Shipwreck (3 page)

KETSCHER
   Well, it really is extraordinary, your inability to admit you're wrong even on such a trifling matter as a cup of coffee.

HERZEN
   It's not me, it's the coffee.

KETSCHER
   No, I mean it's beyond anything, this wretched vanity of yours.

HERZEN
   I didn't make the coffee, I didn't make the coffeepot, it's not my fault that—

KETSCHER
   To hell with the coffee! You're impossible to reason with! It's over between us. I'm going back to Moscow! (
Ketscher leaves.
)

OGAREV
   Between the coffee and the immortality of the soul, you'll end up with no friends at all.

Ketscher returns.

KETSCHER
   Is that your last word?

Herzen takes another sip of coffee.

HERZEN
   I'm sorry.

KETSCHER
   Right.

Ketscher leaves again, passing Granovsky entering.

GRANOVSKY
   (
to Ketscher
) How's the …? (
Seeing Ketscher's face, Granovsky lets the matter drop.
) Aksakov's in the house.

HERZEN
   Aksakov? Impossible.

GRANOVSKY
   (
helping himself to coffee
) Just as you like. (
He makes a face at the taste of the coffee.
) He's ridden over from some friends of his …

HERZEN
   Well, why doesn't he come out? There's no need for old friends to fall out over …

Ketscher returns as though nothing has passed. He pours himself coffee.

KETSCHER
   Aksakov's come. Where is Natalie?

HERZEN
   Picking mushrooms.

KETSCHER
   Ah … good. I must say they were excellent at breakfast. (
He sips his coffee while the others watch him, and considers it.
) Vile. (
He puts the cup down and, in a flurry, he and Herzen are kissing each other's cheeks and clasping each other, competing in self-blame.
)

KETSCHER
   By the way, did I tell you, we're all going to be in the dictionary?

HERZEN
   I'm already in the dictionary.

GRANOVSKY
   He doesn't mean the German dictionary, in which you make a singular appearance, Herzen, and only by accident …

KETSCHER
   No, I'm talking about a new word altogether.

HERZEN
   Excuse me, Granovsky, but I wasn't an accident, I was the child of an affair of the heart, given my surname for my mother's German heart. Being half Russian and half German, at heart I'm Polish, of course … I often feel quite partitioned, sometimes I wake up screaming in the night that the Emperor of Austria is claiming the rest of me.

GRANOVSKY
   That's not the Emperor of Austria, it's Mephistopheles, and he is.

Turgenev laughs.

OGAREV
   What's the new word, Ketscher?

KETSCHER
   You can whistle for it now. (
furiously to Herzen
) Why do you feel you have to make off with every conversation like a bag-snatcher?

HERZEN
   (
protesting, to Ogarev
) I don't, do I, Nick?

GRANOVSKY
   Yes, you do.

KETSCHER
   (
to Granovsky
) It's you as well!

HERZEN
   In the first place, I have a right to defend my good name, not to mention my mother's. In the second place—

OGAREV
   Stop him, stop him!

Herzen joins in the laughter against himself.

KONSTANTIN AKSAKOV,
aged twenty-nine, comes from the house. He seems to be in costume. He wears an embroidered side-fastening shirt and a velvet skullcap. His trousers are tucked into tall boots.

HERZEN
   Aksakov! Have some coffee!

AKSAKOV
   (
formally
) I wanted to tell you in person that relations are over between us. It's a pity, but there is no help for it. You understand that we can no longer meet as friends. I want to shake you by the hand and say goodbye.

Herzen allows his hand to be shaken. Aksakov starts to walk back.

HERZEN
   What is the matter with everybody?

OGAREV
   Aksakov, why do you dress like that?

AKSAKOV
   (
turning angrily
) Because I am proud to be Russian!

OGAREV
   But people think you're a Persian.

AKSAKOV
   I have nothing to say to you, Ogarev. As a matter of fact, I don't hold it against you, compared with some of your friends who spend their time gallivanting around Europe … because I understand that in your case you're not chasing after false gods but only after a false—

OGAREV
   (
hotly
) You be careful, sir, or you will hear from me!

HERZEN
   (
leaping in
) That's enough of that talk!—

AKSAKOV
   You Westernisers apply for passports with letters from your doctors and then go off and drink the water in Paris …

Ogarev relapses, seething.

TURGENEV
   (
mildly
) Not at all, not at all. You can't drink the water in Paris.

AKSAKOV
   Go to France for your cravats if you must, but why do you have to go to France for your ideas?

TURGENEV
   Because they're in French. You can publish anything you like in France, it's extraordinary.

AKSAKOV
   And what's the result? Scepticism. Materialism. Triviality.

Ogarev, still furious and agitated, leaps up.

OGAREV
   Repeat what you said!

AKSAKOV
   Scepticism—materialism—

OGAREV
   Before!

AKSAKOV
   Censorship is not all bad for a writer—it teaches precision and Christian patience.

OGAREV
   (
to Aksakov
) Chasing after a false what?

AKSAKOV
   (
ignoring
) France is a moral cesspit, but you can publish anything you like, so you're all dazzled—blinded to the fact that the Western model is a bourgeois monarchy for philistines and profiteers.

HERZEN
   Don't tell me, tell them.

Ogarev goes out.

AKSAKOV
   (
to Herzen
) Oh, I've heard about your socialist utopianism. What use is that to us? This is Russia … (
to Granovsky
) We haven't even got a bourgeoisie.

GRANOVSKY
   Don't tell me, tell him.

AKSAKOV
   It's all of you. Jacobins and German sentimentalists. Destroyers and dreamers. You've turned your back on your own people, the real Russians abandoned a hundred and fifty years ago by Peter the Great Westerniser!—but you can't agree on the next step.

Ogarev enters.

OGAREV
   I demand that you finish what you were going to say!

AKSAKOV
   I'm afraid I can't remember what it was.

OGAREV
   Yes, you can!

AKSAKOV
   A false beard …? No … A false passport …?

Ogarev goes out.

AKSAKOV
   (
cont.
) We have to reunite ourselves with the masses from whom we became separated when we put on silk breeches and powdered wigs. It's not too late. From our village communes we can still develop in a Russian way, without socialism or capitalism, without a bourgeoisie, yes, and with our own culture unpolluted by the Renaissance, and our own Church unpolluted by the Popes or by the Reformation. It can even be our destiny to unite the Slav nations and lead Europe back to the true path. It will be the age of Russia.

KETSCHER
   You've left out our own astronomy unpolluted by Copernicus.

HERZEN
   Why don't you wear a peasant's shirt and bast shoes if you want to advertise the real Russia, instead of dressing it up like you in your costume? Russia before Peter had no culture. Life was ugly, poor and savage. Our only tradition was submitting ourselves to invaders. The history of other nations is the history of their emancipation. The history of Russia goes the opposite way, to serfdom and obscurantism. The Church of your infatuated iconpainter's imagination is a conspiracy of pot-house priests and anointed courtiers in trade with the police. A country like this will never see the light if we turn our backs to it, and the light is over there. (
He points.
) West. (
He points the other way.
) There is none there.

AKSAKOV
   Then you that way, we this way. Farewell.

Leaving, Aksakov meets Ogarev storming in.

AKSAKOV
   (
cont.
) We lost Pushkin—(
He ‘shoots' with his finger.
)—we lost Lermontov. (
He ‘shoots' again.
) We cannot lose Ogarev. I ask your forgiveness.

He bows to Ogarev and leaves. Herzen puts his arm around Ogarev.

HERZEN
   He's right, Nick.

GRANOVSKY
   It's not the only thing he's right about.

HERZEN
   Granovsky … let's not be quarrelling when Natalie comes back.

GRANOVSKY
   I'm not quarrelling. He's right about us having no ideas of our own, that's all.

HERZEN
   Where would they come from when we have no history of thought, when nothing has been handed on because nothing can be written or read or discussed? No wonder Europe regards us as a barbarian horde at the gates. This huge country, so vast it takes in fur-trappers, camelherders, pearl-fishers … and yet not a single original philosopher, not one contribution to political discourse …

KETSCHER
   Yes—one! The intelligentsia!

GRANOVSKY
   What's that?

KETSCHER
   It's the new word I was telling you about.

OGAREV
   Well, it's a horrible word.

KETSCHER
   I agree, but it's our own, Russia's debut in the lexicon.

HERZEN
   What does it mean?

KETSCHER
   It means us. A uniquely Russian phenomenon, the intellectual opposition considered as a social force.

GRANOVSKY
   Well … !

HERZEN
   The … intelligentsia! …

OGAREV
   Including Aksakov?

KETSCHER
   That's the subtlety of it, we don't have to agree with each other.

GRANOVSKY
   The Slavophiles are not entirely wrong about the West, you know.

HERZEN
   I'm sure they're entirely right.

GRANOVSKY
   Materialism …

HERZEN
   Triviality.

GRANOVSKY
   Scepticism above all.

HERZEN
   Above all. I'm not arguing with you.

GRANOVSKY
   But—don't you see?—it doesn't follow that our own bourgeoisie has to adopt the same values as in the West.

HERZEN
   No. Yes.

GRANOVSKY
   How would you know, anyway?

HERZEN
   I wouldn't. It's you and Turgenev who've been there. I still can't get a passport. I've applied again.

KETSCHER
   For your health?

HERZEN
   (
laughs
) It's for little Kolya … Natalie and I want to consult the best doctors …

OGAREV
   (
looking
) Where is Kolya …?

KETSCHER
   I'm a doctor. He's deaf. (
Shrugs.
) I'm sorry.

Ogarev, unheeded, leaves to look for Kolya.