The Grand Budapest Hotel (13 page)

M. Gustave scoffs, irritated.

Agatha’s room. Her few possessions are laid out neatly on the mattress: two changes of clothes, a short stack of cookbooks, her volume of romantic poetry, some tangled ribbons, and a hairbrush.

Agatha reaches up to the top of a skinny, pine wardrobe and pulls down an old, wicker suitcase. It has been repaired extensively with wire and string. She transfers everything she owns into it swiftly. She buckles it shut, slides it under the bed – then bolts upright. She looks up at the ceiling.

There is a thump.

Silence. Agatha slips off her shoes
(
wooden clogs
).
She slowly steps up onto the bed. She stands on her tiptoes.

There is no moon, and the night is pitch-black. Agatha’s hands grip the edges of the skylight’s frame. Her eyes come up into view. She looks cautiously around in every direction. She listens.

Agatha sinks back down, pulls away the pencil holding the skylight window open, and quickly latches it shut.

The camera holds on the empty rooftop: a quiet wind whistles over the sleeping village.

Insert:

The front page of the
Trans-Alpine Yodel.
Headline:

The next morning. An office decorated with flags, shields, and swords. There is a large map on a broad table with game pieces
(
chess, checkers, jacks, dice, and dominoes
)
marking troops and munitions. Henckels sits in a leather armchair drinking a cup of coffee while he stares at the front page of the newspaper.

A First Lieutenant stands over him holding a notebook and an envelope labeled
WIRE MESSAGE
.
He explains:

The Lieutenant points across the room. Henckels sighs. He stands up and walks over to a laundry basket on top of a desk against the wall. Pause. He reaches into it and lifts out, by the hair:

Serge’s sister’s severed head.

Title:

Insert:

The radio telegram – which has been torn to shreds, then carefully taped back together. It is speckled with blood.

A lone fuel-pump in front of a service shack at the foot of a hill on a snowy country road. A fourteen-year-old Pump Attendant in a greasy jumpsuit fills the tank of Jopling’s motorcycle. A sled-runner has been fitted over the front wheel.

Jopling leans against the wall, silent, looking down at the radio telegram in his hands. The Pump Attendant chirps:

Pause. Jopling’s eyeballs turn to the attendant.

Jopling looks away again.

The Pump Attendant grows slightly uneasy. Jopling reaches into his leather coat – half revealing, holstered, inside: a stiletto icepick, a blackjack bludgeon, a Luger pistol, and a ball-peen hammer. He withdraws a glass flask with a silver stopper and takes a pull. His brass knuckles clack against it.

The Pump Attendant clears his throat, pulls the nozzle out of the tank, and says – polite but quick:

The Zubrowkian Alps. A high-altitude depot nestled in a pass between two craggy ridges. There is fresh powder on the ground. Scattered flakes flicker in the air. A sign along the tracks reads: ‘Gabelmeister’s Peak’.

Twenty-five soldiers armed with carbine rifles stand spaced apart down the length of the platform, waiting.

The train rolls in. Doors open, and passengers with skis, snow-shoes, and suitcases step down and hurry into the building and around its sides. The soldiers study them, attentive, and peer inside the compartment windows. The passengers continue until they have all cleared away, and the platform is quiet again. A train conductor, leaning out from the end of a car, watches the soldiers. The soldiers look to each other tentatively.

A Sergeant jerks open a door and steps onto the train. He looks around. He raises his chin, lifts his nose – and sniffs the air. He looks irritated.

The peak of an icy butte. A narrow, domed building sticks up into the sky at the top. A steel balcony winds around it with a platform that extends out over a plunging drop into the white mist. A group of scientists bundled in fur coats listens to a professor. A man on a bench pours cocoa from a Thermos. An eagle circles overhead.

M. Gustave and Zero shiver at the end of the railing.

Pause. M. Gustave checks his watch. He says with a slightly bitter edge to his voice:

Silence. M. Gustave withdraws the small bottle of cologne from his pocket, spritzes himself twice, hands it to Zero who does the same automatically, then tucks it back away again. He holds out his palm under the flittering snow. He begins to recite:

A Monk in a grey cloak and a thick scarf clanks up a metal staircase. His face is old and wrinkled. He walks directly out to M. Gustave and Zero and stops. He studies them for a moment, frowning. He whispers:

The Monk points.

A cable car is just arriving down the sloping line from an adjacent peak. M. Gustave hesitates. The Monk urges him on with a brusque motion. M. Gustave and Zero sprint across the balcony, scramble down a flight of steps, and race out onto the boarding platform. A family of six waits in skiing costumes. They stare at M. Gustave and Zero as they arrive, breathless. A tramway operator holds open the door. Everyone boards, squeezing.

The cable car sets off up and across the wide ravine. M. Gustave and Zero sit side by side with the curious, silent family. The father sniffs the air. He looks irritated.

Halfway there: the cable car slams to a stop with a clunk.

Everyone is startled. The stalled vehicle sways in the quiet wind. The father looks up. The mother looks down. The children look to each other. In the distance: there is a faint, mechanical hum. M. Gustave and Zero look out.

Another cable car is ascending at a diagonal on a different line. They all watch as it slowly approaches. Just as it is about to criss-cross their path, it slams to a stop, too.

Another elderly, cloaked Monk stares out from inside the other cable car. He is alone in the vehicle. He studies M. Gustave and Zero for a moment, frowning. He whispers loudly:

The Monk unlatches the door of his cable car and opens it. The family watch nervously as M. Gustave and Zero stand up, rocking the vehicle, open their own door, and carefully exit. They reluctantly lunge across the precarious abyss. The Monk changes places with them. There is another clunk, and the two cable cars resume their journeys.

M. Gustave and Zero exchange a look. Their new cable car continues up toward its destination. A sign above the arrival platform reads: ‘Our Holy Father of the Sudetenwaltz’. Directly below it, there is a walled fort with a steeple and a tall stone cross.

Another tramway attendant holds the door open for them as they disembark.

M. Gustave and Zero walk down a staircase and through the front gate into an empty churchyard. There are walls and low buildings on
the sides, a few graves in the middle, and the entrance to a church at one end. Pause.

A small window swings open next to M. Gustave and Zero. Another elderly, cloaked Monk stares out from inside a caretaker’s booth. He studies them for a moment, frowning. He whispers:

The Monk thrusts a small bundle into M. Gustave’s hands. It consists of: two cloaks and two hymnals. The echoing sound of a Gregorian chant begins to rise from all around. M. Gustave and Zero swiftly slip on the cloaks just as a procession of a hundred monks enters from two directions, merges in the churchyard, and advances double-file toward the chapel.

M. Gustave and Zero open their hymnals at random and slip into the procession.

A blasting organ joins the chant inside a vast, austere hall as the procession enters. The Monks file into pews. The music ends, and the room goes silent. Everyone kneels. The monsignor at the altar places his hands on a thick Bible and speaks Latin.

A voice behind M. Gustave and Zero says:

M. Gustave and Zero turn around. Another elderly, cloaked monk kneels on a kneeler behind them with his hands folded in prayer. He studies them for a moment, frowning. He whispers:

M. Gustave looks deeply offended and flabbergasted. He snaps:

The Monk points to a confessional booth in the transept.

M. Gustave hesitates. He nods, realizing. He and Zero look down the row of kneeling legs. They step up onto the pew, slink quickly in a crouch to the aisle, then hop down to the floor. Monks, watching them, frown.

M. Gustave and Zero hurry together into the confessional booth and close the door.

A dark, wooden box lined with purple velvet. It is a bit tight for two. A panel slides open. Through the lattice screen: Serge has aged a decade. His eyes are watery and dim. He whispers immediately, reverent: