Man From the USSR & Other Plays Read online

  MARIANNA

  May I? Want to try right now?

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  (coming alive, with a radiant expression)

  What is it, Alyosha? You seem so cheerful.

  MARIANNA

  I’ll go ask the landlady for a phonograph, (runs out)

  KUZNETSOFF

  Olya, the deal went through. I’m getting even more than I expected. In ten days I’m going back.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  But you will be careful, won’t you?

  KUZNETSOFF

  What does being careful have to do with it? I’m talking about money.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  I’m particularly afraid this time. But I’m glad for you. Really, I’m very glad.

  KUZNETSOFF

  Good.

  (Marianna runs back in.)

  MARIANNA

  The landlady is grouchy today—she says the phonograph is broken.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Oh, well, you’ll do it another time.

  MARIANNA

  I told the maid to bring some coffee. She seems grouchy too. (a knock at the door. Maid’s voice: “Besuch für Frau Kuznetsoff. ”)

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Für mich?(goes out)

  MARIANNA

  Now, kiss me—quick!

  KUZNETSOFF

  No, no—please don’t rush me, madam.

  MARIANNA

  Why “madam”? Why are you always so distant? When will you learn to be less formal with me ? You don’t want to kiss me ? Alec!

  KUZNETSOFF

  Oh well, why not....

  MARIANNA

  No, now I don’t want to.

  KUZNETSOFF

  Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you—you shouldn’t use any perfume at all.

  MARIANNA

  This is an excellent perfume. You don’t understand a thing. It’s Houbigant.

  KUZNETSOFF

  (sings half-voice)

  And my beloved hooligan

  gave me an ounce of Houbigant4...

  MARIANNA

  No, it was from a former admirer. Are you jealous?

  KUZNETSOFF

  Marianna, you want to know the truth?

  MARIANNA

  Yes, of course.

  KUZNETSOFF

  All right—I’m not the least bit jealous, (picks up the photograph and examines it again) I’ve seen that face before.

  MARIANNA

  He was shot by the Bolsheviks last year. In Moscow, (pause) And why do you call me “madam”? It’s getting unbearable! Alec, wake up!

  KUZNETSOFF

  (puts down the portrait, which he has been holding, lost in thought) Unbearable, is it? Less unbearable than “Alec.”

  MARIANNA

  (perching on the arm of his chair and changing her tone of voice)

  You’re an awfully strange man. I’ve never had such a strange love affair. I can’t even understand how it happened. The way we met in the cellar. Then that crazy drunken evening with the Baron and Lyulya—It’s only been four days—yet it seems so long ago, doesn’t it? I can’t understand why I love you.... You’re an ugly little thing. But I love you. You’ve got lots of charm. I love to kiss you here ... and here....

  KUZNETSOFF

  You promised me some coffee.

  MARIANNA

  It’s coming in a minute, my darling. Tell me, what if your wife—Oh yes!—tell me, you’re not a Bolshevik, are you?

  KUZNETSOFF

  A Bolshevik, madam, a real Bolshevik.

  MARIANNA

  Cut it out—you keep kidding with me. It’s strange. You don’t appreciate one bit the fact that a refined woman like me got infatuated with you of all people. Don’t start thinking it’s love—it’s only an infatuation. When I get tired of a lover I drop him like a wilted flower. But today you are mine, today you may love me. Why don’t you say something?

  KUZNETSOFF

  Forgot my lines.

  MARIANNA

  You’re absolutely impossible! You ... you ... I simply don’t know what you are. You refuse to tell me anything about yourself. Wait, just a minute.... Darling.... Listen, Alec, why don’t you want me to move into the hotel with you? That’s the only place we meet anyway. Alec?

  KUZNETSOFF

  Listen, Marianna Sergeyevna, let’s agree once and for all—no questions.

  MARIANNA

  All right, all right, I won’t ask anything more. But I just don’t understand. Why?

  (voices outside the door. Then Olga Pavlovna brings in Yevghenia Vasilyevna Oshivenski, and Oshivenski himself follows. Yevghenia Vasilyevna is a plump old lady, dressed all in black, with slightly protruding eyes.)

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  These people want to migrate over to your room, Marianna Sergeyevna.

  OSHIVENSKI

  We just wanted to peek in on you. Let’s have your little hand.

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  That’s a very becoming little dress, Mariannochka.

  MARIANNA

  This is Olga Pavlovna’s husband.

  OSHIVENSKI

  (dryly)

  My pleasure.

  MARIANNA

  Oh, what am I saying....I believe you already know each other. Sit down, dear Yevghenia Vasilyevna. Over here. Olga Pavlovna, you want to do the honors for me? I’m such a bad hostess. Please sit down, everybody.

  (Meanwhile the maid has entered with a tray. On it are a coffeepot and cups. She sets it down, says “Bitte,” and leaves.)

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  (to Marianna)

  How are you, darling? Still making photographs?

  OSHIVENSKI

  Oh, Zhenya, you always mix things up! It’s called shooting. Shooting a movie....

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  I hear you play Communists in it?

  MARIANNA

  Please have some cake. Olga Pavlovna, would you cut it? Yes, it’s a very interesting film. Of course it’s hard to judge, because it’s being shot—please have some—in bits and pieces.

  OSHIVENSKI

  Thanks, I guess I will have a bitty piece. (He glances at Kuznetsoff, who has walked, with his cup, to the settee in the comer.) Why do they have to make movies about those scoundrels?

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Victor Ivanovich, how is your tavern doing?

  OSHIVENSKI

  And why are you changing the subject, Olga Pavlovna? I repeat, these characters ought to be strangled, not trotted out onto the stage.

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  I could strangle Trotsky with my own hands.

  MARIANNA

  Of course, art is above politics, but they have besmirched everything—beauty, the poetry of life....

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  I hear they have some great poet—Blok or Bloch5—or whatever his name is. A Jew futurist. Well, they maintain that this Bloch is better than Pushkin-and-Lermontov.

  (She says it like “Laurel-and-Hardy.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Come, come, Yevghenia Vasilyevna—Alexander Blok died a long time ago. Besides—

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  (sailing on unperturbed)

  But dearie, the whole point is that he’s alive. They lie about it deliberately. Just like they lied about Lenin. There were several Lenins. The real one was killed at the very beginning.

  OSHIVENSKI

  (continuing to glance to the left)

  Those scoundrels are capable of anything. Excuse me.... Olga Pavlovna, what’s the name and patronymic of your—

  KUZNETSOFF

  Alexey Matveyich.6 At your service.

  OSHIVENSKI

  I wanted to ask you, Alexey Matveyich—why are you smiling like that?

  KUZNETSOFF

  To be polite. You keep looking over at me.

  OSHIVENSKI

  Emigré talk doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea. Sir, you ought to try—

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Can I give you some more coffee?

  OSHIVEN
SKI

  —you ought to try living the way we live for a while. You’d start talking émigré talk yourself. Take me, for example. I’m an old man. They took away everything I had. They killed my son. For more than seven years I’ve been leading a pauper’s existence in exile. And now I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Our way of thinking is very different from yours.

  KUZNETSOFF

  (laughing)

  Why on earth are you attacking me like this?

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  Mariannochka, we must be going soon, (in a rapid sotto voce) Sorry, mais je ne peux pas supporter la compagnie d’un bolchevik.

  OSHIVENSKI

  No, I’m not attacking you. It’s just hard to control oneself sometimes. The mood may be different in Warsaw. You were there, weren’t you?

  KUZNETSOFF

  Passed through on my way. I’ve already answered that question for you.

  OSHIVENSKI

  And you’re planning to stay here a long time?

  KUZNETSOFF

  No, I’m leaving soon.

  OSHIVENSKI

  And for where?

  KUZNETSOFF

  What do you mean where? The USSR, of course.

  (silence)

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  Monsieur Kuznetsoff, perhaps you might be so kind as to take a little parcel with you? I have a granddaughter in St. Petersburg.

  OSHIVENSKI

  Zhenya!

  KUZNETSOFF

  If the parcel is not too big I’ll take it.

  OSHIVENSKI

  And permit me to ask, how come they let you into Russia?

  KUZNETSOFF

  Why wouldn’t they?

  MARIANNA

  Alexey Matveyevich, stop joking. God only knows what people will think.

  KUZNETSOFF

  If the interrogation is over, allow me to say good-by. Olya, I’d like to lie down for an hour in your room. I still have things to do tonight.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Wait, I’ll make you comfortable....

  (Olga Pavlovna and Kuznetsoff leave.)

  OSHIVENSKI

  How do you like that!

  MRS. OSHIVENSKI

  I had a feeling this would happen. Poor Olga Pavlovna.... I’m beginning to understand a lot of things.

  OSHIVENSKI

  She’s a fine one too....If people decide to separate they should stop seeing each other and acting like lovebirds! I’ll never shake his hand again, you have my word on that.

  MARIANNA

  Victor Ivanovich, I assure you—Alexey Matveyevich was only joking. You got overly excited.

  OSHIVENSKI

  (gradually calming down)

  No, I detest that kind of person. May I have some more coffee!

  (Marianna tilts the coffeepot.)

  CURTAIN

  ACT THREE

  A very bare room: a vestibule, somewhat like an embryonic foyer. A slate-colored wall extends from the right along the proscenium, stops at center stage, and recedes, with the angle of its outline creating the proper perspective, into the distance, where one can see a door that leads into an auditorium. At the extreme right edge of the stage, steps, with a copper handrail, lead down to the right. Against the wall, facing the audience, stands a small red velour settee. At the left edge, downstage, there is a table that serves as a box office, with a plain chair. Thus, someone who arrives for the lecture comes up the steps from the right, crosses from right to left along the slate wall enlivened by the red settee and either continues across the stage all the way to the left edge and the table where tickets are being sold, or else, having reached center stage, where the wall stops, turns, goes upstage and there disappears through the door leading into the hall. On the left wall there is a Toilette sign and the red cone of afire extinguisher above a folded hose. At the table sits Lyulya, a pert, attractive girl, with cosmetic footnotes, and beside her stands Taubendorf. Several people (typical émigrés) cross the stage, a bell rings, there is a confused sound of voices, and the stage grows empty. Everyone has gone through the upstage door. Only Lyulya and Taubendorf remain.

  LYULYA

  Let’s count how much we’ve taken in. Wait, let’s do it this way—

  TAUBENDORF

  Not much, I think. Why is this money lying separately?

  LYULYA

  —eighteen—don’t interrupt—eighteen-fifty, nineteen—

  TAUBENDORF

  Oh, how many times I’ve already done all this!...I’m lucky—as soon as they organize some lecture or concert or ball they always ask me to be in charge. I’ve even established a tariff: for a ball I get twenty-five.

  LYULYA

  There, I’ve lost count! Tsk-tsk.... Now I have to start all over again.

  TAUBENDORF

  Lectures, idiotic reports, charity balls, anniversaries—how many of them! Lyulya, I, too, have lost count. Now, for instance, someone is lecturing on something—but who it is and what, I really couldn’t care less. Then again, maybe it’s not a lecture at all but a concert, or else some long-haired moron reading poetry. Listen, Lyulya, let me count for you.

  LYULYA

  You say such strange things, Nikolay Karlovich. Today it should be especially interesting. And there are lots of people I know. This five is all torn.

  TAUBENDORF

  The faces are always the same. The same ProfessorVólkov, the Feldman girls, journalists, lawyers ... all the faces are familiar....

  LYULYA

  (powdering her face)

  Well, if you’ll really be a dear and count for me, I’ll go inside—to me it’s very interesting. May I powder your nose for you?

  TAUBENDORF

  Thanks a lot. By the way, don’t forget—tomorrow is the last day of shooting. Go on, go on, I’ll take care of everything here.

  LYULYA

  You are a sweetheart!

  (Goes out through the upstage door. Taubendorf sits down at the table and counts the money. Olga Pavlovna, in coat and hat, enters from the right.)

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Is Alyosha here?

  TAUBENDORF

  You’re the last person I expected!...No, I haven’t seen him.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  That’s odd.

  TAUBENDORF

  I can’t imagine him coming to this kind of affair!

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  There’s a lecture of some kind going on here, isn’t there? He told me Thursday that he planned to go.

  TAUBENDORF

  I really don’t know. I ran into him on the street yesterday. He didn’t say anything about it.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  That means I came for nothing.

  TAUBENDORF

  I wouldn’t think émigré lectures could possibly interest him. Anyway, it only just started. He may still come.

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  Could be. Let’s sit down somewhere.

  (They sit on the red settee.)

  TAUBENDORF

  I don’t understand it—is it possible Alyosha hasn’t been to see you in the last couple of days?

  OLGA PAVLOVNA

  The last time he came over was when the Oshivenskis were there—that would make it Thursday. And this is Sunday. I know he’s very busy and so forth. But I have been feeling uneasy and very nervous these last days. Of course what worries me is not the fact that he doesn’t come to see me but this business he’s involved in.... Is everything going all right, Nikolay Karlovich?

  TAUBENDORF

  Splendidly. It sometimes almost makes my head spin when I think about the things that are happening.