SHCHOEV: And how are your crayfish doing in our mighty deeps?
KLOKOTOV: The crayfish are keeping mum, Ignat Nikanorovich—it’s early yet.
YEVSEI (enters, covered in bird feathers): Ignat Nikanorovich! Birds with official documents have arrived! Just look! (Takes a number of cardboard disks from his pocket.) Each one has a number—and an official seal! These birds are organized, Ignat Nikanorovich! I’m afraid of them!
SHCHOEV (slowly and pensively): Organized birds. Well ordered is the air above our land.
OPORNYKH (entering, wet all over, in tall boots): Fish are on the move, Ignat Nikanorovich!
KLOKOTOV: I knew it!
OPORNYKH: Fish are pressing forward along the surface and birds are flying down and gobbling them up…
YEVSEI: This will undermine our crayfish season, Ignat Nikanorovich!
SHCHOEV: And there’s no one at all…no larger animal of any kind, who might, in turn, make a meal of the birds? Nothing at all?
KLOKOTOV (with satisfaction): Of course there isn’t, Ignat Nikanorovich! And we don’t need anything now. For meat we’ll make do with crayfish. For butter we can use nut juice. And for milk we’ll mix wild honey with formic acid—and what more do we need? Science today, they say, has progressed a long way.24
YEVSEI: Little by little, Ignat Nikanorovich, we’ll provide for everyone. Everyone’s appetite will be fully developed!
OPORNYKH: So? Hmm…What do you say? Finish off the birds? Or go after the fish?
A noise offstage, growing louder, as in scene 2.
SHCHOEV: Go outside and look, Yevsei. (Yevsei disappears.) So why are these birds flying to us from the bourgeoisie?
OPORNYKH: Our country is mighty rich, Ignat Nikanorovich. Anything can get born here—and keep living!
SHCHOEV: Huh! If life here were that wonderful, everything would just crawl into the right packaging all by itself.
OPORNYKH: But human beings here are fools, Ignat Nikanorovich. We don’t have any—any whatchamacallit—any packaging here!25
SHCHOEV: I myself am a human being.
The noise intensifies. In runs YEVSEI.
YEVSEI: Another whole swarm is flying this way.
SHCHOEV: A swarm of what?
YEVSEI: Geese, sparrows, cranes—and roosters racing along below them. Some kind of seagulls too!26
SHCHOEV: My God, my God…Why did you leave me at this post?27 Better to have been some extremist—then I’d have gotten myself settled elsewhere by now.
OPORNYKH: Now all the fish will get gobbled up. So tell us, you, er, cooperative leadership, what we should do! Procure a Lenten meal out of the waters, or leave that to the priests?
YEVSEI (to OPORNYKH): No need to be overactivist, Petya, when no one’s even put you forward to volunteer!
SHCHOEV: Yevsei, think something definite for God’s sake. Can’t you see, my heart is aching.
YEVSEI: But I’ve already thought everything through, Ignat Nikanorovich.
SHCHOEV: Then make your report to me, take up the Party line, and move into action.
YEVSEI: The Air-Chem Defense Society has an artillery circle, Ignat Nikanorovich, and this circle has a cannon. With your permission we’ll bombard the flock of birds.
SHCHOEV: Fire away!
YEVSEI and KLOKOTOV exit. The noise offstage continues and turns into bird cries.
OPORNYKH: Ignat Nikanorovich! Why chase the birds away? We’d have managed to catch the birds and snatch up the fish too! The people—what’s the word—are willing to work.
SHCHOEV: And what if they are? Let the birds fly into other districts—people eat there too! Why be such an egotist? I’m truly surprised at you!
OPORNYKH mutters something to himself.
And what else is the matter? Have you forgotten, you unprincipled devil, that I now have undivided authority?28 Go on, Petya, go back to your fishing!
OPORNYKH (exiting): Well, and there’s one…er, what’s the word…peasant asshole for you!
SHCHOEV: Somehow I’m tired. It’s hard work having to feed such a troublesome population from cradle to grave.
The noise offstage fades a little, now only gently audible. Enter MIUD and ALYOSHA, both covered in bird feathers. MIUD even has feathers in her hair.
MIUD (to SHCHOEV): What makes you so very important?
SHCHOEV: I’m not important—I’m responsible. And why have you come back? Can’t you see that animals are attacking the cooperative?
ALYOSHA: It’s all right, Comrade Shchoev. The proletariat is always in need of food. We two procured a thousand items. We…
SHCHOEV: We, we, we… That’s enough of your bleating! What use would you be if it weren’t for me standing here at your head?
MIUD: Alyosha, where are the Party and the shock workers? I’m getting bored here!
SHCHOEV (somewhat pensively): Boredom…a tender, decent feeling…in youth it can lead to developmental complications.
Backstage something hisses, as if a huge fire were bursting into flame.
ALYOSHA (to SHCHOEV): Uncle, let’s think up some method of rationalization29—somehow nothing here seems quite scientific.
The noise offstage turns into a roar and suddenly ceases entirely.
SHCHOEV (pensively): Rationalization…(touches ALYOSHA) You may be a genius of the masses, but I too, brother, am a thoughtful person…(Deep in thought) Let science labor now while man rests beside her as if at a resort. That’ll be good. We will, at least, be able to rest our torsos.
Offstage—a continuous, intensifying roar, as from a blazing fire. A short pause. A quiet cannon shot. The back wall of the office (from the audience’s perspective) slowly collapses. A wind tears through the office, and thousands of birds fly up from the office roof. The landscape round about is revealed: two cooperative shops with shop assistants standing outside. A gate with the sign “Park of Culture and Leisure,” with a line of people standing outside it. KUZMA is first in line. At first, this entire spectacle is veiled in smoke. The smoke disperses. Four sturdy young women, members of the Air-Chem Defense Society, carry two stretchers into the office, entering through the collapsed wall. On the stretchers lie YEVSEI and KLOKOTOV. The stretchers are placed on the floor in front of SHCHOEV. YEVSEI and KLOKOTOV sit up on their stretchers.
YEVSEI: The cannon, Ignat Nikanorovich!
SHCHOEV: What about the cannon? A cannon’s a cannon!
YEVSEI: The cannon, Ignat Nikanorovich, took a whole hour to warm up—and then it fired.
SHCHOEV: And a good thing too!
KLOKOTOV: It fired at us!
YEVSEI: It shoots low, Ignat Nikanorovich. There’s a slogan hanging down from its muzzle…
SHCHOEV: And what about you two? Have you been shot dead or not?
YEVSEI: Oh no, Ignat Nikanorovich, we still have to go on living. Can’t be helped.
SHCHOEV (looking at the stretcher girls): And who are these girls?
YEVSEI: Oh, for them this is community service, Ignat Nikanorovich. They’re happy to lug people around.
LOCAL POSTMAN (runs up with his bag to the line of people standing outside the Park of Culture and Leisure): Citizens, give this packet to the cooperative—each of my steps, you know, is valuable, and anyway, you’re on your feet already.
The people in line point at KUZMA. The postman shoves the packet into some sort of opening in KUZMA and urgently races off into the distance. KUZMA begins to pace toward the cooperative office. Keeping their places in line, the people begin to move in the same direction, with KUZMA at their head.
SHCHOEV (to the Air-Chem Defense girls): Listen to me, girls. Since you love weighty burdens, lift this office wall back up again. As it is, I keep seeing various masses and my thoughts get scattered.
AIR-CHEM DEFENSE GIRL: All right, citizen, as you say! After all, that’s why you’re the boss—cuz no one ever sees you. What do you take us for—fools?
The four of them effortlessly pick up the log wall and put it back in place, blocking off the
office from the outside world. The girls themselves are thus left outside.
MIUD: Alyosha, what’s going on here—capitalism, or a second something or other?
SHCHOEV: Yevsei, please organize this girl for me. She’s starting to give me heartburn.
YEVSEI: I’ll make a note of her, Ignat Nikanorovich.
SHCHOEV: And where is my office staff?
YEVSEI: It has the day off, Ignat Nikanorovich.
SHCHOEV (pensively): The day off…and a good thing if it never came back. I would take the office off the supply list and fulfill the Plan at the same time! Yevsei, let’s set our course in the direction of peoplelessness.
YEVSEI: Certainly, Ignat Nikanorovich. But how?
SHCHOEV: How? How am I meant to know?! We’ll set our course and that’s that!
ALYOSHA: We could invent some mechanism, Comrade Cooperative. Mechanisms can do office work too.
SHCHOEV: Mechanisms…Now there’s an idea for you! Some sort of scientific being will sit and spin its wheels and I will direct it. I like it! I could have the whole republic go mechanical and stop provisioning it altogether. How would that be, Yevsei?
YEVSEI: Things would be easier for us, Ignat Nikanorovich.
KLOKOTOV: A normal work tempo would begin!
MIUD: Birds are flying and fish are swimming. The peasants want something to eat—and these people think that…Alyosha, I don’t understand this place!
SHCHOEV: Here, let me be your head—then you’ll understand everything!
OPORNYKH (enters, wet all over): So then? This, er, what’s the word…these fish here…Are we to catch them, or should we let them live?
SHCHOEV: Procure them, of course.
OPORNYKH: But there aren’t any tubs, Ignat Nikanorovich…And the coopers are saying…er, how did it go…You haven’t given them any salt for a month. “Give us some salt,” they say. “Our daily bread is unsalted.”
SHCHOEV: Petya, you must go and tell them that they are opportunists.
OPORNYKH: But they told me that you’re an opportunist! What am I meant to do?
MIUD (to everyone): Who are they? Fascists?
OPORNYKH: What’s more, some girls I met were telling me about berries. Berries, they say, are everywhere in the woods…Everything—now how does it go—is flying, pressing forward, swimming and growing, but we don’t have any containers. I walk around and feel torment.
Noise offstage.
SHCHOEV (to ALYOSHA): Where is your music, musician? Somehow I’m feeling sad again from opinions and dreams. Yevsei, go and see who’s violating and making a noise out there.
YEVSEI exits. ALYOSHA and MIUD disappear outside with him. The noise of people offstage grows louder.
OPORNYKH: And, Ignat Nikanorovich, the flocks of birds have left heaps of droppings. Whole mounds are lying around, and this, people say, is a gold mine. So what should we do, procure it or just let it be?
The noise offstage grows quieter.
SHCHOEV: And what do you care about droppings? You are the most backward individual in your class. Foreign chemists make iron and cream from bird excrement, but to you it’s just droppings. What do you understand about anything?
Enter YEVSEI.
KLOKOTOV: Let’s send for a foreign scientist, Ignat Nikanorovich—we’re facing a mass of questions here.
YEVSEI: Yes, of course. Foreigners are given special food and they bring clothes in their suitcases.
SHCHOEV: That’s right, Yevsei…Who was that making a noise outside?
YEVSEI: Cooperative masses were heading this way, but I stopped them.
SHCHOEV: That was a mistake, Yevsei. You should have chosen a representative from them—so that there’d be one man, once and for all, to stand for all of them.
YEVSEI: But that’s just what I’ve done, Ignat Nikanorovich. I picked someone and gave him an official post—now he’ll calm down.
SHCHOEV: You did the right thing, Yevsei. For some reason you and I are always right.
A quiet knocking at the door.
Yes, please, be so kind as to come in.
Enter the Danish professor, EDUARD VALKYRIYA-HANSEN STERVETSEN, and his daughter Serena.30
STERVETSEN: Greetings, gentlemen Russian maximalist people!
SERENA: We are scienticity, which knows food. Greetings!
SHCHOEV: Greetings, gentlemen bourgeois scientists. We sit here and are always happy to see science.
YEVSEI: We procure science too.
STERVETSEN: From our child years we are maximum lovers of cooperativeness. Here in your Soviet of Russian Oonions you have wonderful cooperativeness. We want to learn all about your…I am in sad difficulty…your impetuous production of foods and goods.
SHCHOEV: So here you are at last. Our cooperativeness has become wonderful, has it, now that we’ve caught up with and surpassed you?31 Yevsei, respect these devils!
SERENA (to her father): He says—dyevil!
STERVETSEN (to his daughter): That, Serena, is because they don’t have any God here. Only his comrade is left—the dyevil.
SHCHOEV (solemnly): Comrade members of the bourgeoisie. You have arrived at the very height of the reorganization of our apparatus.32 So please, in the first place, go along, relax, collect your wits, and, in the second place, come back in ten days’ time to our cooperativeness—then we’ll show you! But leave your suitcases here—our land will endure any burden.
STERVETSEN: Wonderful (he bows). Let’s go, Seren. We need to hurry and collect our wits.
SERENA: Papa, I’m so happy for some reason…
They exit, leaving their suitcases in the office.
SHCHOEV: Yevsei! Organize me a ball! Arrange a vast rationalization, prepare a mighty nourishment!
YEVSEI: The rationalization I can manage—there is plenty of mind in the masses, but as for nourishment, I’m afraid there won’t be enough.
SHCHOEV (pensively): No nourishment, you say? Well, what of it? We’ll organize an evening of experimental trial of new forms of food. We’ll pick heaps of every kind of grass—then we’ll make flour from fish, snatch crayfish out of the water, turn bird droppings into chemistry, make soup with the lard from dead bones, and brew kvass from wild honey mixed half and half with formic acid. And furthermore—we’ll bake burdock pancakes such as will be eaten with enthusiasm and fervor. We’ll put all of Nature into these victuals and we’ll feed everyone with stuff that is cheap and eternal. Oh Yevsei, Yevsei, food is really just a social convention, nothing more!
A motorcycle engine sputters outside. Someone enters, an agent from a state collective farm.
AGENT: I’m from the Little Giant state farm. Our birds knocked down the aviary and flew the coop. And water undermined our dams and our fish all hurled themselves downstream. You haven’t noticed these animals in your district, have you?
YEVSEI: No, comrade, we procure only uncultured animals. We love hardships.
AGENT: But I’ve just seen people covered in feathers.
SHCHOEV: People covered in feathers! Someone’s lying. That’s not true, comrade!
AGENT: Huh?!
ACT 2
Scene 1
The same office, somewhat altered. It has been equipped with various mechanisms. As they are set in motion, the audience will understand their function. Along the back wall lie the foreigners’ suitcases. Everything is clean. A single long table, with nothing on it. A dais by the window. In one corner—a piano. On the opposite side of the room—the hurdy-gurdy. Instead of a handle, it now has a pulley. Running up from the pulley is a belt drive. Quiet. No people. In the other half of the office—the noise of food preparation. Enter YEVSEI and ALYOSHA.
YEVSEI: Well, how are you doing here? Everything decent and proper?
ALYOSHA: Everything has been arranged.
YEVSEI (looking ALYOSHA over): Seems like you’ve gotten thinner.
ALYOSHA: I’ve put forth much thought from my torso, and I feel bored here in your district. Yevsei, when will the future people set in? I
’m sick and tired of the ones living now. You too are a shithead, you know!
YEVSEI: Me? Yes, I’m a shithead. That’s why I’m still in one piece. Otherwise I’d have perished long ago—I might not even have been born. What else could I be?
ALYOSHA: Then how come I’m alive myself?
YEVSEI: Spontaneously, elementally…But are you really alive? You move about, but you don’t exist. Why did you become a hurdy-gurdy man anyway, you fly-by-night devil?
ALYOSHA: I want to achieve socialism more quickly. I’m always longing for somewhere distant.
YEVSEI: Socialism will set in for the rational elements in society, but you will vanish without a trace. You are nothing, you need someone at your head.
ALYOSHA: So be it. I don’t give thought to myself anyway. I don’t understand. You’re more important than me, yet you’re a reptile through and through!
YEVSEI: It’s because of the masses. They’ve reptilized me. Think a moment about the material I’m expected to lead!
ALYOSHA (deeply thoughtful): There’ll be Communism soon. The world will move on without you.
YEVSEI: Without me? What do you mean? I’m afraid that without me the world will cease to exist—yes, no doubt about it!
The noise of food preparation grows louder. Enter SHCHOEV. ALYOSHA busies himself with setting up the various mechanisms.
SHCHOEV: Report, Yevsei!
YEVSEI: Everything is all right, Ignat Nikanorovich! The nettle soup is ready, the cabbage soup prepared from shrubs and wood fat is steaming, the mechanical sandwiches are lying in their posts, and the compote made from the juice of narrow minds is cooling on the roof. The black earth cutlets are frying, and as for the kasha made from locusts and ants’ eggs,33 it is stewing away, Ignat Nikanorovich! Everything else is being mobilized on the stove top—except the dessert made from glue and kvass, which is already done.
Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays Page 5