Shipwreck Read online

  OGAREV I like him. He’s not so affected as he used to be, do you think?

  Turgenev returns, a little agitated.

  TURGENEV You don’t understand Gogol, if I may say so. It’s Belinsky’s fault. I love Belinsky and owe a great deal to him, for his praise of my first poem, certainly, but also for his complete indifference to all my subsequent ones—but he browbeat us into taking Gogol as a realist …

  ALEXANDER HERZEN, aged thirty-four, and TIMOTHY GRANOVSKY, aged thirty-three, approach, Herzen with a basket.

  NATALIE (jumps up) They’re here … Alexander!

  She embraces Herzen as warmly as decorum allows her.

  HERZEN My dear … but what’s this? We haven’t come from Moscow.

  Granovsky goes unsmilingly towards the house.

  NATALIE Have you been quarrelling?

  HERZEN Disputing. He’ll get over it. The only trouble is, we were having such an interesting talk …

  He turns the basket upside down, letting a single mushroom fall out.

  NATALIE Oh, Alexander! I can see one from here!

  She snatches the basket and runs off with it. Herzen takes her chair.

  HERZEN What were you and Natalie saying about me? Well, thank you very much, anyway.

  OGAREV What were you and Granovsky arguing about?

  HERZEN The immortality of the soul.

  OGAREV Oh, that.

  NICHOLAS KETSCHER, aged forty, a thin, avuncular figure to the younger men, comes from the house carrying, with a slightly ceremonial air, a tray with a coffeepot on a small spirit lamp, and cups. In silence Herzen, Ogarev and Turgenev watch him put the tray on a garden table and pour a cup, which he brings to Herzen. Herzen sips the coffee.

  HERZEN It’s the same.

  KETSCHER What?

  HERZEN It tastes the same.

  KETSCHER So you think the coffee is no better?

  HERZEN No.

  The others are now nervous. Ketscher gives a short barking laugh.

  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 yo
u 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.

  TURGENEV It’s not all philistines, either. The only thing that’ll save Russia is Western culture transmitted by … people like us.

  KETSCHER No, it’s the Spirit of History, the ceaseless March of Progress …

  HERZEN (venting his anger) Oh, a curse on your capital letters! We’re asking people to spill their blood—at least spare them your conceit that they’re acting out the biography of an abstract noun!

  KETSCHER Oh, it’s my conceit? (to the others) There was nothing wrong with that coffee, either.

  HERZEN (to Granovsky, conciliatory) I’m not starry-eyed about France. To sit in a café with Louis Blanc, Leroux, Ledru-Rollin … to buy La Réforme with the ink still wet, and walk in the Place de la Concorde … the thought excites me like a child, I admit that, but Aksakov is right—I don’t know the next step. Where are we off to? Who’s got the map? We study the ideal societies … power to the experts, to the workers, to the philosophers … property rights, property sanctions, the evil of competition, the evil of monopoly … central planning, free housing, free love … limited to eight hundred families or unconstrained by national frontiers … and all of them uniquely harmonious, just and efficient. But Proudhon is the only one who understands what the question is: why should anyone obey anyone else?

  GRANOVSKY Because that’s what society means. You might as well ask, why should an orchestra play together? And yet it can play together without being socialist.

  TURGENEV That’s true!—my mother keeps an orchestra at Spasskoye. What I find even harder to grasp, however, is that she also owns the nightingales.

  HERZEN Bringing in Russia always seems to confuse things. I’m not saying socialism is history’s secret plan, it just looks like the rational step.

  GRANOVSKY To whom?

  HERZEN To me. Not just me. The future is being scrawled on the factory walls of Paris.

  GRANOVSKY Why? Why necessarily? We have no factory districts. Why should we wait to be inundated from within by our very own industrialised Goths? Everything you hold dear in civilisation will be smashed on the altar of equality … the equality of the barracks.

  HERZEN You judge the common people after they’ve been brutalised. But people are good, by nature. I have faith in them.

  GRANOVSKY Without faith in something higher, human nature is animal nature.

  HERZEN Without superstition, you mean.

  GRANOVSKY Superstition? Did you say superstition?

  Herzen forgets to keep his temper, and Granovsky starts to respond in kind until they are rowing.

  HERZEN Superstition! The pious and pitiful belief that there’s something outside or up there, or God knows where, without which men can’t find their nobility.

  GRANOVSKY Without ‘up there,’ as you call it, scores have to be settled down here—that’s the whole truth about materialism.

  HERZEN How can you—how dare you—throw away your dignity as a human being? You can choose well or badly without deference to a ghost!—you’re a free man, Granovsky, there’s no other kind.

  Natalie arrives hurriedly and frightened. Her distress is at first misinterpreted. She runs to Alexander and hugs him, unable to speak. There are some mushrooms in her basket.

  NATALIE Alexander …

  HERZEN (apologetically to Natalie) It’s only a little argument …

  GRANOVSKY (to Natalie) It grieves me deeply to have to absent myself from a household in which I have always received a kind welcome. (Granovsky starts to leave.)

  NATALIE There’s a policeman come to the house—I saw him from the field.

  HERZEN A policeman?

  A Servant comes from the house, overtaken by a uniformed

  POLICEMAN.

  HERZEN (cont.) Oh God, not again … Natalie, Natalie …

  POLICEMAN Is one of you Herzen?

  HERZEN I am.

  POLICEMAN You’re to read this. From Count Orlov.
/>   The Policeman gives Herzen a letter. Herzen tears it open.

  NATALIE (to the Policeman) I want to go with him.

  POLICEMAN I wasn’t told …

  Herzen hugs Natalie.

  HERZEN It’s all right. (announces) After twelve years of police surveillance in and out of exile, Count Orlov has graciously let it be known, I can now apply to travel abroad … !

  The others gather round him in relief and congratulation. The Policeman hesitates. Natalie snatches the letter.

  KETSCHER You’ll see Sazonov again.

  GRANOVSKY He’s changed.

  TURGENEV And Bakunin …

  GRANOVSKY He hasn’t, I’m afraid.

  NATALIE ‘… to travel abroad to seek medical assistance in respect of your son Nikolai Alexandrovich …’

  HERZEN (lifting her up) Paris, Natalie!

  Her basket of mushrooms falls and spills.

  NATALIE (weeping with joy) … Kolya! … (Natalie runs off.)

  HERZEN Where’s Nick?

  POLICEMAN Good news, then.

  Herzen takes the hint and tips him. The Policeman leaves.

  NATALIE (returning) Where’s Kolya?

  HERZEN Kolya? I don’t know. Why?

  NATALIE Where is he?

  Natalie runs out, calling the name.

  HERZEN (following hurriedly) He can’t hear you …

  Turgenev rushes out after them, Granovsky and Ketscher following anxiously.

  After a pause, during which Natalie can be heard distantly, silence falls.

  Distant thunder.

  Sasha enters from another direction and turns to look back. He comes forward and sees the spilled mushrooms. He rights the basket. Ogarev enters at peace, carrying Sasha’s fishing cane and jar, glancing behind him.

  OGAREV (calls) Come on, Kolya!

  SASHA He can’t hear you.

  OGAREV Come along!

  SASHA He can’t hear you.

  Ogarev goes back towards Kolya.

  Distant thunder.

  OGAREV There, you see? He heard that.

  He goes out.

  Sasha starts putting the mushrooms into the basket.

  JULY 1847

  Salzbrunn, a small spa town in Germany.

  [VISSARION BELINSKY and Turgenev took rooms on the ground floor of a small wooden house in the main street. A shack in the courtyard served them as a summer pavilion.] Belinsky and Turgenev are reading separate manuscripts, a short story and a long letter respectively, while drinking water from large beakers. Belinsky is thirty-six and less than a year from death. His face is pale and smooth. He has a stout walking stick to hand. Turgenev finishes first. He puts the letter on the table. He waits for Belinksy to finish reading, and drinks from his beaker, making a face. Belinsky finishes reading and gives the manuscript to Turgenev. Turgenev waits for the verdict. Belinsky nods thoughtfully, drinks from his beaker.