Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays

by Andrei Platonov

  BOS: Wait, my nonentity! You know I like to caress radically.

  INTERHOM: I’m radical too. I don’t like opportunistic half-measures!

  BOS: Radical! Opportunistic half measures! You’ve changed!

  INTERHOM: Johann, I’m a Marxist! Mister Latrinov taught me—and it’s all so easy and pleasant, everyone’s quite astonished and they adore me. It’s so interesting to live and die on behalf of all the workers! I want to join the Party, I shall struggle! Only I’ve forgotten one thing—they advised me to be as…As conscious as possible? As serious as possible? No! What else is there?

  BOS: Vigilant!

  INTERHOM: That’s the word! You’re a genius!

  Brief pause.

  BOS: But what’s turned you—into such a bitch? Who thought you up?

  INTERHOM: I’m not a bitch. I’ve learned all charm and bon ton in the cultural houses of Moscow. I’ve restructured myself!

  BOS (seriously and sadly): Listen, slut. There are no Latrinovs here—only Bolsheviks. And they’ll throw you out!

  INTERHOM: Outright lies and downright deception! Underestimation! I’m an ideological worker, I’m a fighter on the cultural front, I’ve collaborated on three sketches and a play! I’m a member of the All-Union Union of Soviet Writers, they’re expecting a growth of quality from me, I shall be cherished wherever I go.

  BOS (thoughtfully): You’re right, Interhom. If the world is perishing, then you must be thriving. What’s that in your suitcase?

  INTERHOM: Food and hygiene.

  BOS: Good. Let’s go and caress radically. We’ll exchange our organisms. Feelings—what else is there for us to think up?

  INTERHOM: Ah, Johann! But where?

  BOS: Here! (Points to the prison basket.)

  INTERHOM: And let’s not waste time! I’m all wilted from the journey—without love there’s no complete hygiene.

  Both exit into the wattle basket. Pause.

  VOICE OF FUTILLA (Lulling her child, she sings approximately the following):31

  Sleep, and don’t wake up soon.

  Sleep—free of boredom and pain.

  Soon our cows will grow big

  And we will reap fields of grain.

  Best to forget your own self—

  We live in a world full of dread.

  Warm yourself in my breast—

  Science, he tells us, is Bread.

  FUTILLA (calling): Grandpa Bos!

  Silence. FUTILLA comes onstage, wrapping a blanket around a baby and pressing it to her breast.

  But now my breast is cold too…What can I do to warm him up? Hide him inside my belly again? It’s cramped there—he’ll suffocate. And out here it’s all spacious and empty—he’ll die. (Looks hard at her child.) Are you suffering badly? Say it’s not too bad! Say something to me! Why do you close your eyes and not say anything? What are you thinking about all on your own? (The wattle prison begins to stir. Occasional rhythmic creaking sounds. These sounds are repeated. FUTILLA listens, unable to guess their cause.) What’s that—someone riding by in the distance? They’ve stopped! Come quick, we’re bored to death here!

  She bends down. ANTON runs in.

  ANTON: My body’s starting to languish with death! I’m afraid I shall lose my consciousness! The people have fallen silent, they’re lying down half-asleep.

  FUTILLA: Are they still breathing?

  ANTON: I ordered everyone to breathe on without respite! Everyone who keeps breathing till evening will be put down for one workday!

  FUTILLA: No, Antoshka! That’s a mistake. Our register won’t be approved.

  ANTON: Nothing is without mistakes, we learn from mistakes. Mistakes are essential, we must organize mistakes. I haven’t eaten any provisions for ten days—my hands work, my body hurtles about, but my head can no longer think anything! (Rushes about the stage.)

  FUTILLA: Who can I barter myself to in exchange for bread and grain for the kolkhoz? Antoshka, where can I get food for those who have not eaten? (Sits down on the ground in sorrow.)

  The sounds from the wattle prison cease.

  ANTON: Time now to organize food! Warm the child, keep his life going into the reserve of the future!

  FUTILLA: I shall.

  ANTON: He shall live forever in Communism!

  FUTILLA (looking at the child): No, he’s dead now. (Passes the child to ANTON.)

  ANTON (taking the child): Fact: he has died forever!

  From inside the wattle basket INTERHOM lets out a gurgling, guttural scream.

  FUTILLA: A woman has died somewhere!

  ANTON: Doesn’t matter. Science will achieve everything—your child, along with everyone who has perished prematurely but can still bring about benefit, will be revived immortally back to life and activism!

  Brief pause.

  FUTILLA: No, don’t try to deceive me. Give me my baby—I’m going to cry for him. That’s all—there won’t be anything more. (Takes the baby from ANTON.)

  ANTON: Sit and cry like the rain. But we shall look on your tears as sabotage of action!

  ANTON disappears. BOS emerges from the wattle prison.

  BOS: Weep, Futilla!

  FUTILLA: I shall endure.

  BOS: I heard everything, my little girl. How can you and I go on living now?

  FUTILLA: Have you thought up food for the kolkhoz?

  BOS: Yes. I’ve just strangled a class enemy and they’ve left some food—sausage, butter, and permanent milk. Do you want to eat?

  FUTILLA: Where is it?

  BOS: In the prison hut. Interhom—my former European woman—is lying there. I lived with her just now, but then I cut short her breathing—

  FUTILLA: Why did you kill her?

  BOS: She was a danger to you and the whole of socialism—more dangerous than old-style imperialism.

  Brief pause.

  FUTILLA: You must go somewhere else, Grandpa Bos.

  BOS: There’s nowhere to go, Futilla.

  FUTILLA: You’ll find somewhere. You should go. We’ll bury your woman in a grave, we’ll fill ourselves with our own food…You’re piffle!

  BOS: Where can I go, Futilla? My glimmering one!

  FUTILLA: Go away and die.

  BOS: Soon, maybe…It’s getting late in the world. Though this too is a laughing matter. What’s death? Raw material for the stupidest of the elements! There’s nowhere for anyone serious to disappear to.

  FUTILLA: Hold my dead son for a moment. I’ll go and wash my face in the sea. (Gets up from the ground, hands her baby to BOS, and leaves.)

  BOS (alone, to the baby): You’ve already died, little fellow. You’re the flesh of Futilla gone cold—you’re my darling, my little one! (Kisses the baby.) Let’s lie side by side on the ground, I’ll die along with you too. (Lies down on the ground, places the baby beside him, and embraces it.) May the light darken in my eyes and my heart cease to feel irritation. Dear God, dear God—so childlike and forgotten!

  Enter KSYUSHA and GARMALOV.

  KSYUSHA: Where’s Futilla gone? Everyone’s lying down and sleeping—it’s really annoying!

  Enter FUTILLA.

  FUTILLA: Did you barter the hay?

  KSYUSHA: Fat chance of that! We met the representative. “Nothing but wormwood,” he says. “This won’t thicken the fleece on a sheep. If you’re so desperate, then chew on it yourselves!” Well, so much for the kolkhoz—now we can all lie down and die! And to think how we hoped…My little one’s lying senseless.

  FUTILLA: And mine’s dead.

  GARMALOV: Who’s dead? (Rushes to the baby lying beside BOS.) My poor little weak one, what will be left for me to feel now? I don’t know if I can go on living!

  BOS: Don’t make so much noise up there, citizen, give me some peace! Ksyusha, bring me some kind of chemical for the night!

  KSYUSHA: You should take liquid manure, you old cripple! If only you’d croak—then I could eat you! (Shouting) Chemicals! A curse on Moscow! I’ll scratch your eyes out for giving us a fate like ours! (Disappears from
the stage.)

  ANTON runs in.

  ANTON: The counterrevolution is letting itself go now!! (Falls to the ground from weakness. Gets up again.) It’s nothing, my reason is alive, my ideology is fully intact. Hunger has nested only inside my body—and nowhere else! I shall rise again and rush forward to victory! Long live— (Loses consciousness.)

  GARMALOV (getting up, moving away from the baby and toward FUTILLA): What’s happened? Why have you allowed discipline to unravel? There’s nothing to eat and the children are dying.

  FUTILLA: It’s only our own child that’s dead. You gave him too much bread. The others are all alive, they’re only pretending. (Half delirious, begins to croon.)

  Nulimbatuiya, nulimbatuiya,

  Alyaylya, my poor Alyaylya.

  (Seizes the child.) So poor and weak! (Calms down a little, lays the baby close up against BOS.) Warm him!

  BOS: I’m growing cold myself.

  GARMALOV: Away with grief! We must come to our senses! We’re more than a family, we’re the whole of humanity! Now is the time to endure and labor—assign me some task before my consciousness goes out of its mind.

  FUTILLA: Lower this wattle prison basket into the sea. Wind the barbed wire tight and we’ll catch some fish. Then we can eat our fill.

  GARMALOV: Ah, a rationalization! I understand. I’ll make a net, I’ll make a trap for the fish underwater, I know what to do. But where can I find bait?

  FUTILLA: I’ll give you some later.

  GARMALOV: And some thick rope?

  FUTILLA: You’ll find some in the kolkhoz.

  GARMALOV: There’s none there.

  FUTILLA: I’ll cut my hair.

  GARMALOV: Don’t bother—I’ll go and make some rope. (Leaves.)

  FUTILLA: Grandpa Bos! (BOS remains silent.) Grandpa! Get up! It’ll be evening soon. Make a fire—we’ll be cooking fish soup. (BOS remains silent.) Antoshka! Get up! Soon we’ll be eating.

  ANTON remains silent.

  (Leaning down very close to BOS) Grandpa Ivan! Are you pretending? (Feels him.) No, he’s dead already—he’s gone! Grandpa! Stop pretending, your cheek’s warm. Grandpa Ivan, death is just piffle—so how come you’re dead? (Weeps quietly over BOS.)

  ANTON: It’s obscene—watching someone weep over the class alien. One of my eyes is still open—I see everything!

  FUTILLA: He knew Karl Marx and he worked here as a bookkeeper—that’s why I’m crying. I’m in charge of the kolkhoz, it’s my duty to pity him.

  ANTON: My reason is pure, but you speak dialectics! I allow you your tears.

  FUTILLA: Sleep, Antoshka!

  ANTON: When you haven’t eaten, sleep without food fully takes the place of bread. I’m asleep.

  FUTILLA: If everyone dies, I shall remain. There has to be someone, or things won’t be right in the world, will they?

  BOS (gets to his feet and then sits): I thought I’d died. I began to laugh and then I woke up.

  FUTILLA: You won’t try to die again?

  BOS: It doesn’t work out, my girl. For death too you need to possess some stupid psychosis. Without stupidity you can’t do a thing.

  FUTILLA (sitting down beside BOS): And what will become of you now?

  BOS: Nothing. I shall languish without motion amid the historical current. I’m the same piffle as everything living or dead. One can understand everything, my orphan, but there’s nowhere to escape to.

  FUTILLA (sadly): You’re going to leave us?

  BOS: I’ll go on my way. I’m bored of you all with your youth and enthusiasm, your capacity for work, and your faith in the future. You stand at the beginning, but I already know the end. We can’t understand one another.

  FUTILLA: I don’t understand, that’s true, but you and I will be friends…Grandpa Ivan, you know what…I think…you’re a fool!

  BOS: I’m glad you’re starting to understand matters.

  FUTILLA: Wait, Grandpa…I can see a sail! (Stands up and looks out to sea.) No, it’s not a sail, it was a bird flying by.

  Enter GARMALOV.

  GARMALOV: I’ve sorted out a rope. (In his hands is some bast that he has twisted into a rope.) Futilla, give me the bait now, to put in the basket. I’ll roll it along to the shore now. (He touches the basket and opens the door.)

  FUTILLA (picking up her baby): Georgy, we don’t have any bait. Let’s put our son there—he’s dead now, and science says that the dead don’t feel anything.

  BOS (to himself): Even in memory, there is no God.

  FUTILLA: Put him there, Georgy. He tasted so good. I loved kissing him as he fell asleep in my arms.

  She kisses her child. GARMALOV, by now, has opened the door in the wattle basket and looked inside.

  GARMALOV: There’s some woman lying here—a beauty all over. Someone’s bourgeois woman! She’s been strangled—her neck’s broken.

  BOS: Throw her into the sea in this wattle prison. You’ll be able to catch a lot of fish on her body.

  FUTILLA: That’s true, Georgy. Get to work quickly.

  GEORGY: I’ll roll the prison out to the stand. Then I’ll sort out the tackle and undress the woman, so the fish can sense her. And I’ve found a suitcase with rations of food!

  FUTILLA: We don’t need them. Leave them for bait too.

  FUTILLA puts her baby back on the ground, beside ANTON. Pause. GARMALOV turns the cylindrical prison basket onto its side and rolls it off the stage. Its dry creaking is lost in the space outside.

  BOS: Good-bye, Futilla.

  FUTILLA: Good-bye, Grandpa, good-bye forever! (Rushes toward BOS, embraces him, and kisses him on the lips.)

  BOS (holding FUTILLA): Forever? No, it’s impossible to part with you forever. I shall return to you again—but not for a while! Not till you’re an old woman too, you poor, thin, foolish warmth of my old heart.

  BOS kisses FUTILLA on the eyes. Then he moves away from her and leaves the stage. Pause. Out at sea appears the white sail of a small fishing boat. Above the white sail—a red flag. FUTILLA does not see the sail.

  FUTILLA: My baby isn’t breathing. Grandpa Bos has left. Soon it’ll be evening—how boring it gets on my own…

  ANTON (jumping up onto his feet): You and I are alone now until the final victory—long live comrade Stalin!—for age upon age to the nth degree! (Falls again to the ground.)

  FUTILLA (indifferently catching sight of the sail): There’s our ship—our grain and our sheep are on their way home…But my child feels nothing…I’ll go and wake the kolkhoz. (Leaves.)

  ANTON is left onstage, lying down, with FUTILLA’s dead baby lying beside him. A sail out to sea. Pause.

  ANTON (jumping up to his full height): Forward now!!!

  He disappears instantly.

  The End.

  Written in 1933

  Translated by Robert Chandler

  GRANDMOTHER’S LITTLE HUT

  (An Unfinished Play)

  CHARACTERS

  DUSYA, an orphan

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA, DUSYA’s aunt

  ARCHAPOV ARKADY, the aunt’s husband

  MITYA, an orphan

  MITYA’S UNCLE

  A YOUNG WOMAN, the uncle’s girlfriend

  ACT 1

  Scene 1

  A room in the small, old house of a tradesman. A dresser. Above it are photographs of the owners’ relatives; on it stand aging souvenirs and knickknacks from the nineteenth century. Furniture that had once been a part of the wife’s dowry—plush sofas and chairs, now threadbare. A trunk; a table covered by a tablecloth; one or two windows with ornate curtains cut from paper; pots with flowers on the windowsills; a mirror on the dresser—and any other bits and pieces that an old, thrifty couple might have possessed. The door between this room and the kitchen is open: in the kitchen can be seen a scoured kitchen table, plates, and a Russian stove in one corner.

  ARCHAPOV is in the room, sitting at the table and eating from a little bowl. TATYANA FILIPPOVNA, his wife, is in the kitchen; leaning on a large stove fork, she looks out
at her husband.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: Full yet?

  ARCHAPOV (wipes his mustache): Bring me some more.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: Sure that wasn’t enough?

  ARCHAPOV: Too watery. Make it thicker.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: All right, have all you want! You’ll feel it later, though.

  ARCHAPOV: Go light the samovar.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: You’ll be sweating after all that tea, won’t you? You’ll sweat and sweat—and then you’ll catch cold…

  ARCHAPOV: And then I’ll get well again—don’t fret.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: Oh, go on, eat and drink all you want. With you around we’ll never be putting any money aside—you’re a bottomless pit! No money to fix the roof—but we eat beef every day…(She wipes away her tears with the edge of her apron.)

  A latch rattles against the door that opens from the porch into the kitchen.

  ARCHAPOV: Are you going to open the door?

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: There’s no hurry. It could be a beggar woman…

  ARCHAPOV: A beggar—in our day and age?

  TATYANA undoes the latch and bolt of the kitchen door.

  DUSYA enters barefoot and bareheaded. TATYANA FILIPPOVNA looks her over coldly and indifferently.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: What are you doing here?

  DUSYA: When my mother was dying, she told me to come to you. And now my father is dead too, and I’ve been living all alone…Dear Auntie, I don’t have anyone now!

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA lifts the edge of her apron and wipes her eyes.

  TATYANA FILIPPOVNA: No one in our family lasts long. And I’m no different—I only look like I’m doing okay, but I’m not in good shape…No, not in good shape at all…