The Grand Budapest Hotel (10 page)

The spacious, soaring entrance hall is dim and deserted. One guard sits alone in a corner writing in a logbook. Deputy Kovacs strides across the room. His clacking feet echo broadly. He detours into an antechamber filled with French still-lives. He pauses.

A second set of footsteps clacks through the lobby behind him.

Deputy Kovacs advances rapidly into the next gallery, past a long mural of an ancient war, and descends a staircase. He pauses again at the bottom.

The second set of footsteps continues through the ante chamber behind him.

Deputy Kovacs turns a corner and rushes between rows of Greek and Roman statues. He cuts through an Egyptian tomb. He skims through an alcove of iron weapons and suits of armor. He pauses once more and listens.

Silence.

Insert:

A pair of high-heeled boots. Two feet quietly slip out of them and tiptoe away.

Cut to:

Deputy Kovacs looking all around, frantic. Across the room, he sees:

A door labeled
VERBOTEN
.

Deputy Kovacs runs to the door and opens it. He scans the hall behind him. He sneaks inside.

Deputy Kovacs flicks on a light. He is in a long hallway lined with racks filled with hundreds of canvases. The room goes dark at either end. He chooses a direction, then sprints straight through into the blackness. Up ahead, he sees lines of faint light around the edges of a door. He skids to a stop and searches for the knob. He turns it and pulls. It is locked. He fumbles at a latch. He snaps it sideways. He swings open the door. His eyes light up:

There is a bicycle leaning against the wall across the alley behind the museum. Deputy Kovacs grabs the door frame and takes one last, quick look back into the darkness behind him.

Insert:

Deputy Kovacs’ hand on the knob. A second hand, wearing brass knuckles, gently enfolds it.

Cut to Deputy Kovacs’ face. He gasps.

The door hammers shut with a bang. Four of Deputy Kovacs’ fingers, gripping the door frame, pop off at the knuckles all at once and fall down into a shallow puddle.

On the other side of the door, there is a scream of bloodcurdling agony, then a thump, a thwhack, and, finally, a wallop. Pause.

The door opens again. Jopling comes out in his stocking feet. He puts on his boots. He takes out a handkerchief, leans down and collects the four fingers off the ground, wraps them up, slips them into his pocket, and walks away down the alley.

Eight a.m. Zero, substituting at the concierge desk again, looks up to the high window across the room. Herr Becker waits alone in the storage pantry with the ledger book under his arm. He checks his watch.

Title:

A nearly empty bus squeals to a stop behind a quiet inn in the middle of a deserted hamlet and deposits Zero on the roadside. He carries a knapsack and is dressed like a vagabond. The bus drives off.

Zero wanders to the middle of the cobblestone lane. He looks down at a rusty manhole. He looks up at the prison-castle across the way, high above the village. He checks his watch.

M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig all lie quietly in their bunks with the sheets pulled up to their necks. Faraway voices shout and echo eerily. A guard walks through the section slamming doors and throwing bolts. With a series of loud thumps, block by block the lights go out, and the prison goes dark. Silence. Ludwig whispers:

The cell launches into soundless activity: bed linens are whisked away, the table is carried into the corner, and a row of floor-planks is carefully lifted. M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig are all dressed like vagabonds already and carry various sacks and baskets. One by one, they disappear into the floor. A pair of hands, at the rear, reaches up to replace the planks.

M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig advance on all fours, single file, through a low, moldy sub structure.

A small window in a stone wall. Ludwig gently taps loose four pre-cut iron bars with one of the small hammers.

Insert:

The stump of one of the bars. A little noose is fitted over it and pulled tight.

Günther assists Ludwig as they slowly feed an unfurling tangle of rope and rungs out the window, inch by inch.

Cut to:

M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig all on the rope ladder at once like a string of beads dangling down the outside of the tower, 325 feet above the moat with crocodiles gliding along the dark surface. The ladder twists and creaks as they descend. Suddenly, a sharp voice calls out above their heads:

They all look up. An anxious convict with a missing ear stares down at them from a cell window. Ludwig whispers:

The convict frowns. He turns to his unseen bunkmates and says loudly:

Ludwig looks furious. He whispers fiercely:

A single, large hand grabs the convict with the missing ear by the neck, crushes the wind out of him, and rips him away from the window, out of view. Pause. The giant with the long scar across his face appears in the convict’s place, looking down at the dangling escapees. M. Gustave says, gasping:

The giant nods sadly.

Cut to:

The bottom of the rope ladder which ends halfway down the tower. M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig step onto a narrow ledge and make their way, side stepping cautiously, around the circumference of the building. They arrive at a small sloped roof and open a trapdoor.

M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig all crouch on a beam in the upper eaves of a vaulted hall. In the dark below, there are twenty narrow cots in two rows. Next to each cot, there is a guard’s uniform on a coat-hanger, a billy-club on a peg, and a Luger pistol on the night stand. Asleep in each cot, there is a lightly snoring goon.

Ludwig gets a firm grip on a tarnished copper pipe. He turns to the others and nods. He swings out and makes his way, hand over hand, from pipe to pipe across the ceiling. The others follow.

A dirty chute sticks down from the ceiling above a wide garbage bin filled with empty tins and rotting vegetables. M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig slide down into view, one-by-one, drop out into the trash pile, and hurry on their tiptoes into a dim corridor.

Cut to:

The candlelit dungeon. M. Gustave, Pinky, Günther, Wolf, and Ludwig all listen attentively, looking up at the ceiling. There is a loud but muffled sneeze above, then feet creaking away. Ludwig nods.

Pinky pulls away an oilskin tarp to reveal the cement pothole which has now been chiselled all the way through the thick sub-floor clear into the room below – where they see:

Three startled guards staring up at them from a card table in a dank, brick basement. They each hold a hand of cards. One is in the middle of placing a bet into a rich pot. A gas lantern flickers on a hook. The escapees all cry out at once:

Günther whips the toothbrush-knife out of his sock and jumps down into the hole. The table shatters and cards and coins fly in every direction. There is a frenzy of punching, scrapping, and grunting. The others converge excitedly around the hole like the audience at a cock-fight. Günther kicks one guard in the teeth, slashes another across the neck, and socks the third, blasting the lantern into bits in the process.

The room goes black.

M. Gustave, Pinky, and Wolf cheer at a low decibel, whispering advice and encouragement simultaneously down into the darkness while Ludwig quickly searches for a match. He lights it and holds it over the hole.

Two of the guards are now sprawled out on their backs in a spreading pool of blood. Günther and the remaining guard twist and clutch on the floor, grappling in violent headlocks while they simultaneously stab each other repeatedly with the throat-slitter and a thick hunting knife. They both fall silent and stop moving. Silence. M. Gustave says quietly:

Ludwig sighs. He delivers a brief eulogy:

M. Gustave, Pinky, and Wolf nod and solemnly concur, muttering. They climb down into the hole.

Zero watches as the manhole cover flips open onto the street. M. Gustave pokes his head up and whispers simply:

Zero rushes to assist M. Gustave out of the storm drain. Pinky, Wolf, and Ludwig surface on high alert, looking around in every direction
. (
Pinky carries a wad of the crumbled-up gambling money in his little hand.
)

M. Gustave crosses himself quickly. He begins a wistful speech:

Pinky, Wolf, and Ludwig sprint away into the woods. M. Gustave watches them go, bittersweet. He grabs Zero by the shoulder and says, suddenly urgent: