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.
GEORGE ‘Bonaparte Plumbers, a name you can trust.’
HERZEN How naive we were at Sokolovo that last summer in Russia, do you remember, Natalie?
NATALIE I remember you quarrelling with everyone.
HERZEN Arguing, yes. Because we were agreed that there was only one thing worth arguing about—France! France, the sleeping bride of revolution. What a joke. All she wanted was to be the kept woman of a bourgeois … Cynicism fills the air like ash and blights the leaves on the freedom trees.
Herzen gives one of the letters to Natalie.
NATALIE Thank you … Oh, from Natasha! I miss her so, since she went home.
GEORGE One must learn to be a stoic. Look at me.
HERZEN You’re a stoic?
GEORGE What does it look like?
HERZEN Apathy?
GEORGE Exactly. But apathy is misunderstood.
HERZEN I’m very fond of you, George.
GEORGE Apatheia! To the ancient stoics there was nothing irresolute about apathy, it required strenuous effort and concentration.
HERZEN Very fond of you.
GEORGE Because being a stoic didn’t mean a sort of uncomplaining putting up with misfortune, that’s only how it looks on the outside—inside, it’s all about achieving apathy …
HERZEN (laughs) No, I love you.
GEORGE (hardening) … which meant: a calming of the spirit. Apathy isn’t passive, it’s the freedom that comes from recognising new borders, a new country called Necessity … it comes from accepting that things are what they are, and not some other thing, and can’t for the moment be altered … which people find quite difficult. We’ve had a terrible shock. We discovered that history has no respect for intellectuals. History is more like the weather. You never know what it’s going to do. God, we were busy!—bustling about under the sky, shouting directions to the winds, remonstrating with the clouds in German, Russian, French … and hailing every sunbeam as proof of the power of words, some of which rhymed and scanned. Well … would you like to share my umbrella? It’s not too bad under here. Political freedom is a rather banal ambition, after all … all that can’t-sit-still about voting and assembling and controlling the means of production. Stoical freedom is nothing but not wasting your time berating the weather when it’s bucketing down on your picnic.
HERZEN George … George … (to Natalie) He’s the only real Russian left in Paris. Bakunin’s in Saxony under a false name—he wrote and told me! Turgenev is guess where, and Sazonov has disappeared into an aviary of Polish conspirators who are planning a demonstration. We should go to live in … Italy, perhaps, or Switzerland. The best school for Kolya is in Zurich. When he’s a little older, my mother’s going to move there to be with him.
NATALIE (to George) They’ve got a new system. Put your hands on my face.
GEORGE Like that?
George touches her face lightly. Natalie stammers M’s and pops P’s.
NATALIE Can you feel? That’s how you learn if you’re doing it right. Mama … Papa … Baby … Ball … George … George …
Herzen jumps up with his letter.
HERZEN Ogarev’s engaged to Natasha!
Natalie cries out and opens her letter. They both read.
GEORGE My wife is in an interesting condition, did I tell you?
HERZEN Good for Nick!
NATALIE It all started before Christmas!
GEORGE Well, it’s not very interesting. In fact, it’s the least interesting condition she’s ever in.
NATALIE I’m going to write to her this minute!
GEORGE (vaguely) Oh … all right.
NATALIE Let me see what he says.
Natalie, delighted, takes Herzen’s letter and gives him hers. She hurries out.
GEORGE There was always something that appealed to me about Ogarev. I don’t know what it was … He’s such a vague, lazy, hopeless sort of person. (Pause.) I thought he had a wife. He had a wife when I knew him in Paris.
HERZEN Maria.
GEORGE Maria! She kept company with a painter, to speak loosely. Well, he applied paint to canvas and was said to have a large brush. Did she die?
HERZEN No, she’s alive and kicking.
GEORGE What’s to be done about marriage? We should have a programme, like Proudhon. ‘Property is theft, except for wives.’
HERZEN Proudhon’s programme of shackles from altar to coffin is an absurdity. Passions are facts. Making cages for them is the vanity of Utopians, preachers, lawgivers … Still, passions running free, owing nothing to yesterday or tomorrow, isn’t what you’d call a programme either. Ogarev is my programme. He’s the only man I know who lives true to his beliefs. Fidelity is admirable, but proprietorship disgusting. But Maria was vain, flighty, I worried for Nick. She was not like my Natalie. But with Ogarev, love doesn’t turn out to be pride. It’s love like on the label, and he suffered it. You think that’s weakness? No, it’s strength.
Natalie enters wearing a hat and adjusts it, pleased, in an imaginary mirror.
MARIA OGAREV, aged thirty-six, poses nude for an unseen painter.
HERZEN (cont.) He’s a free man because he gives away freely. I’m beginning to understand the trick of freedom. Freedom can’t be a residue of what was unfreely given up, divided up like a fought-over loaf. Every giving up has to be self-willed, freely chosen, unenforceable. Each of us must forgo only what we choose to forgo, balancing our personal freedom of action against our need for the cooperation of other people—who are each making the same balance for themselves. What is the largest number of individuals who can pull this trick off? I would say it’s smaller than a nation, smaller than the ideal communities of Cabet or Fourier. I would say the largest number is smaller than three. Two is possible, if there is love, but two is not a guarantee.
APRIL 1849
Natalie looks around. She reacts to an (imaginary) painting. Maria enters, robing herself.
MARIA I’ve already written to Nick … I told him I had no intention of marrying again, and so had no need of a divorce.
NATALIE No … the need is Nick’s.
MARIA Exactly. Mine is to protect my position as his wife.
NATALIE Your position? But Maria, you haven’t been his wife for years now, except in name.
MARIA That’s a large exception, and while it’s so, there’s three hundred thousand roubles in the six-per-cents, secured against his property. Where would it leave me if I were divorced? Worse still when there’s a new wife with her own ideas about her position. You know what a child Nicholas is about money. Anyone can get round him. He had four thousand souls when his father died, and almost the first thing he did was hand over the largest property to his serfs. He’s simply not someone you can depend on. And now he sends you to plead for him and his eager bride. Do you know her?
NATALIE (nods) The Tuchkovs went home last year. Nick knew her before, but it was only when she returned from abroad … well, you know … and anybody would fall in love with Natasha, I fell in love with her myself!
MARIA Really? Really in love?
NATALIE Yes!—really, utterly, transported by love, I’ve never loved anyone as I loved Natasha, she brought me back to life.
MARIA You were lovers?
NATALIE (in confusion) No. What do you mean?
MARIA Oh. Utterly, transportedly, but not really. Why won’t you look at my picture?
NATALIE Your …? Well … it seems rude to …
MARIA You’ve always idealised love, and you think—surely this can’t be it? (She laughs.) Painted from life, one afternoon when we lived in the Rue de Seine over the hat shop, do you know it? I’ll take you there, we’ll find something that suits you. Go on, have a good look.
NATALIE (looking) He’s got the porcelain quite well … What do you do with it when just anybody comes, your … companion’s friends, the landlord, strangers …? Do you cover it up?
MARIA No … it’s art.
NATALIE And you don’t mind?
MARIA (confidentially) I’m in the paint!
NATALIE What do you … (mean)?
MARIA Mixed in.
NATALIE (Pause.) I’ve only been sketched in pencil.
MARIA Naked?
NATALIE (laughs shyly) Alexander doesn’t draw.
MARIA If an artist asks you, don’t hesitate. You feel like a woman.
NATALIE But I do feel like a woman, Maria. I think our sex is ennobled by idealising love. You say it as if it meant denying love in some way, but it’s you who’s denying it its … greatness … which comes from being a universal idea, like a thought in nature, without which there’d be no lovers, or artists either, because they’re the same thing only happening differently, and neither is any good if they deny the joined-upness of everything … oh dear, we should speak German for this …
MARIA No … I could follow it, being in much the same state when I met Nicholas Ogarev at the Governor’s Ball in Penza. A poet in exile, what could be more romantic? We sat out and talked twaddle at each other, and knew that this was love. We had no idea we were in fashion, that people who didn’t know any better were falling in love quite adequately without dragging in the mind of the Universe as dreamt up by some German professor who left out the irritating details. There was also talk of the angels in heaven singing hosannas. So the next time I fell in love, it stank of turpentine, tobacco smoke, laundry baskets … the musk of love! To arouse and satisfy desire is nature making its point about the sexes, everything else is convention.
NATALIE (timidly) But our animal nature is not our whole nature … and when the babies start coming …
MARIA I had a child, too … born dead. Yes, you know, of course you know—what wouldn’t Nicholas tell your husband? … Being taken to meet Alexander for the first time was like being auditioned for my own marriage.
NATALIE It was the same for me, meeting Nick, and I was expecting Sasha.
MARIA Poor Nick. Even my having another man’s child, it was nothing to the agony he went through when he found himself caught in the middle between his wife and his best friend.
NATALIE But we all loved each other at the beginning. Don’t you remember how we joined hands and knelt and thanked God for each other?
MARIA Well, I didn’t want to be the only one standing up.
NATALIE That’s not so, is it?
MARIA Yes—it is so. I found it embarrassing … childish—
NATALIE Even at the beginning! How sad for you, Maria … I’m sorry …
Maria, to Natalie’s complete surprise, suddenly gives in to her rage.
MARIA Don’t you look down on me with your stuck-up charity, you’re still the simpering little fool you always were—giving away your birthright, idealising it away in your prattle of exalted feelings … You can tell Ogarev he’ll get nothing out of me, and that goes for all his friends!
The interview is evidently over. Natalie remains composed.
NATALIE I’ll go, then. I don’t know what I said to make you angry. (She gathers herself to leave.) Your portrait, by the way, is a failure, no doubt because your friend thinks he can produce the desired effect on canvas in the same way he produces it on you, by calculation … If he dips his brush here and prods it there, he’ll get this time what he got last time, and so on till you’re done. But that’s neither art nor love. You and your portrait resemble each other only in crudeness and banality. But that’s a trivial failure. Imitation isn’t art, everyone knows that. Technique by itself can’t create. So, where do you think is the rest of the work of art if not in exalted feeling translated into paint or music or poetry, and who are you to call it prattle? German philosophy is the first time anyone’s explained everything that can’t be explained by the rules. Why can’t your expert lover satisfy a desire to paint like Raphael or Michelangelo? That would shut me up, wouldn’t it? What’s stopping him? Why can’t he look harder and see what the rules are? Because there aren’t any. Genius isn’t a matter of matching art to nature better than he can do it, it’s nature itself—revealing itself through the exalted feeling of the artist, because the world isn’t a collection of different things, mountains and rain and people, which have somehow landed up together, it’s all one thing, like the ultimate work of art trying to reach its perfection through us, its most conscious part, and we fall short most of the time. We can’t all be artists, of course, so the rest of us do the best we can at what’s our consolation, we fall short at love. (She pauses for a last look at the portrait.) I know what it is. He’s got your tits too high and your arse too small. (Natalie leaves.)
Saxony. In a prison room, a lawyer (FRANZ OTTO) is seated at a table. Bakunin is in chains, sitting opposite.
OTTO What were you doing in Dresden?
BAKUNIN When I arrived or when I left?
OTTO Just generally.
BAKUNIN When I arrived, I was using Dresden as my base while plotting the destruction of the Austrian Empire. But after a week or two, a local revolution broke out against the King of Saxony, so I joined it.
OTTO (Pause.) You understand who I am?
BAKUNIN Yes.
OTTO I am your lawyer, nominated by the Saxon authorities to present your defence.
BAKUNIN Yes.
OTTO You are charged with treason, for which the penalty is death. (Pause.) What brought you to Dresden? I suspect it was to visit the art gallery with its famous Sistine Madonna by Raphael. In all probability you had no knowledge of any popular insurrection brewing against the King. On May the third, when the barricades appeared, it was a complete surprise to you.
BAKUNIN Yes.
OTTO Ah. Good. You never planned any revolt, you had no obligation to it or connection with it, its objectives were of no interest to you.
BAKUNIN Absolutely true! The King of Saxony is welcome to dismiss his parliament, as far as I’m concerned. I look on all such assemblies with contempt.
OTTO There you are. At heart, you’re a monarchist.
BAKUNIN On May the fourth I met a friend of mine in the street.
OTTO Quite by chance.
BAKUNIN Quite by chance.
OTTO His name?
BAKUNIN Wagner. He’s a music director of the Dresden opera, at least he was till we burned it down—
OTTO Er … don’t get too far ahead.
BAKUNIN Oh, he was delighted—he despised the taste of the management. Anyway, Wagner said he was on his way to the Town Hall to see what was going on. So I went with him. The provisional government had just been proclaimed. They were out of their depth. The poor things hadn’t the faintest idea how to conduct a revolution, so I took charge—
OTTO Just—just a moment—
BAKUNIN The King’s troops were waiting for reinforcements sent by Prussia, and there was no time to be lost. I had them tear up the railway tracks, showed them where to place the cannons—
OTTO Stop, stop—
BAKUNIN (laughs) There’s a story that I suggested hanging the Sistine Madonna on the barricades on the theory that Prussians would be too cultured to open fire on a Raphael …
Otto jumps to his feet and sits again.
OTTO You know who I am?
BAKUNIN Yes.
OTTO What brought you to Dresden? Before you answer, I should tell you, both the Austrian and the Russian Emperors have asked for you to be handed over to them.
BAKUNIN (Pause.) When I arrived, I was using Dresden as my base while plotting the destruction of the Austrian Empire, which I consider a necessary first step to put Europe in flames and thus set off a revolution in Russia. But after a week or two, to my amazement, a revolution broke out against the King of Saxony …
JUNE 1849
[From Herzen’s essays, From the Other Shore: ‘Of all the suburbs of Paris I like Montmorency best. There is nothing remarkable there, no carefully trimmed parks as at St Cloud, no boudoirs of trees as at Trianon … In Montmorency nature is extremely simple … There is a large grove there, situated high up, and quiet … I do not know why but this grove always reminds me of our Russian woods … one thinks that in a minute a whiff of smoke will drift across from the byres … The road cuts through a clearing, and I then feel sad because instead of Zvenigorod, I see Paris … A small cottage with no more than three windows … is Rousseau’s house …’]
‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ … There is a tableau which anticipates—by fourteen years—the painting by Manet. Natalie is the undressed woman sitting on the grass in the company of two fully clothed men, George and Herzen. Emma, stooping to pick a flower, is the woman in the background. The broader composition includes Turgenev, who is at first glance sketching Natalie but in fact is sketching Emma. The tableau, however, is an overlapping of two locations, Natalie and George being in one, while Herzen, Emma and Turgenev are together elsewhere. Emma is heavily pregnant. There is a small basket near Natalie.
HERZEN I let Sazonov talk me into joining his march. A few hours in custody have left me with no desire to be locked up in the Conciergerie with hundreds of prisoners and a slop bucket. I’ve borrowed a Wallachian passport. What we should do is take a house together, our two families across the frontier …
GEORGE Can I open?
NATALIE Not yet.
TURGENEV The police aren’t interested in stopping you.
HERZEN I’m not going to stay to find out like Bakunin in Saxony.
TURGENEV But this is a republic.
HERZEN The Crimson Cockatoo has already left for Geneva.
NATALIE Are you peeping?
GEORGE No—tight shut. What are you doing?
HERZEN Can I look?
TURGENEV If you want.
NATALIE All right, then—you can open now.
HERZEN (looking over Turgenev’s shoulder) Ah …
GEORGE Oh, my God!
EMMA I have to move—I’m sorry—!
GEORGE Natalie …
TURGENEV Of course! Move!
NATALIE Sssh …
TURGENEV I’m so sorry—
GEORGE My dear …
TURGENEV I don’t need you anymore.
EMMA Terrible words! …
GEORGE But suppose somebody …
NATALIE Sssh …
HERZEN He’s doing clouds. I wonder what Russian modern art would be like.
NATALIE I wanted to be naked for you, you see.
GEORGE I do. I do see.
EMMA Where’ve they got to, I wonder?
NATALIE Just once!
TURGENEV They’re hunting mushrooms.
NATALIE So, when I’m sitting across from you in the objective world, listening to Alexander reading Schiller in the evenings—or picnicking at Montmorency!—you’ll remember there is an inner reality, my existence-in-itself, where my naked soul is one with yours!
GEORGE I am deeply … Just once?
HERZEN What would it be like?
NATALIE Let’s not talk … let’s close our eyes and commune with the spirit of Rousseau among the woods where he walked!
HERZEN That’s where Rousseau lived, that cottage. Montmorency is the only bit of country round Paris which reminds me of Russia. Nature here is simple, not like the park at St Cloud, which is somebody’s masterpiece, or the disciplinarian planting at Trianon. How is the country where you go to stay?
TURGENEV Delightful.
EMMA Do your friends have land?
TURGENEV It wouldn’t count for much at home. You can see right across it.
HERZEN How many souls do they have?
TURGENEV One each.
NATALIE Oh, George! I ask for nothing but to give!
GEORGE Please get dressed before …
NATALIE I ask nothing of you but to take!
GEORGE I will, I will, but not here …
NATALIE To take strength from me.
GEORGE Oh, yes, yes, you’re the only one who understands me.
HERZEN Well, what do you do there?
TURGENEV We like to go out shooting.
HERZEN Madame Viardot shoots?
TURGENEV No, she’s not an American, she’s an opera singer. Her husband shoots.
HERZEN Ah. Is he accurate?
Turgenev crumples up his drawing.
EMMA Oh—what a waste of being still.
GEORGE But Emma must be wondering …
NATALIE Let’s tell her!
GEORGE No!
NATALIE Why ever not?
GEORGE Besides, she’d tell Alexander.
NATALIE Do you think so? Alexander must never know.
GEORGE I agree.
NATALIE He wouldn’t understand.
GEORGE No, he wouldn’t
NATALIE If only he could see there’s no egoism in my love.
GEORGE We’ll find a way.
NATALIE One day, perhaps …
GEORGE Yes, let me think—Tuesday …
NATALIE But until then …
GEORGE Yes—so put your clothes on, my dear spirit, my beautiful soul!
NATALIE Don’t look, then.
GEORGE Oh God, we haven’t found a single mushroom!
George snatches up the basket and hurries away. Natalie starts getting dressed.
TURGENEV (to Herzen) You still own a small estate at home, I believe. How many souls do you have?
HERZEN None now. The government took it. But you’re quite right. I apologise.
TURGENEV I freed my mother’s household serfs, with land, but I receive quit-rent from the rest.
EMMA Honestly, you Russians.
HERZEN I’m going to find George and Natalie. (Herzen leaves.)
EMMA What are you writing now?
TURGENEV A play.
EMMA Is it about us?
TURGENEV It takes place over a month in a house in the country. A woman and a young girl fall in love with the same man.
EMMA Who wins?
TURGENEV Nobody, of course.
EMMA I want to ask you something, but you might be angry with me.
TURGENEV I’ll answer anyway. No.
EMMA But how do you know the question?
TURGENEV I don’t. You can apply my answer to any question of your choice.
EMMA That’s a good system … Well, I’m sorry. Devotion such as yours should not go unrewarded.
Pause.
EMMA (cont.) Now I want to ask you something else.
TURGENEV Yes.
Emma starts to weep.
TURGENEV (cont.) I’m sorry.
EMMA But you’re right. If you knew how I suffer. George was my first.
TURGENEV My first was a serf. I think my mother put her up to it. I was fifteen. I was in the garden. It was a drizzly sort of day. Suddenly I saw a girl coming towards me … she came right to me. I was her master, you must remember. She was my slave. She took hold of me by the hair and said, ‘Come!’ … Unforgettable … Words stagger after. Art despairs.
EMMA That’s different. That’s eroticism.
TURGENEV Yes.
EMMA Have you ever been happy?
TURGENEV But I have moments of extreme happiness … ecstasy!—
EMMA Do you?
TURGENEV —watching a duck scratching the back of its head with that quick back-and-forth of its damp foot … and the way slow silver threads of water stream from a cow’s mouth when it raises its head from the edge of the pond to stare at you …
HERZEN Rousseau has a lot to answer for.
George follows Herzen, with the basket.
GEORGE Oh … why do you say that?
Natalie leaves. Emma takes the basket and upends it. A single virulent toadstool falls out.
HERZEN I idolised Rousseau when I was young … Man in his natural state, uncorrupted by civilisation, desiring only those things which are good to desire …
GEORGE Oh, yes.
HERZEN … and everybody free to follow their desires without conflicts, because they’d all want the same things …
EMMA Where’s Natalie?
GEORGE Didn’t she come back?
HERZEN She’ll be rounding up the nurse and the children.
GEORGE (to Emma) My love, what do you think? We’re going to share a house with Alexander and Natalie in Nice! He’s going to go on ahead and find a place.
EMMA Why … why leave Paris?
HERZEN We belong to Egypt, not to the Promised Land. The people faltered. I wouldn’t insult them by absolving them. They had no programme, and no sovereign brain to carry one out. The Sovereign People are our invention. The masses are more like a phenomenon in nature, and nature isn’t interested in our fantasy that ink is action. Ask George. We’re dupes.
Natalie enters.
HERZEN (cont.) (to Natalie) I’m a dupe. Well and good. We, too, will look to our faults—our passions and vices—and prepare ourselves by living by our ideals in a republic of our own. We are many!—Nine, counting my mother and the children.
NATALIE The children must be hungry. I’m starving.
TURGENEV It’s going to rain.
HERZEN (to Natalie) George has offered to escort you and the children on your journey south. (to Emma) Your husband is kindness itself.
GEORGE (to Emma) And when you’ve had the baby, you’ll join us.
EMMA (to Herzen) There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.
NATALIE Come on—we can go in that empty cottage.
Herzen and Natalie leave, holding hands.
GEORGE (to Turgenev) Are you writing anything?
TURGENEV Well … no …
EMMA Yes, he is. It’s a comedy.
TURGENEV Here it comes.
Turgenev puts his palm out to the first drops. They leave, following Herzen and Natalie.
SEPTEMBER 1850
Nice (at this time an Italian town).
Herzen is writing on the verandah of a large house on the Promenade. The light is Mediterranean, the sea washing the shingles is audible, part of the garden is visible. The verandah is a large area containing a family dining table and chairs, and some comfortable chairs around a smaller table. There is a door to the interior. Mother and Kolya are absorbed together, at a distance from Herzen, using a hand mirror (in which Kolya studies his mouth movements). An Italian servant, ROCCA, is laying the table and singing for his own enjoyment. As he goes indoors, he passingly ‘serenades’ Mother and Kolya. Mother manages a game smile. With her collusion, Kolya trots over to Herzen. Herzen slightly over-enunciates for Kolya.
HERZEN Was moechtest du denn? [What do you want, darling?]
Kolya looks back to Mother for assurance. She smiles him on.
KOLYA Ich spreche Russisch! [I speak Russian!] (in ‘English’) ‘Sunny day! My name is Kolya!’
HERZEN Wunderbar! [Wonderful!]
Great delight, made physical, on all sides.
HERZEN (cont.) Jetzt sprichst du Russisch! [Now you speak Russian!]
KOLYA Ich spreche Russisch! [I speak Russian!]
Rocca returns, singing, with more things for the table.
HERZEN Zeig es Mami! [Show Mummy!] Do vei Signora? [Where is the Signora?]
ROCCA Sta nel giardino. [She was in the garden.]
Rocca leaves singing.
MOTHER I suppose the next one will juggle.
Herzen places Kolya’s hands on Herzen’s face and enunciates while Kolya lip-reads.
HERZEN (to Kolya) Garten. [Garden.]
Kolya trots off out of sight.
MOTHER But Italy is friendlier than Switzerland, especially to children and old ladies. The school in Zurich was the last straw—what a shock when they discovered they were harbouring the child of a dangerous revolutionary instead of a Russian nobleman.
HERZEN I was pleased that my little book made such an impression on the good burghers of Zurich … and we stole the school’s best teacher for Kolya, so it’s ended well—(He looks at his watch.)—and I have to meet him off the diligence at Genoa. He’ll soon have Kolya orating on the seashore like Demosthenes with a pebble in his mouth. But I want you to be happy here, too.
MOTHER I, too? (She kisses him.)
HERZEN I liked Nice when we came through here on our way to Rome three years ago, do you remember?
MOTHER I remember the shingle beach when we were on our way back after the French Republic was declared … and the excitement, when we reached the border, of having Republican stamps in our passports … A French stamp, even before the Republic, would get you into trouble at home, Sasha …
HERZEN How can I go back? I’ve tried suffocation, darkness, fear and censorship—and I’ve tried air, light, security and freedom to publish—and I know which is better. There’s no emperor or king or pope in Europe who can match the Tsar for despotism, especially now, after the almighty scare he got … The people here have had a civilisation for two thousand years, and they keep something of themselves which no passing tyranny can eradicate. But I’ll show you why I can’t go home again. (He goes to the table where he has been working and picks up a French journal.) Here’s a man writing about us. It’s a French paper. He’s the first person in France to write about the Russian people, and he can prove that the Russian people are not human, because they are devoid of moral sense. The Russian is a thief and a liar, and is so innocently because it’s his nature.
MOTHER He doesn’t mean us, he means the peasants.
HERZEN Yes, they lie to landowners, officials, judges, policemen … and steal from them—and they are right, because they are denied every kind of self-protection and dignity. What have our moral categories got to do with the Russians we’ve abandoned? Not to steal would be to concede the fairness of their portion. For two hundred years their whole life has been one long dumb passive protest against the existing order. They have no one to speak for them.
MOTHER What time is the diligence?
HERZEN God give me Medea!
MOTHER (indicating the garden) Kolya’s nagging Natalie to go to the beach—and she’s in no fit state—where’s the nurse?
HERZEN (throwing down the journal) This is not some demented pamphleteer, he’s a distinguished historian famous for his humanitarian views, writing for intelligent Frenchmen—(shouting after her) It’s about time to acquaint Europe with Russia, don’t you think?
Mother leaves.
Herzen looks at his watch, hurries away, reverses direction and shouts towards the garden.
HERZEN (cont.) Don’t let go of his hand in the water!
Leaving again, he encounters Emma, who is no longer pregnant, wheeling a small baby carriage.
HERZEN (cont.) Is there any news of George? When is he coming?
EMMA I don’t know.
HERZEN Well, it’s too bad of him. We’re not complete without him.
Natalie, seven months pregnant, comes into view.
HERZEN (cont.) (to Natalie) I’m going to pick up Spielmann. That’s his name!—Spielmann!
Laughing, he runs off calling for Rocca. Natalie comes forward.
NATALIE Was there a letter?
Emma gives Natalie a sealed letter.
NATALIE (cont.) Thank you. (Natalie puts the letter in her bosom.)
EMMA If he says when he’s coming, perhaps you’ll tell me.
NATALIE Yes, of course.
EMMA If you loved him, you’d leave Alexander.
NATALIE (shakes her head) Alexander must be spared this. The one time he began to wonder … he nearly lost his mind. I would have done anything to reassure him.
EMMA You did the simplest thing. If you weren’t in a state where you can hardly be said to be of practical use, George would be here now.
NATALIE You mustn’t humiliate yourself, Emma. He loves you, too.
EMMA I’m a post office, and living upstairs in your house like a lodger, which is all we can afford to be—there is no further humiliation I could suffer. But I’m glad to do it for my George. He was unrecognisable when I came from Paris. He was suffering more than I. If you can’t make him happy—or cure him—give him back. He’ll come back anyway. This is not love, it’s exaltation.
Emma’s baby starts crying. She picks it up and paces.
NATALIE You haven’t understood anything. All my actions spring from the divine spirit of love, which I feel for all creation. Your logical way of looking at things just shows that you have grown apart from Nature. George is not the way you talk about him. He understands. He loves you. He loves Alexander. He loves your children and mine. Together, our love will be strong enough for all of us.
George enters, in travelling clothes. He takes one look at his wife, baby and pregnant mistress, and turns about.
NATALIE George!
EMMA George!
Natalie, with a glad cry, runs after him, followed by Emma.
NOVEMBER 1850
A newborn baby starts squalling inside the house. Bouquets of flowers arrive, by messenger and butler (Rocca). Herzen and George appear from indoors in smoking jackets, with cigars and glasses of champagne.
HERZEN (toasts) To Natalie and baby Olga.
GEORGE To Natalie and Olga.
HERZEN Where’s Emma?
George looks around.
GEORGE There.
DECEMBER 1850
The same place. A nurse (MARIA FOMM) wheels a smart pram. Emma is holding her crying eighteen-month-old child and close to hysteria. Herzen is writing what turns out to be a cheque and an IOU. When the baby raises its voice, Emma continues louder, so the decibel level threatens sometimes to become ludicrous.
EMMA On our honeymoon in Italy, George didn’t like the cologne they had there, so I sent to Paris for his special cologne, and when it arrived in Rome we were in Naples, and when it reached Naples we were back in Rome, and so it went on until the cologne followed us back to Paris. The carriage charges were enormous. That’s how I’ve always been with George. Nothing was too good or too much. Daddy used to be rich, he supplied all the silk furnishings to the Prussian court, but somehow the revolution made him quite poor, and he resents George, it’s so unfair. I’ve borrowed and sold everything I can so that George isn’t troubled, and now I don’t know where else to turn.
Natalie, no longer pregnant, wearing white, is seen being painted in Mediterranean sunshine.
EMMA (cont.) I felt you would be sympathetic because Natalie and I have such a close bond in George. He hardly wrote to me in all the months I was left behind in Paris. Natalie is the one who wrote, to tell me how wonderful and kind and sensitive George is, how good with your children, how adorable he is … She has such a broad loving heart, there’s room for everybody in it, it seems …
HERZEN (giving her the cheque) Ten thousand francs for two years.
She signs the receipt, takes the cheque and leaves, with her crying baby.
JANUARY 1851
Natalie, with the painting she posed for, comes to show it to Herzen.
HERZEN Oh yes … Where will we put it?
NATALIE Oh … but it’s a present for George for the New Year.
HERZEN How silly of me.
NATALIE Do you like it?
HERZEN Very much. If Herwegh will permit it, I’ll order a copy made for myself.
NATALIE You’re angry.
HERZEN What should I have to be angry about?
NATALIE Take it for yourself, then.
HERZEN Nothing would induce me.
Natalie becomes tearful and confused.
NATALIE George is like my child. He becomes distressed—destroyed—or elated—by the smallest things. You’re a grown man among men, you don’t understand the yearning for love of a sensitive being for a different kind of love—
HERZEN Please speak plainly.
NATALIE He worships you, he lives for your approval, spare him this—
HERZEN Natalie, examine your heart calmly, be open with yourself, and with me. If you want me to go, I’ll go—I’ll go to America with Sasha—
Natalie becomes almost hysterical.
NATALIE How can you! How can you! As though such a thing were possible! You’re my homeland, my whole life. I’ve lived on my love for you as in God’s world, without it I wouldn’t exist, I’d have to be born again to have a life at all—
HERZEN Plain speech, for God’s sake! Has Herwegh—known you?
NATALIE If only you could understand!—you would beg my forgiveness for what you’re saying.
HERZEN Has he taken you?
NATALIE I have taken him—to my bosom like a babe.
HERZEN Is this poetry or infantilism? I want to know if he’s your lover.
NATALIE I am pure before myself and before the world—I bear no reproach in the very depths of my heart—now you know.
HERZEN (exasperated) Now I know what?
NATALIE That I am yours, that I love you, that my affection for George is God-given—if he went away, I would sicken—if you went away, I would die! Perhaps I should be the one to go—to Russia for a year—Natasha is the only one who would understand the purity of my love. Oh, how did this happen? How did this innocent world of my loving heart shatter to fragments?
HERZEN Christ! Just tell me without the double-talk!—Is Herwegh your lover?!
NATALIE He loves me, yes—he loves me—
HERZEN Is he your lover? Have you been to his bed?
NATALIE Oh—I see. You have no objection if I take him to my heart, only to my bed—
HERZEN Precisely. Or his bed, or a flower bed, or up against the back of the town hall—
NATALIE Alexander, Alexander, this is not you, this is not the great-hearted soul I gave my tender innocent heart to when I—
Herzen shakes her.
HERZEN Tell me, damn your speeches! Is it true?
Natalie collapses weeping.
HERZEN (cont.) It’s true, then. Say it. Say it.
NATALIE He is my lover! There!
HERZEN Thank you. That guttersnipe—that unctuous, treacherous, lecher—that thiefl—
NATALIE Oh my God, what have we done—and the children!
HERZEN There was a time to think of that before you besmirched all of us with your common little fall from grace—well, I shall go!
NATALIE No—no!—It’ll kill him!
HERZEN Kill him? What kind of mockery of a love affair is this?
NATALIE I swear it—he’ll kill himself. He’s got a pistol.
Herzen laughs madly.
HERZEN Well, he’d better clean it if it’s the one he went to war with—the barrel must be full of mud!
NATALIE Alexander, aren’t you ashamed? I’m at your mercy, and you make a joke of a love which gave me back my life.
HERZEN Oh—thank you! Thank you! And what was your life before I took you from it in the clothes you stood up in?
NATALIE It was wretched. You’re right. I gave it to you joyfully, it belongs to you to do what you want with, so kill me all at once and not little by little!
Natalie collapses sobbing. Herzen sits next to her and takes her hands, his fury spent.
HERZEN And you forgot to bring your hat. (He gives way to tears, embracing her.) Forgive me, too—forgive everything I said. They are not things I believe. I have lost something I hardly gave a thought to. My existence. My purchase on my life.
Emma enters.
EMMA George wants you to kill him.
HERZEN Can’t he ask me himself?
EMMA This is a calamity for both of us, but compare your behaviour with mine. Let Natalie go away with him.
HERZEN Of course! If she wants to.
Emma goes to Natalie and kneels by her.
EMMA Save him.
NATALIE I can’t. What strength I have, I need for Alexander. I will go wherever he goes.
HERZEN It’s him who’s going. (to Emma) I’ll pay your fares to Genoa provided you leave in the morning.
Emma gets up.
EMMA We can’t leave. There are tradesmen’s accounts we have to settle.
HERZEN It will be my pleasure.
Emma runs back to Natalie and flings herself down in desperation.
EMMA If you won’t go with George, ask him to take me when he goes!—Ask him not to abandon me!
HERZEN You’re asking my wife to plead for you …?
EMMA Will you?
Natalie nods. Emma gets up to go.
EMMA (cont.) (to Herzen) Egoist!
HERZEN But you’ve made yourself a slave, and this is where it’s got you.
Emma leaves.
HERZEN (cont.) Of course I’m an egoist! How strange people are!—taking pride in humility … in servitude to others … and the whole system of duties designed by authority to keep us quiet and as little different from each other as possible … Why should we damp down everything in us which is our uniqueness, the salt of our personality … the tiny furnace which needs to be constantly fed with selfesteem to keep us warm and vital and, yes, of use to our brothers and neighbours? Egoism isn’t an acquired vice. It’s not an acquired virtue either. It’s just part of what comes with being human, to keep us free, to create our own destiny, and our values. It’s not the enemy of love! It’s what love feeds on. That’s why without you I’d be destroyed.
Herzen’s self-assurance collapses. Natalie comforts him. She is altered back, and speaks as one who is dry-eyed.
NATALIE No … no … You wouldn’t be destroyed, Alexander. I’m only a little part of your … your sense of worth. I can’t give it back to you. But it’s not lost between us. It passes to me. I’ll never leave you. But think what I have lost, too … the ideal of a love which is greater the more it includes, instead of more hurtful, squalid and ridiculous.
Rocca is heard—and then seen—singing. He is laying the table and making the verandah festive.
NOVEMBER 1851
Herzen is working on the verandah. Rocca, singing, is making the verandah and dining table festive, helped by a Maid. Rocca leaves and returns.
ROCCA Principe!
Rocca admits a man who is the Russian Consul. The CONSUL bows. Rocca leaves.
CONSUL Leonty Vasilevich Ibayev. I am addressing Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, of course.
HERZEN You are.
CONSUL I am the Russian Consul in Nice.
HERZEN Good heavens.
CONSUL I have a communication to make to you.
HERZEN From whom?
CONSUL From Count Orlov.
HERZEN Ah. Last time it was good news. Please sit down.
CONSUL Thank you.
The Consul sits down and takes a document from his pocket. He reads it out.
CONSUL (cont) ‘Adjutant-General Count Orlov has notified Count Nesselrode, Minister of Foreign Affairs, that—(He rises to his feet, inclining his head.)—His Imperial Majesty—(He sits again.)—has been graciously pleased to order that Alexander Ivanovich Herzen shall return to Russia at once—of which he is to be informed, accepting from him no reasons for delay and granting him no postponement under any circumstances.’ (He folds the document and puts it in his pocket.) What am I to answer?
HERZEN That I’m not going.
CONSUL How do you mean, ‘not going’?
HERZEN Just that. Not going. Remaining. Staying put.
CONSUL You don’t understand. His Imperial—(He stands, bows his head and sits.)—Majesty is ordering you …
HERZEN Yes, and I’m not going.
CONSUL You mean you are humbly requesting a delay in the execution of the will of His Imperial—
HERZEN No, no, I can’t make myself any clearer. I’m not asking for a delay. I’m not going at any time.
CONSUL An indefinite delay, you mean? You are ill, perhaps, too ill to travel. There would be precedents for that.
HERZEN One of us is mad. I’m in excellent health, especially mental health, so it must be you. Do you really think I would hold out my wrists for the handcuffs on the say-so of His Imperial—sit down, for God’s sake!
CONSUL But what am I to do? Look on it from my position. If I were to be the intermediary for an act of disobedience to the will of His Imp—(He starts to rise but checks himself.)—Majesty, it would call attention to my name in a most unfavourable context. It might even look as if I’m giving myself airs … being privy to something so inimicable to His Majesty’s dignity, so incommensurable with the vastness of his anger, before which nations tremble.
HERZEN (amused now) I see what you mean.
CONSUL Thank you.
HERZEN But it would be Count Orlov to whom you’d be giving the bad news.
CONSUL It’s the same thing. Count Orlov would never forget my name.
HERZEN But you’re only the messenger.
CONSUL There’s a streak of the Cleopatra in him.
HERZEN We’d better have a drink. Rocca! Vino.
Rocca interrupts an aria to serve the wine.
HERZEN (cont.) Why don’t I write personally to Count Orlov? Then you wouldn’t know what I’ve said.
CONSUL Would you do that? I’d be immensely grateful.
Herzen starts writing. The wine is served.
CONSUL (cont.) Are you having a celebration?
HERZEN A homecoming. My mother has been in Paris with one of my children. They’re returning tonight on the Marseilles steamer.
CONSUL Your little boy who is deaf?
HERZEN I was wondering why Orlov would keep a consul in a place like this.
CONSUL No, no … what an egoist! I see your children with their nurse, playing on the beach. But you’re right. Life is very quiet. Very few passports are being issued to travellers since the … events in Europe.
Natalie comes onto the verandah with Sazonov.
NATALIE Look who’s come from Geneva!
HERZEN (to the Consul) Allow me to present you to my wife. This is Mr …
CONSUL Ibayev, Russian Consul.
Natalie is frightened.
NATALIE What …? (to Herzen) Is everything all right?
HERZEN Perfectly. (to the Consul) And this is …
Sazonov becomes suave.
SAZONOV Ah. I’m impressed. I never told anyone I was coming.
CONSUL I had business with Mr Herzen.
Sazonov laughs sceptically.
SAZONOV Of course. Please compliment Count Orlov for me … on his excellent information.
CONSUL Do you know Count Orlov?
SAZONOV No. But I daresay he knows me. I was a thorn in his side for many years in Paris.
HERZEN Sit down, have a drink—
SAZONOV (ignoring Herzen) No doubt you know a little bit about my … activities in Geneva. Tell Orlov we will undoubtedly be meeting one day.
CONSUL Certainly. What name shall I say?
SAZONOV Just say … the blue nightingale is still flying in the sky … He’ll understand.
Herzen signs and seals the letter.
HERZEN All done.
The Consul accepts the letter and bows to Natalie and Sazonov. Herzen accompanies him out. There is a transition to evening. Natalie and Rocca, perhaps with a maid, are completing the preparations for the reunion, with Chinese lanterns, bunting, toys on the table, and a ‘Welcome Kolya’ sign. (In an ideal world Sasha would be part of this, but he is eleven now. His never-seen sister, Tata, would be seven.) Sazonov is vaguely helping, too, but soon gives up to ramble on and drink. Natalie hardly bothers to listen to him.
SAZONOV I’ve had a letter from Botkin … Alexander’s pamphlet on the development of revolutionary ideas in Russia gave heart attacks to his friends in the Moscow University circle … (He becomes conscious of Rocca and suddenly addresses him.) Watch out, look what you’re doing!
Rocca reacts late and baffled.
NATALIE He doesn’t know Russian. He’s our Italian servant. (to Rocca) E niente. [It’s nothing.]
SAZONOV You can’t be too careful.
NATALIE Why aren’t they here yet? I should have gone with Alexander to meet the steamer …
SAZONOV What else …? Moscow was en fête for the opening of the railway. Tsar Nicholas loves it. He inspected every bridge and tunnel personally. His German relatives impressed everyone by their appetites in the station refreshment room …
NATALIE (distracted) Why are they so late? It’s probably Granny’s trunks. She travels like an archduchess.
SAZONOV Who’s with them?
NATALIE Only her maid, I think, and Spielmann, Kolya’s tutor. (to Rocca) Por favor, vai a vedere se vengano. [Please go and see if they’re coming.]
SAZONOV The speech man? Are you mad? That can’t be his real name!
Rocca meets Herzen at the edge of the stage. Herzen brushes past him. Natalie sees him.
NATALIE Alexander …? Where are they?
HERZEN They’re not coming. The boat from Marseilles … isn’t coming.
Herzen embraces her, weeping.
NATALIE (bewildered) They’re not coming at all?
HERZEN No. There was an accident at sea … Oh, Natalie!
NATALIE When is Kolya coming?
HERZEN He’s never coming. I’m sorry.
Natalie fights out of his embrace and pummels him.
NATALIE Don’t you dare tell me that! (She runs inside.)
HERZEN (to Rocca) Get rid of everything. (Herzen gestures at the decorations.)
SAZONOV God … what happened?
HERZEN They got rammed by another boat. A hundred people drowned. (to Rocca in Italian) Get rid of all this.
Herzen follows Natalie indoors. She starts to howl in her grief. Rocca uncertainly starts to blow out the candles.
AUGUST 1852
At night Herzen stands by the guardrail on the deck of the crosschannel steamer at sea. After a few moments he realises that Bakunin is at the rail, too.
BAKUNIN Where are we off to? Who’s got the map?
HERZEN Michael? Are you dead?
HERZEN That’s good. I was just thinking about you, and there you are, how very … un-odd!—yes, looking just like you looked when I saw you off in the rain on the tender to Kronstadt where the steamer was waiting. Do you remember?
BAKUNIN You were the only one who came to see me off.
HERZEN And now you’re the only one who’s come to see me off!
BAKUNIN Where are you going?
HERZEN England.
BAKUNIN Alone?
HERZEN Natalie died three months ago … We lost Kolya. He was drowned at sea, my mother with him, and a young man who was teaching Kolya to speak. None of them was ever found. It finished my Natalie. She was expecting another baby, and when it came, she had no strength left. The baby died, too.
BAKUNIN My poor friend.
HERZEN Oh, Michael, you should have heard Kolya talk! He had such a funny, charming way … and he understood everything you said, you’d swear he was listening! The thing I can’t bear … (He almost breaks down.) … I just wish it hadn’t happened at night. He couldn’t hear in the dark. He couldn’t see your lips.
BAKUNIN Little Kolya, his life cut so short! Who is this Moloch …?
HERZEN No, no, not at all! His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced? It’s only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called Utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us. (Pause.) What happened to you, Michael? Were you betrayed?
BAKUNIN No. I ran out of revolutions. When the soldiers caught up with me, I was too tired to care. I only wanted to sleep. I had plenty of time to sleep after that … nine months in fetters in the fortress of Königstein, and when the Germans had done with me, as long againin Prague Castle. Thank you for the money you sent. I was allowed to order cigars and books. I learned English! (accented) ‘George and Mary go to the seaside.’ How is George? Thank him for me. Emma sent a hundred francs, too. Small sums of money came from democrats all over, from people I didn’t know. Brotherhood before bread, it’s not all bathwater.
HERZEN You’ve become a myth. I heard that society ladies were collecting funds for a rescue attempt.
BAKUNIN Word must have got back to Russia—there were twenty Cossacks waiting at the border to escort me to the Peter and Paul Fortress. No, it’s up to the revolution now.
HERZEN What revolution?
BAKUNIN The Russian revolution. It can’t be long coming now. Our Westerniser friends at home were waiting for a Russian bourgeoisie to make a revolution for their children, but—don’t you see?—not having a bourgeoisie is Russia’s good fortune!
HERZEN Don’t tell me, tell them.
BAKUNIN Our own revolution, Herzen! Not a bourgeois revolution like in Europe—they let us down very badly, the Germans and the French, they were all for getting rid of aristocratic privilege, but they closed ranks to defend their property.
HERZEN What did you expect?
BAKUNIN Well, why didn’t you tell me?
HERZEN You never listened.
BAKUNIN Why should I listen? There were more poor people with the vote than rich people … How could it turn out the way it did?
HERZEN It’s as Proudhon said, universal suffrage is counterrevolutionary.
BAKUNIN He kept coming out with those, Pierre-Joseph, didn’t he? I taught him Hegel. His wife would serve supper by the fire, go to bed, get up, and serve breakfast, and we’d still be sat there over the embers, going through the categories … Great days, Herzen!
HERZEN Oh … Bakunin!
BAKUNIN We were there for the February revolution. It was the happiest time of my life.
HERZEN I was in Italy. Ten days after I got back to Paris, I knew the revolution was dead … and now the Republic is dead, too. Vive la mort! Did you know? President Louis-Napoleon turned himself into Emperor Louis-Napoleon with only a few thousand arrests. People didn’t care. It was one way out of a Republic which was ashamed of itself. The Second Empire arrived just in time to finish the year off nicely. Expect important changes in furniture and ladies’ fashions. You’re right. It’s over with us Russians and the Western model. Civilisation passed us by, we belonged to geography, not history, so we escaped. We can now get on without being distracted. The West has nothing to teach us. It’s sinking under its weight of precious cargo which it won’t jettison—all those shackles for the mind. With us it’s all ballast. Over the side with it! We’re too oppressed to make do with half-liberty. We’re free to act because we have nothing.
BAKUNIN I couldn’t wait to get to the West! Twenty Cossacks couldn’t have held me back in my yearning for the other shore. But the answer was behind me all the time. A peasant revolution, Herzen! Marx bamboozled us. He’s such a townie, to him peasants are hardly people, they’re agriculture, like cows and turnips. Well, he doesn’t know the Russian peasant! There’s a history of rebellion there, and we forgot it.
HERZEN Stop—Stop.
BAKUNIN I don’t mean your hand-kissing, priest-fearing greybeards—the Slavophiles can have those. I mean men and women who are ready to burn everything in sight and string up the landlord!—with policemen’s heads on their pitchforks!
HERZEN Stop!—’Destruction is a creative passion!’ You’re such a … child! We have to go to the people, bring them with us, step by step. But Russia has a chance. The village commune can be the foundation of true populism, not Aksakov’s sentimental paternalism, and not the iron bureaucracy of a socialist elite, but self-government from the ground up. Russian socialism! After the farce of 1848, I was in despair. My life meant nothing. Russia saved me … and then fate had another trick up its sleeve … Are you there, Michael?
BAKUNIN Oh, yes. If it goes your way, I’ll be there for years. (Bakunin leaves.)
HERZEN Nobody’s got the map. In the West, socialism may win next time, but it’s not history’s destination. Socialism, too, will reach its own extremes and absurdities, and once more Europe will burst at the seams. Borders will change, nationalities break up, cities burn … the collapse of law, education, manufacture, fields left to rot—military rule and money in flight to England, America … And then a new war will begin between the barefoot and the shod. It will be bloody, swift and unjust, and leave Europe like Bohemia after the Hussites. Are you sorry for civilisation? I am sorry for it, too.
Natalie’s voice—from the past—is heard distantly calling repeatedly for Kolya. Distant thunder.
HERZEN (cont.) He can’t hear you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Natalie.
SUMMER 1846
Sokolovo as before: a continuation. Distant thunder. Sasha continues putting the fallen mushrooms into the basket. Natalie’s voice is still calling for Kolya. Sasha stops to look and listen. Men’s voices can be heard yet more distantly, calling to each other—i.e., Herzen and his friends directing each other in the search. Ogarev enters, calling to Natalie.
OGAREV Kolya’s here! He’s with me.
NATALIE (entering) Oh, thank God … thank God!
OGAREV No panic, no panic … he followed the ditch, he’s filthy.
Natalie runs across.
NATALIE (offstage) Mummy thought she’d lost you! Come on, let’s wash you in the stream. (receding) Alexander! … Here! …
Ogarev still has Sasha’s fishing cane and jam jar. Distantly, the men are heard shouting to each other, calling off the search. A final distant sound of thunder.
OGAREV Life, life … (to Sasha) I got to know your papa because of a man nearly drowning … in the river at Luzhniki.
SASHA (interested) Really?
OGAREV Yes, really! A Cossack who was grazing his horse on the Sparrow Hills came running down into the water and saved him, a real hero! Your father was playing by the river and saw it all, and he told his papa, who wrote to the Cossack’s commanding officer about it. The man who was saved came to your house to thank your grandpa for doing that, and so he became friends with your family. And where do I come in? Well, the man in the water later became my tutor, and one day when I was about twelve years old, he took me to meet a boy he’d come to know because of being nearly drowned, and that’s how I met your daddy, and we became best friends.
SASHA No, you’re not, I don’t know you.
OGAREV Why, I patted your behind before you were born! It was the happiest day of my life, that day. We knelt down together, holding hands, your mother and father and my wife and I, and … But you’re right, later I went travelling. (Pause.) No, my happiest day was another day, before that, up on the Sparrow Hills, just where the Cossack had come running down, and your daddy and I … we climbed up to the top where the sun was setting on Moscow spread out below us, and we made a promise to … to be revolutionaries together. I was thirteen then. (He gives a little laugh and looks up.) The storm has missed us.
HERZEN (offstage) Nick … !
Herzen enters with the letter from Orlov.
OGAREV Tell Sasha who I am.
HERZEN Look … from Count Orlov.
He gives the letter to Ogarev, who starts to read it.
HERZEN (cont.) (to Sasha) Nick? Nick is my best friend.
Ogarev returns the letter to Herzen.
OGAREV (to Sasha) See?
Ogarev embraces Herzen in joyous congratulation.
Natalie enters.
A slow fade begins.
Servants enter to clear up the coffee tray, etc.
Ogarev, Herzen, Natalie and Sasha stroll away towards the house, taking the basket of mushrooms.