MAZZINI Paris—the whole of mankind, for that matter—will be liberated from Milano! My agents are in place.

  Worcell and Blanc enter.

  WORCELL (coughing asthmatically) Poland greets Hungary, Italy and France!

  BLANC Socialist France greets Hungary, Italy and the bourgeois Republic-in-exile! … and Germany, Germany and Germany, ‘Divided we fall, united we're fucked!’

  Ruge and Kinkel cut each other. Ruge cuts Marx.

  MARX (to Jones) Watch out for that preening glove-puppet Louis Blanc—a deviationist to his stinking arsehole.

  WORCELL (shaking hands) Herzen! Poland forgives Russia!

  JONES I say! It's Herzen!

  MARX Russia is irrelevant. I propose Herzen is expelled from the Committee.

  JONES Oh, I say—that's simply not on.

  MARX I resign!

  Marx leaves. The émigrés watch him go, overtly catcalling now.

  RUGE Abortionist!

  KINKEL Parasite! Sponger!

  LEDRU-ROLLIN Onanist!

  MAZZINI Economist! (generally) Arrivederci! Today Milano—tomorrow the world! (Mazzini leaves.)

  BLANC Fantasist!

  WORCELL (to Jones) Can we get on? I have to give a math lesson in Muswell Hill at five o'clock.

  JONES Gentlemen! Order, order! The European Committee of Co-operation and Joint Action by the International Brotherhood of Democrats in Exile is now in session!

  Unadvertised, a localised drama involving the Kinkels and Malwida reaches an operatic climax, ignored by everyone else, with Joanna waving the pistol at Kinkel and Malwida.

  JOANNA Do up your buttons! I was blind, blind!

  Joanna fires the pistol. The noise, like a slammed door, startles Herzen awake.

  The Herzen interior’ from now on incorporates, permanently or otherwise and according to needs, tables, chairs, armchairs, desk, couch and so on, as well as notional doors and enclosed spaces.

  Malwida has just entered the room where Herzen has been asleep.

  The remaining members of the dream are ‘next door’ chatting socially, holding glasses of wine, smoking, eating snacks replenished by a PARLOURMAID.

  HERZEN (waking) Oh! … Are you all right?

  There is a burst of jovial laughter from the émigrés responding to some remark.

  MALWIDA I'm so sorry, the wind caught the door … I did knock.

  HERZEN (getting up) No—no—forgive me! I felt tired for a moment … and the next thing I knew …

  MALWIDA Were you having a dream?

  HERZEN My God, I hope so.

  MALWIDA I received your letter.

  HERZEN That's it. My letter.

  MALWIDA You want a tutor for your children.

  HERZEN Only for Tata. Sasha has his own tutors, and Olga is not old enough yet. The girls have been living with friends in Paris since my wife died, it's time I brought us all together again. Tata will need mathematics, history, geography … you have some English?

  MALWIDA I could teach a beginner. Would I be teaching in French or in German?

  HERZEN Undoubtedly!—We speak Russian en famille.

  MALWIDA I'd like to learn Russian. I've read From the Other Shore, but only in German, of course.

  HERZEN You know my book?

  MALWIDA At home I was close to someone who took part in the revolution. He died last year. He died young.

  HERZEN We are both bereaved.

  MALWIDA Somebody's lost a glove. A child …

  Malwida picks up a small-sized glove from the floor by Herzen's chair. She gives him the glove. Herzen puts it in his pocket.

  HERZEN Yes, it's mine. Well—how much will I pay you?

  MALWIDA I would like to suggest two shillings an hour.

  HERZEN I would like to suggest three. Should we shake hands on it like Englishmen?

  They shake hands. He starts escorting her to the other room.

  HERZEN (cont.) At home we used to call Englishmen ‘Eyseyki'—'I say-ki!’

  Malwida joins the Kinkels. Joanna is buttoning Kinkel's coat. Kossuth is making a round of farewell handshakes. The party is breaking up, assisted as appropriately by the Parlourmaid helping with coats and hats.

  JOANNA It is foggy out? My foolish cavalier is determined to provoke the Grim Reaper into an indiscretion!

  HUNGARIAN AIDE (to Herzen) Monsieur le Gouverneur begs to take his leave, that your guests may feel free to depart.

  RUGE (in ‘English‘) ‘Mr Jones—Marx tells me you Chartists will be the government in two years—and private property abolished in three!’

  JONES Oh, I say—I think that's premature.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN The revolution can only radiate from France! France means Europe! (complaining to his Aide) Look at that!—Kossuth is leaving before me!

  KOSSUTH (to Worcell) That admirable man Ledru-Rollin has his head in the clouds, I'm afraid.

  WORCELL You heard? Mazzini is alive but in hiding.

  KOSSUTH A brave patriot but, alas, a romantic.

  Kossuth and Worcell shake hands. Kossuth shakes hands with Herzen and leaves.

  KINKEL (saying goodbye to Jones) ‘You show the steep and thorny way to heaven while we the Primrose Hill of dalliance tread.’

  JONES (baffled) Indeed.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN (to his Aide) And now those Germans! You'd better fetch a cab or I'll be last.

  The Aide leaves on his errand.

  KINKEL (to Herzen) Malwida showed me your letter, and I must tell you I was horrified. Letters in England must be folded in three—never in quarters! Especially when writing to a lady!

  HERZEN (to Malwida) The children will be arriving with their nurse. She's a German girl, so you'll get on.

  JOANNA We must go, we must go! Gottfried is losing his voice, and where will Germany be then?

  Kinkel, Joanna and Malwida leave.

  JONES (to Herzen) I promised Emily an early start on the compost.

  HERZEN (politely baffled) ‘Safe journey!‘

  Jones leaves. Herzen returns to the remaining guests—Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Ruge and Worcell, who has fallen asleep.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN (to Blanc) But, you know, when Kossuth's triumphal progress reached Marseilles, he talked socialism to the workers, and when he got to England, he praised parliamentary democracy!

  HERZEN Well, he would have been a fool to do it the other way round.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN But that's hypocrisy.

  HERZEN What is? To allow that here is not there? Cutting people out like pastry with your one true pastry-cutter makes you no better than the tyranny you're fighting.

  BLANC What's this?

  HERZEN It's all right … I had a dream about exiles. What a snake pit, adders’ tongues weren't in it. But they spoke Russian! Extraordinary. You don't know Russian, do you?

  BLANC (put out) Why? Was I … ?

  HERZEN It was a dream. You wouldn't like it if you'd been left out. And it's true, anyway. The only thing that unites the émigrés is criticising the English. Blanc hates the English because they don't speak French.

  BLANC Moi?

  HERZEN You become furious when they don't know the way to Sharring Crow and Backay Strit.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN Not that the English aren't in some respects capable of improvement … The slavery of restaurants closed on Sundays. Is it some kind of restaurant-based theology? And when they're open, you want them closed as quickly as humanely possible …

  BLANC They have the ridiculous idea that they're the most advanced nation on earth, but they haven't discovered the principle of organisation. Everything here is connected in some incomprehensible sideways manner, instead of top to bottom like in a sensible country. There's no system to anything—society, the law, literary life—everything's just left to grow tangled together. There's a word here, ‘shroobbery,’ do you know it? I saw a sign at Keff Gardens, The Shroobbery’, and there was nothing you could call a garden to be seen! England is one enormous shroobbery.

  HERZEN Keff Garden?

  RUGE (Jeers) Not Keff! Kev!

  BLANC (irritated) Yes, Keff Gardens, they're famous. You ought to get out more instead of brooding over your Russian soul.

  HERZEN It's true—I haven't entered into English life. The English take us up with cries of interest and delight as if they've discovered a new amusement, like an acrobat or a singer, but it's a noise, an energy, to cover their instinctive aversion to foreigners. We're amusing when we wear a hat we brought from home, and even funnier when we put on a hat we bought in St James's. There's no way round it. But their coarseness is the sinew of some kind of brute confidence, which is the reason England is home to every shade of political exile. They don't give us asylum out of respect for the asylum-seekers but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty, and they know it, and they did it without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it's liberty. So French history empties out through the Dover customs. King Louis- Philippe ran straight for the Channel, under the thoughtful pseudonym of ‘Mr Smith’ … and when the Republic took three lurches to the right, he was followed in order by the communist Barbès, the socialist Blanc, and the bourgeois republican Ledru-Rollin.

  Ledru-Rollin's Aide enters with his master's coat.

  FRENCH AIDE Your carriage awaits, Minister.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN Ah, well. I part reluctantly from your comfortable and elegant house where we might have continued to discuss bourgeois republicanism …

  RUGE I'll come with you. Good night, Herzen.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN (displeased) But where do you live?

  RUGE Brighton.

  LEDRU-ROLLIN Brighton?!

  RUGE Good night, Blanc.

  While Ledru-Rollin is helped into his coat, Ruge goes out.

  HERZEN He'll sleep on a bench at the station. (Herzen tactfully shepherds Ledru-Rollin to the door.) For the sake of the old days in Paris, eh?

  LEDRU-ROLLIN (grumbling) Oh yes, I remember Ruge in the forties, fancying himself the leader of an international revolutionary movement, hanging around with Marx and Herwegh …

  HERZEN (sharply) Let me see you out.

  Herzen leaves with Ledru-Rollin and the Aide.

  BLANC (to Worcell) Oh—oh! Did you hear that? We don't mention Herwegh! Are you asleep?

  WORCELL (waking) What?

  BLANC That ass Ledru-Rollin mentioned Herwegh … (He uses his index fingers to make cuckold's horns.) Herzen's wife and Herwegh, you know …

  WORCELL (shortly) What of it?

  BLANC Ah, yes—you're right. What of it?

  Herzen returns.

  BLANC (cont.) Did you hear that poor Ruge announced a public lecture on German philosophy, and only two people turned up?

  HERZEN I was one of them.

  WORCELL And I was the other.

  Herzen is near tears. He wipes his eyes covertly.

  HERZEN Ruge was someone to meet, when I was young in Moscow. We studied contraband copies of his newspaper like religious texts. When I read Bakunin in Ruge's Deutsche Jahrbucher, I thought, ‘Yes, this is the language of free men! We'll make the revolution in Berlin, Paris, Brussels!’ And the revolution when it came might have swept Ruge high up into the company of vindicated prophets … But the wave broke, and washed him up on the English shore, a refugee in the flotsam of refugees, their moment missed, their clothes shabbier by the month, their hopes shabbier, too … forever going over the past, living on recrimination and fantasy, schemers, dreamers, monomaniacs from every failed insurrection from Sicily to the Baltic, men who can't get their shoes mended sending agents with earth-shaking instructions to Marseilles, Lisbon, Cologne … men who walk across London to give a piano lesson redrawing the frontiers of Europe on the oilskin table-tops of back-street restaurants, toppling emperors like so many sauce bottles … and Marx in his proud retreat in the British Museum, anathemising everyone else … The clock has stopped in this theatre of political exile! You want to start it again at the moment when all was lost, so that you can make the same mistakes again. You reject the logic of why things went the way they did. That's vanity and cowardice.

  BLANC Your language is extravagant. I ignore it because it's the language of a bystander. Your father left you rich, and you have been generous, but you're a tourist and occasional journalist. Worcell, for example, leads the cause of Polish independence from his basement room in Hunter Street and gives mathematics lessons to earn a few shillings, hut he is a revolutionary. Good night, gentlemen. (Blanc leaves.)

  WORCELL (deflecting) Don't.

  HERZEN I wasn't going to. (Pause.) Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know.

  Worcell laughs asthmatically.

  HERZEN (cont.) What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. And to whom would I speak? About what? I've stopped quarrelling with the world. (Worcell laughs.) No, I really have. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house. I'd just arrived in England, and for the first time … for the first time since Natalie died … no, from before that, I don't know since when … but for the first time in a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where I was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of ordinary life … and I just sat quiet and alone all that day, looking at the tops of the trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. It was as if I'd come to the end of a long journey that started when I left Moscow more than six years ago with Natalie and the children and my mother, packed into a carriage hung with furs against the January cold. Half a dozen sledges with our friends came to see us off as far as the staging post, and then we were on our way to a land of limitless possibilities, known intimately from our dreams. I came to Paris as people used to come to Jerusalem or Rome, and found the city of the plain. It made one half-hearted effort to be worthy of itself and then collapsed satisfied under six feet of dung, not even brimstone. I have lost every illusion dear to me. I'm forty. I will dwell in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden, and the world will hear no more of me.

  WORCELL I came to speak to you … about … to ask you to help us … to start a Polish press in London.

  HERZEN A free Polish press? Yes. You should. You should. It's a good idea. Isn't there a Pole—yes—

  WORCELL Tchorzewski—

  HERZEN (simultaneously) —Tchorzewski who keeps a bookshop in Soho? Not only that, you've got people coming and going all the time, you could get material from home and smuggle in real news and discussion—wake up the intelligentsia, educate the young people, bring fresh blood to the cause. I'll write something for you—you can translate it. Better still … can you get hold of Cyrillic type?

  WORCELL (nods) From Paris … We can buy second-hand fonts.

  HERZEN (galvanised) A free Russian press!—and Polish. Do you know a printer?

  WORCELL Ciernecki is a printer.

  HERZEN We'll need—WORCELL Premises.

  HERZEN (simultaneously) —premises. Have a seat!

  (Herzen sits down and grabs a sheet of paper and a pen.) We'll need a supplier, paper, ink, an assistant, part-time to begin with … what else? How much?

  FEBRUARY 1853

  ‘The Schoolroom.’

  A table with a cloth reaching the floor. Malwida enters, holding the necessities of giving a lesson, but in mid-pantomime in search of a lost child whom she knows to be hiding under the table.

  MALWIDA Now, where could she have got to! I'm sure I saw her come in here! What a mystery! Oh, dear, perhaps she's lost forever!

  And so on, with sounds of excited suppressed delight emanating from under the table, until, after drawing a blank here and there, Malwida peeks under the tablecloth, releasing a paroxysm of pleasure from the unseen Olga.

  Tata enters with her schoolbooks.

  MAY 1853

  A party can be heard going on, with laughter and some music and singing in Russian. Herzen and Worcell, with drinks in hand, study printed Cyrillic sheets. Maria enters, complaining.

  MARIA Sascha muss ins Bett. Er hoert nicht auf mich!—und jetzt ist auch noch Tata heruntergekommen! [Sasha has to go to bed. I have no control over him!—and now Tata has come downstairs!]

  Herzen waves her away without looking up. Maria leaves.

  WORCELL To read such things, printed in Russian … it makes you frightened.

  Sasha enters, complaining.

  SASHA Papa—Herr Ciernecki zeigt mir gerade—[Papa—Mr Ciernecki is showing me—]

  HERZEN Am I a German?

  SASHA Maria says I have to go to bed, and Mr Ciernecki is teaching me chords!

  HERZEN Come here. Come close. Look at this.

  Sasha takes the sheet.

  SASHA What does it say?

  HERZEN You can read it.

  SASHA It's difficult.

  HERZEN Difficult? What is that tutor reading with you?

  SASHA Marlinski's stories, they're exciting.

  HERZEN Well, just read the words at the top, about the crow.

  SASHA Why?

  HERZEN It's an article by your papa.

  SASHA ‘I am not yet the real crow but only a small crow … the real one is still flying in the sky …’

  HERZEN The words of Pugachev, who made a rebellion against the Tsarina Katerina in the eighteenth century. Now this is why you must remember today. What I have written—words like these—have rarely been whispered at home, even more rarely written down, but in the whole history of Russia they have never before been in print. This is the first time. Will you remember?

  Sasha nods.