Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

She embraces Herzen as warmly as decorum allows her.

HERZEN   My dear … but what’s this? We haven’t come from Moscow.

Granovsky goes unsmilingly towards the house.

NATALIE   Have you been quarrelling?

HERZEN   Disputing. He’ll get over it. The only trouble is, we were having such an interesting talk …

He turns the basket upside down, letting a single mushroom fall out.

NATALIE   Oh, Alexander! I can see one from here!

She snatches the basket and runs off with it. Herzen takes her chair.

HERZEN   What were you and Natalie saying about me? Well, thank you very much, anyway.

OGAREV   What were you and Granovsky arguing about?

HERZEN   The immortality of the soul.

OGAREV   Oh, that.

NICHOLAS KETSCHER, aged forty, a thin, avuncular figure to the younger men, comes from the house carrying, with a slightly ceremonial air, a tray with a coffeepot on a small spirit lamp, and cups. In silence Herzen, Ogarev and Turgenev watch him put the tray on a garden table and pour a cup, which he brings to Herzen. Herzen sips the coffee.

HERZEN   It’s the same.

KETSCHER   What?

HERZEN   It tastes the same.

KETSCHER   So you think the coffee is no better?

HERZEN   No.

The others are now nervous. Ketscher gives a short barking laugh.

KETSCHER   Well, it really is extraordinary, your inability to admit you’re wrong even on such a trifling matter as a cup of coffee.

HERZEN   It’s not me, it’s the coffee.

KETSCHER   No, I mean it’s beyond anything, this wretched vanity of yours.

HERZEN   I didn’t make the coffee, I didn’t make the coffeepot, it’s not my fault that—

KETSCHER   To hell with the coffee! You’re impossible to reason with! It’s over between us. I’m going back to Moscow! (Ketscher leaves.)

OGAREV   Between the coffee and the immortality of the soul, you’ll end up with no friends at all.

Ketscher returns.

KETSCHER   Is that your last word?

Herzen takes another sip of coffee.

HERZEN   I’m sorry.

KETSCHER   Right.

Ketscher leaves again, passing Granovsky entering.

GRANOVSKY   (to Ketscher) How’s the …? (Seeing Ketscher’s face, Granovsky lets the matter drop.) Aksakov’s in the house.

HERZEN   Aksakov? Impossible.

GRANOVSKY   (helping himself to coffee) Just as you like. (He makes a face at the taste of the coffee.) He’s ridden over from some friends of his …

HERZEN   Well, why doesn’t he come out? There’s no need for old friends to fall out over …

Ketscher returns as though nothing has passed. He pours himself coffee.

KETSCHER   Aksakov’s come. Where is Natalie?

HERZEN   Picking mushrooms.

KETSCHER   Ah … good. I must say they were excellent at breakfast. (He sips his coffee while the others watch him, and considers it.) Vile. (He puts the cup down and, in a flurry, he and Herzen are kissing each other’s cheeks and clasping each other, competing in self-blame.)

KETSCHER   By the way, did I tell you, we’re all going to be in the dictionary?

HERZEN   I’m already in the dictionary.

GRANOVSKY   He doesn’t mean the German dictionary, in which you make a singular appearance, Herzen, and only by accident …

KETSCHER   No, I’m talking about a new word altogether.

HERZEN   Excuse me, Granovsky, but I wasn’t an accident, I was the child of an affair of the heart, given my surname for my mother’s German heart. Being half Russian and half German, at heart I’m Polish, of course … I often feel quite partitioned, sometimes I wake up screaming in the night that the Emperor of Austria is claiming the rest of me.

GRANOVSKY   That’s not the Emperor of Austria, it’s Mephistopheles, and he is.

Turgenev laughs.

OGAREV   What’s the new word, Ketscher?

KETSCHER   You can whistle for it now. (furiously to Herzen) Why do you feel you have to make off with every conversation like a bag-snatcher?