Chapter Eighteen – Seiji's Strength

Nearly two weeks go by.

Late afternoon. The courtyard. Shizuku is sitting on the hotel steps. Seiji comes out of the school, some other students also, he raises a hand to them, we hear cheerful teenager goodbyes and they turn and head up the alley. Seiji crosses to Shizuku who stands.

Seiji: "Yo."
Shizuku: "Hi."
Seiji: "Hey, I've got great news. Listen. The school is doing really well, Signore Guarnieri is really pleased with our progress. And because he's happy with our work he's arranged a day holiday for us all. Tomorrow."
Shizuku: "Yay, that's great!"
Seiji: "And not just that, we're going to the seaside!"
Shizuku: "Oooh, where?"
Seiji: "Ah, that would be telling! Pack your swimming things!"
Shizuku: "I hate surprises! Tell me!"
Seiji: "Nope. But if you wanted to see some Italian history, now's your chance." (he winks mischievously).

Cut to several linked scenes:

A train at Cremona station, Seiji and Shizuku board. Other students are with them. The train pulls out of the station; The train interior. This carriage has open seating, not old-style compartments. Seiji, Shizuku and some of Seiji's student friends are in shot. They chatter animatedly. The train is moving slow, stopping. A station name board comes slowly into view outside the window. It reads VENEZIA. Shizuku sees it, she turns to Seiji.

Shizuku: "Venice! You brought us to Venice! Oh, Seiji, that's fantastic! Do you know how amazing this city is? The whole place is like a fairy tale city, built on the water!"
Seiji: "Hey, it wasn't my choice, Signore Guarnieri paid for the tickets."
Shizuku: "Today is going to be so special, I know it!"
Seiji: "Yeah, when I found out I knew you'd be pleased."

Cut to more scenes that flow and link together:

A scene of the students boarding a river bus on the canal outside the station; The river bus travelling down the Grand Canal. Magnificent waterside buildings slide by, the canal is busy with small boats; Shizuku and Seiji leaning on the side railing of the river bus. Their faces glow with excitement; The river bus heading out across the lagoon of Venice towards the Lido; A shot of the river bus docking at the Lido pier. Hotels and bars can be seen along the Lido water front. The place is crowded with tourists; Shizuku and Seiji at a café. They are eating pizza; The Lido beach. Many people bathing in the sea; Shizuku and Seiji on the beach in swimming costume. They are in the sea, standing with the water up to their knees. They splash one another and laugh. Seiji runs at Shizuku and she runs away squealing. He catches her and they fall together in the water laughing; The two of them on towels on the sand, lying on their sides facing each other; A close up of their faces. Seiji lifts a hand and tenderly puts it on Shizuku's cheek. She smiles; Later in the day. Another river bus departing the Lido and heading out to Venice proper; Shizuku at the river bus' railing. The San Marco bell tower and the domes of the Doge's Palace in the distance. She watches the scene in awe.

Cut to:

The couple walking up a wide pavement thronged with tourists, the Grand Canal is to their left and gondolieri stand by the small piers in their famous striped shirts. Rows of gondolas are moored to their poles. To the couple's right is the Piazza di San Marco, they turn right and walk in.

Cut to:

A view of the Piazza di San Marco, crowds everywhere. Seiji and Shizuku stand and marvel at the buildings. Seiji gets out a camera and takes photos.

Cut to:

Shizuku standing in front of the Doge's Palace. Seiji is taking a picture of her. Shizuku steps back and leans against a stone pillar at one side of the doorway. She is wearing a short sleeved top and the bare skin of her arm touches the stone. She starts in surprise and stands upright, rubbing her arm. She looks about herself in wonder and something like fear. Seiji presses the shutter of the camera.

Seiji: "Ah, you moved. I'll take another. Smile."

Cut to:

Close up of Shizuku. She still rubs her arm and looks worried. She looks about herself as if to be sure she is where she thinks she is.

Cut to:

Seiji (lowering the camera from his eye): "You OK?"

Cut to:

Shizuku, close up, still rubbing her skin as though it's sore.

Shizuku: "Yes, I think so."
Seiji: "What was it, something cut you?"
Shizuku: "No. I don't know. Can we go and sit down somewhere?"
Seiji: "Sure, these crowds are bugging me a bit too. Lets find somewhere quiet."

Cut to:

A café in a narrower side lane. The couple sit at a table in the shade of a striped awning. Two ice creams are on the table in glass bowls. There are a few moments silence.

Seiji (gently): "Talk to me."
Shizuku: "Seiji, I'm scared, something odd is going on."
Seiji: "Do you want to talk about it?"
Shizuku: "I think so."

She takes a spoonful of ice cream. She draws the ice cream off the spoon with her lips and swallows absently as though she doesn't taste it at all.

Shizuku: "In the taxi. In Milan. I don't understand what happened."

Cut to Seiji's face. He says nothing. This is a time to be silent and let her speak.

Cut to:

Shizuku: "It was night time. And yet when I looked out on that bridge I saw a scene in daylight. It wasn't my imagination. I was there. It was so weird, I can't describe it. It was like… like an opening in time and I could see through it, just for a few moments. I saw a factory and a canal as they were, oh, sixty years ago. Before the war anyway. I can even remember the name painted on one of the factories. I was looking at the scene as it was in the past."

Cut to Seiji. He looks at her carefully.

Shizuku (off camera): "How can that happen? I've never heard of such a thing before."
Seiji: "You said something just before that, something about you'd been there before."

Cut to:

Shizuku: "Yes, that's right. Just before I had that… vision… or whatever it was… I had this weird feeling. Like I knew the place, I knew the bridge was up ahead. It was like the strongest déjà vu I have ever felt. I just can't understand it."
Seiji: "What happened just now?"
Shizuku: "The same thing, only worse, much worse. When I touched the building. I was suddenly in Saint Marks square but it was long ago, I mean hundreds and hundreds of years ago. There were crowds of people…"

While she is talking the close up of her face zooms slowly out. Her eyes widen with surprise. We continue to zoom out and we see behind her people in sixteenth century dress.

Cut to:

A view of what she sees. Crowds fill both sides of the piazza. This is very long ago, renaissance times. The same buildings are around the piazza as today but there are no boutiques, no tourist information stand, no cafés. Down the centre of the crowd is a clear space, this avenue is formed by two lines of soldiers standing at attention with large halberds held upright. The soldiers wear steel skull caps, blue and red tabards, the coloured panels cut in a checkerboard fashion. They have steel guards on their forearms and wear tight soft leather gloves. They wear red hose and soft boots. They face inwards, the thronging crowds behind them. The townspeople wear medieval dress, ladies in long skirts with tight bodices and tall conical caps with veils. Men with big beards wearing padded jackets with slashed sleeves that trail low, puffed up padded cloth at the hips and hose of coloured silk. The citizens are all well dressed, it seems the lower classes, the unwashed, have been kept away from this event.

Cut to:

Two soldiers with townsfolk behind them. In the front row between them stands Shizuku, in her normal clothes. She is next to the Doges Palace.

Cut to:

A view from behind her looking at the palace steps and doorway. In front of the doorway stand a group of men. Their clothing is very fine, they wear silks, jewels and furs. Among them are bishops and cardinals. One prominent nobleman wears a peculiar white conical hat almost like an Egyptian headdress. He has a pale face and long hooked nose. He does not look happy. The men face down the avenue, waiting.

Cut to:

A group of people walking up the cleared aisle. At their head is an imposing man richly dressed in green velvet and wearing a crown. His right arm is held out and a tall elegant lady rests her hand on his arm. Behind the royal couple a gaggle of other richly dressed courtiers and advisors follow. Before them walk three men dressed in yellow and blue, they carry ceremonial trumpets.

Cut to:

Shizuku's face again. She idly spoons ice cream into her mouth.

Shizuku: "What scared me is that I stood there about ten minutes and watched the scene. The man in the white hat was the Doge of Venice; the king was the Holy Roman Emperor, a German. It was a very important state visit. There was war coming, the crowd knew it. I could feel it. Seiji – I even heard their conversation! I was so afraid, I thought a soldier would notice me, that I wasn't dressed properly and he'd grab me. Then suddenly I was back among tourists again."
Seiji: "Did you say ten minutes?"
Shizuku: "Yes, well it seemed like that."

Cut to:

Seiji (deeply worried): "You never went anywhere. You just leaned against the building and stood up again rubbing your arm. It was the blink of the eye."

Cut to:

Shizuku (puts her face in her hands): "I was so scared."
Seiji: "Don't be. It's OK now, you're here – I'm here."
Shizuku: "It frightens me Seiji. I don't know if it'll happen again. What if I touch an old building and never come back?"

Cut to:

Seiji: "I think it's your imagination, you aren't really travelling in time, you were here all along, you didn't vanish in a puff of smoke…"

Cut to:

Shizuku (raising her voice): "Don't make fun of me! I was scared to death!"
Seiji: "Sorry, I'm trying to help. What I mean is, you shouldn't be afraid, nothing will harm you."
Shizuku: "I hate it. I don't like it happening. It's not the real me."

Cut to:

Seiji's face. Some memory comes to him and something dawns in his eyes.

Seiji: "I said that once: 'It's not the real me'"
Shizuku: "What?"
Seiji (slowly, deep in thought): "My first violin. I was ten."

Cut to:

Shizuku's face. She looks at Seiji, her eyes are wet.

The view cuts to a side view of the couple at the table:

Seiji: "I had just finished it," (he frowns) "It was rubbish. I tried to play it but it sounded terrible. I cried and cried. All that work was a waste of time. I felt useless." (he sighs) "Grandpa was with me. He took the violin and adjusted the stringing. Then he laid his bow across it and made a note come out. It was such a beautiful note. Like a bird singing. I couldn't believe the terrible violin I'd made could produce such a sound. Grandpa looked at me in the way he does. You know, so kind and patient? He said he had never before seen a violin so well made by someone so young. He said people sometimes have something mysterious inside them, some power. Many people go through their whole lives searching for something – money, success, love and they don't realise that the power to be what they want to be is inside them. They never find it and then they die unfulfilled. Grandpa said I had something inside, some skill that comes from he didn't know where. He said the crafting of that violin wasn't done by the hands of a ten year old." (Seiji smiles and shakes his head) "You know what I said? I said 'Well I don't like it – it's not the real me.' It was a funny conversation."
Shizuku (smiling): "Your grandfather spoke to me once like that. Last year…" (she smiles at the irony) "…it was while you were here actually. I was worried about how badly my writing would turn out and he went into this long speech about looking inside myself and finding the gems of my writing ability and spending time polishing them."
Seiji: "Sounds just like grandpa."
Shizuku: "That rock on my bedside cabinet in the hotel. You know that big old lump you noticed the other day? He gave me that. If you look in it you'll see there is a quartzite inside. He did this thing with a torch that lit the rock up inside. Made a big impression on me that did. He said the gemstones inside the rock are like the writing skills inside me. They are in there but it would be hard to find them and dig them out. And make them shine."
Seiji: "He can be like that. I can spend days and days with him and he's just an ordinary old man then one day – bang! He'll come out with something amazing! Something that makes you stop and think and really consider things. You know, consider the world around you in a different way."
Shizuku: "He's a strange person, like two people really. He hasn't spoken to you about his time in Germany before the war has he? About when he met Luisa?"
Seiji: "No, he never mentioned anything like that."
Shizuku: "And he's known you all your life. Yet he confided that story to me and we'd only met a few times. Strange – like two different people."
Seiji: "That night in the taxi in Milan, I think the power grandpa spoke to me about… I think you have something special in your mind, in your imagination. A power – uh - an ability. I don't know. Is it in the brain or in the spirit? But you seem to have something spiritual, other worldly, something ancient in you that lets you see places like no-one else can, lets you see through time even. Or what feels like seeing through time. Mmm, I'm not saying this very well, am I?"
Shizuku: "Go on. I'm following you."
Seiji: "If you can harness that ability then there is no stopping you in the amazing books you can write."
Shizuku: "Do you think so?"
Seiji: "How else can you explain it? It wasn't time travel – you never moved! Don't be afraid. Learn to use that instinct. Hey, that toy plane we saw…"
Shizuku: "It wasn't a toy, remember?"
Seiji: "Ah, well, you know," (he smiles a smile of defeat on that point). "Well that was built before the war wasn't it? Maybe the factory you saw built planes like that one. There's a story in there you know."
Shizuku (thinking): "Hm... I wonder what sort of pilot flew a plane like that? What kind of man was he?"

She eats another spoonful of ice cream.

Cut to:

A sequence of scenes of the two of them in Venice. The scenes fade in and out: Walking up the steps of the Rialto Bridge looking in the stalls there; looking in shop windows full of beautiful glass; standing on a small curved bridge and leaning on its parapet watching gondolas gliding beneath; standing looking along a canal, the Bridge of Sighs is before them. We hold on this last scene for a moment. It's late in the afternoon and there is a golden quality to the light. Shizuku looks down, watching the light play on the water.

Cut to:

Behind the couple, our point of view has the Bridge of Sighs in the background. Seiji looks at Shizuku. We see the back of her head, her face is still downcast.

Seiji (softly): "Hey."

Shizuku lifts her head to look at him. We see her profile.

Seiji: "Think about what I said. Don't fear it, face it. It's no curse. Treat it as a blessing."
Shizuku: "I'll try. It's just the strangeness of it that knocks the wind out of me. I've never heard of anything like this before."
Seiji (turning to her): "Come here."

Shizuku goes to him. He holds her.

Seiji: "That's because you're special. If the wind blows too hard, lean on me. You'll always have me."
Shizuku (looking up at him): "Seiji Amasawa… I love you."
Seiji (so softly he almost mouths it silently): "I love you, Shizuku."

Seiji lowers his head, slowly, slowly. Shizuku tilts hers back a little and closes her eyes. With infinite slowness, Seiji's face comes closer to her upturned face. The camera view pans upward to the Bridge of Sighs above and beyond them.

Fade.