YEVSEI (lying down): Somehow, Ignat Nikanorovich, I just can’t manage to end.
SHCHOEV: Easy does it, Yevsei. Don’t hurry—you’ll find a way. What is it? Don’t you feel like dying?
YEVSEI: Given that I’m a reptile, Ignat Nikanorovich, I don’t have much choice. But watch out you don’t feel bored without me.
SHCHOEV: We won’t, Yevsei. Alyosha, give us something with a tune. (ALYOSHA quietly begins to turn his music. It plays a sad little tune, then quiets a little, now barely audible.) Somehow I’m feeling pitiful again. Citizen woman, let me at least write a statement to the effect that I sympathize with everything.
YEVSEI sighs loudly on the floor.
FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Yevsei Ivanovich is sighing.
YEVSEI: Without me—I warn you—there will be a holdup in construction.
OPORNYKH: What’s up with him? Already killed, yet he sympathizes…
MIUD: My hand’s worn out. I’m going to shoot this minute.
ALYOSHA (singing along with his music):
Along the merry path of labor
Shoeless we plod on our bare feet.
MIUD: Not that song, Alyosha. Not that one, you reptile! Your road now is neither rough nor joyful. Sing this one…(The music falls silent. MIUD drops the revolver and sings alone, amid total silence.)
Who will open a door to me—
Some alien beast or bird?
Where have you gone, my comrade?
No word—I hear no word.
YEVSEI (from the floor): Perhaps I could be your comrade. I could become a shock worker, I could enlist among the enthusiasts and be endowed with zeal for the rest of the age! I will organize packaging!
The assembly joins in the song and sings along with the hurdy-gurdy:
Where have you gone, my comrade?
No word—I hear no word.
SHCHOEV (weeping through his horn-rimmed glasses): I want to end.
In the distance—the noise of birds and of rushing water. The sputter of a motorcycle. In runs the AGENT from the state farm.
STATE COLLECTIVE FARM AGENT: Mobilize the masses for me, on the double. I am chasing birds and fish back into the economy! But what’s up with you?
SHCHOEV: Have no fear of difficulties, comrade! Chase them back on your own!
AGENT: Huh?
YEVSEI: Maybe this is something I could do? Animals are afraid of me.
MIUD: Run along then.
YEVSEI leaps briskly to his feet and runs off. The AGENT disappears after him.
OPORNYKH: Those who have been killed make even more of an effort. Now there’s a…oh, what’s the word…Party line for you.
STERVETSEN: Citizens of the district, I am overwhelmed by the presence of your spirit. I highly value your transient passer-by girl, Miud!
SHCHOEV: So why aren’t you killing me, girl? Feeble-powered creature! Are you afraid of my manly courage? (Pensively) Courage! I love my personality for that quality!…Fire away, murderess!
MIUD: I no longer feel like it. I’m afraid of overstepping into extremism.
SERENA: Papa, won’t you buy Alyosha now?
STERVETSEN: No, Seren, he’s degenerated…
The assembly gradually settles down for the night—on the floor or on items of office inventory. MIUD takes the hurdy-gurdy from ALYOSHA and, with difficulty, carries it on her back to the door. She stops by the door and looks around the office. Everyone looks at her vigilantly…
ALYOSHA: Good-bye, Miud!
MIUD: Good-bye, you compromising reptile! (The supine assembly raises its hands to salute the girl as she leaves. MIUD brandishes a fist at the assembly and smiles) Pah! Dregs of the grass roots! (Opens the door.)
STERVETSEN (rises from the floor and rushes toward MIUD): Listen to me, small lady…Allow me to acquire you for Europe. It’s you who are the superstructure! (MIUD laughs.) But I beg you. You are the mind and heart of all the districts of our earth. The West will fall in love with you.
MIUD (seriously): No, I don’t need love. I have love of my own.
STERVETSEN: May I inquire—who is it there in your breast?
MIUD: Comrade Stalin.
THE ASSEMBLY (almost in one voice): We salute you.
STERVETSEN: But your state needs zeppelins, and we could give you a whole squadron of them…
OPORNYKH: Take them, girl!
MIUD: Somehow I don’t feel like it. For now we’re going to live on foot.
STERVETSEN (bowing): That is a great pity.
MIUD: Ask the proletariat of your own district.
STERVETSEN: I thank you.
MIUD leaves. Silence.
SHCHOEV (sighs): Oh Lord, how much longer?
OPORNYKH (who is lying down, amid the assembly): Er, er, what’s your name, Ignat Nikanorovich…who will give comfort to us now?
SHCHOEV: Oh, Petya, Petya, what I want now is sadness…Everything became clear to me long ago, and what I’m drawn to now is something or other indefinite.
KLOKOTOV: Comrade Shchoev, let us, please, get on with current business. Members, after all, can get exhausted too. We have to get up early tomorrow—to fulfill the Plan.
FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: Oh no, what are you saying? It’s far too interesting for us here. We love overcoming difficulties.
STERVETSEN (his face turning crimson with anger): Deceivers, grasping self-servers, eulogizers of the status quo, impetuous drifters…You have only circulars, your lines are not clear and hard. You have no superstructure—you are opportunists! Take your references (takes papers from his pocket and hurls them into space). Take your paragraphs and punctilios—give me back my suits, my shirts, my glasses, and all my other belongings!
SERENA: And my blouses, my brassieres, my stockings, and overalls!
STERVETSEN and SERENA rush at SHCHOEV and KLOKOTOV and rip their former clothing from them.
KLOKOTOV (to the FEMALE OFFICE WORKER): Listen, didn’t you exchange a copy of the prospective plan for a foreign girdle?
FIRST FEMALE OFFICE WORKER: I did…But you seized it from me and took it away to your spouse. You said she had been born on that day forty years before. Remember?
KLOKOTOV: I forgot.
SHCHOEV is already minus his jacket, vest, and glasses, all of which SERENA has managed to tear off him. Meanwhile, STERVETSEN has stripped KLOKOTOV almost to the skin. As things are taken off him, SHCHOEV indifferently peruses one of the papers tossed away by STERVETSEN.
SHCHOEV: Stop, citizens. It seems we no longer exist. (General attention. Everyone lying on the floor stands up. SHCHOEV reads) “As of this April your Sandy Ravine Cooperative System is scheduled for liquidation. The delivery of manufactured goods, as well as of grain and fodder, is hereby terminated. The reason: the above-mentioned inhabited locality is to be removed, in order to facilitate industrial exploitation of the subsoil, which contains deposits of carbon monoxide.” (To the assembly) I don’t understand. How come we’ve kept on being, when we haven’t existed for a long time?
KLOKOTOV: So, Ignat Nikanorovich, it seems we’ve been breathing carbon monoxide! What do you make of that? Do we exist because of consciousness, or because of carbon monoxide?
SHCHOEV (pensively): Carbon monoxide! So there we are—the objective cause of the district population’s lack of consciousness.
GODOVALOV: And what about us, Ignat Nikanorovich? What are we going to do now? People say that objective causes do not exist—only subjects…
SHCHOEV: No objects, you say? Go and organize a self-criticism session then, if you’re a subject.
GODOVALOV: Right away, Ignat Nikanorovich. (Bustles about.)
The sound of axes. Several logs from the back wall of the office (from the audience’s perspective) tumble to the ground. Two workers can be seen in the gap, working away. Another part of the wall collapses. The assembly lies down, except for STERVETSEN and SERENA, who remain standing, clutching their bundles of recovered clothing.
ONE OF THE WORKERS (positions the teeth of a cran
e beneath the upper part of the office and shouts): Take it up now! (To the assembly) We were told that this whole area had been cleared out long ago and that there was no one here. You were blocking the whole of our path…
The upper part of the office vanishes upward; the remnants of the walls tumble down. The world’s emptiness—an endless country landscape—becomes visible. Pause. Then, from far away, the sound of the hurdy-gurdy. No longer visible, already on her way, MIUD is playing. The music is solemn; it touches a human being’s bored and weary heart.
MIUD (sings in the distance):
They set off on foot
For a faraway land,
Leaving their motherland
For a freedom unknown.
Strangers to everyone,
No comrade but the wind—
In their breast their heart
Beats without reply.
SHCHOEV’s belly starts to rumble and he rubs it in the hope of extinguishing the sounds. The assembly lies there in silence, facedown on the floor. STERVETSEN and SERENA stand amid a liquidated, demolished office.
SERENA: Papa, what is all this?
STERVETSEN: The superstructure of the soul, Seren, over weeping Europe.
The End
Written October–November 1930
Translated by Susan Larsen in 1989 and revised by Robert Chandler and Jesse Irwin in 2016
Additional Scene
SHCHOEV: Stop, Yevsei! Some kind of piffle has just shot through my head.
YEVSEI (to the entire office): Nobody move!
Everyone freezes in inactivity. Pause.
SHCHOEV: My thought has now organized itself!
YEVSEI (to the office): Forward, comrades, to new victories!
The office at once engages in clerical, accounting, and other activity.
I’m ready, Ignat Nikanorovich!
SHCHOEV: Wait till I pronounce. Some quality of genius hinders me from expressing myself. I sense only precision, like light in emptiness.
YEVSEI: Take care, Ignat Nikanorovich…
SHCHOEV: I’m taking my time, Yevsei. Oh, Yevsei, shouldn’t we simply liquidate appetite in principle and once and for all?
YEVSEI: Ignat Nikanorovich! That would be monumental! Were I myself to think up such a thought or analogy, I could live off the prize money for a hundred years! How come I don’t have more quality of genius myself?
SHCHOEV: Oh, Yevsei, we couldn’t have just anyone thinking!
YEVSEI: All right, Ignat Nikanorovich. Please now, for God’s sake, give me a directive line toward the liquidation of appetite.
SHCHOEV: Right now, Yevsei. Prepare for the fact!
YEVSEI: And it won’t be too schematic, Ignat Nikanorovich?
SHCHOEV: What do you mean, Yevsei? You’re simplifying me! Such things must be done with culture, in a principled manner and with perspective—not mechanically and not in an impetuous drift.
YEVSEI: But what do you expect, Ignat Nikanorovich? In your presence I am not even real.
SHCHOEV: All right, Yevsei! But can you inform me what it is that terrifies the population still more than hunger?
YEVSEI: Death, Ignat Nikanorovich!
SHCHOEV: You’re right, Yevsei. You must arrange death closer toward the population!
YEVSEI (getting lost): Er?
SHCHOEV: What do you mean—er? I need you to arrange death closer toward the masses.
YEVSEI: You want them killed?
SHCHOEV: Idiot! That would be counterrevolution. What we need are measures of principle. Let death draw near the population and take away their appetite. They’ll go on living, but they won’t want to eat anymore. Their mood will change.
YEVSEI: Say more, Ignat Nikanorovich! I’m still unable to comprehend the depth of your line.
SHCHOEV: Very well, comprehend in detail! I can speak concretely. I can recount the origin of the entire world. You must issue a directive—coordinated with the highest authorities—to the effect that all hostile elements of the population are to be dispersed amid our Nature and landscape.
YEVSEI (disappointed, failing to understand): But, Ignat Nikanorovich, that’s only the hostile elements. How will we feed the friendly elements?
SHCHOEV: It’s true, Yevsei, you aren’t real! Every element is hostile! How did you imagine our population? It’s impossible for there to be friendly elements, they lead us astray. Friendly elements represent the greatest danger, Yevsei. This is a matter of fact you must grasp at once. The population is a class enemy, Yevsei!
YEVSEI: Ignat Nikanorovich! Heavens, my heart feels anguish!
SHCHOEV: Your heart feels anguish in vain, Yevsei. It should be rejoicing. You must issue a directive throughout our entire eating mass—to the effect that we will soon be dispersing them into universal space, into infinity.
YEVSEI: They’ll take fright, Ignat Nikanorovich! For the mass, that means death. In universal space there are neither pots and pans, nor homes, nor food, nor matchsticks from the cooperative50—only clay and wind…There’ll be nothing for them but climate, Ignat Nikanorovich, they’ll feel horror! They’ll all keel over and die just like that!
SHCHOEV: But that’s just it, Yevsei. We need the masses to feel horror. They’ll lose their appetite and our stores will be restored.
YEVSEI: Ignat Nikanorovich, you’re right!
SHCHOEV: Of course I am! Death will immediately curb the petty bourgeois appetite, and our supplies will be sorted. And death’s not so terrible to the masses, Yevsei—they won’t die, they’ll merely take fright.
YEVSEI: What do you mean—they won’t die? They’ll freeze in space when we expel them from the district!
SHCHOEV: Oh Yevsei, Yevsei, if our masses were able to die, they’d have come to an end long ago.
YEVSEI: What?
SHCHOEV: It couldn’t be clearer! Things were better for them in the past, but statistics show that the population keeps growing and growing, as if out of some eternal and bottomless pit. Evidently our masses are unable to die—they live well!51
YEVSEI: All too true, Ignat Nikanorovich. How is it you’re a leader, our greatest genius—yet you’re stuck in a district cooperative?
SHCHOEV: Evidently there are people in the center beside whom I am empty piffle—unreal psychopiffle, like you beside me!
YEVSEI: True, Ignat Nikanorovich, that is indeed true!
SHCHOEV: Well then, get on with it! Organize me the horror of death amid the masses! Liquidate this universal opportunistic appetite! We must act, Yevsei, like true Bolsheviks! More uncompromising intransigence! Forward, Yevsei, to new achievements—into the farthest height of the class struggle!
YEVSEI: Forward, Ignat Nikanorovich! Long live our class lighthouse!
SHCHOEV: What lighthouse, Yevsei? You’re confused! We don’t have storms—and we don’t need lighthouses! It’s in capitalist countries that the storms rage now, Yevsei—things are terrible there! But we don’t need lighthouses—we can see right through everything anyway!
Translated by Robert Chandler
FOURTEEN LITTLE RED HUTS
A Tragedy
CHARACTERS
JOHANN-FRIEDRICH BOS, a world-renowned scholar, chairman of the League of Nations Commission for the Resolution of the Riddle of the World Economy, one hundred one years old
INTERHOM, Bos’s female traveling companion, twenty-one years old
AN OFFICIAL GREETER, forty-five years old
THE STATIONMASTER
PYOTR POLIKARPOVICH LATRINOV, writer
MECHISLAV YEVDOKIMOVICH GLUTONOV, writer
GENNADY PAVLOVICH FUSHENKO, writer
FUTILLA, chairman of the Fourteen Little Red Huts kolkhoz,1 nineteen or twenty years old
KSENYA SEKUSHCHEVA (referred to throughout as KSYUSHA), a kolkhoz worker, twenty-three years old
FILIPP VERSHKOV, an elderly kolkhoz worker
ANTON ENDOV, aged thirty (speaks and acts with faultless precision, with an inspired animation always outstripping his ability to express it)<
br />
GEORGY GARMALOV, Futilla’s husband, a demobilized Red Army soldier
PROKHOR CARBINOV, kolkhoz watchman, an old man
AN OLD MAN from the district center
A PILOT
A RAILWAY GUARD
BABIES of FUTILLA and KSYUSHA
PASSENGERS from an ordinary long-distance train
ACT 1
The concourse of a Moscow railway terminus. Flowers, small tables, banners inscribed with greetings in foreign languages. A few slogans in Russian. One large banner proclaims, “Toward a Healthy Soviet Old Man! Toward a Cultured and Still More Fruitful Old Age!” Whistles of distant locomotives under full steam. Sounds of a brass band tuning up somewhere on the platform.
The STATIONMASTER inspects everything vigilantly and rearranges the flowers on the small tables to show them off to their best. A GUARD stands by the gate.
Enter the OFFICIAL GREETER.
OFFICIAL GREETER: Greetings, Comrade. When does the train arrive from the frontier?
STATIONMASTER: The Mighty Bird express is due to arrive in two minutes. According to the controller, it is four minutes late, but I believe the driver will make up the time. The locomotive is an IS 20.2
OFFICIAL GREETER: Transport systems in our country are not yet operating with the required punctuality.
The long plaintive distant whistle, broken up by speed and the headwind, of a locomotive under full steam.
STATIONMASTER (in his official voice): Trans-Soviet Express Stolbtsy-Vladivostok, the Mighty Bird, is now drawing up alongside platform one. Traveling in first-class coach is Mister Johann-Friedrich Bos, honorary member of Stockholm Academy, chairman of League of Nations Commission for Resolution of Riddle of World Economy. (Looks at his wristwatch) Delay: half a minute! Driver: Comrade Vitalov!
The whistle of a locomotive, now inside the terminus. The sound of brakes. The train stops. Hubbub from the crowd. Greetings. A fanfare.
The STATIONMASTER, drawing himself up to his full height, goes out onto the platform. The OFFICIAL GREETER adopts an alert pose.
With INTERHOM on his arm, JOHANN BOS enters the station concourse. INTERHOM is carrying a small suitcase. They are followed by three writers: LATRINOV, GLUTONOV, and FUSHENKO. Then the STATIONMASTER. The OFFICIAL GREETER welcomes BOS. He introduces himself to him and his companion and says a short sentence of welcome in French.
Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays Page 9