Home From Home – Chronicle of a Vision (Die andere Heimat - Chronik einer Sehnsucht)

Jakob!

Jakob!

Give me that book!

- Lazy boy, I'll teach him what work is! - I didn't hear you.

- Come out of here! - Jakob!

Get out of here!

- Give me the book. - Give me the book.

- I didn't hear you. - Come out of there!

Not the book, father.

You rascal, next time I catch you skiving, I'll break your neck!

Give me that book!

- Jakob! - As long as you live under my roof,

you do as I say.

Where are you going?

And you always stick up for the lout!

Trouble and strife all day...

Thinks he's an Indian himself, the halfwit!

HOME FROM HOME

Chronicle of a Vision

Uncle!

What is it?

On this,

the first day of April

in the year 1842,

in Schabbach,

commenced his journal

Jakob Adam Simon,

son of the master blacksmith Johann Simon

and his wedded wife Margarethe, my dearly beloved mother,

spurred by the promptings of my heart to explore the world

as it is described in books

and in the records left by intrepid travelers,

chiefly for the sake of the languages of faraway peoples which I intend to study.

The moon is full, that's why you can't sleep.

It's all right, grandmother.

Be careful what you dream.

Dreams have a way of coming true one day.

This is my vowed intent

to entrust to this book

each of my steps and earnest resolutions,

until I stand at the edge of the great ocean that will bear me to the New World.

In the night, slumber has often forsaken me,

and in my mind's eye I see the multitude of men and women,

servant girls, children and youths

who have abandoned their homes in these years.

In long battalions their pilgrim shadows wend their way to the surging waves

that will take them out to the New World.

But why, asks my pining heart,

why leave home for ever?

The hardship that besets us will surely relent,

and rarely does good fortune smile on the exiles.

Why do all these wagons stand heavy-laden,

outward-bound in the lanes and farmyards of the Rhineland,

the Palatinate, nay, so rumor has it, all over Europe.

This is it then.

The Kuhn brothers are emigrating.

All three of them.

Many retire for the night irresolute and swear that they will stay for the duration,

only to awake determined to tear up their roots that very same day

and follow the call of the times,

a call stronger than all our resolve.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

God bless you, amen.

Our Father, which art in Heaven,

hallowed be Thy name,

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

in earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us our daily bread

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive them that trespass against us...

These are the last.

Just imagine, mother,

over there the fields are five hundred times bigger than here,

and there is no winter.

They can harvest corn, maize and wheat twice a year.

On the Rio Grande!

The biggest forest is in the north.

It's not just hundred, it's thousand times bigger than the whole Hunsrück!

Where do you get it from, Jakob?

It makes me come over all funny when I look in your eyes.

There's something in those eyes of yours, Jakob...

I don't know where it comes from.

It's just from a few books, mother.

There are hundreds of them, thousands.

No, Jakob.

You've always been different, even when you were small.

Always staring into the distance.

Gran said,

be careful he doesn't die young,

gazing into the other world like that.

Father doesn't see it that way.

With this hymn we welcome the spring in a year

that with God's help will bring us the just reward

for all the hard work of the last years: a rich harvest.

It's God's will that the lean years will be followed by the fat years.

We look back on seven years of hardship, poor harvests, darkness

and the deaths of many of our little children.

Some of us have understood the hymn: "Go seek my heart the joys of life"

as an injunction to seek their fortune on the other side of the ocean.

But even in Brazil, God's paradise is not merely there for the asking!

The paths of destiny are legion, and I shall follow their beckoning

when once my brother Gustav shall return from His Majesty's infantry in Wesel,

where he acquits his military service as a hoof-smith for the dragoons.

For the greater glory of that Prussian king

so oblivious and unmindful of his subjects!

There is a better cause that I can serve.

It's name is Liberty!

Hence my resolve, before the year is out,

to turn my back on this faithless homeland

that has nothing but servitude to offer to its children and to go in quest

that realm of dreams described in so many books and travelogues.

They're all in church.

It's so nice to have you back, Gustav.

Good day, Gran.

I'm so tired.

Go ahead and sleep.

You're home now.

Uncle.

Uncle!

- Uncle, Gustav's home. - Yes, yes.

The time has come. It's the end of the world.

But not for me.

It's in my sister's will.

And she shook Napoleon by the hand and knitted a bit of his shroud!

- And the awful hunger... - Ah, yes.

Hunger came with the false emperor.

But the Swedes couldn't frighten us.

We were too tough for them here in Schabbach.

But that was 200 years ago, Uncle.

When the world ends, it'll be on a Sunday.

When they're all in church.

- Mark my words! - Listen, Uncle!

Gustav is home.

When they're all in church.

And God in heaven can look down on them all.

- He never forgets. The day of reckoning! - He's right there in the kitchen.

Uncle, they're waiting for us.

Jakob, does your father still make your life a misery?

It's time to go home.

When the Republic comes marching down the hill

The rascals

In their palaces

Will have to pay the bill

They'll all cough up until they cough up blood!

Jakob, when you go to the Indians, can I come too?

Yes, for sure.

- And will you teach me to read? - Yes.

And then we can read all those books I hid for you.

Yes, I promise.

When the Republic Comes marching down the hill...

Come here, Margot, say good-day to Gustav.

He was nearly two years in the army.

Margot!

You backhanded halfvvit! You little fiend! You ugly cripple!

Stupid creature that you are!

You're the Devil's work and no mistake!

With your club foot...!

Satan is your father, we've always known.

My father died in the war!

What war'? Napoleon's?

There was no sign of you then.

It's good you're back.

Things will be better now.

Attention!

Jakob, old lad. You held the fort while I was gone?

You've grown.

The villagers call him the Indian.

Where's Lena then?

Has anything happened to her?

Your sister married a Mosel man.

A strapping fellow he is.

Protestant or Catholic, character is the main thing!

She lives in Wolf an der Mosel,

her husband is a winegrower called Zeitz.

You won't know him.

And that little Catholic bastard in her oven has no place here.

- Am I right? - You are.

- Smearcase cheese for supper! - Fold your hands.

All eyes are raised to thee, O Lord,

For Thou shalt feed us when the time is come,

The fullness of Thy hands pours blessings on all creatures.

Amen.

The Cayucachua believe that it brings misfortune, hing-ti-tuyu,

to speak of things long past or yet to come.

If they do so,

they either refrain from any reference to time at all

or the so-called ancestral tense.

Only the native Indians are permitted to use this form

because it is also the tense in which their sacred narratives are couched.

For example: "Place where the sun rises",

kla-kulo.

Come on, I'll show you.

It's good for it to be wet. Come on.

Listen, will it really help? Do you swear?

On anything you like.

I've tried it myself. All the sores were gone by nightfall.

Look.

Come on, we have to undress. And sing that song.