago, they were killing
each other.
War passed through the country.
He worked that country
as a diplomat.
Now it's peaceful again and they
can drink, sing,
sleep together.
They can dream together.
You must come to visit us.
It's safe now. Believe me. Yeah.
There is a direct flight to the
capitol three times a week.
- Really?
- Sure, yes.
Suddenly, I had a vivid image of
myself sitting on the airplane
as if I'd already decided
to go.
At the end of the month, I told my
office I was taking a few weeks off
and then I was at the airport
waiting to fly off.
Welcome to our country and have
a nice day.
Oh, thank you.
The Diplomat had told me that
he and his friends had lead
a revolution in the country.
I know that visitors can be fooled
by the charming displays
put forward by brutal regimes.
I've never believed in revolution,
because I think power can corrupt
even well-meaning leaders.
There were lots of soldiers,
that was a fact,
but to me they looked more like
shepherds in Renaissance paintings.
Excuse me, office,
government, tourist ?
Yes, yes, I know. Down there.
No, no, go down the street...
A government official
explained to me that
literacy was increasing
and children's diseases
were being eradicated.
He said our government's goal
is for people to keep more of the
fruits of their labor.
And then the sweetness of
the people broke through to me.
Well all together, I've been covering
this country for over ten years.
Oh, really? I thought
newspapers liked to shift their
people around from place to place?
Yeah, my boss is gonna try to get
me to go to other places,
but I don't know, I like it here.
If they insist I go somewhere
else, I quit.
I like it here too. I mean even this
ice cream, it, it's really delicious.
Yes, they're, they're quite proud of
their ice cream.
But you know,
the milk in this ice cream,
it really should go
to the children.
There's not that much
of it to go around here.
The tourism industry last year
seriously made the argument that
most of the people in the world
don't understand
what's going on in this country,
so the hotels owned by the
tourism department
actually ought to get the milk,
because the country would
benefit more
by making a good impression on
visitors such as yourself.
And they're trying to show
what kind of society they'd like
to build one day
if they can ever get the economy
to really produce.
And, and it might very well be
a society full of nice things.
In contrast to the horrible aesthetic
of the rich people
in all the other countries
in this region
I mean my god, have, have you
ever seen such ugliness?
No, I've never been to any of
the other countries in the region.
You're kidding? You have to go.
To at least one or two of them,
otherwise you, you can't appreciate
what the revolution has done here.
I mean, just cross the border three
hundred miles north of here
and you'll see a place where
the army and the death squads
can simply prevent people
from even dreaming of change.
I had read about countries
terrorized by death squads.
I'd never wanted to see one.
But I was intrigued by what he said.
I decided I had to see for myself.
The journalist had urged me
to visit a certain office,
where facts were collected about
things that were happening,
day after day.
I tried to keep, uh, a record
of all the cases of political murder.
And torture. And also rape.
Rape used as a form of torture
or in the course of torture.
This was a friend of mine.
We went to school together.
Then uh, she became a teacher
and she taught at our old school.
You see. They shot her in front
of her own students.
Why?
They thought she was one of
the people
who were fighting the
way things are.
When she was killed
a lot of people were afraid to go to
the funeral.
But they went anyway.
The man in the office told me about
an interesting church
I could go to on Sunday.
A young woman he knew
was often there.
- Thank you.
- It's all right. You're welcome.
- You speak English?
- A little. Yes. From college.
- For your, your head.
- Oh, yes, thank you.
Then the Priest began to speak
intensely.
I felt he must be speaking about
terrible things.
Violence. Death.
He says that we must learn to
forgive our enemies.
Even if it seems difficult
or very impossible.
He says that
Christ was loving and tolerant and
merciful and that we must be, too.
I'm afraid I don't know how to get
back into town.
We walked together for awhile and
then we stopped at a farm.
The government militia set fire
to the barn.
All the animals were killed.
Then they raped both girls
and beat them
and then they decide
to hang them.
And they did from that there.
I don't understand you say
you are interested in music.
But you studied English
at the university.
Why was that?
Well, I didn't think I had enough
talent to make a life in music.
Then after university you
you go to France?
You want to learn more about
English in France?
There was a man who offered me
a job in France.
An older man.
His wife was in love with me.
And you were sleeping with her
husband or...
Well, once I did.
But mostly it was just a kiss.
Once in a while.
And you were there for how long?
Why do you want to know
so much about me?
Because I want to know if
I'm to trust you or not.
She explained that she came
from the part of her country
where valuable minerals lie
beneath the soil.
This tiny group of people
began stealing the land
which we had been living on
for hundreds of years.
And they give themselves
legal title to it.
She hadn't seen her home
for a long time.
She loved her parents.
She had two small children.
Her husband had died
in his early twenties.
My sister was not involved
in politics at all.
She was nurse.
She worked in hospital.
She used to go dancing every weekend
and after a while,
she got together with this
guy she met dancing
and it turned out that
his brother was someone
the government was very
interested in
and my sister never
met his brother.
She knew nothing about him.
But they said she did.
So one day they come to the house
and they beat her
and they beat her.
And after she... died,
I think I cannot go on,
I think I'll kill myself...
but no, so...
I leave my children
with my mother and father.
And I leave the city and I walk.
Into the mountain.
And I find the rebels.
Sitting in a caf'
in the wealthy part of town,
it seemed as if what I'd seen
and heard
couldn't possibly
be happening.
Back home I resumed
my normal life.
But I couldn't help noticing that
everything seemed to feel different.
But first I tried to ignore
the feeling
the way you ignore some symptom
you hope will go away by itself.
But it didn't go away.
I'd had an affair with Jeffrey
years ago.
I hadn't seen him
for a long time.
Just the ticket.
In the old apartment
full of memories
we talked about
a recent play,
a film a terrible performance
by a group of dancers.
One of whom
we knew.
I meant to ask
how is your father doing?
Well, he, he... I'm afraid
What? When did that happen?
About, about a month ago.
Now, I should have told you earlier,
but it would have ruined our dinner.
- I get angry when I think about it.
- Angry?
Yeah, well, it was the usual story of
that god forsaken hospital.
The amazing thing is that
nobody there seems to know
what the hell's going on.
It was as if he had felt no one had
ever died before.
As if he felt it was quite unfair
that his father should have died.
And finally in, in the end,
there were six nurses around him
doing things to him.
Awful.
You know, I was thinking it's
so interesting uh,
there, there were six nurses
standing around your father's bed
trying to extend his life.
Or at least help him to
die without feeling any pain.
And then, at the other end
of the world
there are people lying on the other
kind of bed, the torture table,
and the technicians standing around
those beds are doing all they can
to be sure that the people lying in
those beds will die in horrible agony.
My remarks were out of place.
Where was the sympathy
I owed my friend?
Sometimes I was fine.
There was a nice morning when
I went to have my hair done.
I bought myself
a nice pair of stockings.
And I bought the lot.
Because it's not easy to find
the kind of stockings I like.
Happy Birthday, Jane.
I went to a birthday party.
With my neighbor, Jean.
She told me about her love affair
with an older man.
A film that had disturbed her.
The actress.
The psychiatrist.
The criminals.
The walks at night through the woods
in the country.
The insatiable appetite
for violent sex.
Unpredictably things would put me
into an emotional state.
The injustices in the world.
The unhappiness.
All those stories I must have
read a thousand times.
Never paid much attention to.
What was going on?
I'd always said I'm a happy person.
I love life.
What are we waiting for then?
It's time to go.
My coat. My coat.
I went to a play
with a group of friends.
I'd never even seen the walls and
ceilings of this house before.
And now
I look at them with such longing.
Such tender affection.
I stared at the heroine whose
estate had been sold.
She would now be forced to live
in an apartment in Paris.
The man whose father had once
worked for her family as a serf
would own the house
where she'd grown up.
My sister. My sister.
My darling, my precious,
my beautiful orchard.
My life. My youth. My happiness.
Goodbye.
This person would no longer own
the estate she once owned,
she would have to live
in an apartment instead.
This is the room where our poor
mother loved to walk.
I couldn't remember why
I was supposed to be weeping.
- I know. She was fine.
- So why did you let him bother you?
Because the whole thing revolves
around his reaction to her.
- And if you don't believe him...
- Oh, you are so rigid.
The whole thing falls apart.
What's happening to me ?
I, I feel,
I don't believe in anything and
everyone has some beliefs.
Every person believes certain things.
My neighbor Jean believes...
Articles in magazines try to make
me feel guilty about famines in Africa
and nauseating drivel.
What am I supposed to do
about a famine in Africa?
Get on a plane and bring an African
the salad that I bought for lunch?
And Fred, Fred believes that...
I like to drink champagne.
And so does the woman
that cleans my flat.
The difference is I can afford it.
So what am I supposed to do,
feel bad about that?
I'm sure if it was
the other way around,
she wouldn't feel bad
about me.
Mario believes that...
People are born selfish.
It's human nature.
If I have some extra money,
I'm gonna spend it on myself,
not on some orphan in Asia
I've never met before.
Natasha believes that...
I vote, I write out a few checks,
I try and be friendly to
all the people I meet.
That's all I can do to try and
make the world a better place.
And Anne-Marie believes that...
I have money in my purse
because I made that money
by working very hard.
But poor people work hard,
too.
I'm not saying it's your fault.
You don't make the rules,
but you have to ask yourself
"Why does your world bring so much
money and theirs practically nothing?"
By then it was Christmas.
The season made me
think about children
and all the people having children.
Is that why
we bring children into the world?
So that they, too, can one day
roam the streets,
buying, devouring,
always the best.
Do we really need to bring
in more children?
And gather more treasures
together from all over the world
for all of them to have ?
Are there not enough people
in the world already ?
Who demand the best,
insist on the best?
Of course. I am one of them.
But who does that hurt?
I'm so confused.
I don't know what I think.
But at least I still know what
I like. Yes.
I know what I like. I like walls.
Coziness, pleasure, love.
Lettuce, presents.
I like nice plates.
Those paintings by Matise.
But where do all these objects
come from?
The plates, the presents?
How does it happen that these
are things are made and not others.
Of course, there are only a limited
number of workers in the world.
And each day they do a limited
number of things.
Some things and not other things.
Who tells them what they ought
to do? The holders of money.
They bid their money
for the things they want.
And each bit of money determines
some fraction of the day's activities.
So the people who have a little
determine a little
and the people who have a lot
determine a lot.
And the people who have nothing
determine nothing.
And the workers obey the instructions
of the money.
Money tells some of them
to grow rice
and transport it to places
where children are starving.
And it tells others
to sew costumes
and repair violins.
The world would not
do everything today.
If food is transported
to the starving children
then certain ballets
will not be performed
and if certain performances are,
in fact given,
then the food won't be transported
and the children will die.
Finally, I had a dream.
I was a very young mother.
And it was Christmas.
- What happened?
- I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I just can't give any of you any
more presents.
I love you all, but I, I don't want
to give you anymore presents.
I told my office I was taking
another week off.
I felt that maybe I needed to go back
to the poor, cold country.
Maybe that was where I had to go
in order to cure myself
of this terrible discomfort
or whatever it was.
Suddenly, I seemed to be
in a strange prison.
The guards have beaten me.
I can't stop thinking
about my mother.
The way she took care of me.
The guards have left
me a book.
And yes,
it looks very familiar.
It's the book I've never read.
The book I've never wanted
to read.
What country I grew up in. City.
Street. My family's origins.
The color of their skin.
The money they made.
What I was fed.
What I was taught.
Yes, I understand.
I see that there's an answer
to that difficult question.
Why does your work bring you
so much money,
while their work brings them
practically nothing?
Yes. It could have been
predicted from knowing these things.
Where I was born and
how I was raised.
What an hour of my labor
would probably be worth.
I was born
and the field was provided.
A piece of land for which rich fruit
could be plucked by hands.
But the voluptuous field
that was given to me,
how did I come to be given
that one?
And not one that was black
and baron?
It happened like that because
before I was born there was a time
when thieves, when killers started
seizing all the fields
and piecing them together
over centuries.
Night after night.
Knives glittering.
Throats cut.
Again and again.
Until the beautiful
Christmas morning we woke up
and our proud parents showed us
the gorgeous, shining,
blood-soaked fields,
which now were ours.
Cultivate, they said.
Then give your children the next
hillside. The next valley.
The others will always give you
what you want
or sell you what you want
for the price you want,
they have no choice.
They've become the poor.
So we have everything.
But there's one difficulty,
a curse, we can't escape
our connection to the poor.
We need the poor.
If the poor didn't exist
we would spend our lives
doing the things they do.
Digging in mines and working
in factories.
If the poor weren't poor.
If they were well paid,
we couldn't afford to buy
nice clothes
or go to a nice restaurant
or eat a nice fish.
But we remember the way our
ancestors took the land from the poor
and the poor remember it, too.
They still don't accept
that we have the land.
They think
there should be change.
So we have to talk
to the poor.
Talk and explain that
there's no alternative.
They want things to be different,
they want change,
and so we have to say,
yes, change.
That's what we want too.
Change is good.
But not violent change.
Not theft.
Or revolt or revenge.
No. Instead listen to the idea
of gradual change.
Change that will help you,
but that won't hurt us.
Morality. Law.
Gradual change.
We'll explain it all.
A two-sided contract.
You see, we'll give you things,
many things,
but in exchange,
you must accept that
you don't have the right
to just take what you want.
You see, here's what we'll do.
First, we'll produce more so there
will be more of everything.
And then we'll convince
everyone that
we have to give some
of the new things to you.
That's morality.
So for now, you have to wait.
Otherwise, if we gave you more now
before the new things come along,
that would mean that we
would have less.
But the problem is that we know
the poor, we know they won't wait.
We know what they're planning.
We have to prevent it.
Violent ones
are everywhere already.
Teaching the poor that the way
things are is not God given.
The world could be run
for their benefit.
And so, we have to set up a special
classroom for the poor
to teach the poor some terrible
lessons from the past.
All the crimes.
Committed by the terrorists
and rebels teach the poor
that they must never try to
seize power for themselves,
because the rule of the poor will
always be incompetent
and it will always be cruel.
The poor are bloodthirsty.
Uneducated.
They don't' have the skills.
For their own sake,
it must never happen.
And they must understand that the
dreamers, the idealists,
the ones who say that they
love the poor
will all become viscous killers
in the end.
And the ones that claim
they can create something better
will always end up by creating
something worse.
The poor must understand
these essential lessons.
Chapters from history.
And if they don't understand
them,
they must all be taken out
and shot.
But that can't be me.
That's impossible.
My life has been so good.
Everyone has always been
so good to me.
No. No. That's wrong.
You've misinterpreted everything.
The old woman who bent down
and gave you sugar covered buns
didn't love you.
You were not loved
the way you thought.
I'm trying to tell you
that people hate you.
I'm trying to explain to you
about the people who hate you.
Why do you think they all love you?
What do you think they would love
about you?
What are you? Look at yourself.
Look.
You walk so stiffly into your kitchen
each morning.
You approach your cupboard,
you open it and reach for the coffee.
The coffee you expect to
find on its shelf.
And it has to be there and
if one morning it isn't there...
At the very thought
of the unexpected
the unexpected deprivation you
begin to twitch, to panic, to pant.
Listen to the tone of your voice
on the telephone
when you talk about your life.
Oh, no, Robin, Robin, Robin,
what I need to live on.
What I need to live on?
The amount I need just
in order to live.
The amount I need just
in order to live?
You understand your situation.
Without a place to live in,
without nice clothes to wear,
without money
you would be like them.
The homeless.
The comfortless.
So of course you know it,
you will do anything.
There are no limits
to what you will do.
Sometimes you think about
the suffering of the poor.
Lying in your bed,
you feel a sympathy.
You whisper into your pillow
some words of hope.
Soon, you will all have medicine for
your children. Soon, a home.
The heartless world, the heartless
people will soon give way.
Gradual change will happen,
but during this period of endless
waiting for gradual change,
one by one they
come knocking at your door.
And they cry out, they beg you
for help.
And you say "Get them away
from me, take them away."
And they're detained,
they're held.
Then sent to bad neighborhoods.
And some become angry. Violent.
Commit vicious crimes
that fill everyone with horror
and the one who's being protected
from them is you.
Just as it's also you.
Because of how much you love
those clean, white sheets
and the music
and the dancers.
For whom all those people with
shy faces are being tortured tonight.
Or being murdered tonight.
Your life is an example of something
getting away with something.
And a decent person
can't be a person
who's gotten away with
something.
A decent person cannot have what
is not appropriate for them to have.
Do you see this understanding
of your situation
gives you a basis for
a view of the world?
It means you have to say that
despite all the problems,
the way the world works
is fundamentally not unjust.
Because you know you have
received a share of things
which you know is appropriate
for you to have.
And if it's appropriate,
for you to have the share of things
which in fact you have
and it's appropriate for all the
people like you all over the world
to have the share that they have
that means
it's not inappropriate for the others
to have the share that remains.
The way the world works
is fundamentally not unjust.
You have to be defined as the highest
and most admirable type of human being
while the young woman you met
in the church
who out of some desperate
devotion the people she loves
offers up her body
to the torturers knife
has to be defined as the lowest
and most reprehensible type
who deserves
the punishment of death.
Dear God. I understand.
That what's been exhausting me
has been the effort of constant lying.
I've been lying from the minute
I got up to the minute I went to bed.
I wonder if I could put down
my burden of lies.
Go ahead. Try it.
Just let it happen. Say it.
Say it.
The life I lead is irredeemably
corrupt.
It has no justification.
My sympathy for the poor does not
change the life of the poor.
Gradual change is not happening.
The life of the poor
is only getting worse.
I'm not better than the beggar
or the chamber maid.
So I don't deserve to have
more than they have.
It's not an inescapable destiny
for me to have more.
The money I have
isn't a part of me.
I could perfectly easily
give it away.
Keeping the money
is just a choice I'm making.
I've struggled hard to
get what I have,
but my struggle has always
been against others.
I've been struggling against
the ones who are poor.
And from the point of view
of the ones who are poor,
I'm the same...
as my neighbor,
Jean.
I'm exactly the same
and I'm not on their side.
And that, too, is a choice
I'm making.
I could change sides.
I could join their side.
Betraying, the people I've always
been close to,
walking into danger,
very difficult.
But a possible choice,
if I could accept hardship,
accept discomfort, why not?
Suffering, prison.
And even...
The fever
has broken.
And I see its dawn.
The streets are waking up.
But I want to sleep.
Next week, I'll be home.
I'll be going to sleep
in my own room.
Surrounded by my own things.
My lamp, my clock.
Books, presents.
My porcelain ballerina.
And there among them,
from now on,
let all those
faces sit by my bed.