Soyuzmultfilm Puppet Film Division
Man must understand that he is the creator and master of the world,
that he bears the responsibility for all the world's misfortunes,
and that to him belongs the glory for all the good there is in life.
(From a letter by Maxim Gorky to Romain Rolland)
The Handyman from Clamecy
Based on the novella by Romain Rolland "Colas Breugnon"
Screenplay by Aleksey Simukov
Directed by Vadim Kurchevsky
Art Director Teodor Tezhik
Cinematographers: Ilya Minkovetsky, Teodor Bunimovich, Yan Topper
Animators: Maya Buzinova, Natalya Dabizha, Iosif Douksha.
Composer Mikhail Meyerovich
Sound Engineer Vladimir Kutuzov Montage Nadezhda Treshcheva
Script Editor Raisa Frichinskaya
Narrated by Aleksey Konsovsky
Artistic Staff: Roman Gurov, Pavel Gusev, Vladimir Abakumov, Margarita Chesnokova, Liliana Lyutinskaya, Valentin Ladygin
Artistic Staff: Oleg Masainov, Galina Gettinger, Svetlana Znamenskaya, Vladimir Alisov, Pavel Lesin.
Production Director Natan Bitman
I know not why, my friends, it brings me such pleasure
to drink deep from the full cup of old memories in my heart.
For idle daydreams are not for me, no.
I tell of what I saw, what I said, and what I did.
Colas, nicknamed Breugnon.
An old sparrow of Burgundian blood, vast in spirit and in belly.
My wife, my treasure, the virtue of our house.
She often infuriates me.
But I am not so foolish as to let her words grieve me even a penny's worth.
She reproaches me for having a sweet tooth and being far too fond of revelry.
I truly do love all good things.
A good table, good wine,
fine, fleshy joys,
and those one finds in dreams.
I am eternally hungry.
My mouth waters the moment I see the table set by earth and sun.
How good it is to live in this land!
The earth is good. The one upon which I was created,
and upon which I live.
I am of the Brotherhood of Saint Anne,
that is to say, a carpenter.
Everything here was made by my hands.
What could be better than the joy of a steady hand,
of clever fingers from which a fragile creation of art emerges.
Ah, my granddaughter! A sly little fox.
The moment she sees me, she runs to meet me.
She knows I always have a basket full of tall tales.
She loves them no less than I do.
It is good to have tools in hand— to saw, to plane, to drill.
To wake a sleeping beauty,
one need only, like a lover, penetrate the depths of the wood.
How many forms slumber in the wood, lurking and concealed.
I look at them, and my youth is reborn.
It was good to be twenty.
Women in those days had breasts more beautiful and full.
And men had their hearts where they belonged. And the rest, too.
They don't make people from such wood anymore.
My Little Weasel, where are you now?
It has been so many years since I saw you.
What remains of your nimble little face,
of the sly little grimace of my Weasel?
Now there is no longer cause to fear
that you will gnaw at my heart with your sharp little teeth.
But in the old days, how well they knew how to laugh and bite.
Once—it was some thirty-five years after our last meeting—
I finally saw her.
She was driving a donkey and shouting across the whole street.
I said: "of all the women in the world,
I would know you with my eyes closed."
"Breugnon," she said, "you are the same madcap as ever."
And I looked at her...
My breath was taken away, and I could not utter a word.
And suddenly she said: "you know, I did love you back then."
Loved me...
And I thought she was mocking me.
Ah, foolish youth.
How good it is to think that I was once so foolish.
How it refreshes the heart.
"Kiss me," she asked.
When I touched her old cheeks,
my eyes stung with the urge to weep.
And Little Weasel said to me: "Prickly."
But then I heard my old woman's voice.
She was waving her arms and shouting that I was a loafer and a drunkard.
And that I should hurry with the order for the Lord Duke—
they had come from His Grace.
Yes, yes, yes, yes... They say truly: "take a wife, and forget the quiet life."
Let her drone on with her little song, and I shall drone on with mine.
Sing on, my beauty.
To your health.
What is it?
Is our friend the Curé quarreling with his parishioners again?
"Breugnon, do you hear?" he shouted,
"These loafers are always asking God for something.
Every day they pester me and the Lord with their fancies.
One wants a bit of sun for the fields,
another wants the clouds dispersed— the wheat must be cut.
Now it's these caterpillars and beetles."
I was amused by their dispute.
Then we raised our glasses.
The Curé, of course, for the Lord God,
and I—for common sense.
But the parishioners would not be stilled, and demanded their shepherd.
"Vagabonds!" shouted the Curé, "I serve God, not you, children of the devil."
"Yes..." I said, "there is no trade more wretched
than instilling God's truths into their thick-skinned skulls."
It was like a sin to stay indoors on such a morning.
And I set off into the forest with my granddaughter and my apprentice.
I needed a piece of wood, supple and dense.
I never get tired of running my hands over every piece I find.
To me, wood is dearer than a woman.
To each his own passion.
Occupied with my work,
I did not notice the horsemen approaching us.
They were the men of our Duke de Nevers.
They set upon us as if we were brigands,
claiming that we were trespassing upon their master's property.
We knew that this land belonged to him.
But until quite recently, in the time of his late father,
we walked these roads freely.
I tried to explain to this iron-headed block,
that for 300 years our grandfathers and great-grandfathers
grazed goats here, mowed the grass, and gathered firewood.
But he would listen to nothing.
Coming to my senses, I decided to go to the castle of His Grace,
to seek justice.
Over a quarter-century, many of my works had gathered there.
They were lonely and uneasy there, my children.
The figures were spoiled and battered.
Yes, our young Duke is not like the old one.
And I realized I had come in vain.
"Do you not know," he said, "that in Clamecy everything belongs to me.
The land, the forest, even you yourself with your wooden trinkets,
which I buy from you."
Well, what could I answer to that? Everyone around was laughing.
And he began to mock me, shooting my dear little ones with an arquebus.
I would have let myself be whipped for any of those wooden pieces,
brought to life by my fingers.
For man is nothing. Hallowed is his creation.
A triple murderer is he who kills a thought.
But then something happened
that neither the Duke nor his drunken loafers could foresee.
One of them, wheezing and writhing in convulsions, rolled to my feet.
"What is wrong with him?" asked the Duke.
"Your Grace, a marksman more accurate than you has been found," I said to him.
"Who is it, who?" "The Plague. The Plague, Your Grace!"
Driven mad by fear of the plague and death,
people lost the last of their common sense.
They burned the houses of both the sick and the healthy.
Others hid in their burrows,
boarding up the windows, afraid to meet one another.
I felt that my song was sung.
A fever burned within me.
My side was aching, and my insides were being turned out.
"O Lord," I groaned, "why do you punish a harmless man
who has done nothing to you? Why?"
Then I realized that He did not hear me,
and that I was wasting my time.
I know not how long I lay in that shed,
only that when I stood on my feet and went out to breathe the fresh air,
I did not recognize Clamecy.
And then I shouted to the people: "this cannot go on!
Come out! We must stay together!
Or have your trousers been taken, that you sit in your rooms?"
And I won the day. We were together again.
Yes, they say truly: trouble comes to us on horseback, but leaves on foot.
Just as I thought it was all behind us, a new misfortune befell us.
Our little granddaughter fell ill.
Burning with fever,
she cried out for help and struggled like a wounded bird.
What a night that was, I cannot tell.
Is it not a strange thing,
how one becomes so attached to this little creature.
With them, all is well, even the very worst.
And without them, it is as if nothing exists.
I completely forgot that I had left my sick old woman alone in the room.
The deathwatch beetle in the wall was already ticking away her final minutes,
during which her whole life flashed before her.
Only the prayer for our granddaughter's salvation kept her in this life.
Who worked this miracle, I know not.
But our granddaughter's fever began to break,
her breath flowed like a gentle stream,
and our little bird began to revive.
And my old woman, letting her head fall upon the pillow, sighed:
"Now I can go."
And instantly her gaze was lost, her face fell away,
as if her breath had vanished at once.
That is all, the burden is laid upon the ground.
You see,
one might not love one's old woman,
one might be angry with each other day and night for twenty-five years.
But in the hour when the snub-nosed one comes for her,
you feel something clutching at your throat.
As if a piece of yourself is falling away.
And though it be not beautiful, though it constrained you greatly,
still you pity it, you love it, Lord.
The sun has passed away.
The cold sets in.
That rogue frost has crept even in here.
Time is the best healer.
How long can one mourn that, which can never be returned?
Life is good, my friends. The only trouble is—it is short.
Ah, how I wish for a bit more.
I—an old sparrow—would know how to make use of it.
And I wouldn't forget my friends... Now then, let's shake ourselves off!
But, God is my witness, we have not yet settled with our good Duke
as to whose land this is.
We are forbidden to tread upon his meadow.
If we in France did not have those like us,
who love their vineyards and fields,
what would the King have for his fare?
In the evening we gathered at the "Three Mugs" tavern.
It is always easier to reach an agreement at the table.
And here is what we devised.
It is not enough to teach our Duke a lesson,
we must also have some fun ourselves.
We set off for the meadow, carrying upon our shoulders a clever contraption,
veiled for the time being by a cloth.
Everyone shouted: "Hats off! Long live our good Duke!"
And those fools guarding the meadow, of course, could understand nothing.
With cries of "Where is the Lord Duke?" they stopped our procession.
Choking with laughter, we answered:
"Our good Duke is with us."
But then the Duke himself appeared, in his own proper person.
And I said once more: "Our Duke is with us."
He immediately noticed the canopy and ordered the veil to be torn away.
Does it look like him? I think so.
The nose is a bit long, true.
But no matter, let the Duke be left with a long nose.
Being a well-bred man, the Duke de Nevers realized at once
that there was no room here for two Dukes.
And we... we began to celebrate our victory.
We ate, drank, and made merry all day, sparing neither our soles nor our throats.
That is how we showed that the folk of Clamecy
know how to be obedient subjects of their Duke,
and yet always do exactly as they please.
The poorer I am, the more riches I possess.
With me are my children, my friends.
My granddaughter, my blue-eyed little titmouse.
And my student, my apprentice.
Is this not wealth?
Children leave home, and the old stay with the grandchildren.
It is even better that way— we always have something to talk about.
Fine little creatures, who are nothing yet,
but will surely be something one day.
It is for them that I live.
These are my seeds, which I cast into the times to come.
This is my workshop.
It was burned when the plague was here.
It has always been so:
one man creates, another destroys.
And yet life is good when one feels the steadiness of a sure hand.
When labor is with you.
And the best of what I have made— the souls I have sculpted—
they will be happier,
because they will stand on my shoulders and will see further.
The End (subs by Ayri, edited by Niffiwan)