BAKUNIN That would be telling.

  HERZEN But I'm a member.

  BAKUNIN Yes, but inside the Alliance is a Secret Alliance!

  HERZEN How much is the subscription?

  BAKUNIN Forty francs.

  HERZEN No, I don't think so.

  BAKUNIN Well, I'll tell you anyway.

  HERZEN Oh, really, this is too much!

  BAKUNIN Marx doesn't know it, but the Alliance is going to be the Trojan horse inside his citadel! I really have a lot of respect for Marx. We are both out to free the workingman. But Marx wants to free the workers as a class, not as individuals. His freedom is regimentation by a workers’ dictatorship. But true freedom is spontaneity. To be answerable to authority is demeaning to man's spiritual essence. All discipline is vicious. Our first task will be to destroy authority. There is no second task.

  HERZEN But your—our—enemies in the International number tens of thousands.

  BAKUNIN This is where my Secret Alliance comes in—a dedicated group of revolutionaries under iron discipline, answerable to my absolute authority—

  HERZEN Hold on …

  BAKUNIN Marx's day is done. Everything's coming together but for a few tiresome necessities. This is the last thing I'll ever ask of you—

  He is interrupted by Tata coming from the house, preceding Olga. There is a general influx … Malwida, Sasha and Teresina, Natalie, who is somewhat recovered, and Servants bringing a considerable tea to a garden table towards which everybody is drawn—Olga and Malwida in due course. Herzen is brought alive by Olga's arrival. He goes to meet her. They kiss.

  HERZEN (rapidly) Ya nye ooslýshal ekipázh! Tibyá vstrecháli na stántsii? I fsyó byló fparyádkye na granítse? Kak ty kharashó i módno adyéta! Shto? Shto tabóy? [I never heard the carriage! Was the carriage at the station? Was everything all right at the frontier? You look like a lady of fashion!—What? What is it?]

  Olga glances, embarrassed, at Malwida.

  HERZEN (cont.) Oh … you've forgotten Russian?

  OLGA It's only that … Malwida and I are fluent Italians now!

  HERZEN Well, why not?—We talk French half the time! The main thing is you're here. (to Malwida) Welcome!

  SASHA (to Olga) You're an auntie!

  Olga responds appropriately to Teresina and the pram. She already knows Teresina.

  MALWIDA My, such opulence, Alexander! We're not used to it. How long have you taken the chateau?

  HERZEN Just for the month. Your room has a view of the lake.

  MALWIDA We don't mind sharing.

  Malwida joins the group. Herzen resumes his chair, somewhat apart from the tea table where the eight others—Liza absent—get into conversation …

  SASHA (to Bakunin) Twenty francs? I'm not really interested in politics—I lecture in physiology.

  NATALIE (to Ogarev) Tata did a lovely painting of her—that's how Sasha met her.

  OGAREV Are you still painting and drawing?

  TATA No. I wasn't good enough.

  NATALIE Nonsense, (to Herzen) Come on, Alexander …

  BAKUNIN Seven degrees of human happiness! First, to die fighting for liberty; second, love and friendship; third, art and science; fourth, a cigarette; fifth, drinking; sixth, eating; and seventh, sleeping.

  Applause and dissent.

  OGAREV First, love and friendship …

  MALWIDA First, to raise a human being to the highest degree of which she is capable!

  NATALIE Alexander …

  TATA Let him he. He didn't have a good night.

  NATALIE Well, who did? Where's Liza? My head aches.

  MALWIDA (to Natalie) I'm a firm believer in flannel.

  Herzen is asleep. Turgenev and Marx, who have strolled into view like mismatched friends, are Herzen's dream.

  HERZEN Marx!

  They ignore him.

  TURGENEV Dobrolyubov once referred to me in the Contemporary as … well, he was dead at twenty-six, consumption, poor fellow, so who am I to complain? … but he called me ‘A fashionable novelist trailing in the wake of a female singer and arranging ovations for her in provincial theatres abroad …’ I thought I might go and live in the Sandwich Islands. What do you think?

  MARX The Sandwich Islands? Like Russia, and for the same reason, the Sandwich Islands are irrelevant. Considered as a social class acting out its destiny in a struggle with the class above, the proletariat of the Sandwich Islands is not as yet significant. I couldn't recommend it, you'd miss all the fun. None of us may live long enough, but when it comes, the cataclysm will be glorious … Every stage leads to a higher stage in the permanent conflict which is the march of history. Industrialisation, ever expanding to feed the markets for canoes, cooking pots, samovars … and ever contracting to drive out competition … alienates the worker more and more from the product of his toil, until Capital and Labour stand revealed in fatal contradiction. Then will come the final titanic struggle, the last turn of the great wheel of progress beneath which generations of toiling masses perished for the ultimate victory. Now at last the unity and rationality of history's purpose will be clear to everyone—even—finally—to the last Islander and to the last muzhik. Everything that seemed vicious, mean and ugly, the broken lives and ignoble deaths of millions, will be understood as part of a higher reality, a superior morality, against which resistance is irrational—a cosmos where every atom has been striving for the goal of human self-realisation and the culmination of history. I see the Neva lit by flames and running red, the coconut palms hung with corpses all along the shining strand from Kronstadt to the Nevsky Prospekt

  HERZEN (to Marx) But history has no culmination! There is always as much in front as behind. There is no libretto. History knocks at a thousand gates at every moment, and the gatekeeper is chance. We shout into the mist for this one or that one to be opened for us, but through every gate there are a thousand more. We need wit and courage to make our way while our way is making us. But that is our dignity as human beings, and we rob ourselves if we pardon us by the absolution of historical necessity. What kind of beast is it, this Ginger Cat with its insatiable appetite for human sacrifice? This Moloch who promises that everything will be beautiful after we're dead? A distant end is not an end but a trap. The end we work for must be closer, the labourer's wage, the pleasure in the work done, the summer lightning of personal happiness …

  Marx and Turgenev ignore him and stroll away.

  Herzen half falls out of his chair. Ogarev sees him and comes to him.

  HERZEN (cont.) (awake) Nothing, nothing … The idea will not perish. The young people will come of age.

  OGAREV Whose fault is it we didn't carry them with us? We knew what we were aiming for, but how were we supposed to get it?—by revolution?—by Imperial decree?—a constitution? What do you believe? I ask you seriously because I no longer understand.

  HERZEN We have to open men's eyes and not tear them out … and if we see differently, it's all right, we don't have to kill the myopic in our myopia … We have to bring what's good along with us. People won't forgive us. I imagine myself the future custodian of a broken statue, a blank wall, a desecrated grave, telling everyone who passes by, ‘Yes—yes, all this was destroyed by the revolution.’

  BAKUNIN (lighting a cigarette) At last, the happy moment

  NATALIE There's going to be a storm.

  Liza enters with a broken halter.

  LIZA (showing the broken rope) Smatrí, slamálsa! [It broke!]

  HERZEN Ty nye patselóoyesh minyá? [Will you give me a kiss?]

  LIZA Da! [Yes!] She kisses him like a tomboy.

  Summer lightning … and cheerful responses of fright … then thunder and further responses … and a quick fade.

  The End.

 

 

  Tom Stoppard, Salvage

 

 

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