Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

by Andrei Platonov

  KUZMA: Yes, almost the same as you…

  MIUD: Alyosha, all I see in my dreams are bourgeoisie and subkulaks. But you and I—we’re not there!

  ALYOSHA: Fight them, Miud, even in your dreams! Where are they?

  YEVSEI: Citizens, I beg you to stay calm. Socialist construction is going on here. Give me a chance to conclude a contract with the professor for our Party lines…

  MIUD (shoving KUZMA onto the floor): Get away from me, you opportunist. You’re on their side.

  KUZMA crashes onto the floor. A clock strikes in the district town.

  ACT 3

  Scene 1

  The same government office, now empty, without mechanical constructions. A conference of the cooperative members. Everyone who was at the culinary ball is present, as well as about ten other people of various personalities. A dais. On the dais sit SHCHOEV and YEVSEI. They—along with OPORNYKH, GODOVALOV, and KLOKOTOV—are wearing suits of foreign make. SHCHOEV is also wearing horn-rimmed glasses. YEVSEI is wearing the pince-nez. KUZMA—in a foreign vest and trousers—looks completely human. STERVETSEN and SERENA are now dressed very badly. STERVETSEN is wearing a short, typhoid-yellow peasant jacket, cotton quilted trousers like those worn by the local volunteer militia, and a peaked cap. SERENA is wearing a cook’s chintz housecoat and, over her head, a small locally made shawl. The conference has already been in session for a long time. General hubbub.

  SHCHOEV (smoking a cigar, pensively, in a sudden silence): There just isn’t anyone. They’re all well seasoned, they all have something radiant storming inside them—but it isn’t enough. Petya, how’s your soul doing?

  OPORNYKH: Well, Ignat Nikanorovich, everything…er, what’s the word…is quite all right with it. I even…er…feel fine.

  SHCHOEV: And what do you think, Godovalov?

  GODOVALOV: I don’t think, Ignat Nikanorovich. I’m full of joy.

  YEVSEI: What about the girl? Should we send Miud?

  SHCHOEV: Good idea, Yevsei. Girl! How are you inclined?

  MIUD: I am definitely opposed!

  SHCHOEV: Opposed—to what?

  MIUD: Opposed to you. Because you are a shithead, a eulogizer of the status quo, and a rightist-leftist element.46 You’ve tormented the whole local mass, you have no packaging, you’re a predatory reptile to the poor class—that’s what you are! Alyosha, I’m bored here, I’m all in tears. Let’s get away from here and move on to socialism.

  ALYOSHA: Wait a bit, Miud. I may yet ignite enthusiasm within them. Or else extinguish them forever!

  MIUD: Better to extinguish them forever. Because at night I hear in the distance the clatter of hammers, and wheels—and nails! And then my heart aches, Alyosha, because you and I are not there! I want to be with the shock workers—I want it to be true hardship that makes me bored and weary!

  KUZMA: Vote unanimously…Adopt!

  SHCHOEV: There’s nothing to vote on, Kuzma. We’ve yet to come to an opinion.

  GODOVALOV: Ignat Nikanorovich, sell Yevsei Ivanovich to the bourgeoisie. He’ll fetch a good price!

  YEVSEI: Vasya! Keep your mouth shut—you have yet to be reelected to the committee!

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Ignat Nikanorovich! Entrust me with this mission…I have taken part in the cultural relay.47 A luxurious charm of spirit has long lain hidden in me, I just didn’t talk about it…I’m crazy about competition with Europe!

  SHCHOEV (pensively): Oh women, women, why are you endowed below, but not above? Yevsei, think something up, for God’s sake! Can’t you see—I’m languishing.

  YEVSEI: But I’ve already thought something up, Ignat Nikanorovich! We’ll send Kuzma!

  SHCHOEV: What do you mean, Yevsei? He is pure idea!

  YEVSEI: But that’s what we’re selling, Ignat Nikanorovich—pure idea! The superstructure! The empty piffle above the base! And Kuzma is someone firm, well seasoned, almost rational!

  MIUD: Let them sell him, Alyosha. I don’t care in the least about Kuzya. All I care about is fulfilling the Five-Year Plan within four years.

  SERENA: Papa, let them give us Alyosha! He is the superstructure!

  MIUD (turning on SERENA in fury): You are an idiot of capitalism! Alyosha would unsettle the whole of your Europe—that’s what!

  SERENA: But I’m already unsettled…

  SHCHOEV: Kuzma! We’re packing you off into the bourgeoisie like so much freight, and there you will exist as the ideology of their culture! Can you manage to be alive?

  KUZMA: I can’t be alive…R-r-reptiles…

  SHCHOEV: What’s the matter with you?

  KUZMA: I don’t want to be alive. I will make mistakes…I want to remain iron.

  SHCHOEV: A sad element.

  YEVSEI: He is afraid of losing his steadfastness, Ignat Nikanorovich. Afraid of falling into groundless enthusiasm and sliding from his convictions into deviation. He—is a rational element.

  KUZMA: I’m afraid of backsliding from the Party line…The living rejoice in their enthusiasm and feel torment, whereas I feel doubt and rest in peace. There’s nobody there, r-r-reptiles. Only Comrade Uglanov, Mikhail Pavlovich!48

  SHCHOEV: He is indeed a rational element.

  SERENA (pointing at KUZMA): Who is this, Alyosha?

  ALYOSHA: He has become a bourgeois toady.

  SERENA: A shock worker?

  ALYOSHA: He shocks us. We thought him up expressly—for the conduct of educational work.

  MIUD: Kuzya is a shithead. An opportunist.

  OPORNYKH: Er…what is she saying?

  ONE OF THE MEMBERS: Ignat Nikanorovich, allow me to go and disintegrate Europe!

  OPORNYKH: This…er…you know…Maybe, Ignat Nikanorovich, it’s only here that we seem unfit for ideologicality—while over there we might come to our senses?

  STERVETSEN: In all solidarity, I beg your pardon…but if such a sale would cause you a deficit…

  YEVSEI: That’s right, scientist. Your price will put us in the red…Sweeten the pot a little.

  STERVETSEN: We are almost in agreement…

  SHCHOEV: Your calculations are correct, Yevsei. Let him throw himself into the pot. Enlist him as scientific personnel until the end of the Five-Year Plan.

  YEVSEI: He’ll sneak away somewhere, Ignat Nikanorovich!

  SHCHOEV: Well then we’ll—we’ll…We’ll get him to sign something.

  GODOVALOV: Find him a wife, and that’ll be it! Yevdokia’s still wandering about without any workload. Let him show Yevdokia a little love…

  SHCHOEV: Yevdokia!

  YEVDOKIA emerges out of the mass.

  SHCHOEV (pointing to STERVETSEN): Could you love a foreign muzhik?

  YEVDOKIA: I sure can! Why wouldn’t I?!

  SHCHOEV (to STERVETSEN): Here’s a female person for you—stick it out with her for a couple of years, then I’ll give you a divorce. Now you can kiss.

  YEVDOKIA throws her arms around STERVETSEN and is the first to kiss.

  YEVSEI: But what about his daughter, Ignat Nikanorovich? His daughter will miss him.

  SHCHOEV: Just a minute…Alyosha, embrace the young lady bourgeoise. Love her a little for the good of the common cause.

  SERENA tries to draw nearer to ALYOSHA.

  ALYOSHA (leaping up onto the dais): I shall go myself to the bourgeoisie! Here within me, without respite, rages an ideological soul…(To STERVETSEN) What will you give the Soviet Socialist Republic for our superstructure?

  YEVSEI: How much cash will you pay for the production of a revolution?

  SERENA: Alyosha, a zeppelin!

  ALYOSHA (now happy): A zeppelin! On it the proletariat will ascend high above the entire indigent earth! For such a machine I am ready to perish in Europe!

  STERVETSEN: But I don’t understand…

  SERENA: Papa, Alyosha loves me…

  OPORNYKH: Well, er…A zeppelin is just what we need for packaging.49 We’ve got no barrels.

  GODOVALOV: My own opinion is that, in exchange for our Soviet soul, we should purchase hor
se-drawn transport.

  ONE OF THE MEMBERS: What do we want with an idea? We became conscious of everything long ago. A worldwide question is empty piffle.

  MIUD: But what about me, Alyosha? Who will I be left with? Opportunism will be the death of me.

  ALYOSHA: Don’t worry, Miud. I’ll liquidate it straightaway. Kuzma!

  KUZMA (from the thick of the assembly): Yeah?

  ALYOSHA: Do you want to meet your end forever?

  KUZMA: I want peace. Everyone likes the dead.

  ALYOSHA leads KUZMA out in front of the assembly. He takes from his pocket a monkey wrench, a screwdriver, and some other tools. He unscrews KUZMA’s head and tosses it aside.

  OPORNYKH: I’ll just take this head—I could make it into a soup bowl. (Takes KUZMA’s head.)

  ALYOSHA removes from KUZMA’s chest a primus stove, a radio, and other everyday objects. Then he separates the entire torso into a number of pieces—KUZMA’s constituent elements crash to the ground and five-kopeck pieces scatter everywhere. From the very depth of the perished iron body comes a cloud of yellow smoke. A heap of scrap metal is left on the floor. Everyone watches the cloud of yellow smoke as it slowly dissipates.

  MIUD (looking at the smoke): Alyosha, what is all this?

  ALYOSHA: Exhaust fumes. Opportunism.

  MIUD (melancholically): Let it go to waste then. It’s no good for breathing.

  STERVETSEN: I regret the demise of citizen Kuzma. We in Europe have need of an iron spirit.

  KLOKOTOV comes out with a sack and packs away the remains of KUZMA.

  ALYOSHA: No need to miss him, learned person. I could make iron out of you too.

  STERVETSEN: I am far from objecting.

  SHCHOEV: Opornykh! Petya!

  OPORNYKH: That’s me, Ignat Nikanorovich!

  SHCHOEV: Take Kuzma to the district salvage heap, to be credited to the account of our Plan.

  OPORNYKH: Straightaway, Ignat Nikanorovich! (Now on official business, he rushes off.)

  SHCHOEV (to ALYOSHA): And as for you, dear comrade—you’ve been inventing opportunists, have you? Trying to spoil and corrupt our mass?

  ALYOSHA: Yes, well I…Comrade Shchoev…I inadvertently…I wanted to create a hero, but he broke…

  SHCHOEV: He broke?! What difference does that make? Submit a statement in acknowledgment of your error. But declare your own statement to be clearly inadequate and confess yourself a class enemy.

  YEVSEI: Yes, yes…I like that! A broken hero! As if a hero can break!

  ALYOSHA bows his head sorrowfully.

  MIUD: Don’t cry, Alyosha. Just close your eyes tight and I will lead you to socialism as if you were blind. And you and I will be on our own together again, singing in the collective farms about the Five-Year Plan, about shock workers, about all that lies in our hearts.

  ALYOSHA: No, I created an opportunist. My soul now aches with sorrow.

  YEVSEI: Submit a statement. Write that you now feel mute anguish.

  SHCHOEV: Acknowledge your fault. It will ease the burden.

  A MEMBER: Death to the traitor who has betrayed the interests of our social stratum.

  FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: This is terrible! This unofficial musician has turned out to be a compromiser and an appeaser, a simplifier who has cheapened our ideology! Do you understand?

  Conversation among the assembly:

  —What a nightmare! I told you there would be a foreign intervention…

  —His documents! Verify his documents! Grab him by the document!

  —Surround them with an invincible unity of ranks!

  —This is a cardinal error of principle—he must renounce his disgraceful ways!

  —Give him a good slap, whoever’s closest!

  —He’s a saboteur, he wants to wreck our class apparatus!

  —Fascist! Let me have a go at him! Give me the face of the class enemy!

  —Here within us rages a lofty hatred. And—above all—it rages within a common breast!

  —We’ll have some fun with you now, you mother’s son!

  —Life in our office has become so interesting now. We well and truly tremble with feelings!

  —All artillery circle members, this way!

  —Seren, what’s going on in here? I’m once again in a state of perplexity.

  —Oh, Papa, this is an impetuous welling up of intrigue and machination.

  —We-ell now, what’s the word…Alyosha, you’re a shithead!

  —And all the time, you know, absolutely all the time, even when I was having the abortion—all the time I had a feeling that something at work wasn’t right…I even said this to the doctor during the operation—I was surprised at myself!

  —Oh I love these moments of danger!

  —You’re a nice person. Only toward women are you capable of acting vilely.

  —And certainly not toward the state!

  —An enterprise of shame should be organized for the traitors!

  —Ah, let him have it, let him have it, let him have it hard! We’ll have fun with you now, you sons of bitches!

  —Now, comrades, it is necessary to close our ranks!

  —Keep a watchful eye on one another!

  —Let none of you, ever, trust yourselves!

  —Consider yourself a saboteur, for the sake of the work!

  —Chastise yourselves on your days off!

  —More torment, more gnawings of conscience, more anguish with regard to the class, comrades!

  —Up to the highest level!

  —Hurrah!

  SHCHOEV: Silence, elemental masses!

  Silence sets in. ALYOSHA stands surrounded by universal hostility; he is in anguish, entirely lost. He has no idea how to live further.

  SHCHOEV (with sangfroid): It will be enough if this man repents in writing of his delusion of heart.

  YEVSEI: What matters is that we receive from him a proper document, everything according to protocol. That’s all there is to it. In accord with the document, he will then be corrected automatically!

  SHCHOEV: You’re right, Yevsei! (Pensively) A document…Such depth of thought in a single word! An eternal memorial to the thoughts of humanity!

  ALYOSHA: I was an uncollectivized proprietor of my own talent…

  YEVSEI: You are a gift of God—but there is no God…

  ALYOSHA: Why didn’t I become iron? Then I would have been true to you forever.

  YEVSEI: You lack firmness and were tormented by tenderness.

  ALYOSHA: You are right on every count! And I myself am nothing, I no longer exist in this organized world.

  YEVSEI: You lacked discipline and your hard line has shattered.

  ALYOSHA: I thought whatever came into my head. I’m uncultured, and my feelings roamed in all directions, and I often wept just from sad music.

  SHCHOEV: You invented things without leadership, and your objects functioned the wrong way around. Where were you earlier? I’d have taken charge of you!

  ALYOSHA: I acknowledge myself to be a double-dealer, a mistaker, and compromiser, as well as being a mechanistic materialist…But don’t believe me…Maybe I am the mask of the class enemy! Your thoughts are precise and rare, you are members of great intelligence. But I thought boring things about you, that you were plodding along on a wave of impetuous spontaneity, that you were a tribe of bureaucrats, shitheads, agents of kulakdom, of Fascism itself. Now I see that I was an opportunist and I am sorrowful in my mind.

  MIUD: Alyosha! I’m all alone now! (Turns away from everyone and covers her face with her hands.)

  SHCHOEV: It’s all right, Alyosha. We’ll bring you back to reason.

  SERENA: Papa, what is happening here? Alyosha, don’t be afraid!

  STERVETSEN (to SHCHOEV and YEVSEI): This psychology (he points to ALYOSHA) is unacceptable. This is defective goods, not a proper superstructure. Only ardent, selfless heroes are of use to us. I reject this reject!

  YEVSEI: You’ve brought us into deficit, Alyosha!

  ALYOSHA: I�
��m a pitiful and deluded stray—while you are leaders…

  SHCHOEV: We are not blind to that fact. We lead and we come to conclusions.

  MIUD: What’s come over you, Alyosha?

  ALYOSHA: I am submitting to the facts, Miud.

  MIUD: Why did you allow this vile social stratum to frighten you? Without you I will be an orphan. I cannot lift the hurdy-gurdy by myself, nor can I walk alone in such heat all the way to socialism!…Alyosha, Comrade Alyosha!

  ALYOSHA weeps. Everyone is silent.

  SHCHOEV: His tenderness is creeping out. You can see it all over him now. He couldn’t save it up for the future, the bastard!

  MIUD pulls out the revolver from beneath her shirt. She points the barrel at SHCHOEV and YEVSEI.

  MIUD: End now!

  YEVSEI immediately weeps, silently and copiously; his whole face is covered with flowing moisture. SHCHOEV looks at YEVSEI and MIUD in disbelief.

  OPORNYKH: Er…Yevsei Ivanovich, are those really tears? You’ve never before been able to weep.

  MIUD: End now! You will torment socialism! Better that I should put an end to your torments now!

  SHCHOEV: Right away, Comrade Woman. Give me a piece of paper—I’ll write a statement renouncing my errors.

  YEVSEI (in a worthless, childish voice): We’ve run out of ink, Ignat Nikanorovich. Ask the young woman citizen to wait a minute. We’ll give her a receipt agreeing to be ended…

  SHCHOEV: I want something sad, Alyosha. Play a march for us.

  MIUD: Hurry up. My hand is worn out.

  SHCHOEV: Yevsei, support the citizen’s hand.

  YEVSEI hurls himself at MIUD. She fires at him. YEVSEI falls and lies motionless. MIUD points the revolver at SHCHOEV. The assembly instinctively takes a step toward MIUD.

  MIUD: Stay where you are. We don’t have time to be digging graves.

  The assembly freezes.

  SHCHOEV: On behalf of our members, I express our gratitude to the comrade woman for the death of this (pointing at YEVSEI) secret reptile.

  MIUD (to SHCHOEV): I haven’t given you the floor.

  SHCHOEV: I beg your pardon. But please allow me then to feel a little sadness…Alyosha, put forth something by way of a musical tune.

  OPORNYKH: Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich! Where is that…that…er, whatchamacallit? (Disappears, then reappears with the hurdy-gurdy, which he carries over to ALYOSHA.) Please, for God’s sake!