Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

NATALIE   Sssh …

HERZEN   He’s doing clouds. I wonder what Russian modern art would be like.

NATALIE   I wanted to be naked for you, you see.

GEORGE   I do. I do see.

EMMA   Where’ve they got to, I wonder?

NATALIE   Just once!

TURGENEV   They’re hunting mushrooms.

NATALIE   So, when I’m sitting across from you in the objective world, listening to Alexander reading Schiller in the evenings—or picnicking at Montmorency!—you’ll remember there is an inner reality, my existence-in-itself, where my naked soul is one with yours!

GEORGE   I am deeply … Just once?

HERZEN   What would it be like?

NATALIE   Let’s not talk … let’s close our eyes and commune with the spirit of Rousseau among the woods where he walked!

HERZEN   That’s where Rousseau lived, that cottage. Montmorency is the only bit of country round Paris which reminds me of Russia. Nature here is simple, not like the park at St Cloud, which is somebody’s masterpiece, or the disciplinarian planting at Trianon. How is the country where you go to stay?

TURGENEV   Delightful.

EMMA   Do your friends have land?

TURGENEV   It wouldn’t count for much at home. You can see right across it.

HERZEN   How many souls do they have?

TURGENEV   One each.

NATALIE   Oh, George! I ask for nothing but to give!

GEORGE   Please get dressed before …

NATALIE   I ask nothing of you but to take!

GEORGE   I will, I will, but not here …

NATALIE   To take strength from me.

GEORGE   Oh, yes, yes, you’re the only one who understands me.

HERZEN   Well, what do you do there?

TURGENEV   We like to go out shooting.

HERZEN   Madame Viardot shoots?

TURGENEV   No, she’s not an American, she’s an opera singer. Her husband shoots.

HERZEN   Ah. Is he accurate?

Turgenev crumples up his drawing.

EMMA   Oh—what a waste of being still.

GEORGE   But Emma must be wondering …

NATALIE   Let’s tell her!

GEORGE   No!

NATALIE   Why ever not?

GEORGE   Besides, she’d tell Alexander.

NATALIE   Do you think so? Alexander must never know.

GEORGE   I agree.

NATALIE   He wouldn’t understand.

GEORGE   No, he wouldn’t

NATALIE   If only he could see there’s no egoism in my love.

GEORGE   We’ll find a way.

NATALIE   One day, perhaps …

GEORGE   Yes, let me think—Tuesday …

NATALIE   But until then …

GEORGE   Yes—so put your clothes on, my dear spirit, my beautiful soul!

NATALIE   Don’t look, then.

GEORGE   Oh God, we haven’t found a single mushroom!

George snatches up the basket and hurries away. Natalie starts getting dressed.

TURGENEV   (to Herzen) You still own a small estate at home, I believe. How many souls do you have?

HERZEN   None now. The government took it. But you’re quite right. I apologise.

TURGENEV   I freed my mother’s household serfs, with land, but I receive quit-rent from the rest.

EMMA   Honestly, you Russians.

HERZEN   I’m going to find George and Natalie. (Herzen leaves.)

EMMA   What are you writing now?

TURGENEV   A play.

EMMA   Is it about us?

TURGENEV   It takes place over a month in a house in the country. A woman and a young girl fall in love with the same man.

EMMA   Who wins?

TURGENEV   Nobody, of course.

EMMA   I want to ask you something, but you might be angry with me.

TURGENEV   I’ll answer anyway. No.

EMMA   But how do you know the question?

TURGENEV   I don’t. You can apply my answer to any question of your choice.

EMMA   That’s a good system … Well, I’m sorry. Devotion such as yours should not go unrewarded.

Pause.

EMMA   (cont.) Now I want to ask you something else.

TURGENEV   Yes.

Emma starts to weep.

TURGENEV   (cont.) I’m sorry.

EMMA   But you’re right. If you knew how I suffer. George was my first.

TURGENEV   My first was a serf. I think my mother put her up to it. I was fifteen. I was in the garden. It was a drizzly sort of day. Suddenly I saw a girl coming towards me … she came right to me. I was her master, you must remember. She was my slave. She took hold of me by the hair and said, ‘Come!’ … Unforgettable … Words stagger after. Art despairs.

EMMA   That’s different. That’s eroticism.

TURGENEV   Yes.

EMMA   Have you ever been happy?

TURGENEV   But I have moments of extreme happiness … ecstasy!—

EMMA   Do you?

TURGENEV   —watching a duck scratching the back of its head with that quick back-and-forth of its damp foot … and the way slow silver threads of water stream from a cow’s mouth when it raises its head from the edge of the pond to stare at you …

Herzen enters.

HERZEN   Rousseau has a lot to answer for.

George follows Herzen, with the basket.

GEORGE   Oh … why do you say that?