The Prisoner Page #4

brought me food?

You're fed according

to the regulations.

Not for days.

Three days.

That's why they've

boarded the window.

To frighten me so that I can't tell.

No, it's just you've been allowed

to sleep as much as you like.

It's muddled you up.

I can't get over

what you're doing to that floor.

You're making

a real show place of it.

I'll tell you what.

I'll get you a tin of polish

and a proper cloth.

We had a fellow

in solitary for a long time...

...he used to take a mop to bed

with him at night and stroke its hair.

He got so he ate it up in the end

and they had to put him away.

Have they given up?

Am I to be left here now to rot...

...here, forever?

- Is that it?

- Now, why should it be?

You finished already?

I'm gonna make a clock somehow.

Next time, I'll know how long

you've left me alone.

Something running,

something rolling.

Something round.

- A clock.

- A cuckoo.

You need a cuckoo clock.

My granny had one.

I stuck its little door fast

so it couldn't get out.

You could hear it

whirling about inside.

Flying about.

I thought it was alive.

Kids!

Cuckoo!

Look a bit different after a couple

of months of solitary, don't they?

What time is it

supposed to be now?

You haven't been out of this room

five minutes.

What have you been up to?

Pick it up.

You worked up a pretty good appetite

in five minutes.

Well, I was hungry,

I hadn't eaten for three days.

- Five minutes, you said.

- You're tricking me, trying to fool me!

Now, no violence!

You're not the violent sort.

How are you doing this to me?

Why am I...

...going out of my mind?

Well, it's funny, you know.

The more store a man sets by his wits,

the sooner he loses them.

When a man starts

watching his mind at work...

...you can't leave

him alone for 5 minutes...

...without he frightens himself

to death.

Finished with it?

Oh, don't go.

What's the matter?

You should try and get some sleep.

I told you the switch

is working here now, didn't I?

They always complain

about the light at first...

...and when you tell them they can

switch it off, they don't want to.

You get so you don't like the dark,

don't you?

Night-night.

Not like the dark.

My good fellow...

...you really think I'm afraid

of the dark?

The dark.

Quiet.

Quiet.

Quiet!

Keep us, O Lord, while we wake...

...and guard us while we sleep...

...that we may watch with Christ

and sleep in peace.

Get him to send for me again.

Get him to send for me.

No good to them

if out of my mind.

Tell him he's got what he wanted.

The man on the

psychiatrist's couch...

...wants to talk.

No!

What are you trying

to make me say?

You twist what I say!

You make me see myself

as warped and crooked.

You, with your fake friendship!

Your friendship will talk.

And something knows I mustn't.

Talking for 15 hours.

Last kick, poor brute.

I know the signs.

Sedative.

No.

- Nothing in this room.

- Now, look.

The things I have to drink for you.

I'm onto him now.

I've got him.

I can hold him for 48 hours.

They must stage the trial

within that time.

- But I get all that laid on.

- That's their business.

I've hooked him.

His weakness is humility.

And he, poor fool, thinks he's proud.

He'll pour it all out now,

all his imagined vices.

I can play him. And land him.

But they must be ready

when I give the word.

It's a pity it's a sport that has

to be played with living men.

What are you fighting?

Why do you hate yourself?

I know you, I don't hate you.

- You must.

- I'm supposed to, but I can't.

You don't love your

fellow men, do you?

No.

Is that it, or is it something deeper?

You've no delight in your God,

have you, nor never had?

No.

Is that why you hate yourself?

Your heroism in the Resistance...

...was that just to convince yourself,

to prove yourself to yourself?

Why should you do that?

What must you keep proving?

The flesh...

...not weak.

What are you ashamed of?

Women?

A priest?

- Even so.

- Thank God, no.

Not in the corners of your mind?

Not alive, pulsing in the dark?

Not veiled, buried, drowned, waiting?

No.

You think all your life was a faade.

What are you hiding?

Why are you ashamed?

Unclean flesh.

Yes, yes.

My body...

...of her flesh and blood.

Your mother?

Behind the fish market?

Oh, she was married.

I was legitimate.

But I knew how it had always been.

Everyone knew.

In my little room, at night...

...listening to the new feet

blundering up the stairs.

The whispering and

the smothered laughter...

...behind the stupid flowered

paper on the wall!

My body of her flesh.

Oh, I put a scholar's gown on it...

...wrapped it in a cassock...

...tried to cover it.

And then, success.

To justify the pride, something...

...always to prove...

...what wasn't there.

Not there?

No heart.

There's no love in some of us.

Don't you think I'd have

found it if there were?

Your mother's sin, your shame

for her and for yourself.

Is that all?

Only the start.

Why did I become a priest?

You think the decision was easy?

Look, the day I heard I'd won

the university scholarship...

...and had to choose between

that and the priesthood...

...I tried to kill myself.

- Why?

Why?

Because I knew the university

was second-best.

I wanted to serve no less than God.

They should have let me die.

I became a priest...

...because I wanted to start again.

I wanted to feel free.

I wanted to feel clean.

So that was it.

I wanted to justify myself to myself.

To me...

...not to God.

And then?

I succeeded.

I can serve men or God

or my country...

...but I can't care.

You fake.

The hero of the Resistance...

...who outwitted the Gestapo

for his own vanity.

The martyr for the church whose only

resistance is for his own pride.

His Eminence, the cardinal...

...who could steal the estimation

of the world to justify...

...a miserable little tyke of a

backstreet drab who smelled of fish!

Forgiveness.

Did you preach forgiveness

up in your pulpit?

- Forgiveness for those who stole?

- Of course.

Didn't they have to give back

what they'd stolen?

How...

...can you give back...

...honour?

Deface the national monument?

Tell them...

...tell the world, as you've told me...

...that your whole life was a fake?

But you couldn't do that.

There'd be nothing left.

Nothing.

Tell them you betrayed

them in the war...

...that they could understand.

- It isn't true.

- Does it matter?

Madness.

It's a mad world.

If you really want to start again,

as low as the gutter you came from...

...why not tell them that in

the war, you betrayed them?

I betrayed them?

Oh, God.

Would you have the courage

to say it in open court?

I don't know.

It couldn't be done.

Don't mock me.

Of course, if you threw in enough

politics to leaven the loaf...

...they'd eat it.

- I mustn't confess!

- You mustn't confess?

You mustn't weaken, you, so certain

of yourself when you came here...

...with your wit and your sacred hands

and your insufferable conceit.

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