Não, Jorge, não há nenhuma traição no Stalker. Se fores ver a ficha técnica, encontras lá o nome de Arkady Strugatsky, um dos escritores de “Piknik na obotchine”. E se continuares, descobres mais:
…
"What should Stalker be like in the new screenplay?"
"I don't know, you're the author, not I."
I see. Actually, I could see nothing, but that was the usual thing now. But even before the work started it became clear to my brother and me: if Tarkovsky makes mistakes, they are brilliant mistakes and worth a dozen correct decision by ordinary directors.
On a sudden urge I asked:
"Listen, Andrei, what do you need the science fiction in the film for? Let's throw it out."
He smirked: just like a cat that has eaten its owner's parrot.
"There! You suggested it, not I! I've wanted it for a long time, only was afraid of suggesting it, so you wouldn't take offense."
To make a long story short, next morning I was flying to Leningrad. I won't tell you how it was with Boris, because I'm writing not about us but about Andrei Tarkovsky. We wrote not a science fiction screenplay but a parable (if we understand a parable as a certain anecdote whose personae are typical of the age and carriers of typical ideas and behaviour). A fashionable Writer and a prominent Scientist go into the Zone where their most cherished dreams might come true, and they are led by the Apostle of the new faith, a kind of ideologist.
I returned to Tallinn ten days later. Andrei met me at the airport. We embraced. He asked: "Have you brought it?" I nodded, trying not to shake. At home he took the manuscript, retreated into the next room in silence and shut the door firmly behind him. The wives began to look after me, offered brandy (it was my birthday). Naturally, we couldn't eat anything.
Some time passed, perhaps an hour.
The door opened and Andrei came in. His face expressed nothing, only his moustache bristled as it always did when he was immersed in his thoughts.
He looked at us absent-mindedly, came up to the table, caught a piece of food with a fork, put it in his mouth and chewed on it. Then he said staring above our heads:
"The first time in my life I have my own screenplay."
