Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

by Andrei Platonov

  BOS: Your body and soul aren’t yet properly joined—but don’t worry: the graft will take effect soon! (Puts on a pair of tin-framed glasses, ties them behind his ears, sits down where FUTILLA was sitting, and starts to read the register.) What’s the good of counting? What’s the good of counting figures when everything in the world is approximate? Futilla, love me with your sad, unconscious heart—it’s the only precision in life.

  FUTILLA: No, I love you consciously!

  BOS: Consciously! Consciousness is the bright half-light of youth before your eyes, when you can’t see the piffle that holds sway in the world.

  FUTILLA: Consciousness is mind. If you don’t understand, then say nothing.

  BOS: My conscious girl. I’m happy when I don’t understand.

  FUTILLA: And I feel bored then…Get counting. I want a complete list by morning. You’re delaying payment of the kolkhoz workers! Everything must be clear to everyone—let there be no uncertainties…I’ll be back soon! (Takes the baby, wrapped in a blanket, from the bench and walks a few steps.) It’s turned cold, I must find a lit stove so I can warm him up. (Leaves.)

  BOS: Everything’s clear. But I want obscurity. Obscurity! I lost you long ago and I live in the emptiness of clarity and despair.

  The knocking of a hammer in the kolkhoz, and the whine of a file. These sounds are repeated.

  BOS (counting off figures on the abacus; suddenly gives up): Let them be happy approximately! Every count just demands a recount. (Writes on the register) To Prokhor Carbinov—ten kilograms: you, Prokhor, harvested hay without zeal, you look askance on Soviet power. Ksenya Sekushcheva—you, Ksyusha, breath of God, have done well! Here’s more strength for your body—fifty kilograms of mutton, plus the wool. And Anton—Antoshka!—you get a hundred kilograms. You can eat meat! You’ve used the wind to sow grass, you’ve dug two wells, both of them now dry, you’re measuring the sea for the Academy of Sciences, you’ve staged a poetic drama about an axe,21 and you’ve brought every kolkhoznik to an understanding of the principles of cost accounting…Now is that an airplane?

  VOICE OF ANTON: It’s nothing. Darkness. Empty elements noising their noise!

  BOS (counting): Yes! Yes! I’ll knock half off everyone’s wages! For sixteen years they’ve been working at Communism, and to this day they still can’t organize the small globe of the earth. Pedants! I’m going to fine the lot of you!

  VOICE OF ANTON: Punish and fine us, Comrade Worldwide Academician! Strike at the masses’ psy…psychosis with the weapon of workdays!22

  BOS: Out of the question, Antoshka. Karl Marx told me in the middle of the last century that the proletariat has no need of psychology.23

  VOICE OF ANTON: Did you know Karl Marx?

  BOS: How could I not know Karl Marx? Of course I knew him! All his life he was looking for something serious. The current piffle of all our events made him laugh.

  VOICE OF ANTON: You’re lying, man of science! Marx didn’t laugh at us—he loved us in advance and forever, he wept over the grave of the Paris Commune, and beyond the horizon of world history he stretched out the path of his speculation! We’ve had enough of you and your views! You’d better understand us—before we understand you!

  BOS (counting): To Serafima Koshchunkina and her husband, also Koshchunkin: zero, two zeros.

  Enter ANTON.

  ANTON: Why do you irritate me by understanding every object to the nth degree? You’re blurring life’s whole impression before my very eyes!

  BOS: Blessed are the mutterers! (Still counting.)

  ANTON: We’re not blessed yet—we’re workers. What makes you say all these psycho-crazed things?

  BOS (not looking up from his work): What do you want, infant?

  ANTON: Go on—tell me something still more crazed! What’s the whole world made from? Is it atoms or not?

  BOS: From piffle—from psycho-crazed piffle!

  ANTON (tormentedly): So life’s just as awful for the atom! I’ll go and measure the sea and check the weights. Otherwise the world isn’t properly real—it demands to be organized with precision!

  BOS: Antoshka! Why did you put up that scarecrow? You wasted three workdays! You’re a squanderer!

  ANTON: To frighten the class enemy! A scarecrow’s bigger than a man and he’s more frightening. And the men need to be working—we don’t have enough of them.

  BOS: But the class enemy wasn’t frightened.

  ANTON: No, not in the least, insofar as the scarecrow was dead. It was Filipp Vershkov who instructed me. Make a scarecrow, he said—what do we need guards for? They started leaving the huts unguarded, everyone went off to dig wells—and the class enemy raided…I’ll go and get down to some labor right away! There’s no airplane, it’s dark everywhere.

  ANTON begins to exit. Enter FUTILLA and the baby, crossing paths with ANTON.

  Won’t he sleep?

  FUTILLA: No, he’s delirious. It’s cold everywhere, no one’s lit their stove, and hunger makes his mother sleep without feeling.

  BOS: Futilla, why are you carrying that child about? Let it die! Or don’t you have enough love in you to give birth without pity?

  ANTON (to BOS): Any moment now and I shall thump you one—you’ll soar right out of your shoes! You’ll scatter apart into all your components, smashed by the proletariat!

  BOS: You’re wrong, Anton! What’s the proletariat to me? It’s younger than I am! I was born before there was any proletariat, and it will be gone before I die! And if the proletariat smashes into my hard bones, it’ll mutilate itself!

  FUTILLA: Still no airplane?

  ANTON: No. Let me take him. I’ll put him in a basket and rock him. (Takes the baby from FUTILLA and exits.)

  FUTILLA: And have you completed the register?

  BOS: Yes.

  FUTILLA: Let me check it.

  BOS: Don’t check it, Futilla. Your sheep are no longer in your pastoral kolkhoz. They’re in the hands of the class enemy.

  FUTILLA: You poor old grandpa! You don’t know the strict watch kept over our frontiers. Our sacred bread will return to our body.

  Pale dawn. Distant hum of a plane. FUTILLA listens. Pause.

  (Shouting) Antoshka! An airplane! Make the signals brighter! Wait! I’ll set fire to a hut! (Runs off.)

  VOICE OF ANTON: I’ve seen everything already and am now undertaking maximal measures!

  Pause. Approaching hum of the plane.

  BOS: Chance events of all kinds are accelerating. I must draw up a balance sheet.

  A fierce red light. FUTILLA has set one of the kolkhoz huts on fire. The sound of the airplane, growing quieter as it lands. Pause. Enter ANTON and a pilot, followed by VERSHKOV.

  ANTON: Where’s Futilla Ivanovna?

  VERSHKOV: She’ll appear in a moment. She set one of the hut roofs on fire and now she can’t put it out.

  FUTILLA runs in.

  PILOT: Are you the chairman?

  FUTILLA: Can’t you see I am?

  PILOT: At your command. I’m the pilot of agricultural light aircraft number 4207. I was flying to a rice kolkhoz. I touched down after seeing signal fires. Comrade Anton has informed me of the need to pursue a band of kulaks. I’m ready to carry out reconnaissance over the sea, but I need a guide to identify your fishing vessel.

  FUTILLA: Quick—take me!

  ANTON: I’m going as well! My heart’s bursting with joy!

  PILOT: Two of you?! All right then. Let’s not waste time! (They go out. FUTILLA turns around for a moment.)

  FUTILLA (to BOS): Grandpa, you love me—so take care of the kolkhoz. (Leaves.)

  BOS: Fly, my poor little bird. I shall be vigilant.

  BOS and VERSHKOV remain onstage.

  VERSHKOV: Well, now you and I are in charge, Ivan Fyodorovich!24 Let’s give orders!

  BOS: Orders? I’ll show you who’s giving orders! Forge ahead and labor hard!

  VERSHKOV: That’s right, Ivan Fyodorovich, I’ll do just that. Firm leadership is essential to us!

  V
ERSHKOV goes out. The light from the burning hut is extinguished. A gray, boring dawn. The roar of a plane taking off.

  ACT 3

  The inside of the kolkhoz office. Portraits and slogans. Stock-raising posters. A wall newspaper.25 In the corner—a rolled-up Red Flag. A table with an abacus. Benches. A single window, closed. It is nearly morning. A lamp burns. BOS sits at the desk, wearing glasses, extremely unkempt and unshaven.

  BOS: Night! Silence! I love it when nothing elemental can be heard! When nothing resounds except the breath of man! (Listens—outside the window someone is snoring.) The socialist Filipp Vershkov is snoring. He cut a whole rick of hay on his own—he worked day and night, making use of the light of the moon. He should be put down for ten workdays. But he’s an imaginary being—I’ll put him down for four.

  Enter KSYUSHA, now much thinner.

  KSYUSHA: Some news for you. (Takes a letter from under her jacket and hands it to BOS.) The postman dropped it in this morning—tracking you down, he said, had proved almost beyond him. Read it.

  BOS (ignoring the letter): I gave up reading long ago.

  KSYUSHA: But it might be interesting!

  BOS: No, Ksyusha, it isn’t. And have you forgotten that your child is now sailing across the Caspian Sea?

  KSYUSHA: No, my friend, I have not forgotten. Certainly not. I can see the little darling—all alive and well—right here in front of my eyes. I’ve got nothing to eat, but my breasts are swollen with milk. No, no, I don’t forget—only if I’m asleep.

  BOS: That’s good—suffer! Suffering’s splendid. I’m reminding you, so you don’t forget. And what about the sacks you’re mending? Have you overfulfilled your quota?

  KSYUSHA: I’ve fulfilled my quota, but I haven’t had time to overfulfill it. My hands ache from grief, I can’t even weep anymore, I can only stare like a dead fish.

  BOS: Ksyusha! Poor sad stuff that you are, come closer. Let me embrace you and stroke you! (Caresses KSYUSHA.)

  KSYUSHA (nestling up to BOS): Grandpa Ivan, you’re a scientist, you’re a kind man—tell me how I’m supposed to live now, help me to get through my suffering.

  BOS: Don’t cry, Ksyusha! You cried when you were a child—over a broken glass vial, over a lost blue rag—and your grief was no less sad. Now you’re crying over a child. Once I used to cry too. I had four official wives, they all died. They bore me nineteen children—young men and women—and not one of them is left in the world, I can’t even find their graves. Not one footprint, not one trace of the warm foot of a child of mine, have I ever seen on the earth.

  KSYUSHA: Don’t be bored, Grandpa. I feel bored too. My poor sad old man!

  BOS: Do you have a pharmacy here?

  KSYUSHA: A small one.

  BOS: Go and get me something chemical to swallow.

  KSYUSHA: In a minute.

  BOS: Run along, my girl.

  Exit KSYUSHA.

  BOS (calling through the window): Filipp!

  VOICE OF VERSHKOV: What is it, Ivan Fyodorovich?

  BOS: Come here.

  VOICE OF VERSHKOV: In a moment. Let me just have a stretch—I’m cracking my joints!

  BOS (rummaging through his papers): The danger of falling behind is all too apparent. Haymaking has not been completed. The supplementary meat quota has not been sent off, there are insufficient sacks for the winter stores, two of the women went into labor yesterday—they conceived on the same day. So where, oh God, am I going to find anyone to darn the sacks? Futilla, breath of my life, come back soon to our little huts—your heart beats with more intelligence than my head. I fail to recognize the class enemy. And these are his doings!

  Enter FILIPP VERSHKOV.

  VERSHKOV: What do you want?

  BOS: I want to know why you sleep so much.

  VERSHKOV: Well, I’ll be damned! I thought you were one of those counter fellows, but it seems you’re no different from us. Is it true? Are we really all that interests you foreign counterfeits?

  BOS: Listen, Filipp—you’re a class enemy!

  VERSHKOV: Me? You could say that I am, and then again you could say that I’m not! You could say that’s a foul lie, a subterfuge, and a slander against our finest people. As you like, Ivan Fyodorovich: you can look at it this way and you can look at it that way, all in all it’s a riddle!

  BOS: You’re a liar, you’re a saboteur! I can see right through humanity to the whole of fate!

  VERSHKOV: Who cares what you see? It’s theory, up in the air—

  BOS: It’s right down-to-earth, you reptile! I’ve been living over a century, I’ve measured everything against real events! You don’t love the policies of the Party, you pretend to be on our side, but really you’re on the side of Europe, of the well-off and bourgeois!

  VERSHKOV: You…Don’t you psycho-craze me, I’ll start to st-stammer, I’ll st-stick something hard up your…Who created a giant hayrick ti-titan, who was it completed ten workdays in twenty-four hours?

  BOS: Yes, Filipp Vasilievich, that was you. I put you down for four workdays.

  VERSHKOV: Four! You’re driving me psychological, you’re making me forget facts! You’re developing indignation in me, you devilish capitalist remnant.

  Enter KSYUSHA.

  KSYUSHA: The sea’s loud tonight. It must be frightening to be sailing alone on the water—

  BOS: Give me a powder.

  KSYUSHA: Take whichever you like, I’ve brought them all. (Opens her pharmacy box.)

  BOS swallows three powders, one after the other.

  BOS: There isn’t even anything to wash them down with. It’s time you made kvass on the kolkhozes.

  VERSHKOV: You’ll have to chew on them.

  BOS: Don’t irritate me, you insignificance!

  VERSHKOV: I’ll show you who’s insignificant! You know where we put people who’re insignificant? Here we have only the polysignificant!

  BOS: You’re driving me psychological! Vacate the kolkhoz office!

  VERSHKOV: Bureaucracy-crazed already! Wait till Futilla Ivanovna returns from her mission—I’ll tell her everything.

  KSYUSHA: Nor can I remain silent. This is a collective enterprise and the atmosphere should be comradely. You’re slandering a man on the basis of unsubstantiated evidence. Pah, it’s a disgrace!

  VERSHKOV: Come on, Ksyusha, let’s leave the alien class on its own. We don’t want to soil our worldview.

  They both leave.

  BOS (happily): And so these almost-godly beings live out their lives. They play at different games—and we end up with world history…Soon it’ll be getting light—I must prepare the report for the district land section.

  BOS returns to work. Enter CARBINOV with a rifle.

  CARBINOV: Still not gone to bed?

  BOS: No, I’m burying myself in the facts of collective life.

  CARBINOV: It’s time you lay down. Anyone would think you’re younger than I am!

  BOS: How many years have you seen?

  CARBINOV: Around a hundred, I think. No, hardly! My mind’s starting to fog up. I can see the whole wide world, but it’s no longer of interest.

  BOS: So you’re clever, are you?

  CARBINOV: Oh, it depends. Sometimes I’m clever, sometimes I’m not. Clouds float across my mind.

  BOS: You’re clever, all right. Go and guard the kolkhoz border.

  CARBINOV: But aren’t I…aren’t I a class enemy?

  BOS: Why are you hanging about here then? Go to the district center and tell them to arrest you. It’s time you learned consciousness.

  CARBINOV: I’ve already been. Twice now I’ve asked them to arrest me. But they’re not interested. No social indicators, they say—you’re one of the poor. They authorize a crust of bread for me to eat on the way home—and off I go.

  BOS: So you’re socially useful?

  CARBINOV: Me? I don’t think so. I’ve read a lot in a book. There have been people in the world now for a hundred millennia—and they’ve achieved damn all! Are we going to achieve much in five
years? Not likely!

  BOS: Get out of here, you class enemy!

  CARBINOV: I said that on an empty stomach. I was checking your vigilance—after all, you might be an agent of Ashurkov’s! I’m the guard here, I watch over everything—all our inventory and all our ideology. It’s dawn—lie down on your side and go to sleep, otherwise you’ll have no strength for the coming day. Each day of our labor lays the foundation for centuries to come—and on our kolkhoz revolution rests the fate of a hundred millennia. Yes, that’s how it is, like it or not! Lie down and God rest you!

  Carbinov leaves. Brief pause.

  BOS (alone): I don’t understand a thing. Clouds float across my mind!

  Pink dawn on the kolkhoz. VERSHKOV enters.

  Why aren’t you asleep?

  VERSHKOV: I can’t sleep—I’m worried. It’s getting light and there’s no food. The people are tossing and turning.

  BOS: Go on, go on, keep on irritating me! Get in the way of my work!

  VERSHKOV (sighing): I’m astonished at worldwide humanity. How come the imperialists—by no means the most stupid of people—chose you to unravel the riddle of their lives? You’re well and truly behind the times, you can’t even organize a pastoral kolkhoz! I’d have solved the whole world problem long ago—and without traveling anywhere. I’d have stayed in my room, eating food and thinking thoughts! I’d have come up with an answer!

  BOS: Filipp! Worldwide fools all search for worldwide truth.

  VERSHKOV: All the better for you! But you and I aren’t fools! You’re a worldwide double-dealer, and I’m an exemplary shock worker of a kolkhoz shepherd. Nothing more and nothing less!

  BOS: Filipp! Look in here—see what else Europe’s been writing to me! Reply in writing to that kolkhoz of kulaks! You, it seems, are a great man! (Hands VERSHKOV the letter.)

  VERSHKOV (unsealing the envelope): Call me whatever you like! It’s up to you. Sometimes I’m great, sometimes I’m petty. Can’t be helped. Life’s an ongoing event—you have to adjust!