Every Good Boy Deserves Favor & Professional Foul Read online

  ALEXANDER: Your condition is interesting.

  IVANOV: I’ve got a violin section which is to violin playing what Heifetz is to water-polo. I’ve got a tubercular great-nephew of John Philip Sousa who goes oom when he should be going pah. And the Jew’s harp has applied for a visa. I’m seriously thinking of getting a new orchestra. Do you read music?

  ALEXANDER: No.

  IVANOV: Don’t worry: crochets, minims, sharp, flat, every good boy deserves favour. You’ll pick it up in no time. What is your instrument?

  ALEXANDER: I do not play an instrument.

  IVANOV: Percussion? Strings? Brass?

  ALEXANDER: No.

  IVANOV: Reed? Keyboard?

  ALEXANDER: I’m afraid not.

  IVANOV: I’m amazed. Not keyboard. Wait a minute—flute.

  ALEXANDER: No. Really.

  IVANOV: Extraordinary. Give me a clue. If I beat you to a pulp would you try to protect your face or your hands? Which would be the more serious—if you couldn’t sit down for a week or couldn’t stand up? I’m trying to narrow it down, you see. Can I take it you don’t stick this instrument up your arse in a kneeling position?

  ALEXANDER: I do not play an instrument.

  IVANOV: You can speak frankly. You will find I am without prejudice. I have invited musicians into my own house. And do you know why?—because we all have some musician in us. Any man says he has no musician in him, I’ll call that man a bigot. Listen, I’ve had clarinet players eating at my own table. I’ve had French whores and gigolos speak to me in the public street, I mean horns, I mean piccolos, so don’t worry about me, maestro, I’ve sat down with them, drummers even, sharing a plate of tagliatelle Verdi and stuffed Puccini—why, I know people who make the orchestra eat in the kitchen, off scraps, the way you’d throw a trombone to a dog, I mean a second violinist, I mean to the lions; I love musicians, I respect them, human beings to a man. Let me put it like this: if I smashed this instrument of yours over your head, would you need a carpenter, a welder, or a brain surgeon?

  ALEXANDER: I do not play an instrument. If I played an instrument I’d tell you what it was. But I do not play one. I have never played one. I do not know how to play one. I am not a musician.

  IVANOV: What the hell are you doing here?

  ALEXANDER: I was put here.

  IVANOV: What for?

  ALEXANDER: For slander.

  IVANOV: Slander? What a fool! Never speak ill of a musician!—those bastards won’t rest. They’re animals, to a man.

  ALEXANDER: This was political.

  IVANOV: Let me give you some advice. Number one—never mix music with politics. Number two—never confide in your psychiatrist. Number three—practise!

  ALEXANDER: Thank you.

  (IVANOV strikes his triangle once.

  The CELL lighting fades.

  Percussion band. The music is that of a band of young children.

  It includes strings but they are only plucked.

  Pretty soon the percussion performance goes wrong because there

  is a subversive triangle in it. The triangle is struck randomly

  and then rapidly, until finally it is the only instrument to be

  heard. And then the triangle stops.)

  SCHOOL

  The lights come up on the TEACHER and SACHA. The TEACHER is holding a triangle.

  TEACHER: Well? Are you colour blind?

  SACHA: No.

  TEACHER: Let me see your music.

  (SACHA has sheet music on his desk.)

  Very well. What are the red notes?

  SACHA: Strings.

  TEACHER: Green?

  SACHA: Tambourine.

  TEACHER: Purple?

  SACHA: Drum.

  TEACHER: Yellow?

  SACHA: Triangle.

  TEACHER: Do you see forty yellow notes in a row?

  SACHA: No.

  TEACHER: What then? Detention is becoming a family tradition.

  Your name is notorious. Did you know that?

  SACHA: Yes.

  TEACHER: How did you know?

  SACHA: Everybody tells me.

  TEACHER: Open a book.

  SACHA: What book?

  TEACHER: Any book. Fathers and Sons, perhaps.

  (SACHA takes a book out of the desk.)

  Is it Turgenev?

  SACHA: It’s my geometry book.

  TEACHER: Yes, your name goes round the world. By telegram. It is printed in the newspapers. It is spoken on the radio. With such a famous name why should you bother with different colours? We will change the music for you. It will look like a field of buttercups, and sound like dinnertime.

  SACHA: I don’t want to be in the orchestra.

  TEACHER: Open the book. Pencil and paper. You see what happens to anti-social malcontents.

  SACHA: Will I be sent to the lunatics’ prison?

  TEACHER: Certainly not. Read aloud.

  SACHA: ‘A point has position but no dimension.’

  TEACHER: The asylum is for malcontents who don’t know what they’re doing.

  SACHA: ‘A line has length but no breadth.’

  TEACHER: They know what they’re doing but they don’t know it’s anti-social.

  SACHA: ‘A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.’

  TEACHER: They know it’s anti-social but they’re fanatics.

  SACHA: ‘A circle is the path of a point moving equidistant to a given point.’

  TEACHER: They’re sick.

  SACHA: ‘A polygon is a plane area bounded by straight lines.’

  TEACHER: And it’s not a prison, it’s a hospital.

  (Pause.)

  SACHA: ‘A triangle is the polygon bounded by the fewest possible sides.’

  TEACHER: Good. Perfect. Copy neatly ten times, and if you’re a good boy I might find you a better instrument.

  SACHA: (Writing) ‘A triangle is the polygon bounded by the fewest possible sides.’ Is this what they make papa do?

  TEACHER: Yes. They make him copy, ‘I am a member of an orchestra and we must play together.’

  SACHA: How many times?

  TEACHER: A million.

  SACHA: A million?

  (Pause.)

  (Cries.) Papa!

  ALEXANDER: (Cries) Sacha!

  (This cry is ALEXANDER shouting in his sleep at the other end of the stage.

  IVANOV sits watching ALEXANDER.

  The orchestra plays chords between the following.)

  SACHA: Papa!

  TEACHER: Hush!

  ALEXANDER: Sacha!

  (The orchestra continues with percussion element for perhaps ten seconds and then is sabotaged by a triangle beaten rapidly, until the triangle is the only sound heard. ALEXANDER sits up and the triangle stops.)

  CELL

  IVANOV: Dinner time. (Orchestra.)

  OFFICE

  IVANOV goes to sit at the table in the OFFICE, which is now the lit area.

  In the orchestra one of the lowliest violinists leaves his place. The orchestra accompanies and parodies this man’s actions as he leaves the platform and enters the OFFICE. IVANOV is sitting at the table on one of the chairs. The man (DOCTOR) puts his violin on the table. The orchestra has been following him the whole time and the DOCTOR’s movements fit precisely to the music.

  IVANOV jumps up from his chair and shouts in the general direction of the orchestra.

  IVANOV: All right, all right!

  (The music cuts out. The DOCTOR pauses looking at IVANOV.)

  IVANOV: (To the DOCTOR) I’m sorry about that.

  (IVANOV sits down.

  The DOCTOR sits down and all the strings accompany this movement into his chair.

  IVANOV leaps up again.)

  (Shouts.) I’ll have your gut for garters!

  DOCTOR: Sit down, please.

  IVANOV: (Sitting down) It’s the only kind of language they understand.

  DOCTOR: Did the pills help at all?

  IVANOV: I don’t know. What pills
did you give them?

  DOCTOR: Now look, there is no orchestra. We cannot make progress until we agree that there is no orchestra.

  IVANOV: Or until we agree that there is.

  DOCTOR: (Slapping his violin, which is on the table) But there is no orchestra.

  (IVANOV glances at the violin.)

  I have an orchestra, but you do not.

  IVANOV: Does that seem reasonable to you?

  DOCTOR: It just happens to be so. I play in an orchestra occasionally. It is my hobby. It is a real orchestra. Yours is not. I am a doctor. You are a patient. If I tell you you do not have an orchestra, it follows that you do not have an orchestra. If you tell me you have an orchestra, it follows that you do not have an orchestra. Or rather it does not follow that you do have an orchestra.

  IVANOV: I am perfectly happy not to have an orchestra.

  DOCTOR: Good.

  IVANOV: I never asked to have an orchestra.

  DOCTOR: Keep saying to yourself, ‘I have no orchestra. I have never had an orchestra. I do not want an orchestra.’

  IVANOV: Absolutely.

  DOCTOR: ‘There is no orchestra.’

  IVANOV: All right.

  DOCTOR: Good.

  IVANOV: There is one thing you can do for me.

  DOCTOR: Yes?

  IVANOV: Stop them playing.

  DOCTOR: They will stop playing when you understand that they do not exist.

  (IVANOV gets up.)

  IVANOV: I have no orchestra.

  (Music. 1 chord.)

  I have never had an orchestra.

  (Music. 2 chords.)

  I do not want an orchestra.

  (Music. 3 chords.)

  There is no orchestra.

  (The orchestra takes off in triumph.

  Light fades on OFFICE, comes up on CELL.)

  CELL

  ALEXANDER has been asleep on his bed the whole time. IVANOV returns to the CELL. He picks up his triangle rod. He stands by ALEXANDER’s bed looking down on him. The music continues and becomes threatening. It becomes nightmare music. ALEXANDER’s nightmare. The music seems to be approaching violent catharsis. But ALEXANDER jumps awake and the music cuts out in mid-bar.

  Silence.

  IVANOV: Sorry. I can’t control them.

  ALEXANDER: Please …

  IVANOV: Don’t worry, I know how to handle myself. Any trumpeter comes at me, I’ll kick his teeth in. Violins get it under the chin to boot, this boot, and God help anyone who plays a cello. Do you play a musical instrument?

  ALEXANDER: No.

  IVANOV: Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Tell me about yourself—your home, your childhood, your first pianoteacher … how did it all begin?

  (The next speech should be lit as a sort of solo. Musical annotation.)

  ALEXANDER: One day they arrested a friend of mine for possessing a controversial book, and they kept him in mental hospitals for a year and a half. I thought this was an odd thing to do. Soon after he got out, they arrested a couple of writers, A and B, who had published some stories abroad under different names. Under their own names they got five years’ and seven years’ hard labour. I thought this was most peculiar. My friend, C, demonstrated against the arrest of A and B. I told him he was crazy to do it, and they put him back into the mental hospital. D was a man who wrote to various people about the trial of A and B and held meetings with his friends E, F, G and H, who were all arrested, so I, J, K, L and a fifth man demonstrated against the arrest of E, F, G and H, and were themselves arrested. D was arrested the next day. The fifth man was my friend C, who had just got out of the mental hospital where they put him for demonstrating against the arrest of A and B, and I told him he was crazy to demonstrate against the arrest of E, F, G and H, and he got three years in a labour camp. I thought this really wasn’t fair. M compiled a book on the trials of C, I, J, K and L, and with his colleagues N, O, P, Q, R and S attended the trial of T who had written a book about his experiences in a labour camp, and who got a year in a labour camp. In the courtroom it was learned that the Russian army had gone to the aid of Czechoslovakia. M, N, O, P, Q, R and S decided to demonstrate in Red Square the following Sunday, when they were all arrested and variously disposed of in labour camps, psychiatric hospitals and internal exile. Three years had passed since the arrest of A and B. C finished his sentence about the same time as A, and then he did something really crazy. He started telling everybody that sane people were being put in mental hospitals for their political opinions. By the time B finished his sentence, C was on trial for anti-Soviet agitation and slander, and he got seven years in prison and labour camps, and five years’ exile.

  You see all the trouble writers cause.

  (The children’s percussion band re-enters as a discreet subtext.)

  They spoil things for ordinary people.

  My childhood was uneventful. My adolescence was normal. I got an ordinary job, and married a conventional girl who died uncontroversially in childbirth. Until the child was seven the only faintly interesting thing about me was that I had a friend who kept getting arrested.

  Then one day I did something really crazy.

  (The percussion is sabotaged exactly as before but this time by a snare drum being violently beaten. It stops suddenly and the light comes up on SACHA sitting at the desk with a punctured drum on the desk, the TEACHER standing motionless in her position. Optional: On tape the sound of a children’s playground at some distance.)

  SCHOOL

  TEACHER: So this is how I am repaid. Is this how it began with your father? First he smashes school property. Later he keeps bad company. Finally, slanderous letters. Lies. To his superiors. To the Party. To the newspapers…. To foreigners….

  SACHA: Papa doesn’t lie. He beat me when I did it.

  TEACHER: Lies! Bombarding Pravda with lies! What did he expect?

  (The light on the TEACHER and SACHA fades just after the beginning of ALEXANDER’s speech.)

  CELL

  ALEXANDER: They put me in the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital on Arsenal’naya Street, where I was kept for thirty months, including two months on hunger strike.

  They don’t like you to die unless you can die anonymously.

  If your name is known in the West, it is an embarrassment.

  The bad old days were over long ago. Things are different now. Russia is a civilized country, very good at Swan Lake and space technology, and it is confusing if people starve themselves to death.

  So after a couple of weeks they brought my son to persuade me to eat. But although by this time he was nine years old he was uncertain what to say.

  (SACHA speaks from the SCHOOL, not directly to ALEXANDER.)

  SACHA: I got a letter from abroad, with our picture in the newspaper.

  ALEXANDER: What did it say?

  SACHA: I don’t know. It was all in English.

  ALEXANDER: How is school?

  SACHA: All right. I’ve started geometry. It’s horrible.

  ALEXANDER: How is Babushka?

  SACHA: All right. You smell like Olga when she does her nails.

  ALEXANDER: Who is Olga?

  SACHA: She has your room now. Till you come back.

  ALEXANDER: Good.

  SACHA: Do they make you paint your nails here?

  (End of duologue. Return to solo.)

  ALEXANDER: If you don’t eat for a long time you start to smell of acetone, which is the stuff girls use for taking the paint off their finger-nails. When the body runs out of protein and carbohydrate it starts to metabolize its own fat, and acetone is the waste product. To put this another way, a girl removing her nail-varnish smells of starvation.

  After two months you could have removed nail-varnish with my urine, so they brought Sacha back, but when he saw me he couldn’t speak—

  SACHA: (Cries) Papa!

  ALEXANDER: —and then they gave in. And when I was well enough they brought me here.

  This means they have decided to let me go. It is much har
der to get from Arsenal’naya to a civil hospital than from a civil hospital to the street. But it has to be done right. They don’t want to lose ground. They need a formula. It will take a little time but that’s all right. I shall read War and Peace.

  Everything is going to be all right.

  (Orchestra.)

  SCHOOL

  This scene is enclosed inside music which ends up as the DOCTOR’s violin solo into the following scene.

  SACHA: A triangle is the shortest distance between three points.

  TEACHER: Rubbish.

  SACHA: A circle is the longest distance to the same point.

  TEACHER: Sacha!

  SACHA: A plane area bordered by high walls is a prison not a hospital.

  TEACHER: Be quiet!

  SACHA: I don’t care!—he was never sick at home. Never!

  (Music.)

  TEACHER: Stop crying.

  (Music.)

  Everything is going to be all right.

  (Music to violin solo.

  Lights fade on SCHOOL.)

  OFFICE

  DOCTOR in his OFFICE playing violin solo. Violin cuts out.

  DOCTOR: Come in.

  (ALEXANDER enters the DOCTOR’s light.)

  DOCTOR: Hello. Sit down please. Do you play a musical instrument?

  ALEXANDER: (Taken aback) Are you a patient?

  DOCTOR: (Cheerfully) No, I am a doctor. You are a patient. It’s a distinction which we try to keep going here, though I’m told it’s coming under scrutiny in more advanced circles of psychiatric medicine. (He carefully puts his violin into its case.) (Sententiously) Yes, if everybody in the world played a violin, I’d be out of a job.

  ALEXANDER: As a psychiatrist?

  DOCTOR: No, as a violinist. The psychiatric hospitals would be packed to the doors. You obviously don’t know much about musicians. Welcome to the Third Civil Mental Hospital. What can I do for you?

  ALEXANDER: I have a complaint.

  DOCTOR: (Opening file) Yes, I know—pathological development of the personality with paranoid delusions.

  ALEXANDER: No, there’s nothing the matter with me.

  DOCTOR: (Closing file) There you are, you see.

  ALEXANDER: My complaint is about the man in my cell.

  DOCTOR: Ward.

  ALEXANDER: He thinks he has an orchestra.

  DOCTOR: Yes, he has an identity problem. I forget his name.

  ALEXANDER: His behaviour is aggressive.

  DOCTOR: He complains about you, too. Apparently you cough during the diminuendos.