A Serious Man Page #2

. . . One knows when one isn’t wanted.

He walks unsteadily to the door, opens it with effort, and staggers out into the moaning

wind and snow to be swallowed by the night.

The wife and husband stare at the door banging in the wind.

Finally:

Man

Dear wife. We are ruined. Tomorrow they will discover

the body. All is lost.

Wife

Nonsense, Velvel.

She walks to the door. . .

Blessed is the Lord. Good riddance to evil.

. . . and shuts it against the wind.

BLACK:

A drumbeat thumps in black.

Music:
the Jefferson Airplane. Grace Slick’s voice enters:

When the truth is found to be lies

And all the joy within you dies

Don’t you want somebody to love. . .

An image fades in slowly, but even full up it is dim: a round, dull white shape with a

black pinhole center. This white half-globe is a plug set in a flesh-toned field. The flesh

tone glows translucently, backlit. We are drifting toward the white plug and, as we do so,

the music grows louder still.

AN EARPIECE:

A pull back—a reverse of the preceding push in—from the white plastic earpiece of a

transistor radio. The Jefferson Airplane continues over the cut but becomes extremely

compressed. The pull back reveals that the earpiece, lodged in someone’s ear, trails a

white cord.

compressed. The pull back reveals that the earpiece, lodged in someone’s ear, trails a

white cord.

We drift down the cord to find the radio at its other end. As we do so we hear, live in the

room, many voices speaking a foreign language in unison. A classroom, apparently.

The radio, on a desktop, is hidden from in front by a book held open before it. The book

is written in non-Roman characters.

We are in Hebrew school.

The boy who is listening to the transistor radio—Danny Gopnik—sits at a hinge-topped

desk in a cinderblock classroom whose rows of desks are occupied by other boys and

girls of about twelve years of age. It is dusk and the room is fluorescent-lit.

At the front of the room an elderly teacher performs a soporific verb conjugation.

Danny straightens one leg so that he may dig into a pocket. With an eye on the teacher to

make sure he isn’t being watched, he eases something out:

A twenty-dollar bill.

Teacher

Mee yodayah? Reuven? Rifkah? Mah zeh, “anakim”?

BLINDING LIGHT:

The light resolves into a flared image of a blinking eye.

Reverse:
the inside of a human ear: fleshy whorls finely veined, a cavity receding to dark.

Objective on the doctor’s office: the doctor is peering through a lightscope into the ear of

an early-middle-aged man, Larry Gopnik.

Doctor

Uh-huh.

HEBREW SCHOOL:

Close on Hebrew characters being scribbled onto the blackboard as the teacher talks.

The teacher, talking.

A bored child, staring off.

His point-of-view: a blacktopped parking lot with a few orange school buses; beyond it a

marshy field and distant suburban tract housing.

Close on another child staring through drooping eyelids.

His point-of-view: very close on the face of a classroom clock. We hear its electrical

hum. Its red sweep-second hand crawls around the dial very, very slowly.

Danny Gopnik hisses:

Danny

Fagle!. . .

The teacher drones on, writing on the blackboard. Danny’s eyes flit from the teacher to

the student sitting kitty-corner in front of him—a husky youth with shaggy hair. He

hasn’t heard Danny.

. . . Fagle!

The teacher turns from the blackboard and Danny leans back, eyes front, folding the

twenty up small behind his book.

The teacher, not finding the source of the noise, turns back to the board and resumes the

droning lesson.

The clock-watching child, eyelids sinking, is beginning to drool out of one side of his

mouth.

DOCTOR’S OFFICE

The light again flares.

Reverse:
looking into a pupil.

Objective:
the doctor looking through his scope into Larry’s eye.

Doctor

Mm-hmm. -hmm.

HEBREW SCHOOL:

The teacher drones.

A bored child excavates a booger from his nose.

Danny

Fagle!

The teacher interrupts himself briefly to make a couple of phlegm-hawking sounds, then

resumes.

DOCTOR’S OFFICE

The doctor palpates Larry’s midriff, digging his fingers into the hairy, baggy flesh.

Doctor’s Voice

Uh-huh. We’ll do some routine X-rays.

HEBREW SCHOOL:

A young girl holds a hank of her bangs in front of her face, separating out individual hairs

to examine them for split ends.

The teacher turns from the board and begins to pace the desk aisles, looking back and

forth among the students, posing questions.

The booger-seeker, having succesfully withdrawn a specimen, drapes it carefully over the

sharp end of his pencil, to what end we cannot know.

Danny, apprehensively eyeing the teacher, slides the twenty into the transistor radio’s

cover-sleeve.

X-RAY CONE

A huge white rubberized cone, pointed directly at us.

We hear a rush of static and the doctor’s voice filtered through a talk-back:

Doctor’s Voice

Hold still.

-back:

Doctor’s Voice

Hold still.

Wider:
Larry is in his shorts lying on his back on an examining table covered by a sheet

of tissue paper. The X-ray cone is pointed at the middle of his body.

There is a brief sci-fi-like machine hum. It clicks off.

HEBREW SCHOOL:

The clock-watching student’s head is bobbing slowly toward his chest.

The teacher’s circuit of the classroom has taken him around behind Danny. Danny’s

book lies face-down on the desk, covering the radio, but the white cord snakes out from

under it up to his ear. The teacher’s questions and perambulation stop short as he notices

the cord.

Teacher

Mah zeh?

He yanks at the cord.

The cord pops out of its jack and the Jefferson Airplane blares tinnily from beneath the

book of Torah stories.

The teacher lifts the book to expose the jangling radio.

Outraged, the teacher projects above the music:

. . . Mah zeh?! Mah zeh?!

Some of the students sing along with the music; some beat rhythm on their desks.

. . . Sheket, talmidim! Sheket bivakasha!

Three other students join in a chorus:

Students

Sheket! Sheket bivakasha!

The nodding student’s head droops ever lower.

Other students join in the chant:

Chorus

SHAH! SHAH! SHEKET BIVAKASHA!

The nodding student’s chin finally reaches, and settles upon, his chest as a long clattering

inhale signals his surrender to sleep.

Other students join in the chant:

Chorus

SHAH! SHAH! SHEKET BIVAKASHA!

The nodding student’s chin finally reaches, and settles upon, his chest as a long clattering

inhale signals his surrender to sleep.

DOCTOR’S OFFICE

Larry, now fully clothed, is seated across from the doctor.

The doctor examines his file. He absently taps a cigarette out of a pack and lights up. He

nods as he smokes, looking at the file.

Doctor

Well, I—sorry.

He holds the pack toward Larry.

Larry

No thanks.

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