Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

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Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays Page 6

by Andrei Platonov


  SHCHOEV: And the sauce—what sort of sauce will you serve?

  YEVSEI: Sauce, Ignat Nikanorovich, is a tricky business. We are serving a liquid supporting sauce made from birch sap.

  SHCHOEV: And, er, will there be anything particular for our clarity of long-term perspective?

  YEVSEI: Vinegar, Ignat Nikanorovich—vinegar with crumbs of old tobacco and lilac bush!

  SHCHOEV: Wonderful, Yevsei. Now, tell me—what’s the situation with our inventory?

  ALYOSHA: Well, I’ve banged out a whole stack of wooden dishes. You didn’t have any spoons or cups anywhere—you hadn’t figured out that there are forests all around, and in these forests are collective farms with many able hands. You could build a whole Wooden Age here.

  SHCHOEV: The Wooden Age…Well, that too was a fine transitional epoch!34

  Noise of people outside the door.

  YEVSEI: The guest mass, Ignat Nikanorovich, is approaching.

  SHCHOEV: Don’t let them in. Give us a moment to collect our wits.

  Yevsei bolts the door.

  Now, what are you going to give the scientific bourgeois and his daughter?

  YEVSEI: Exactly the same, Ignat Nikanorovich. He said himself that he sympathizes with the great food of the future and is prepared to suffer for the new radiant nourishment.

  SHCHOEV: And what am I going to eat?

  YEVSEI: You, Ignat Nikanorovich, will be sharing with me. You and I will test the foreign scientist’s rations. I took all his food for experimental purposes.

  SHCHOEV: You’re a smart one, Yevsei!

  YEVSEI: But of course! One must develop in all directions.

  Outside the locked door the guests are creating an uproar.

  SHCHOEV: Let in the mouths to be fed, Yevsei. Alyosha, strike up some chords!

  ALYOSHA starts the hurdy-gurdy. He pulls a lever, and the belt drive, slapping regularly against the pulley throughout the tune, begins to turn the crank of the hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy softly and melodiously plays the waltz “On the Hills of Manchuria.”35 YEVSEI opens the door. Enter STERVETSEN with his daughter on his arm and carrying a box; KLOKOTOV; YEVDOKIA, the promoted proletarian; five young female office workers; PYOTR OPORNYKH with his wife, who is very small, on his arm; three male office workers with their wives; and GODOVALOV, the representative of the cooperative members. Then a FIREMAN in full uniform and helmet comes in and stands by the door, followed by a POLICEMAN. The hurdy-gurdy stops playing. STERVETSEN hands YEVSEI the box, which is full of food.

  YEVSEI: Listen to me, comrade guests! Allow me to salute you for some reason or other. Let us all rejoice today and be glad—

  SHCHOEV: Yevsei, stop your speechmaking! I haven’t yet had my say.

  YEVSEI: Well I, Ignat Nikanorovich, as the saying goes—

  SHCHOEV: You, Yevsei, should learn to act not as the saying goes but as good sense prompts. Listen to me, comrade guests…(The guests had almost taken their seats, but now they all stand, except for STERVETSEN and his daughter, and listen to SHCHOEV.) Local and foreign comrades! I want to say something special to you, but I have grown unaccustomed to happiness of mood. I am tormented by worries about providing adequate food for the masses…Perplexity languishes within me…In view of the increased tempo of the masses’ appetites, our cooperative system is confronted with one evident necessity—namely, to overcome some sort of evident underestimation of something…And so you just have to swallow your food, and when it lands in your stomach—well, let it sort things out for itself, let it feel bored there or rejoice. Now we must test in the depth of our own torsos a new form of nourishment, one we have procured from the impetuously produced materials of raw Nature. Long Live the Five-Year-Plan-Now-Being-Fulfilled-in-Four!

  Universal applause. A general hurrah. People stop clapping and lower their hands, but the applause does not stop. Instead it grows louder, turning into a real ovation. Ever more loudly, the cry of “hurrah” is repeated in a metallic tone. The guests are all frightened. ALYOSHA squeezes the handle of a crude wooden mechanism (it is partly visible to the audience) that the belt drive is turning from above. It is applauding and shouting, “Hurrah!” ALYOSHA releases the handle—the belt drive stops turning, and the mechanism falls silent.

  Yevsei!

  YEVSEI: Alyosha!

  ALYOSHA: Nourishment is served!

  ALYOSHA pulls a lever. The rumble of an unknown mechanism. Then—quiet. Slowly, on a conveyor belt running along the table, there floats out a huge wooden tureen with steam pouring from it. All around the tureen, leaning against it, are hefty wooden spoons. The guests take the spoons.

  SHCHOEV: Alyosha, some bold, heartening music!

  ALYOSHA: Straightaway. What shall I play?

  SHCHOEV: I’ll be grateful, please, if you could strike up something soulful!

  ALYOSHA starts the hurdy-gurdy, which begins something soulful. The guests eat. SHCHOEV and YEVSEI sit on the dais. From the box provided by STERVETSEN, YEVSEI takes out a separate meal—cheese, sausage, etc.—and eats it with SHCHOEV on the dais.

  OPORNYKH: Er…Ignat Nikanorovich! What is this? Have you instituted cabbage soup like this forever? Or is this just a one-off campaign?

  SHCHOEV: Eat, Petya, don’t be an opportunist.

  OPORNYKH: Who, me? All I’m saying is…er, what’s the word…we’ve still got beef and cabbage here in the republic. Maybe we’d be better off with regular cabbage soup? With this one, your stomach could go berserk!

  YEVSEI: Petya, eat in silence. You’re performing a test on yourself.

  OPORNYKH: I am being silent. Now I’m going to think, as a test.

  The hurdy-gurdy falls silent.

  SHCHOEV: Alyosha! Be so kind as to serve up the second course. Let’s test the kasha.

  ALYOSHA pulls a lever. A rumble. The tureen of soup slowly creeps away. The rumbling stops. A bowl of kasha sails out.

  GODOVALOV (stands): On behalf of all the consuming members of the cooperative, who have invested me with the authority to think for them, and also—

  YEVSEI: To suffer torments of the soul on their behalf, Comrade Godovalov…

  GODOVALOV: And also to suffer torments of the soul on their behalf…I express a universal, giant feeling of joy, and also of enthusiasm…

  ALYOSHA turns on the automatic machine. Thunder of applause. GODOVALOV sits down. Everyone eats the kasha.

  SHCHOEV: Well, how is it, comrades?

  SERENA: Papa! Are these locusts? Are they eating saboteur insects?36

  YEVSEI: That’s right, young lady. We’re hiding the little saboteurs away inside us.

  SERENA: Then you will become saboteurs yourselves.37

  GODOVALOV: It’s a fine kasha, Ignat Nikanorovich.

  FIRST MALE OFFICE WORKER: These experiments have an enormous educational significance, Comrade Shchoev. They should be organized once every ten days.

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Oh, it’s awfully nice here. This is my first time at an intervention.

  SHCHOEV: Hey, idiot…Shut up if you don’t know the words. Sit there and feel something wordless.

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: But there’s something I want, Ignat Nikanorovich. I’m all in a complete tizzy…

  YEVSEI: Polya! You can tell your mama all about it in a whisper later, but right now you’re here for an experiment…

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Oh, Yevsei Ivanovich, I do so love our office…I do feel something so…

  STERVETSEN: Nothing should be left untried. The whole world is only an experiment.

  SHCHOEV: Swallow more quietly over there! Let us hear the words of science.

  STERVETSEN: I say the whole world is but an experiment of God’s powers. Do you agree, Seren?

  SERENA: But Papa, is God really a professor too? Why do you exist then?

  YEVSEI (quietly to SHCHOEV): Ignat Nikanorovich, this is religious propaganda!

  SHCHOEV: Let them be, Yevsei. It’s all right for them. They’re not normal. Alyosha! Bring us all the food to choose
from!

  ALYOSHA pulls the lever. Rumbling. The kasha floats off on the conveyor belt. The rumbling fades away. The conveyor belt gradually serves up a series of assorted dishes.

  SHCHOEV: Comrades, please partake of these victuals without restraint. Here we have lots of everything—one-sixth of the entire terrestrial sphere…Alyosha! Organize the sandwiches!

  ALYOSHA turns on another wooden apparatus; a loaf of bread has already been placed inside it. The apparatus slices the bread and then spreads the slices with some kind of white substance. Then the prepared sandwiches are tossed by the paw of the apparatus onto a wooden serving dish. The dish then moves onto the conveyor belt.

  STERVETSEN (surveying the operation of the apparatus): This is mind-boggling, Seren. This is true hygiene!

  SERENA: Papa, I like Alyosha.

  SHCHOEV: Alyosha! Do something gracious for the foreign young lady—she likes you.

  ALYOSHA walks over to SERENA and kisses her, lifting her whole body off the floor.

  STERVETSEN: This is barbaric, Seren.

  SERENA (smoothing herself down): Don’t worry, Papa. It’s not as if it hurt. And I have to get a feeling for the Oonion of Russian Soviets.

  SHCHOEV (to ALYOSHA, sternly): Don’t be unprincipled, Alyosha…

  SERENA (to ALYOSHA): Is there anything in the world that you love—or only Communism?

  ALYOSHA: More than anything else I love the zeppelin. I’m always thinking about how it will rise up above the whole of the poor earth, how every one of the collective farmers will look up at the sky and begin to weep, and I, all in tears of class joy, will start the motors with a mighty roar. We will fly against the wind, over all the oceans—and world capitalism, beneath this huge torso of science and technology, will begin to grieve mightily because of the flying masses…

  SERENA: I’m listening…But in Moscow one lonely member told me that you all love shock workers and everyone who labors to catch up with and surpass.

  YEVSEI: He’s a fly-by-night, he thinks only of flitting off somewhere, while our dear masses live on foot…

  ALYOSHA (answering SERENA): You don’t understand, and he (indicating YEVSEI) is no different from your own people. He’s not the class—he is a compromiser…

  SERENA: But Europe has zeppelins too.

  ALYOSHA: So what?

  SHCHOEV: Their zeppelins have narrow minds.

  ALYOSHA (to SERENA): You don’t understand, because you belong to the bourgeoisie. You’re an uncollectivized egotist! You imagine you have a soul…

  SERENA: Yes.

  ALYOSHA: You don’t. But we will have a zeppelin. It will fly above the propertyless terrestrial sphere, above the Third International.38 Then it will descend, and the proletariat of the whole world will touch it with their hands…

  SHCHOEV (to YEVSEI): And there was I, thinking he was an idiot.

  YEVSEI: Well, we used to have only clear, straightforward idiots, but he is a back-to-front idiot.

  SERENA (to ALYOSHA): You affect me like a landscape. I feel sadness…how do you say it…inside my blouse. (STERVETSEN takes out a packet of Troika cigarettes and lights up.) Papa, why are you and I uncollectivized egotists?

  STERVETSEN: Seren, you shock me.

  OPORNYKH (drinking a cup of vinegar): I drink to all countries and states where the…er…proletariat lifts its head to catch a glimpse of our, er, what’s the word, our zeppelin!

  SHCHOEV (standing solemnly): To the zeppelin of the Revolution, to the members of the universal cooperative, and…to all the slogans published in the local press—hurrah!

  EVERYONE: Hurrah!

  After this exclamation, a silence suddenly sets in, but the second male office worker shouts, “Hurrah!” again, in a solitary voice, not noticing this silence.

  SHCHOEV (to the shouter): Vasya, that’s enough of your craziness! Shocking!

  The office worker immediately falls silent. Noise outside the office.

  Alyosha! Start up the ball!

  GODOVALOV: Let me just drink up this watery fruit juice. (Drinks compote from a clay jug.)

  OPORNYKH (to STERVETSEN): I feel like a smoke. How about treating us to one of those…er…what’s the word…goods that get dumped?39

  STERVETSEN hands him the packet of Troikas. OPORNYKH takes three cigarettes and gives two to his neighbors. The guests hurry to finish up the food, except for SERENA, who is talking with ALYOSHA.

  SHCHOEV (pensively): A ball…I do love the joyful civil strife of humanity!

  One of the employee guests walks over to a window and opens it. The noise of the district town rushes in, then gradually fades away. Three half-childish faces appear at the window and look in. The employee guest indifferently blows smoke into these faces, and the smoke floats out into the gloom of the district night.

  YEVSEI (to STERVETSEN): Mister Bourgeois Scientist, have you perhaps formed an opinion of our models for nourishment—or are you still chewing it over?

  STERVETSEN: I would say that an opinion is taking shape within me. But does that sound like impetuous drifting, or a sign of an incomplete evaluation? I am bored and lost without understanding.

  YEVSEI: Oh, never mind—you’re not a Marxist, after all. We can teach you. May I look at your self-writing system? It’s an import, isn’t it?

  STERVETSEN (handing YEVSEI his fountain pen): I recommend it to you. It’s excellent, it’s automatic.

  YEVSEI: It writes all by itself?

  STERVETSEN: No, it has no activism of its own. You have to think like a…what’s the word…like an uncollectivized egotist…

  YEVSEI: I see. And there was I, imagining it could think something itself. But it’s just one of your opportunists. Leave it as a model. Alyosha will surpass it.

  LITTLE GIRL OUTSIDE THE WINDOW: Uncle, give us a bite to eat!

  SERENA (to ALYOSHA): Why do you look so bored on your face?

  ALYOSHA: Because I’m always yearning for socialism…

  SERENA: And will it be wonderful?

  ALYOSHA: For a question like that I could kill you. Can’t you see?

  SERENA: No, I see only you.

  LITTLE GIRL: Uncle, give us a little bite!

  ANOTHER FACE (from the population gathered outside the window): Anything at all!

  Outside the window, behind everyone else, appears the face of MIUD.

  SHCHOEV: Alyosha, now let’s have the unofficial part!

  ALYOSHA pulls some lever, and the table with the remnants of the victuals slowly crawls away into an opening in the side of the office wall. The guests are all standing.

  VOICE FROM OUTSIDE THE WINDOW: Even if it tastes bad…even the dregs…

  VOICE OF AN ALIEN, OF PEASANT GARBAGE (from an adult outside the window): Even just a bit of swill. I too was a member once.40

  The FIREMAN closes the window. But another, neighboring window is opened from outside, and the same faces appear in it, in the very same order, as if they hadn’t moved an inch. The FIREMAN closes this window too. The first window opens again, and again the same faces appear, in their unalterable order.

  SHCHOEV: Yevsei! Call the population to order!…Alyosha, play something tender…

  ALYOSHA switches on the belt drive of the hurdy-gurdy and, slapping regularly against the pulley, the belt turns the hurdy-gurdy; it plays a tender melody, a waltz. The guests begin to move to its rhythm.

  YEVSEI (into the window): Why are you staring like that?

  GIRL’S VOICE (from the window): We’d like something a little bit tasty.

  ALIEN, GARBAGE VOICE: Give me, please, something to put down my gullet.

  YEVSEI: Here, drink for the love of God! (Gives one of them a cup of vinegar left on the dais.) Please understand that we are holding a scientific evening here—people are suffering torment on your account, O my brother.

  Someone outside the window drinks the vinegar and passes the cup back.

  ALIEN, GARBAGE VOICE: I love anything liquid…

  The guests are dancing: ALYOSHA with SERENA, O
PORNYKH (a tall man) with his tiny wife, STERVETSEN with YEVDOKIA the promoted proletarian, etc. Only SHCHOEV is sitting down, thinking in his elevated position.

  SHCHOEV: I respect this pleasure of the masses.

  YEVSEI (moving nearer to SHCHOEV): Somehow, Ignat Nikanorovich, I’ve this minute come to love all our citizens.

  SHCHOEV: All animals, Yevsei, love one another. But what we need isn’t love, it’s the Party line…(more thoughtfully) the Party line…without it, we’d all have lain down flat on our backs long ago…

  The waltz continues. OPORNYKH, pressing his wife to himself, pukes over her head into an urn in the corner but does not stop his polite conjugal dance. His wife does not notice this fact.

  MIUD: Alyosha! Let us inside!

  ALYOSHA doesn’t hear as he dances with Serena, who has already turned completely white and is convulsing rather than dancing. STERVETSEN, now pale, suddenly falls toward the piano. YEVSEI grabs the urn and respectfully holds it near STERVETSEN’s mouth. Outside the window stands MIUD. Beside her appears the face of KUZMA, his chin resting on the windowsill. There are no other people; the district night is clearly visible.

  STERVETSEN: I thank you. The food did not exit but assimilated itself deep within.

  YEVSEI: If you—even you—didn’t vomit, then you can count on it that our population isn’t going to puke.

  The FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER begins to twist her body from side to side as she dances. Her jaw and throat are seized by convulsions. She feels a terrible sense of nausea. She moves almost as if she is suffering a fit, her whole body shaking from gastric pain. Exactly the same is happening to her coworker and dance partner.

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Oh, all in all I am most absolutely content, but I can’t any longer…I haven’t the strength…My whole soul is leaving me.

  STERVETSEN: Sell it to me, mademoiselle.

  All the remaining dancers are similarly convulsed by spasms of nausea, but the dance continues all the same. Bodies now out of control embrace one another in torment, but the pressure of gastric stuff is right there at their throats, and the dancers recoil from one another. The music fades away.

 

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