by Maxim Gorky
Protasov Liza, catch.
Liza Pavel. People are starving. / This is food. Boris. This is disgraceful.
Boris They’re all everywhere.
Protasov It’s just fun, Liza.
Vageen This is freedom. It means nothing except / what it means to us. Now.
Boris What a mess. All gone.
Melaniya You people do nothing.
Amidst the laughter, Melaniya hurries away.
Yelena It’s / just silly.
Protasov Nanny!
Liza Pavel. Yelena? All of you?
Protasov We were just being silly. Mucking / around.
Liza That’s food. That is food. Look at the waste.
Protasov She brought them for an experiment and I don’t need them today.
Vageen We were playing. Play is freedom.
Liza Can’t you see? The way you live? This freedom. Here? Is merely a clearing in a dark and dangerous wood. This precious clearing we inhabit, that allows for the odd flower, the odd laughter. But the wood that surrounds us is dark and putrid. Airless and rotten. The wild and the embittered are breaking out on to the streets, exterminating each other with delight. Soon their malice will rain down upon all of us. You read about / it everywhere. Nowhere is safe. Nothing is working.
Protasov Liza, you read too much. Really. Those are all. Don’t … It’s all … Sweet Liza, I think your nerves have / made it difficult to …
Liza Shut up about my fucking nerves. It’s just so you don’t have to think / about what I know.
Protasov Well, I don’t know. / I …
Liza No you don’t. None of you can see that by just making yourselves better and happier you have made the world worse.
Vageen So, what are you saying? We should feel guilty for having some fun with eggs because some people are hungry?
Liza Are you a moron?
Vageen No. No. Our education allows us to explore things freely. And in doing that we find alternatives by … in using things differently. Even in play. Things. Because we are free of the constraints of plodding through doing / what we are told.
Liza It’s exactly this. This separation. Us and them? And you benefit from the plodding, and the people doing what they are told. You are better for the education. All the good outcomes are yours to enjoy each day and … every day … further and further away from all this ‘progress’ and ‘alternative thinking’ … the hatred grows and seethes and lies in waiting. How could you expect anything else?
Vageen You just sound / like Cassandra.
Protasov No, no, Liza, hang on. The work we do is important. The knowledge I reveal will lead to advances for everyone. It trickles / down inevitably.
Vageen And who says that matters anyway?
Protasov No, no, it does actually, Dimitri. Because that is the greater purpose here.
Vageen Greater / purpose.
Liza Trickles down? How long will that take? You are a self-involved / fool, Pavel.
Boris Liza. Liza.
Yelena It’ll be fine.
Protasov Liza? In my own lifetime, people call me a fool and in two hundred years’ time what I struggle to find out now will be common knowledge. We’re all fools from one perspective or another. But you know what I am doing? Really doing? I am uncovering the secret of life. Just one among many. And there are others – still to come – who will master this great knowledge. Having mastered it, sickness, poverty, conflict, all these will be slowly eradicated. It may take two or three hundred more years but that, added to the last ten thousand, is nothing. A fitting conclusion to the vast cosmic narrative which we, humans, shape and punctuate. That is what we are doing, Liza. And the reason we can’t do it today. Snap, like that. Is because we aren’t ready. But the work it takes will prepare us for the knowledge we gain. It will.
Liza Everything I read fills me with fear.
Boris You’re / only human.
Protasov Fear, exactly. Yes, Liza, fear. Fear of death stops people from making the personal sacrifices necessary for a better future. Fear of death is our greatest enemy and the greatest weapon that ignorance and superstition have in the battle for enlightenment. We obsess about our petty lives and our tiny struggles and forget that the big picture is the only thing of interest to the cosmos. ‘Oh, I feel all sad today?’ ‘I’m a bit cross about losing my job.’ ‘Gosh I’m hungry …’ Does the sun stop shining? Sorry. Does the moon stop orbiting? No. Does the earth stop turning? Let alone the rest of the solar system, the rest of the galaxy, the rest of the universe. No, it doesn’t. We are tiny, tiny fragments of minuscule cogs in a grand and fabulously random collision, and the sense can only be read in the whole story, not in each insignificant pen scratch and bellyache. So it is fear we must eradicate. Ignorance and superstition and those obvious cronies of damnation and grace. If there must be a divine force? Let it be the sun. It is the warmth of the sun, our planet’s fabulously fortuitous relationship to the sun. It is the sun that burns in our veins and sustains our precarious balance. If we are born of anything? We are born of the sun.
Liza And a broken heart is irrelevant in that, of course. My worries and sorrows are – in perspective – insignificant, aren’t they? When you look at the vast, vast sun-warmed universe that you can see? Isn’t it?
Protasov Yes.
She reads a poem from her oft-clutched notebook.
Liza ‘For Pavel’.
In the vastness that surrounds me
Only stars to light the path.
My tiny candle burns against the dark,
Ignorance is always breathing at the grate.
Stupidity is always lying coiled, in wait.
There is always a saliva-dog
Scrabbling amongst the bins.
The candle is my only light that will reveal
The possibility of the heavens and her stars,
In the vastness that surrounds me.
Protasov Liza? Did you write / that for me? When?
Boris It’s very powerful, Liza.
Vageen It’s great, it reminds me of a painting. I thought:
Stormy world,
Impassioned clouds
Form on every gnarled horizon.
By candle I reveal
The ground on which we travel.
‘By candle, we steal the light of the heavens.’
Protasov There it is.
Liza Boris? Are you all right?
Boris You spoke truth. And reminded me of what was …
Liza Really?
Boris He imagined beauty.
Vageen And what is wrong with that?
Boris Beauty is nice to live with, but truth is more useful.
Avdotya bursts in pursued by her drunken husband, Yegor.
Avdotya Arsehole.
Liza I’m sorry, / what’s happening?
Avdotya Help me, please.
Yegor Don’t you dare go talking to them. / I’ll kill you.
Liza Oh God, someone / stop them.
Avdotya What is this place? It smells of rot and death.
Protasov I’m doing an experiment.
Yegor Don’t listen to the / bitch.
Boris Be quiet. / What are you here for?
Liza What do they want?
Avdotya What are you bringing into our town? Yegor is covered in it?
Yegor Shut up, woman. I am fine. Shut up.
Yelena Come here.
Avdotya Everyone says there’s sickness here.
Protasov It’s just my work.
Yegor I’m fine, don’t listen / to the bitch.
Liza Help us, / someone please help us.
Boris Get inside. And you. You, leave at once.
Yakov rounds the corner bleeding from a cut face.
Yegor She’s my wife.
Yakov A man has rights over his wife. Which doesn’t necessarily mean he has control of her.
Yegor This man’s telling me I’ve sold my soul. But I need the work. And she’s all at him, cuts his face.
Avdotya My children are sick.
Yakov This place is full of the sulphurs of hell.
Boris Get home now.
Yegor He can’t handle his drink. And she’s on him like a dog.
Boris Leave.
Vageen Careful.
Boris moves in on Yegor, who collapses into tears.
Yegor I need the work here. There is nothing else for me. I didn’t want to come here and spoil everything.
Boris Get this pile of shit out of here.
Yakov leads his humiliated friend off.
Vageen God, I could paint that look. That’s the look of determination. That’s the look of the heroes / on the boat. I could paint that.
Liza Pavel? How can you be right? Yes, the world may roll on for another thousand years but at what daily, hourly, soul-destroying, inhuman, crushing cost? We have to find peace now. Now. Not in two hundred years, not in twenty years. Now. Listen to me, Pavel. Please.
Blackout.
Act Three
The living room, again. Later. Overcast.
Roman working and singing. Feema comes in.
Feema I’m going.
Roman And?
Feema I’m leaving here, for ever.
Roman Yeah. And?
Feema I’m marrying a man. An old man. A wealthy old man.
Roman That’d be right.
Feema Roman, please? Just kiss me.
Roman I thought you hated me.
Feema Only ’cause I can’t have you.
Roman Shit. You can have me.
Nanny enters.
Nanny There you are, I need you to go across town and get Yegor.
Feema No. I’m leaving.
Nanny I beg your pardon?
Roman She’s not going.
Nanny Roman? Why aren’t / you fixing the gate?
Roman She can’t go there. It’s too dangerous. Illness and everyone’s bashing each other. And Yegor is a drunk. She’s just a girl, a delicate.
Nanny Delicate?
Roman You can’t make her. I’ll go.
Nanny Roman, what / has come …
Feema As of right now. I don’t work here any more, anyway.
Nanny I don’t think you ever worked here, young / lady.
Feema I did so.
Nanny and Feema Where are you going?
Roman To get Yegor.
Nanny No, you stay here – we need you to fix the gate.
Roman What for?
Nanny It’s broken.
Boris enters.
Boris Where’s Liza?
Nanny She hasn’t had her drops yet.
Boris I can give them to her.
Nanny She’s not a –
Go and get Yegor.
Feema No.
Boris I wouldn’t go across town. They’re all going bonkers.
Where are the drops? LIZA?
Nanny Now don’t you stir her up. Just you.
She follows him off. Quiet.
Roman I think you are so sexy.
Feema You’re everything a man should be.
Roman You can have me. You can have me. I’m yours.
Feema I can’t have you. If I marry you then we will be servants for ever.
Roman So what?
Feema Just kiss me.
Nazar barrels on.
Nazar Where is Pavel? Where is he?
Roman? What are you doing here?
Roman Just.
PAVEL! SIR, I MEAN! SIR, SIR! SIR!
Nazar You look. Beautiful today.
Feema I’m going. Nanny’s in charge.
Nazar Good. Great.
Fancy a little …?
Feema goes.
Pavel!
Yelena Try and keep it down will you? Pavel is working. What do you want? Nanny said you were all … What?
Nazar Best I keep it between me and Pavel.
Yelena No, he’s busy. I promised him some peace.
Nazar It’s very delicate and quite technical.
Yelena So am I.
Nazar The police are involved. The workers are all. There’s a lot of talk, superstitious talk. The townsfolk are all saying that … that. That the disease is being cooked up here.
Yelena That’s ridiculous.
Nazar It is, I couldn’t agree more. It’s ridiculous. Their ignorance is massive. But you see the illness thing. Is different – in a way. Which is where the police come into it and probably your husband and … well, Yegor as well. You see?
Yelena No.
Nazar It’s very technical. It involves copper and – an exact amount of copper. Some of which … was sold twice – which can happen at the pawnshop a lot. We are / used to the idea that …
Yelena You sold some copper twice?
Nazar We didn’t sell all of it twice. Just. An amount that meant the original amount. The full amount which your honourable husband purchased was slightly less than, you know, full. There’s a crack. And now police are shaking fists and threatening fines – three hundred roubles. I mean, three hundred roubles.
Yelena It sounds like your problem. You can go now.
Nazar Well, I need to fix it. I know what to do but someone has to talk to the police. About the cesspit.
Yelena It can’t be Pavel, he needs peace. Bye.
Nazar Well, when can he?
Yelena Bye.
Nazar I’ll just be down the road. / Whenever.
Yelena Yes. Bye.
She sees Nazar off. Protasov sticks his head out from the room.
Protasov Lena, darling!
Yelena Shh.
She checks the landlord is gone. All clear.
Protasov Has he left?
Yelena Not quite.
Protasov I haven’t been able to do a thing. I can’t seem to … think.
Yelena Would now be a good time for us to talk, then?
Protasov I need to get somewhere, first. With this experiment. I’m as close as I’ve ever been.
Where’s Dimitri? Are you bored?
Yelena What are you saying? What are you doing, Pavel? I’m making this time for you, for us, and you’re driving me away.
Protasov No, no. Not at all. But right now. Right this instant. Ooh, there’s Feema.
He vanishes. Feema hurries on.
Yelena Feema, I need / you to –
Feema Thing is, ma’am. I was hoping we could finish today.
Yelena Finish what?
Feema Let me go.
Yelena But who’ll look after us?
Feema Nanny. Roman.
Yelena You’re all dressed up.
Feema Yes. I’m leaving.
Yelena Leaving?
Feema Yes.
Yelena But who’ll look / after us?
Feema Can we settle up? For three weeks. Pay.
You owe me.
Yelena Could you fetch Yegor? For / Nanny.
Feema I’m not going there.
Yelena I need you / to.
Feema Even if I did work for you.
Yelena Send Nanny in.
Feema I don’t know where she is.
You can’t send an old woman to fetch that man.
Yelena Could you ask Roman to come in?
Feema Roman!
I have to go. You owe me three weeks. Then I can leave.
She exits, almost knocking Boris over.