Fourteen Little Red Huts: And Other Plays

A Tragedy

CHARACTERS

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)

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. 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.

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 mother-and-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.

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—

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.

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!

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.

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, 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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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?

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.)

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.

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 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!

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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 Fairbanks-system 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.

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?

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):

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.

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?