by Tom Stoppard
GWIAZDA: And you’re still talking to them about workers’ self-management! It’s confrontation, Lech.
WALESA: Yes. I know.
117. INT. SOLIDARITY MEETING ROOM. DAY
This is a meeting of about twenty people, the Praesidium and Regional Chairmen of Solidarity. WALESA is speaking.
WALESA: Confrontation was always at the end of the road. I hoped to get there by easy stages. I think we could have got further, but I miscalculated. So we have to change our tactics and be prepared to move at lightning speed.
BUJAK: We’ll liberate the radio and TV … we’ll establish our own council for the national economy. It will be like a provisional government.
118. INT. JARUZELSKL’S OFFICE. DAY
JARUZELSKI is listening to a tape of Bujak’s speech.
BUJAK: (On tape) … we’ll establish our own council for the national economy. It will be like a provisional government.
JARUZELSKI: We’re there.
(We see that he is talking to MARSHAL KULIKOV.)
KULIKOV: None too soon. This trap has been a long time springing.
JARUZELSKI: Forgive me, Marshal, we prefer to think of it as a regrettable outcome.
KULIKOV: We all forgive you, Wojciech.
119. INT. WALSEA BEDROOM. NIGHT
DANUTA is in bed. WALESA enters without putting on the light. He sits on the bed and starts taking his shoes off.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) The final meeting of the National Commission of Solidarity ended in Gdansk on Saturday night, December 12th. There was going to be a national day of protest, a general strike against strike laws, and, going all the way now, a reappraisal of the Soviet connection.
DANUTA: Remember once they arrested you when I was nearly giving birth? Which baby was that?
WALESA: Yes, I remember. Everything was simpler then. We didn’t fight amongst ourselves. There was only one way to go. Then round the corner there was a fork in the road, and each fork led to a fork … so we got separated. Well, it’s been sixteen months. We’ve gone further and quicker than anyone expected. Jacek said we could win little by little, or lose overnight.
DANUTA: Lech …?
WALESA: They’ve cut the phone lines from Gdansk. I’m sorry. We may be apart for a while.
DANUTA: You don’t know that. Lech …?
WALESA: I think I’ve always known.
120. INT. POLICE CELL. DAY
The WITNESS is asleep. KURON apparently doesn’t know it, for he is pacing the cell, talking angrily.
KURON: It was not a conflict between ideologists – trying to make one system fit with another. (Scornfully) Marxist-Leninism! – what would Lenin have thought of the Polish Church? Or Polish agriculture – 80 per cent privately owned. Ideology is as dead as Lenin. All Brezhnev demanded from us was a political guarantee of the military alliance, and reliable railways for the army. All the rest is self-delusion.
121. INT. AIRFIELD. NIGHT
There is a parked helicopter with its rotors spinning. WALESA is escorted into the helicopter, which then takes flight.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) By dawn on Sunday, December 13th almost the entire Solidarity leadership was under arrest. The military council which announced itself as Poland’s saviour also arrested the former First Secretary, Edward Gierek, together with five others who had helped him to bring the Party and the country to the point in August 1980 when the shipyard workers on the Baltic Coast went on strike and demanded the right to form a free and independent trade union.
122. EXT. SEA SHORE. DAY
The beach and sea again. Everything is the same except that JARUZELSKI has replaced KANIA.
NARRATOR: (Voice over) When the summer came, Wojciech Jaruzelski, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, left Warsaw for his holiday in the Soviet Union by the Black Sea. There he met Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
(BREZHNEV approaches, and the two men come together andembrace.)
In an atmosphere of cordiality and complete mutual understanding the two leaders had a frank exchange of views.
BREZHNEV: Greetings, Comrade!
JARUZELSKI: Greetings, Comrade First Secretary!
BREZHNEV: So, how’s tricks?
JARUZELSKI: Fine.
BREZHNEV: And Mrs Jaruzelski?
JARUZELSKI: Who? – Oh, fine. And you?
BREZHNEV: To tell you the truth, I haven’t been feeling too well.
(They walk together up the beach.)
About the Author
Tom Stoppard’s work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, After Magritte, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, the trilogy The Coast of Utopia and Rock ’n’ Roll. His radio plays include If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died and In the Native State. Television work includes Professional Foul, Squaring the Circle and Parade’s End. His film credits include Empire of the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which he also directed, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma and Anna Karenina.
By the Same Author
TOM STOPPARD: PLAYS ONE
The Real Inspector Hound, After Magritte, Dirty Linen, New-Found-Land, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth
TOM STOPPARD: PLAYS TWO
The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, ‘M’ is for Moon among Other Things, If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog it Was That Died, In the Native State, On ‘Dover Beach’
TOM STOPPARD: PLAYS THREE
A Separate Peace, Teeth, Another Moon Called Earth, Neutral Ground, Professional Foul, Squaring the Circle
TOM STOPPARD: PLAYS FOUR
Dalliance (after Schnitzler), Undiscovered Country (after Schnitzler), Rough Crossing (after Molnár), On the Razzle (after Nestroy), The Seagull (after Chekhov)
TOM STOPPARD: PLAYS FIVE
Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Indian Ink, Hapgood
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
TRAVESTIES
JUMPERS
THE INVENTION OF LOVE
THE COAST OF UTOPIA
(Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage)
ROCK ’N’ ROLL
adaptations and translations
HENRY IV (after Pirandello)
HEROES (after Sibleyras)
IVANOV (after Chekhov)
THE CHERRY ORCHARD (after Chekhov)
screenplays
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (with Marc Norman)
fiction
LORD MALQUIST AND MR MOON
Copyright
This collection first published in 1993 as Stoppard: The Television Plays 1965–1984
Reissued as Tom Stoppard: Plays Three in 1998
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
This collection © Tom Stoppard, 1998
A Separate Peace © Tom Stoppard, 1969
Professional Foul © Tom Stoppard, 1978
Teeth © Tom Stoppard, 1983
Another Moon Called Earth © Tom Stoppard, 1983
Neutral Ground © Tom Stoppard, 1983
Squaring the Circle © Tom Stoppard, 1984
The right of Tom Stoppard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights whatsoever in these works are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever including performance rights must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to United Agents, 12–26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE ([email protected]). No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained.
This e
book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–30119–5