HERZEN (cont.) Mille pardons, Benoit.
George weeps afresh. Natalie comforts him. There is a transition to a month later.
JUNE 1848
A ‘BLUE BLOUSE,’ an old workman in tattered clothes, stands in the room, a desperate motionless figure, invisible to Natalie and Natasha who, innocently embraced, recline on the couch, with George in attendance moping.
GEORGE Everybody’s being horrible about me. They say I hid in a ditch as soon as the enemy came in sight. You don’t believe it, do you?
NATALIE Of course we don’t.
NATASHA Of course not.
NATALIE Nor does Emma. Well, she was there.
GEORGE She pushed me into it.
NATALIE The ditch?
GEORGE No, the whole business … chairman of the German democrats in exile, and suddenly I was Napoleon at Austerlitz.
NATASHA Waterloo. Oh, sorry … but you looked so defeated.
GEORGE Emma still has faith in me. Perhaps she’ll invade Poland. She was in love with me before she met me. So were half the women in Germany. My book of poems went through six editions. I met the King. Then I met Emma.
NATALIE And she’s the one who got you!
GEORGE I wish I’d listened to Marx.
NATALIE Marx? Why?
GEORGE He tried to talk me out of it.
NATALIE (amazed) Marrying Emma?
GEORGE No, the Legion of German Democrats.
NATALIE Oh … !
GEORGE Now he’s crowing over my humiliation … after all I’ve done for him, taking him to all the best houses, introducing him at Marie d’Agoult’s salon …
NATASHA The countess?
GEORGE Yes, the writer, one of my admirers.
NATALIE And you were one of hers, surely … I admire her, too. When she fell in love with Liszt, she followed her heart. Everything had to give way to love—reputation, society, husband, children … just like George Sand and Chopin! … Do you play?
GEORGE A little. I compose a bit, too. Emma says if I practised, Chopin and Liszt better watch out.
NATASHA Shto praiskhódit? [What’s this?]
NATALIE (to Natasha) George looks like Onegin ought to look, don’t you think? (Natalie jumps up and pulls George by the hand.) Come on, then!
Herzen enters.
NATALIE (cont.) George is going to play for us!
There is a distant sound of riot, and a transition. Herzen and the Blue Blouse remain.
NATASHA (to Natalie, warningly) Natalie.
NATALIE (dissembling) What?
NATASHA You haven’t got a piano.
NATALIE (brazenly) Well?
The two women embrace hilariously and take George out.
Herzen sees the Blue Blouse.
HERZEN What do you want? Bread? I’m afraid bread got left out of the theory. We are bookish people, with bookish solutions. Prose is our strong point, prose and abstraction. But everything is going beautifully. Last time—in 1789—there was a misunderstanding. We thought we had discovered that social progress was a science like everything else. The First Republic was to have been the embodiment of morality and justice as a rational enterprise. The result was, admittedly, a bitter blow. But now there’s a completely new idea. History itself is the main character of the drama, and also its author. We are all in the story, which ends with universal bliss. Perhaps not for you. Perhaps not for your children. But universal bliss, you can put your shirt on it, which, I see, you have. Your personal sacrifice, the sacrifice of countless others on History’s slaughter-bench, all the apparent crimes and lunacies of the hour, which to you may seem irrational, are part of a much much bigger story which you probably aren’t in the mood for—let’s just say that this time, as luck would have it, you’re the zig and they’re the zag.
The noise of insurrection increases.
21 JUNE 1848
Street.
[From Turgenev’s Literary Reminiscences: ‘At first there was nothing particular that I could see … But the farther I went the more did the appearance of the boulevard change. Carriages became less frequent, the omnibuses disappeared completely; the shops and cafés were being hastily closed … there were many fewer people in the street. On the other hand, all the windows of the houses were open, and a great number of people, mostly women, children, maids and nursemaids, were crowded in the doorways. They were all talking, laughing, not shouting but calling to one another, looking round, waving their hands—as though in expectation of some pageant. A light-hearted, festive curiosity seemed to have taken possession of people. Ribbons of many colours, kerchiefs, caps, white, pink, blue dresses shimmered and glittered, rose and rustled in the light summer breeze … The uneven line of the barricade, about eight feet high, came into sight. In the middle of it, surrounded by other tricolour and gold-embroidered banners, a small red flag fluttered with its ominous pointed tongue … I moved a little nearer. The space just in front of the barricade was almost deserted, only a few men walking to and fro in the roadway. The workers exchanged jokes with the spectators in the street who came up to them … One of them, with a white soldier’s sword-belt round his waist, held out an uncorked bottle and a half-filled glass to them, as if inviting them to come up and have a drink; another, next to him, with a double-barrelled gun over his shoulder, yelled in a drawn-out voice, “Long live the democratic and socialist republic!” Beside him stood a black-haired woman in a striped dress, also with a sword-belt and a revolver thrust in it; she alone did not laugh … Meanwhile the sound of drums drew nearer and grew louder …’]
Natalie, carrying Kolya, the Nurse pushing a stroller containing a three-year-old (TATA), as it were, and Mother holding Sasha’s hand, hurry across the street. Sasha carries a tricolour on a pole, which encumbers him.
NATALIE Oh God—oh God—quickly … There were omnibuses full of corpses.
MOTHER You must be calm for the children …
Herzen meets them and takes Kolya.
HERZEN (to Sasha) Go with Mama. What are you doing with that?
SASHA Benoit says to wave it for the Garde Mobile!
HERZEN Go inside.
NATALIE Did you see?
HERZEN Yes.
NATALIE The omnibuses?
HERZEN Yes.
Rachel’s voice is heard again … but ‘The Marseillaise’ is drowned out in volleys of rifle fire.
27 JUNE 1848
There is a transition to the interior, with cheerful music heard from the street.
Kolya remains with Herzen and sits on the floor with his top. Turgenev is with Herzen. Benoit delivers some letters to Herzen on a salver and leaves.
TURGENEV Have you been out? It’s amazing how life settles back. The theatres are open. There’s carriages in the streets again, and ladies and gentlemen inspecting the ruins as if they were in Rome. To think it was only on Friday morning the laundress who brought my washing said, ‘It’s started!’ And then four days shut away in this awful heat, listening to the guns, knowing what must be happening and helpless to do anything … oh, that was torture.
HERZEN But with clean laundry.
TURGENEV I trust if we’re going to have this conversation—
HERZEN I didn’t invite conversation. If I were you, I’d take avoiding action. These four days could make one hate for a decade.
TURGENEV I’ll go, then. (Pause.) But allow me to express the opinion that somebody must do your laundry, too.
HERZEN Letter from Granovsky! Just wait till he hears! (He opens the letter.) All you liberals are splashed with blood no matter how you tried to keep your distance. Yes, I have a laundress, possibly several, how would I know? The whole point of the serving class is that the rest of us, the fortunate minority, can concentrate on our higher destinies. Intellectuals must be allowed to think, poets to dream, landowners to own land, dandies to perfect their cravats. It’s a kind of cannibalism. The uninvited are necessary to the feast. I’m not a sentimental moralist. Nature, too, is merciless. So long as a man thinks it’s the natural order
of things for him to be eaten and for another to eat, then who should regret the death of the old order if not we who write our stories or go to the opera while others do our laundry? But once people realise the arrangement is completely artificial, the game is up. I take comfort in this catastrophe. The dead have exposed the republican lie. It’s government by slogan for the sake of power, and if anyone objects, there’s always the police. The police are the realists in a pseudo-democracy. From one regime to the next, power passes down the system until it puts its thumbprint on every policeman’s forehead like the dab of holy oil at an emperor’s coronation. The conservatives can’t keep the smiles off their faces, now they know the whole thing was a confidence trick. The liberals wanted a republic for their own cultivated circle. Outside it they’re conservatives. They cheered on Cavaignac’s butchers while wringing their hands with their fingers crossed. Well, now we know what the reactionaries have always known: liberty, equality and fraternity are like three rotten apples in their barrel of privilege, even a pip could prove fatal—from now on it’s all or nothing, no quarter, no mercy.
TURGENEV (mildly) You sound like Belinsky, adjusting some poet’s reputation … Do you think there’s something Russian about taking everything to extremes?
HERZEN No doubt. Single-minded conviction is a quality of youth, and Russia is young. (pointedly) Compromise, prevarication, the ability to hold two irreconcilable beliefs, both with ironic detachment—these are ancient European arts, and a Russian who finds them irresistible is, I would say, exceptional.
TURGENEV (disingenuously) How interesting that you should say that. Because I myself, you see—
Herzen, despite himself, laughs, and Turgenev laughs with him, but almost at once his laughter turns to anger.
TURGENEV (cont.) Putting yourself in another’s place is a proper modesty, and yes, it takes centuries to learn it. Impatience, pig-headed stubbornness to the point of destruction—yes, these are things to be forgiven in the young, who lack the imagination to see that almost nothing in this life holds still, everything is moving and changing—
HERZEN (with Granovsky’s letter, cries out) Who is this Moloch who eats his children?
TURGENEV Yes, and your taste for melodramatic, rhetorical—
HERZEN Belinsky’s dead.
TURGENEV No, no … oh, no, no, no … No! … No more blather, please. Blather, blather, blather. Enough.
Natalie enters and goes to Herzen.
NATALIE Alexander …?
SEPTEMBER 1847 (REPRISE)
Herzen, Natalie, Turgenev and Kolya remain, their positions corresponding to the reprised scene which now reassembles itself at the point of Natalie’s re-entrance.
GEORGE Mir geht es besser. [I feel better.]
BELINSKY Turgenev’s got a point.
EMMA Georg geht es besser. [George is feeling better!]
BELINSKY Our problem is feudalism and serfdom.
The rest of the scene now repeats itself with the difference that instead of the general babel which ensued, the conversation between Belinsky and Turgenev is now ‘protected,’ with the other conversations virtually mimed. At the point where the babel went silent before, nothing now alters.
BELINSKY (cont.) What have these theoretical models got to do with us? We’re so big and backward!
TURGENEV My mother’s estate is ten times the size of Fourier’s model society.
BELINSKY I’m sick of Utopias. I’m tired of hearing about them. I’d trade the lot for one practical difference that owes nothing to anybody’s ideal society, one commonsensical action that puts right an injury to one person. Do you know what I like to do best when I’m at home?—watch them build the railway station in St Petersburg. My heart lifts to see the tracks going down. In a year or two, friends and families, lovers, letters, will be speeding to Moscow and back. Life will be altered. The poetry of practical gesture. Something unknown to literary criticism! I’m sick of everything I’ve ever done. Sick of it and from it. I fell in love with literature and stayed lovesick all my life. No woman had a more fervent or steadfast adorer. I picked up every handkerchief she let fall, lace, linen, snot rag, it made no difference. Every writer dead or alive was writing for me personally, to transport me, insult me, make me shout for joy or tear my hair out, and I wasn’t fooled often. Your Sportsman’s Sketches are the best thing since Gogol was young, and this Dostoevsky is another if he can do it twice. People are going to be amazed by Russian writers. In literature we’re a great nation before we’re ready.
TURGENEV You’re going round again, Captain.
HERZEN My God! We’re going to miss it! (comforting Natalie) You’re pale. Stay here. Stay with the children.
Natalie nods.
NATALIE (to Belinsky) I won’t come to the station. Have you got everything?
BAKUNIN It’s not too late to change your mind.
BELINSKY I know—it’s my motto.
Natalie embraces Belinsky. Turgenev and Sazonov help Belinsky with his valise and his parcels.
HERZEN Don’t try to talk French. Or German. Just be helpless. Don’t get on the wrong boat.
There is a general exodus, as before.
Kolya is left alone. There are sounds of the cabs departing. There is distant thunder, which Kolya ignores. Then there is a roll of thunder nearer. Kolya looks around, aware of something. Natalie enters. She kisses Kolya on the nose, enunciating his name. He watches her mouth.
NATALIE Kolya … Kolya …
Natalie notices Belinsky’s dressing gown. She gives a cry of dismay and runs out of the room with it.
KOLYA (absent-mindedly) Ko’ ya … Ko’ ya. (He plays with his top.)
ACT TWO
JANUARY 1849
Paris.
George has been reading to Herzen and Natalie. Natalie sits with George at her feet. Herzen lies on the couch with a silk handkerchief over his face. The book—or booklet—is The Communist Manifesto in its yellow wrapper.
NATALIE Why have you stopped?
George closes the book and lets it fall. Natalie smoothes George’s hair.
GEORGE I don’t see the point.
NATALIE He’s saying that all history up to now is the history of class struggle. And by sheer luck, Marx himself, the discoverer of this fact, is living in the very place, at the very time, when, thanks to industrialisation, these centuries of class struggle, from feudal times onwards—
GEORGE Yes, I’ve got that.
NATALIE Well, then. It’s all now arriving at the end of history, with the final—
GEORGE But there’s no point if, every time you want to argue back, Karl just says, ‘Well you would think that, because as a product of your class, you can’t think anything else.’ In my opinion, that’s cheating.
NATALIE I agree. But then I would, wouldn’t I, because—
GEORGE You think what you are! You say, ‘Karl, I don’t agree good and evil are to be defined entirely by our economic relations,’ and Karl replies—
NATALIE ‘Well, you would think that—’
GEORGE ‘—because you’re not a member of the proletariat!’
Natalie and George delightedly clasp hands in mutual congratulation. Herzen removes the handkerchief from his face. Natalie continues to smooth George’s hair.
HERZEN But Marx is a bourgeois from the anus up.
NATALIE Alexander! I won’t have that word …
HERZEN Sorry, middle-class.
GEORGE It’s German genius, that’s what it is.
NATALIE What is?
GEORGE That if you’re a miserable exploited worker, you’re playing a vital role in a historical process that’ll put you on top as sure as omelettes was eggs. Everything’s functioning perfectly, you see! With the French geniuses, your miserable exploited no-accountness means there’s a fault in the plumbing, and they’re here to fix it because you’re too stupid to do it for yourself … So the workers have to hope the plumber knows what he’s doing and won’t cheat them. No wonder it didn’t catch on.
>
HERZEN But how can Communism catch on? It asks a worker to give up his … aristocracy. A cobbler with his own last is an aristocrat compared with the worker in a factory. A minimum of control over your own life, even to make a mess of it, is something necessarily human. What do you think goes wrong with those experimental societies? It’s not the mosquitoes. It’s something human refusing to erase itself.
Still, at least Marx is an honest-to-God materialist. Those ‘Marseillaise’-singing orators of the left won’t let go of nurse. I feel sorry for them. They’re preparing for themselves a life of bewilderment and grief … because the republic they want to bring back is the last delirium of two thousand years of metaphysics … the elevation of spirit over matter … brotherhood before bread, equality by obedience, salvation through sacrifice. To save this tepid bathwater, they’ll chuck out the baby and wonder where it went. Marx gets it. We didn’t get it—or we didn’t have the courage.
NATALIE George risked his life on the field of battle!
HERZEN So he did. You know, now that people have started recognising you clean-shaven, you should grow a beard.
NATALIE You’re a brute. (to George) He’s only teasing. Nobody cares about that anymore, it’s all forgotten.
HERZEN I haven’t forgotten.
NATALIE Stop it.
GEORGE I don’t mind. Would you like me to grow my beard?
NATALIE I’ve got used to you without it. What does Emma say?
GEORGE She said I should ask you.
NATALIE Oh! How flattering. But it’s not me who gets the tickles if you grow it back.
HERZEN Why doesn’t Emma come with you anymore?
GEORGE I need to have an hour or two free from family life. What an abominable institution.
HERZEN I thought this was family life.
GEORGE Yes, but your wife is a saint. It’s not Emma’s fault. Her father was ruined by the dialectic of history, and he blames me. … It’s very hard on Emma, losing her allowance. But what can I do? I’m a poet of revolution between revolutions.
Herzen takes up a few newly arrived letters and looks through them.
HERZEN Write an ode to Prince Louis Napoleon on his election as President of the Republic. In a free vote, the French public renounced freedom.