Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HUTS A N D O T H E R P L AY S

RU S S I A N L I BR A RY

The Russian Library at Columbia University Press publishes an expansive selection of Russian literature in English translation, concentrating on works previously unavailable in English and those ripe for new translations. Works of premodern, modern, and contemporary literature are featured, including recent writing. The series seeks to demonstrate the breadth, surprising variety, and global importance of the Russian literary tradition and includes not only novels but also short stories, plays, poetry, memoirs, creative nonfiction, and works of mixed or fluid genre.

Editorial Board: Vsevolod Bagno Dmitry Bak Rosamund Bartlett Caryl Emerson Peter B. Kaufman Mark Lipovetsky Oliver Ready Stephanie Sandler ɷɸɷ Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov, translated by Alexander Boguslawski Strolls with Pushkin by Andrei Sinyavsky, translated by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy and Slava I. Yastremski

A N D R E I P L AT O N O V

FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HUTS A N D O T H E R P L AY S Edited by Robert Chandler Translated by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen with notes by Robert Chandler and Natalya Duzhina

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Published with the support of Read Russia, Inc., and the Institute of Literary Translation, Russia Andrei Platonov’s Russian texts copyright © by Anton Martynenko, 2011 English publishing rights are acquired via FTM Agency, Ltd., Russia, 2016 Translation copyright © 2017 Susan Larsen for The Hurdy-Gurdy; Robert Chandler for Fourteen Little Red Huts and additional scene, The Hurdy-Gurdy; Jesse Irwin for Grandmother’s Little Hut Introduction and notes copyright © Robert Chandler All rights reserved Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich Book design: Lisa Hamm

CONTENTS

Introduction

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The Hurdy-Gurdy 1 Additional Scene

83

Fourteen Little Red Huts 87 Grandmother’s Little Hut 163 Afterword

179

Acknowledgments 187 A Note on Names Notes

189

193

Further Reading 209

INTRODUCTION

1 Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) wrote novels, short stories, plays, and film scripts. He wrote mainly between the late 1920s and the mid-1940s, but he was subject to vicious criticism throughout his career, and much of his work was first published only several decades after his death. He has been acclaimed by many Russian writers and critics as the greatest Russian prose writer of the twentieth century, but he has yet to enjoy the international reputation that is his due—in part, perhaps, because his idiosyncratic style makes him difficult to translate. He is also unusually difficult to categorize. His language is stunningly innovative, yet he had little in common with most modernists. He was almost certainly an atheist, yet his work is dense with religious symbolism and imbued with deep religious feeling. He was a passionate supporter of the 1917 Revolution and remained sympathetic to the dream that gave birth to it, yet few people have written more searingly of its disastrous consequences. And he worked in many different genres.

His early Chevengur is a long, picaresque, sometimes surreal

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novel that deserves comparison with Don Quixote and Dead Souls. His late “The Return,” a short story chosen in 1999 by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of her “three great Russian works of the last millennium,” is a wise, tender, and entirely realistic evocation of family life, firmly embedded in a particular historical moment. His versions of traditional Russian magic tales—his last major publication—were republished in countless Soviet school textbooks, often without acknowledgment of his authorship. And there are still aspects of his work that have hardly been explored at all. His six film scripts are almost unknown; his eight finished and two unfinished plays are still seldom staged, even in Russia. At least two of these plays, however, are masterpieces. The Hurdy-Gurdy (1930) and Fourteen Little Red Huts (1933) anticipate the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. They are as bold in their political satire as Bertolt Brecht at his most biting. And they are also important as documents of historical witness. Along with the short novel The Foundation Pit, they constitute Platonov’s most impassioned, and penetrating, response to Stalin’s assault on the Soviet peasantry—the catastrophes of the collectivization of agriculture (1930) and the ensuing Terror Famine (1932–1933).

2 Platonov was brought up on the outskirts of Voronezh, the main city of the Black Earth region. Born in 1899, he came of age with the Revolution, which he supported passionately. Between 1918 and 1921 he published numerous articles

on political, philosophical, and scientific themes in the local press as well as a collection of poems, The Blue Depth. In 1921, however, shocked by the terrible drought and famine, he abandoned literature in order to work as a land reclamation expert. “Being someone technically qualified,” he wrote, “I was unable to continue to engage in contemplative work such as literature.”1 During the mid-1920s he supervised the digging of no fewer than 763 ponds and 331 wells, as well as the draining of 2,400 acres of swamps and the building of three small rural power stations.2 In late 1926 he returned to writing, though continuing to work in other capacities. Between 1929 and 1932, along with other writers, he was sent on a number of journeys through central and southern Russia.3 Unlike nearly all his colleagues, he wrote honestly about what he saw.

In August 1931, for example, Platonov was asked to report on the progress of collectivization in the central Volga and North Caucasus regions. The following entry from his notebooks is only one of many, all equally direct: “State Farm no. 22, ‘The Swineherd.’ Building work—25% of the plan has been carried out. There are no nails, iron, timber . . . milkmaids have been running away, men have been sent after them on horseback, and the women have been forced to work. This has led to cases of suicide . . . Loss of livestock—89–90%.”4 It is astonishing that Platonov dared to write such lines, even in a private notebook, at a time when the official press was reporting only ever greater success.

These journeys served as the inspiration for a number of works about collectivization and the Terror Famine. As well as The Foundation Pit and the short novels For Future Use and Introduction

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Sea of Youth, these include two film scripts and the two fulllength plays in the present volume. None of these works was published in Platonov’s lifetime except For Future Use—which was immediately, and fiercely, criticized by Stalin himself. To a reader unversed in Soviet history, these works seem surreal. In reality, they contain barely an incident or passage of dialogue that does not directly relate to some real event or publication from these years. Platonov’s focus is not on some private dream world but on a political and historical reality so extraordinary as to be barely credible.

3 The Soviet Union had adopted as its emblem the hammer, symbolizing the workers, and the sickle, symbolizing the peasants. It claimed to be a Workers’ and Peasants’ State, and to this day many people continue to take this claim at face value, failing to recognize the depth of the Bolsheviks’ hostility to the peasantry. Most Bolsheviks saw the peasants as little better than the petty bourgeoisie; many probably felt much the same as Maxim Gorky, whom Kornei Chukovsky records as saying on one occasion that the Russian peasant “is our enemy, our enemy” and on another as saying, “You’ll pardon my saying so, but the peasant is not yet human.”5 Gorky’s first sentence, at least, was accurate; the peasants’ whole way of life was indeed a threat to the Bolshevik project of a strong, centrally planned state.

In 1917, in order to destabilize the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks had encouraged the peasants to rise against their landlords and appropriate their estates. After seizing power themselves, the Bolsheviks found themselves having to reassert the power of central government. The peasants resisted the Bolshevik policy of “grain requisitioning”—of forcibly confiscating grain from the peasants in order to feed the cities—and peasant revolts continued on a massive scale until as late as 1924. After a few years of uneasy truce, there was another grain procurement crisis in 1927–1928. Ever more forcible measures were taken to compel the peasants to surrender their grain at the extremely low price offered them by government procurement agents. Collectivization and the Terror Famine were the last, most terrible battles of a war that had lasted over a decade.

The main tactic adopted by the Bolsheviks was the promotion of class struggle in the village. Peasants were officially classified as poor peasants (bednyaki), who had no property of their own, middle peasants (serednyaki), who owned property but did not employ hired labor, and rich peasants, or kulaks (kulaki), who not only owned property but also employed hired labor. Peasants opposed to collectivization but too poor to be called kulaks were categorized as “subkulaks” or “kulak hirelings” (podkulachniki). The kulaks were deported; since nearly all the middle peasants were opposed to collectivization, they were labeled kulaks or subkulaks and deported en masse, along with the kulaks; the poor peasants were allowed to join the collective farms. According to data from Soviet archives,

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over 1,800,000 “kulaks” and family members were deported in 1930 and 1931; it is likely that about a quarter of them died before reaching the “special settlements”—often just patches of Siberian forest—that were their destination. The historian Lynne Viola has written, “The liquidation of the kulak as a class—dekulakization for short . . . was Stalin’s first great purge . . . an endeavor to remove undesirable elements and to decapitate traditional village leadership and authority structures in order to break down village cohesion . . . and intimidate the mass of the peasantry into compliance.”6 Most Soviet writers of the time lived in the main cities, and few witnessed any of this directly. Mikhail Sholokhov knew what was happening and bravely protested to Stalin. A few writers—like Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak—sensed that something terrible was taking place and at least hinted at it in their work. Some writers—like Alexander Tvardovsky— came from peasant families and knew what had happened but chose, for the sake of self-preservation, to lie about it. Platonov and his friend Vasily Grossman were the only two members of their generation to write truthfully and in depth about the fate of the Soviet peasantry. Grossman was probably largely dependent on what he heard from others (perhaps including Platonov himself), but the chapters about the peasantry in his short novel Everything Flows are both accurate and heartbreakingly vivid. Much of Platonov’s account is firsthand; no Soviet writer of his generation had a better understanding of the life of the peasantry in the 1920s and early 1930s.

4 In 1921, faced by widespread opposition to the Bolshevik regime and a near-total breakdown of the system of food distribution, Lenin had instigated the somewhat more liberal New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed some measure of free trade. In 1928, wanting to reinstate central control of all aspects of economic and political life, Stalin rescinded the NEP and implemented the first of the many Soviet Five-Year Plans. This program of crash industrialization was accompanied by the promotion of the “shock-worker movement,” to which Platonov repeatedly alludes throughout both The Hurdy-Gurdy and Fourteen Little Red Huts. The term “shock worker” is one of many words and phrases in these plays that now require explanation—not only to foreign readers but even to younger Russians. It is the conventional translation of udarnik (literally, “one who strikes blows”). From May 1929 this originally military term was used of exemplary workers who overfulfilled their “norm” and so helped to accelerate the “tempo” (another key word of the time) of production. The First All-Union Conference of Shock Workers was held in December 1929 and its battle cry was the slogan “Fulfill the Five-Year Plan in Four!”

Stalin’s twin programs of industrialization and collectivization were of incalculable importance; it is they that transformed the Soviet Union into the militaristic state it would always remain. Nevertheless, they were not the only aspects of life that required government intervention. Collectivization made it easier for the central authorities to extract grain and

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other foodstuffs from the peasantry and deliver them to the cities, but it was still necessary to supply the peasants with a modicum of essential goods. Now that almost all private trade had been banned, it was necessary to set up some kind of distribution system. This proved unexpectedly difficult, and for some time the system was in a state of almost constant reorganization. The Hurdy-Gurdy provides us with a clear picture of a particular “cooperative system”—a network of small stores, centered on a district town, and with several thousand full members (paishchiki, or “dues payers”)—that existed between August and December 1930. The density of realistic detail in the play is remarkable. In the words of the Moscow scholar Natalya Duzhina, “The Hurdy-Gurdy could be called an encyclopedia of the political and social life of the time when it was being written. It is a distinctive photograph of a reality that was . . . changing with extraordinary speed. Imprinted in the play are international events, internal Soviet political struggles, and phenomena unique to Soviet life.”7 The corruption and incompetence endemic to rural cooperatives were widely recognized; cooperatives were often criticized in the provincial and national press and were a safe target for satire; jokes about “cooperative matchsticks” that never caught fire seem to have been particularly widespread.

Duzhina has established, from a study of the various drafts of The Hurdy-Gurdy, that Platonov began with the aim of writing a light comedy. Maxim Gorky had encouraged Platonov to “try his hand at comedy” and had discussed his work with one of the directors of the Moscow Art Theatre. In a letter to

Platonov, Gorky had written, “Your language, spoken by intelligent actors, would sound excellent onstage. Your sense of humor—your very original, lyrical sense of humor—testifies to your ability to write a play. . . . As I see it, there is some kinship in your psyche with Gogol.” When he began work on The Hurdy-Gurdy, Platonov may well have hoped that the Moscow Art Theatre would agree to stage it.8 The capacity to respond to major social and political events both quickly and in depth has always been rare; most artists need time to meditate a response. Platonov is an exception; many of his works constitute an almost immediate response to events taking place while he was writing. This may be particularly true of The Hurdy-Gurdy. The autumn of 1930—the time he was at work on the play—saw not only the alleged discovery of a “counterrevolutionary organization” attempting to sabotage Soviet food supplies but also a show trial (November 25–December 7, 1930) during which a number of prominent Soviet economists and engineers were found guilty of forming an anti-Soviet “Industrial Party” and having plotted, during the previous four years, to wreck Soviet industry and transport.

During the trial there were mass demonstrations by workers carrying banners with such slogans as “Death to the Saboteurs” and “May the Saboteurs Be Shot.” Platonov was an engineer himself and may well have spent more time with other engineers than he did with other writers. He evidently understood not only the absurdity of these accusations and appeals for vengeance but also the likelihood that more such trials would be held. While he was working, The Hurdy-Gurdy’s original

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theme—the corruption and incompetence of cooperatives— receded into the background; the theme of imaginary acts of sabotage and show trials became central.

The miniature show trial in the final scene is a tour de force.

Platonov deftly captures the bewildering mixture of absurdity and tragedy that characterized such trials. Just as Nikolai Bukharin notoriously confessed to plotting against the Soviet state eight years later, in the last of the Moscow Show Trials, so Platonov’s innocent and idealistic Alyosha confesses to ludicrous acts of sabotage. The spectators, for their part, respond in a variety of ways, though not one of them shows either common sense or understanding: —Here within us rages a lofty hatred. And—above all—it rages within a common breast! . . .

—Oh, Papa, this is an impetuous welling up of intrigue and machination.

—And all the time, you know, absolutely all the time, even when I was having the abortion—all the time I had a feeling that something at work wasn’t right . . . I even said this to the doctor during the operation—I was surprised at myself!

—Oh I love these moments of danger! . . .

—Let none of you, ever, trust yourselves!

—Consider yourself a saboteur, for the sake of the work!

—Chastise yourselves on your days off!

—More torment, more gnawings of conscience, more anguish with regard to the class, comrades!

Here Platonov anticipates not only the historical reality of the 1930s but also much of the nonofficial Soviet literature of later decades—the work of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky in the 1930s and that of the Moscow Conceptualists of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Hurdy-Gurdy’s other climactic scene—the Evening of the Experimental Trial of New Forms of Food—is more complex in its symbolism. Most simply, it is a parody of the research into the potential of artificial foodstuffs then being carried out in a number of new institutes in Moscow and Leningrad with such titles as the Higher Institute of Nourishment; the difficulty of feeding the population was only too evident, and the authorities were hoping that science could provide a solution. Less obviously, Platonov is drawing attention to the danger that this new “diet” of conspiracy theories represented to the Soviet people.9 When the guests are offered kasha made from locusts, Serena (a visiting foreigner) says that if people eat “saboteur insects,” they will become saboteurs themselves. Behind her words lies a then well-known quotation from Ludwig Feuerbach—“A man is what he eats”10—and her assertion sounds all the more convincing because the Russian vreditel’ (saboteur) is equally applicable to human saboteurs and to such creatures as mice and locusts. Platonov is giving his country a warning; he is afraid that constant exposure to newspaper articles and radio broadcasts about saboteurs will corrupt people.

The evening is also a black parody of the Last Supper—the supreme example of a “trial of new forms of food.” Instead of the body and blood of Christ, the guests eat bird droppings, black earth cutlets, lard from dead bones, and other “stuff that Introduction

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is cheap and eternal” (emphasis added). Platonov does, incidentally, directly ask his audience—or readers—to search his texts for hidden meanings. In a stage direction that appears to be addressed more to readers than to actors or directors, he writes of the cooperative loudspeaker system, “The tube on the table repeats these same words a few seconds later in an entirely different voice—one that is more muffled, with a different expression and even a different meaning.” And in the story “Among Animals and Plants” (1936) he tells us about a young railwayman who always read books “in all kinds of interesting ways, taking pleasure in the lofty thoughts of others and his own supplementary imagination. . . . He preferred to choose pages at random—now page 50, now page 214. And although every book is interesting, reading this way makes it even better, and still more interesting, because you have to imagine for yourself everything you have skipped, and you have to compose anew passages that don’t make sense or are badly written, just as if you too are an author, a member of the Soviet Union’s Union of Writers”11 The play’s title—Sharmanka—could also be translated as “barrel organ.” We chose to translate it as “hurdy-gurdy” because this seemed more evocative. Originally the word “hurdy-gurdy” was used only of stringed instruments sounded by turning a wheel, but it came to be used more loosely of any instrument played by turning a handle, including a barrel organ. The Russian idiom “to turn the sharmanka” means “to grind away at something,” “to keep harping on the same theme.” During the the Evening of the Experimental Trial of New Forms of Food, the sharmanka is used to help convey

their new, propaganda-filled diet to the members of the cooperative. The word “hurdy-gurdy,” with its thumping rhyme, conveys something of the appropriate monotony.

Platonov’s symbols, however, are always complex. Like the cooperative loudspeaker system, Platonov elicits different meanings from the same thing. Left to itself, Alyosha’s hurdy-gurdy seems to generate curiously old-fashioned tunes, some of them probably religious in origin. Shchoev and Yevsei evidently find this a source of comfort. However dangerous the effects of propaganda, the foundations of a people’s life are resistant to change.

5 A famine that struck the grain-producing areas of European Russia and—still more severely—Ukraine and Kazakhstan, reached a climax in the summer of 1933. Weather conditions may have played a part, but this famine was, for the main part, a direct result of government policy. Collectivization—in effect, the extermination of many of the most hardworking peasants and the enslavement of the rest—had led to a huge drop in yields. The authorities, however, still needed to procure grain to feed workers in the cities. More than that, they were determined to export grain in order to purchase foreign equipment required for industrialization.

Despite repeated protests from officials at a local level, the central authorities maintained that the collapse in agricultural yields resulted only from the obstinacy and dishonesty of the Introduction

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peasants—who they alleged to be hiding their grain. Activists were sent out into the villages to search for nonexistent hidden stores. Like all Soviet workers, these activists had to fulfill their quota—and so they seized every grain they could find, even the seed corn for the following year. By the autumn of 1932, if not long before then, a catastrophe was inevitable.

During the first half of the following year about three to five million peasants died in Ukraine (perhaps a fifth of the republic’s population) and about one and a half million peasants in Kazakhstan (nearly 38 percent of the population)—and there were serious food shortages throughout the entire Soviet Union.12 It is this famine that constitutes the central theme of Fourteen Little Red Huts, the only one of his ten plays that Platonov himself termed a tragedy. When Platonov conceived the play, in 1931, he intended to write a comedy, but by the summer of 1933, when he wrote both a complete draft and his final version, his vision had darkened. In a marginal note to the draft of the fourth act he wrote, “Develop famine throughout.”13 The play ends with a discussion of how best the members of the kolkhoz might be able to catch fish. A small, recently constructed wattle “prison hut” is to serve as a trap, and the bait will be either Futilla’s baby, who has starved to death, or Interhom, the young foreign visitor who has just been murdered in this same hut. The last words of all are spoken by Anton Endov, the most ideologically impeccable of the kolkhoz workers. He collapses, jumps up to his full height to shout “Forward now!!!” and then collapses again. Earlier in the act, another of the workers, Vershkov, has come out with

the memorable line, “No, what keeps me alive is consciousness. You can’t stay alive here from food, can you?”

The variety of tone—the shifts between tragedy and black, absurdist humor—may seem bewildering. There seems, on first reading, to be little emotional connection between the agonizingly painful last act and the lightly satirical first act about an encounter, in a Moscow railway terminus, between two visiting foreigners and a group of Soviet writers. This split may be part of the reason for the often repeated view that the play is “unstageable.” The absoluteness of this split, however, is precisely what Platonov wants to emphasize. The Soviet writers live in one world; the Soviet peasants live in another. Bos, the visiting foreign dignitary, understands this; when he is told that two of the writers wish to be introduced to him, he replies, “Yes, but be quick about it. I need reality, not literature.” The first act is Platonov’s reproach to his colleagues for choosing— despite their lip service to realism—not to write about reality.

The real-life prototypes for the three writers are easily recognizable. Glutonov is modeled on Alexei Tolstoy, a gifted but opportunistic figure, nicknamed the “Comrade Count” and famed as a bon viveur. In the Russian original he is called Zhovov; since most names in the play have a clear meaning— in this case, “Chewer”—we have chosen to re-create them rather than simply to transliterate them. Alexei Tolstoy was on the organizing committee of the Union of Soviet Writers, and in early 1933, when he was celebrating his fiftieth birthday, he had received a great deal of favorable attention in the Soviet press. Like Glutonov, he had a large extended family to support. This—Bos is informed—is why he keeps his mouth shut.

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His name may also be intended to evoke the dialect word zhovka, which means “dummy.”

A second writer, Latrinov (Ubornyak in Russian—from ubornaya, meaning “toilet”) is modeled on Boris Pilnyak, with whom Platonov had twice collaborated in the late 1920s. Pilnyak was subjected to fierce criticism in 1929–1930, but in 1932 he reestablished his Soviet credentials—if only temporarily— with the publication of The Volga Falls into the Caspian Sea; the title of one of Latrinov’s books, Eternally Soviet, probably alludes to this attempt on Pilnyak’s part to win back his place in the literary establishment. Pilnyak was a gifted writer, and he and Platonov have something in common; it is possible that he represents Platonov’s alter ego—some fear on Platonov’s part that he too might one day be terrified into capitulation.

The third writer, Fushenko, is modeled on Pyotr Pavlenko, a talentless and ultraorthodox writer who seems to have been a particular enemy of Platonov’s. In February 1932 Pavlenko had chaired a Writers’ Union meeting that was, in effect, a show trial of Platonov. He and Platonov, both born in 1899, continued to mock and criticize each other till they both died in 1951; here Platonov has conflated Pavlenko’s name with that of a nineteenth-century French police minister, Joseph Fouché.

From 1929 there had been a huge increase in the number of foreigners visiting the USSR. Among the reasons for this were the need for foreign engineers at new industrial enterprises being established as a part of the first Five-Year Plan and increasing foreign interest, on account of the economic crisis in Europe and America, in the potential of a centrally planned economy. All this is reflected in both The Hurdy-Gurdy and Fourteen Little Red Huts.

Both plays feature a foreign couple—a father and daughter in The Hurdy-Gurdy and an improbably ancient man with a flighty young mistress in Fourteen Little Red Huts. In the later play, the ancient man—“Bos” in English, “Khoz” in Russian—is a complex and enigmatic figure. Like his twin in the earlier play, he bears a long list of names, taken from several languages; both old men are generic West European figures. There is little doubt, however, that Bos embodies something of George Bernard Shaw. Shaw had celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday in the Soviet Union in 1931 and had asserted afterward that the world’s only hope lay in the success of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. He had ridiculed the idea that there might be famine in the Soviet Union, saying that he had never dined so well or so sumptuously as during his travels there. Bos is, among other things, a George Bernard Shaw who has chosen to discover the reality of the Terror Famine.

6 There are two words, or groups of words, that function as leitmotifs in The Hurdy-Gurdy and Fourteen Little Red Huts. One— which occurs three times in The Hurdy-Gurdy and fifteen times in Fourteen Little Red Huts—is pustyak. This is usually translated as “trifle” but is here translated as “piffle.” Platonov’s extreme emphasis on this word, which he places in the most unexpected contexts, made it seem better to choose a word that draws attention to itself. In many respects “piffle,” a colloquial, originally dialect, word works well. There is, however, one serious loss—probably unavoidable. Pustyak belongs to an Introduction

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entire family of words—all of them important to Platonov— that have to do with emptiness; pustoi means “empty,” pustota means “emptiness,” and pustynya is the standard word for both “wilderness” and “desert.” “Piffle” lacks these associations, and there is, of course, no equivalent family of words in English.

The other important leitmotif—still more problematic for a translator—is the word skuchno, most often translated as “boring” or “dreary.” Among the word’s cognates are skuka (“boredom” or “dreariness”) and the verb skuchat’ (to be bored), which is also commonly used to mean “to miss” or “to long for” someone or something. Throughout the two plays Platonov plays on all the different meanings of these words; as my colleague Maria Bloshteyn writes, “for Platonov’s characters life is dreary, they are frequently bored, and they long for something better or different.”14 This theme—of boredom and what it can drive people to—has deep roots in Russian literature. One of Gogol’s most famous stories, “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” concludes with a phrase that quickly became proverbial: “Yes, gentlemen, life in this world is boring.” And the heroine of Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is driven to commit a series of cold-blooded murders by what Leskov calls “that same Russian boredom . . . a boredom so profound that, as people say, it makes even the thought of hanging yourself seem like fun.”15 The theme of boredom is developed by Chekhov and many other writers of Russia’s “Silver Age,” and it is important throughout Platonov’s work; the desperation of his characters’ hopes and ambitions springs, above all, from an overwhelming need to escape from a profound, unrelieved boredom, from their sense that “all is vanity.”

The most shocking occurrence of the word “boring” is in the very last lines of Fourteen Little Red Huts. Numbed by all that has happened, Futilla can only say, “My baby isn’t breathing. Grandpa Bos has left. Soon it’ll be evening—how boring it gets on my own . . .” The effect is complex. On the face of it, these words are a heartrending understatement, yet their literary associations imbue them with a depth of a different kind. Since such associations are not readily available in English, I have compensated by introducing—in earlier passages of dialogue—such idioms as “bored to tears” and the all-too-appropriate “bored to death”; my hope is that, by the end of the play, “bored” and “boring” will have acquired the same depth of meaning in English as they have in Russian.

Linked to these themes of deathly boredom and emptiness is the theme of orphanhood; nearly all Platonov’s most important works have central characters who are orphans.

Fourteen Little Red Huts is no exception; if no one in the play is explicitly referred to as an orphan, this is simply because all of these Soviet peasants have been orphaned. Their Mother—the Earth—has been taken away from them—and so has their God, their Father in Heaven. In Chevengur, written around five years earlier, a recalcitrant peasant complains to one of the Bolsheviks, “Very clever. You’ve given us the land, but you take away our every last grain of wheat. Well I hope you choke on this land. All us peasants have got left of it is the horizon. Who do you think you’re fooling?” Without earth and heaven, Platonov’s peasants do indeed have nothing left to them but the horizon—a distant hope, an ever receding line of distant light.

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In Fourteen Little Red Huts, Distant Light is the name of the kolkhoz fishing ship, which has been stolen—along with all the kolkhoz sheep, grain, and children. The play ends as Distant Light is about to be returned to the kolkhoz, but whether this represents any real hope is doubtful. There are scholars who consider Platonov to have been a secret Christian—and there is certainly no doubt that the play is dense with Christian symbolism, with references to sheep and shepherds, to bread and fish, to enlightenment and salvation. Futilla, the young chairman of the collective farm, is not only a shepherd but also a sacrificial lamb, offering her own body—her milk, her lymph, her blood, her bones—as food for the starving people. Nevertheless, her child is already dead, and many other adults and children have probably died too. It seems almost certain that this distant light is a mere will-o’-the-wisp, that the hope it represents is illusory.

The Terror Famine resulted in at least seven million deaths.

Platonov wrote of it while it was happening; few writers after him have dared write about it at all. Fourteen Little Red Huts is an extraordinary work. It is hard to distinguish between the real and the surreal, and the tone shifts jarringly between farce and tragedy, between resigned alienation and furious satire. These dislocations serve a purpose; they are probably the only way to evoke catastrophes of this order without simply numbing the reader or listener. Platonov’s courage, fierce wit, and devotion to truth are, in the end, inspiring. In the words of John Berger, the poet, novelist, and critic who is one of Platonov’s most passionate admirers in the English-speaking world, “His stories do not add to the grief being lived; they save something.”16

7 Platonov is an enigmatic writer, and the Soviet Union of the 1930s remains hard to imagine; it is an alien world to us. This makes it all too tempting, when writing about Platonov, to focus excessively on the historical background and to forget that, like all great art, his stories and plays can speak to a reader who knows little or nothing about the author and his times.

Platonov’s deepest concerns were, in fact, always universal— philosophical and psychological more than political.

Other than orphanhood, the most important of Platonov’s themes, central to all his mature work, are the loss of a child and the loss of a limb. All these are, in effect, one and the same theme; for a family to lose one of its members is the same, in Platonov’s understanding, as for an individual to suffer the loss of one of their limbs. And just as an individual can become disconnected from their family, so mankind as a whole can become disconnected from the greater family of Earth, Man, and Heaven.

The general tone of Platonov’s work between 1926 and 1935 is despairing. Chevengur (1927–1928) ends with Sasha Dvanov drowning himself in the lake where, when Sasha was a small child, his father had drowned himself. The Foundation Pit (1930) ends with the death of Nastya, the small child who embodies the workers’ hope for a bright future. The heroine of the unfinished novel Happy Moscow (1933–1936) loses one of her legs and proves incapable of sustaining a relationship with any of her gifted suitors. In 1935, however, with the short novel Soul, something changes; whereas Happy Moscow begins in Introduction

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hope and ends in despair, Soul begins in despair and ends on a note of cautious hope; the remnants of the Dzhan nation come back together and the hero, Chagataev, seems ready to enter into a deeper relationship with another human being.

Soul—and the journey to Central Asia that inspired the novel—evidently marked a turning point in Platonov’s life. Everything that Platonov wrote after Soul can be read as a search for healing, for a way to restore the integrity of the broken individual and the broken family. This search, of course, proved difficult, and the answers only tentative; it was not until 1947, with the publication of “No Arms” (a free adaptation of a traditional magic tale), that Platonov felt able to bring all aspects of his central themes—orphanhood, the loss of a limb, the breakdown of a marriage—to an unambiguously optimistic conclusion. Nevertheless, almost everything he wrote after Soul is gentler in tone, and more hopeful, than his earlier work.

We have chosen to conclude this volume with a short, unfinished work, written in 1938 but first published only in 2010, that needs no historical commentary and that perfectly embodies this sense of timid hope. Dusya, an orphaned adolescent girl, befriends Mitya, a little orphaned boy who has given her a drink of water. Both children have been betrayed by the adults around them and they respond to this, albeit hesitantly, by deciding to take care of each other. The fragment ends with Dusya and Mitya setting out at night toward the distant—or possibly imaginary—light of what Mitya says is his grandmother’s hut.

There is no indication as to how Platonov meant to continue the play, or why he abandoned it. There is, however, a film

script—The Adopted Daughter—the first section of which incorporates much of the play. In the course of the next few sections the orphaned girl trains as a railway engineer. The script ends with Platonov returning to another of his most insistent themes: the prevention of a railway accident. Through her courage, initiative, and decisiveness the girl turns what could have been a disaster into a relatively minor accident; she herself is the only person to sustain serious injury.

Before this, when asked during her training, “By what means does a real engineer drive?” the girl replies, “By means of the power of steam, multiplied by one’s soul!” This beautifully encapsulates both the matter and the manner of late Platonov.

Platonov never lost his belief in technology—nor his belief in the power of the human soul.

Robert Chandler, April 2016

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FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HUTS A N D O T H E R P L AY S

THE HURDY-GURDY A Play in Three Acts, Six Scenes

CH A R ACTE R S

ignat nikanorovich shchoev, the director of a network of rural cooperatives in a remote district Yevsei, his assistant pyotr opornykh, a procurement agent for the cooperative klokotov, a procurement agent for the cooperative godovalov, a representative of the cooperative’s members, member of the cooperative’s supervisory committee yevdokia, a newly promoted member of the proletariat1 first female office worker first male office worker alyosha, a wandering cultural worker with music miud,2 an adolescent maiden, Alyosha’s companion in their common work kuzma, an iron man, Alyosha’s and Miud’s sideshow eduard-valkyriya-hansen stervetsen, a Danish professor and food industry expert, in the USSR with the goal of acquiring its “shock-working soul” for western Europe3 serena, his daughter, a young girl

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a talking tube on shchoev’s desk an agent of a state collective farm an alien person four air-chem defense girls4 a fireman a policeman a local postman others: children’s faces looking in the office window; two workers on a demolition crew; several office workers, men and women; people from the cooperativized population; people standing in line outside the Park of Culture and Leisure; two or three passing construction workers; workers in the shop by the doors of the cooperative

ACT 1 Scene 1 Outskirts of a district town. A road leading into distant parts. An occasional wind stirs the trees to either side of it. On the left, amid the emptiness of the horizon, stands a construction site. On the right can be seen a small town. Above the town are flags. On the edge of the town stands a large barnlike dwelling with a flag above it. The flag shows a cooperative handshake, which can be made out from a distance.5 Wind. No sign of life. The distant flags flutter. Above the earth— the sun and a vast summer day. At first, except for the wind, everything is still. Then come sounds of moving iron. Some unknown iron heaviness is moving along—very slowly indeed, judging by

the sounds. A girlish voice wearily sings a quiet song. The song and the iron approach together.

A mechanical individual—an iron man, to be referred to as kuzma—appears onstage. kuzma is a metal, wind-up construction in the shape of someone short and stocky, self-importantly stepping forward and clanking his mouth all the while, as if taking breaths. alyosha—a young man in a straw hat, with the face of a wanderer—leads kuzma by the hand, rotating it on its axis like a wheel or a regulator. With them appears miud—an adolescent girl. She speaks and carries herself with trust and clarity; she has not known oppression. On his back alyosha carries a hurdy-gurdy. The threesome appear to be strolling musicians, with kuzma as their special attraction.6 kuzma suddenly stops and clanks his jaw, as if wanting a drink. The group stand still amid an empty, radiant world.7 miud: Alyosha, I’ve gotten bored of living in the world. alyosha: Never mind. Soon there will be socialism—then everyone will rejoice. miud: Me too? alyosha: Yes, you too. miud: But what if my heart starts to ache for some reason? alyosha: Doesn’t matter. It will be cut out of you, to save it from torment.

Pause. miud hums a tune without words. alyosha examines the space around him. miud (moving from a hum into song): Along the merry path of labor Shoeless we plod on our bare feet.

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We’re nearly there, not far to go; Our happy home’s already built.

Alyosha, I’ve been thinking—and it’s like this: my heart aches because I’ve lost touch with the masses. alyosha: You live unscientifically. That’s why something’s always aching inside you—first one thing, then another. As soon as socialism sets in, I will invent you all over again, from square one—and you will be the child of the whole international proletariat. miud: All right. Because, you know, I was born under capitalism. For two years I knew only suffering. (She turns to kuzma, touching him with her hands. miud always touches the people and objects with whom she enters into relationship.) Kuzma, tell me something that’s smarter than smart!

Kuzma chomps his human-looking jaws. alyosha adjusts some mechanism in kuzma’s cuffs and holds his hand. miud: Come on, Kuzma! kuzma (in an indifferent wooden voice, in which can always be heard the grating of cogs and wheels): Opportunist . . . miud (listening attentively): And what else? kuzma: Unscrupulous and grasping self-server . . . Un-principledness . . . Rightist-leftist element . . . Backwardness . . .

You need someone at your head! miud: And what else am I? Alyosha manipulates something in kuzma’s hand. kuzma: You are a class wonder . . . You are a special young sprout . . . You are the shock worker of the poor peasants’ joy.

Already we . . .

miud (quickly): I know, I know. We have already stepped into the foundation, we already have both feet inside it. (Moves about and does a little dance.)8 Wholly and entirely, we’re simply something very special indeed! kuzma: We, the advancing mass, now press on forward!

(Random, indecipherable sounds then issue from Kuzma.) miud (to kuzma): I love you, Kuzma! You, after all, are only poor iron! You look so important, but your heart is broken down, and you were thought up by Alyosha! After all, you’re not really a proper being, only a middling something! kuzma is silent and doesn’t clank his mouth. A locomotive whistles in the distance. alyosha: Let’s go, Miud. Soon it will be evening. Gloom will descend on the earth, and we need to eat and find somewhere to spend the night. miud: Alyosha, all my ideas ache with hunger! (She touches her chest.) alyosha (touches miud): Where? miud: There, Alyosha, where I sometimes feel fine, and sometimes not. alyosha: Sabotage on the part of Nature, Miud. miud: Is Nature a Fascist? alyosha: What did you think she was? miud: I thought she must be a Fascist too. All of a sudden the sun goes out. Or the rain—sometimes it drips, sometimes it doesn’t. Isn’t that right? We need a Bolshevik Nature, the way spring was—isn’t that true? And what’s this (points toward the locality)? Nothing but a den of subkulaks. There’s not the least principle of the Plan here!

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kuzma growls indistinctly. alyosha regulates him, and he falls silent. Briefly, a locomotive whistles nearby. alyosha: Let this place shine for a little longer. (Looks around him.) Soon we’ll liquidate it too, like a well-off ghost. We didn’t construct it, so why does it exist? miud: The sooner, the better, Alyosha. Waiting is boring.

The sound of people’s footsteps. kuzma (muttering): Failure to respond to activism. miud: What’s he saying? alyosha: It’s his remaining words—they’re stuck in his throat.

(Regulates kuzma on the back of his neck.)

Two or three construction workers walk up, carrying small chests, saws, and—in the hands of the foremost—a flag. miud: And who are you? Shock workers, or not? first worker: That’s us, young lady. That’s who we are. miud: And we are cultural workers. Our kolkhoz reading hut has sent us here.9 other worker: So you’re beggars, is that it? miud: Alyosha, he is the idiotism of village life.10 kuzma (first growls something, then speaks): Live quietly . . . Sow hemp and castor-oil plants . . .11 (Drones on and falls silent: the rasping of an inner mechanism is audible.) first worker: Play us something, lad. Entrance us. alyosha: Just a minute (winds kuzma up from behind). miud: Put a five-kopek piece in Kuzma (shows them where to put it—in his mouth). It goes toward cultural work with uncollectivized peasant households. You love peasant households, don’t you?

One of the construction workers puts a five-kopek piece in kuzma’s mouth. kuzma’s jaw begins to chew. alyosha takes kuzma by the hand and sets up the hurdy-gurdy. kuzma begins to grate out something unintelligible. alyosha begins to play an old-fashioned tune on the hurdy-gurdy. kuzma sings out more distinctly. miud (sings along with kuzma): To the u-ni-ver-sal pro-le-ta-ri-an, To the holder of power, Glory!

To the sub-ku-lak hi-re-ling, to extremists, to eulogizers of the status quo, To double-dealers and those without principles, To the right and the left deviationist, to every dark force— Shame everlasting! kuzma (after the song, to himself): . . . It’s warmer in a hut than in socialism . . . other worker (after hearing the song through): Sell us this ironclad opportunist! alyosha: This old Kuzya? What are you saying? We ourselves hold him dear. Anyway, what do you want him for? other worker: Well, for comfort. God, in his day, got himself a devil. We’ll do the same. We’ll get ourselves a pet opportunist! first worker (to alyosha): Here, mate, here’s a ruble for your invention. Get yourself something to eat, or your head will grow weak.

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alyosha: No thanks. But you should lower the fee you charge for construction—then I’ll sense your ruble everywhere. miud: We don’t take money for ourselves. We love our Soviet currency and we want it to be strong. kuzma: R-r-reptile-h-h-heroes . . . Live little by little. alyosha (regulates kuzma, and he falls silent): Counterrevolutionary slogans of one kind or another are always storming within him. Either he’s sick or he’s broken. miud (to the construction workers): All right, you lot, the FiveYear Plan’s on the go. You get going too! first worker: This is some young lady! Whoever could have been her mama? other worker (insightfully): Social stuff of some kind.

The construction workers walk away.

Behind the wall—indefinite foreign sounds. miud: Let’s go, Alyosha. I want something to fill me up. alyosha (puts kuzma in order): In a moment. What is it with you, little toadlet? You’re always suffering. It’s time you got used to it. miud: All right. I do like getting used to things, Alyosha. stervetsen and his daughter serena appear.12 She is a young European, with a somewhat Mongolian face and an elegant revolver at her hip. Both wear traveling coats and are carrying suitcases. They bow and greet alyosha, miud, and also kuzma. In response kuzma slowly offers his hand to stervetsen and serena. The foreigners speak in Russian; the degree to which they distort the language is up to the individual actors.

stervetsen: Greetings, comrade activists. serena: We want to be with you. We love your whole bitter fate! miud: Liar, we don’t have fate here anymore. We have summer here now, the birds are singing, and what we’ve got under construction here is quite something! (To alyosha, in a different, peaceable tone) Alyosha, what is she? alyosha: One of the well-off, I guess. kuzma: R-r-reptiles . . . alyosha restrains kuzma. miud (to the foreigners): So, what are you? stervetsen: We . . . are now a propertyless spirit, which has been dekulakized.13 serena: We were reading, and transduced for us was . . . Papa, información? stervetsen: A terse conversing, Seren. serena: A conversing, in which they said you have taken the bourgeoisie, and also the half class, and even the stronger class, and sent them all tersely to hell. miud: She is good, Alyosha. We sent them to hell, and that’s where they’ve come from—and she talks so clearly. stervetsen: I was young, and I visited Russia long ago to exist.

I lived here in the nineteenth century in a factory that made little peppermint buns. Now I can see a town—but back then only rare, occasional people were to be found here, and I wept among them on foot . . . Yes, Seren! serena: What, Papa? Who are these people—the hired hands of the avant-garde?

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miud: You’re a stupid little bourgeoise! We are the generation— that’s who we are! stervetsen: They are a good and kind enterprise, Seren! alyosha: And what do you need here among our class? stervetsen: We need your celestial joy of terrestrial labor. alyosha: What kind of joy? stervetsen: Here you have a shock-working psyche. Enthusiasm is visibly located on every citizen’s face. miud: And what business of yours is it if we’re joyful? stervetsen: Here you have organized a state silence and over it stands . . . a tower of the superstretched soul. miud: You mean the superstructure! You don’t even know what to call it—we have surpassed you! stervetsen: The superstructure! The spirit of motion in the citizens’ heart of hearts. The warmth above the icy landscape of your poverty! The superstructure!!! We want to purchase it here in your tsardom or swap it for our precise and sorrowful science. In Europe we have a fair amount of the lower stuff, but the flame on the tower has gone out. The wind cries straight into our bored heart—and above it stands no superstructure of inspiring fervor . . . Our heart is no shock worker . . . It is . . . how do you say it? . . . it is a soft-spoken fly-by-night . . . serena: Papa, tell them that I . . . kuzma: Unscrupulous and grasping self-server! The strength of an element. serena (looking at kuzma): He knows everything, like a comrade guide. miud: Our Kuzya? But he is an element under our guidance!

stervetsen: Where around here is it permitted to purchase the superstructure? (Points to the town) There? We will give a lot of foreign currency. We will allocate you, maybe, a loan of diamonds, or ships of Canadian wheat, our Danish cream, two aircraft carriers, the Mongolian beauty of ripened women—we are ready to open our eternal safes to you . . .

And you—just give us the gift of your superstructure! What do you need it for? You have the base, after all—so you can live for the time being on the foundation. kuzma (growls threateningly): The cunning of the class enemy . . . The Roman Catholic Pope . . . alyosha (cutting kuzma short): Aha. You want to shut down our ashpan and our blower pipe. So we stop dead in our tracks! miud (whispering to alyosha): Fascists! Don’t sell our superstructure—we can climb up on it ourselves! alyosha: I won’t. serena: We were given an understanding of this question.

They have Party lines laid down for them. Buy Europe a Party guideline. They’re not ready to part with their superstructure. stervetsen: Sell us a Party line! I’ll give you dollars! miud: All we have is a single directive—and only a little one at that. serena: Buy this directive, Papa. You can buy the superstructure of extremism later, somewhere far away. alyosha: We don’t sell our directives for Fascist money. miud (touches the revolver on serena’s hip): Give it to me. We’re having a cultural revolution here—and you walk around with a pistol. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

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serena (in bewilderment): Do you need it badly? miud: Of course I do. After all, you’re not having a cultural revolution. You’re benighted, evil people, and we have a right to your Nagant revolvers.14 serena: Take it (hands over the revolver). miud: Thank you, girl (immediately kisses serena’s cheek).

When someone yields to us, we forgive them everything.15 serena: Papa, the Oonion Soviet is very nice. (To alyosha) Play us a fox-trot! alyosha: No Soviet mechanism would dare.16 stervetsen and serena bow and exit. miud: But Alyosha, how will they purchase an idea, when it’s inside our whole body? Having it extracted is going to be painful. alyosha: Don’t worry, Miud. I will sell them . . . Kuzma. He is, after all, an idea. And he’ll be the death of the bourgeoisie. miud: I’ll be sorry to part with Kuzma. kuzma: Backwardness . . . Live in fear of capitalism . . . alyosha: No need to miss him, Miud. We’ll order ourselves another. In any case, Kuzma’s already fallen somewhat behind the masses.

He winds up kuzma. kuzma begins to step forward with a grinding sound from inside him, muttering something unintelligible with his steel lips. All three exit. Offstage, no longer visible, they sing a few words of a song. alyosha and miud stop singing, but kuzma, as he moves further away, continues to drone on alone in his cast-iron voice: “Eh-eh-eh-eh . . .”

Scene 2 A government office—something between a bathhouse, a beer joint, and a barrack. Smoke, noise, and a crush of office workers. Two toilets, and two doors that open into them. The toilet doors open and close; employees of various sexes are using the toilets. shchoev is sitting behind an enormous desk. On the desk is a trumpet-shaped megaphone that he uses to converse with the whole town and the cooperatives: the town is not large and the megaphone can be heard throughout its confines. shchoev (to the whole office, which is seething with clerical production): Let me think a minute. You there, cut out those stomach odors that are drifting over to me. (The toilet doors stop opening and closing. A general silence. shchoev falls into thought. His stomach begins to growl; the growling gets louder.

Then, quietly) The requirements of the distribution system make me ache all over. (Strokes his stomach) The moment I fall into thought, my stomach starts rumbling. That means all the elements are grieving within me . . . (Into the mass of employees) Yevsei!

Yevsei (from somewhere out of sight): Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich. I’ll just total up the cabbages and pickled cucumber— and then I’ll appear before you. shchoev: Add them up on the double, without leaving your post. I’ll iron out your figures myself, later. Now answer in detail: what do we have today for the non-dues-paying members of our cooperative?17

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Yevsei (still out of sight): Glue! shchoev: Fine. And tomorrow?

Yevsei: A first-grade reader, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: And yesterday?

Yevsei: Fly-killing powder, Zverev’s system, a half package per person. shchoev: Is it wise, Yevsei, to be killing flies with powder?

Yevsei: Whyever not, Ignat Nikanorovich? After all, we have yet to receive any Party line for the procurement of flies.18 And the salvage yard is still refusing to accept insects. shchoev: That’s not what I mean—don’t interrupt me when I’m thinking . . . I’m asking, what about the pigeon birds or other flying ephemera? What are they going to eat once you knock down all the flies? After all, things that fly are also food products.

Yevsei: No flying ephemera are expected this year, Ignat Nikanorovich. The cooperatives of the southern district intercepted and procured them ahead of us. This spring, Ignat Nikanorovich, we are expecting an empty sky. And with no birds, the flies will run wild. shchoev: Ah well, leave it be, then. Let them stuff themselves with flying ephemera. Telegraph the regional office for me and check whether Party lines are being stolen in our district . . . Ten days without even one circular—it’s terrifying! I see no guiding line beneath my feet.

In the yard outside the office the hurdy-gurdy plays an old waltz. The office turns its ears to the sound. So does shchoev.

Yevsei (still unseen): How about a coin for the musician, Ignat Nikanorovich? A cultural worker is, after all, a human being!

shchoev: I’ll coin you a coin or two! You’re a fine one— squandering the money of others! Our financial plan is unfulfilled—and here you go tossing our resources out the window! You go and get a contribution for our zeppelin out of him—that’s what you should be doing now!19 Yevsei appears briefly, standing up from within the mass of employees, then goes away. The hurdy-gurdy plays on without interruption. The talking tube on shchoev’s desk begins to whistle and hum. The hurdy-gurdy falls silent. shchoev (into the tube): Alla!20 Who? Speak up, it’s me—who else!

These words, spoken into the tube, are then repeated, three times as loud, somewhere beyond the office walls. The echo resounds in the surrounding spaces, the emptiness of which is felt in the length and boredom of the repeatedly reverberating sounds.

All conversation via the tube is to be carried out in this manner; this stage direction will not be repeated on every subsequent occasion. a distant voice (from outside the office): The little mushrooms, Ignat Nikanorovich, are beginning to go wormy. If you please, let the shop employees eat them—or else distribute them to the working mass!

The tube on the desk repeats these same words a few seconds later in an entirely different voice—one that is more muffled, with a different expression and even a different meaning. shchoev (into the tube): What mushrooms? distant voice (offstage): Year-old mushrooms, salted, soaked, and dried . . . shchoev (not into the tube): Yevsei!

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office workers: Ignat Nikanorovich, Yevsei has gone out to conduct a fund-raising campaign. shchoev: Labor on in silence. I’ve remembered.

The hurdy-gurdy plays a new tune. Yevsei enters with someone else’s straw hat in his hands. It is full of copper coins. He pours them onto shchoev’s desk. The hurdy-gurdy falls silent.

Yevsei: He gave twenty rubles. Later, he says, he’ll bring more.

The zeppelin, he says, fills me with joy. Too bad, he says, I didn’t hear about it earlier, or, he says, I’d have invented a Soviet airship myself. shchoev: What is he—some kind of enthusiast for every kind of construction?

Yevsei: Seems like it, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Member of something, or not?

Yevsei: He says he’s not a member of anything. shchoev: How come? That’s strange . . . (Pause. The hurdygurdy is playing far away, barely audible.) Never in my life have I seen a true enthusiast. Ten thousand members I unite, and they’re all like animals—day and night, all they want to do is eat. Go and bring him here—for my observation. (The tube on the desk growls something. He looks at the tube, then continues, to Yevsei) Is this your doing? You’ve been tormenting these mushrooms for over a year now!

Yevsei: They’re not mushrooms, Ignat Nikanorovich. It’s soy in the guise of mushrooms—I ordered it to be marinated.

What’s the hurry, Ignat Nikanorovich? People can eat anything—but where does it get us? We’ll be better off with a bit more materialism—there are enough people around as it is.

shchoev (pensively): You’re right—one hundred percent and then some! (Into the tube) Don’t touch the mushrooms, you locusts from hell. Let them lie there as reserve supplies!

The hurdy-gurdy plays still further away.

(To Yevsei) Call the music in here. I want a mood!

Exit Yevsei.

(To the office workers) Give me some papers to sign. Somehow the world has turned boring. first male office worker (standing up from among the rows of desks): We’ve got some confirmations and reminders lying around over here, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Hand over whatever you’ve got.

The worker brings a sheaf of papers over to shchoev’s desk.

(Takes a seal from his pocket and hands it to the worker) Go on then!

The worker blows on the seal and stamps the papers.

(Sitting idle) We need to direct some kind of directive at the shops on our periphery. first male office worker: I’ll do just that, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Please do.

Enter Yevsei. Behind him—alyosha with the hurdygurdy. miud attempts to lead kuzma in by the hand, but his torso is unable to get through the narrow space of the entrance. miud: Alyosha, Kuzya’s misfitting. There’s a bottleneck.21 alyosha: Let him stick around outside then. kuzma (in the doorway): Don’t touch old-timer capitalism . . .

R-r-reptiles . . . (remains outside the office). shchoev: And who are you?

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alyosha: We’re strolling Bolsheviks. shchoev: And where are you strolling now? alyosha (with profound sincerity): We’re going by way of collective farms and construction sites—to socialism! shchoev: To where? miud (childishly sincere): To socialism! shchoev (pensively): A fine, faraway district. miud: Yes, that’s right, far away. But we’ll get there all the same. shchoev: Yevsei, give this girl a candy. alyosha (embracing miud): No, don’t. She’s not used to sweets. miud: Suck the candy yourself, you sweet-toothed egotist. shchoev (comes out from behind his desk, toward people): Dear comrades, laborers, consumers, members, pedestrian foot walkers, and Bolsheviks—I love you all most remarkably!

Yevsei (to miud): And you, young lady, how do you like your candy—filled with jam, or with cherry juice? miud: Let the proletariat bring me treats—not you. You don’t have a class face. shchoev: I do love this generation, Yevsei. And you?

Yevsei: Well, Ignat Nikanorovich, one simply has to love them! alyosha (not understanding the situation): So are you building socialism here? shchoev: And how!

Yevsei: All the way! alyosha: Can we help build too? Playing music all the time—it makes your heart ache. miud (touching alyosha): And I’ve got bored of living in the world on foot.

shchoev: But why do you want to build? You are the springtime of our class, and spring must blossom. Keep playing your music. What do you think, Yevsei?

Yevsei: Yes, I reckon, Ignat Nikanorovich, that we will manage just fine without minors. Once everything’s ready, they can come and feast themselves! miud: But we want to help build. shchoev: But can you organize the masses? alyosha and miud are silent for a while. alyosha: All I can do is invent a zeppelin.

Pause. shchoev: Well, there we are. And you say you want to help.

You’d do better to stay in our multistore system as musical reinforcement. You will give comfort to the leadership. Yevsei, do our staff regulations provide for the employment of comforters?

Yevsei: I reckon, Ignat Nikanorovich, that no objections will arise. Let them comfort away. shchoev (thinking this over deeply): Excellent. In that case, Yevsei, let’s enroll these wanderers. Let them stop here.

(To alyosha) Play me something tender. alyosha takes his hurdy-gurdy and plays a sorrowful folk melody. shchoev, Yevsei, and the entire office are in a deep pause. The institution stands idle. Everyone is lost in thought. alyosha changes registers and plays a different piece. miud (gradually and imperceptibly joins in the melody and begins to sing softly): They set off on foot For a faraway land, The Hurdy-Gurdy

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Leaving their motherland For a freedom unknown.

Strangers to everyone, No comrade but the wind— In their breast their heart Beats without reply. alyosha goes on playing a little while after miud has fallen silent. In the course of the music and miud’s song, shchoev has been gradually slumping over his desk, weeping in quiet anguish.

Yevsei has been looking at shchoev and contorting his features with suffering in a similar way—but tears cannot flow from his eyes. The office weeps in silence. Pause. shchoev: Somehow it’s all so pitiful, damn it. Come on, Yevsei, let’s organize the masses.

Yevsei: Then there won’t be enough vegetables for them, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Oh, Yevsei, let’s believe in something! (Wipes away his tears. Then, to alyosha) Know what you should be inventing instead of zeppelins? How best to dry up the tears of crybabies! alyosha: I can do that. shchoev: Enroll him then, Yevsei, in our permanent staff: as comforter of the masses. Get the approval of the proper authorities. It’s time we procured some masses to work in our apparatus.

Yevsei: Do we have to, Ignat Nikanorovich? We’ve already had one promoted proletarian dumped on us—Yevdokia! alyosha quietly plays a dance tune on the hurdy-gurdy. miud moves lightly through the steps.

shchoev: And what is Yevdokia doing now?

Yevsei: Nothing, Ignat Nikanorovich. She’s a woman. shchoev: So what if she’s a woman? There’s something unknown in her too.

Yevsei: There’s milk in her, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Ah! Then she can play a leading role in the milk and butter sector of our apparatus.

Yevsei: So she can, Ignat Nikanorovich. alyosha plays the same dance a little more loudly. Still sitting, not rising from their places, the office staff move their torsos in time to the dance. The tube on shchoev’s desk begins to growl. shchoev (into the tube): Alla! It’s me! tube: Birds, Ignat Nikanorovich, are flying over our district. shchoev (into the tube): Where from? tube: From parts unknown. From foreign states. shchoev: How many? tube: Three. shchoev: Catch them! tube: Right away.

Noise of wind over the office. Bird cries. shchoev: What is all this?

Yevsei: This, Ignat Nikanorovich, is the beginning of a new quarter or, by the old calendar, the beginning of spring. shchoev (pensively): Spring. A good Bolshevik epoch!

Yevsei: A tolerable one, Ignat Nikanorovich. miud: It’s not spring now. Spring ended long ago. It’s summer now—the season for construction. shchoev: What do you mean, summer?

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Yevsei: It makes no difference, Ignat Nikanorovich. It’s only the weather that changes, the time remains the same. shchoev: You’re right, Yevsei.

Enter pyotr opornykh. In his hands are a chicken and two pigeons. opornykh: Here’s a whatchamacallit! I, Ignat Nikanorovich, have now procured you some fowl: one propertyless hen and two pigeons to boot. miud: In spring only strange birds fly in—not chickens. All chickens are kolkhoz members. alyosha (examines the birds in opornykh’s hands. On one of the chicken’s legs is a tag, and on the leg of one of the pigeons—a little roll of paper. He reads): “The chicken declares a curse on reckless wastefulness. She is being given an unnecessary mass of grain, in consequence of which grain goes to waste or is eaten by predators. But not one drop does she receive to drink.

The chicken declares her indignation at this undervaluation.

Signed—the Pioneer Brigade of the Little Giant state farm.” shchoev: We cannot procure such birds. There is no Party line to that effect. Toss her out, Petya!” opornykh takes the chicken by the head and tosses it out the door. The chicken’s head remains in his hands, but its torso disappears.

Yevsei (looking at the chicken’s head and its blinking eyes): Now the chicken is worn out and will fly no further. shchoev (to alyosha): And what does the Egyptian pigeon have to tell us? alyosha (reads): It’s written in a capitalist language. It’s not very clear to us.

shchoev: Then pound the kulak propaganda into the ground! miud: Let me eat the bird instead, with its paper. shchoev: Eat, child, every last bite.

Yevsei (to miud): Oh no, you don’t! This might be the Egyptian proletariat sending us a bulletin about their achievements.22 shchoev (pensively): A faraway and worn-out class . . .

Opornykh, look after that pigeon as if it were your union membership card!

A distant noise. Everyone listens. The noise grows louder, turning into a boom. opornykh: What the hell’s going on now? (Exits.)

Small pause of fear.

Yevsei (shouting with all his zeal): Ignat Nikanorovich, it’s a foreign intervention!

The work of the office comes to an immediate halt. miud takes the revolver out of her blouse. alyosha takes the growling tube from shchoev’s desk. It continues to growl in the hands of a human being. alyosha and miud run out with these objects and disappear. The strange boom intensifies but grows, as it were, wider and softer, like a stream of water.

(Horrified) I told you, Ignat Nikanorovich, that mother bourgeoisie is one tough lady. shchoev: Don’t worry, Yevsei. Maybe this time it’s only the petty bourgeoisie . . . But where are my masses? shchoev looks around the office—which is empty. Shortly before this, the workers have all disappeared somewhere. kuzma smashes through the doorway and squeezes his way into the office.23 He sits down amid the emptiness of the desks and takes The Hurdy-Gurdy

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up a pen. shchoev and Yevsei observe him in terror. miud enters, revolver in hand. miud: It’s swan geese, flying swan geese . . . Idiots!

The boom turns into the voices of thousands of birds. The sound of birds’ feet touching the iron roof of the office; the birds are settling on it, calling to one another. shchoev: Yevsei! Call the office workers here. Where have they hidden themselves? Something or other needs to be put in order here! kuzma stands up and walks into the toilet, slamming the door brusquely behind him.

Scene 3 The same office as in scene 2. No tube on shchoev’s desk. The place is empty. Only shchoev. Birds cry pitifully outside; they are being attacked and exterminated with whatever comes to hand. shchoev (chewing some food): The people today do have one huge appetite. They build some kind of brick buildings, fences, or towers—and for that they want three meals a day, and I’m supposed to sit here and provide treats for every one of them. Yes, it’s tough being a cooperative system. Better if I’d been an object of some sort, or simply a consumer.

Somehow we don’t have much of an ideological superstructure. Either we’ve invented everything already or there’s some other reason. I’m always craving some kind of pleasure! (Picks up some crumbs of the food he’s consumed and tips them into his mouth.) Yevsei!

Yevsei (behind the office): Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: Where on earth can these bastard birds have sprung from? Everything was so quiet and consistent with the Plan, the entire apparatus had adopted the Party line for the organization of fleshy crayfish deeps—and now in come these birds! Try and procure them! O local populace, local populace, you’ll be the death of the whole cooperative system! . . .

Klokotov! klokotov (behind the office walls): Coming, Ignat Nikanorovich.

Enter klokotov, entirely covered in bird feathers. shchoev: Well, how is it out there? klokotov: Not good at all, Ignat Nikanorovich—as you can see! shchoev: What’s going on out there? klokotov: The whole Plan is falling apart, Ignat Nikanorovich . . . We adopted the Party line for the organization of fleshy crayfish deeps—and we should be guided by it. The midsection of a crayfish, Ignat Nikanorovich, is better than any beef. I mean, yesterday it was crayfish, today it’s flying birds, tomorrow wild beasts will come scampering out of the forest, and we, it seems, have to bring the whole system crashing to a halt because of these brute elements! (shchoev is pensively silent.) It’s just no good, Ignat Nikanorovich—and the whole populace will be spoiled. Once we’ve got them used to one kind of food, that’s more than enough. As for what’s going on now! Looks like all the poultry life from every bourgeois tsardom may come tearing into our republic. They’re having a crisis over there—an overproduction The Hurdy-Gurdy

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crisis—but how are we meant to consume all this ourselves?

There simply aren’t enough mouths! shchoev: And how are your crayfish doing in our mighty deeps? klokotov: The crayfish are keeping mum, Ignat Nikanorovich—it’s early yet.

Yevsei (enters, covered in bird feathers): Ignat Nikanorovich!

Birds with official documents have arrived! Just look! (Takes a number of cardboard disks from his pocket.) Each one has a number—and an official seal! These birds are organized, Ignat Nikanorovich! I’m afraid of them! shchoev (slowly and pensively): Organized birds. Well ordered is the air above our land. opornykh (entering, wet all over, in tall boots): Fish are on the move, Ignat Nikanorovich! klokotov: I knew it! opornykh: Fish are pressing forward along the surface and birds are flying down and gobbling them up . . .

Yevsei: This will undermine our crayfish season, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: And there’s no one at all . . . no larger animal of any kind, who might, in turn, make a meal of the birds? Nothing at all? klokotov (with satisfaction): Of course there isn’t, Ignat Nikanorovich! And we don’t need anything now. For meat we’ll make do with crayfish. For butter we can use nut juice. And for milk we’ll mix wild honey with formic acid—and what more do we need? Science today, they say, has progressed a long way.24

Yevsei: Little by little, Ignat Nikanorovich, we’ll provide for everyone. Everyone’s appetite will be fully developed! opornykh: So? Hmm . . . What do you say? Finish off the birds? Or go after the fish?

A noise offstage, growing louder, as in scene 2. shchoev: Go outside and look, Yevsei. (Yevsei disappears.) So why are these birds flying to us from the bourgeoisie? opornykh: Our country is mighty rich, Ignat Nikanorovich.

Anything can get born here—and keep living! shchoev: Huh! If life here were that wonderful, everything would just crawl into the right packaging all by itself. opornykh: But human beings here are fools, Ignat Nikanorovich. We don’t have any—any whatchamacallit—any packaging here!25 shchoev: I myself am a human being.

The noise intensifies. In runs Yevsei.

Yevsei: Another whole swarm is flying this way. shchoev: A swarm of what?

Yevsei: Geese, sparrows, cranes—and roosters racing along below them. Some kind of seagulls too!26 shchoev: My God, my God . . . Why did you leave me at this post?27 Better to have been some extremist—then I’d have gotten myself settled elsewhere by now. opornykh: Now all the fish will get gobbled up. So tell us, you, er, cooperative leadership, what we should do! Procure a Lenten meal out of the waters, or leave that to the priests?

Yevsei (to opornykh): No need to be overactivist, Petya, when no one’s even put you forward to volunteer!

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shchoev: Yevsei, think something definite for God’s sake. Can’t you see, my heart is aching.

Yevsei: But I’ve already thought everything through, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: Then make your report to me, take up the Party line, and move into action.

Yevsei: The Air-Chem Defense Society has an artillery circle, Ignat Nikanorovich, and this circle has a cannon. With your permission we’ll bombard the flock of birds. shchoev: Fire away!

Yevsei and klokotov exit. The noise offstage continues and turns into bird cries. opornykh: Ignat Nikanorovich! Why chase the birds away?

We’d have managed to catch the birds and snatch up the fish too! The people—what’s the word—are willing to work. shchoev: And what if they are? Let the birds fly into other districts—people eat there too! Why be such an egotist? I’m truly surprised at you! opornykh mutters something to himself.

And what else is the matter? Have you forgotten, you unprincipled devil, that I now have undivided authority?28 Go on, Petya, go back to your fishing! opornykh (exiting): Well, and there’s one . . . er, what’s the word . . . peasant asshole for you! shchoev: Somehow I’m tired. It’s hard work having to feed such a troublesome population from cradle to grave.

The noise offstage fades a little, now only gently audible. Enter miud and alyosha, both covered in bird feathers. miud even has feathers in her hair.

miud (to shchoev): What makes you so very important? shchoev: I’m not important—I’m responsible. And why have you come back? Can’t you see that animals are attacking the cooperative? alyosha: It’s all right, Comrade Shchoev. The proletariat is always in need of food. We two procured a thousand items.

We . . . shchoev: We, we, we . . . That’s enough of your bleating! What use would you be if it weren’t for me standing here at your head? miud: Alyosha, where are the Party and the shock workers? I’m getting bored here! shchoev (somewhat pensively): Boredom . . . a tender, decent feeling . . . in youth it can lead to developmental complications.

Backstage something hisses, as if a huge fire were bursting into flame. alyosha (to shchoev): Uncle, let’s think up some method of rationalization29—somehow nothing here seems quite scientific.

The noise offstage turns into a roar and suddenly ceases entirely. shchoev (pensively): Rationalization . . . (touches alyosha) You may be a genius of the masses, but I too, brother, am a thoughtful person . . . (Deep in thought) Let science labor now while man rests beside her as if at a resort. That’ll be good.

We will, at least, be able to rest our torsos.

Offstage—a continuous, intensifying roar, as from a blazing fire. A short pause. A quiet cannon shot. The back wall of the The Hurdy-Gurdy

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office (from the audience’s perspective) slowly collapses. A wind tears through the office, and thousands of birds fly up from the office roof. The landscape round about is revealed: two cooperative shops with shop assistants standing outside. A gate with the sign “Park of Culture and Leisure,” with a line of people standing outside it. kuzma is first in line. At first, this entire spectacle is veiled in smoke. The smoke disperses. Four sturdy young women, members of the Air-Chem Defense Society, carry two stretchers into the office, entering through the collapsed wall. On the stretchers lie Yevsei and klokotov. The stretchers are placed on the floor in front of shchoev. Yevsei and klokotov sit up on their stretchers.

Yevsei: The cannon, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: What about the cannon? A cannon’s a cannon!

Yevsei: The cannon, Ignat Nikanorovich, took a whole hour to warm up—and then it fired. shchoev: And a good thing too! klokotov: It fired at us!

Yevsei: It shoots low, Ignat Nikanorovich. There’s a slogan hanging down from its muzzle . . . shchoev: And what about you two? Have you been shot dead or not?

Yevsei: Oh no, Ignat Nikanorovich, we still have to go on living.

Can’t be helped. shchoev (looking at the stretcher girls): And who are these girls?

Yevsei: Oh, for them this is community service, Ignat Nikanorovich. They’re happy to lug people around. local postman (runs up with his bag to the line of people standing outside the Park of Culture and Leisure): Citizens, give this

packet to the cooperative—each of my steps, you know, is valuable, and anyway, you’re on your feet already.

The people in line point at kuzma. The postman shoves the packet into some sort of opening in kuzma and urgently races off into the distance. kuzma begins to pace toward the cooperative office. Keeping their places in line, the people begin to move in the same direction, with kuzma at their head. shchoev (to the Air-Chem Defense girls): Listen to me, girls.

Since you love weighty burdens, lift this office wall back up again. As it is, I keep seeing various masses and my thoughts get scattered. air-chem defense girl: All right, citizen, as you say! After all, that’s why you’re the boss—cuz no one ever sees you.

What do you take us for—fools?

The four of them effortlessly pick up the log wall and put it back in place, blocking off the office from the outside world. The girls themselves are thus left outside. miud: Alyosha, what’s going on here—capitalism, or a second something or other? shchoev: Yevsei, please organize this girl for me. She’s starting to give me heartburn.

Yevsei: I’ll make a note of her, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev: And where is my office staff?

Yevsei: It has the day off, Ignat Nikanorovich. shchoev (pensively): The day off . . . and a good thing if it never came back. I would take the office off the supply list and fulfill the Plan at the same time! Yevsei, let’s set our course in the direction of peoplelessness.

Yevsei: Certainly, Ignat Nikanorovich. But how?

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shchoev: How? How am I meant to know?! We’ll set our course and that’s that! alyosha: We could invent some mechanism, Comrade Cooperative. Mechanisms can do office work too. shchoev: Mechanisms . . . Now there’s an idea for you! Some sort of scientific being will sit and spin its wheels and I will direct it. I like it! I could have the whole republic go mechanical and stop provisioning it altogether. How would that be, Yevsei?

Yevsei: Things would be easier for us, Ignat Nikanorovich. klokotov: A normal work tempo would begin! miud: Birds are flying and fish are swimming. The peasants want something to eat—and these people think that . . . Alyosha, I don’t understand this place! shchoev: Here, let me be your head—then you’ll understand everything! opornykh (enters, wet all over): So then? This, er, what’s the word . . . these fish here . . . Are we to catch them, or should we let them live? shchoev: Procure them, of course. opornykh: But there aren’t any tubs, Ignat Nikanorovich . . .

And the coopers are saying . . . er, how did it go . . . You haven’t given them any salt for a month. “Give us some salt,” they say. “Our daily bread is unsalted.” shchoev: Petya, you must go and tell them that they are opportunists. opornykh: But they told me that you’re an opportunist! What am I meant to do? miud (to everyone): Who are they? Fascists?

opornykh: What’s more, some girls I met were telling me about berries. Berries, they say, are everywhere in the woods . . . Everything—now how does it go—is flying, pressing forward, swimming and growing, but we don’t have any containers. I walk around and feel torment.

Noise offstage. shchoev (to alyosha): Where is your music, musician? Somehow I’m feeling sad again from opinions and dreams. Yevsei, go and see who’s violating and making a noise out there.

Yevsei exits. alyosha and miud disappear outside with him. The noise of people offstage grows louder. opornykh: And, Ignat Nikanorovich, the flocks of birds have left heaps of droppings. Whole mounds are lying around, and this, people say, is a gold mine. So what should we do, procure it or just let it be?

The noise offstage grows quieter. shchoev: And what do you care about droppings? You are the most backward individual in your class. Foreign chemists make iron and cream from bird excrement, but to you it’s just droppings. What do you understand about anything?

Enter Yevsei. klokotov: Let’s send for a foreign scientist, Ignat Nikanorovich—we’re facing a mass of questions here.

Yevsei: Yes, of course. Foreigners are given special food and they bring clothes in their suitcases. shchoev: That’s right, Yevsei . . . Who was that making a noise outside?

Yevsei: Cooperative masses were heading this way, but I stopped them.

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shchoev: That was a mistake, Yevsei. You should have chosen a representative from them—so that there’d be one man, once and for all, to stand for all of them.

Yevsei: But that’s just what I’ve done, Ignat Nikanorovich.

I picked someone and gave him an official post—now he’ll calm down. shchoev: You did the right thing, Yevsei. For some reason you and I are always right.

A quiet knocking at the door.

Yes, please, be so kind as to come in.

Enter the Danish professor, eduard valkyriya-hansen stervetsen, and his daughter Serena.30 stervetsen: Greetings, gentlemen Russian maximalist people! serena: We are scienticity, which knows food. Greetings! shchoev: Greetings, gentlemen bourgeois scientists. We sit here and are always happy to see science.

Yevsei: We procure science too. stervetsen: From our child years we are maximum lovers of cooperativeness. Here in your Soviet of Russian Oonions you have wonderful cooperativeness. We want to learn all about your . . . I am in sad difficulty . . . your impetuous production of foods and goods. shchoev: So here you are at last. Our cooperativeness has become wonderful, has it, now that we’ve caught up with and surpassed you?31 Yevsei, respect these devils! serena (to her father): He says—dyevil! stervetsen (to his daughter): That, Serena, is because they don’t have any God here. Only his comrade is left—the dyevil.

shchoev (solemnly): Comrade members of the bourgeoisie.

You have arrived at the very height of the reorganization of our apparatus.32 So please, in the first place, go along, relax, collect your wits, and, in the second place, come back in ten days’ time to our cooperativeness—then we’ll show you! But leave your suitcases here—our land will endure any burden. stervetsen: Wonderful (he bows). Let’s go, Seren. We need to hurry and collect our wits. serena: Papa, I’m so happy for some reason . . .

They exit, leaving their suitcases in the office. shchoev: Yevsei! Organize me a ball! Arrange a vast rationalization, prepare a mighty nourishment!

Yevsei: The rationalization I can manage—there is plenty of mind in the masses, but as for nourishment, I’m afraid there won’t be enough. shchoev (pensively): No nourishment, you say? Well, what of it? We’ll organize an evening of experimental trial of new forms of food. We’ll pick heaps of every kind of grass—then we’ll make flour from fish, snatch crayfish out of the water, turn bird droppings into chemistry, make soup with the lard from dead bones, and brew kvass from wild honey mixed half and half with formic acid. And furthermore—we’ll bake burdock pancakes such as will be eaten with enthusiasm and fervor. We’ll put all of Nature into these victuals and we’ll feed everyone with stuff that is cheap and eternal.

Oh Yevsei, Yevsei, food is really just a social convention, nothing more!

A motorcycle engine sputters outside. Someone enters, an agent from a state collective farm.

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agent: I’m from the Little Giant state farm. Our birds knocked down the aviary and flew the coop. And water undermined our dams and our fish all hurled themselves downstream. You haven’t noticed these animals in your district, have you?

Yevsei: No, comrade, we procure only uncultured animals. We love hardships. agent: But I’ve just seen people covered in feathers. shchoev: People covered in feathers! Someone’s lying. That’s not true, comrade! agent: Huh?!

ACT 2 Scene 1 The same office, somewhat altered. It has been equipped with various mechanisms. As they are set in motion, the audience will understand their function. Along the back wall lie the foreigners’ suitcases. Everything is clean. A single long table, with nothing on it. A dais by the window. In one corner—a piano. On the opposite side of the room—the hurdy-gurdy. Instead of a handle, it now has a pulley. Running up from the pulley is a belt drive. Quiet. No people.

In the other half of the office—the noise of food preparation. Enter Yevsei and alyosha.

Yevsei: Well, how are you doing here? Everything decent and proper? alyosha: Everything has been arranged.

Yevsei (looking alyosha over): Seems like you’ve gotten thinner. alyosha: I’ve put forth much thought from my torso, and I feel bored here in your district. Yevsei, when will the future people set in? I’m sick and tired of the ones living now. You too are a shithead, you know!

Yevsei: Me? Yes, I’m a shithead. That’s why I’m still in one piece. Otherwise I’d have perished long ago—I might not even have been born. What else could I be? alyosha: Then how come I’m alive myself?

Yevsei: Spontaneously, elementally . . . But are you really alive?

You move about, but you don’t exist. Why did you become a hurdy-gurdy man anyway, you fly-by-night devil? alyosha: I want to achieve socialism more quickly. I’m always longing for somewhere distant.

Yevsei: Socialism will set in for the rational elements in society, but you will vanish without a trace. You are nothing, you need someone at your head. alyosha: So be it. I don’t give thought to myself anyway. I don’t understand. You’re more important than me, yet you’re a reptile through and through!

Yevsei: It’s because of the masses. They’ve reptilized me. Think a moment about the material I’m expected to lead! alyosha (deeply thoughtful): There’ll be Communism soon.

The world will move on without you.

Yevsei: Without me? What do you mean? I’m afraid that without me the world will cease to exist—yes, no doubt about it!

The noise of food preparation grows louder. Enter shchoev. alyosha busies himself with setting up the various mechanisms.

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shchoev: Report, Yevsei!

Yevsei: Everything is all right, Ignat Nikanorovich! The nettle soup is ready, the cabbage soup prepared from shrubs and wood fat is steaming, the mechanical sandwiches are lying in their posts, and the compote made from the juice of narrow minds is cooling on the roof. The black earth cutlets are frying, and as for the kasha made from locusts and ants’ eggs,33 it is stewing away, Ignat Nikanorovich! Everything else is being mobilized on the stove top—except the dessert made from glue and kvass, which is already done. shchoev: And the sauce—what sort of sauce will you serve?

Yevsei: Sauce, Ignat Nikanorovich, is a tricky business. We are serving a liquid supporting sauce made from birch sap. shchoev: And, er, will there be anything particular for our clarity of long-term perspective?

Yevsei: Vinegar, Ignat Nikanorovich—vinegar with crumbs of old tobacco and lilac bush! shchoev: Wonderful, Yevsei. Now, tell me—what’s the situation with our inventory? alyosha: Well, I’ve banged out a whole stack of wooden dishes. You didn’t have any spoons or cups anywhere—you hadn’t figured out that there are forests all around, and in these forests are collective farms with many able hands. You could build a whole Wooden Age here. shchoev: The Wooden Age . . . Well, that too was a fine transitional epoch!34 Noise of people outside the door.

Yevsei: The guest mass, Ignat Nikanorovich, is approaching. shchoev: Don’t let them in. Give us a moment to collect our wits.

Yevsei bolts the door.

Now, what are you going to give the scientific bourgeois and his daughter?

Yevsei: Exactly the same, Ignat Nikanorovich. He said himself that he sympathizes with the great food of the future and is prepared to suffer for the new radiant nourishment. shchoev: And what am I going to eat?

Yevsei: You, Ignat Nikanorovich, will be sharing with me. You and I will test the foreign scientist’s rations. I took all his food for experimental purposes. shchoev: You’re a smart one, Yevsei!

Yevsei: But of course! One must develop in all directions.

Outside the locked door the guests are creating an uproar. shchoev: Let in the mouths to be fed, Yevsei. Alyosha, strike up some chords! alyosha starts the hurdy-gurdy. He pulls a lever, and the belt drive, slapping regularly against the pulley throughout the tune, begins to turn the crank of the hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy softly and melodiously plays the waltz “On the Hills of Manchuria.”35 Yevsei opens the door. Enter stervetsen with his daughter on his arm and carrying a box; klokotov; yevdokia, the promoted proletarian; five young female office workers; pyotr opornykh with his wife, who is very small, on his arm; three male office workers with their wives; and godovalov, the representative of the cooperative members.

Then a fireman in full uniform and helmet comes in and stands by the door, followed by a policeman. The hurdy-gurdy stops playing. stervetsen hands Yevsei the box, which is full of food.

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Yevsei: Listen to me, comrade guests! Allow me to salute you for some reason or other. Let us all rejoice today and be glad— shchoev: Yevsei, stop your speechmaking! I haven’t yet had my say.

Yevsei: Well I, Ignat Nikanorovich, as the saying goes— shchoev: You, Yevsei, should learn to act not as the saying goes but as good sense prompts. Listen to me, comrade guests . . .

(The guests had almost taken their seats, but now they all stand, except for stervetsen and his daughter, and listen to shchoev.) Local and foreign comrades! I want to say something special to you, but I have grown unaccustomed to happiness of mood. I am tormented by worries about providing adequate food for the masses . . . Perplexity languishes within me . . . In view of the increased tempo of the masses’ appetites, our cooperative system is confronted with one evident necessity—namely, to overcome some sort of evident underestimation of something . . . And so you just have to swallow your food, and when it lands in your stomach— well, let it sort things out for itself, let it feel bored there or rejoice. Now we must test in the depth of our own torsos a new form of nourishment, one we have procured from the impetuously produced materials of raw Nature. Long Live the Five-Year-Plan-Now-Being-Fulfilled-in-Four!

Universal applause. A general hurrah. People stop clapping and lower their hands, but the applause does not stop. Instead it grows louder, turning into a real ovation. Ever more loudly, the cry of “hurrah” is repeated in a metallic tone. The guests are all frightened. alyosha squeezes the handle of a crude wooden

mechanism (it is partly visible to the audience) that the belt drive is turning from above. It is applauding and shouting, “Hurrah!” alyosha releases the handle—the belt drive stops turning, and the mechanism falls silent.

Yevsei!

Yevsei: Alyosha! alyosha: Nourishment is served! alyosha pulls a lever. The rumble of an unknown mechanism. Then—quiet. Slowly, on a conveyor belt running along the table, there floats out a huge wooden tureen with steam pouring from it. All around the tureen, leaning against it, are hefty wooden spoons. The guests take the spoons. shchoev: Alyosha, some bold, heartening music! alyosha: Straightaway. What shall I play? shchoev: I’ll be grateful, please, if you could strike up something soulful! alyosha starts the hurdy-gurdy, which begins something soulful. The guests eat. shchoev and Yevsei sit on the dais.

From the box provided by stervetsen, Yevsei takes out a separate meal—cheese, sausage, etc.—and eats it with shchoev on the dais. opornykh: Er . . . Ignat Nikanorovich! What is this? Have you instituted cabbage soup like this forever? Or is this just a oneoff campaign? shchoev: Eat, Petya, don’t be an opportunist. opornykh: Who, me? All I’m saying is . . . er, what’s the word . . . we’ve still got beef and cabbage here in the republic. Maybe we’d be better off with regular cabbage soup? With this one, your stomach could go berserk!

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Yevsei: Petya, eat in silence. You’re performing a test on yourself. opornykh: I am being silent. Now I’m going to think, as a test.

The hurdy-gurdy falls silent. shchoev: Alyosha! Be so kind as to serve up the second course.

Let’s test the kasha. alyosha pulls a lever. A rumble. The tureen of soup slowly creeps away. The rumbling stops. A bowl of kasha sails out. godovalov (stands): On behalf of all the consuming members of the cooperative, who have invested me with the authority to think for them, and also— Yevsei: To suffer torments of the soul on their behalf, Comrade Godovalov . . . godovalov: And also to suffer torments of the soul on their behalf . . . I express a universal, giant feeling of joy, and also of enthusiasm . . . alyosha turns on the automatic machine. Thunder of applause. godovalov sits down. Everyone eats the kasha. shchoev: Well, how is it, comrades? serena: Papa! Are these locusts? Are they eating saboteur insects?36 Yevsei: That’s right, young lady. We’re hiding the little saboteurs away inside us. serena: Then you will become saboteurs yourselves.37 godovalov: It’s a fine kasha, Ignat Nikanorovich. first male office worker: These experiments have an enormous educational significance, Comrade Shchoev. They should be organized once every ten days.

first female office worker: Oh, it’s awfully nice here.

This is my first time at an intervention. shchoev: Hey, idiot . . . Shut up if you don’t know the words.

Sit there and feel something wordless. first female office worker: But there’s something I want, Ignat Nikanorovich. I’m all in a complete tizzy . . .

Yevsei: Polya! You can tell your mama all about it in a whisper later, but right now you’re here for an experiment . . . first female office worker: Oh, Yevsei Ivanovich, I do so love our office . . . I do feel something so . . . stervetsen: Nothing should be left untried. The whole world is only an experiment. shchoev: Swallow more quietly over there! Let us hear the words of science. stervetsen: I say the whole world is but an experiment of God’s powers. Do you agree, Seren? serena: But Papa, is God really a professor too? Why do you exist then?

Yevsei (quietly to shchoev): Ignat Nikanorovich, this is religious propaganda! shchoev: Let them be, Yevsei. It’s all right for them. They’re not normal. Alyosha! Bring us all the food to choose from! alyosha pulls the lever. Rumbling. The kasha floats off on the conveyor belt. The rumbling fades away. The conveyor belt gradually serves up a series of assorted dishes. shchoev: Comrades, please partake of these victuals without restraint. Here we have lots of everything—one-sixth of the entire terrestrial sphere… Alyosha! Organize the sandwiches!

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alyosha turns on another wooden apparatus; a loaf of bread has already been placed inside it. The apparatus slices the bread and then spreads the slices with some kind of white substance. Then the prepared sandwiches are tossed by the paw of the apparatus onto a wooden serving dish. The dish then moves onto the conveyor belt. stervetsen (surveying the operation of the apparatus): This is mind-boggling, Seren. This is true hygiene! serena: Papa, I like Alyosha. shchoev: Alyosha! Do something gracious for the foreign young lady—she likes you. alyosha walks over to serena and kisses her, lifting her whole body off the floor. stervetsen: This is barbaric, Seren. serena (smoothing herself down): Don’t worry, Papa. It’s not as if it hurt. And I have to get a feeling for the Oonion of Russian Soviets. shchoev (to alyosha, sternly): Don’t be unprincipled, Alyosha . . . serena (to alyosha): Is there anything in the world that you love—or only Communism? alyosha: More than anything else I love the zeppelin. I’m always thinking about how it will rise up above the whole of the poor earth, how every one of the collective farmers will look up at the sky and begin to weep, and I, all in tears of class joy, will start the motors with a mighty roar. We will fly against the wind, over all the oceans—and world capitalism, beneath this huge torso of science and technology, will begin to grieve mightily because of the flying masses . . .

serena: I’m listening . . . But in Moscow one lonely member told me that you all love shock workers and everyone who labors to catch up with and surpass.

Yevsei: He’s a fly-by-night, he thinks only of flitting off somewhere, while our dear masses live on foot . . . alyosha (answering serena): You don’t understand, and he (indicating Yevsei) is no different from your own people.

He’s not the class—he is a compromiser . . . serena: But Europe has zeppelins too. alyosha: So what? shchoev: Their zeppelins have narrow minds. alyosha (to serena): You don’t understand, because you belong to the bourgeoisie. You’re an uncollectivized egotist!

You imagine you have a soul . . . serena: Yes. alyosha: You don’t. But we will have a zeppelin. It will fly above the propertyless terrestrial sphere, above the Third International.38 Then it will descend, and the proletariat of the whole world will touch it with their hands . . . shchoev (to Yevsei): And there was I, thinking he was an idiot.

Yevsei: Well, we used to have only clear, straightforward idiots, but he is a back-to-front idiot. serena (to alyosha): You affect me like a landscape.

I feel sadness . . . how do you say it . . . inside my blouse. (stervetsen takes out a packet of Troika cigarettes and lights up.) Papa, why are you and I uncollectivized egotists? stervetsen: Seren, you shock me.

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opornykh (drinking a cup of vinegar): I drink to all countries and states where the . . . er . . . proletariat lifts its head to catch a glimpse of our, er, what’s the word, our zeppelin! shchoev (standing solemnly): To the zeppelin of the Revolution, to the members of the universal cooperative, and . . . to all the slogans published in the local press—hurrah! everyone: Hurrah!

After this exclamation, a silence suddenly sets in, but the second male office worker shouts, “Hurrah!” again, in a solitary voice, not noticing this silence. shchoev (to the shouter): Vasya, that’s enough of your craziness! Shocking!

The office worker immediately falls silent. Noise outside the office.

Alyosha! Start up the ball! godovalov: Let me just drink up this watery fruit juice.

(Drinks compote from a clay jug.) opornykh (to stervetsen): I feel like a smoke. How about treating us to one of those . . . er . . . what’s the word . . . goods that get dumped?39 stervetsen hands him the packet of Troikas. opornykh takes three cigarettes and gives two to his neighbors. The guests hurry to finish up the food, except for serena, who is talking with alyosha. shchoev (pensively): A ball . . . I do love the joyful civil strife of humanity!

One of the employee guests walks over to a window and opens it. The noise of the district town rushes in, then gradually fades away. Three half-childish faces appear at the window and look in.

The employee guest indifferently blows smoke into these faces, and the smoke floats out into the gloom of the district night.

Yevsei (to stervetsen): Mister Bourgeois Scientist, have you perhaps formed an opinion of our models for nourishment— or are you still chewing it over? stervetsen: I would say that an opinion is taking shape within me. But does that sound like impetuous drifting, or a sign of an incomplete evaluation? I am bored and lost without understanding.

Yevsei: Oh, never mind—you’re not a Marxist, after all. We can teach you. May I look at your self-writing system? It’s an import, isn’t it? stervetsen (handing Yevsei his fountain pen): I recommend it to you. It’s excellent, it’s automatic.

Yevsei: It writes all by itself? stervetsen: No, it has no activism of its own. You have to think like a . . . what’s the word . . . like an uncollectivized egotist . . .

Yevsei: I see. And there was I, imagining it could think something itself. But it’s just one of your opportunists. Leave it as a model. Alyosha will surpass it. little girl outside the window: Uncle, give us a bite to eat! serena (to alyosha): Why do you look so bored on your face? alyosha: Because I’m always yearning for socialism . . . serena: And will it be wonderful? alyosha: For a question like that I could kill you. Can’t you see?

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serena: No, I see only you. little girl: Uncle, give us a little bite! another face (from the population gathered outside the window): Anything at all!

Outside the window, behind everyone else, appears the face of miud. shchoev: Alyosha, now let’s have the unofficial part! alyosha pulls some lever, and the table with the remnants of the victuals slowly crawls away into an opening in the side of the office wall. The guests are all standing. voice from outside the window: Even if it tastes bad . . . even the dregs . . . voice of an alien, of peasant garbage (from an adult outside the window): Even just a bit of swill. I too was a member once.40 The fireman closes the window. But another, neighboring window is opened from outside, and the same faces appear in it, in the very same order, as if they hadn’t moved an inch. The fireman closes this window too. The first window opens again, and again the same faces appear, in their unalterable order. shchoev: Yevsei! Call the population to order! . . . Alyosha, play something tender . . . alyosha switches on the belt drive of the hurdy-gurdy and, slapping regularly against the pulley, the belt turns the hurdygurdy; it plays a tender melody, a waltz. The guests begin to move to its rhythm.

Yevsei (into the window): Why are you staring like that? girl’s voice (from the window): We’d like something a little bit tasty.

alien, garbage voice: Give me, please, something to put down my gullet.

Yevsei: Here, drink for the love of God! (Gives one of them a cup of vinegar left on the dais.) Please understand that we are holding a scientific evening here—people are suffering torment on your account, O my brother.

Someone outside the window drinks the vinegar and passes the cup back. alien, garbage voice: I love anything liquid . . .

The guests are dancing: alyosha with serena, opornykh (a tall man) with his tiny wife, stervetsen with yevdokia the promoted proletarian, etc. Only shchoev is sitting down, thinking in his elevated position. shchoev: I respect this pleasure of the masses.

Yevsei (moving nearer to shchoev): Somehow, Ignat Nikanorovich, I’ve this minute come to love all our citizens. shchoev: All animals, Yevsei, love one another. But what we need isn’t love, it’s the Party line . . . (more thoughtfully) the Party line . . . without it, we’d all have lain down flat on our backs long ago . . .

The waltz continues. opornykh, pressing his wife to himself, pukes over her head into an urn in the corner but does not stop his polite conjugal dance. His wife does not notice this fact. miud: Alyosha! Let us inside! alyosha doesn’t hear as he dances with Serena, who has already turned completely white and is convulsing rather than dancing. stervetsen, now pale, suddenly falls toward the piano. Yevsei grabs the urn and respectfully holds it near stervetsen’s mouth. Outside the window stands miud.

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Beside her appears the face of kuzma, his chin resting on the windowsill. There are no other people; the district night is clearly visible. stervetsen: I thank you. The food did not exit but assimilated itself deep within.

Yevsei: If you—even you—didn’t vomit, then you can count on it that our population isn’t going to puke.

The first female office worker begins to twist her body from side to side as she dances. Her jaw and throat are seized by convulsions. She feels a terrible sense of nausea. She moves almost as if she is suffering a fit, her whole body shaking from gastric pain. Exactly the same is happening to her coworker and dance partner. first female office worker: Oh, all in all I am most absolutely content, but I can’t any longer . . . I haven’t the strength . . . My whole soul is leaving me. stervetsen: Sell it to me, mademoiselle.

All the remaining dancers are similarly convulsed by spasms of nausea, but the dance continues all the same.

Bodies now out of control embrace one another in torment, but the pressure of gastric stuff is right there at their throats, and the dancers recoil from one another. The music fades away. kuzma (sings from outside the window): High above in the clear blue sky . . . miud (also outside the window, continuing the song in a pitiful voice): Waves a scarlet banner. serena (her failing body barely moving in the dance, sadly to alyosha): Oh, I feel so sad in my stomach! alyosha: What is it? Is your soul taking leave of your body?

serena (bends over in convulsions and does something into a handkerchief): My soul’s already left! (The music has stopped altogether. The guests are seated along the sides of the rooms, convulsing in their chairs from gastric emotions. Immediately after the fact of the handkerchief, serena changes, turns joyful, and dances on alone. To her father) Papa, what I’d like now is a little fox-trot. (stervetsen sits down at the piano and begins to play a slow, pessimistic fox-trot. serena moves about and sings): Oh, sailor who sails the oceans no more, Oh, my far-far-traveled young lad, Sail back for a last farewell— Without you, Even fox-trots are sad.

(Sadly, to alyosha) Where do you keep your Bolshevik soul? Without it, Europe weeps in boredom . . . alyosha: The bourgeoisie must weep without respite. It’s good for them to do a little crying! serena: Oh, Alyosha, Bolshevism is so sweet! Life here is so joyful and hard! Embrace me with your Bolshevik fearlessness! alyosha (pushing serena away): I’m not interested. You’re a member of the bourgeoisie. opornykh: Er . . . now, what’s the name . . . Ignat Nikanorovich, may I throw up, please—the second helping is still with me. godovalov (pleading): Ignat Nikanorovich, I just need to heave up that one extra mouthful—I took too large a serving. first female office worker: Comrade Shchoev, please, let me go off duty now! I’ve already spent a whole evening being joyful.

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shchoev: Silence! School yourselves in self-control—you are opening a new epoch of radiant food. The whole world is developing, thanks to patience and torment. (Pensively) Patience! That’s the reason why time keeps moving somewhere.

Yevsei (to the guests): That’s enough of your bellyaching! kuzma is crying outside the window. Some kind of liquid is trickling down his iron face. miud (through the window): Alyosha, take us in, we’re bored and weary. Fascist Nature is blowing at me out here, and Kuzma is crying. alyosha (suddenly remembering them): Miud!

He drags first miud, then kuzma in through the window. kuzma rumbles. The guests all turn their faces to the wall; they are tormented by nausea. kuzma eats the remnants of the office’s food supply. The clock strikes in the town belfry. serena: Papa, where do they keep their superstructure? stervetsen (to shchoev): Mister Patron! We are most desirous, and you would gladden all Pan-Europe if you could let us have the fiery spirit from within your state superstructure.41 kuzma goes into the toilet. serena: Or even just sell us a Party line . . . Papa, that’ll be cheaper! shchoev (pensively): You want to procure for yourselves our spirit of enthusiasm?

Yevsei (to shchoev): Let them have it, Ignat Nikanorovich, even though there is no norm for such sales. What we need now is containers and packaging, not spirit.

shchoev: Well then! We have any number of Party lines on enthusiasm, almost a surplus, as it turns out. (From the toilet comes the distinct, cast-iron sound of kuzma belching. After kuzma, the guests all do the same, simultaneously. shchoev turns his attention to the guests.) Be off now and go to bed.

Tomorrow’s a working day. (The guests disappear. shchoev, Yevsei, stervetsen, serena, miud, alyosha, and the fireman and the policeman remain. shchoev then turns his attention back to stervetsen.) Well then, we can let you have some ideological lines, but only in exchange for foreign currency!

An explosion of collective nausea offstage.

Yevsei: They stuffed themselves till they burst, the monsters.

They’re yelping now . . . but they’ll get used to it! policeman and fireman (smiling): They have no self-control.

Scene 2 The stage as before. miud is sleeping on a bench, hugging kuzma.

Yevsei dozes in a chair. serena sleeps on a tall writing desk. shchoev, alyosha, and stervetsen are still awake at the table. Through the open window, stars are visible over the district. shchoev: You offer too little, Mister Bourgeois Scientist. You seem to be forgetting that this product is perishable. Or else you forget the difference between market prices and what the government pays for a product—but that difference is quite something!42 Do you know where we keep our Party lines?

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stervetsen: I am not in possession of this fact, Comrade Shchoev. shchoev: Well, if you lack understanding, you shouldn’t be bargaining. Do you imagine we keep our superstructure heaped up in a barn somewhere like bales of hay? Do you think we just hire a watchman, at the lowest wage category, pay him twice a month, buy him some felt boots for the winter—and that’s that?! You’re a fine one, you foreign interventionist devil! kuzma (in his sleep): The Roman Catholic Pope . . .

R-r-reptiles . . . shchoev: You’re right, Kuzma—one hundred percent and then some! And you, sir, are an agent of the bourgeoisie . . . stervetsen: I’m not an agent. I’m a cultural personality of Europe. shchoev: It’s all the same. Once you enter our periphery, you no longer possess a personality. I’m the personality here . . .

Just think a little further—calculate how much each idea costs us in storage alone! Figure it out: we store each idea in millions of seasoned personalities, each of which not only has to be fed—but also to be insured, protected from decay, and thoroughly worked over, so that the air inside them doesn’t turn bad and cause the directive to molder and rot. A line is a delicate product, Mister Scientist—we’re not just talking about some mushroom!

Yevsei (in his sleep): Didn’t we have our share of problems with those mushrooms, Ignat Nikanorovich? shchoev: Then you must add up the construction costs for each line!

stervetsen: But is your soul really manufactured like some industrial product? shchoev: Our soul is the superstructure, you idiot! The superstructure rising over the interrelationships of stuff! Of course we manufacture it! In our district consumers’ union a single ideological resolution took us three whole years. The attendance of forty thousand members was required in order to clarify a line of central importance. Fourteen campaigns were carried out among the masses! Thirty-seven of our senior instructors were thrown into the thick of our membership for a period of eighteen months! Two hundred and fourteen meetings were held with a combined attendance of seven thousand of our constituent souls! On top of this, you must figure in the general assemblies, where the total must have been a matter of millions! . . . That’s what it takes to construct a single line! And you want to purchase the entire superstructure! The whole of Europe won’t even be enough to transport it. And where’s your packaging? You don’t have a suitable international personality . . . kuzma: The Roman Catholic Pope . . . shchoev: The Pope, Kuzma, will not do. He is a pitiful scheming opportunist. (Pensively) A vile simplifier of the Party line of Jesus Christ and nothing more. alyosha: Comrade Shchoev, let me transport it to them.

Within me lies a mass of revolutionary spirit! I sense everything in advance of the future. I ache all over from the boredom and misery of foreign capitalism! stervetsen: I don’t understand . . . I nourish myself with food, but I live with my soul. In the West our hearts have grown The Hurdy-Gurdy

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quiet, but your hearts . . . are shock workers of joy hammering in your chests. Our poor intelligentsia wish for your soul.

We’re just asking if we can have it a little cheaper—we have a crisis and our minds are full of sorrow. shchoev: You have my sympathy. But what can we do with you when you’re such beggars? Our ruble, my brother, is a controlled currency. kuzma: We need to come to an understanding with capitalism. alyosha: Better to lie there in silence, Kuzma, now that I’ve fixed you up. miud (in her sleep): Don’t wake me up, Kuzya, I’m seeing a dream. shchoev: I know, Kuzma, what has to be done. I don’t want to, but I must. He, the interventionist devil, is never going to understand that the resolutions we construct are giants of consciousness. He wants to buy them for nothing. Excavating the Kuzbass coalfields will prove cheaper and quicker than the completion of our district regulations! Hey, Yevsei!

Yevsei (in his sleep): Hmm? shchoev: What did it cost us to construct our district regulations?

Yevsei: Just a minute, Ignat Nikanorovich! Er, according to executive estimate number 48/11, forty thousand rubles and a few kopecks, excluding the expenditure of human resources during public meetings. shchoev (to stervetsen): See! And you wanted to purchase an entire line! You’d be better off with a small directive— I can let you have one at a discount. stervetsen: Really? And does it come together with your enthusiasm?

shchoev: We don’t deal in defective goods! Your merchant bourgeoisie has had no cause to complain of us. stervetsen: And what funds do you require of us? shchoev: Yevsei!

Yevsei (dozing): Huh? shchoev: How much would you and I charge for a small directive, including all our markups?

Yevsei: Thirty-seven rubles apiece, Ignat Nikanorovich!

That’s the cost of a suit cut to fit the average member of the intelligentsia. stervetsen: I have suits with me!

Yevsei: Then hand them over! alyosha (to Yevsei): Don’t take anything from him. Let me give you my own shirt and trousers!

Yevsei: You can hang on to those old britches—you certainly didn’t pay foreign currency for material like that! alyosha: You devils! I’ll kill you with my bare hands! This comrade wants to immerse himself in our ideals, and you— Yevsei: We are undressing him so he can dive in and cleanse himself completely. shchoev: Alyosha, calm your psychology! This isn’t a private establishment. stervetsen: Seren! serena: Oui? stervetsen: Where’s our wardrobe? serena: Straightaway, Papa!

She gets up and goes into the corner, where there are two suitcases. Yevsei moves in on the suitcases too.

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alyosha (to shchoev): What you’re selling him isn’t an ideal—it’s mere bureaucracy! I’ll inform the Party! shchoev: You’re a hundred percent right. Let bureaucracy attack the bourgeoisie too—let them too start to itch all over.

(Pensively) Bureaucracy . . . We’ll set it against capitalism— and good-bye, Fascists! Look how scared they were by our timber, the dratted demagogues! They should be grateful we’re selling them timber! We could have been making paper from that wood, processing a soul from that paper, and then setting that soul loose on them . . . That really would have given them something to cry about . . .

In the meantime Yevsei has cast off his trousers and padded jacket and re-dressed himself in a foreign suit.

Yevsei (takes a folder of papers and offers one sheet to stervetsen. Holding the folder open): Sign in receipt! stervetsen (signs, takes the paper, then reads): “Circularly. On the principles of autoarousal of enthusiasm.” We like that. Let us have still more of your mood!

Yevsei: All right. Ignat Nikanorovich, here’s a jacket for your old woman. shchoev: Yes, give it to me, Yevsei! An old bat is a sentient being too.43 Yevsei removes a brightly colored jacket from the suitcase and tosses it onto shchoev’s desk. stervetsen signs another receipt and receives a second document. stervetsen (reading): “Partial Additional Notes to the Regulations for Cultural Work”—very good! shchoev: There you are! Study, feel, and you will become a decent member of the class.

stervetsen: Thank you! kuzma (stands up, takes from somewhere inside himself the paper given to him by the local postman, and hands it to stervetsen): Here! stervetsen (taking the document): I thank you kindly. kuzma: Gimme, r-r-reptile! stervetsen: Please, help yourself. stervetsen brings kuzma a small, open suitcase. kuzma takes a brightly colored vest and some trousers and calms down. alyosha (to shchoev): Why is it, Comrade Shchoev, that when I look at you, and at almost everyone, my heart starts to ache? shchoev: It’s still unseasoned, that’s why it aches! kuzma: No peace . . . Eclectical. shchoev: Precisely, Kuzma! There’s no peace . . . I don’t sleep nights—and what do I hear from above? “Your tempos aren’t enough!” I want some tenderness from the superstructure, but they just tell me to find my own joy . . . I’m bored, Kuzma! kuzma: They’re tearing toward the future . . . R-r-reptiles . . . miud stirs and opens her eyes. shchoev: Yes, Kuzma, they’re tearing along! . . . O Lord, Lord, if only you truly existed!

Yevsei (rummaging about in the suitcases): There are still good things here, Ignat Nikanorovich! Maybe there’s some small Party line we can sell them in exchange for more foreign goods? shchoev: All right, Yevsei . . . We will, after all, remain standing even without the Party line. And if we collapse, we’ll just keep on living lying down . . . Ah, wouldn’t it be good to live lying down for a while!

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alyosha: Go on then—sell them the whole superstructure at once! We won’t miss it—we’ll see a soul grow up out of its remnants! shchoev: You’re right, Alyosha. But where can we get hold of the superstructure all in one, so we can invoice it as a single item? alyosha: The entire superstructure, Comrade Shchoev, is present within you. You, after all, are the most organized man in the district! As for the rest of us, we have no superstructure.

We’re the lower mass, you’ve said it yourself. shchoev: That could well be! I do, all the time, feel something truly great—only I keep saying the wrong thing. stervetsen: Your feeling is just what we need! miud: Sell them Shchoev, Alyosha. He is the bastard of socialism. alyosha (quietly): I’ve been sensing everything for a while, Miud. Lie in sleep a while longer. shchoev: So it’s true, is it, Yevsei? I’m to sell my soul for the sake of the Soviet Socialist Republic?44 Yes, I shall doom myself for the sake of socialism—so let socialism be content, let the young ones remember me. Ah, Yevsei, I long to perish— the entire international proletariat will weep for me. Sad music will resound throughout Europe and in other parts.

In exchange for hard currency, carrion bourgeois will consume the soul of a proletarian!

Yevsei: They will gobble you up, Ignat Nikanorovich, and steal our enthusiasm. And without you, the whole Soviet Socialist Republic will be orphaned—and what will we do then?

Who will stand at our head? (Contorts his face for weeping, but

tears are unable to flow. In anguish he puts on a pince-nez from the pocket of the suit, formerly stervetsen’s, that he is now wearing.) shchoev: You may well be right, Yevsei! Think this over and report later. alyosha: There isn’t anything to think over. Drive a harder bargain with the bourgeoisie for your torso, in which your ideological soul is quivering! Or have you stopped loving the republic, you bastard? stervetsen (to shchoev): Please, I beg you . . . If you could . . . the superstructure . . . the psyche of joy . . . I beg you to ensoul Europe with the whole heart of your culture. Let’s set off for our world! shchoev: To stand at your head, yes? stervetsen: You communicate truly. We need your entire enterprise of culture.

Indistinctly and fearfully, serena mutters in French in her sleep.45 shchoev: Something has frightened the young lady.

Yevsei: There’s no Party line—that’s why she’s afraid. Class consciousness is disintegrating. alyosha: Go on, Comrade Shchoev! Ask for a million! shchoev: I’m worth somewhat more than that sum. What do you think, Yevsei?

Yevsei: I’ve puzzled over this and thought everything through.

Ignat Nikanorovich, as our leading superstructure-in-chief, must remain in the Soviet Socialist Republic because the Soviet Socialist Republic is dearer to us than the remaining entirety of vile dry land.

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shchoev: You’re right, Yevsei! alyosha: Get along, both of you, to the other world. There’s no one we hold less dear . . .

Yevsei: Wait a minute, Alyosha, before you overstep into extremism . . . I reckon we can quickly locate a suitably progressive personality among the members of our cooperative.

Let one of them journey into Fascism and give it an appropriate mood. To us it’s empty piffle—all they want is the spirit, and spirit is nothing. We’ve nowhere to put it—what we need is materialism! shchoev: Could we let them have Opornykh?

Yevsei: Our Petya? He’s a fool, we hold him dear . . . shchoev: How about Godovalov, then?

Yevsei: Unseasoned. Always full of joy about one thing or another. shchoev: Some female or other?

Yevsei: They’ll demand a discount, Ignat Nikanorovich. It’s not worth it. serena (in her sleep): Oh Papa, Papa, I love this Soviet Alyosha so much, and I can’t wake up from our sadness. stervetsen: Sleep, little girl of ours. serena: But Papa, this happens as rarely as life itself. Only once.

Yevsei: A fine line this fool of a girl has decided to follow! shchoev: Well, who can we send with this burden of spirit? kuzma: . . . A quiet, rational constituent element. shchoev (of kuzma): He thinks almost like me. Let’s send a quiet, rational element.

Yevsei: Lie down for the time being and rest, Ignat Nikanorovich. Tomorrow we’ll call the members together and take bids

for the best ideologicality. There’s sure to be some element or other we can send. shchoev: You’re very smart, Yevsei! Good-bye, Mister Bourgeois Scientist. Farewell, Kuzma! kuzma: Sleep, activists! shchoev: Kuzma, are you alive? kuzma: Yes, almost the same as you . . . miud: Alyosha, all I see in my dreams are bourgeoisie and subkulaks. But you and I—we’re not there! alyosha: Fight them, Miud, even in your dreams! Where are they?

Yevsei: Citizens, I beg you to stay calm. Socialist construction is going on here. Give me a chance to conclude a contract with the professor for our Party lines . . . miud (shoving kuzma onto the floor): Get away from me, you opportunist. You’re on their side. kuzma crashes onto the floor. A clock strikes in the district town.

ACT 3 Scene 1 The same government office, now empty, without mechanical constructions. A conference of the cooperative members. Everyone who was at the culinary ball is present, as well as about ten other people of various personalities. A dais. On the dais sit shchoev and Yevsei. They—along with opornykh, godovalov, and klokotov—are wearing suits of foreign make. shchoev is The Hurdy-Gurdy

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also wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Yevsei is wearing the pincenez. kuzma—in a foreign vest and trousers—looks completely human. stervetsen and serena are now dressed very badly. stervetsen is wearing a short, typhoid-yellow peasant jacket, cotton quilted trousers like those worn by the local volunteer militia, and a peaked cap. serena is wearing a cook’s chintz housecoat and, over her head, a small locally made shawl. The conference has already been in session for a long time. General hubbub. shchoev (smoking a cigar, pensively, in a sudden silence): There just isn’t anyone. They’re all well seasoned, they all have something radiant storming inside them—but it isn’t enough.

Petya, how’s your soul doing? opornykh: Well, Ignat Nikanorovich, everything . . . er, what’s the word . . . is quite all right with it. I even . . . er . . . feel fine. shchoev: And what do you think, Godovalov? godovalov: I don’t think, Ignat Nikanorovich. I’m full of joy.

Yevsei: What about the girl? Should we send Miud? shchoev: Good idea, Yevsei. Girl! How are you inclined? miud: I am definitely opposed! shchoev: Opposed—to what? miud: Opposed to you. Because you are a shithead, a eulogizer of the status quo, and a rightist-leftist element.46 You’ve tormented the whole local mass, you have no packaging, you’re a predatory reptile to the poor class—that’s what you are!

Alyosha, I’m bored here, I’m all in tears. Let’s get away from here and move on to socialism. alyosha: Wait a bit, Miud. I may yet ignite enthusiasm within them. Or else extinguish them forever!

miud: Better to extinguish them forever. Because at night I hear in the distance the clatter of hammers, and wheels—and nails! And then my heart aches, Alyosha, because you and I are not there! I want to be with the shock workers—I want it to be true hardship that makes me bored and weary! kuzma: Vote unanimously . . . Adopt! shchoev: There’s nothing to vote on, Kuzma. We’ve yet to come to an opinion. godovalov: Ignat Nikanorovich, sell Yevsei Ivanovich to the bourgeoisie. He’ll fetch a good price!

Yevsei: Vasya! Keep your mouth shut—you have yet to be reelected to the committee! first female office worker: Ignat Nikanorovich! Entrust me with this mission . . . I have taken part in the cultural relay.47 A luxurious charm of spirit has long lain hidden in me, I just didn’t talk about it . . . I’m crazy about competition with Europe! shchoev (pensively): Oh women, women, why are you endowed below, but not above? Yevsei, think something up, for God’s sake! Can’t you see—I’m languishing.

Yevsei: But I’ve already thought something up, Ignat Nikanorovich! We’ll send Kuzma! shchoev: What do you mean, Yevsei? He is pure idea!

Yevsei: But that’s what we’re selling, Ignat Nikanorovich—pure idea! The superstructure! The empty piffle above the base!

And Kuzma is someone firm, well seasoned, almost rational! miud: Let them sell him, Alyosha. I don’t care in the least about Kuzya. All I care about is fulfilling the Five-Year Plan within four years.

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serena: Papa, let them give us Alyosha! He is the superstructure! miud (turning on serena in fury): You are an idiot of capitalism! Alyosha would unsettle the whole of your Europe— that’s what! serena: But I’m already unsettled . . . shchoev: Kuzma! We’re packing you off into the bourgeoisie like so much freight, and there you will exist as the ideology of their culture! Can you manage to be alive? kuzma: I can’t be alive . . . R-r-reptiles . . . shchoev: What’s the matter with you? kuzma: I don’t want to be alive. I will make mistakes . . . I want to remain iron. shchoev: A sad element.

Yevsei: He is afraid of losing his steadfastness, Ignat Nikanorovich. Afraid of falling into groundless enthusiasm and sliding from his convictions into deviation. He—is a rational element. kuzma: I’m afraid of backsliding from the Party line . . . The living rejoice in their enthusiasm and feel torment, whereas I feel doubt and rest in peace. There’s nobody there, r-r-reptiles.

Only Comrade Uglanov, Mikhail Pavlovich!48 shchoev: He is indeed a rational element. serena (pointing at kuzma): Who is this, Alyosha? alyosha: He has become a bourgeois toady. serena: A shock worker? alyosha: He shocks us. We thought him up expressly—for the conduct of educational work. miud: Kuzya is a shithead. An opportunist. opornykh: Er . . . what is she saying?

one of the members: Ignat Nikanorovich, allow me to go and disintegrate Europe! opornykh: This . . . er . . . you know . . . Maybe, Ignat Nikanorovich, it’s only here that we seem unfit for ideologicality— while over there we might come to our senses? stervetsen: In all solidarity, I beg your pardon . . . but if such a sale would cause you a deficit . . .

Yevsei: That’s right, scientist. Your price will put us in the red . . . Sweeten the pot a little. stervetsen: We are almost in agreement . . . shchoev: Your calculations are correct, Yevsei. Let him throw himself into the pot. Enlist him as scientific personnel until the end of the Five-Year Plan.

Yevsei: He’ll sneak away somewhere, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: Well then we’ll—we’ll . . . We’ll get him to sign something. godovalov: Find him a wife, and that’ll be it! Yevdokia’s still wandering about without any workload. Let him show Yevdokia a little love . . . shchoev: Yevdokia! yevdokia emerges out of the mass. shchoev (pointing to stervetsen): Could you love a foreign muzhik? yevdokia: I sure can! Why wouldn’t I?! shchoev (to stervetsen): Here’s a female person for you— stick it out with her for a couple of years, then I’ll give you a divorce. Now you can kiss. yevdokia throws her arms around stervetsen and is the first to kiss.

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Yevsei: But what about his daughter, Ignat Nikanorovich? His daughter will miss him. shchoev: Just a minute . . . Alyosha, embrace the young lady bourgeoise. Love her a little for the good of the common cause. serena tries to draw nearer to alyosha. alyosha (leaping up onto the dais): I shall go myself to the bourgeoisie! Here within me, without respite, rages an ideological soul . . . (To stervetsen) What will you give the Soviet Socialist Republic for our superstructure?

Yevsei: How much cash will you pay for the production of a revolution? serena: Alyosha, a zeppelin! alyosha (now happy): A zeppelin! On it the proletariat will ascend high above the entire indigent earth! For such a machine I am ready to perish in Europe! stervetsen: But I don’t understand . . . serena: Papa, Alyosha loves me . . . opornykh: Well, er . . . A zeppelin is just what we need for packaging.49 We’ve got no barrels. godovalov: My own opinion is that, in exchange for our Soviet soul, we should purchase horse-drawn transport. one of the members: What do we want with an idea? We became conscious of everything long ago. A worldwide question is empty piffle. miud: But what about me, Alyosha? Who will I be left with?

Opportunism will be the death of me. alyosha: Don’t worry, Miud. I’ll liquidate it straightaway.

Kuzma! kuzma (from the thick of the assembly): Yeah?

alyosha: Do you want to meet your end forever? kuzma: I want peace. Everyone likes the dead. alyosha leads kuzma out in front of the assembly. He takes from his pocket a monkey wrench, a screwdriver, and some other tools. He unscrews kuzma’s head and tosses it aside. opornykh: I’ll just take this head—I could make it into a soup bowl. (Takes kuzma’s head.) alyosha removes from kuzma’s chest a primus stove, a radio, and other everyday objects. Then he separates the entire torso into a number of pieces—kuzma’s constituent elements crash to the ground and five-kopeck pieces scatter everywhere.

From the very depth of the perished iron body comes a cloud of yellow smoke. A heap of scrap metal is left on the floor. Everyone watches the cloud of yellow smoke as it slowly dissipates. miud (looking at the smoke): Alyosha, what is all this? alyosha: Exhaust fumes. Opportunism. miud (melancholically): Let it go to waste then. It’s no good for breathing. stervetsen: I regret the demise of citizen Kuzma. We in Europe have need of an iron spirit. klokotov comes out with a sack and packs away the remains of kuzma. alyosha: No need to miss him, learned person. I could make iron out of you too. stervetsen: I am far from objecting. shchoev: Opornykh! Petya! opornykh: That’s me, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: Take Kuzma to the district salvage heap, to be credited to the account of our Plan.

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opornykh: Straightaway, Ignat Nikanorovich! (Now on official business, he rushes off.) shchoev (to alyosha): And as for you, dear comrade— you’ve been inventing opportunists, have you? Trying to spoil and corrupt our mass? alyosha: Yes, well I . . . Comrade Shchoev . . . I inadvertently . . . I wanted to create a hero, but he broke . . . shchoev: He broke?! What difference does that make? Submit a statement in acknowledgment of your error. But declare your own statement to be clearly inadequate and confess yourself a class enemy.

Yevsei: Yes, yes . . . I like that! A broken hero! As if a hero can break! alyosha bows his head sorrowfully. miud: Don’t cry, Alyosha. Just close your eyes tight and I will lead you to socialism as if you were blind. And you and I will be on our own together again, singing in the collective farms about the Five-Year Plan, about shock workers, about all that lies in our hearts. alyosha: No, I created an opportunist. My soul now aches with sorrow.

Yevsei: Submit a statement. Write that you now feel mute anguish. shchoev: Acknowledge your fault. It will ease the burden. a member: Death to the traitor who has betrayed the interests of our social stratum. first female office worker: This is terrible! This unofficial musician has turned out to be a compromiser and an appeaser, a simplifier who has cheapened our ideology!

Do you understand?

Conversation among the assembly: —What a nightmare! I told you there would be a foreign intervention . . .

—His documents! Verify his documents! Grab him by the document!

—Surround them with an invincible unity of ranks!

—This is a cardinal error of principle—he must renounce his disgraceful ways!

—Give him a good slap, whoever’s closest!

—He’s a saboteur, he wants to wreck our class apparatus!

—Fascist! Let me have a go at him! Give me the face of the class enemy!

—Here within us rages a lofty hatred. And—above all—it rages within a common breast!

—We’ll have some fun with you now, you mother’s son!

—Life in our office has become so interesting now. We well and truly tremble with feelings!

—All artillery circle members, this way!

—Seren, what’s going on in here? I’m once again in a state of perplexity.

—Oh, Papa, this is an impetuous welling up of intrigue and machination.

—We-ell now, what’s the word . . . Alyosha, you’re a shithead!

—And all the time, you know, absolutely all the time, even when I was having the abortion—all the time I had a feeling that something at work wasn’t right . . . I even said this to the doctor during the operation—I was surprised at myself!

—Oh I love these moments of danger!

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—You’re a nice person. Only toward women are you capable of acting vilely.

—And certainly not toward the state!

—An enterprise of shame should be organized for the traitors!

—Ah, let him have it, let him have it, let him have it hard! We’ll have fun with you now, you sons of bitches!

—Now, comrades, it is necessary to close our ranks!

—Keep a watchful eye on one another!

—Let none of you, ever, trust yourselves!

—Consider yourself a saboteur, for the sake of the work!

—Chastise yourselves on your days off!

—More torment, more gnawings of conscience, more anguish with regard to the class, comrades!

—Up to the highest level!

—Hurrah! shchoev: Silence, elemental masses!

Silence sets in. alyosha stands surrounded by universal hostility; he is in anguish, entirely lost. He has no idea how to live further. shchoev (with sangfroid): It will be enough if this man repents in writing of his delusion of heart.

Yevsei: What matters is that we receive from him a proper document, everything according to protocol. That’s all there is to it. In accord with the document, he will then be corrected automatically! shchoev: You’re right, Yevsei! (Pensively) A document . . . Such depth of thought in a single word! An eternal memorial to the thoughts of humanity!

alyosha: I was an uncollectivized proprietor of my own talent . . .

Yevsei: You are a gift of God—but there is no God . . . alyosha: Why didn’t I become iron? Then I would have been true to you forever.

Yevsei: You lack firmness and were tormented by tenderness. alyosha: You are right on every count! And I myself am nothing, I no longer exist in this organized world.

Yevsei: You lacked discipline and your hard line has shattered. alyosha: I thought whatever came into my head. I’m uncultured, and my feelings roamed in all directions, and I often wept just from sad music. shchoev: You invented things without leadership, and your objects functioned the wrong way around. Where were you earlier? I’d have taken charge of you! alyosha: I acknowledge myself to be a double-dealer, a mistaker, and compromiser, as well as being a mechanistic materialist . . . But don’t believe me . . . Maybe I am the mask of the class enemy! Your thoughts are precise and rare, you are members of great intelligence. But I thought boring things about you, that you were plodding along on a wave of impetuous spontaneity, that you were a tribe of bureaucrats, shitheads, agents of kulakdom, of Fascism itself. Now I see that I was an opportunist and I am sorrowful in my mind. miud: Alyosha! I’m all alone now! (Turns away from everyone and covers her face with her hands.) shchoev: It’s all right, Alyosha. We’ll bring you back to reason. serena: Papa, what is happening here? Alyosha, don’t be afraid!

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stervetsen (to shchoev and Yevsei): This psychology (he points to alyosha) is unacceptable. This is defective goods, not a proper superstructure. Only ardent, selfless heroes are of use to us. I reject this reject!

Yevsei: You’ve brought us into deficit, Alyosha! alyosha: I’m a pitiful and deluded stray—while you are leaders . . . shchoev: We are not blind to that fact. We lead and we come to conclusions. miud: What’s come over you, Alyosha? alyosha: I am submitting to the facts, Miud. miud: Why did you allow this vile social stratum to frighten you? Without you I will be an orphan. I cannot lift the hurdy-gurdy by myself, nor can I walk alone in such heat all the way to socialism! . . . Alyosha, Comrade Alyosha! alyosha weeps. Everyone is silent. shchoev: His tenderness is creeping out. You can see it all over him now. He couldn’t save it up for the future, the bastard! miud pulls out the revolver from beneath her shirt. She points the barrel at shchoev and Yevsei. miud: End now!

Yevsei immediately weeps, silently and copiously; his whole face is covered with flowing moisture. shchoev looks at Yevsei and miud in disbelief. opornykh: Er . . . Yevsei Ivanovich, are those really tears?

You’ve never before been able to weep. miud: End now! You will torment socialism! Better that I should put an end to your torments now!

shchoev: Right away, Comrade Woman. Give me a piece of paper—I’ll write a statement renouncing my errors.

Yevsei (in a worthless, childish voice): We’ve run out of ink, Ignat Nikanorovich. Ask the young woman citizen to wait a minute. We’ll give her a receipt agreeing to be ended . . . shchoev: I want something sad, Alyosha. Play a march for us. miud: Hurry up. My hand is worn out. shchoev: Yevsei, support the citizen’s hand.

Yevsei hurls himself at miud. She fires at him. Yevsei falls and lies motionless. miud points the revolver at shchoev. The assembly instinctively takes a step toward miud. miud: Stay where you are. We don’t have time to be digging graves.

The assembly freezes. shchoev: On behalf of our members, I express our gratitude to the comrade woman for the death of this (pointing at Yevsei) secret reptile. miud (to shchoev): I haven’t given you the floor. shchoev: I beg your pardon. But please allow me then to feel a little sadness . . . Alyosha, put forth something by way of a musical tune. opornykh: Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich! Where is that . . . that . . . er, whatchamacallit? (Disappears, then reappears with the hurdy-gurdy, which he carries over to alyosha.) Please, for God’s sake!

Yevsei (lying down): Somehow, Ignat Nikanorovich, I just can’t manage to end. shchoev: Easy does it, Yevsei. Don’t hurry—you’ll find a way.

What is it? Don’t you feel like dying?

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Yevsei: Given that I’m a reptile, Ignat Nikanorovich, I don’t have much choice. But watch out you don’t feel bored without me. shchoev: We won’t, Yevsei. Alyosha, give us something with a tune. (alyosha quietly begins to turn his music. It plays a sad little tune, then quiets a little, now barely audible.) Somehow I’m feeling pitiful again. Citizen woman, let me at least write a statement to the effect that I sympathize with everything.

Yevsei sighs loudly on the floor. first female office worker: Yevsei Ivanovich is sighing.

Yevsei: Without me—I warn you—there will be a holdup in construction. opornykh: What’s up with him? Already killed, yet he sympathizes . . . miud: My hand’s worn out. I’m going to shoot this minute. alyosha (singing along with his music): Along the merry path of labor Shoeless we plod on our bare feet. miud: Not that song, Alyosha. Not that one, you reptile! Your road now is neither rough nor joyful. Sing this one . . . (The music falls silent. miud drops the revolver and sings alone, amid total silence.)

Who will open a door to me— Some alien beast or bird?

Where have you gone, my comrade?

No word—I hear no word.

Yevsei (from the floor): Perhaps I could be your comrade. I could become a shock worker, I could enlist among the enthusiasts and be endowed with zeal for the rest of the age! I will organize packaging!

The assembly joins in the song and sings along with the hurdy-gurdy: Where have you gone, my comrade?

No word—I hear no word. shchoev (weeping through his horn-rimmed glasses): I want to end.

In the distance—the noise of birds and of rushing water. The sputter of a motorcycle. In runs the agent from the state farm. state collective farm agent: Mobilize the masses for me, on the double. I am chasing birds and fish back into the economy! But what’s up with you? shchoev: Have no fear of difficulties, comrade! Chase them back on your own! agent: Huh? Yevsei: Maybe this is something I could do? Animals are afraid of me. miud: Run along then.

Yevsei leaps briskly to his feet and runs off. The agent disappears after him. opornykh: Those who have been killed make even more of an effort. Now there’s a . . . oh, what’s the word . . . Party line for you. stervetsen: Citizens of the district, I am overwhelmed by the presence of your spirit. I highly value your transient passer-by girl, Miud! shchoev: So why aren’t you killing me, girl? Feeble-powered creature! Are you afraid of my manly courage? (Pensively) Courage! I love my personality for that quality! . . . Fire away, murderess!

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miud: I no longer feel like it. I’m afraid of overstepping into extremism. serena: Papa, won’t you buy Alyosha now? stervetsen: No, Seren, he’s degenerated . . .

The assembly gradually settles down for the night—on the floor or on items of office inventory. miud takes the hurdy-gurdy from alyosha and, with difficulty, carries it on her back to the door. She stops by the door and looks around the office. Everyone looks at her vigilantly . . . alyosha: Good-bye, Miud! miud: Good-bye, you compromising reptile! (The supine assembly raises its hands to salute the girl as she leaves. miud brandishes a fist at the assembly and smiles) Pah! Dregs of the grass roots! (Opens the door.) stervetsen (rises from the floor and rushes toward miud): Listen to me, small lady . . . Allow me to acquire you for Europe.

It’s you who are the superstructure! (miud laughs.) But I beg you. You are the mind and heart of all the districts of our earth. The West will fall in love with you. miud (seriously): No, I don’t need love. I have love of my own. stervetsen: May I inquire—who is it there in your breast? miud: Comrade Stalin. the assembly (almost in one voice): We salute you. stervetsen: But your state needs zeppelins, and we could give you a whole squadron of them . . . opornykh: Take them, girl! miud: Somehow I don’t feel like it. For now we’re going to live on foot. stervetsen (bowing): That is a great pity.

miud: Ask the proletariat of your own district. stervetsen: I thank you. miud leaves. Silence. shchoev (sighs): Oh Lord, how much longer? opornykh (who is lying down, amid the assembly): Er, er, what’s your name, Ignat Nikanorovich . . . who will give comfort to us now? shchoev: Oh, Petya, Petya, what I want now is sadness . . .

Everything became clear to me long ago, and what I’m drawn to now is something or other indefinite. klokotov: Comrade Shchoev, let us, please, get on with current business. Members, after all, can get exhausted too. We have to get up early tomorrow—to fulfill the Plan. first female office worker: Oh no, what are you saying? It’s far too interesting for us here. We love overcoming difficulties. stervetsen (his face turning crimson with anger): Deceivers, grasping self-servers, eulogizers of the status quo, impetuous drifters . . . You have only circulars, your lines are not clear and hard. You have no superstructure—you are opportunists! Take your references (takes papers from his pocket and hurls them into space). Take your paragraphs and punctilios—give me back my suits, my shirts, my glasses, and all my other belongings! serena: And my blouses, my brassieres, my stockings, and overalls! stervetsen and serena rush at shchoev and klokotov and rip their former clothing from them. klokotov (to the female office worker): Listen, didn’t you exchange a copy of the prospective plan for a foreign girdle?

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first female office worker: I did . . . But you seized it from me and took it away to your spouse. You said she had been born on that day forty years before. Remember? klokotov: I forgot. shchoev is already minus his jacket, vest, and glasses, all of which serena has managed to tear off him. Meanwhile, stervetsen has stripped klokotov almost to the skin. As things are taken off him, shchoev indifferently peruses one of the papers tossed away by stervetsen. shchoev: Stop, citizens. It seems we no longer exist. (General attention. Everyone lying on the floor stands up. shchoev reads) “As of this April your Sandy Ravine Cooperative System is scheduled for liquidation. The delivery of manufactured goods, as well as of grain and fodder, is hereby terminated. The reason: the above-mentioned inhabited locality is to be removed, in order to facilitate industrial exploitation of the subsoil, which contains deposits of carbon monoxide.”

(To the assembly) I don’t understand. How come we’ve kept on being, when we haven’t existed for a long time? klokotov: So, Ignat Nikanorovich, it seems we’ve been breathing carbon monoxide! What do you make of that?

Do we exist because of consciousness, or because of carbon monoxide? shchoev (pensively): Carbon monoxide! So there we are— the objective cause of the district population’s lack of consciousness. godovalov: And what about us, Ignat Nikanorovich? What are we going to do now? People say that objective causes do not exist—only subjects . . .

shchoev: No objects, you say? Go and organize a self-criticism session then, if you’re a subject. godovalov: Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich. (Bustles about.)

The sound of axes. Several logs from the back wall of the office (from the audience’s perspective) tumble to the ground. Two workers can be seen in the gap, working away. Another part of the wall collapses. The assembly lies down, except for stervetsen and serena, who remain standing, clutching their bundles of recovered clothing. one of the workers (positions the teeth of a crane beneath the upper part of the office and shouts): Take it up now! (To the assembly) We were told that this whole area had been cleared out long ago and that there was no one here. You were blocking the whole of our path . . .

The upper part of the office vanishes upward; the remnants of the walls tumble down. The world’s emptiness—an endless country landscape—becomes visible. Pause. Then, from far away, the sound of the hurdy-gurdy. No longer visible, already on her way, miud is playing. The music is solemn; it touches a human being’s bored and weary heart. miud (sings in the distance): They set off on foot For a faraway land, Leaving their motherland For a freedom unknown.

Strangers to everyone, No comrade but the wind— In their breast their heart Beats without reply.

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shchoev’s belly starts to rumble and he rubs it in the hope of extinguishing the sounds. The assembly lies there in silence, facedown on the floor. stervetsen and serena stand amid a liquidated, demolished office. serena: Papa, what is all this? stervetsen: The superstructure of the soul, Seren, over weeping Europe.

The End Written October–November 1930 Translated by Susan Larsen in 1989 and revised by Robert Chandler and Jesse Irwin in 2016

Additional Scene shchoev: Stop, Yevsei! Some kind of piffle has just shot through my head.

Yevsei (to the entire office): Nobody move!

Everyone freezes in inactivity. Pause. shchoev: My thought has now organized itself!

Yevsei (to the office): Forward, comrades, to new victories!

The office at once engages in clerical, accounting, and other activity.

I’m ready, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: Wait till I pronounce. Some quality of genius hinders me from expressing myself. I sense only precision, like light in emptiness.

Yevsei: Take care, Ignat Nikanorovich . . . shchoev: I’m taking my time, Yevsei. Oh, Yevsei, shouldn’t we simply liquidate appetite in principle and once and for all?

Yevsei: Ignat Nikanorovich! That would be monumental! Were I myself to think up such a thought or analogy, I could live off the prize money for a hundred years! How come I don’t have more quality of genius myself? shchoev: Oh, Yevsei, we couldn’t have just anyone thinking!

Yevsei: All right, Ignat Nikanorovich. Please now, for God’s sake, give me a directive line toward the liquidation of appetite. shchoev: Right now, Yevsei. Prepare for the fact!

Yevsei: And it won’t be too schematic, Ignat Nikanorovich?

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shchoev: What do you mean, Yevsei? You’re simplifying me!

Such things must be done with culture, in a principled manner and with perspective—not mechanically and not in an impetuous drift.

Yevsei: But what do you expect, Ignat Nikanorovich? In your presence I am not even real. shchoev: All right, Yevsei! But can you inform me what it is that terrifies the population still more than hunger?

Yevsei: Death, Ignat Nikanorovich! shchoev: You’re right, Yevsei. You must arrange death closer toward the population!

Yevsei (getting lost): Er? shchoev: What do you mean—er? I need you to arrange death closer toward the masses.

Yevsei: You want them killed? shchoev: Idiot! That would be counterrevolution. What we need are measures of principle. Let death draw near the population and take away their appetite. They’ll go on living, but they won’t want to eat anymore. Their mood will change.

Yevsei: Say more, Ignat Nikanorovich! I’m still unable to comprehend the depth of your line. shchoev: Very well, comprehend in detail! I can speak concretely. I can recount the origin of the entire world. You must issue a directive—coordinated with the highest authorities— to the effect that all hostile elements of the population are to be dispersed amid our Nature and landscape.

Yevsei (disappointed, failing to understand): But, Ignat Nikanorovich, that’s only the hostile elements. How will we feed the friendly elements?

shchoev: It’s true, Yevsei, you aren’t real! Every element is hostile! How did you imagine our population? It’s impossible for there to be friendly elements, they lead us astray. Friendly elements represent the greatest danger, Yevsei. This is a matter of fact you must grasp at once. The population is a class enemy, Yevsei!

Yevsei: Ignat Nikanorovich! Heavens, my heart feels anguish! shchoev: Your heart feels anguish in vain, Yevsei. It should be rejoicing. You must issue a directive throughout our entire eating mass—to the effect that we will soon be dispersing them into universal space, into infinity.

Yevsei: They’ll take fright, Ignat Nikanorovich! For the mass, that means death. In universal space there are neither pots and pans, nor homes, nor food, nor matchsticks from the cooperative50—only clay and wind . . . There’ll be nothing for them but climate, Ignat Nikanorovich, they’ll feel horror!

They’ll all keel over and die just like that! shchoev: But that’s just it, Yevsei. We need the masses to feel horror. They’ll lose their appetite and our stores will be restored.

Yevsei: Ignat Nikanorovich, you’re right! shchoev: Of course I am! Death will immediately curb the petty bourgeois appetite, and our supplies will be sorted. And death’s not so terrible to the masses, Yevsei—they won’t die, they’ll merely take fright.

Yevsei: What do you mean—they won’t die? They’ll freeze in space when we expel them from the district! shchoev: Oh Yevsei, Yevsei, if our masses were able to die, they’d have come to an end long ago.

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Yevsei: What? shchoev: It couldn’t be clearer! Things were better for them in the past, but statistics show that the population keeps growing and growing, as if out of some eternal and bottomless pit.

Evidently our masses are unable to die—they live well!51 Yevsei: All too true, Ignat Nikanorovich. How is it you’re a leader, our greatest genius—yet you’re stuck in a district cooperative? shchoev: Evidently there are people in the center beside whom I am empty piffle—unreal psychopiffle, like you beside me!

Yevsei: True, Ignat Nikanorovich, that is indeed true! shchoev: Well then, get on with it! Organize me the horror of death amid the masses! Liquidate this universal opportunistic appetite! We must act, Yevsei, like true Bolsheviks! More uncompromising intransigence! Forward, Yevsei, to new achievements—into the farthest height of the class struggle!

Yevsei: Forward, Ignat Nikanorovich! Long live our class lighthouse! shchoev: What lighthouse, Yevsei? You’re confused! We don’t have storms—and we don’t need lighthouses! It’s in capitalist countries that the storms rage now, Yevsei—things are terrible there! But we don’t need lighthouses—we can see right through everything anyway!

Translated by Robert Chandler

FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HUTS A Tragedy

CH A R ACTE R S

johann-friedrich bos, a world-renowned scholar, chairman of the League of Nations Commission for the Resolution of the Riddle of the World Economy, one hundred one years old interhom, Bos’s female traveling companion, twenty-one years old an official greeter, forty-five years old the stationmaster pyotr polikarpovich latrinov, writer mechislav yevdokimovich glutonov, writer gennady pavlovich fushenko, writer futilla, chairman of the Fourteen Little Red Huts kolkhoz,1 nineteen or twenty years old ksenya sekushcheva (referred to throughout as ksyusha), a kolkhoz worker, twenty-three years old filipp vershkov, an elderly kolkhoz worker anton endov, aged thirty (speaks and acts with faultless precision, with an inspired animation always outstripping his ability to express it)

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georgy garmalov, Futilla’s husband, a demobilized Red Army soldier prokhor carbinov, kolkhoz watchman, an old man an old man from the district center a pilot a railway guard babies of futilla and ksyusha passengers from an ordinary long-distance train

ACT 1 The concourse of a Moscow railway terminus. Flowers, small tables, banners inscribed with greetings in foreign languages. A few slogans in Russian. One large banner proclaims, “Toward a Healthy Soviet Old Man! Toward a Cultured and Still More Fruitful Old Age!” Whistles of distant locomotives under full steam. Sounds of a brass band tuning up somewhere on the platform.

The stationmaster inspects everything vigilantly and rearranges the flowers on the small tables to show them off to their best.

A guard stands by the gate.

Enter the official greeter. official greeter: Greetings, Comrade. When does the train arrive from the frontier? stationmaster: The Mighty Bird express is due to arrive in two minutes. According to the controller, it is four minutes late, but I believe the driver will make up the time. The locomotive is an IS 20.2

official greeter: Transport systems in our country are not yet operating with the required punctuality.

The long plaintive distant whistle, broken up by speed and the headwind, of a locomotive under full steam. stationmaster (in his official voice): Trans-Soviet Express Stolbtsy-Vladivostok, the Mighty Bird, is now drawing up alongside platform one. Traveling in first-class coach is Mister Johann-Friedrich Bos, honorary member of Stockholm Academy, chairman of League of Nations Commission for Resolution of Riddle of World Economy. (Looks at his wristwatch) Delay: half a minute! Driver: Comrade Vitalov!

The whistle of a locomotive, now inside the terminus. The sound of brakes. The train stops. Hubbub from the crowd. Greetings. A fanfare.

The stationmaster, drawing himself up to his full height, goes out onto the platform. The official greeter adopts an alert pose.

With interhom on his arm, johann bos enters the station concourse. interhom is carrying a small suitcase. They are followed by three writers: latrinov, glutonov, and fushenko. Then the stationmaster. The official greeter welcomes bos. He introduces himself to him and his companion and says a short sentence of welcome in French. bos: Greetings, greetings! You live well here! Well, how are things with your second Five-Year Plan? All correct, I hope?! official greeter: Pardon! You speak Russian? You know our difficult language of the proletariat? bos (with irritation): Yes, yes . . . Of course I know Russian!

What don’t I know? I no longer remember how much I know.

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Russian, Indian, Mexican, Yiddish, astronomy, psychotechnics, hydraulics . . . I’m a hundred and one years old, and you, a boy (with more and more irritation)—a mere boy!—dare to address me in French. official greeter: Excuse me. Has your companion also labored at the Russian language? bos: Boy! Don’t irritate my state of spirit on this irritated land!

Interhom, say some of your piffle to him in Russian. interhom: Down with antihaymaking tendencies! bos: What? What’s that? Do you know Russian better than I do, Miss A Grader? Repeat it at once. I’m dumbfounded—can’t you see? interhom: Down with antihaymaking tendencies! I’ve read Soviet newspapers, I’ve learned from them. “Antihaymaking tendency” is Russian for “sorrow.” It means “ennui,” it’s not socialism. bos: That’s radiant! interhom: Wrong. You should say, “That’s brilliant!” bos: Pardon! Brilliant! What’s the matter with me—forgetting nonsense like that? Boys and girls, children, make me a stick from a graveyard cross, so I can walk to the wretched beyond! interhom: You, Grandpa, are a counterfool. bos: What? What’s that? interhom: You’re a counterfool—which means “clever.” bos (with concentration): That remains to be seen, Interhom. stationmaster (to bos): Congratulations on your safe arrival.

I wish you a happy journey across this most great, and to you still most alien, of lands.

bos: Most alien? No: to me all countries are equally alien and unwelcoming. I thank you.

The stationmaster takes his leave and walks away. official greeter: Greetings to you, Mister Johann Bos, great philosopher of weakening capitalism, brilliant master of opportunistic ploys, and may I wish that you— interhom: Become an infant, a preschool child, a Young Pioneer, an Octobrist of the new world.3 official greeter (to interhom, dourly): Far from true.

(To bos) I welcome you—in the name of the laboring people making happiness and truth for both you and themselves—to this still unknown, gigantic country. We are happy to meet you here in our common home! bos: I doubt if I will make you happy. (Brief pause.) I haven’t yet made anyone happy or merry. (With a nod toward Interhom) Probably, only her. interhom: Yes, Johann, your love has made me awfully happy. bos: I know, I know . . . Forwards you’re a woman, afterwards you’re a human being. interhom: Forwards and backwards, I’m a woman all around. bos: You’re counterclever, Interhom . . . Ah, my little mademoiselle, I’m sick and tired of living in my organism, in this life, in the ennui of current facts—give me some milk! I’m bored, mademoiselle, of having conscious feelings. Milk! interhom (takes a small bottle of condensed milk from her suitcase and gives it to bos): There you are, Grandpa, don’t fret, don’t do any thinking. You’ve got such a weak stomach . . .

And for the love of God, Grandpa, don’t leave a drop on the bottom, I love you.

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bos (drinks up the milk and returns the bottle): And now for something chemical, something caustic! interhom (rummages in her little suitcase): Here you are. I don’t know what it is. Something chemical—it tastes horrible. bos: Give it to me—I must swallow. (Takes a pill from interhom, swallows, and immediately turns to the greeter.)

Where can I see socialism? Show it to me at once. Capitalism irritates me. official greeter: I am in a position to immediately demonstrate individual elements of our social order. Here you are!

To your right you will see the mother-and-child room. interhom: We thank you. Show us, for God’s sake, the room for the poorest old men, and show us what they do there. official greeter (embarrassed): I’m sorry. It’s being refurbished. bos: Don’t rush, Interhom. There are no old men here—everyone dies on time. (To the official greeter) Leader, Comrade, you can stop refurbishing the old room for the old men.

It will stay empty anyway. official greeter: I exaggerated, Mister Bos. We have no such room. bos: Don’t be embarrassed: I know that to a certain extent you are . . . (mumbles indistinctly) boasters, whereas we, on the other hand, are scoundrels all the way through.

Communist greetings! (Addressing the whole group) We should look at it this way, comrades. They have a motherand-child room—that’s piffle. They have only a few old men and there isn’t a room for them—that’s success.

Am I not right, gentlemen?

the three writers (tensely, simultaneously, almost in unison): Greetings! Bravo! À jour! Gut! As a matter of principle! Merci! official greeter: You are deeply mistaken, gentlemen! We have a slogan: “Toward a Healthy Soviet Old Man! Toward a Cultured and Still More Fruitful Old Age!” Look! (Points to the slogan on the wall.) interhom: Johann, do Bolshevik old men also love women as much as you do? bos: I doubt it. interhom: What if they catch up with and surpass you?4 bos: Then you’ll go and join them, and I’ll marry a young Komsomol girl who’s younger than you are. interhom: That’s awful, Johann! bos: It’s my technique. Aren’t you aware of it? interhom: I certainly am. My body is progressing from your passion. bos: It’s also wilting, Interhom. Your body, I mean. But my experience is gaining in rationality. official greeter (embarrassed): Mister Bos, our country awaits you. bos: Yes, yes, we shall now set out into the space of Russia, into the fresh air, into the green grove, to the kolkhoz stove of the new world, into the nonsense of Nature! official greeter: Mister Bos, the motor car has been started for you, it’s been ready for a long time. Let us know your itinerary! bos: Into the anonymity of history, into Asia, into the emptiness of the East. We want to gauge the candlepower of the dawn you claim to have lit.

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latrinov: May I learn from Mister Worldwide Thinker his point of view on some matter of worldwide historical importance? bos: And who are you—a worker? latrinov: I am the prosaic Russian writer Pyotr Polikarpovich Latrinov. I presume that you know my books: Poor Tree, A Year of Profit, A Most Specific Figure, Eternally Soviet, and other works of mine? bos: Don’t presume. I don’t know your books. latrinov: Other nations are aware of my international activity to strengthen the defenses of my motherland. bos: Excuse my ignorance. What form has this activity of yours taken? latrinov: At the moment of the threat of intervention from England I married a famous Englishwoman. At the time of the Japanese threat I became engaged to a Japanese lady from an ancient family.5 bos: Very sensible. The interventions, as we know, did not take place—your contribution has been invaluable. But whom did you marry during the Civil War? latrinov: The highly educated daughter of an esteemed Russian general. bos: Excellent. You, Comrade Latrinov, are far from stupid— as fools go. latrinov: In accordance with the finest traditions of my motherland, in accordance with the heartfelt friendliness of our most gracious and most grateful, most excellent and superior country, let us exchange a kiss—in order for this moment to become truly cultured and historical.

bos (pointing to interhom): You can kiss her on the cheek.

She’s in charge of my feelings. interhom offers her cheek, puffing it out, and latrinov politely brushes it with his lips. official greeter: Two more writers wish to be introduced to you, Mister Bos: Mechislav Glutonov and Gennady Fushenko. bos: Yes, but be quick about it. I need reality, not literature. mechislav glutonov slowly comes right up to bos and smiles silently and a little shyly. interhom: Johann, why does he have the face of a happy root plant? I’ve forgotten the Russian word. fushenko: In Russian we say “vegetable,” Mademoiselle. latrinov: Not just “vegetable”—he has the face of a pumpkin! interhom: A happy pumpkin!

Pause. glutonov remains silent. official greeter (to bos): He can’t speak. He has ten dependents to support. But he’s glad to see you. fushenko (quietly but insistently): Mister Bos, I am a member of the Board of the Writers Union. I write stories from Turkish life. bos ignores fushenko. official greeter: Could Mister Bos comment in more scientific terms on the purpose of his journey into the land where socialism is being constructed? bos: In more scientific terms? Don’t irritate me. I’ve come here to enjoy merriment, the purpose of my journey is piffle. latrinov (solemnly): You are mistaken, Mister Bos. In our country, which covers one-sixth of the world’s dry land, where— Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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fushenko: Mister Bos, I— bos: Don’t pretend to be serious, gentlemen. What you all want in your country is to have a laugh, but you keep trying to think! Better to laugh with fellow feeling! fushenko: Mister Bos! I am orga— bos: Good! Write stories. Play at fame.

The noise of a train entering the station. Hubbub of passengers.

It is clear from the sounds that this is an ordinary, poor man’s long-distance train, not an express.

Some shabby-looking passengers enter the concourse by mistake, but the railway guard pushes them back out. Two passengers, however, manage to pass the guard and enter the concourse with sacks over their shoulders. A third passenger, futilla, also walks past the guard, calmly and inadvertently.

Her belongings are bundled over her shoulder: a tin mug and a sack of rusks on her back and a pile of books, tied with string, in front. futilla is a swarthy, southern woman, now tired and dirty from traveling. She takes in both people and surroundings with surprised, somewhat sad eyes. bos (observing futilla): What a poor creation of Nature! futilla: We are not rich. Which is the way out to the Kazan station? I need to travel to the desert. bos (eyes her up without moving): What is your name, creature of God? Where are you hurrying to, Soviet child? futilla: I’m not a child. I’m the chairman of the pastoral kolkhoz the Little Red Huts. I’m on my way home to the Caspian Sea. bos: What a wonder of life—a child ruling a village kingdom.6 Where have you come from, my defenseless one?

futilla: I’m not defenseless—we have the kolkhoz, and I have a husband in the Red Army. I’ve been to Leningrad—I was given a library as a prize. fushenko: Comrade Chairman, how many of your households have been collectivized? Is there activity on the part of the kulaks? Are there any crises in organizational and economic consolidation? Is there not an urgent need to dispatch to your kolkhoz a storming-and-liquidation brigade of writers? I am myself a member of a culture brigade. futilla (thoughtfully): Writers? Are they clever people? We have fourteen little red huts. We had nothing to read, we’d read everything already, at night in the kolkhoz we read aloud.

The lamp burns, the glass is cracked from the flame, and I read, and around me everyone thinks, and it’s dark everywhere, you can hear the sound of the Caspian Sea. We’d read all the books, they weren’t interesting anymore, it was boring living with only our own minds. Then I was given a library as a prize for the excellence of my register of workdays.7 They said they’d be sending the books, but the books never came.

What does bureaucracy care about socialism? I went to collect the books myself—but now I need to find the way out to the Kazan station, to where you buy tickets without seat reservations. official greeter: Here before you, Mister Bos, stands a small being of socialism. bos: A huge being, my dear. The whole of God’s world is contained in this poor being. (To futilla) Give me your hand, my happy one!

Shyly, futilla gives bos her hand. bos kisses it.

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futilla: Now you should spit. My hand’s dirty. Hands aren’t for kissing, they’re for working and hugging. latrinov: She has completed the course in elementary hygiene. futilla: Yes, I’m an assistant nurse and I can deliver babies. bos: Have you tried giving birth yourself? futilla: Yes, I’ve given birth. interhom: Do you want some eau de cologne for your hands? futilla: Not really. Why? Where’s the Kazan station? fushenko: Allow me to get you a ticket without standing in line. futilla: Is that possible? It’s against the law—I can see people standing in line. I’ve punished people myself for stealing a kilo of millet.8 latrinov: It certainly is possible, my dear. Fushenko can get you a ticket all right. He even lives without standing in line— his turn passed by long ago, yet here the man is, still living his cultured life! Gennady, let’s kiss! fushenko: Yes, Pyotr Polikarpovich! (They kiss.) interhom (to futilla): Do you want some milk? futilla: I’ve drunk milk in the kolkhoz. Good-bye. I’ll join the queue for tickets—I’m afraid there’ll be none left. Why did those two kiss? It’s indecent of them. bos: Wait. I’ll travel with you—don’t say no to an elderly man! futilla: You are old. And where we live there are no trees. If you die, we’ll have nothing to make a coffin from. We’ll lay you down in the sand. bos: All agreed. Good-bye, gentlemen! Keep at it—write your works, greet visitors, meet international express trains, and stay in good health! bos and futilla make their way to the exit.

interhom (rushing after him): Johann! Where will I live?

Johann? This is an alien country, without you I’ll die, Johann! bos (stopping for a moment): Now what? Go on, go on, keep on irritating me! Release piffle from your body! interhom (pressing herself against him): Johann, with your love you have consumed my whole youth. bos: Yes, I have. I’m a man, Interhom! interhom: You can’t leave me just like that! Drink up your milk, eat something chemical—we’ll go off to a hotel and forget ourselves . . . Take me to the desert—without you, I’ll wither away in Europe. (Cries.) bos: Only angels live in deserts or die of love, Interhom. You’re a woman, you won’t be going to the desert. In an hour or two you’ll be smiling. futilla: Old man, the trains for all the kolkhozes will soon be leaving. We’ll be left behind. bos: In a moment. In a moment we’ll organize everything, my poor girls! interhom (in tears): Where are you going to drink milk and eat your powder and pills? Who are you going to love now?

I’ve studied you and figured you out, I’ve got used to feeling, and now I must forget! futilla: I’m going to feed him from my knapsack. I’ve got rusks and crusts. bos (to latrinov): Mister Writer! Interhom is Dutch Flemish, although she was born in Russia. I consider it of importance to improve politico-moral relations between your motherland and Holland. Take Interhom under your protection and love.

Do a favor to the Dutch queen!

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interhom: Oh Johann, I’m so sad! Kiss my hand! bos: Calm down, Interhom. You know life’s not a serious matter anyway. Good-bye, my poor body! (Kisses interhom on the forehead and leaves her, moving toward futilla.) latrinov (to interhom, offering her his arm): Madame, allow me to offer you the most cultured friendship and hospitality.

My house is open to the whole of Europe! futilla (to bos): Quick, Grandpa, let’s go back to our village, my child’s crying there. bos: Let’s go, dear creation of God. Give me a rusk from your knapsack to suck on. futilla: In a minute. You can guzzle once we’re on the train. official greeter: Mister Bos, your Buick is ready and waiting. The motor’s been kept warm all this time, the car is on duty for you. bos: Turn it off. I’m warming up on my own now—let the motor cool down.

Goes off with futilla. latrinov (with interhom on his arm): You will live excellently and seriously in my home, my splendid and very dear Madame Interhom.

Everyone disperses. latrinov takes both of interhom’s hands.

Ah, my very own Dutch girl! What a wonderful hydrotechnical motherland you have! You and I can write novels—and sketches! At home I have a dog called Makar,9 the beast will be delighted to see you! interhom (smiling): Yes, Mister Latrinov, I love novels. And I love Makars too—they’re splendid!

latrinov: Darling, I’m dying for some of that milk of Bos’s. interhom takes a bottle of milk out of her little suitcase and hands it to latrinov. interhom: There you are! latrinov (after drinking the milk): That scientific old man had cultured ways! But listen, my superlative one, how could you live with such a very ancient old man? interhom (smiling): Oh Mister Latrinov, life really isn’t such a serious matter!

ACT 2 One end of a low wattle fence; the bare branches, rocked by the wind, of an emaciated tree; the distant sound of the Caspian Sea. Beyond the wattle fence—an extension to a hut, something like a large porch. Inside stands a writing table.

All the above takes up the right-hand side of the stage. To the left you can see into the distance, into empty, blurred space. Front left is a column bearing a hammer and sickle and the inscription, “USSR. Agricultural Pastoral Collective of the XIV Little Red Huts.

Height above sea level: 19.27 meters. Average annual precipitation: 140 mm. Mouths to feed: 34. Chairman: F. I. Garmalova.”

Center stage stands a scarecrow, made of clay, straw, and bits of rag. The scarecrow resembles a stern man, one and a half times life size. The right hand is raised in a gesture of vague threat.10 Evening. bos and futilla arrive from their long journey. futilla is carrying the same things as in the Moscow terminus.

They stop. Not a single human voice can be heard in the kolkhoz.

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futilla (listening): Not a sound from anyone. They’ve put up some kind of scarecrow—as if there aren’t enough people!

(Brief pause.) Here we are, Grandpa. Look—this is our pastoral kolkhoz. We graze sheep here and do a little fishing. Let’s change into something clean. (They sit down on the ground. futilla begins to change her shoes.) bos: I don’t have anything clean. I’ll just sit and rest a little from speculation. futilla (changing her shoes): All right, sit and be bored for a while. Then you can go and sleep on the stove.11 In the distance, somewhere beyond the kolkhoz, a baby begins to cry. The quiet sound of a woman’s human voice. bos: Who can be crying here, in your socialized fields? futilla: It’s our children, playing in their nursery. bos: I heard children crying. futilla: You should close your ears.

Once again a baby cries in the distance. bos: There it is again—some petty little voice is yearning. futilla: It’s just my baby. Without his mother he’s been bored to tears. Look the other way—I’m going to wipe my nipples, then I’ll go and feed him. (She wipes her nipples. bos looks straight at futilla’s breasts.) See how much milk has collected! bos: Yes. futilla: You should close your eyes. bos: I’m tired of walking over this indefinite earth! People live their lives amid flowers, tears, and dust, and I, an old man, must be their witness. How will it all end, my poor people?

futilla: Well, what do you think, Grandpa? Do you like our USSR? Anything can happen here, whatever our heart desires! What do you mean—how will it all end? bos: Yes, I do like your USSR: contradictions all around and no clarity within. But I’m saying: when will we cease to breathe in this empty space? When will we all embrace in a common grave? When, my little girl? futilla: We never will. But you will very soon. You’re an old man—you’re withering already! (Having changed her shoes, she gets up.) Well, that’s my shoes done. (Shouting out into the kolkhoz) Antoshka! Ksyusha! Uncle Filipp! We’re here!

Ksyusha, bring me my little boy straightaway! (More quietly) Without him I’m bored all over, from head to toe. (To bos) Go into the kolkhoz, Grandpa, find someone with a stove that’s been lit—you can lie down on top of it and they’ll give you some food! I’ll call you when I’ve tidied my room. bos: I don’t like food. Have you got anything chemical? futilla: The kolkhoz has a pharmacy chest. You can have some powder. bos: I’ll go and find it. bos leaves. futilla goes up into the porch and puts down her bundles. futilla (sorting through the books she has brought): I can’t wait to see him. A small warm body, and it always smells of something nice . . . But why’s it so quiet in the kolkhoz? (Calls out) Ksyusha, Ksyusha! Bring me my little boy! (Silence everywhere. Brief pause.) Soon I’ll be having another baby. I like it when something so hot and helpless and crying comes out from inside me—a poor little lump of my life, defenseless, Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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frightened, all covered in blood. A terrible death has worn it out and tormented it. (Calls out) Ksyusha! Where is everyone? Where’s my baby? Where’s the kolkhoz? filipp vershkov quietly comes onstage. vershkov: Greetings, Comrade Chairwoman! Congratulations on your arrival, on the attainment of good health and every other kind of success! (Gives futilla his hand.) Did you see our fine people in our country’s great capitals, did you pay our respects to them, or did you remain silent? futilla: I paid our respects to them. vershkov: And how is their health?12 futilla (during this dialogue she slowly changes into a clean dress, disappearing for a moment into the hut and then coming out again): It’s all right. They gave me this message for you. “Let him work more and talk less—then he won’t play into the hands of the enemy!”13 vershkov: Is that really so, Futilla Ivanovna? Have they really received reports on my personal state of mind? Well, now you’ll be hearing me thunder! With everything that I’ve got, with every one of my bones! futilla: Uncle Filipp! What’s going on in the kolkhoz? Have they cut all the hay? I didn’t see any haystacks on the way here. And has our quota been sent off to SovMeat? vershkov (in embarrassment): We haven’t finished yet, Futilla Ivanovna. futilla: You devils! I gave you instructions! What have you been up to? What use are we to the state like this? The state would be better off if it were sea here, not people. At least the sea has fish in it.

vershkov: The sea? That’s an interesting question, Futilla Ivanovna. But what life-giving books have you brought us? When are you going to introduce the population to them? futilla: Where’s Antoshka? Where’s Ksyusha gone? vershkov: They’ve gone begging by the sea—looking for dead fish on the shore. Antoshka’s even started frying burdock and making little cakes from goods that have passed through sheeps’ stomachs. There’s no food for us to eat. There’s no mutton. futilla: What about our sheep—our kolkhoz sheep? Uncle Filipp!

From now on the dialogue moves ever faster. vershkov (quickly, almost choking): Listen to me, Futilla Ivanovna. I speak for the community, in the name of everyone most conscious and most truly a shock worker . . . You just listen: I’ll tell you real facts, convincing to the highest degree.

A bantik has been here. futilla: What do you mean—a bantik? Quick, get on with it! vershkov: I’m telling you abbreviatedly, arithmetically, like SovNarKom and TseKuBa:14 B-A-N-T-I-K—Bourgeois ANTI-Kolkhoznik!15 Fyodor Kirilich Ashurkov is a BANTIK! You dekulakized him before the Second Bolshevik Spring, but now his presence has been felt again!16 futilla: Did you kill him? vershkov: No, I didn’t! He smashed me three times on my hump, and Antoshka was kicked too. Yes, they kicked him with their boots and they hit him on the head with bricks, right on his consciousness. Only the bricks were soft, they were adobe and they hadn’t been baked, so Antoshka rose a second time without impairment.

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futilla: Right on his consciousness! And where was your own consciousness at the time? vershkov: There was no time for consciousness, Futilla Ivanovna—there were seven of these bantiks, no fewer than seven of them! They came out of the dark steppe, and our kolkhoz fishing ship, Distant Light, was lying close in to shore. And that’s where Antoshka and I were—we’d driven our flock there, the entire sum of our property, we were dipping them against parasites. Other wandering people were digging a well far off in the steppe—there wasn’t sight nor sound of them! futilla: Get on with it! You talk for so long it’s as if you say nothing! vershkov: They drove our flock of sheep onto the kolkhoz ship—they left only one ram—and they hauled the hut to the shore, whole and hale, window glass and all, and they loaded it onto the ship, and then they flew off under sail in fright. A terrible manifestation of negligence has occurred! futilla: And our salted meat, and our communal grain that was in the patched-up sacks? Quick! Tell me at once! vershkov: I can’t tell you at once—there’s a psy . . . psyche, stuck in my throat. Our salted beef, and the grain that belongs to us poor peasants, in the patched-up sacks—everything we own has sailed away too, in our own boat, toward the far shore of imperialism.17 futilla: But why didn’t you kill the kulaks? You’ve got a revolver! You must all of you be on their side! If you’re a coward today, then you’re a subkulak. You’re trash, you’re scum—you’re anything but Bolsheviks! You should all be

investigated thoroughly—until each of your hearts learns to beat at a gallop and not at a cowardly patter! futilla runs down from the porch. vershkov (calmly): And why not? We should all of us be vetted. There’s too little cultural work in our midst—that’s what I say. Still, it wouldn’t have been safe to take out my revolver— they might have removed it from me! futilla (shouting): Ksyusha! voice of ksyusha (nearby): Hello-o-o! vershkov (quietly): This is a tragedy.18 ksyusha runs in. The sound of a child crying in the distance. ksyusha (weeping carefully and discreetly, she embraces futilla): My Futilla’s come back. futilla: Ksyusha! What’s happened? Why’s our hut disappeared? Why have all the sheep been stolen? Why are the children crying? (Pause: the friends continue to embrace.) I’ve brought an old man here with me—he’s to be fed from my rations. ksyusha: I’ve already given instructions. He’s eating some mashed grass, and he’s taken two powders from the pharmacy. futilla: We’ve got nothing tastier than mashed grass? ksyusha: No, the bantiks took everything. futilla: Ksyusha! Did you keep feeding my baby? You didn’t run out of milk? ksyusha: No, I didn’t run out of milk. futilla: Bring him to me, then. I want to feed him myself, my breasts are all swollen. ksyusha (crying out): You must grieve, Futilla. You and I no longer have children.

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futilla (unable to take this in): What will become of us? And why aren’t you grieving? ksyusha (with self-control): I’ve already grieved all my grief.

(Losing her self-control) I feel sick at heart, it’s awful. The wind rocks me as if I were empty. I want to believe in God! futilla: Ksyusha! There isn’t any God anywhere—you and I will be grieving alone. (In anguish, trying to control herself) What am I to do with this grief of mine? We may not feel like going on living, but we have to! Where have you buried my little boy? vershkov (hurriedly, almost choking): Futilla Ivanovna, let me express myself at last! I know everything, I’ve been holding myself in readiness for a long time! futilla (weeping slowly and mournfully): Uncle Filipp, why didn’t you guard the kolkhoz? Why have you buried my child? vershkov: What do you mean—buried? I haven’t buried your child. Don’t weep and mourn—there’s a good girl. At this moment your child is sailing calmly across the Caspian Sea— in the hands of the class enemy! futilla: Don’t keep frightening me! Uncle Filipp, where are our children? vershkov: There’s no information! Listen! When Fyodor Ashurkov the bantik first fell on our huts, it took him a while to track down our wealth. At first he just dragged one hut to the shore. It was the nursery hut. And as Fate—and damn all who believe in such nonsense!—would have it, your child was asleep there, together with Ksyusha’s little one. I laid into the band straightaway, but they struck at me with some kulak

weight and down I sat on my bottom—and thank God I at least had something to sit on! futilla: Uncle Filipp, why didn’t you snatch back the children? vershkov: The children? I was trying to recover the sheep.

Children are just love, but sheep are wealth. Don’t overvalue children—you’re strong, you can bear more of them! futilla: Go away and leave us alone! Go and slaughter a ram for the scientist. vershkov: A ram? Our last ram? All right, I’ll do it . . . Such a fine beast . . . A political murder, I suppose.19 (Leaves.)

The sound of babies crying in the depth of the kolkhoz. futilla (forgetting herself): Ksyusha! They’re bringing our babies! ksyusha: It’s the women. They’re coming back from the shore.

They’re afraid to leave children at home now—they take their children with them, and the children are howling because they’re hungry. futilla: Bring me someone else’s baby. I’ll feed it and then I’ll take it to bed with me. Bring me Serafima Koshchunkina’s. ksyusha: All right, but don’t do anything foolish! I’ll go and fetch it right now. (Leaves.) futilla (calling out): Antoshka! Antoshka! voice of anton: Let me finish! I’m not far away—I’m here in the kolkhoz!

Enter bos. bos: Thank you for your hospitality. I’ve had a tasty meal of some kind of desert grass. futilla: That’s nothing. Tomorrow you’ll eat mutton. (Calls.)

Antoshka!

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voice of anton: Wait. Let me measure the wind. The airways of our republic must remain free from danger! ksyusha brings in two babies. She gives one to futilla and keeps the other herself. ksyusha: Let’s feed these two—or the milk will go to our heads and we’ll die of grief. (Exits, lulling the baby.) futilla (looks at the baby): Why does he look so bored? (Puts his mouth to her breast.) He won’t suck milk from my breast! bos: Put him down on the earth, Futilla. Your baby probably wants to die. futilla: He’ll be left all alone in the world—without us and without life. bos: Don’t grieve, Futilla. You conceived him in laughter. You were breathless and joyful. Why be irritated now? It’s nothing serious. What’s one child to you? In your hips, as in a cradle, you rock all future humanity. Come here!

The distant, indistinct hum of an airplane. futilla: I can’t hear you, Grandpa. It’s not easy for me right now. anton appears, his head wrapped in bandages because of his wounds.

Antoshka! Take a horse. Gallop to the district center, get on the phone, and call the OGPU20 out to the Caspian Sea. Why haven’t you gone after the kulaks already? anton: We’ve been trying to organize edible food from all kinds of reject dirt! There was no time to fuss about. All the more so since our frontiers are guarded with strict vigilance—no one will be able to sail past!

The hum grows louder. The plane is now overhead.

futilla: It’s an airplane! Antoshka, get it to land—we can chase the kulaks in an airplane! anton (looking up): I’ll land it! I’ll land it at once! I’ve never flown in a machine before! It’s technology, my whole heart thunders! I feel like shouting, “Forward!” bos: Do you know the signals? anton: I’m a member of the Air-Chem Defense Society. I’ll light a fire and release the smoke of state danger. But you ought to be arrested—you scatter my thoughts! (Makes off.) bos: Your baby’s asleep. futilla: My little boy is sleeping. (She covers up the baby and puts him on a bench inside the porch). Everyone is asleep now—on sea and on land. Only one faraway child is crying out now on our little ship. He’s calling to me, he has no one to defend him! I’ll throw myself into the water, I’ll swim to him in the dark. bos (moving closer to futilla): Don’t make so much noise, my girl, our fate is soundless. (Embraces futilla and bends down beside her.) I want to cry with you too. I want to grieve beside your humble skirt, beside your dusty feet that smell of the earth and of your children.

He puts his arms around the now enfeebled futilla and holds her. The airplane’s distant hum fades further into the distance.

I have lived through a whole age of sorrow, Futilla. But now I have found your small body in the world. Now, poor and sad as I am, I yearn for you. I want quietly to earn my workdays.

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futilla (gently stroking bos): You can live with us till you die, here in our pastoral kolkhoz. Be happy in a small way. You can go to the district center and do a course in bookkeeping.

Enter anton. anton: It hurtled past in the height without stopping! But I’ll stay on guard—planes often fly by here on their great path. I’ll walk up and down all night long and make signals from fire! anton leaves. futilla goes to the porch and bends down over the sleeping child. bos goes up to the fence. He stands there awhile in silence. Evening darkens into night. bos: Fraud! (Short pause.) What worldwide, historically organized fraud! And the wind appears to sorrow, and infinity is full of space, like a stupid hole, and the sea gets agitated too and weeps against the shore of the earth. As if all this were truly serious, pitiful, and splendid! But it’s only raging piffle! futilla (from the porch): Grandpa, who are you talking to in vain? bos: Oh Futilla, my little girl, it’s all fraud! Nature isn’t like that—the wind doesn’t feel boredom and the sea doesn’t call anyone anywhere. The wind feels so-so, and across the sea live scum—not angels. anton enters and begins to walk across the stage. anton: No one flying anywhere. Nothing in the world but darkness and the sound of the sea. anton leaves. futilla goes into the hut, comes back with a burning oil lamp, and sits down at the table to work. futilla: Why are you so clever? Maybe you’re not to be trusted either?

bos: I’m not clever. I’ve been alive for a hundred years. If I know life, it’s from habit—not cleverness. futilla: What are fraudsters and why doesn’t someone shoot them? And what do fraudsters think? bos: They think like I do: that the world exists on account of some long-forgotten piffle. And so they treat life mercilessly—like a delusion. Daughter, come and let me kiss you on the head. futilla: Why? bos: Because I love you. We have both been deceived. Don’t irritate me. When two deceived hearts press against each other, something almost serious starts to happen. Then we deceive the deceivers themselves. futilla: I don’t want to. bos: Why not? futilla: I don’t love you. bos: Milk!!! Give me some milk! Where’s my Interhom? futilla: We haven’t got any milk for you—we have to feed the children. Come and count workdays, Grandpa—I’ve gotten muddled. bos: All right, my girl. We’ll busy ourselves with piffle for the exhaustion of our souls. futilla: It’s not piffle. It’s our bread, Grandpa, and all our Revolution.

Enter anton. anton: No one flying through the air. I’ll go and check our inventory. One has to try and do something. anton leaves. bos goes up to futilla. bos: Where are my glasses? Where—did you say—is all your Revolution?

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futilla: You left your glasses in your mistress’s trunk. You came with just the clothes you stand up in—you didn’t even bring any bread. Look, there are our shepherd’s glasses— they’ll do. (In a different tone) Listen, Grandpa Bos! (Pause.

The sound of the sea. Dark night.) I feel bored again. My heart aches and my body’s ashamed to go on living. bos: Your body and soul aren’t yet properly joined—but don’t worry: the graft will take effect soon! (Puts on a pair of tin-framed glasses, ties them behind his ears, sits down where futilla was sitting, and starts to read the register.) What’s the good of counting? What’s the good of counting figures when everything in the world is approximate? Futilla, love me with your sad, unconscious heart—it’s the only precision in life. futilla: No, I love you consciously! bos: Consciously! Consciousness is the bright half-light of youth before your eyes, when you can’t see the piffle that holds sway in the world. futilla: Consciousness is mind. If you don’t understand, then say nothing. bos: My conscious girl. I’m happy when I don’t understand. futilla: And I feel bored then . . . Get counting. I want a complete list by morning. You’re delaying payment of the kolkhoz workers! Everything must be clear to everyone—let there be no uncertainties . . . I’ll be back soon! (Takes the baby, wrapped in a blanket, from the bench and walks a few steps.)

It’s turned cold, I must find a lit stove so I can warm him up.

(Leaves.) bos: Everything’s clear. But I want obscurity. Obscurity! I lost you long ago and I live in the emptiness of clarity and despair.

The knocking of a hammer in the kolkhoz, and the whine of a file. These sounds are repeated. bos (counting off figures on the abacus; suddenly gives up): Let them be happy approximately! Every count just demands a recount. (Writes on the register) To Prokhor Carbinov— ten kilograms: you, Prokhor, harvested hay without zeal, you look askance on Soviet power. Ksenya Sekushcheva— you, Ksyusha, breath of God, have done well! Here’s more strength for your body—fifty kilograms of mutton, plus the wool. And Anton—Antoshka!—you get a hundred kilograms. You can eat meat! You’ve used the wind to sow grass, you’ve dug two wells, both of them now dry, you’re measuring the sea for the Academy of Sciences, you’ve staged a poetic drama about an axe,21 and you’ve brought every kolkhoznik to an understanding of the principles of cost accounting . . . Now is that an airplane? voice of anton: It’s nothing. Darkness. Empty elements noising their noise! bos (counting): Yes! Yes! I’ll knock half off everyone’s wages! For sixteen years they’ve been working at Communism, and to this day they still can’t organize the small globe of the earth.

Pedants! I’m going to fine the lot of you! voice of anton: Punish and fine us, Comrade Worldwide Academician! Strike at the masses’ psy . . . psychosis with the weapon of workdays!22 bos: Out of the question, Antoshka. Karl Marx told me in the middle of the last century that the proletariat has no need of psychology.23 voice of anton: Did you know Karl Marx?

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bos: How could I not know Karl Marx? Of course I knew him!

All his life he was looking for something serious. The current piffle of all our events made him laugh. voice of anton: You’re lying, man of science! Marx didn’t laugh at us—he loved us in advance and forever, he wept over the grave of the Paris Commune, and beyond the horizon of world history he stretched out the path of his speculation!

We’ve had enough of you and your views! You’d better understand us—before we understand you! bos (counting): To Serafima Koshchunkina and her husband, also Koshchunkin: zero, two zeros.

Enter anton. anton: Why do you irritate me by understanding every object to the nth degree? You’re blurring life’s whole impression before my very eyes! bos: Blessed are the mutterers! (Still counting.) anton: We’re not blessed yet—we’re workers. What makes you say all these psycho-crazed things? bos (not looking up from his work): What do you want, infant? anton: Go on—tell me something still more crazed! What’s the whole world made from? Is it atoms or not? bos: From piffle—from psycho-crazed piffle! anton (tormentedly): So life’s just as awful for the atom! I’ll go and measure the sea and check the weights. Otherwise the world isn’t properly real—it demands to be organized with precision! bos: Antoshka! Why did you put up that scarecrow? You wasted three workdays! You’re a squanderer!

anton: To frighten the class enemy! A scarecrow’s bigger than a man and he’s more frightening. And the men need to be working—we don’t have enough of them. bos: But the class enemy wasn’t frightened. anton: No, not in the least, insofar as the scarecrow was dead.

It was Filipp Vershkov who instructed me. Make a scarecrow, he said—what do we need guards for? They started leaving the huts unguarded, everyone went off to dig wells—and the class enemy raided . . . I’ll go and get down to some labor right away! There’s no airplane, it’s dark everywhere. anton begins to exit. Enter futilla and the baby, crossing paths with anton.

Won’t he sleep? futilla: No, he’s delirious. It’s cold everywhere, no one’s lit their stove, and hunger makes his mother sleep without feeling. bos: Futilla, why are you carrying that child about? Let it die! Or don’t you have enough love in you to give birth without pity? anton (to bos): Any moment now and I shall thump you one—you’ll soar right out of your shoes! You’ll scatter apart into all your components, smashed by the proletariat! bos: You’re wrong, Anton! What’s the proletariat to me? It’s younger than I am! I was born before there was any proletariat, and it will be gone before I die! And if the proletariat smashes into my hard bones, it’ll mutilate itself! futilla: Still no airplane? anton: No. Let me take him. I’ll put him in a basket and rock him. (Takes the baby from futilla and exits.)

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futilla: And have you completed the register? bos: Yes. futilla: Let me check it. bos: Don’t check it, Futilla. Your sheep are no longer in your pastoral kolkhoz. They’re in the hands of the class enemy. futilla: You poor old grandpa! You don’t know the strict watch kept over our frontiers. Our sacred bread will return to our body.

Pale dawn. Distant hum of a plane. futilla listens. Pause.

(Shouting) Antoshka! An airplane! Make the signals brighter! Wait! I’ll set fire to a hut! (Runs off.) voice of anton: I’ve seen everything already and am now undertaking maximal measures!

Pause. Approaching hum of the plane. bos: Chance events of all kinds are accelerating. I must draw up a balance sheet.

A fierce red light. futilla has set one of the kolkhoz huts on fire. The sound of the airplane, growing quieter as it lands. Pause.

Enter anton and a pilot, followed by vershkov. anton: Where’s Futilla Ivanovna? vershkov: She’ll appear in a moment. She set one of the hut roofs on fire and now she can’t put it out. futilla runs in. pilot: Are you the chairman? futilla: Can’t you see I am? pilot: At your command. I’m the pilot of agricultural light aircraft number 4207. I was flying to a rice kolkhoz. I touched down after seeing signal fires. Comrade Anton has informed

me of the need to pursue a band of kulaks. I’m ready to carry out reconnaissance over the sea, but I need a guide to identify your fishing vessel. futilla: Quick—take me! anton: I’m going as well! My heart’s bursting with joy! pilot: Two of you?! All right then. Let’s not waste time! (They go out. futilla turns around for a moment.) futilla (to bos): Grandpa, you love me—so take care of the kolkhoz. (Leaves.) bos: Fly, my poor little bird. I shall be vigilant. bos and vershkov remain onstage. vershkov: Well, now you and I are in charge, Ivan Fyodorovich!24 Let’s give orders! bos: Orders? I’ll show you who’s giving orders! Forge ahead and labor hard! vershkov: That’s right, Ivan Fyodorovich, I’ll do just that. Firm leadership is essential to us! vershkov goes out. The light from the burning hut is extinguished. A gray, boring dawn. The roar of a plane taking off.

ACT 3 The inside of the kolkhoz office. Portraits and slogans. Stock-raising posters. A wall newspaper.25 In the corner—a rolled-up Red Flag. A table with an abacus. Benches. A single window, closed.

It is nearly morning. A lamp burns. bos sits at the desk, wearing glasses, extremely unkempt and unshaven.

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bos: Night! Silence! I love it when nothing elemental can be heard! When nothing resounds except the breath of man!

(Listens—outside the window someone is snoring.) The socialist Filipp Vershkov is snoring. He cut a whole rick of hay on his own—he worked day and night, making use of the light of the moon. He should be put down for ten workdays. But he’s an imaginary being—I’ll put him down for four.

Enter ksyusha, now much thinner. ksyusha: Some news for you. (Takes a letter from under her jacket and hands it to bos.) The postman dropped it in this morning—tracking you down, he said, had proved almost beyond him. Read it. bos (ignoring the letter): I gave up reading long ago. ksyusha: But it might be interesting! bos: No, Ksyusha, it isn’t. And have you forgotten that your child is now sailing across the Caspian Sea? ksyusha: No, my friend, I have not forgotten. Certainly not.

I can see the little darling—all alive and well—right here in front of my eyes. I’ve got nothing to eat, but my breasts are swollen with milk. No, no, I don’t forget—only if I’m asleep. bos: That’s good—suffer! Suffering’s splendid. I’m reminding you, so you don’t forget. And what about the sacks you’re mending? Have you overfulfilled your quota? ksyusha: I’ve fulfilled my quota, but I haven’t had time to overfulfill it. My hands ache from grief, I can’t even weep anymore, I can only stare like a dead fish. bos: Ksyusha! Poor sad stuff that you are, come closer. Let me embrace you and stroke you! (Caresses ksyusha.)

ksyusha (nestling up to bos): Grandpa Ivan, you’re a scientist, you’re a kind man—tell me how I’m supposed to live now, help me to get through my suffering. bos: Don’t cry, Ksyusha! You cried when you were a child— over a broken glass vial, over a lost blue rag—and your grief was no less sad. Now you’re crying over a child. Once I used to cry too. I had four official wives, they all died. They bore me nineteen children—young men and women—and not one of them is left in the world, I can’t even find their graves.

Not one footprint, not one trace of the warm foot of a child of mine, have I ever seen on the earth. ksyusha: Don’t be bored, Grandpa. I feel bored too. My poor sad old man! bos: Do you have a pharmacy here? ksyusha: A small one. bos: Go and get me something chemical to swallow. ksyusha: In a minute. bos: Run along, my girl.

Exit ksyusha. bos (calling through the window): Filipp! voice of vershkov: What is it, Ivan Fyodorovich? bos: Come here. voice of vershkov: In a moment. Let me just have a stretch—I’m cracking my joints! bos (rummaging through his papers): The danger of falling behind is all too apparent. Haymaking has not been completed. The supplementary meat quota has not been sent off, there are insufficient sacks for the winter stores, two of the women went into labor yesterday—they conceived on the Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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same day. So where, oh God, am I going to find anyone to darn the sacks? Futilla, breath of my life, come back soon to our little huts—your heart beats with more intelligence than my head. I fail to recognize the class enemy. And these are his doings!

Enter filipp vershkov. vershkov: What do you want? bos: I want to know why you sleep so much. vershkov: Well, I’ll be damned! I thought you were one of those counter fellows, but it seems you’re no different from us. Is it true? Are we really all that interests you foreign counterfeits? bos: Listen, Filipp—you’re a class enemy! vershkov: Me? You could say that I am, and then again you could say that I’m not! You could say that’s a foul lie, a subterfuge, and a slander against our finest people. As you like, Ivan Fyodorovich: you can look at it this way and you can look at it that way, all in all it’s a riddle! bos: You’re a liar, you’re a saboteur! I can see right through humanity to the whole of fate! vershkov: Who cares what you see? It’s theory, up in the air— bos: It’s right down-to-earth, you reptile! I’ve been living over a century, I’ve measured everything against real events! You don’t love the policies of the Party, you pretend to be on our side, but really you’re on the side of Europe, of the well-off and bourgeois! vershkov: You . . . Don’t you psycho-craze me, I’ll start to st-stammer, I’ll st-stick something hard up your . . . Who

created a giant hayrick ti-titan, who was it completed ten workdays in twenty-four hours? bos: Yes, Filipp Vasilievich, that was you. I put you down for four workdays. vershkov: Four! You’re driving me psychological, you’re making me forget facts! You’re developing indignation in me, you devilish capitalist remnant.

Enter ksyusha. ksyusha: The sea’s loud tonight. It must be frightening to be sailing alone on the water— bos: Give me a powder. ksyusha: Take whichever you like, I’ve brought them all.

(Opens her pharmacy box.) bos swallows three powders, one after the other. bos: There isn’t even anything to wash them down with. It’s time you made kvass on the kolkhozes. vershkov: You’ll have to chew on them. bos: Don’t irritate me, you insignificance! vershkov: I’ll show you who’s insignificant! You know where we put people who’re insignificant? Here we have only the polysignificant! bos: You’re driving me psychological! Vacate the kolkhoz office! vershkov: Bureaucracy-crazed already! Wait till Futilla Ivanovna returns from her mission—I’ll tell her everything. ksyusha: Nor can I remain silent. This is a collective enterprise and the atmosphere should be comradely. You’re slandering a man on the basis of unsubstantiated evidence. Pah, it’s a disgrace!

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vershkov: Come on, Ksyusha, let’s leave the alien class on its own. We don’t want to soil our worldview.

They both leave. bos (happily): And so these almost-godly beings live out their lives. They play at different games—and we end up with world history . . . Soon it’ll be getting light—I must prepare the report for the district land section. bos returns to work. Enter carbinov with a rifle. carbinov: Still not gone to bed? bos: No, I’m burying myself in the facts of collective life. carbinov: It’s time you lay down. Anyone would think you’re younger than I am! bos: How many years have you seen? carbinov: Around a hundred, I think. No, hardly! My mind’s starting to fog up. I can see the whole wide world, but it’s no longer of interest. bos: So you’re clever, are you? carbinov: Oh, it depends. Sometimes I’m clever, sometimes I’m not. Clouds float across my mind. bos: You’re clever, all right. Go and guard the kolkhoz border. carbinov: But aren’t I . . . aren’t I a class enemy? bos: Why are you hanging about here then? Go to the district center and tell them to arrest you. It’s time you learned consciousness. carbinov: I’ve already been. Twice now I’ve asked them to arrest me. But they’re not interested. No social indicators, they say—you’re one of the poor. They authorize a crust of bread for me to eat on the way home—and off I go. bos: So you’re socially useful?

carbinov: Me? I don’t think so. I’ve read a lot in a book. There have been people in the world now for a hundred millennia— and they’ve achieved damn all! Are we going to achieve much in five years? Not likely! bos: Get out of here, you class enemy! carbinov: I said that on an empty stomach. I was checking your vigilance—after all, you might be an agent of Ashurkov’s! I’m the guard here, I watch over everything—all our inventory and all our ideology. It’s dawn—lie down on your side and go to sleep, otherwise you’ll have no strength for the coming day. Each day of our labor lays the foundation for centuries to come—and on our kolkhoz revolution rests the fate of a hundred millennia. Yes, that’s how it is, like it or not!

Lie down and God rest you!

Carbinov leaves. Brief pause. bos (alone): I don’t understand a thing. Clouds float across my mind!

Pink dawn on the kolkhoz. vershkov enters.

Why aren’t you asleep? vershkov: I can’t sleep—I’m worried. It’s getting light and there’s no food. The people are tossing and turning. bos: Go on, go on, keep on irritating me! Get in the way of my work! vershkov (sighing): I’m astonished at worldwide humanity.

How come the imperialists—by no means the most stupid of people—chose you to unravel the riddle of their lives? You’re well and truly behind the times, you can’t even organize a pastoral kolkhoz! I’d have solved the whole world problem long ago—and without traveling anywhere. I’d have stayed in Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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my room, eating food and thinking thoughts! I’d have come up with an answer! bos: Filipp! Worldwide fools all search for worldwide truth. vershkov: All the better for you! But you and I aren’t fools!

You’re a worldwide double-dealer, and I’m an exemplary shock worker of a kolkhoz shepherd. Nothing more and nothing less! bos: Filipp! Look in here—see what else Europe’s been writing to me! Reply in writing to that kolkhoz of kulaks! You, it seems, are a great man! (Hands vershkov the letter.) vershkov (unsealing the envelope): Call me whatever you like! It’s up to you. Sometimes I’m great, sometimes I’m petty. Can’t be helped. Life’s an ongoing event—you have to adjust! bos: It’s the same with me, Filipp. It all depends. You and I are both laboring people. vershkov: Think I can’t see your game? I can see it, all right!

(Without having read the letter, he writes a few words on it—a resolution.) Yes, a Bolshevik can observe straight through fools like you! (Hands the letter and envelope back to bos.) bos (reading the resolution): Filipp! Is that really true? Is the world’s entire economic riddle truly solved in your four words? vershkov: We write nothing without reason. Believe me.

Pause. bos (thoughtfully): Yes. That’s true. And what has Europe written to me? vershkov: They say that things are so-so: unsatisfactory. Read it aloud yourself.

bos (reads, omitting some passages, in an angry mutter): . . . A communication from Moscow . . . At the railway terminus you wished to marry a famous beauty—Futilla the shepherdess . . . As a result of a certain limitation of your mental capacities . . . The ever narrowing circle of European tragedy . . . Send . . . a new principle . . . solution to the world politico-economic riddle. vershkov: I’ve already written it down. The world riddle no longer exists. bos: What you wrote was clear—there’s no longer a riddle. We must send this off. It’s morning. vershkov: You sign. I’ll countersign.

They sign the letter and seal the envelope. An old man from the district center appears—with a briefcase and a supply of rolled-up banners—some made from red calico, some from bast matting. old man: Greetings! Put the lamp out. What are you doing sitting in here? I’ve come on foot from the district center. I’m keeping an eye on socialist emulation!

The old man removes the red banner from the corner of the room and replaces it with an inferior banner, made from bast.26 vershkov: Why are you slighting us? old man: Happens all the time—must be what you deserve!

(Leaves.) bos: I fear Futilla Ivanovna will be irritated. vershkov: Doesn’t matter. But we need to give the people something, Ivan Fyodorovich. They haven’t eaten anything, they’re lying on the ground and weeping. bos: I can’t hear them.

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vershkov: Now is a time to think, not to listen. Oh, all right—listen!

Opens the office window. The sound of men and women cursing one another—and the intermittent, distant crying of children, which sounds more peaceful. bos: They’re not weeping, they’re quarreling. vershkov: They’re gnawing away at one another—it’s worse than tears. Hunger never makes the people weep; they sink their teeth into one another and die of rage. bos: Close the window. How many days has Futilla Ivanovna been gone? vershkov (closes the window): Nine days now. bos: What about you? Don’t you want to eat? vershkov: No, what keeps me alive is consciousness. You can’t stay alive here from food, can you? bos: Go and call Ksyusha! vershkov: It won’t be any use. But I’ll go if you want.

(Leaves.) bos (alone): My God, life, where is your consolation? I must finish the bookkeeping for the district land section.

Enter ksyusha. ksyusha: I was already awake. I was on my way. (Blows out the lamp. A sunny day is beginning outside the window.) I’ll finish the bookkeeping for you. bos: Ksyusha! Give your heart a rest—it’s aching. ksyusha: Think I didn’t know! And what if the OGPU brings my child back—and then makes out I’ve been idling? That would be fun! bos: Bring me something chemical. I feel weak.

ksyusha (calming down): In a moment. What about some milk? My breasts are swollen—I’m going to have to squeeze my milk out onto the earth. A woman’s milk is good for you. bos: All right, go and milk yourself. You can bring me some in a bottle. But don’t forget to bring some chemistry too! ksyusha: All right, all right. I know you can’t live without your powders! bos: I’d die. ksyusha leaves.

In this country I feel the warmth of humanity . . . I’ve completed the report for the district land section, thank God! I’ve written whole books before now, but never have I felt such relief. (Signs with a flourish.) Good!

The crying of children and the shouting and cursing of women can be heard through the closed window. vershkov hurries in, followed by carbinov with a rifle. vershkov: Hear how they’re muttering? Ivan Fyodorovich, I advise you to rely on Carbinov. He has a rifle and he was ratified by the district center! carbinov: No, you won’t need to! The people will just rage at one another. That’s what they always do—they don’t touch outsiders. bos: You, Filipp, are a class enemy! The people must be fed. carbinov: That’s true! You and I have been around a long time, we know everything. vershkov: And how are you going to feed the people? With politics! With slogans from off the top of your head! bos: Carbinov, put him under arrest! See—the kulak’s unmasked himself!

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carbinov: He has indeed. Your leadership is working well. bos: Take him off to our prison basket—the one made by Antoshka. carbinov: At once. But you will still feed the people, won’t you? You haven’t changed your mind? bos: I will. Carry out your duty! carbinov: Immediately! Don’t take offense! (Pushes vershkov with the butt of his rifle) Out—you double-dealer!

They both leave. Enter ksyusha with a bottle of milk. ksyusha: Grandpa Ivan! What on earth’s going on out there?

Everyone’s yelling and moaning and getting on one another’s nerves! bos (taking the bottle from ksyusha): Is that your milk? ksyusha: Yes. I squeezed it out of my breast for you, but I couldn’t fill the bottle—the men were trying to tear it out of my hands, they want food. Swallow down your wafers first.

(Gives bos some wafers.)27 bos: How many children do we have in the kolkhoz—not counting yours and Futilla’s? ksyusha: Wait. (Counts in a whisper.) Seven! Two now buried— so that makes five. bos: And is there much milk left in your breasts? ksyusha: I shall feed both old and young—and there’ll still be enough for a reserve supply! bos (gives her back the bottle of milk): Go and feed all the children with your milk. As many as you can before you dry up completely. ksyusha (delighted and surprised): You’re right, Grandpa Bos! How could I be so stupid—saving myself up till it hurt!

bos: And give each man and woman one chemical wafer from the pharmacy. Let them eat wafers. Say I’ve ordered them to, that I eat them myself, and that I’m over a hundred years old now. The kolkhoz workers are wise, they’ll eat their fill. ksyusha: Oh they’re so wise, Grandpa Bos, they’re so patient!

Their hearts will stop aching at once—all they need is a smidgen! bos: Go and feed them, Ksyusha—from your breasts and from the pharmacy. ksyusha: All right, Grandpa. (Leaves.) bos (takes the powders and sucks them): Good. Nutritious!

(Pause.) I shall live a life like Carbinov’s—preserving and protecting our supplies and mishaps!

Unheard, unnoticed, enter futilla. She is laughing. Lost in thought, bos fails to see her. futilla: Greetings, Grandpa Bos! bos: Futilla! You’ve returned to us, my most convincing one!

But where’s your petty child? futilla: I’ve left him in the kolkhoz. I’ve given him to Serafima Koshchunkina to look after—no one else has seen me yet.

And Ksyusha’s boy’s in one piece too—I’ve brought them both back with me, they’re alive! Report to me on the situation of the kolkhoz economy! bos: Let up for a moment! Don’t be in such a hurry with all your inhuman reports and situations and economies! (Opens the window onto the kolkhoz. Not a sound to be heard. A bright late morning.) It’s quiet, the people are eating their fill. Let an old man give you a kiss! futilla: All right, give me a kiss then—I won’t dry up. bos kisses futilla on the forehead.

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bos: My eternal one. I’ve been searching so long for you—a hundred years. futilla: I wasn’t alive then—you were searching in vain. bos: I knew you were going to be born. futilla: You’ve been slow to appear—I’m already bearing children myself. bos: I’m feeding the people here. My leadership is working well. futilla: We shall see. bos: And where’s our kolkhoz grain and our sheep? Have you taken them back from the class enemy? futilla: Our airplane overtook the sailing boat. Then the OGPU launch took it in tow and brought it to Astrakhan. bos: Where, I ask you, is Ashurkov? futilla: When the OGPU launch gave chase, they threw half our grain into the sea. They drowned forty of our sheep, but the rest are in one piece. And they threw our hut overboard too—it floated away. As for our babies—mine and Ksyusha’s—they were lying in the hold. Ashurkov was taking care of them when he was arrested. He was weeping over them. bos: So he’s a decent man! futilla: Yes, he loved me when I was still a girl, before the liquidation of the classes. bos: Where, I ask you, are our grain and our sheep? futilla: Ashurkov is bringing them to us from Astrakhan, in our boat. bos: Ashurkov? futilla: The former bantik. He’s got a following wind. Soon we’ll see his sail out to sea. He’s being accompanied by an OGPU officer.

Pause. bos: Nothing is clear to me. Where have you just come from? futilla: From Astrakhan, old man! Antoshka and me and the babies flew in the airplane to the state farm, and then we came the rest of the way on foot. Understand? And I told the OGPU to pardon Fedya Ashurkov and give him to me to be educated— I’ll make him into an exemplary shock worker. He’ll be better than any of our lot, believe me! And he’ll do as he’s told! bos: So that’s what class struggle means. Well, well, well—and so the piffle revolves! futilla: And you thought class struggle was just a matter of murder! bos: So . . . The class enemy is someone we can’t do without: we must make foe into friend, and friend into foe—so the game can continue. But what are we going to eat before your Ashurkov sails back with your goods? futilla: Chemistry, my old man. You still haven’t grasped the game! ksyusha runs in and embraces futilla.

Ksyusha, you and I are mothers again! ksyusha: Yes we are! Oh my Futilla! futilla: Grandpa Bos, send me Filipp Vershkov. I’m arresting him. bos: I’ve already arrested him! futilla: Well done! Go and fetch him then! bos: All right. Only none of this is serious! (Leaves.) futilla: What is it, Ksyusha? Where are our little ones? ksyusha: It’s all right, Futilla! (They stroke and caress each other.) They’re with Serafima, they’re asleep. I’ve seen them.

Enter carbinov.

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carbinov: Our chief citizen has arrived. Greetings, my girl! futilla: Old man, do you know that you’re a class enemy—or haven’t you realized yet? carbinov: I know. I told you long ago that I’m not what you take me for. futilla: Ashurkov has told me how you pretended to be asleep in the middle of the kolkhoz while they dragged the hut away.

Instead of you, a faceless scarecrow was on guard! carbinov: Things happen. ksyusha: And what does that mean, you ratbag?! carbinov: An act. futilla: What do you mean? Repeat, you pathetic being! carbinov: An act, a free act. futilla: At the next general meeting you’ll be expelled from the kolkhoz forever! Lay your rifle down in the corner.

Pause. carbinov (laying down his rifle): I’ll go and sew myself a beggar’s satchel. Ksyusha, give me a needle! I had one of my own, but it was broken by a courier from the district center.

He asked for a needle to darn his trousers, and then he broke it. Where can you find needles now? We overfulfill plan after plan—but there’s not a needle in sight! ksyusha (removing a needle from the hem of her skirt): Here you are! Be off with you—while my heart can still endure you! carbinov: Your heart! A heart can always ache and endure!

(Exits with needle.) voice of anton: I shall vet all of you according to each one of the Party lines! Comrade Anton Endov knows the way things are going, he can make out your antiscientific and

contemptible face of a class enemy! Comrade Antoshka understands why the kolkhoz cart is rattling! His stare is fearless and point-blank! There is not yet a man in the world who could deceive or frighten comrade Anton Endov! I shall reclassify all of local humanity in accord with all our principles! Science! Worldwide academicians! You have come here to smirk: now go and struggle against the class enemy in the name of the quality and quantity of production! ksyusha (respectfully): Antoshka is here! futilla (through the window): Antoshka! voice of anton (more calmly): In view of the necessity of a control check of the grain expected to arrive along with the bantiks, the need has arisen in me to test our Fairbankssystem weighing scales, since it is possible that they have been damaged by the noiseless hand of the kulak. futilla: Ksyusha, I don’t like Antoshka. ksyusha: He’s gone crazy with all his model exemplariness.

They’re all one and the same, these kolkhoz hypocrites—I’d like to give them all a good thrashing! Give me a bantik any day. Arrest a bantik and you can make him work! And how!

Enter bos. bos: Filipp will be here in a moment. He’s gone to seal a letter to Europe. I’ve received a communication from Europe—a tragedy is unfolding there! futilla: You have Europe on your mind, but we have the fate of the whole world on our hands. Can’t you see? bos: Yes, I can. You’re in a muddle. None of you will have anything to eat. vershkov appears.

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vershkov: Greetings, Comrade Chairman! And congratulations on your victory over the bantik class enemy! futilla: Drop it. You’re a bantik yourself. vershkov (smiling): You’re very merry today! futilla: I don’t feel bored. But you soon will. Why did you order Anton to put up a scarecrow? So there’d be only a scarecrow on guard when the bantiks appeared? (Takes out a revolver from under her clothes) Take your revolver—Ashurkov ordered it to be returned to you. He wanted to shoot you with it, but he knew I’d dekulakize you anyway. vershkov (without the revolver): So you snakes have got to the bottom of everything? futilla: Yes, we have, Uncle Filipp, we’ve got as far as your downfall. ksyusha: Please peg out soon. I don’t have the patience to think about you any longer. vershkov: I’m an exemplary shock worker who has been awarded a prize. Don’t let this joke of yours go too far, citizens! ksyusha: He’s right—he’s been awarded a prize! What’s going on in the world? Futilla, we’d do better to get bantiks to join the kolkhoz—they won’t be so brazen and they’ll be less two-faced. futilla (to vershkov): And who met Ashurkov by the well in the steppe? Who told him to storm the kolkhoz and carry off the sheep—so you could live it up in the Caucasus like trade union members? vershkov: Who cares what I said? You get bored sitting on your own in silence—you say words as an experiment. Words don’t count—they’re only sounds.

bos: Mister Vershkov, allow me to ask: Are you for the kolkhoz?

Are you for socialism? Or are you opposed to them? vershkov: I’m for them, Ivan Fyodorovich, and I’m opposed to them. What do I care whether or not we have socialism?

None of this is serious, Ivan Fyodorovich, it’s just a way of driving us all psychological. bos (thoughtfully): Not serious, Uncle Filipp, a way of driving us all psychological?! futilla: Any fool can out-lie us, but no one’s smart enough to outdo us . . . Ksyusha, give Antoshka a shout! ksyusha (through the window): Antoshka! Come here at once, you vermin! voice of anton: In a moment! I’m preparing some packaging. bos: Mister Vershkov, where is the letter for Europe? vershkov (handing over the letter): Hand it to the postman yourself. Look at me. I was an exemplary shock worker, I solved the worldwide economic riddle—and now I’m about to perish. futilla: What riddle did he solve? bos: The riddle of the whole wide world! In his own hand he wrote, LONG LIVE COMRADE STALIN. End of world riddle. vershkov: End of world riddle. I solved it at once. ksyusha: Truly demonic!

Pause. futilla: We are poor here, we have no one except Stalin. We pronounce his name in a whisper, but you desecrate it. You’re rich, you have many learned leaders, but we have only one.

What kind of thing are you, Vershkov?

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vershkov: What are you? futilla: I work here on the kolkhoz, I shall be socialism. vershkov: And me? I’m socialism too! futilla: We can only have one socialism and one Stalin. Two are too many. (Suddenly plunges a dagger into vershkov’s chest.) vershkov sits down on a bench in the exhaustion of death. bos (to vershkov): Uncle Filipp, what’s going on in the beyond? Can you sense anything there? vershkov (collapsing): Nothing much—plans and piffles . . .

It’s not serious here either, Ivan Fyodorovich—dying gets you nowhere. bos: This man sees death clearly. vershkov: I haven’t died, I’ve switched over.

Pause. futilla: Is that the end of him? ksyusha (checking vershkov’s body): Yes, he’s starting to go cold. futilla (feeling the dagger): But somehow the dagger’s still warm! anton appears. anton (not taking the scene in): Today every man must live not only consciously but also responsibly!

Curtain.

ACT 4 Shore of the Caspian Sea. A southern horizon. Sky. Brilliant light over deserted distant water. A small basketlike structure made

entirely from wattle—a round wall and roof. This cylinder stands on three stones, and all of it, including the roof, is entwined with barbed wire. This is the kolkhoz prison basket. Beside this wattle basket sits anton with the homemade rifle that belonged to carbinov. He is guarding futilla, who has been imprisoned. futilla (invisible, quietly singing inside the prison): Nulimbatuiya, nulimbatuiya, Alyailya, so far, so far.

Uvvikuveira fimulumayla— Alailya khalma sarvaidzha!28 Pause. futilla: Are you there, Antoshka? anton: I am always wherever it is essential for me to be according to instructions from above or according to my personal point of view as to what will be of most benefit to the state. futilla: From here I can see a crack. How bright the sun shines out there in the kolkhoz! How much longer will I be sitting in darkness? anton: For an nth quantity of time. futilla: How long is n? anton: Nobody knows. It’s mathematics. There’s an nth quantity of water in the sea. There’s an nth quantity of sand in the desert. Everywhere’s just one gigantic n. futilla: I’m cold in here. It’s all shadow. anton: Insofar as Nature, at the present moment, is emitting an adequate quantity of temperature, you are slandering the entire climate of the USSR. futilla (singing quietly): Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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The grass is warmer in the spring And rain falls on the motherland.

Stalin is far now from my heart, But I await him in the sand. anton: The state is provided with a system of vertical communications—via the regional, district, and kolkhoz committees.

For you at this moment I substitute for the entire higher leadership: suffer without any boredom!

Pause. futilla: Antoshka! I’m going to climb out (claws at the wall of the prison basket). anton: That will lead to your mortification! futilla: And who was Filipp? anton: Filipp Vershkov was none other than a now fully unmasked class enemy, a dangerous double-dealer wearing the mask of a prizewinning exemplary shock worker. futilla: Liar! He was a true exemplary shock worker! anton: But a class enemy at the same time! futilla: Yes. He was also a true class enemy. anton: The question is now exhausted. futilla: According to our constitution, the class enemy stands outside the law. He can be killed. I’m climbing out (claws at the wall). anton: Since there are no instructions as to your release, I shall liquidate you to death on the spot! futilla: Do you know our constitution? anton: By heart! Every clause. Ask what you like! futilla: Without exception?

anton: I don’t precisely remember every amendment and addendum to the constitution introduced by decree of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. futilla: I do.29 anton: Nevertheless, you don’t have the documents to hand. futilla: You’re an accomplice of the class enemy! anton: Comrade Anton Endov knows himself better than any unsubstantiated and psycho-crazed girl taken into custody for exceeding her mandate of local authority.

Brief pause. futilla: There’s someone coming. Antoshka, call out to him! anton (looking): It’s the old man from the district center, the man responsible for assessing socialist emulation and the quality of production. He’s distributing directives summarizing the most important of the district’s recent measures. futilla (drawing out the words): But how alien his face looks! anton: The face is a mask for one’s ideological readiness to fight on either side of the front line of struggle! voice of old man: Guard! Can you hear me from over there?

My legs are exhausted from walking. I must sit down and get my breath back. anton: I’m listening, comrade from the district center. Speak your requirement. voice of old man: Listen to me! Futilla Ivanovna is to walk free—by order of the district prosecutor. Henceforward until further notice neither you nor anyone else is to touch her.

She is to be reinstated in her former position, with full rights of citizenship.

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anton: Henceforward until further notice? How long does that mean? voice of old man: Henceforward means forever. She can walk free as far as the grave—the prosecutor has other concerns.

Futilla Ivanovna’s a good lass—she doesn’t kill for nothing. anton: Go and have a word with comrade Bos. He, in his capacity of chairman, must read me the directive—you don’t carry enough credibility. voice of old man: I’ll call out to him in a moment. I’m worn out from walking—how I long to live until fully schematized transport! anton: Your position will not entitle you to transport. voice of old man: I’ll make a career for myself, then—I’ll climb higher. After all, I’m a zealous worker. Well, it’s time I went on my way. Ay, ay, ay, what it is to serve the district at such an hour of time! (Mutters and groans.)

Pause. futilla: Old, old bastard of an old man! anton: Old age, in the event of its being profitable to the state, is permissible for an nth interval of time.

A demobilized soldier arrives, looking vigilantly around him.

He wears a Red Army greatcoat and has a knapsack on his back.

This is georgy garmalov, futilla’s husband. futilla: You’ve come back to our kolkhoz? You’ve come to me? Georgy! I’m in here, I’ve been locked up. garmalov (startled): Futilla! Where are you? Why are you in there? Who’s making you suffer? futilla: Put your mouth to the wall. I’ll kiss you with my tongue. garmalov: Is our boy alive or dead?

futilla: He’s alive. And he looks like both of us . . . Bend down closer. I can see you, but the wire cuts into my face. (Claws at the wall.) Quick! I’m getting cold in here. garmalov runs his hands over the prison wall. anton (getting to his feet): Keep your distance, citizen, from this classified construction. garmalov (recognizing anton): Are you Antoshka Endov? anton: Whatever my name, I am a man of definition! garmalov: Comrade Endov: release my wife. anton: Masterpieces like yourself show up every day—keep your distance! garmalov: Don’t be afraid. I’m a Red Army soldier, I will do no harm. I miss my family. futilla: Georgy! You’re a soldier and I’m the kolkhoz chairman. I order you to remove Antoshka’s rifle! garmalov: Don’t you dare wrong my wife! (Rushes at anton.)

She’s the chairman—the Soviet boss! anton (shoots): I live life seriously. I strike terror into everyone! futilla: You missed! anton: Don’t speak too soon—that was a warning! (Adopts the pose of a marksman.) A platoon commander of the Red Army reserve never misses!

With the howl of a meek man, garmalov seizes anton.

He knocks the rifle out of his hands, breaks it in two, and throws it to one side.

Aha! Assaulting a guard. It being peacetime, that’ll be ten years. An inescapable fact! bos appears. bos: Antoshka! Leave now—you’re being replaced!

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anton: Time you stopped showing up late! An official from the district center has ordered that Futilla Ivanovna— bos: I know, I know. For a long time now I’ve known and understood everything. anton: And he (pointing to garmalov) should be sentenced without delay to ten years within our prison system! bos: Who is he? Who does he fight for? anton: He’s Futilla Ivanovna’s spouse. He has assaulted a guard.

It is essential that merciless— bos: Stop, you classic of the masses! At the end of the calendar year we shall record this event in the balance sheet of the class struggle. Go and check our measuring instruments of weight, draw up a meteorological bulletin, busy yourself with questions of pasture management, check the stove in the canteen kitchen, draw up a plan of your invention on a scale of— anton: Which of my inventions? There is a maximal quantity of them! bos: The most important of all—this hut, which confines within it a human being. anton: It is essential that electrical current be directed through all the barbed wire. bos: Go get stuck in, Antoshka! anton: Antoshka himself knows very well what should be stuck in and what pulled out in the unison of labor, with no reward of either glory or food. bos: Hurry up then and get organizing! anton: Time to aspire! (Disappears.) garmalov: Old man, release my woman for me.

bos: You’ll have her soon enough. Store up your patience until bliss. futilla (clawing at the wall): I’m cold in here. I’m squeezing myself with my own hands to get warm. Something hot inside me is going cold. bos: You have warm hands. You can warm whatever’s going cold. futilla: I don’t know, Grandpa Bos. Maybe nothing but cold will remain in my hands—and they’ll turn cold too! garmalov: Futilla! Breathe on your own self—then you’ll warm up! futilla: I’m breathing anyway, I’m warming up already. Go and labor on the wells. Feed people something—they haven’t eaten. Can you see a sail out to sea? garmalov (looking out to sea): There’s no sail to be seen, Futilla. bos (releasing the bolt): Come back out, Futilla Ivanovna, to your former happiness. Soviet power loves you. futilla (comes out, wrinkling her eyes and rubbing her hands over an emaciated body): And where’s Georgy from the Red Army?

He’s my husband! garmalov: I’m here, Futilla Ivanovna. futilla: Have you served your term! garmalov: My successes have entitled me to early release.

I’ve returned on indefinite leave to my permanent place of residence—to help the kolkhoz regime! futilla embraces garmalov. garmalov responds by cautiously clasping her to his body, holding her in a modest embrace. futilla: And you won’t prove to be a class enemy?

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garmalov (withdrawing a little): How dare you? I’m a Red Army soldier! futilla (pressing herself against him): I shall love you, I shall be a wife to you once again. garmalov: Thank you, Futilla Ivanovna. I shall endeavor to be a full and complete shock worker. futilla: Be sure to spare no effort! We’re weak from hunger and class enemies, we’re waiting for the ship carrying our grain and our sheep. Can you see a sail out there? (Looks out to sea.) The wind’s getting up a little. garmalov: And where’s our son? futilla: With Ksyusha. Have a look at him—then get down to work. You must redo all that Antoshka has done. bos: But Antoshka’s a peerless shock worker! futilla: Be quiet! You have no vigilance! Antoshka’s work all turns out wrong. He digs a well—it goes dry. He bakes a hundred weights from clay—they crumble. He made this prison—it terrifies criminals and they can escape! We want everything done proper and forever. Your Antoshka’s insignificant piffle! bos (meekly): I have nothing to say. futilla (to garmalov): Let’s kiss now. garmalov wipes his mouth and kisses futilla tenderly, holding her protectively.

I love you. We need husbands and loyal kolkhozniks. garmalov (crisply): I shall endeavor to live rigorously, both as husband and kolkhoznik. bos (thoughtfully): Men disappear in the world, but women remain eternal.

garmalov: Good-bye, Futilla. futilla: Come to me in the evening—depending on your output I’ll put you down for a workday.30 garmalov leaves. bos: Futilla! futilla: What is it, Grandpa Bos? bos: Let’s kiss. futilla: Only not on the lips. bos: However you like—your body’s enough. futilla: All you want is the body—you don’t love the worldview. bos: The body, only the body. (Kisses futilla on the temple.)

I love this essence! My girl, you haven’t got anything chemical, have you? futilla: No, Grandpa, you’ve eaten the whole of our pharmacy already. Go and get some bleach off Ksyusha—I told her to buy some long ago. bos: I’ll go and eat some of this bleach. (Leaves.) futilla (alone): Not a ship to be seen out to sea! What a brilliant light everywhere—it must be joyful to live in the world now! I can hear some noise! What’s going on in the whole world? (Looks perplexedly into space and listens intently.) Over there lies imperialism, yes, it’s boring and awful there, I stand alone on the shore, and behind me there stands all the entire Soviet Union of Bolsheviks . . . But I’ve grown weak, you can see my ribs, my husband won’t love me . . . We must hurry up and build the winter sheepfolds. I’ll look after the grain, I’ll guard it myself, I won’t sleep. (A distant harmonious hum. futilla looks up at the sky.) An airplane flying over the Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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desert! The plane is ours too—in it is a drop of our kolkhoz blood. May it fly higher—we shall endure!

Enter ksyusha. ksyusha: Futilla, there’s no food—the men are all collapsing.

Antoshka’s throwing up—he’s eaten some poisonous herb. futilla: They should have protected our grain and our sheep from the kulaks. Let them suffer now—that will be science and technology for them. ksyusha: I’m running out of milk. We have no food for our children. futilla: Squeeze out some of your lymph—like I did last night. ksyusha: Futilla, the whole people will rise up. futilla: Subkulaks aren’t people. They don’t rise up—they lie down. ksyusha: Futilla, surely a life like this must part body and soul? futilla: Ksyusha! To hell with you—you take me for God! Have you given my child something to suck? ksyusha: I have. Your man brought some bread with him. He chewed a little and slipped it into the child’s mouth. futilla: Very good . . . Listen, take my man and go as quick as you can to the state meat farm. In exchange for all our hay maybe they’ll give you a sheep! ksyusha: And who’ll feed my baby without me? futilla: I will. Quick, go. ksyusha: Your milk’s dried up. futilla: Don’t worry. I’ll give him my bones to gnaw. ksyusha (with feeling): Futilla, when did you last eat? futilla: I had a little fish soup in Astrakhan—twelve days ago.

ksyusha: But how can— futilla: Do as I say and go! Don’t try to scare me, and don’t make up to me either. Mollycoddled kulak—weeping one minute, picking a fight the next! ksyusha: A right old bitch you’ve become! It’s not nice even to look at you. It’s disgusting! (Sets off.) futilla (calling out): Grandpa Bos! voice of bos: I’m coming, my girl. Don’t stir from there without me. futilla: Be quick then!

Enter bos. bos: Do you miss me? Is it boring when I’m gone? futilla: Yes, it is. You know, Grandpa, step-by-step I’m coming to love you. bos: Love me a little. But Grandpa won’t love you. futilla: Why did Grandpa love me before? bos: Because you’re an illusion. An empty delusion for my sorrow. futilla: That’s true. I’ve never been conceited—I’m an empty delusion. bos: I have an exact knowledge of the structure of the entire world. The world is constituted from a confluence of psycho-crazed piffle. And that’s all there is in you too! futilla (lying down on the ground): Yes, Grandpa, there are piffles inside me too. I can feel them. bos: You are merely a poor body, aching from the sad stuff cramped within it. futilla: There’s not much stuff left in me, I haven’t eaten for a long time.

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bos: It’s all the same. I ate for a hundred years—and I’m still a nonentity. futilla: Put your arms around me then. Forget yourself and die, dear old man! bos: You’re right, my girl. Let’s warm ourselves together, before you cool down . . . (Lies down beside her, close to the prison basket.) futilla (caressing bos): Grandpa Bos, you’re a great worldwide sage. Feed the kolkhoz! bos: How, my girl? futilla: Think something up, think something chemical.

Death’s on its way to us—feel my bones. bos feels futilla’s bones. bos: You’re thin. I can sense your heart—it’s come close now. futilla: Soon it will beat its way right through my skin . . . I want to sleep. bos: Don’t sleep, my eternal one. Talk to me—I feel bored. futilla: Think up some food for us quickly. You know the stuff of the whole world. Nothing but piffles, you said so yourself.

Give us some of these piffles—then we can eat them. (Brief pause.) Think quickly—you know everything. bos: I am thinking. Give me a kiss. futilla: In a moment. First think some food up—even just a smidgen. bos: In a moment.

Pause. bos tosses and turns on the ground in the anguish of vain thought. Then he begins to roll about, his whole torso rotating. futilla: Well? Are you thinking?

bos: I am. futilla: Any thoughts? bos: Not yet. Don’t pester me with piffle. I want to sleep.

In the depth of the kolkhoz some babies begin to cry. futilla: Sleep, then. I’ll go feed the babies. bos: What will you feed them with? You’ve dried right up. futilla: I’ll squeeze something out of myself—perhaps there’ll be some blood. (Exit.) bos (alone, lying down): How can I think up bread for the kolkhoz? Nobody ever thinks anything in the world! There’s no thought anywhere—only fraud and the machinations of chance.

Enter interhom with a suitcase. She sees bos. interhom: Johann, is it you? Here—alive and well? Thank God! bos (getting up off the ground): Interhom! My mad, faithful child! interhom (nestling up to bos, speaking quickly): For ten days I’ve been driving alone through the steppe. The chauffeur died. I’ve been searching for you all over the local republic, I left the car at the district center, where all the authorities are. I’ve come seventy kilometers on foot, they said Mister Bos was living in the little huts—and living well! We shall be together again without separation! Mister Latrinov sent me on a mission throughout the Soviet Union—to search for the ancient and terrible forces that counter the Revolution—but there aren’t any. I’ve searched and searched, I’m exhausted, and I still haven’t found them . . .

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with charm, but he’s not a Marxist and they took away his— I’ve forgotten the word—the horse you ride on to make your career! My darling Johann, how exhausted you are, O my eternal grandfather-husband. (Kisses bos.) bos: Wait, my nonentity! You know I like to caress radically. interhom: I’m radical too. I don’t like opportunistic half-measures! bos: Radical! Opportunistic half measures! You’ve changed! interhom: Johann, I’m a Marxist! Mister Latrinov taught me—and it’s all so easy and pleasant, everyone’s quite astonished and they adore me. It’s so interesting to live and die on behalf of all the workers! I want to join the Party, I shall struggle! Only I’ve forgotten one thing—they advised me to be as . . . As conscious as possible? As serious as possible? No! What else is there? bos: Vigilant! interhom: That’s the word! You’re a genius!

Brief pause. bos: But what’s turned you—into such a bitch? Who thought you up? interhom: I’m not a bitch. I’ve learned all charm and bon ton in the cultural houses of Moscow. I’ve restructured myself! bos (seriously and sadly): Listen, slut. There are no Latrinovs here—only Bolsheviks. And they’ll throw you out! interhom: Outright lies and downright deception! Underestimation! I’m an ideological worker, I’m a fighter on the cultural front, I’ve collaborated on three sketches and a play! I’m a member of the All-Union Union of Soviet Writers, they’re expecting a growth of quality from me, I shall be cherished wherever I go.

bos (thoughtfully): You’re right, Interhom. If the world is perishing, then you must be thriving. What’s that in your suitcase? interhom: Food and hygiene. bos: Good. Let’s go and caress radically. We’ll exchange our organisms. Feelings—what else is there for us to think up? interhom: Ah, Johann! But where? bos: Here! (Points to the prison basket.) interhom: And let’s not waste time! I’m all wilted from the journey—without love there’s no complete hygiene.

Both exit into the wattle basket. Pause. voice of futilla (Lulling her child, she sings approximately the following):31 Sleep, and don’t wake up soon.

Sleep—free of boredom and pain.

Soon our cows will grow big And we will reap fields of grain.

Best to forget your own self— We live in a world full of dread.

Warm yourself in my breast— Science, he tells us, is Bread. futilla (calling): Grandpa Bos! Silence. futilla comes onstage, wrapping a blanket around a baby and pressing it to her breast.

But now my breast is cold too . . . What can I do to warm him up? Hide him inside my belly again? It’s cramped there— he’ll suffocate. And out here it’s all spacious and empty—he’ll die. (Looks hard at her child.) Are you suffering badly? Say it’s not too bad! Say something to me! Why do you close your eyes and not say anything? What are you thinking about all Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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on your own? (The wattle prison begins to stir. Occasional rhythmic creaking sounds. These sounds are repeated. futilla listens, unable to guess their cause.) What’s that—someone riding by in the distance? They’ve stopped! Come quick, we’re bored to death here!

She bends down. anton runs in. anton: My body’s starting to languish with death! I’m afraid I shall lose my consciousness! The people have fallen silent, they’re lying down half-asleep. futilla: Are they still breathing? anton: I ordered everyone to breathe on without respite!

Everyone who keeps breathing till evening will be put down for one workday! futilla: No, Antoshka! That’s a mistake. Our register won’t be approved. anton: Nothing is without mistakes, we learn from mistakes.

Mistakes are essential, we must organize mistakes. I haven’t eaten any provisions for ten days—my hands work, my body hurtles about, but my head can no longer think anything!

(Rushes about the stage.) futilla: Who can I barter myself to in exchange for bread and grain for the kolkhoz? Antoshka, where can I get food for those who have not eaten? (Sits down on the ground in sorrow.)

The sounds from the wattle prison cease. anton: Time now to organize food! Warm the child, keep his life going into the reserve of the future! futilla: I shall. anton: He shall live forever in Communism!

futilla (looking at the child): No, he’s dead now. (Passes the child to anton.) anton (taking the child): Fact: he has died forever!

From inside the wattle basket interhom lets out a gurgling, guttural scream. futilla: A woman has died somewhere! anton: Doesn’t matter. Science will achieve everything—your child, along with everyone who has perished prematurely but can still bring about benefit, will be revived immortally back to life and activism!

Brief pause. futilla: No, don’t try to deceive me. Give me my baby—I’m going to cry for him. That’s all—there won’t be anything more. (Takes the baby from anton.) anton: Sit and cry like the rain. But we shall look on your tears as sabotage of action! anton disappears. bos emerges from the wattle prison. bos: Weep, Futilla! futilla: I shall endure. bos: I heard everything, my little girl. How can you and I go on living now? futilla: Have you thought up food for the kolkhoz? bos: Yes. I’ve just strangled a class enemy and they’ve left some food—sausage, butter, and permanent milk. Do you want to eat? futilla: Where is it? bos: In the prison hut. Interhom—my former European woman—is lying there. I lived with her just now, but then I cut short her breathing— Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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futilla: Why did you kill her? bos: She was a danger to you and the whole of socialism—more dangerous than old-style imperialism.

Brief pause. futilla: You must go somewhere else, Grandpa Bos. bos: There’s nowhere to go, Futilla. futilla: You’ll find somewhere. You should go. We’ll bury your woman in a grave, we’ll fill ourselves with our own food . . . You’re piffle! bos: Where can I go, Futilla? My glimmering one! futilla: Go away and die. bos: Soon, maybe . . . It’s getting late in the world. Though this too is a laughing matter. What’s death? Raw material for the stupidest of the elements! There’s nowhere for anyone serious to disappear to. futilla: Hold my dead son for a moment. I’ll go and wash my face in the sea. (Gets up from the ground, hands her baby to bos, and leaves.) bos (alone, to the baby): You’ve already died, little fellow. You’re the flesh of Futilla gone cold—you’re my darling, my little one! (Kisses the baby.) Let’s lie side by side on the ground, I’ll die along with you too. (Lies down on the ground, places the baby beside him, and embraces it.) May the light darken in my eyes and my heart cease to feel irritation. Dear God, dear God—so childlike and forgotten!

Enter ksyusha and garmalov. ksyusha: Where’s Futilla gone? Everyone’s lying down and sleeping—it’s really annoying!

Enter futilla.

futilla: Did you barter the hay? ksyusha: Fat chance of that! We met the representative. “Nothing but wormwood,” he says. “This won’t thicken the fleece on a sheep. If you’re so desperate, then chew on it yourselves!”

Well, so much for the kolkhoz—now we can all lie down and die! And to think how we hoped . . . My little one’s lying senseless. futilla: And mine’s dead. garmalov: Who’s dead? (Rushes to the baby lying beside bos.)

My poor little weak one, what will be left for me to feel now? I don’t know if I can go on living! bos: Don’t make so much noise up there, citizen, give me some peace! Ksyusha, bring me some kind of chemical for the night! ksyusha: You should take liquid manure, you old cripple! If only you’d croak—then I could eat you! (Shouting) Chemicals! A curse on Moscow! I’ll scratch your eyes out for giving us a fate like ours! (Disappears from the stage.) anton runs in. anton: The counterrevolution is letting itself go now!! (Falls to the ground from weakness. Gets up again.) It’s nothing, my reason is alive, my ideology is fully intact. Hunger has nested only inside my body—and nowhere else! I shall rise again and rush forward to victory! Long live— (Loses consciousness.) garmalov (getting up, moving away from the baby and toward futilla): What’s happened? Why have you allowed discipline to unravel? There’s nothing to eat and the children are dying.

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futilla: It’s only our own child that’s dead. You gave him too much bread. The others are all alive, they’re only pretending.

(Half delirious, begins to croon.)

Nulimbatuiya, nulimbatuiya, Alyaylya, my poor Alyaylya.

(Seizes the child.) So poor and weak! (Calms down a little, lays the baby close up against bos.) Warm him! bos: I’m growing cold myself. garmalov: Away with grief! We must come to our senses!

We’re more than a family, we’re the whole of humanity! Now is the time to endure and labor—assign me some task before my consciousness goes out of its mind. futilla: Lower this wattle prison basket into the sea. Wind the barbed wire tight and we’ll catch some fish. Then we can eat our fill. garmalov: Ah, a rationalization! I understand. I’ll make a net, I’ll make a trap for the fish underwater, I know what to do.

But where can I find bait? futilla: I’ll give you some later. garmalov: And some thick rope? futilla: You’ll find some in the kolkhoz. garmalov: There’s none there. futilla: I’ll cut my hair. garmalov: Don’t bother—I’ll go and make some rope.

(Leaves.) futilla: Grandpa Bos! (bos remains silent.) Grandpa! Get up!

It’ll be evening soon. Make a fire—we’ll be cooking fish soup. (bos remains silent.) Antoshka! Get up! Soon we’ll be eating. anton remains silent.

(Leaning down very close to bos) Grandpa Ivan! Are you pretending? (Feels him.) No, he’s dead already—he’s gone!

Grandpa! Stop pretending, your cheek’s warm. Grandpa Ivan, death is just piffle—so how come you’re dead? (Weeps quietly over bos.) anton: It’s obscene—watching someone weep over the class alien. One of my eyes is still open—I see everything! futilla: He knew Karl Marx and he worked here as a bookkeeper—that’s why I’m crying. I’m in charge of the kolkhoz, it’s my duty to pity him. anton: My reason is pure, but you speak dialectics! I allow you your tears. futilla: Sleep, Antoshka! anton: When you haven’t eaten, sleep without food fully takes the place of bread. I’m asleep. futilla: If everyone dies, I shall remain. There has to be someone, or things won’t be right in the world, will they? bos (gets to his feet and then sits): I thought I’d died. I began to laugh and then I woke up. futilla: You won’t try to die again? bos: It doesn’t work out, my girl. For death too you need to possess some stupid psychosis. Without stupidity you can’t do a thing. futilla (sitting down beside bos): And what will become of you now? bos: Nothing. I shall languish without motion amid the historical current. I’m the same piffle as everything living or dead.

One can understand everything, my orphan, but there’s nowhere to escape to.

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futilla (sadly): You’re going to leave us? bos: I’ll go on my way. I’m bored of you all with your youth and enthusiasm, your capacity for work, and your faith in the future. You stand at the beginning, but I already know the end. We can’t understand one another. futilla: I don’t understand, that’s true, but you and I will be friends . . . Grandpa Ivan, you know what . . . I think . . . you’re a fool! bos: I’m glad you’re starting to understand matters. futilla: Wait, Grandpa . . . I can see a sail! (Stands up and looks out to sea.) No, it’s not a sail, it was a bird flying by.

Enter garmalov. garmalov: I’ve sorted out a rope. (In his hands is some bast that he has twisted into a rope.) Futilla, give me the bait now, to put in the basket. I’ll roll it along to the shore now. (He touches the basket and opens the door.) futilla (picking up her baby): Georgy, we don’t have any bait.

Let’s put our son there—he’s dead now, and science says that the dead don’t feel anything. bos (to himself): Even in memory, there is no God. futilla: Put him there, Georgy. He tasted so good. I loved kissing him as he fell asleep in my arms.

She kisses her child. garmalov, by now, has opened the door in the wattle basket and looked inside. garmalov: There’s some woman lying here—a beauty all over.

Someone’s bourgeois woman! She’s been strangled—her neck’s broken. bos: Throw her into the sea in this wattle prison. You’ll be able to catch a lot of fish on her body.

futilla: That’s true, Georgy. Get to work quickly. georgy: I’ll roll the prison out to the stand. Then I’ll sort out the tackle and undress the woman, so the fish can sense her.

And I’ve found a suitcase with rations of food! futilla: We don’t need them. Leave them for bait too. futilla puts her baby back on the ground, beside anton.

Pause. garmalov turns the cylindrical prison basket onto its side and rolls it off the stage. Its dry creaking is lost in the space outside. bos: Good-bye, Futilla. futilla: Good-bye, Grandpa, good-bye forever! (Rushes toward bos, embraces him, and kisses him on the lips.) bos (holding futilla): Forever? No, it’s impossible to part with you forever. I shall return to you again—but not for a while!

Not till you’re an old woman too, you poor, thin, foolish warmth of my old heart. bos kisses futilla on the eyes. Then he moves away from her and leaves the stage. Pause. Out at sea appears the white sail of a small fishing boat. Above the white sail—a red flag. futilla does not see the sail. futilla: My baby isn’t breathing. Grandpa Bos has left. Soon it’ll be evening—how boring it gets on my own . . . anton (jumping up onto his feet): You and I are alone now until the final victory—long live comrade Stalin!—for age upon age to the nth degree! (Falls again to the ground.) futilla (indifferently catching sight of the sail): There’s our ship—our grain and our sheep are on their way home . . .

But my child feels nothing . . . I’ll go and wake the kolkhoz.

(Leaves.)

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anton is left onstage, lying down, with futilla’s dead baby lying beside him. A sail out to sea. Pause. anton (jumping up to his full height): Forward now!!!

He disappears instantly.

The End. Written in 1933 Translated by Robert Chandler

GRANDMOTHER’S LITTLE HUT (An Unfinished Play)

CH A R ACTE R S

dusya, an orphan tatyana filippovna, dusya’s aunt archapov arkady, the aunt’s husband mitya, an orphan mitya’s uncle a young woman, the uncle’s girlfriend

ACT 1 Scene 1 A room in the small, old house of a tradesman. A dresser. Above it are photographs of the owners’ relatives; on it stand aging souvenirs and knickknacks from the nineteenth century. Furniture that had once been a part of the wife’s dowry—plush sofas and chairs, now threadbare. A trunk; a table covered by a tablecloth; one or two windows with ornate curtains cut from paper; pots with flowers on the windowsills; a mirror on the dresser—and any other bits and

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pieces that an old, thrifty couple might have possessed. The door between this room and the kitchen is open: in the kitchen can be seen a scoured kitchen table, plates, and a Russian stove in one corner. archapov is in the room, sitting at the table and eating from a little bowl. tatyana filippovna, his wife, is in the kitchen; leaning on a large stove fork, she looks out at her husband. tatyana filippovna: Full yet? archapov (wipes his mustache): Bring me some more. tatyana filippovna: Sure that wasn’t enough? archapov: Too watery. Make it thicker. tatyana filippovna: All right, have all you want! You’ll feel it later, though. archapov: Go light the samovar. tatyana filippovna: You’ll be sweating after all that tea, won’t you? You’ll sweat and sweat—and then you’ll catch cold . . . archapov: And then I’ll get well again—don’t fret. tatyana filippovna: Oh, go on, eat and drink all you want.

With you around we’ll never be putting any money aside— you’re a bottomless pit! No money to fix the roof—but we eat beef every day . . . (She wipes away her tears with the edge of her apron.)

A latch rattles against the door that opens from the porch into the kitchen. archapov: Are you going to open the door? tatyana filippovna: There’s no hurry. It could be a beggar woman . . . archapov: A beggar—in our day and age? tatyana undoes the latch and bolt of the kitchen door.

dusya enters barefoot and bareheaded. tatyana filippovna looks her over coldly and indifferently. tatyana filippovna: What are you doing here? dusya: When my mother was dying, she told me to come to you. And now my father is dead too, and I’ve been living all alone . . . Dear Auntie, I don’t have anyone now! tatyana filippovna lifts the edge of her apron and wipes her eyes. tatyana filippovna: No one in our family lasts long. And I’m no different—I only look like I’m doing okay, but I’m not in good shape . . . No, not in good shape at all . . .

Pause. tatyana filippovna cries. dusya watches her timidly.

Oh, come on, have a seat here in the kitchen. There’s some herring on that plate over there—go and get yourself some. dusya takes a piece of herring from a wooden plate and eats it timidly. tatyana filippovna goes back out to her husband, into the main room.

God relieves us of our own children—and what then?

Then our relatives fling children at us. There she is, Arkasha— my niece! She’s a true orphan now: she’ll need to be fed—not to mention new clothes and shoes! archapov (sullenly): What more could we ask for! dusya comes out from the kitchen. dusya: I don’t need to be fed, I’ve eaten all I want. I just want to sleep. tatyana filippovna: If you want to sleep, then lie down and sleep. There’s a trunk over there . . . When was your father’s funeral?

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dusya: It’s been seven days. dusya lies down on the trunk, her face to the wall; she curls her body closer into itself and tries to pull down her dress—she is growing out of it. archapov taps his fingers on the table and looks at the clock on the wall. archapov: Bring me my food, I need to go to work soon. tatyana filippovna: Why the hurry? (A little more quietly) Maybe she’ll fall asleep soon, just wait a little. archapov: I don’t care—she’s not my relative. I just want peace and order in my own home. tatyana filippovna goes to the kitchen, takes a pot and pan from the stove, slices some fresh bread, brings the bread to the table, goes back again, then bustles about between the stove and her husband, bringing things to the table one at a time—the salt shaker, a fork, a piece of bread. All the time, she keeps talking. tatyana filippovna: In she comes—and she makes herself at home just like that. Oh, my dear uncle and aunt, she says to herself, they don’t lack for anything! They’ll feed me, they’ll give me clothes and shoes. They’ll find me a husband and give me a dowry!! . . . Here I am—what more could they ask for? A hungry, unwashed, barefoot, unhappy little orphan in a skirt grown too small for her. Soon, God willing, the two of them will kick the bucket—and then I’ll be the woman of the house. All they earned by the sweat of their brow—all mine to spend as I please! . . . Well, Dusya, you know what I think you should do? Find yourself bed and board down below with the devils! As for my goods, I won’t let you even blow the dust off them. And may my bread choke you! My man toils all day long—out in the wind and cold. I don’t sit

down myself from dawn till dusk—and then along comes dear Dusya: “Here I am! Take good care of me! Love me and nourish me . . .”

Short pause. archapov eats. tatyana filippovna, irritated, hurries toward the trunk, where dusya, as before, lies facing the wall. tatyana filippovna: Just look at her—how sweet and cozy!

Short pause. dusya (not turning over): I’m not asleep. I was listening to you.

Short pause. dusya sits up.

I’m going now. I’m not staying with you. tatyana filippovna (with a sigh): All right, go. Seems you do, after all, have somewhere to go . . . dusya: Yes, I’m going to the Soviet Union of Republics. archapov: You should say it in full: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. dusya: You don’t need it in full. tatyana filippovna: Oh, she is sure of herself, she’s not one to be frightened! And she’s taken offense! . . . All right, go and live where you like—we’re not a roadside inn and we’re not a republic. dusya leaves in silence, without a glance at her aunt and uncle.

Scene 2 An apartment in a small building. Usual furnishings for a laborer’s or office worker’s family. Two large windows looking out onto a Grandmother’s Li le Hut

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quiet, provincial street. Outside—the light of a sunny day; in the distance—two or three trees and a wide-open field stretching off into space. On the wall between the windows (facing the audience) is a large portrait of a young smiling woman; the portrait is decorated with pine branches and is bordered by black crepe. On the floor of the room—a rug; a boy, mitya, sits on this rug, playing with some toys. It’s quiet everywhere—in the room and outside the building; all that can be heard is the heavy breathing of mitya, who is intensely focused on his game. Solemn music suddenly starts up in the distance—Red Army soldiers or pioneers are marching somewhere. mitya stops playing; he cries quietly and slowly and, sitting all alone on the rug, wipes his eyes with his hands. Eyes red with tears, he gets to his feet, walks up to the wall, looks at the portrait of the young woman, and begins speaking to her: mitya: Mama, why did you die? . . . Papa is out at work, Grandma Povanna lives far away in a little hut, she’s sick, she just lies there without ever dying—and I sit here on my own, weeping for you . . . Mama, please come back and live with us—it must be boring there with only dead people. We’ll be together again, and I’ll listen to you—and when I grow up, then you can die again, and we’ll bury you with music. Or better still, don’t die at all . . . Come back now, Mama, even if it’s only for a minute, and then you can go away again.

Short pause.

No, I understand—you’ll never be here with me. Your eyes are shut, you’ve gone blind, and you’ve forgotten everyone.

I’m the only one who remembers you now, and I won’t ever forget you.

mitya bows his head before his mother’s portrait and cries quietly. dusya appears a little way from the window. She stops a little way away, and then comes closer; she presses her face against the glass and taps timidly on the frame with one finger, but mitya, absorbed in his grief, his head now resting on the table beneath his mother’s portrait, does not hear her. dusya looks around the room. She catches sight of the boy—seeing him through the single pane of glass, she taps more loudly. mitya looks up, goes to the window, and looks at dusya (his back to the audience). dusya: Give me something to drink, I just ate some herring. mitya: We only have plain water—you need to add some syrup. dusya: Sure, I’ll have it with syrup. mitya: They sell it in a booth on the corner—go buy some and drink all you want. dusya: I don’t have any money. mitya: Are you poor? dusya: Yes, I’m poor. mitya: You’re lying—nobody’s poor. We were poor too, but not anymore. We have milk now, and meat. dusya: Let me just have a mug of water. Open the door for me. mitya: I live locked in. My father locks me inside with his key.

He’s away all today—he’s gone to the brick factory—and I’m living all on my own, it’s boring . . . They won’t take me at the kindergarten, there’s no room, there are a lot of people being born, and there aren’t enough kindergartens. We had saboteurs and we had spies—half and half! dusya: If the building catches fire—you’ll burn to death. You’re still little.

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mitya: I won’t. I’ll open the window and escape. My father’s taught me everything. dusya: Open the window for me. mitya: I’m afraid—you’re a stranger. dusya presses her face firmly against the windowpane; her face flattens out, distorted to the point of looking ridiculous. Then she sticks out her tongue. mitya laughs at her. dusya (stepping back from the window): Open up, I’m exhausted.

I’m not going to kill you. mitya: Are you someone’s mama too? dusya (slowly tracing her finger across the glass): No, I’m not really anything much, I’m not a mama. My own mama died.

Short pause. mitya: My mama died too . . . Only my mama wasn’t like yours. dusya: Yours was better? mitya: Yeah, mine was better. Yours was an old, old woman, soon you’re going to be old too. My mama just died—she wasn’t sick. It was poison—she died right away. She was in pain, but not a lot. Now she lies there and she’s not in pain.

Pause. mitya climbs onto the windowsill and, with some difficulty, pulls the bolt and the hook free from the window frame. The window opens. dusya climbs through the window and into the room. mitya hands her a mug of water. dusya drinks. mitya looks at her a little nervously.

Don’t take any of our stuff. dusya (in surprise): Of course not. Who’s taught you to say things like that? Do I look like a thief?

mitya: My uncle’s taught me everything. I know. dusya sits down on the rug in the middle of the room and starts putting the toys in order. mitya squats next to her, on his haunches, and eyes his guest. dusya: Your uncle’s a fool. But where’s your father? mitya: My father left us for a fat woman. Mama said he fell in love with some other woman because she was fat, and then he went off with her to distant parts. My father didn’t love Mama anymore. “You’re bourgeois,” he told her. “I’ve found happiness in someone else, in someone gentle and wonderful—and anyway you and I were never suited,” he said—and off he went. In his suitcase he put his coat, his jackets and pants, his handkerchiefs and everything, and the ashtray—he spilled the ash on the floor, what did he care now?—and he took all the money from the table, then he came back again and told Mama to give him the savings book.

Mama gave it to him—and my father left us. He said to me, “Farewell, Mitya, study hard, be a pioneer, do what your pioneer leader says, be a young Communist, be an activist, be an honest citizen, read some classics, and don’t smoke.” dusya: And what did you say? mitya: I said, “Papa, it would be better to stay at home and become suited to Mama again.” dusya: And what did he answer? mitya: He said, “No, we’re strangers now.” And I said, “Well then, go and get yourself suited to that fat woman. And take your Short Course with you.” Papa’s only read two pages this year, though he tells everyone he’s been studying it deeply.

But I’ve already spelled out every word in it.”1

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Short pause. dusya: Did your mama live long after your father, after he left? mitya: No, not long. He left, then Mama fell and began to cry.

She loved him all the same and felt suited to him . . . After that, Mama was always silent. She would talk quietly to me, but never to anyone else, and then she died. dusya: How did she die? mitya (distantly): She’s my mama, not yours. I’m the only one who knows how she died, it’s not for you to ask questions. dusya: But what did she die from? mitya: She took poison. She loved Papa and couldn’t forget him. She would shout and call for him in her sleep. dusya takes mitya and sits him on her knees. dusya: Your mama shouldn’t have died. She didn’t pity you, she left you to live all alone. mitya: That’s none of your business. You’ve had your drink—so go climb back out the window. (He gets up off dusya’s knees and moves away from her.) dusya: Your mother loved herself and her husband—your father—more than she loved you. mitya: Wrong order. Papa more than anyone, then me—and herself least of all. dusya: Better if she’d loved you more than anyone, then she wouldn’t have wanted to die. mitya: Better if it had been you who died, not Mama. dusya (standing up from the rug): Better . . . Let me wash you, you look like a chimney sweep. mitya: Are you going to be our cook and nanny? dusya: We’ll see.

mitya: Will you go out for a walk with me later? dusya: Yes, I will. mitya: I’ll tell my uncle to hire you as a nanny. He’s been looking everywhere, but no luck. He says the cooks are all snakes—all studying to be pilots and scientists.

Meanwhile dusya walks through the door (on the right or left) to the kitchen and comes back carrying a basin of water, some soap, a sponge, and a towel. She puts the basin on a chair, or a stool, then quickly pulls mitya’s head down over the basin. She washes and soaps it.

The water’s cold. Why didn’t you heat some up on the primus, you snake? I can see why they didn’t want you to be a pilot. dusya: The water’s not that cold. You’ll be fine. It won’t hurt you . . . So when does your uncle come back? mitya: How would I know? This evening or maybe tomorrow.

There’s food waiting in the kitchen—lunch and supper. You can have some. dusya: Thank you. mitya: Don’t scratch my head with those nails of yours! Rinse the soap away, did you hear me? dusya: I am rinsing it away. But who is your uncle? mitya: A fool, you said so yourself. He runs around with different women, he wants to bring me a new mother. But when he does, I’ll leave home for an orphanage. I’ll just take Mama’s portrait and go . . . Hey, that got in my eyes. (Hoarsely) Damn you, you klutz! dusya: Just a moment. It’ll all be over soon. What’s your name? mitya: Dimitry Avdotich. dusya: There’s no such name as Avdotich.2

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mitya: It comes from my mother. I don’t use my father’s name. dusya: Your mama and I have the same name. mitya: My mama didn’t scratch me when she washed my hair. dusya: I won’t scratch you again. All over now. dusya wipes mitya’s head with the towel. mitya: Let’s have some food. Will you eat? dusya: After you. mitya: If anything’s left. mitya goes into the kitchen and comes back carrying a pot with two spoons inside, their handles sticking up from within, and he puts the pot on the table beneath the portrait of his mother.

Let’s have some kasha. Take a spoon. I’m not going to eat on my own. mitya and dusya eat kasha out of the pot.

In the course of this scene the view from the windows has changed: it is getting dark outside.

(Pointing his spoon at the window) My grandma lives in a little hut out there. It was Mama she loved most—and now it’s me. May she live on. dusya: Is she old? mitya: She’s a hundred. dusya: She’ll die soon. mitya: No, she can’t die. Her time’s come, but she can’t. dusya: Why not? Does death not come to her? mitya: No, death comes, but Grandma’s afraid to leave me in the world alone. How would I look after myself, she asks. So she doesn’t die. She’s waiting till I grow up and get old and come to live with her in her little hut. Then she’ll die. She wants me to shut her eyes. And I will.

Outside the windows it is now completely dark—a blue, late twilight; crickets in the neighborhood have started chirping.

(Pointing into the far distance) That’s where my grandma lives—far, far away. Too far away to see.

In the distance, a lonely, humble little light flares in the blue darkness.

That was Grandma lighting her lamp. She can’t come to me—her legs don’t go.

Far off, around the light, a little hut with a porch, faced with planks or boards, gradually becomes apparent; it has two windows lit from the inside; near the hut stand two old, bent willows.

I’m going to Grandma’s. We’ll have some compote right now, and then I’ll go. mitya fetches a jug of fruit compote from the kitchen, then puts it down on the table. dusya: You have it good, your grandma loves you. It’s because of you she doesn’t die. mitya: And it’s because of her that I didn’t die . . . When Mama died, I wanted to lie down beside her. I wanted to lie there on the table and stop breathing, because she wasn’t breathing either. But then I felt sorry for Grandma—it would be boring for her without me. dusya (thoughtfully): I wonder where my own grandma lives?

Short pause. mitya: My grandma can be half yours.

Evening has turned into night, but the light of the little hut in the distant field shines still brighter in the darkness; the light from its windows, along with the light of the stars, makes more apparent than ever the vision of the little hut and the two willows dozing beside it.

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Two people appear outside the open window: mitya’s uncle and a young woman. uncle (excited and merry): Mitya! Feeling bored in there? I’ll open up for you and let you out for a walk. I’ve brought you a new mama!

Sound of the door being unlocked from outside; the door opens; in come the uncle and a young woman. uncle (gesturing toward the smiling young woman): Here you are, Avdotich, your new mama. Better than the old one.

She’s going to live with us now. So you’d better listen to her, or else! Understand? (He looks closely at dusya.) And who do we have here? . . . Wait, stop! Nobody move! (He looks at the young woman, then back at dusya, comparing the two of them.) Stop! I see! (To the young woman) There’s been a mistake. Go back, my love, off you go. young woman: You trash! Don’t think I’ll ever marry you, not after this. I’m a citizen in my own right—I do light work and I get four hundred rubles a month for it! You know what you get for seduction of powerless women? (She grabs something fragile off a bookcase and throws it on the floor. It shatters.) I’ll teach you how to respect a woman! (She sits down in a chair.)

I’m not going anywhere—and that’s that. You brought me here—and now you’ll be living with me for the rest of your life! I’ll be the one organizing you and sorting you out! I’ll humble you once and for all! mitya presses closer to dusya. dusya takes him by the hand. dusya: But I’m . . . I’m already married. I’ve got an uncle and an aunt. You can’t marry me. No, you can’t marry anymore!

uncle: Oh, why were you in such a hurry? You should have waited! mitya: She’s my mama now! . . . (He squeezes dusya’s hand with both his own hands.) Let’s run away to my grandma. dusya: Come on, Dmitry Avdotich, let’s go.3 dusya takes mitya in her arms and climbs out the open window. mitya: The compote! Get the jug of compote—we didn’t finish it! dusya lowers mitya to the ground—both are already outside—then comes back into the room through the same window, picks up the jug and the spoons, and climbs out through the window again.

And dusya, putting the jug in mitya’s hands and then taking him in her arms, sets off toward his grandmother’s shining little hut. uncle: Mitya’s grandmother lives a long way away. (At this moment, the light in the little hut goes out; outside the windows, it is now pitch-dark.) They’ll never get there. young woman: What’s it to you if they get there or not? Good riddance! (And she starts to untie her boots.)

Curtain 1938–1940 Translated by Jesse Irwin

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Poster advertising a 2006 production of Fourteen Little Red Huts at Queen Mary University of London. Poster design by Niina Kortelainen.

AFTERWORD

A

t Queen Mary College, University of London, where I used to teach, there is a tradition of staging a Russian play, in Russian, once a year. Ten years ago, when no one else put themselves forward, I offered to direct Fourteen Little Red Huts. Other members of staff tried to persuade me to choose something “more straightforward,” “less harrowing,” “more stageable”; I replied that, since this would be my first experience of directing, I wanted to choose a play that I knew well and that was important to me.

Fourteen Little Red Huts has seldom been staged. I have heard of only three productions: in Saratov in the late 1980s, in Paris in 2000, and at the Voronezh International Platonov Festival in 2013. Platonov wrote several plays, as well as film scripts, but Russian theater directors evidently prefer to put on adaptations of his stories and novels. Why they avoid the plays I do not understand. Perhaps the plays truly are problematic and only my own blindness enabled me to step in “where angels fear to tread.” Or it may just be that Russian directors are slow to seek out new repertoire; Russian publishers have been

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equally slow to bring out accessible editions of recently discovered stories by Platonov.

After the college production of Uncle Vanya the previous year, a Russian colleague had said to me, “Chekhov was present.” I knew what he meant: the production had been far from faultless, but it had embodied something of Chekhov. The student director had, at least, not erected barriers between Chekhov and the audience—something that even the most prestigious directors do all too often. My hope was that the audience for Fourteen Little Red Huts would respond in a similar way, that they would feel afterward that at least something of Platonov “had been present.” I wanted to allow Platonov to speak; he had, after all, already suffered more than enough from interfering editors and censors. I wanted to impose as little as possible of my own, to allow the spirit of the production to emerge from the text itself. I know that Platonov used to read his work out loud in a neutral, inexpressive voice. I know that Beckett, whose work Fourteen Little Red Huts in many ways anticipates, constantly enjoined his actors “not to act.”

I also understood that I had to work with little time, little money, and a small, almost all-female cast with no understudies; whatever clever ideas might occur to me, I had to accept that chance would play an important role. Platonov himself can be seen as a collage artist, someone who put together works of remarkable philosophical and psychological subtlety out of whatever materials were nearest to hand: Soviet songs and slogans, articles from Pravda, speeches by Stalin, the language of bewildered—though often perceptive—workers and peasants. Throughout the rehearsals I tried to keep his example

in mind. In the end, chance was generous to us, transforming the aspect of the production about which I felt least confident: the visual one.

Kazimir Malevich’s most famous work, Black Square, seems to have been intended as an expression of revolutionary optimism; it is difficult, however, not to see it as an expression of despair. Thinking that Malevich’s black futurist icon encapsulates the mood of Platonov’s tragedy, we decided that the workers on the collective farm should wear white T-shirts with a Malevich-style black square on the front.1 I then learned that a black and white checkerboard floor was being laid down for a history department play to be staged a week before Fourteen Little Red Huts. Chance’s gifts can be oddly hard to recognize; it took me some time to realize that we could use this floor to good effect. As well as harmonizing with the costumes, the checkerboard provided a striking symbol for the Soviet Union in the 1930s, a black and white world in which everyone was considered either a loyal supporter of Stalin or a Trotskyist saboteur. And it was not difficult to make the floor seem part of Platonov’s original vision. The phrase bely svet occurs several times in the play. This is a common idiom, the Russian equivalent of “the whole wide world,” but the literal meaning is “the white world.” I only had to insert two extra words—chernaya byl’ (black reality)—in one passage of dialogue, immediately after an occurrence of bely svet, to make our floor seem a perfect reflection of Platonov’s text.

My main task was to provide an “empty space”—as Peter Brook titled his first book about the theater; inside this empty space, with luck, a coherent production might take shape.

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I gave little specific advice to the actors; for the main part, they arrived at their own interpretations of their roles. Not all of these were what I expected, but all were convincing. An empty space, however, can exist only inside defining boundaries; it was essential that I keep these in place. During one rehearsal, the reunion scene between Futilla, the collective farm chairman, and her husband, Garmalov, seemed to be turning into a jolly comedy. I had to remind the cast that Futilla was close to death from starvation. It is remarkable, however, how seldom I needed to intervene in this way; most of the time, Platonov’s vivid language—and there is not a sentence in which you cannot sense the rhythms and intonations of living speech—told the actors all they needed to know.

The history department had provided us with an eloquent floor; I myself had to provide a protective roof for our “empty space”—to prevent minor irritations from turning into dangerous flare-ups, to acknowledge the reality of problems while professing confidence that they could be solved. Two things kept me going through the inevitable difficulties. One was an underlying sense of goodwill from the cast; I treated them with respect and they responded in kind. The other was that I never ceased to be enthralled by the dialogue. No doubt I often said and did too little during rehearsals, listening intently but failing—sometimes simply from exhaustion—to come up with new thoughts of my own. There are times, however, when an interested listener is all that an actor truly needs.

The central role in the play is that of Bos. This 101-yearold Western intellectual is sometimes wise, sometimes silly, sometimes caring, sometimes brutal. He survives on a diet

of chemical powders and milk, as if he has either outworn his humanity or never fully entered into it. In the first act he says wearily, “Boys and girls, children, make me a stick from a graveyard cross, so I can walk to the wretched beyond!” Soon after he says with real or pretend optimism, “We want to gauge the candlepower of the dawn you claim to have lit.”

This demanding role was played by Josefine Olsen, a twentyfive-year-old student from Sweden. At first, Josefine seemed simply competent and diligent, learning her lines with impressive efficiency. Gradually, however, her performance grew subtler and more multilayered—like the text itself. We agreed that, rather than being embarrassed by any difficulties she might have with pronunciation, she should incorporate them into her part; she was, after all, playing a man whose knowledge of Russian is imperfect. When she found long words hard to pronounce, I encouraged her to separate them out into their component syllables: bu-shu-yu-schi-ye pust-yak-ki (raging piffle); Ne ras-psikh-ov-yv-ai-tye men-ya! (Don’t you psycho-craze me!). This not only made it easier both for Josefine and for the audience; it also enabled us to emphasize that Bos is himself a student, a foreigner struggling to adapt to alien ways. I also suggested that when Bos is talking to himself, which he does several times, he should occasionally revert to English; Josefine added yet another layer of linguistic complexity by choosing to speak these lines in a German accent. As for the question of gender, Katya Grigoruk, who played Bos’s young girlfriend, said afterward that Josefine was so convincing as a man that she herself felt inspired “to be more feminine and flirty.” I initially assigned the role of Bos to Josefine simply because she A erword

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volunteered for it and because I had already learned—as her literature teacher—to respect her intelligence and commitment. I find it difficult, however, to imagine a mature Russian man bringing so many layers of feeling and meaning into the role as this young Swedish female polyglot. Josefine was both young and old, both male and female; Bos, in her interpretation, was not only an extraordinary and impossible figure but also a representative of humanity as a whole, beyond age, sex, or nationality.

The Russian word for “palate” (nyobo) is cognate with the Russian word for “sky” (nyebo); a tongue is a language, words mirror the world, the dome of the mouth mirrors the dome of the heavens—and struggling with unfamiliar sounds can help an actor to adopt another persona and enter an alien world.

There were memorable performances by at least two other non -Russians—by an Austrian postgraduate and by a young Polish girl who struggled more than most students with Russian pronunciation. I worried that I had made a serious mistake in casting her as Anton Endov, a fanatically Stalinist collectivefarm worker who acts and speaks, according to Platonov, “with faultless precision.” Since there was no one appropriate for the role, I had thought it best to choose someone obviously inappropriate; blatant incongruity can, after all, generate considerable power. In the end my hope was borne out; Paulina’s vulnerability as she struggled with the verbal and physical demands of her part revealed the desperation that typically underlies the blind optimism of a fanatical believer. More than any other actor, she managed to embody what Geoffrey Hosking, writing about The Foundation Pit, once referred to as “the

strange and tormented mixture of hope and despair by which many ordinary people must have lived during Stalin’s revolution from above.”2 ɷɸɷ

I am grateful to have been allowed to direct Fourteen Little Red Huts in Russian; I regret, naturally, that I have never had the opportunity to direct the play in English. The aspect of Platonov I have tried hardest to reproduce—both in these translations and in my translations and cotranslations of his prose—is the sense of a speaking voice. Platonov himself has a remarkable ability to preserve the illusion of a speaking voice, or voices, even while the narrator or the individual characters are using extraordinary language or expressing extraordinary thoughts.

Much has been written about Platonov’s distortions of language; not enough has been written about the subtlety with which—even in straight narrative—he reproduces the music, the intonations and rhythms, of living speech. If his command of tone and idiom were less perfect, his linguistic experimentation would by now seem self-conscious and dated.

If I had had the opportunity to hear actors repeat lines of my translation again and again, I am sure I would have felt that some passages needed still more revision. Nevertheless, I am confident that these plays live in English, and that they can be brought to life in theaters in the English-speaking world.

Robert Chandler

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

S

usan Larsen’s translation of The Hurdy-Gurdy (Sharmanka) was first published in Theater (the journal of the Yale School of Drama) in the fall of 1989. My translation of Fourteen Little Red Huts (14 Krasnykh izbushek) was first published in The Portable Platonov (Glas) in 1999, the centenary of Platonov’s birth. Both translations were made from inaccurate Russian texts and have now been revised in accord with the more accurate texts established during the past ten years.

Platonov’s language is extraordinarily rich and there are always more layers of meaning than are initially apparent. All the following have made invaluable contributions both to our understanding of the original and to the translations themselves: Anna Aizman, Maria Bloshteyn, Boris Dralyuk, Emily Laskin, Olga Meerson, Natasha Perova, Anna Pilkington, Anna Ponomareva, Julia Sutton-Mattocks. Jesse Irwin especially wishes to thank Nadja Berkovich and John Tabb DuVal. The contribution made by my wife, Elizabeth, has been invaluable. I have read all three plays aloud to her and we have discussed at length every phrase that seemed in any way dull or

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Acknowledgments

unconvincing; it was she who solved many of the most intractable problems.

Natalya Duzhina’s contribution to this volume has been no less crucial. Duzhina is one of the group of scholars, based in Moscow at the Institute of World Literature of the Academy of Sciences (IMLI RAN), who are currently, under the supervision of Natalya Kornienko, preparing a scholarly edition of Platonov’s complete works. The first volume, of juvenilia, was published in 2004 and the second volume, of work written in late 1926 and in 1927, was published in April 2016. Duzhina has already published, in Strana filosofov, two important articles about The Hurdy-Gurdy and will be editing the play for the complete works; she generously sent me an early draft of her detailed commentary to the play and gave me carte blanche to draw on it. She also replied patiently and in detail to the questions I e-mailed her almost daily during the last three months of this volume’s preparation. Many of the thoughts in section 4 of the introduction are hers—as is most of the material in the notes to The Hurdy-Gurdy. I am deeply grateful to her; without her help, we could not possibly have done justice to Platonov.

Robert Chandler

A NOTE ON NAMES

M

ost of the characters in Fourteen Little Red Huts have what Russians call “speaking names.” I have tried to re-create these names, rather than simply transliterate them. Platonov’s names are often dense with possible meanings, and there is not always general agreement about which matter most. Here is a brief explanation of the names in the play, along with my reasons for translating them as I have.

Johann-Friedrich Bos: In the original his last name is Khoz. This evokes khozyain, a common word for “boss” or “master,” and khozyaistvo, among the meanings of which are “economy,” “household” and “farm.” The Russian for “collective farm”—kolkhoz—is an abbreviated form of kollektivnoe khozyaistvo.

Interhom: In the original, Intergom. In Russian transliterations of foreign proper names the letter g is usually substituted for h. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, is conventionally Russianized as Gamlet.

Futilla: In the original, Suenita. The most obvious derivation is sueta, meaning “trifle,” “bustle,” “vain activity.” The Russian for the biblical “vanity of vanities” is sueta suet.

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Ksyusha is a diminutive of Ksenya, a common Russian name derived from the Greek xenos, meaning “stranger.” Her surname, Sekushcheva, may be derived from the verb sech’, meaning “to cut,” “to chop,” “to flog.”

Vershkov: Here I have simply transliterated, since I am unsure of the relevance of the Russian name. This is evidently derived from the noun vershok, an old unit of length equivalent to 1.75 inches but often used figuratively, with the sense of “a tiny distance” or ‘‘a tiny amount.” The plural form, vershki, has the figurative meaning of “superficial knowledge.”

Endov: In the original, Kontsov. Konets means “end.”

Garmalov: In the end we decided to leave this untranslated, though we considered “Ruov.” The name is derived from garmala, a common Russian name for Peganum harmala, a hardy drought-resistant perennial known in English as African rue, Syrian rue, and wild rue. In Turkey, Azerbaijan, and other countries in the region, dried capsules from this plant are strung and hung in homes to protect against the evil eye. The other Russian name for Peganum harmala is mogil’nik, which also means “cemetery” or “burial ground.”

Carbinov: In the original, Berdanshchik. The obsolete noun berdanka is the colloquial name for a rifle that was standard issue in the Russian army from 1870 to 1891.

More generally: A Russian has three names—a Christian name, a patronymic (derived from the Christian name of the father), and a family name. Thus, Ignat Nikanorovich is the son of a man whose first name is Nikanor, and Maria Ivanovna is the daughter of a man called Ivan. The first name and patronymic, used together, are the normal polite way of addressing

or referring to a person; the family name is used less often.

Close friends or relatives usually address one another by one of the many diminutive, or affectionate, forms of their first names. Masha, for example, is a diminutive of Maria, Tanya is a diminutive of Tatyana, and Antoshka is a diminutive of Anton.

Less obviously, Ksyusha is a diminutive of Ksenya, and Mitya of Dmitry; still less obviously—since the paths for the formations of diminutives are complex—Dusya is a diminutive of Avdotya.

Robert Chandler

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NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Andrei Platonov, Vzyskanie pogibshikh (Moscow: Shkola Press, 1995), 630.

2. Andrei Platonov, Sochineniya (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2004) I, 1:456–57.

3. Andrei Platonov, Kotlovan (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2000), 324.

4. Andrei Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 353–54n58.

5. Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, 1901–1969 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 46, 94.

6. Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7.

7. Natalya Duzhina, “ ‘Deistvuyushchie lyudi,’ ” in Strana filosofov (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2000), 4:563.

8. A. P. Platonov, Duraki na periferii (Moscow: Vremya, 2011), 690.

9. Duzhina, “ ‘Deistvuyushchie lyudi,’ ” 4:573–77.

10. The Russian translation is memorably neat: Chelovek est’ to, chto on est.

11. Soul and Other Stories, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Meerson et al. (New York: New York Review Books, 2008), xxv.

12. See, for example, Niccolò Pianciola, “The Collectivization Famine in Kazakhstan, 1931–1933,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25,

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13.

14.

15.

16.

no. 3/4 (fall 2001): 237–51; Elena Volkava, “The Kazakh Famine of 1930–33 and the Politics of History in the Post-Soviet Space,” May 2, 2012, Wilson Center, Washington, DC, https://www .wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-kazakh-famine-1930–33 -and-the-politics-history-the-post-soviet-space; Bruce Pannier, “Kazakhstan: The Forgotten Famine,” December 28, 2007, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, http://www.rferl.org/content/article /1079304.html (all three articles accessed April 4, 2016). Donald Rayfield has commented, “The Kazakhstan figure is plausible, but as the Kazakhs were largely nomadic in 1930, numbers are more guesswork than in the Ukraine: hundreds of thousands of Kazakhs fled to China, and they may be included in the casualties. Nomadic meat-eaters had even less chance of surviving than grain-eating Ukrainian farmers” (e-mail message to author, April 4, 2016).

Platonov, Duraki na periferii, 705.

Personal communication from Maria Bloshteyn, to whom I am indebted for many of the thoughts in this paragraph.

Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, trans. Robert Chandler (London: Hesperus, 2003), 5.

John Berger, A Season in London 2005 (London: Artevents, 2005), 87.

THE HURDY- GURDY

1. A term used to denote a member of the proletariat recently promoted, as part of a campaign to replace “bourgeois specialists,” to a position of administrative responsibility. A large number of such workers were sent out into the Russian and Ukrainian countryside in the late 1920s, and still more in 1930.

2. Not a traditional Russian name but an acronym for International Youth Day, observed every year on the first Sunday in September.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

This was understood as a day of struggle for worldwide revolution.

Stervets is the masculine form of sterva, which has the obsolete meaning of “carrion” or “dead animal.” “Stervetsen” could perhaps be translated as something like Maggotsen or Stinkersen.

E. A. Yablokov understands the name to mean “son of death” or, simply, “death” (Khor solistov [St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2014], 383).

The Society for the Promotion of Defense and the Establishment of Aviation and Chemistry (Osoviakhim or Obshchestvo sodeistviya oborone i aviatsionno-khimicheskomu stroitel’stvu), founded in 1927, was a “voluntary” civil-defense organization; its declared aim was to promote patriotism, marksmanship, and aviation skills. It sponsored clubs and organized contests throughout the USSR and soon had around twelve million members. Stalin described it as vital to “keeping the entire population in a state of mobilized readiness against the danger of military attack, so that no ‘accident’ and no tricks of our external enemies can catch us unawares.”

This handshake, symbolizing the close alliance of Soviet peasants and workers, was a common image of the time.

The Hurdy-Gurdy is evidently set in the early autumn of 1930, during a brief period when “cultural brigades” such as Alyosha’s were being sent out into the countryside; from October that year, they were sent mainly to large factories and to railway stations and depots.

Much in Platonov’s stage directions appears to be addressed more to a reader than to an actor or director. Most likely this is because of the play’s being unfinished. There is, however, an interesting similarity between the shifts of perspective in these stage directions and the way the narrative point of view shifts in Platonov’s prose. Sometimes the narrator appears to merge with a particular character; sometimes the narrator steps The Hurdy-Gurdy

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

forward with views of his own. In any case—whatever Platonov’s intentions—reading some of the stage directions aloud is a possible solution for difficulties that might otherwise make the play difficult to stage. For an interesting discussion of this, see Maria Bogomolova, “Remarki i ikh funktsii,” in Strana filosofov (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2011), 7:103–17.

There were frequent references at this time, in political speeches and in the Soviet press, to “the completion of the foundation of a socialist economy”—for example, during a Party plenum held December 17–21, 1930, reported on the front page of Izvestiya, December 22, 1930.

The “reading hut”—a village minilibrary—was the center for propaganda work and campaigns for the eradication of illiteracy.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote, “The bourgeoisie . . . created vast cities . . . and so wrested part of the population out of the idiotism of village life.” The last words of this sentence were adopted by Soviet propagandists. In an article in the first issue (1930) of the journal Village Theater (Derevenskii teatr) D. Shilov wrote, “It seemed that many years would have to pass before this terrible icy wilderness of the stagnant ‘idiotism of village life’ would be melted by the sun of socialism.”

Two crops, neither of them traditionally grown in Russia, the cultivation of which was being actively encouraged.

During 1929–1930 there was a great increase in the number of foreigners visiting the USSR. See the introduction.

Peasants accused of being kulaks were shot, their property confiscated, and their families sent into internal exile. Stervetsen has evidently read some garbled account of all this.

The Nagant M1895 revolver was designed and produced by the Belgian industrialist Léon Nagant for the Russian Empire. After 1917, it was used by the Red Army and by members of the Soviet security agencies. To be presented with a Nagant revolver was a great honor for a Party member.

15. On November 15, 1930, during the trial of members of the Industrial Party, Maxim Gorky published an article in Pravda titled “If the Enemy Does Not Yield, He Will Be Destroyed.” The trial ended with the accused confessing their guilt but being assured by the authorities that they would be treated mercifully.

16. The fox-trot was, at this time, an emblem of bourgeois decadence. On April 18, 1928, Maxim Gorky referred to it in Pravda as “the amorous croaking of a monstrous frog,” as “the cries of a raving camel,” and as “the music of degeneracy” (cited in S. Frederick Starr, Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917–1980 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1983], 90–93).

17. There were frequent complaints in the press about the mismatch between the goods available from cooperatives and people’s real needs.

18. The verb “to procure” (zagotovit’) was a key word of the time.

Shchoev and Yevsei repeatedly use it in absurdly inappropriate contexts; this reflects the government’s more sinister abuse of the same euphemism (see section 3 in the introduction).

19. During the 1920s and 1930s there were regular fund-raising campaigns among the Soviet population. The first German airship flew into Moscow on September 10, 1930, and Pravda immediately announced a fund-raising campaign for a Soviet airship. From October 1, cooperatives were urged to join in this campaign; Shchoev is being characteristically quick to respond to the Party’s demands. See A. P. Platonov, Duraki na periferii (Moscow: Vremya, 2011), 692.

20. Shchoev may be saying, “Hello,” or he may be addressing either a woman called Alla or a Supreme Being. The original is almost certainly intended to be ambiguous.

21. A free translation of the idiomatic uzkoe mesto. This phrase— literally, “a narrow place”—was often used at this time with regard to trouble spots in the economy.

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22. Egypt was, at the time, a British colony. Anti-British protests there, seen as heralding a true proletarian revolution, were followed eagerly by the Soviet media. See, for example, N. Yermakov, “Yegipet volnuetsya,” Ogonyok, no. 22 (1930): 1.

23. See note 20. This doorway was previously referred to as a “narrow place” or “bottleneck”—a phrase associated with the “rightist” Mikhail Bukharin and his more moderate policies.

Bukharin had argued for industrialization to be carried out more slowly, so as to allow time to find a way around problems resulting from “narrow places,” or shortages of some essential item. Stalin’s line—the so-called general line—was more direct.

In the words of a Pravda editorial of November 3, 1929, “We force our way through narrow places and blow them up, actively overcoming them at every step. Panic mongers and opportunists look for ways around problems . . . instead of struggling with them and overcoming these obstacles and contradictions” (quoted by Natalya Duzhina in “ ‘Deistvuyushchie lyudi,’ ” in Strana filosofov, 4:572). Kuzma’s behavior parodically enacts the “general line”—though the evident urgency of his need to go to the toilet casts doubt on the nature of his motivation.

24. The introduction of new foodstuffs was a theme of the time.

There were several scientific institutes devoted to “the rationalization of nourishment”; in Moscow, for example, there was a new Higher Institute of Nourishment (Vysshii institut pitaniya).

25. A lack of containers of all kinds—casks, sacks, nets, baskets— was often cited by cooperatives as a reason for their inability to provide their members with adequate quantities of food.

26. The sudden appearance of these fish and birds is reminiscent of the biblical account of Jehovah feeding the Israelites in the wilderness: “Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full . . . He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea: And he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations. So they did eat, and were well filled” (Psalm 78:23–29).

Another biblical allusion, this time to Christ’s words in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

As always, Shchoev’s words and actions are in line with the Party’s demands. On September 7, 1929, Pravda published a Central Committee decree to the effect that the director, and the director alone, was responsible for the fulfillment of an enterprise’s promfinplan (industrial-financial plan). Until then this had been the joint responsibility of “the triangle”—that is, the director, the trade union representative, and the relevant Party member. This decree evidently proved difficult to put into effect—a great many people did indeed forget that the director’s authority was now supposed to be complete.

“Rationalization”—in an entirely positive sense—was a catchphrase of the time, constantly repeated both in the press and in bureaucratic decrees.

Platonov never prepared a final version of his manuscript. A number of minor inconsistencies remain. The hyphens here, for example, do not accord with those in the cast list.

In 1922 Lenin had said that “we must either perish or else catch up with the leading countries and surpass them economically.”

The words “catch up with . . . and surpass” were taken up by Stalin and became one of the most frequently used slogans of the First Five-Year Plan.

These are not empty words. This particular kind of “cooperative” system—a network of small stores centered on a district town and with several thousand members (paishchiki, “dues payers”)—existed only from August until December 1930.

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33. The mention of locusts, together with the earlier mentions of wild honey, alludes not only to John the Baptist, who survived in the wilderness “on locusts and wild honey,” but also to recent attacks on the trade-union leader Mikhail Tomsky (1880–1936), a close ally of Bukharin’s. In a speech to the Sixteenth Party Congress on July 2, 1930, Stalin referred to Tomsky’s “absurd allegation” that Stalin was threatening him with exile to the Gobi Desert “to live on locusts and wild honey.” Tomsky’s allegation, Stalin asserted, was beneath the dignity of a revolutionary.

34. The late 1920s was, at the time, often referred to as a “transitional epoch” between capitalism and socialism.

35. A haunting waltz, inspired by a disastrous defeat for the Russian forces in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905); it was composed in 1906 and won great popularity. Platonov’s mention of it may be an allusion to the Manchurian Crisis in 1929 over the Chinese Eastern Railway.

36. The word vreditel’ can mean both “harmful insect” and “saboteur” or “wrecker.” Both meanings are relevant. Much was written at this time about the need to improve agricultural production by eliminating harmful insects. See section 4 in the introduction.

37. Here Platonov alludes to a then well-known quotation from Ludwig Feuerbach: “A man is what he eats.” The Russian translation is memorably neat: Chelovek est’ to, chto on est. See section 4 in the introduction.

38. The Second International collapsed in 1914, when the main European socialist parties chose to support their respective governments’ decisions to go to war. The Third, or Communist, International (the Comintern) was founded by Lenin in 1919.

39. In 1930 the French government banned imports from the Soviet Union on the grounds that the Soviets were overproducing and then “dumping” products on world markets at throwaway prices. Other countries followed the French example. All this

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

received considerable attention in the Soviet media; the standard explanation was that France and its allies were preparing to wage war against the Soviet Union. As for Opornykh, he is simply confused; probably he has heard the word “dumping” on the radio and is repeating it without understanding its meaning.

Purges of cooperatives in 1929–1930 led to tens of thousands of “alien” people being—in effect—cast out of Soviet society.

The idea of “pan-Europe” was much discussed during the second half of the 1920s. One of its most vocal proponents was the French prime minister Aristide Briand. The project had three central aims: (1) to avoid further conflicts between France and Germany, (2) to counter the economic threat from the United States, and (3) to counter the political threat from the USSR. The Soviet press focused, unsurprisingly, on the last of these aims.

There was a huge difference between market prices for grain, livestock, and the like and the prices that government procurement agents forced the peasants to accept for these products.

See section 3 in the introduction.

This parodies an early Soviet slogan: “A woman, too, is a human being.”

The Soviet press published regular appeals for suggestions of new goods that the Soviet Union could be exporting. Stalin’s program of crash industrialization required the purchase of foreign technical and engineering equipment, and so the Soviet Union needed hard currency.

Another minor inconsistency in the Russian text. Platonov has, it seems, forgotten to tell us that Serena, after fetching the suitcases, has returned to sleep.

By 1930 Stalin had consolidated his control of the Party. Trotsky, the leading “leftist,” had been sent into foreign exile in February 1929, and the so-called right deviationists—Bukharin, The Hurdy-Gurdy

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47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

Tomsky, and Alexei Rykov—had been discredited by the end of the year. Platonov’s nonsensical “rightist-leftist element” parodies Stalin’s use of such equally nonsensical phrases as “Trotskyist-Bukharinite.”

A mass campaign, carried out during the summer and early autumn of 1930, to eradicate illiteracy.

A composite figure: Nikolai Alexandrovich Uglanov and Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky were—along with Bukharin—the leaders of the “right deviation.” Stalin attacked them during the Twenty-Sixth Party Congress in June–July 1930.

See note 19. Like Shchoev, Opornykh remembers what he reads in the press. In late 1930 a great many articles, and even books, were published about the need to construct a Soviet zeppelin.

Its importance as a means of transporting freight over long distances was especially emphasized.

The poor quality of the matches stocked by cooperatives was a favorite topic of the satirical journals of the time.

In a report to the Sixteenth Party Congress in the summer of 1930 Stalin had claimed that “our annual population growth exceeds three million people.” There were no censuses between 1926 and 1937 and Stalin had no basis for such claims, which he made repeatedly—evidently as a way of denying the huge population losses resulting from collectivization (see Andrei Platonov, Arkhiv A. P. Platonova [Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2009], 248).

FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HU TS

1. In 1929 Stalin had launched his policy of forced collectivization.

By 1932 nearly all individual holdings of land had been abolished and replaced by collective farms, or kolkhozes.

2. IS 20 locomotives were produced between 1932 and 1941. I. S. stands for Iosif Stalin.

3. There were three mass organizations in the Soviet Union for children and youth: the Octobrists, for children aged seven to nine; the Young Pioneers, for children aged ten to fifteen; and the Komsomol, for teenagers and young adults aged fourteen to twenty-eight. Membership of these organizations was, in effect, compulsory.

4. See note 31 to The Hurdy-Gurdy.

5. For more about all three writers, see the introduction. Boris Pilnyak, on whom Latrinov is modeled, traveled a great deal— to Greece, Turkey, Japan, China, Mongolia, and the United States, where he spent six months in 1931. In 1932 he returned from a visit to Japan with a young Japanese woman.

6. In a speech to the First Congress of Kolkhoznik Shock Workers (February 19, 1933) Stalin had emphasized that “the kolkhoz movement has brought forward to positions of leadership a great many remarkable and capable women” (A. P. Platonov, Duraki na periferii [Moscow: Vremya, 2011], 707).

7. A unit of payment on a kolkhoz. Workers were paid according to how many “workdays” they completed. By working hard, it was possible to complete more than one workday during a day.

8. According to an addendum to the Soviet Constitution introduced on August 7, 1932, the theft of a kilogram of millet was to be punished by death, or—in case of mitigating circumstances— ten years in the camps.

9. An allusion to Platonov’s controversial, somewhat anarchistic story “Doubting Makar” (1929).

10. This alludes to one of the tropes of official Soviet art: Lenin pointing the way to the future.

11. A Russian stove was a large brick or clay structure taking up between one-fifth and one-quarter of the room it stood in. Old people often spent much of their time sleeping on the top of the stove; this might be a few feet above the ground or as high as a person.

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12. A reference to Stalin. There was public concern at this time about his health.

13. An expanded version of a sentence from Stalin’s speech to the First Congress of Kolkhoznik Shock Workers: “Chatter less— work more.”

14. The Soviet Narodnykh Komissarov was the Council of People’s Commissars. The less commonly used acronym TseKuBa was the Central Commission for the Improvement of the Living Conditions of Scientists.

15. In the original: “A White Guard Antikolkhoznik” (Belogvardeets-Antikolkhoznik). In the original, the word bantik sounds still more absurd. First, its most obvious meaning is “a little bow”—as in tying a ribbon or shoelaces. Second, Belogvardeets is a term from the Russian Civil War (1918–1921), whereas Antikolkhoznik comes from around 1930, the time of collectivization. Third, in Russian as in English, bantik sounds similar to bandit, as if the speaker might simply have confused the two words.

16. Spring 1931—the second spring since the main thrust of collectivization.

17. A breathtakingly bold allusion to the fact that one of the causes of the Terror Famine was the export of grain to capitalist countries. See the introduction, p. xix.

18. Fourteen Little Red Huts, like The Hurdy-Gurdy, was originally conceived as a comedy. In both instances, Platonov’s horror at the course of events in the Soviet Union forced him to rethink his original idea.

19. Vershkov correctly understands that Futilla considers it necessary to slaughter the ram in order to give the foreign visitor an impression of abundance.

20. In reality, it was the OGPU (as the Soviet security services were then called) that was chiefly responsible for confiscating grain from the Soviet peasantry during these years.

21. An allusion to the journalist and playwright Nikolai Pogodin (1900–1962). The best known of his early plays were Tempo (1929), about the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, and Poem of the Axe (1931), about the production of stainless steel.

22. The number of workdays a peasant was considered to have worked was of critical importance. A peasant with too few workdays to his name would receive only the most minimal rations even when there was no general shortage of food.

23. Karl Marx, in his writings, never touched on individual psychology. In the 1920s and 1930s, various Soviet theoreticians tried to lay the foundation for a Marxist psychology, occasioning much debate. Bos appears to be giving voice to the traditional Marxist view: that the proletariat does not need individual psychology, only class consciousness. The use of “psychosis” instead of “psychology” is a revealing malapropism—as if the speaker considered any concern with psychology to be inherently psychotic (with thanks to Boris Dralyuk for his help with this note).

24. Vershkov has Russified Bos’s first names; Ivan is the Russian equivalent of Johann.

25. Every institute, factory, kolkhoz, and so on would produce its own “wall newspaper”—a propaganda-filled newsletter, posted regularly on a wall.

26. Bast (the inner bark of birch trees) was an essential everyday material in peasant Russia, used to make everything from sandals to bowls and baskets. Perhaps because of its very ordinariness, the word formed a part of several expressions implying shame and disgrace (see Platonov, Duraki na periferii, 708).

From 1930, kolkhozes that failed to fulfill their assigned quotas were awarded a black banner.

27. The Russian oblatka, used five times in this passage, has several meanings: a pharmacological capsule, a Holy Communion wafer, and, colloquially, a flat bread. “The impression is created Fourteen Li le Red Huts

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Fourteen Li le Red Huts

28.

29.

30.

31.

that nourishment and the taking of communion are entirely identified with each other” (E. A. Yablokov, Khor solistov [St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2014], 399).

This verse appears to be nonsense. This seems uncharacteristic of Platonov, but it is certainly not in any Slav, Turkic, or Persian language. Nor is it in Georgian or Avar, one of the main languages of Dagestan, which borders the Caspian.

See note 8.

See note 7.

This unusual stage direction—why does Platonov only tell us “approximately” what she sings?—may be intended to alert the reader to a possible hidden meaning. If these two verses are read as a continuation of an earlier verse sung by Futilla (p. 140), then this meaning becomes evident. The last line of the first verse was “Stalin is far now from my heart.” The “he” of the last line of all, “Science, he tells us, is Bread,” is evidently Stalin, the father now telling his people that, since they have science, they do not need bread.

GR ANDMOTHER’S LITTLE HU T

1. Stalin’s Short Course: The Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) was published in 1938. Between then and 1953, more than forty-two million copies were issued in sixty-seven languages. Stalin supervised and heavily edited the work but himself contributed only one section of chapter 4, about dialectical and historical materialism; after World War II, however, he claimed sole authorship. Most often referred to simply as The Short Course, it was seen as the encyclopedia of Marxism. Lenin and Stalin are repeatedly mentioned together, as if the two of them were inseparable.

2. See, at the end of this volume, “A Note on Names.” “Dimitry” is the correct form of the boy’s Christian name; “Mitya” is a diminutive, or affectionate, form of “Dimitry.” A Russian’s second name is, conventionally, a patronymic—that is, it is derived from the Christian name of the father. Mitya, angry with his father, has rejected his patronymic and chosen to call himself by a matronymic; his mother must have been called Avdotya.

Since matronymics have never been used in Russia, Dusya does not, at first, accept “Avdotich” as a real name. “Dusya,” however, is a diminutive of “Avdotya”—the girl does indeed have the same name as Mitya’s mother. This evidently makes an impression on her.

3. Here, for the first time, Dusya addresses the boy as “Dimitry Avdotich”—an unusually respectful way for an adult, or near adult, to address a child. At the same time, it shows great tenderness on her part; she is accepting his unusual decision to use not a patronymic but a matronymic.

AFTERWORD

1. We also decided to stencil a more complex red, black, and white Malevich design on the backs of the T-shirts. It was the art historian Igor Golomstock who first drew my attention to similarities between Malevich and some aspects of Platonov. The four volumes of Platonov I cotranslated for Harvill Press (London) all bear reproductions of figurative paintings by Malevich on their front covers; Golomstock’s thoughts about Platonov and Malevich are summarized in my preface to the Harvill edition of The Foundation Pit (1996).

2. Geoffrey Hosking, “The Yawning Gap,” Times Literary Supplement (London), December 6, 1996.

A erword

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FURTHER READING

OTHER WORKS BY PL ATONOV AVAIL ABLE IN ENGLISH

Chandler, Robert, et al., trans. Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov. London: Penguin Books, 2012. Includes Platonov’s versions of six well-known Russian folktales.

Platonov, Andrey. The Foundation Pit. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Meerson. New York: New York Review Books, 2009.

——. Happy Moscow. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. New York: New York Review Books, 2012.

——. The Portable Platonov. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. Moscow: Glas, 1999. Includes a long extract from the novel Chevengur.

——. The Return and Other Stories. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Angela Livingstone. London: Harvill Press, 1999.

——. Soul and Other Stories. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Meerson et al. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.

PL ATONOV ’S WORK IN RUSSIAN

Platonov, Andrei. Arkhiv A. P. Platonova. Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2009.

An important publication of material from Platonov’s personal

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Further Reading

archive, including letters to his wife and early drafts of a number of works, including Fourteen Little Red Huts.

——. Sobranie sochinenii. 8 vols. Moscow: Vremya, 2011. This is by far the most reliable and complete edition of Platonov’s work to date.

——. Zapisnye knizhki. Moscow: Nasledie, 2000. A carefully annotated transcription of the vast quantity of disparate material in Platonov’s personal notebooks.

ABOUT PL ATONOV, IN ENGLISH

Bullock, Philip. The Feminine in the Prose of Andrey Platonov. Oxford: Legenda, 2005.

Holt, Katharine, ed. Andrei Platonov: Style, Context, Meaning. Special issue of Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University 14 (2011/2012).

Livingstone, Angela, ed. Essays in Poetics. Andrei Platonov special issue, vols. 26, 27 (autumn 2001, autumn 2002, Keele University).

Seifrid, Thomas. Andrei Platonov: Uncertainties of Spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

ABOUT PL ATONOV, IN RUSSIAN

Geller, Mikhail. Andrei Platonov v poiskakh shchastya. Paris: YMCA Press, 1982; Moscow: MIK, 1999.

Kolesnikova, E. A. Malaya proza Andreya Platonova. St. Petersburg, 2013) Malygina, N. M. Andrei Platonov: Poetika vozvrashecheniya. Moscow: TEIS, 2005.

Meerson, Olga. Apokalipsis v bytu. Moscow: Praktika, 2016.

——. Svobodnaya veshch’. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2001.

Mikheev, M. Andrei Platonov i drugie. Moscow: Yask, 2015.

Rozhentseva, E. A. A. P. Platonov v zhizni i tvorchestve. Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 2014. A clearly written introduction to Platonov and his work.

Strana filosofov. 7 vols. Moscow: IMLI RAN, 1994–. Contains essays on all aspects of Platonov’s work.

Tolstaya, Elena. Mirposlekontsa. Moscow: RGGU, 2002. Includes six essays devoted to Platonov.

Tvorchestvo Andreya Platonova. 4 vols. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995– 2008.

Vyugin, V. Yu. Andrei Platonov: Poetika zagadki. St. Petersburg: Izd. Rus. Krist. Gum. Inst., 2004.

Yablokov, E. A. Khor solistov. St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2014. Includes “Zloklyucheniya sovetskoi pastsushki,” a valuable essay on religious themes in Fourteen Little Red Huts.

Further Reading

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Praise for FOURTE EN LITTLE RE D HUTS & OTHE R PLAYS : “Part horror story, part ideological stand-up comedy, Andrei Platonov’s plays depict an absurd, nightmarish world in which hope and cynicism are inextricable. Their publication in this appropriately clever and meticulously annotated translation serves as an important contribution to our understanding of one of the twentieth century’s most tragic chapters. Platonov, whose complex prose has already established him as Russia’s closest equivalent to Faulkner, here emerges as a dramatist who can easily enter into conversation with Beckett.”

—ERIC NAIMAN, author of Nabokov, Perversely “Absurd, grotesque, and seemingly surreal, the topsy-turvy world of Platonov’s plays captures the disturbing reality of Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s with precision, irreverence, and verbal virtuosity! This stunning translation offers a unique opportunity for English-speaking readers and audiences to encounter one of the most uncompromising and visionary Russian writers of the last century.”

—IRINA BROWN, director of opera and theater “This collection of three plays brings still more of Platonov’s remarkable output to the attention of an English-language readership. Marginalized by Soviet literary officialdom, Platonov was an instinctive modernist who produced a series of prose works that are by turns hauntingly disturbing and beautiful. So too in the handful of works he wrote for the stage: in response to the grotesque Stalinist reality around him, his deformative instincts produced plays that anticipate Kharms, Beckett, and Ionesco. These translations by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen deftly render Platonov’s works in idiomatic English.”

—THOMAS SEIFRID, author of A Companion to Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit

Praise for A N D R E I P L AT O N O V : “I squint back on our century, and I see six writers I think it will be remembered for. They are Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, William Faulkner, Andrei Platonov, and Samuel Beckett. . . . They are summits in the literary landscape of our century. . . . What’s more, they don’t lose an inch of their status when compared to the giants of fiction from the previous century.”—Joseph Brodsky Russian Library Columbia University Press / New York

ISBN: 978-0-231-18128-0

9 780231 181280

cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A.