The ingénue blushed, frowned, but quickly composed herself, and brought the vaudevillian a glass of vodka. He emptied it, livened up, and began telling her a string of playful anecdotes.
DIRTY TRAGEDIANS AND LEPROUS PLAYWRIGHTS
A Dreadful, Terrible, and Scandalously
Foolhardy Tragedy
A play of many Acts, and even more Scenes
Dramatis Personae
MIKHAIL VASILEVICH LENTOVSKY: a man, and a theater impresario.
TARNOVSKY: a playwright who is on nodding terms with devils, whales, and crocodiles; has a pulse of 225, and a temperature of 109.4.
CHARLES XII: King of Sweden; struts like a fireman.
THE BARONESS: a brunette not without talent; willing to take on lesser roles.
GENERAL EHRENSVÄRD: a hulking fellow of a man with the voice of a mastodon.
JAKOB DE LA GARDIE: an unremarkable man; delivers his lines with the panache of a . . . prompter.
STELLA: Lentovsky the impresario’s sister.
BURL: a man carried on the shoulders of dim-witted Svobodin.
THE GRAND MAÎTRE DU BALLET HANSEN.
AND OTHERS.
Epilogue13
Scene: The crater of a volcano. A blood-drenched desk at which Tarnovsky is sitting; in lieu of a head on his shoulders, there is a skull. Sulfur is burning in his mouth, and from his nostrils sniggering little devils hop. He dips his pen—not into an inkpot, but into a cauldron of lava stirred by witches: a terrifying spectacle. Ants of the kind that scurry down one’s back fly through the air. Downstage, quivering sinews hang on glowing hooks. Thunder and lightning. We see the calendar of Aleksey Suvorin (the province and district secretary), which foretells with the passionless detachment of a bailiff the collision of the earth with the sun, the destruction of the universe, and the rise in prices for all pharmaceutical commodities. Chaos, terror, fear . . . I leave the rest to the reader’s imagination.
TARNOVSKY (chewing his pen)
What should I write, dammit? I can’t think of anything! A Journey to the Moon?—No, that’s been done already . . . The Hunchback?—That’s been done too. (He takes a sip of burning oil.) I must come up with something . . . something that will make the wives of Moscow merchants dream of devils for three nights in a row. (He massages his forehead.) Avanti, O great brain! (He ponders; thunder and lightning; the salvos of a thousand cannons as represented in one of Fyodor Shechtel’s illustrations. Dragons, vampires, and snakes slither out of cracks. A large box falls into the crater, out of which Lentovsky emerges, holding a big poster.)
LENTOVSKY
Hey there, Tarnovsky!
TARNOVSKY, THE WITCHES, AND ALL THE OTHERS
(together)
Greetings, Your Excellency.
LENTOVSKY
Well, dammit? (He brandishes a club at him.) Is the play ready?
TARNOVSKY
No, it isn’t, Mikhail Valentinich. I sit here thinking, but can’t come up with anything. The task you have set me is too difficult! You want the blood in the audience’s veins to freeze, you want earthquakes to grip the hearts of the wives of Moscow merchants, you want all the lamps to be doused by my monologues. But you must see that this is beyond the powers of even a great playwright like me, Tarnovsky!
Having praised himself, Tarnovsky becomes flustered.
LENTOVSKY
Balderdash, dammit! A good dose of gunpowder, a Bengal sparkler, and grandiose monologues—that’s all you need! To satisfy the wardrobe department, dammit, set the play in high society. Treason . . . Prison . . . the prisoner’s beloved will be forced to marry the villain . . . We can give the role of the villain to Pisarev. Then an escape from prison . . . shots . . . no need to scrimp on the gunpowder . . . a young maiden whose noble origins come to light only during the course of the play . . . Finally more shots, a conflagration, and the triumph of virtue . . . In short, a play baked in the mold of The Adventures of Rocambole or The Count of Monte Cristo . . .
Thunder, lightning, hoarfrost, dew. The volcano erupts; Lentovsky rushes out.
Act I
The audience, ushers, the Grand Maître du Ballet Hansen, and others.
ushers
(taking the audience members’ furs)
A small tip, Your Excellency? (Not receiving one, they grab the public by the coattails.) Oh black thanklessness! (They are ashamed for humanity.)
A MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE
So, is Lentovsky over his illness?
ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR
He’s been kicking up a fuss, so he must be better.
THE GRAND MAÎTRE DU BALLET HANSEN
(changing in the dressing room)
I’ll knock ’em dead! I’ll show them! All the newspapers will sing my praises!
The First Act continues, but the reader is no doubt impatient: he’s waiting for the Second Act. So, curtain.
Act II
The Palace of Charles XII. Backstage, our grand set designer Valtz is swallowing swords and red-hot coals. Thunder and lightning. Enter Charles XII and his courtiers.
CHARLES XII
(pacing the stage and rolling his eyes)
De la Gardie! You have betrayed the fatherland! Hand over your sword to the captain and off to prison with you!
De la Gardie utters a few heartfelt words and exits.
CHARLES XII
Tarnovsky! In your harrowing play you have made me live an extra ten years! Off to prison with you! (To the Baroness) You love De la Gardie and have a child by him. In the interest of the plot, however, it would be better if I knew nothing about that and give you in marriage to a man you do not love. Marry General Ehrensvärd!
BARONESS
(marries the General)
Ach!
General Ehrensvärd is appointed warden of the jail in which De la Gardie and Tarnovsky are being held.
GENERAL EHRENSVÄRD
I’ll make their life hell!
CHARLES XII
Well, that’s it for me until Act V. I’m off to the dressing room!
Acts IV and V
STELLA
(who usually is not such a bad actress)
Count, I love you!
YOUNG COUNT
And I love you too, Stella. But, in the name of love, I beseech you, tell me why Tarnovsky had to put me in this damn play. It goes on forever! What does he need me for? What in God’s name does this plot have to do with me?
BURL
It’s the octopus that’s behind all this. It was only because of the octopus that I ended up a soldier. He beat me, hounded me, bit me . . . He is the one who wrote this play, or my name isn’t Burl! He’ll do anything to make my life hell!
STELLA
(realizing her noble origins)
I shall go to my father and free him!
On the way to the prison she meets the Grand Maître du Ballet Hansen. He executes a few entrechats.
BURL
It’s all because of the octopus that I ended up a soldier and am now in this play, and it’s the octopus that has made Hansen dance in order to make my life hell! Well, we’ll see about that!
Bridges fall. The scene is engulfed. Hansen executes a great leap that makes the elderly spinsters in the audience faint.
Acts V and VI
In the prison Stella meets her father for the first time and they come up with a plan to escape.
STELLA
I shall save you, Father . . . But how can we flee without Tarnovsky joining us? If he should escape prison, he will write a new play!
GENERAL EHRENSVÄRD
(torturing the Baroness and the prisoners)
As I am a villain, I must not resemble a human being! (He eats raw meat.)
De la Gardie and Stella escape from the prison.
ALL
Stop them! Catch them!
DE LA GARDIE
Whatever happens, we shall escape and achieve our goals! (A shot is fired.) Damn! (He drops dead.) And damn that too. For just as the author can assassinate, he can just as well resuscitate!
Charles XII appears from the dressing room and commands virtue to triumph over evil. There is universal jubilation. The moon smiles, and so do the stars.
THE AUDIENCE
(calling out to Burl, pointing at Tarnovsky)
There’s the octopus! Catch him!
Burl strangles Tarnovsky, who falls to the ground dead but immediately jumps up again. Thunder, lightning, hoarfrost, the dénouement of the play Two Mothers, or He Was Run Over by a Locomotive, mass migration, shipwreck, and the gathering of all the pieces.
LENTOVSKY
I’m still not satisfied. (He is engulfed with the rest of the scenery.)
* * *
13 I wanted to leave “Prologue,” but the editor insists that the less believable all this is, the better. Fine by me.
MARIA IVANOVNA
Ayoung woman of about twenty-three was sitting in a luxuriously furnished drawing room on a purple velvet sofa. Her name was Maria Ivanovna Odnoschekina.
“What a trite, stereotypical beginning!” the reader gasps. “These writers always begin their stories in luxuriously furnished drawing rooms! I don’t want to read this!”
I beg my reader for forgiveness, and continue. A young man of about twenty-six, with a pale, somewhat sad face, stood before her.
“Here we go again! I knew it!” the reader snaps. “A young man, and twenty-six of all things! So what comes next? I know! He spouts poetry, declares his love, and she tells him in an offhand manner that she wants him to buy her a bracelet! Or the opposite, she wants poetry, but he . . . oh, I can’t bear this!”
Be that as it may, I shall continue. The young man’s eyes were fixed on the young woman as he whispered: “I love you, you marvelous creature, even though the chill of the grave envelops you!”
Here the reader loses all patience and begins to curse. “Damn you all! You writers serve up the most idiotic piffle with luxuriously furnished drawing rooms and Maria Ivanovnas enveloped by the damn chill of graves!”
Who knows, dear reader, perhaps you are right to be angry. But then again, perhaps you are not. We live in great times precisely because it is impossible to tell who is in the right and who in the wrong. Even a jury convicting a man for committing theft does not know where the guilt lies: In the man? In the money that just happened to be lying around? In the jurors themselves for having been born? You can’t tell what’s what in this world!
Anyway, even if you are right it doesn’t mean that I am wrong. You think my story is not interesting, that it is pointless. So let’s assume that you are right and I am wrong. But I beg you at least to take extenuating circumstances into consideration. Can I be expected to write something interesting and important if I am despondent and if I have been suffering from intermittent bouts of fever?
“So don’t write if you have a fever!”
Fine. But let me get straight to the point—let’s say I have a fever and am in a bad mood, and that another author has a fever, and a third a jittery wife and a toothache, and a fourth is suffering from depression. None of us would be writing! And where do you think the newspapers and magazines would get their material? Perhaps from the tons and tons of little stories and anecdotes that you, the readers, keep sending in day after day? From the tons of piffle you send in and from which we would be lucky, lucky indeed, to extract just one salvageable piece.
We are all professional literati, not dilettantes! We are literary day laborers, each and every one of us is a person, a person just like you, like your brother, like your sister-in-law—we have the same nerves, the same innards, we are tormented by the same cares that torment you, and our sorrow is much greater than our joy will ever be, and if we wanted to we could come up with reasons not to work every day! Each and every day! But if we were to listen to your “Stop writing!”—if we were all to give in to our fatigue, or despondency, or fever, then we might as well close down all of modern literature!
But we must not close down all of modern literature, dear reader, not for a single day. Even if to you it looks pointless and dull, uninteresting, even if it inspires no laughter or anger or joy in you, literature still exists and serves a purpose. We need literature. If we walk off and leave our calling behind, even for a minute, fools in dunce caps with bells on them will replace us, bad professors, bad lawyers, and bad cadets marching in lockstep, describing their absurd amorous escapades.
I have to write, regardless of how despondent I might be or whether or not I have intermittent bouts of fever! I have to, in any and every way I can, without stopping! There are so few of us—you can count us on the fingers of one hand—and when there are so few workers in a business, you cannot ask for a leave, even a short one—not that you would be given one.
“But still, you writers could choose topics that are a little more serious! I mean, what is the point of this Maria Ivanovna? Is there such a lack of incidents to write about? Is there such a lack of important issues?”
You are right, there are many incidents to write about and many important issues to discuss, but why don’t you tell me exactly what you would like me to write? If you are so indignant, why don’t you prove to me once and for all that you are right, that you really are a serious person living a serious life. Go on, prove it to me in concrete terms, or I might be led to think that the incidents and issues you are talking about don’t amount to much, and that you are simply one of those nice enough fellows one meets who, having nothing better to do, likes to chitchat about serious matters. But I must finish the story I started:
The young man stood awhile before the beautiful woman. Finally he took off his frock coat and shoes, and whispered, “Farewell till tomorrow!” Then he lay down on the couch and drew a plush coverlet over himself.
“In the presence of a lady!” the reader shouts indignantly. “This is pure rubbish! It’s an outrage! Police! Censor!”
Wait a moment, wait a moment, my stern reader. The lady in the luxuriously furnished drawing room was painted in oils on a canvas that is hanging above the couch. So feel free to be as outraged as you like.
“But how can your magazine put up with this? If they are printing rubbish like ‘Maria Ivanovna,’ then it’s obviously because they don’t have anything better. That’s a plain and simple fact. Sit down immediately, expound your deepest and most exquisite thoughts, cover a good ream of paper with your writing, and send it off to an editorial. Sit down and write! Write everything down and send it out!”
And soon enough it will be sent right back.
TROUBLING THOUGHTS
Aclassics instructor of severe, inflexible, bilious aspect but a secret dreamer and freethinker, complained to me that whenever he oversaw student presentations or attended teachers’ meetings, he was tortured by troubling and unsolvable questions. Invariably, he complained, his mind was assailed by matters such as: What would happen if the floor were the ceiling, and the ceiling the floor? Are ancient languages profitable or unprofitable? How would instructors be called before the director if his office were located on the moon? These and similar questions, if they persistently preoccupy one’s mind, are referred to by psychiatrists as “obsessive thoughts.” It is a troubling, incurable ailment, but fascinating for the onlooker. The other day, the instructor approached me and said he was preoccupied by the issue of what would happen if men dressed like women. An incongruous, even uncouth question perhaps, though not one particularly difficult to answer. The classics instructor himself provided the following response. If men dressed like women, then:
Low-ranking members of the civil service, such as collegiate registrars, would appear in calico dresses, though on high feast days perhaps in musli
n ones. They would wear one-ruble corsets and striped stockings made of paper. Décolletés would only be permitted when they were among themselves;
Postmen and reporters who raise their skirts to step over ditches and puddles would be called to account for outraging public decency;
Moscow’s great littérateur, Sergey Andreyevich Yuriev, would walk about in crinolines and a cotton bonnet;
School guards Mikhei and Makar would appear before the director every morning to lace him into his corset;
Officers on special assignments and secretaries of charitable societies would dress beyond their means;
Maikov the poet would wear his hair in ringlets, and appear in a green dress with red ribbons and a cap;
The ample frame of the Pan-Slavist leader Ivan Aksakov would be draped in the flowered smock of a village babushka;
The directors of the Lozovo-Sevastopol Railways would, on account of their poverty, strut about in petticoats.
And as for the conversations:
“Your bodice is above all criticism, Your Excellency, and the bustle is excellent. Your décolleté might, however, be a little low.”
“Nonsense, old boy, my décolleté follows the guidelines set by our table of ranks. It’s a Grade 4 décolleté. By the way, can you straighten my ruffle?”
LETTER TO A REPORTER
Sir:
I know everything! There were six big fires this week and four tiny ones. A young man shot himself in a conflagration of passion for a young lady, whose head, upon hearing of his death, went astray. Guskin, a house porter, hanged himself after excessive imbibification. A boat drowned yesterday, along with two passengers and a small child . . . poor child! At the Arkadia, someone burned a hole in the back of a merchant’s jacket, and in the ensuing rumpus he nearly had his neck broken. Four swindlers dressed to the nines were apprehended, and a train capsized. I know everything, my dear sir! As many exciting things have happened this week as you have rubles in your pocket, of which you haven’t given me a single kopeck of what you owe me!