Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

by Andrei Platonov

  There is no indication as to how Platonov meant to continue the play, or why he abandoned it. There is, however, a film script—The Adopted Daughter—the first section of which incorporates much of the play. In the course of the next few sections the orphaned girl trains as a railway engineer. The script ends with Platonov returning to another of his most insistent themes: the prevention of a railway accident. Through her courage, initiative, and decisiveness the girl turns what could have been a disaster into a relatively minor accident; she herself is the only person to sustain serious injury.

  Before this, when asked during her training, “By what means does a real engineer drive?” the girl replies, “By means of the power of steam, multiplied by one’s soul!” This beautifully encapsulates both the matter and the manner of late Platonov. Platonov never lost his belief in technology—nor his belief in the power of the human soul.

  Robert Chandler, April 2016

  THE HURDY-GURDY

  A Play in Three Acts, Six Scenes

  CHARACTERS

  IGNAT NIKANOROVICH SHCHOEV, the director of a network of rural cooperatives in a remote district

  YEVSEI, his assistant

  PYOTR OPORNYKH, a procurement agent for the cooperative

  KLOKOTOV, a procurement agent for the cooperative

  GODOVALOV, a representative of the cooperative’s members, member of the cooperative’s supervisory committee

  YEVDOKIA, a newly promoted member of the proletariat1

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER

  FIRST MALE OFFICE WORKER

  ALYOSHA, a wandering cultural worker with music

  MIUD,2 an adolescent maiden, Alyosha’s companion in their common work

  KUZMA, an iron man, Alyosha’s and Miud’s sideshow

  EDUARD-VALKYRIYA-HANSEN STERVETSEN, a Danish professor and food industry expert, in the USSR with the goal of acquiring its “shock-working soul” for western Europe3

  SERENA, his daughter, a young girl

  A TALKING TUBE on SHCHOEV’s desk

  AN AGENT OF A STATE COLLECTIVE FARM

  AN ALIEN PERSON

  FOUR AIR-CHEM DEFENSE GIRLS4

  A FIREMAN

  A POLICEMAN

  A LOCAL POSTMAN

  OTHERS: children’s faces looking in the office window; two workers on a demolition crew; several office workers, men and women; people from the cooperativized population; people standing in line outside the Park of Culture and Leisure; two or three passing construction workers; workers in the shop by the doors of the cooperative

  ACT 1

  Scene 1

  Outskirts of a district town. A road leading into distant parts. An occasional wind stirs the trees to either side of it. On the left, amid the emptiness of the horizon, stands a construction site. On the right can be seen a small town. Above the town are flags. On the edge of the town stands a large barnlike dwelling with a flag above it. The flag shows a cooperative handshake, which can be made out from a distance.5

  Wind. No sign of life. The distant flags flutter. Above the earth—the sun and a vast summer day. At first, except for the wind, everything is still. Then come sounds of moving iron. Some unknown iron heaviness is moving along—very slowly indeed, judging by the sounds. A girlish voice wearily sings a quiet song. The song and the iron approach together.

  A mechanical individual—an iron man, to be referred to as KUZMA—appears onstage. KUZMA is a metal, wind-up construction in the shape of someone short and stocky, self-importantly stepping forward and clanking his mouth all the while, as if taking breaths. ALYOSHA—a young man in a straw hat, with the face of a wanderer—leads KUZMA by the hand, rotating it on its axis like a wheel or a regulator. With them appears MIUD—an adolescent girl. She speaks and carries herself with trust and clarity; she has not known oppression. On his back ALYOSHA carries a hurdy-gurdy. The threesome appear to be strolling musicians, with KUZMA as their special attraction.6 KUZMA suddenly stops and clanks his jaw, as if wanting a drink. The group stand still amid an empty, radiant world.7

  MIUD: Alyosha, I’ve gotten bored of living in the world.

  ALYOSHA: Never mind. Soon there will be socialism—then everyone will rejoice.

  MIUD: Me too?

  ALYOSHA: Yes, you too.

  MIUD: But what if my heart starts to ache for some reason?

  ALYOSHA: Doesn’t matter. It will be cut out of you, to save it from torment.

  Pause. MIUD hums a tune without words. ALYOSHA examines the space around him.

  MIUD (moving from a hum into song):

  Along the merry path of labor

  Shoeless we plod on our bare feet.

  We’re nearly there, not far to go;

  Our happy home’s already built.

  Alyosha, I’ve been thinking—and it’s like this: my heart aches because I’ve lost touch with the masses.

  ALYOSHA: You live unscientifically. That’s why something’s always aching inside you—first one thing, then another. As soon as socialism sets in, I will invent you all over again, from square one—and you will be the child of the whole international proletariat.

  MIUD: All right. Because, you know, I was born under capitalism. For two years I knew only suffering. (She turns to KUZMA, touching him with her hands. MIUD always touches the people and objects with whom she enters into relationship.) Kuzma, tell me something that’s smarter than smart!

  Kuzma chomps his human-looking jaws. ALYOSHA adjusts some mechanism in KUZMA’s cuffs and holds his hand.

  MIUD: Come on, Kuzma!

  KUZMA (in an indifferent wooden voice, in which can always be heard the grating of cogs and wheels): Opportunist…

  MIUD (listening attentively): And what else?

  KUZMA: Unscrupulous and grasping self-server…Un-principledness…Rightist-leftist element…Backwardness…You need someone at your head!

  MIUD: And what else am I?

  Alyosha manipulates something in KUZMA’s hand.

  KUZMA: You are a class wonder…You are a special young sprout…You are the shock worker of the poor peasants’ joy. Already we…

  MIUD (quickly): I know, I know. We have already stepped into the foundation, we already have both feet inside it. (Moves about and does a little dance.)8 Wholly and entirely, we’re simply something very special indeed!

  KUZMA: We, the advancing mass, now press on forward! (Random, indecipherable sounds then issue from Kuzma.)

  MIUD (to KUZMA): I love you, Kuzma! You, after all, are only poor iron! You look so important, but your heart is broken down, and you were thought up by Alyosha! After all, you’re not really a proper being, only a middling something!

  KUZMA is silent and doesn’t clank his mouth. A locomotive whistles in the distance.

  ALYOSHA: Let’s go, Miud. Soon it will be evening. Gloom will descend on the earth, and we need to eat and find somewhere to spend the night.

  MIUD: Alyosha, all my ideas ache with hunger! (She touches her chest.)

  ALYOSHA (touches MIUD): Where?

  MIUD: There, Alyosha, where I sometimes feel fine, and sometimes not.

  ALYOSHA: Sabotage on the part of Nature, Miud.

  MIUD: Is Nature a Fascist?

  ALYOSHA: What did you think she was?

  MIUD: I thought she must be a Fascist too. All of a sudden the sun goes out. Or the rain—sometimes it drips, sometimes it doesn’t. Isn’t that right? We need a Bolshevik Nature, the way spring was—isn’t that true? And what’s this (points toward the locality)? Nothing but a den of subkulaks. There’s not the least principle of the Plan here!

  KUZMA growls indistinctly. ALYOSHA regulates him, and he falls silent. Briefly, a locomotive whistles nearby.

  ALYOSHA: Let this place shine for a little longer. (Looks around him.) Soon we’ll liquidate it too, like a well-off ghost. We didn’t construct it, so why does it exist?

  MIUD: The sooner, the better, Alyosha. Waiting is boring.

  The sound of people’s footsteps.

  KUZMA (muttering): F
ailure to respond to activism.

  MIUD: What’s he saying?

  ALYOSHA: It’s his remaining words—they’re stuck in his throat. (Regulates KUZMA on the back of his neck.)

  Two or three construction workers walk up, carrying small chests, saws, and—in the hands of the foremost—a flag.

  MIUD: And who are you? Shock workers, or not?

  FIRST WORKER: That’s us, young lady. That’s who we are.

  MIUD: And we are cultural workers. Our kolkhoz reading hut has sent us here.9

  OTHER WORKER: So you’re beggars, is that it?

  MIUD: Alyosha, he is the idiotism of village life.10

  KUZMA (first growls something, then speaks): Live quietly…Sow hemp and castor-oil plants…11 (Drones on and falls silent: the rasping of an inner mechanism is audible.)

  FIRST WORKER: Play us something, lad. Entrance us.

  ALYOSHA: Just a minute (winds KUZMA up from behind).

  MIUD: Put a five-kopek piece in Kuzma (shows them where to put it—in his mouth). It goes toward cultural work with uncollectivized peasant households. You love peasant households, don’t you?

  One of the construction workers puts a five-kopek piece in KUZMA’s mouth. KUZMA’s jaw begins to chew. ALYOSHA takes KUZMA by the hand and sets up the hurdy-gurdy. KUZMA begins to grate out something unintelligible. ALYOSHA begins to play an old-fashioned tune on the hurdy-gurdy. KUZMA sings out more distinctly.

  MIUD (sings along with KUZMA):

  To the u-ni-ver-sal pro-le-ta-ri-an,

  To the holder of power,

  Glory!

  To the sub-ku-lak hi-re-ling, to extremists, to eulogizers of the status quo,

  To double-dealers and those without principles,

  To the right and the left deviationist, to every dark force—

  Shame everlasting!

  KUZMA (after the song, to himself):…It’s warmer in a hut than in socialism…

  OTHER WORKER (after hearing the song through): Sell us this ironclad opportunist!

  ALYOSHA: This old Kuzya? What are you saying? We ourselves hold him dear. Anyway, what do you want him for?

  OTHER WORKER: Well, for comfort. God, in his day, got himself a devil. We’ll do the same. We’ll get ourselves a pet opportunist!

  FIRST WORKER (to ALYOSHA): Here, mate, here’s a ruble for your invention. Get yourself something to eat, or your head will grow weak.

  ALYOSHA: No thanks. But you should lower the fee you charge for construction—then I’ll sense your ruble everywhere.

  MIUD: We don’t take money for ourselves. We love our Soviet currency and we want it to be strong.

  KUZMA: R-r-reptile-h-h-heroes…Live little by little.

  ALYOSHA (regulates KUZMA, and he falls silent): Counterrevolutionary slogans of one kind or another are always storming within him. Either he’s sick or he’s broken.

  MIUD (to the construction workers): All right, you lot, the Five-Year Plan’s on the go. You get going too!

  FIRST WORKER: This is some young lady! Whoever could have been her mama?

  OTHER WORKER (insightfully): Social stuff of some kind.

  The construction workers walk away.

  Behind the wall—indefinite foreign sounds.

  MIUD: Let’s go, Alyosha. I want something to fill me up.

  ALYOSHA (puts KUZMA in order): In a moment. What is it with you, little toadlet? You’re always suffering. It’s time you got used to it.

  MIUD: All right. I do like getting used to things, Alyosha.

  STERVETSEN and his daughter SERENA appear.12 She is a young European, with a somewhat Mongolian face and an elegant revolver at her hip. Both wear traveling coats and are carrying suitcases. They bow and greet ALYOSHA, MIUD, and also KUZMA. In response KUZMA slowly offers his hand to STERVETSEN and SERENA. The foreigners speak in Russian; the degree to which they distort the language is up to the individual actors.

  STERVETSEN: Greetings, comrade activists.

  SERENA: We want to be with you. We love your whole bitter fate!

  MIUD: Liar, we don’t have fate here anymore. We have summer here now, the birds are singing, and what we’ve got under construction here is quite something! (To ALYOSHA, in a different, peaceable tone) Alyosha, what is she?

  ALYOSHA: One of the well-off, I guess.

  KUZMA: R-r-reptiles…

  ALYOSHA restrains KUZMA.

  MIUD (to the foreigners): So, what are you?

  STERVETSEN: We…are now a propertyless spirit, which has been dekulakized.13

  SERENA: We were reading, and transduced for us was…Papa, información?

  STERVETSEN: A terse conversing, Seren.

  SERENA: A conversing, in which they said you have taken the bourgeoisie, and also the half class, and even the stronger class, and sent them all tersely to hell.

  MIUD: She is good, Alyosha. We sent them to hell, and that’s where they’ve come from—and she talks so clearly.

  STERVETSEN: I was young, and I visited Russia long ago to exist. I lived here in the nineteenth century in a factory that made little peppermint buns. Now I can see a town—but back then only rare, occasional people were to be found here, and I wept among them on foot…Yes, Seren!

  SERENA: What, Papa? Who are these people—the hired hands of the avant-garde?

  MIUD: You’re a stupid little bourgeoise! We are the generation—that’s who we are!

  STERVETSEN: They are a good and kind enterprise, Seren!

  ALYOSHA: And what do you need here among our class?

  STERVETSEN: We need your celestial joy of terrestrial labor.

  ALYOSHA: What kind of joy?

  STERVETSEN: Here you have a shock-working psyche. Enthusiasm is visibly located on every citizen’s face.

  MIUD: And what business of yours is it if we’re joyful?

  STERVETSEN: Here you have organized a state silence and over it stands…a tower of the superstretched soul.

  MIUD: You mean the superstructure! You don’t even know what to call it—we have surpassed you!

  STERVETSEN: The superstructure! The spirit of motion in the citizens’ heart of hearts. The warmth above the icy landscape of your poverty! The superstructure!!! We want to purchase it here in your tsardom or swap it for our precise and sorrowful science. In Europe we have a fair amount of the lower stuff, but the flame on the tower has gone out. The wind cries straight into our bored heart—and above it stands no superstructure of inspiring fervor…Our heart is no shock worker…It is…how do you say it?…it is a soft-spoken fly-by-night…

  SERENA: Papa, tell them that I…

  KUZMA: Unscrupulous and grasping self-server! The strength of an element.

  SERENA (looking at KUZMA): He knows everything, like a comrade guide.

  MIUD: Our Kuzya? But he is an element under our guidance!

  STERVETSEN: Where around here is it permitted to purchase the superstructure? (Points to the town) There? We will give a lot of foreign currency. We will allocate you, maybe, a loan of diamonds, or ships of Canadian wheat, our Danish cream, two aircraft carriers, the Mongolian beauty of ripened women—we are ready to open our eternal safes to you…And you—just give us the gift of your superstructure! What do you need it for? You have the base, after all—so you can live for the time being on the foundation.

  KUZMA (growls threateningly): The cunning of the class enemy…The Roman Catholic Pope…

  ALYOSHA (cutting KUZMA short): Aha. You want to shut down our ashpan and our blower pipe. So we stop dead in our tracks!

  MIUD (whispering to ALYOSHA): Fascists! Don’t sell our superstructure—we can climb up on it ourselves!

  ALYOSHA: I won’t.

  SERENA: We were given an understanding of this question. They have Party lines laid down for them. Buy Europe a Party guideline. They’re not ready to part with their superstructure.

  STERVETSEN: Sell us a Party line! I’ll give you dollars!

  MIUD: All we have is a single directive—and only a little one at that.

&nb
sp; SERENA: Buy this directive, Papa. You can buy the superstructure of extremism later, somewhere far away.

  ALYOSHA: We don’t sell our directives for Fascist money.

  MIUD (touches the revolver on SERENA’s hip): Give it to me. We’re having a cultural revolution here—and you walk around with a pistol. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

  SERENA (in bewilderment): Do you need it badly?

  MIUD: Of course I do. After all, you’re not having a cultural revolution. You’re benighted, evil people, and we have a right to your Nagant revolvers.14

  SERENA: Take it (hands over the revolver).

  MIUD: Thank you, girl (immediately kisses SERENA’s cheek). When someone yields to us, we forgive them everything.15

  SERENA: Papa, the Oonion Soviet is very nice. (To ALYOSHA) Play us a fox-trot!

  ALYOSHA: No Soviet mechanism would dare.16

  STERVETSEN and SERENA bow and exit.

  MIUD: But Alyosha, how will they purchase an idea, when it’s inside our whole body? Having it extracted is going to be painful.

  ALYOSHA: Don’t worry, Miud. I will sell them…Kuzma. He is, after all, an idea. And he’ll be the death of the bourgeoisie.

  MIUD: I’ll be sorry to part with Kuzma.

  KUZMA: Backwardness…Live in fear of capitalism…

  ALYOSHA: No need to miss him, Miud. We’ll order ourselves another. In any case, Kuzma’s already fallen somewhat behind the masses.

  He winds up KUZMA. KUZMA begins to step forward with a grinding sound from inside him, muttering something unintelligible with his steel lips. All three exit. Offstage, no longer visible, they sing a few words of a song. ALYOSHA and MIUD stop singing, but KUZMA, as he moves further away, continues to drone on alone in his cast-iron voice: “Eh-eh-eh-eh…”

  Scene 2

  A government office—something between a bathhouse, a beer joint, and a barrack. Smoke, noise, and a crush of office workers. Two toilets, and two doors that open into them. The toilet doors open and close; employees of various sexes are using the toilets. SHCHOEV is sitting behind an enormous desk. On the desk is a trumpet-shaped megaphone that he uses to converse with the whole town and the cooperatives: the town is not large and the megaphone can be heard throughout its confines.