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?
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.
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