HERZEN And then what?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY We will have to see. First the social revolution, then the political. Organisation on a full belly.

  HERZEN It's not the belly, it's the head. Organisation? The wolf packs will have the freedom of the streets of Saratov! Who will do the organising? Oh, but of course!—you will! The revolutionary elite. Because the peasants aren't to be trusted, they're too ignorant, too feckless, too drunk. Which they are. And what if they don't want you? If they'd rather eat or be eaten like everyone else? Will you coerce them for their own good? Will you be their Little Father? You'll need some help. You might have to have your own police force. Chernyshevsky!—are we ridding the people of their yoke so that they can live under a dictatorship of the intellectuals? Only until the enemy has been liquidated, of course!—that's Proudhon's word, and a good one. In Paris I saw enough wet blood in the gutters to last me. Progress by peaceful steps. I'll babble it as long as I've got breath.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY Good. That's clear. I told Dobrolyubov, the only thing was for me to come and talk to you face-to- face, and then we'll know why the Bell—our hallowed Bell, the only free voice in the Russian tongue, which has called to us to come forward and find each other—that Bell—refuses to agitate for a revolution.

  HERZEN That would suit the government very well—it would drive the reformists into the arms of the conservatives.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY Oh yes, Very dangerous.’ Your article practically accuses me of being in the pay of the government. Dobrolyubov wanted to challenge you to a duel—as our chief critic, he is over-exposed to literature.

  HERZEN The Bell needs a typeface for irony. Do you want a retraction?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY There's no need. It's clear enough that the government should be paying you. Your muckraking isn't progress, it's the opposite. The more the system mends its ways, the longer it will survive.

  HERZEN So let corruption thrive—but at whose cost meanwhile?

  Ogarev enters.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY It's piecemeal. What is your programme?

  OGAREV The abolition of serfdom from above or below, except from below. Obviously I've missed nothing important. You're Chernyshevsky … Ogarev. In England we make ‘le shake-hand.’

  CHERNYSHEVSKY (shaking hands) I'm glad to meet you.

  OGAREV I, too. Forgive me … (glancing at Herzen) Visiting a sick friend. Have you been waiting ages?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY No, not at all. I got lost.

  OGAREV Did you ask a policeman?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY A policeman? No.

  OGAREV You should. They call you ‘sir’ and seem to be a kind of public service. They're for people who are lost. They're issued with maps and gazetteers. Often you see them two together so they can consult about the shortest route. You can hardly turn a corner without seeing another one. At night they carry lanterns so they can read the map. A Russian comes here, and naturally all these policemen make him nervous. It's weeks before he can grasp that they're to tell people the way to everywhere. I was just in Putney and I had to ask a policeman the way to the nearest chemist's, (to Herzen) Mary's sick. I had to bring her.

  HERZEN Bring her … ?

  OGAREV I couldn't leave her with only Henry, (to Chernyshevsky) How long will you stay?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY In England? I'm leaving tomorrow.

  OGAREV But you've only just arrived. London is worth a study. Every night a hundred thousand people have nowhere to sleep except in the streets, and every morning a certain number of them are dead. They die of starvation beside hotels where you can't dine for less than two pounds. The policemen I was telling you about arrange for the bodies to be taken away. That's their other function. But, at the same time, if you're not dead, a policeman can't take you away. If you have a place to live in, even a hovel, he can't enter at his whim. If he believes you're a criminal, he can lock you up, but he has to show cause to a magistrate in public within a couple of days, or he has to let you go—to starve to death perhaps. With all this liberty, there's no beggar in France or Russia as destitute as the London poor, and with all this poverty, no Frenchman or Russian has his liberty guarded like a London beggar. It's not just liberty in the policeman sense. You never saw so many eccentrics, human nature tolerated in all its variety. What exactly is going on here? Do poverty and liberty go together, or is it the English sense of humour? We're not looking at what's around us. The political exiles didn't come to England to continue the quest, they retreated here until the quest can be resumed. So we gather here—in this garden or around the table inside—endlessly debating the Russian question of the hour: emancipation with or without land?—with or without compensation?—how much—who pays? over how long?—in rent or in labour? … but not what is the best society for everyone everywhere?

  HERZEN There's no such thing as ‘everyone everywhere.’ For Russia—now—the answer is communal socialism.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY Communal socialism, each household with its own plot, is inefficient. But communistic socialism, with everybody sharing the labour and the harvest—

  HERZEN (angrily) No!—No!—we haven't come all this way only to arrive at the utopia of the ant heap.

  Natalie enters pushing Liza's pram.

  NATALIE What are you cross about?

  She pushes the pram nearer and takes a chair. Chernyshevsky stands up politely for her.

  OGAREV (to Natalie) Have you … ? It's only until …

  NATALIE (suddenly) Alexander! We have, you have a guest!

  HERZEN What? It's Chernyshevsky! You gave him a glass of water.

  NATALIE (laughs) He thinks I'm an idiot. Have you had nothing but a glass of water? I'm ashamed.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY It was all I wanted, really.

  NATALIE (to Herzen) I mean Mrs Sutherland.

  HERZEN Who? … Oh …

  NATALIE (to Chernyshevsky) One of the Putney Sutherlands.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY Oh, yes?

  OGAREV (to Natalie) You don't mind, do you?

  NATALIE It's Alexander's house, not ours, my dear. (to Herzen) Oughtn't you to go in and … Nick's put her in, in the yellow room.

  HERZEN What yellow room?

  NATALIE Alexander, there is only one yellow room.

  HERZEN The scullery?

  NATALIE The room with the yellow roses on the wallpaper.

  HERZEN Oh … Is she staying?

  NATALIE That's what we all want to know.

  HERZEN (to Ogarev) She's not staying?

  Ogarev doesn't reply. Liza starts grizzling.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY I must be going soon. (He is ignored. He is uneasily aware of missing something.)

  OGAREV It's only until she's …

  Liza grizzles louder. Ogarev, grateful for the distraction, goes to the pram and jogs it agitatedly.

  NATALIE Nurse is busy helping the maid carry the couch in from the landing.

  HERZEN What for?

  OGAREV It's for Henry.

  HERZEN She's brought her son?

  OGAREV Well, what do you expect!

  Ogarev thumps the pram. Liza starts crying. Ogarev jogs the pram, talking to Liza.

  NATALIE (to Herzen, forgetting herself) She wants her daddy.

  Herzen is furious. Chernyshevsky is puzzled.

  NATALIE (to Liza, retracting) There, there, look, Daddy's here …

  CHERNYSHEVSKY (to Ogarev, peering at Liza) She's just like you.

  Tata comes from the house.

  NATALIE (to Herzen) If you don't go, it'll be too late. The maid has already made a scene, and in front of Tata, too.

  TATA (arriving) What's a ‘fancy woman’ in England?

  NATALIE What a thing to ask, Tata!

  TATA (to Ogarev) Well, she's in your bed, anyway. She's got a little boy who won't say his name. He's not going to live here, is he? (to Chernyshevsky) Oh … I'm Tata Herzen!

  CHERNYSHEVSKY (shaking her hand) Goodbye.

  TATA Oh. Goodbye. Chernyshevsky shakes Ogarev's hand and then bows over Natalie's hand.

  TATA (cont.) (to Herzen meanwhile) Natalie says when she goes to Germany to meet her sister, she'll take me.

  HERZEN What about Olga?

  TATA You know what they're like together. Anyway, she'll forget her Russian.

  HERZEN Why? You'll all be speaking Russian, won't you? Natalie's sister and her husband … ?

  TATA Oh, Papa!—what's the point of going to Germany to improve my Russian?

  CHERNYSHEVSKY (to Herzen) Goodbye.

  HERZEN You're going?

  Herzen shepherds Chernyshevsky a few paces.

  NATALIE (hisses to Ogarev) Are you mad? She's a … she's a …

  TATA A fancy woman.

  NATALIE (to Tata) Go in!

  Tata leaves.

  HERZEN (to Chernyshevsky) The thing I feared most was that a gulf would divide the intellectuals from the masses, like in the West. But I never foresaw the worst, that the ground would split between so few of us who want the same thing for Russia.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY It's not so wide that you can't make the step.

  Natalie, who has been whispering fiercely to Ogarev, walks by, to the house.

  HERZEN But I'm right. Even where I'm wrong, I'm right.

  NATALIE (continuing out) You see?!

  CHERNYSHEVSKY Suppose the people don't wait for you.

  HERZEN Then you'll see I was right.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY They won't wait.

  HERZEN They will.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY The Tsar will let you down.

  HERZEN He won't.

  CHERNYSHEVSKY You've bet the Bell on it, you'll lose everything.

  HERZEN The Bell will win.

  Herzen and Chernyshevsky leave, following Natalie. Ogarev, in private physical distress, collapses in an epileptic fit. HENRY SUTHERLAND comes into the garden. He is small and underfed, in poor clothes but neat, and afraid. After a moment he notices Ogarev. He goes to help him, evidently not for the first time. Ogarev recovers, collapsed on a chair, mute for the moment. He smiles to reassure Henry, and makes a sign which Henry understands. The boy takes the mouth organ from his pocket and plays haltingly for Ogarev.

  INTER-SCENE—AUGUST 1860

  Blackgang Chine, a ravine in the southern coastline of the Isle of Wight, notorious for shipwreck.

  In a ‘soundscape’ of waves crashing against rocks, with seabirds shrill in the blasts of wind noise … a windswept figure (Turgenev) stands dramatised by the surrounding dark.

  AUGUST 1860

  Seaside (Ventnor, Isle of Wight).

  There is a passing scene of visitors, who greet each other, exchange remarks and move on. Remarkably, all the exchanges are in Russian (’Good morning—How are you this morning?—Charming weather—When are you leaving’, and such like) … ‘Dóbroye óotra—Kak vy pazhíváyetye sevódnya óotram?—Prekrásnaya pagóda / Atlíchnaya pagóda—Kagdá ooyezháyetye? / Kadgá atpravlyáyetes?’

  A young man—the DOCTOR—who is noticeably more plainly dressed, is sitting on a bench at the boundary between the promenade and the beach. He has a newspaper, the local weekly. Turgenev enters, and after raising his hat and exchanging greetings with one or two people, he sits on the bench, or a nearby bench. He takes a book from his pocket and reads for a while, then dozes. Meanwhile Malwida and Olga have appeared on the beach. Olga has a shrimping net. Malwida has been collecting shells, putting them into a child's pail.

  OLGA Do you think shrimps are happy?

  MALWIDA Perfectly happy.

  OLGA Do you wish you were a shrimp?

  MALWIDA Not very much. No Beethoven, no Schiller or Heine …

  OLGA You wouldn't mind, if you were a shrimp.

  MALWIDA But if I were a shrimp, a little girl might come and catch me in her net.

  OLGA That's no worse than what happens to people.

  MALWIDA Ah, a philosopher. (She picks up a shell.) There's a pretty one … a double. Anyone at home? Well, bad luck, you will decorate a picture frame and think yourself lucky compared to some.

  OLGA Is everyone going to get a picture frame for Christmas?

  MALWIDA Oh, aren't we a clever-boots?

  OLGA I'd like a picture frame, Malwida.

  MALWIDA Special people might get a shell mirror.

  OLGA I don't want to see my face, I want to see yours! (She laughs and hugs Malwida.) There's a man there who knows Papa.

  MALWIDA We don't look. The one with the newspaper or the other one?

  OLGA The other one. He's called Mr Turgenev. He's a famous writer.

  MALWIDA All Russian writers are famous. In Germany you have to work really hard to be a famous writer.

  OLGA Should we speak to him?

  MALWIDA He looks asleep. I wonder where he's staying.

  OLGA When Papa comes from London, we can invite him. Malwida, what will happen when Natalie comes back from Germany?

  MALWIDA She's only just gone and you're worrying about when she comes back. Come on, there's a rock pool.

  OLGA I want to go on living in your house, and Papa can visit us …

  MALWIDA You must try to like Natalie.

  OLGA (thoughtfully) I like her sometimes, when she's not historical. When she gets historical, the only thing that calms her down is intimate relations.

  Olga and Malwida leave.

  Turgenev notices that the Doctor has put aside his newspaper.

  TURGENEV Sir … would you please allow me to look at your newspaper?

  DOCTOR Keep it. I've finished with it. (The Doctor's tone is unsettlingly abrupt.)

  TURGENEV Thank you. I threw my copy away and forgot that there was something I meant to … Ah, here we are … Are you sure you don't need it? Because … (Turgenev takes a small penknife from his pocket and cuts carefully into the newspaper.)

  DOCTOR (meanwhile) Are you Turgenev?

  TURGENEV I am.

  DOCTOR Your name—approximately—is in the paper, in the list of notable visitors. How did you know I was Russian?

  TURGENEV It was a statistical probability. One of the mysteries of summer migration in the animal kingdom is that in August a small town in the Isle of Wight becomes a Russian colony … But I knew you when I saw you. We've met before, haven't we?

  DOCTOR No.

  TURGENEV In St Petersburg … ?

  DOCTOR I doubt it. I'm not one of your literary … I'm not one of your readers. I only read books of practical utility.

  TURGENEV Really? I find there are occasions when even such a useful publication as the Ventnor Times … when you're by the sea, enjoying nature …

  DOCTOR Nature? Nature is nothing but the sum of its facts. What you're enjoying is your romantic egoism. (He has a look at the title of Turgenev's book.) Pushkin! Not a damn bit of use to anyone! Give it up. You're past the age for this nonsense. A good plumber is worth twenty poets.

  TURGENEV Oh. Are you a plumber?

  DOCTOR No.

  TURGENEV Well, in the sense that there are twenty poets for every good plumber, who would disagree with you? But I like to think my books have their uses beyond stopping up a bunghole.

  DOCTOR Well, they don't. For a useful book, give me Mackenzie's No More Haemorrhoids!

  TURGENEV (enthusiastically) Yes, it's extremely good. (He holds up the newspaper cutting.) In case you missed it, there's an advertisement in the paper for Holloway's Pills. Remarkable! (reading) ‘. . . expressly combined to operate on the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the skin and the bowels, purifying the blood, which is the very foundation of life, and thus curing disease in all its forms …‘ I thought they sounded worth trying. But to get back to your haemorrhoids—

  DOCTOR I don't suffer from haemorrhoids.

  TURGENEV Oh. I wish I didn't. But in case you ever do, here's a tip. I found that reading Dr Mackenzie made me very aware of mine … whereas, reading Pushkin, I quite forgot them. Practical utility. I believe in it.

  DOCTOR But what the age demands is to believe in nothing else.

  TURGENEV Nothing at all?

  DOCTOR Nothing.

  TURGENEV You don't believe in principles? Or progress? Or art?

  DOCTOR No. I deny abstractions.

  TURGENEV But you believe in science.

  DOCTOR Abstract science, no. Tell me a fact and I’ll agree with you. Two and two is four. The rest is horse shit. You don't need it to know to put bread in your mouth when you're hungry. Believing in nothing, to be precise, means to take nothing on trust, no matter how clothed in authority or tradition … Negation is the thing that's best for Russia now.

  TURGENEV You mean the people, the masses?

  DOCTOR The people!—worse than useless. No, I don't believe in the people. The pedants of the thick magazines and the secret presses bang on about the people, and the role of the intellectual, and the role of the artist, and the role of science, and everything comes to nothing for want of honest men.

  TURGENEV What, then, do you advocate?

  DOCTOR Nothing.

  TURGENEV Literally nothing?

  DOCTOR Oh, there are more of us nihilists than you think. We're a force.

  TURGENEV Oh, yes … the nihilist. You're right, we haven't met before. It's only that I've been looking out for you without knowing it. The other day, the day we had the storm, I went to look at Blackgang Chine. Have you been? It's not far from here, westward along the upper cliff. At the top there's a grassy bit which runs almost to the edge of the drop, four hundred feet straight down to where the sea smashes over the ledges and the pebble shore, hurling itself into the gullet of the ravine they call Blackgang. There's a way down, a snaking path that takes you back across millennia of bands of colour in the rock face, past limestone and black ironstone piled on yellow sandstone, dark-blue clay … The noise is indescribable. I thought I could hear groans, sobbing, cannon fire, bells, sounding out from the heart of the furious waters. It was like being at the beginning of the world, where the elemental mocked at our flimsy comforts and only horror and death were promised. I saw there was no hope for us. And there was a man in my mind suddenly, a dark towering figure, strong, with no subtlety or mutability in him, with no history, as though he'd grown from the earth, his ill intention complete. I thought—I've never read about him. Why has nobody written about him? I knew he was the future arrived before his time, and that he was doomed. (Pause.) I don't know what to call you.