Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

by Andrei Platonov

  Evening. BOS and FUTILLA arrive from their long journey. FUTILLA is carrying the same things as in the Moscow terminus. They stop. Not a single human voice can be heard in the kolkhoz.

  FUTILLA (listening): Not a sound from anyone. They’ve put up some kind of scarecrow—as if there aren’t enough people! (Brief pause.) Here we are, Grandpa. Look—this is our pastoral kolkhoz. We graze sheep here and do a little fishing. Let’s change into something clean. (They sit down on the ground. FUTILLA begins to change her shoes.)

  BOS: I don’t have anything clean. I’ll just sit and rest a little from speculation.

  FUTILLA (changing her shoes): All right, sit and be bored for a while. Then you can go and sleep on the stove.11

  In the distance, somewhere beyond the kolkhoz, a baby begins to cry. The quiet sound of a woman’s human voice.

  BOS: Who can be crying here, in your socialized fields?

  FUTILLA: It’s our children, playing in their nursery.

  BOS: I heard children crying.

  FUTILLA: You should close your ears.

  Once again a baby cries in the distance.

  BOS: There it is again—some petty little voice is yearning.

  FUTILLA: It’s just my baby. Without his mother he’s been bored to tears. Look the other way—I’m going to wipe my nipples, then I’ll go and feed him. (She wipes her nipples. BOS looks straight at FUTILLA’s breasts.) See how much milk has collected!

  BOS: Yes.

  FUTILLA: You should close your eyes.

  BOS: I’m tired of walking over this indefinite earth! People live their lives amid flowers, tears, and dust, and I, an old man, must be their witness. How will it all end, my poor people?

  FUTILLA: Well, what do you think, Grandpa? Do you like our USSR? Anything can happen here, whatever our heart desires! What do you mean—how will it all end?

  BOS: Yes, I do like your USSR: contradictions all around and no clarity within. But I’m saying: when will we cease to breathe in this empty space? When will we all embrace in a common grave? When, my little girl?

  FUTILLA: We never will. But you will very soon. You’re an old man—you’re withering already! (Having changed her shoes, she gets up.) Well, that’s my shoes done. (Shouting out into the kolkhoz) Antoshka! Ksyusha! Uncle Filipp! We’re here! Ksyusha, bring me my little boy straightaway! (More quietly) Without him I’m bored all over, from head to toe. (To BOS) Go into the kolkhoz, Grandpa, find someone with a stove that’s been lit—you can lie down on top of it and they’ll give you some food! I’ll call you when I’ve tidied my room.

  BOS: I don’t like food. Have you got anything chemical?

  FUTILLA: The kolkhoz has a pharmacy chest. You can have some powder.

  BOS: I’ll go and find it.

  BOS leaves. FUTILLA goes up into the porch and puts down her bundles.

  FUTILLA (sorting through the books she has brought): I can’t wait to see him. A small warm body, and it always smells of something nice…But why’s it so quiet in the kolkhoz? (Calls out) Ksyusha, Ksyusha! Bring me my little boy! (Silence everywhere. Brief pause.) Soon I’ll be having another baby. I like it when something so hot and helpless and crying comes out from inside me—a poor little lump of my life, defenseless, frightened, all covered in blood. A terrible death has worn it out and tormented it. (Calls out) Ksyusha! Where is everyone? Where’s my baby? Where’s the kolkhoz?

  FILIPP VERSHKOV quietly comes onstage.

  VERSHKOV: Greetings, Comrade Chairwoman! Congratulations on your arrival, on the attainment of good health and every other kind of success! (Gives FUTILLA his hand.) Did you see our fine people in our country’s great capitals, did you pay our respects to them, or did you remain silent?

  FUTILLA: I paid our respects to them.

  VERSHKOV: And how is their health?12

  FUTILLA (during this dialogue she slowly changes into a clean dress, disappearing for a moment into the hut and then coming out again): It’s all right. They gave me this message for you. “Let him work more and talk less—then he won’t play into the hands of the enemy!”13

  VERSHKOV: Is that really so, Futilla Ivanovna? Have they really received reports on my personal state of mind? Well, now you’ll be hearing me thunder! With everything that I’ve got, with every one of my bones!

  FUTILLA: Uncle Filipp! What’s going on in the kolkhoz? Have they cut all the hay? I didn’t see any haystacks on the way here. And has our quota been sent off to SovMeat?

  VERSHKOV (in embarrassment): We haven’t finished yet, Futilla Ivanovna.

  FUTILLA: You devils! I gave you instructions! What have you been up to? What use are we to the state like this? The state would be better off if it were sea here, not people. At least the sea has fish in it.

  VERSHKOV: The sea? That’s an interesting question, Futilla Ivanovna. But what life-giving books have you brought us? When are you going to introduce the population to them?

  FUTILLA: Where’s Antoshka? Where’s Ksyusha gone?

  VERSHKOV: They’ve gone begging by the sea—looking for dead fish on the shore. Antoshka’s even started frying burdock and making little cakes from goods that have passed through sheeps’ stomachs. There’s no food for us to eat. There’s no mutton.

  FUTILLA: What about our sheep—our kolkhoz sheep? Uncle Filipp!

  From now on the dialogue moves ever faster.

  VERSHKOV (quickly, almost choking): Listen to me, Futilla Ivanovna. I speak for the community, in the name of everyone most conscious and most truly a shock worker…You just listen: I’ll tell you real facts, convincing to the highest degree. A bantik has been here.

  FUTILLA: What do you mean—a bantik? Quick, get on with it!

  VERSHKOV: I’m telling you abbreviatedly, arithmetically, like SovNarKom and TseKuBa:14 B-A-N-T-I-K—Bourgeois ANTI-Kolkhoznik!15 Fyodor Kirilich Ashurkov is a BANTIK! You dekulakized him before the Second Bolshevik Spring, but now his presence has been felt again!16

  FUTILLA: Did you kill him?

  VERSHKOV: No, I didn’t! He smashed me three times on my hump, and Antoshka was kicked too. Yes, they kicked him with their boots and they hit him on the head with bricks, right on his consciousness. Only the bricks were soft, they were adobe and they hadn’t been baked, so Antoshka rose a second time without impairment.

  FUTILLA: Right on his consciousness! And where was your own consciousness at the time?

  VERSHKOV: There was no time for consciousness, Futilla Ivanovna—there were seven of these bantiks, no fewer than seven of them! They came out of the dark steppe, and our kolkhoz fishing ship, Distant Light, was lying close in to shore. And that’s where Antoshka and I were—we’d driven our flock there, the entire sum of our property, we were dipping them against parasites. Other wandering people were digging a well far off in the steppe—there wasn’t sight nor sound of them!

  FUTILLA: Get on with it! You talk for so long it’s as if you say nothing!

  VERSHKOV: They drove our flock of sheep onto the kolkhoz ship—they left only one ram—and they hauled the hut to the shore, whole and hale, window glass and all, and they loaded it onto the ship, and then they flew off under sail in fright. A terrible manifestation of negligence has occurred!

  FUTILLA: And our salted meat, and our communal grain that was in the patched-up sacks? Quick! Tell me at once!

  VERSHKOV: I can’t tell you at once—there’s a psy…psyche, stuck in my throat. Our salted beef, and the grain that belongs to us poor peasants, in the patched-up sacks—everything we own has sailed away too, in our own boat, toward the far shore of imperialism.17

  FUTILLA: But why didn’t you kill the kulaks? You’ve got a revolver! You must all of you be on their side! If you’re a coward today, then you’re a subkulak. You’re trash, you’re scum—you’re anything but Bolsheviks! You should all be investigated thoroughly—until each of your hearts learns to beat at a gallop and not at a cowardly patter!

  FUTILLA runs down from the porch.

  VERSHKOV (calmly): And why not?
We should all of us be vetted. There’s too little cultural work in our midst—that’s what I say. Still, it wouldn’t have been safe to take out my revolver—they might have removed it from me!

  FUTILLA (shouting): Ksyusha!

  VOICE OF KSYUSHA (nearby): Hello-o-o!

  VERSHKOV (quietly): This is a tragedy.18

  KSYUSHA runs in. The sound of a child crying in the distance.

  KSYUSHA (weeping carefully and discreetly, she embraces FUTILLA): My Futilla’s come back.

  FUTILLA: Ksyusha! What’s happened? Why’s our hut disappeared? Why have all the sheep been stolen? Why are the children crying? (Pause: the friends continue to embrace.) I’ve brought an old man here with me—he’s to be fed from my rations.

  KSYUSHA: I’ve already given instructions. He’s eating some mashed grass, and he’s taken two powders from the pharmacy.

  FUTILLA: We’ve got nothing tastier than mashed grass?

  KSYUSHA: No, the bantiks took everything.

  FUTILLA: Ksyusha! Did you keep feeding my baby? You didn’t run out of milk?

  KSYUSHA: No, I didn’t run out of milk.

  FUTILLA: Bring him to me, then. I want to feed him myself, my breasts are all swollen.

  KSYUSHA (crying out): You must grieve, Futilla. You and I no longer have children.

  FUTILLA (unable to take this in): What will become of us? And why aren’t you grieving?

  KSYUSHA (with self-control): I’ve already grieved all my grief. (Losing her self-control) I feel sick at heart, it’s awful. The wind rocks me as if I were empty. I want to believe in God!

  FUTILLA: Ksyusha! There isn’t any God anywhere—you and I will be grieving alone. (In anguish, trying to control herself) What am I to do with this grief of mine? We may not feel like going on living, but we have to! Where have you buried my little boy?

  VERSHKOV (hurriedly, almost choking): Futilla Ivanovna, let me express myself at last! I know everything, I’ve been holding myself in readiness for a long time!

  FUTILLA (weeping slowly and mournfully): Uncle Filipp, why didn’t you guard the kolkhoz? Why have you buried my child?

  VERSHKOV: What do you mean—buried? I haven’t buried your child. Don’t weep and mourn—there’s a good girl. At this moment your child is sailing calmly across the Caspian Sea—in the hands of the class enemy!

  FUTILLA: Don’t keep frightening me! Uncle Filipp, where are our children?

  VERSHKOV: There’s no information! Listen! When Fyodor Ashurkov the bantik first fell on our huts, it took him a while to track down our wealth. At first he just dragged one hut to the shore. It was the nursery hut. And as Fate—and damn all who believe in such nonsense!—would have it, your child was asleep there, together with Ksyusha’s little one. I laid into the band straightaway, but they struck at me with some kulak weight and down I sat on my bottom—and thank God I at least had something to sit on!

  FUTILLA: Uncle Filipp, why didn’t you snatch back the children?

  VERSHKOV: The children? I was trying to recover the sheep. Children are just love, but sheep are wealth. Don’t overvalue children—you’re strong, you can bear more of them!

  FUTILLA: Go away and leave us alone! Go and slaughter a ram for the scientist.

  VERSHKOV: A ram? Our last ram? All right, I’ll do it…Such a fine beast…A political murder, I suppose.19 (Leaves.)

  The sound of babies crying in the depth of the kolkhoz.

  FUTILLA (forgetting herself): Ksyusha! They’re bringing our babies!

  KSYUSHA: It’s the women. They’re coming back from the shore. They’re afraid to leave children at home now—they take their children with them, and the children are howling because they’re hungry.

  FUTILLA: Bring me someone else’s baby. I’ll feed it and then I’ll take it to bed with me. Bring me Serafima Koshchunkina’s.

  KSYUSHA: All right, but don’t do anything foolish! I’ll go and fetch it right now. (Leaves.)

  FUTILLA (calling out): Antoshka! Antoshka!

  VOICE OF ANTON: Let me finish! I’m not far away—I’m here in the kolkhoz!

  Enter BOS.

  BOS: Thank you for your hospitality. I’ve had a tasty meal of some kind of desert grass.

  FUTILLA: That’s nothing. Tomorrow you’ll eat mutton. (Calls.) Antoshka!

  VOICE OF ANTON: Wait. Let me measure the wind. The airways of our republic must remain free from danger!

  KSYUSHA brings in two babies. She gives one to FUTILLA and keeps the other herself.

  KSYUSHA: Let’s feed these two—or the milk will go to our heads and we’ll die of grief. (Exits, lulling the baby.)

  FUTILLA (looks at the baby): Why does he look so bored? (Puts his mouth to her breast.) He won’t suck milk from my breast!

  BOS: Put him down on the earth, Futilla. Your baby probably wants to die.

  FUTILLA: He’ll be left all alone in the world—without us and without life.

  BOS: Don’t grieve, Futilla. You conceived him in laughter. You were breathless and joyful. Why be irritated now? It’s nothing serious. What’s one child to you? In your hips, as in a cradle, you rock all future humanity. Come here!

  The distant, indistinct hum of an airplane.

  FUTILLA: I can’t hear you, Grandpa. It’s not easy for me right now.

  ANTON appears, his head wrapped in bandages because of his wounds.

  Antoshka! Take a horse. Gallop to the district center, get on the phone, and call the OGPU20 out to the Caspian Sea. Why haven’t you gone after the kulaks already?

  ANTON: We’ve been trying to organize edible food from all kinds of reject dirt! There was no time to fuss about. All the more so since our frontiers are guarded with strict vigilance—no one will be able to sail past!

  The hum grows louder. The plane is now overhead.

  FUTILLA: It’s an airplane! Antoshka, get it to land—we can chase the kulaks in an airplane!

  ANTON (looking up): I’ll land it! I’ll land it at once! I’ve never flown in a machine before! It’s technology, my whole heart thunders! I feel like shouting, “Forward!”

  BOS: Do you know the signals?

  ANTON: I’m a member of the Air-Chem Defense Society. I’ll light a fire and release the smoke of state danger. But you ought to be arrested—you scatter my thoughts! (Makes off.)

  BOS: Your baby’s asleep.

  FUTILLA: My little boy is sleeping. (She covers up the baby and puts him on a bench inside the porch). Everyone is asleep now—on sea and on land. Only one faraway child is crying out now on our little ship. He’s calling to me, he has no one to defend him! I’ll throw myself into the water, I’ll swim to him in the dark.

  BOS (moving closer to FUTILLA): Don’t make so much noise, my girl, our fate is soundless. (Embraces FUTILLA and bends down beside her.) I want to cry with you too. I want to grieve beside your humble skirt, beside your dusty feet that smell of the earth and of your children.

  He puts his arms around the now enfeebled FUTILLA and holds her. The airplane’s distant hum fades further into the distance.

  I have lived through a whole age of sorrow, Futilla. But now I have found your small body in the world. Now, poor and sad as I am, I yearn for you. I want quietly to earn my workdays.

  FUTILLA (gently stroking BOS): You can live with us till you die, here in our pastoral kolkhoz. Be happy in a small way. You can go to the district center and do a course in bookkeeping.

  Enter ANTON.

  ANTON: It hurtled past in the height without stopping! But I’ll stay on guard—planes often fly by here on their great path. I’ll walk up and down all night long and make signals from fire!

  ANTON leaves. FUTILLA goes to the porch and bends down over the sleeping child. BOS goes up to the fence. He stands there awhile in silence. Evening darkens into night.

  BOS: Fraud! (Short pause.) What worldwide, historically organized fraud! And the wind appears to sorrow, and infinity is full of space, like a stupid hole, and the sea gets agitated too and weeps against the shore of the
earth. As if all this were truly serious, pitiful, and splendid! But it’s only raging piffle!

  FUTILLA (from the porch): Grandpa, who are you talking to in vain?

  BOS: Oh Futilla, my little girl, it’s all fraud! Nature isn’t like that—the wind doesn’t feel boredom and the sea doesn’t call anyone anywhere. The wind feels so-so, and across the sea live scum—not angels.

  ANTON enters and begins to walk across the stage.

  ANTON: No one flying anywhere. Nothing in the world but darkness and the sound of the sea.

  ANTON leaves. FUTILLA goes into the hut, comes back with a burning oil lamp, and sits down at the table to work.

  FUTILLA: Why are you so clever? Maybe you’re not to be trusted either?

  BOS: I’m not clever. I’ve been alive for a hundred years. If I know life, it’s from habit—not cleverness.

  FUTILLA: What are fraudsters and why doesn’t someone shoot them? And what do fraudsters think?

  BOS: They think like I do: that the world exists on account of some long-forgotten piffle. And so they treat life mercilessly—like a delusion. Daughter, come and let me kiss you on the head.

  FUTILLA: Why?

  BOS: Because I love you. We have both been deceived. Don’t irritate me. When two deceived hearts press against each other, something almost serious starts to happen. Then we deceive the deceivers themselves.

  FUTILLA: I don’t want to.

  BOS: Why not?

  FUTILLA: I don’t love you.

  BOS: Milk!!! Give me some milk! Where’s my Interhom?

  FUTILLA: We haven’t got any milk for you—we have to feed the children. Come and count workdays, Grandpa—I’ve gotten muddled.

  BOS: All right, my girl. We’ll busy ourselves with piffle for the exhaustion of our souls.

  FUTILLA: It’s not piffle. It’s our bread, Grandpa, and all our Revolution.

  Enter ANTON.

  ANTON: No one flying through the air. I’ll go and check our inventory. One has to try and do something.

  ANTON leaves. BOS goes up to FUTILLA.

  BOS: Where are my glasses? Where—did you say—is all your Revolution?

  FUTILLA: You left your glasses in your mistress’s trunk. You came with just the clothes you stand up in—you didn’t even bring any bread. Look, there are our shepherd’s glasses—they’ll do. (In a different tone) Listen, Grandpa Bos! (Pause. The sound of the sea. Dark night.) I feel bored again. My heart aches and my body’s ashamed to go on living.