Cover art by​ strange files studio.

The layout stands empty. Behind it we take our places, one behind the other, facing the hall. Or is it the layout we are setting — so that its figures may ​rise, afterwards, and face the hall? We come forward. We sit down on opposite sides of the layout. And look through it.

ME. It’s not funny at all

M. and not even a cautionary tale.

ME. And is there a story here at all?

M. Just a few dialogues.

ME. Yes — two living voices,

M. now long gone,

ME. vanished…

M. out of the earthly air — music.

(songs)

ME. Is that enough for a 'story'?

(light)

ME. Oh, what stories there are —

M. with masquerades,

ME. duelling,

M. abandoned babies,

ME. the living dead,

M. party congresses,

ME. And royal favours!

M. Shakespeare alone is worth something!

ME. Pure envy!

ME. What do we have?

M. …In a simplistic, lukewarm lobby

ME. of our 'improved' house

M. stands tall —

ME. clean-shaven

M. in a pince-nez,

ME. Ludwig Karl LEVE.

M. I later learned from relatives that he had been

ME. an ex-banker. German. He leaned down towards me —

M. when I was ten years old —

ME. and held out a hand, warm,

M. with long, red fingers,

ME. and a smile…

M. Not like the others — in his own particular manner,

ME. his 'banker-ish' manner… The July sun, breaking through the grimy stained glass of our front door, struck his polished bald head, and it shone — as though a halo grew up behind it. I liked him,

M. but I was still small, and shy, and I ran away.

ME. I ran away so that I would remember his face forever,

M. and his name, and his pince-nez…

ME. And the July halo of his 'bankdom' breaks free of the cage of the Muses. How? Why… Former banker? German?

M. The war had only just ended… and there he stood, shining, unshakeable,

ME. eternal —

M. at least in my memory.

ME. Because another thirty years will pass —

M. and my friends, having moved into a new flat,

ME. will furnish it with old, antique furniture.

M. And when I ask where it came from, they will remind me:

ME. 'Do you remember the old woman — '

M. 'Anna Pavlovna? '

ME. 'The professor? Here she is — she lived alone, and left everything to us. Her own legacy.'

(I put one figurine next to another — through the layout.)

M. Yes, and I do remember her — she was grumpy and loud,

ME. more than a bit vulgar,

M. the typical Soviet professor, quite bombastic

ME. and proud that she had begun as a servant

M. and risen to become a doctor of chemical sciences. And for twenty years now,

ME. head of her department at the Mendeleevka!

M. I never even liked her.

ME. She never even noticed me.

M. Well — God be with her, and her inheritance too,

ME. except that her surname came up in conversation.

M. Her long-dead husband —

(M. sets the figure of L. down beside it.)

M. Leve!

ME. Ludwig Karlovich?

M. Yes.

ME. Lord — the things that happen in this world. The two names, joined together in my memory. Two faces surfacing, standing side by side. In my memory. Why mine, though? After all, I was nothing to them — not a son, not a relative, not a student… not even an heir, like my friends. Year after year went by…

M. the map of the world changed, loved ones died —

ME. the closest ones… without them, it seems, one cannot live a single day and simply go on.

M. Breaking through the pale veil of loneliness.

ME. But I lived, yes, I lived on, sometimes marvelling at myself,

M. growing older, and

ME. growing more selfish, and quieter…

(Music.)

But in this silence, sometimes — not often, but with a strange persistence —

ME. (through the layout) I heard the voices.

M. Yes — theirs. Anna Pavlovna’s, and her husband’s…

ME. They seemed to rise out of something mysteriously close to me —

M. out of the most secret memory.

ME. That I can’t explain.

M. I only know that each of us carries it. To hear, to listen to other people’s lives, as they draw near to your own —

ME. they seem to be forgotten,

M. but they never leave,

ME. they linger somewhere close by.

M. And they visit us unexpectedly,

ME. unpredictably — and lift us above our solitude, above our selfishness.

(At first there is only the hiss of an old record — voices barely distinguishable, a needle crackling, as on an old gramophone. Then, gradually, everything grows clearer, more distinct… and the wooden intonations fade.)

ANNA. Mom gave me only this frying pan. I left her in such a hurry. She thrust it at me and said — take care of it, it’s cast iron. A treasure.

LUDWIG. Indeed. I have never seen such perfection. And remarkably lightweight, too!

ANNA. Real cast iron! You can fry the most wonderful eggs on it!

LUDWIG. What else?

ANNA. But I can’t cook anything else. Never tried.

LUDWIG. Well, we shall have to wait for the eggs, then — there’s nothing in the house.

ANNA. And how do you live, then?

LUDWIG. Alone.

(Anna hangs up a cloth.)

ANNA. Not alone — not any longer.

(Firmly.)

I’ve been assigned to you. The order’s been issued.

LUDWIG. This is a great joy.

(Pause. He looks Anna in the eye.)

ANNA. Joy? I thought you’d fight me on it.

(In disbelief, studying him, puzzled.)

LUDWIG. Fight? What for?

(Pause.)

I haven’t left the house in a long while. They must have thought me dead.

ANNA. Yes… They told me as much.

(Dryly.)

Move the body out, they said. Wash the place down. And live here.

LUDWIG. They were wrong.

ANNA. Well — either way, you won’t last long.

LUDWIG. Ah yes, senility… I’m all of thirty-four…

ANNA. Well — I’ll break up this cabinet for firewood, find myself a little stove. It’ll be warmer then. I can wait.

(Her eyes take in the flat. She laughs.)

I’m a patient girl!

(She cleans, moves things about, wipes down surfaces.)

LUDWIG. And where are you from?

ANNA. From Bela Gorod. A long way off!

(Laughs.)

Homesick, I was, the whole journey! There’s no walking, without sweeping first — why’s there so much stuff?

LUDWIG. While I lay ill with typhus, all the rooms were requisitioned. 'Uplotnenia' — that’s the word they use now.

ANNA. And now they’ve got to you.

(Laughs.)

Well, you may as well stay — you’re no trouble to me. Unless you manage to get back on your feet, of course.

(She finds the housing order. Music breaks in — Chopin, entering softly.)

LUDWIG. And what’s your name, dear?

ANNA. Nyusha. Nyura, if you like… But really, I’m Anna.

(Music: 'Anna.')

LUDWIG. Why come to Moscow? With the war still on…

ANNA. Well, to give birth! My father and brothers would’ve killed me, if they’d known. My mother sent me to Moscow, with a faithful man she trusted.

LUDWIG. You? To give birth?

ANNA. You can’t see it yet. I’ve got a big frame.

(She sighs, remembering what she had left behind at home.)

And in a month it’ll be too late…

(Pause.)

I’ve been here since the Pokrov Day…

(She turns the question back on Ludwig, ½ truth, ½ pain.)

Do you think it was easy, getting that warrant for you?

(Hard, speaking of the commissar.)

It’s no wonder I spent three months among the servants of the big commissar.

(Thank God for that.)

It was his wife who helped me, out of everyone’s sight —

(explaining)

oh, how she trembled over her Tibor!

(Slyly.)

I thought I’d take him straight out of her bed…

(His face fades from her thoughts — the music laughs. She hums to herself, wrapping her shawl around her.)

Why are you so quiet?

LUDWIG. (Delirious, murmuring in German…)

ANNA. What’s wrong with you? Do you want to die? Not here — how would I manage alone? I’ve still got to give birth. And you’re a human too, after all. Hey, love! Listen to me… why are you rambling? About what? Hey! Don’t you die now! Here — your summons. This… They’re gathering you up, the former people. Yes! A strict order. You have to go, or you’ll be shot. Do you hear me? Be quiet… Lord, rest the soul of Thy servant…

(Pause. She cries.)

Well then, so be it — I’ll tell them he died! Worn right through…

(Contractions begin. Chopin.)

An angel. Christ, tormented. She weeps…

(That distant conversation drifts away, as though carried off into space… And so, in the time that follows, there will be dialogues by day and by night, confessions spoken and unspoken, explanations offered — not always in chronological order. But no matter. We shall make sense of it as we go.)

LUDWIG. Why are you crying? Am I not dead, then?

ANNA. Well, you didn’t die.

(Sobbing.)

And I’d already divided up the room. I thought I’d throw out your sofa…

LUDWIG. Such a sofa, though!

ANNA. Stupid of me, I know. It should have been burnt. Warm weather’s still two months off.

LUDWIG. Where can I go?

ANNA. That’s exactly what I’m saying — I was hoping you’d die.

LUDWIG. (not immediately) Then why did you nurse me? There’s even milk here… Where did you get fresh eggs from?

ANNA. They sent me eggs from the village.

LUDWIG. I could have sold them.

ANNA. Of course…

(After a pause. Her eyes give her away.)

LUDWIG. Why are you silent?

ANNA. It’s a shame…

(Sighs.)

I could have had such a cheerful room. I’d have had my friends round.

(Brightly.)

I’ve got a job — at the galoshes factory.

LUDWIG. You smell of blue dye!

ANNA. I also thought — since I’ll be on my own, you can wash yourself right there in the room.

LUDWIG. Are you ashamed of me?

(Laughs.)

ANNA. Why should I be, old man? Back in my village, the women never stood on ceremony with the likes of you.

(Boldly.)

LUDWIG. I understand — given your condition, it must be difficult. How is it, at the factory? For a mother-to-be.

ANNA. Well, how else am I to live? I’ve been selling off your books and pictures. Whatever’s dull and heavy — into the stove! Whatever’s pretty — off to the market… And they very nearly caught me at it. Soviet power doesn’t forgive that.

(Unexpectedly.)

I took on a great sin, for you.

(She crosses herself.)

When they came asking, I told them — sure, he died, God rest him. So now you’ve been struck off every list. Off the ration cards too. As far as anyone knows, you don’t exist.

LUDWIG. And if I hadn’t died… you could still turn me out, couldn’t you?

ANNA. Oh, look at the pair of us. Beaten down, robbed blind. You, green with typhus. Me, great with child!

(Sighs. Suddenly.)

You need washing!

LUDWIG. Me? Washed?!

(Horrified.)

ANNA. And afterwards, you’ll wash me.

(Calmly.)

One has to live somehow, doesn’t one? Eh?

(Seriously.)

* * *

AUTHOR. It is hard, from their talk alone, to grasp that these were the hardest years after the Revolution. They were small people, and gave no thought to the happiness of mankind. They were merely defending themselves against it — and it took every last bit of their strength.

History, and the people who live inside it, keep different accounts of time. Great History remembers revolutions, wars, coups, congresses, deviations to the left and to the right. A person remembers typhus, hunger gnawing month after month, the terrible disappearance of loved ones… A person never remembers his own longing as belonging to any particular time — perhaps because it never leaves him. That sorrow, that longing — in youth, and in old age alike…

* * *

(Quietly again, almost in a whisper.)

LUDWIG. Put the photographs back.

(Angry.)

ANNA. I won’t!

(Laughs.)

And who’s this one — striking a pose in her hat?

LUDWIG. That 'poseuse'? My wife.

ANNA. Oh — how frightening. Why’s she so old?

LUDWIG. She isn’t old — only a little stout. And a hat, a train on her dress… does that make a woman old?

ANNA. Was she a lady?

LUDWIG. Well — in a manner of speaking…

(Confused.)

ANNA. And you’re a bit the same, then?

(Laughs, not finishing the thought.)

LUDWIG. No. I was never a gentleman. I am a banker.

(Seriously.)

ANNA. A what?

(Frightened.)

LUDWIG. Chairman of the Moscow–Riga Mutual Credit Bank. My office was on Myasnitskaya Street. I’ll show you, one day.

ANNA. Isn’t that where the People’s Commissariat sits now?

(Puzzled.)

A banker?! You mean — a bookkeeper?

LUDWIG. In a manner of speaking…

(Changing the subject.)

And these are our twins — Karl and Gabi. Gabrielle…

ANNA. Oh, what a muddle! Whoever thought up such names…

(Laughs.)

And who’s this old lady?

LUDWIG. My mother-in-law. Baroness von Dernig.

ANNA. A noblewoman.

(Sighs.)

Oh, there’s a bullet out there with your name on it. The lot of you — the Whites, reactionaries…

(Laughs.)

Ain’t you frightened?

LUDWIG. Why?

ANNA. Why haven’t you left this flat in four months, then? Don’t think I haven’t noticed — you’re afraid, deep down.

(Quietly.)

It’ll pass.

LUDWIG. It will pass…

(Not at once. Pause.)

It will all pass!

ANNA. I might as well have buried them myself — your plump lady, and her children, and her mother-in-law. And there you were, about to die. And then — look at that — I landed on your head instead!

(Mournfully.)

I suppose you were ready to kill me, weren’t you, the moment I turned up in your den? Well? What’s that look for!

(Hushed.)

LUDWIG. What?

(Bewildered.)

ANNA. I’m no young girl, I understand how it is… Here I am, about to give birth to your son… Karl the Second… and you’ll go about like a king on the earth again…

(Half in jest, half in despair.)

LUDWIG. My son?

ANNA. Who else’s would it be? Yours, of course!

LUDWIG. Why are you crying?

(Not at once.)

ANNA. If only you could say one kind word! Always so twisted up… like a crooked scale-beam!

* * *

AUTHOR. The boy died at birth. They never even gave him a name. A month later, Leve and Anna registered their marriage at the registry office. It was April 1926. They walked home together afterwards — no wedding, no witnesses.

* * *

(Anna puts on a gramophone record — a rumba, fashionable at the time.)

LUDWIG. Shall we dance?

(Anna is silent.)

Shall we go to the cinema?

(Anna is silent.)

Shout at me! Strike me, if you must — only don’t be silent!

(Anna is silent.)

LUDWIG. We’ll go on living. Somehow it will all come right…

ANNA. You’re the only one I have left.

(After a pause.)

LUDWIG. Me? All you have?!

(Quietly.)

ANNA. I won’t lose you too. Don’t you dare think it! Stop burying me ahead of time.

LUDWIG. And who else… have you buried?

(Not at once.)

ANNA. Father. Brothers…

LUDWIG. When?!

ANNA. When? When everyone else did! They were cut down — they’d gone over to Makhno. And my mother — she’s three months in the ground now.

LUDWIG. How do you know?

ANNA. Someone I trust told me.

LUDWIG. Someone you trust…

(Repeating.)

ANNA. You’re not the only one who’s faithful to me. So now I’m an orphan through and through.

(Sternly.)

Wronging me is a sin — remember that! God punishes for it!

LUDWIG. You keep so much hidden…

(After a pause.)

ANNA. And you are hard to read, either. Always so silent, silent… How’s one to live safely with you? Such is our love.

LUDWIG. Wrong?

ANNA. Not wrong… no!

(Laughs cheerfully.)

LUDWIG. But love, all the same? The kind they write poems about?

ANNA. Yeah, just like in your Faust!

LUDWIG. Not 'in' Faust — 'of' Faust. Faust… and Marguerite.

(Almost laughing.)

ANNA. Faust… and Marguerite.

(Repeating quietly. She smiles.)

Am I your Marguerite, then?

LUDWIG. I… Ja wohl…

(He reads from Faust, in German, then stops.)

ANNA. More… read more!

(She laughs, she cries. The rumba plays on.)

(Ludwig reads on, louder now, joyfully — almost shouting. Anna begins repeating certain German words after him. Louder… louder… louder — and more and more joyful.)

* * *

AUTHOR. On the twenty-eighth of August, 1927, Ludwig Leve was arrested and exiled to the town of Kandalaksha, where he remained for seven years. Anna wrote to him, sent him packets. She waited. He came back on an April morning in 1934.

* * *

ANNA. Sleep now. Sleep… If you want, sleep a while longer…

LUDWIG. How long have I been asleep?

ANNA. This is the third day already.

LUDWIG. And you never left?

ANNA. Thank God, I’m writing my thesis. It’s worked out well — no need to go running to the faculty.

LUDWIG. You? Nyura? My little Nyusha… writing a thesis? Good Lord!

(Laughs softly.)

ANNA. (Reads from Faust, in German.)

LUDWIG. Do you remember? Marguerite…

ANNA. It always surprises people — how I came by such a pronunciation.

LUDWIG. They must know by now that you have a husband…

ANNA. Maybe they will send me to Germany!

LUDWIG. To Germany! Good God — what happiness! I know, I know — you’ll leave me now. What use am I to you? You’re a specialist. And what am I? An unemployed man. A suspicious character…

ANNA. Tell me instead — how was it? In exile?

(Interrupting.)

LUDWIG. (after a pause) Ordinary enough.

ANNA. Well, what sort of answer is that? 'Ordinary, ordinary'… The day you arrived — ordinary. Now, after three days' sleep — still 'ordinary'!

(Suddenly.)

Were there women, there?

LUDWIG. (after a pause) That’s not a subject for conversation.

ANNA. Between husband and wife?

LUDWIG. Precisely. Between husband and wife.

(Firmly.)

ANNA. Of course. I’ve taken a post at the hospital, you know. Doctors live differently — they get their dinners sent up from the kitchen!

(Unexpectedly.)

Was she pretty? Prettier than me?!

LUDWIG. She is seventy-three years old. And she walks with a cane.

(Calmly.)

ANNA. Ah-ah-ah…

(Still carried along by her anger.)

LUDWIG. Why didn’t you simply write and tell me you’d left me? I would have understood.

ANNA. Because then I’d never have been admitted to the university.

(Almost calmly.)

LUDWIG. You did the richt thing.

ANNA. What?

LUDWIG. I said the word wrong. Yes, yes… you did the right thing. You did!

(Bewildered.)

ANNA. La-la-la…

(Mimicking him.)

LUDWIG. I’ll go.

(Gets up.)

ANNA. Go where? I’ve got everything ready in the house… I bought it all…

(Astonished.)

LUDWIG. I think I’d better go.

(Not at once.)

ANNA. Forgive me.

(Ludwig is silent.)

But you had your own life there, in Kandalaksha. All your sort, no doubt — the former people. Speaking French, speaking German… zierlich-manierlich, so dainty and proper…

LUDWIG. I was a patient. In a psychiatric hospital.

ANNA. What’s wrong with you? What happened to you? Why are you crying?! My dear, dear man!

(Crying to herself.)

God, what have I done!

LUDWIG. You are no fool.

(Calmly.)

You are a living woman. And I am not asking about your men. I won’t ask you anything, now.

(After a pause.)

ANNA. You won’t ask me? Truly, Ludik?

LUDWIG. I won’t ask anyone anything! Six years in that hospital! It’s… it’s…

ANNA. It’s grief, isn’t it?

LUDWIG. No. It isn’t grief.

(Pause.)

It’s worse than that. It’s a kind of — uselessness.

ANNA. So that’s why you scream like that in your sleep.

(Sadly, quietly.)

(Somewhere in the distance, faintly, a rumba plays — music from some absurd wedding. But even that cannot drown out their tears, quiet but unmistakable. They weep together.)

* * *

AUTHOR. One great scientist once said: 'It is time that makes people, not people who make time.' He must have been a kind man — such wholesale forgiveness can only be granted by someone who has suffered a very great deal… who has seen, on this earth, more than his share of baseness, faithlessness, ruin.

Anna Pavlovna took her neighbours to court over the two remaining rooms. How she managed it, God alone knows — but she and Leve had their own flat at last. In the late 1930s, this was nothing short of a miracle. She was a rising young specialist; her photograph appeared in the magazine 'USSR in Construction.' A decorated worker, a sportswoman, a parachutist, a lecturer at women’s clubs, an instructor at the Military Academy of Chemical Defence.

As for Ludwig Karlovich — he would collect the newspapers from the letterbox each morning, buy half a dozen more at the Soyuzpechat kiosk on the corner, then retire to the storeroom and read until dinner. Anna Pavlovna was indignant about it, and he always agreed with her — he was, he said, a 'useless man.'

By the fifth time she heard his confession, Anna Pavlovna understood it for what it was, and laughed. His whole life, after all, now unfolded within the four walls of a single room.

* * *

ANNA. I come home from work, my head spinning, I can barely drag my feet — and the whole flat’s turned upside down! What is all this… timber?

(Almost screaming.)

LUDWIG. Dinner’s ready. On the stove.

ANNA. Who needs this junk?

LUDWIG. This bureau stood in the reception room of Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff.

ANNA. Go and boast about that somewhere else! As if I don’t have enough to put up with from you as it is!

LUDWIG. We’re divorced. I’m not your husband. I’m your housekeeper…

ANNA. Throw the whole lot out! Better to be rid of it!

LUDWIG. Never!

(Calmly.)

ANNA. Then I’ll throw it away!

LUDWIG. Over my dead body!

(Laughs.)

'O Jove, thou art angry! '

ANNA. I’m no Jove! I’m a senior lecturer.

LUDWIG. Assistant — insistent!

(Laughing.)

ANNA. Well, it’s my fault, is it! Satisfied? I scold you out of pure devotion, for your idleness!

(Darkly.)

Do something useful for once!

LUDWIG. Have mercy, woman! Cabinet-making is one of the most honoured trades in the world!

(Laughs.)

Oh, oh, just wait, and you’ll be proud of me. Your Chernopiatov will come crawling here on his knees, begging me to repair his Pavlovian furniture!

(Sincerely.)

It’s in a pitiful state, that furniture.

ANNA. Are you sure you could really become a cabinetmaker? A proper one? Your hands are far too white.

(Not immediately.)

LUDWIG. Me?

(Pause.)

I hadn’t noticed…

(Unexpectedly.)

But what about you… you became a university lecturer. That was even more improbable!

ANNA. Well, I’m not the same as you! I’ve got proletarian roots — and the right kind of application…

(Arrogantly.)

LUDWIG. A Makhnovist father. A mother who was a kulak’s daughter…

(Quietly.)

ANNA. And a husband…

(Sharply.)

A former banker!

(In a whisper.)

What is this — childish babble? Have you gone soft in the head?

(Not at once.)

LUDWIG. Didn’t you see him — the boy in the red shirt? In what used to be the nursery.

(After a long pause.)

ANNA. And you… you saw him too?

(Quietly.)

LUDWIG. Yes…

(Quietly.)

ANNA. So you did see him…

(In a whisper.)

Ts-s-s. He’s sleeping!

I’ll just look in…

(Getting up. Opens the door.)

No one there!

(Giggling, unsure.)

Or did we only imagine it?

LUDWIG. Both of us? No — impossible! He must have run off to the Bauman Garden… Look out of the window! There’s his red shirt — you can see it from here!

ANNA. Chernopiatov’s been arrested.

(Pause)

LUDWIG. So — a vacancy opens.

(Quietly. Pause.)

For you.

(Pleading.)

No, don’t! Anya! Stop this! You can’t build a career walking over corpses!

ANNA. But we have a son! A son!

(Almost screaming.)

LUDWIG. By the way — what is his name?

(Carefully. Anna is silent.)

Valeri! Pavel? Karl?

ANNA. Yes, yes — Valeri! Like Chkalov!

(She runs through the flat, calling out.)

Valeri! Va-le-ri…

(A mother’s voice calls out: 'Valeri? Where are you, Valera! Don’t hide from your mom! ' Then silence. Then, from far off, festive New Year’s music sweeps in — a chiming clock, the roar of a crowd — all of it muffled, distant, and silence falls again. A record crackles, and two old voices sing a romance from the end of the last century — Obukhova and Kozlovsky. The great old front door swings open with a heavy creak. Lively, springy footsteps — a young, self-assured woman. Then the click of a switch, and Anna Pavlovna’s voice.)

ANNA. Why are you sitting here in the dark? All alone?

LUDWIG. Happy New Year! Anna! Come here, let me kiss you…

ANNA. Happy New Year, my dear.

(She kisses her husband.)

And where are your guests?

LUDWIG. The party’s over. An hour ago now. My old bachelors have all gone home to their dens.

ANNA. How old they are — Anani Vikentyevich… Yankel Peisakhovich… Kamzalov…

LUDWIG. You could deal out quite a hand from that lot. Like a game of patience. A staff captain of Denikin’s army. A former contractor to the Artillery Department. A one-time Tolstoyan, now an elder in the Baptist congregation!

(Jokingly. Laughs.)

ANNA. Come on, don’t get us into trouble!

LUDWIG. And don’t forget me! Hereditary honorary citizen of the free city of Königsberg! Member of the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Mariinsky Convent! Or, as they’d put it nowadays — 'vladelets zavodov, domov, parohodov.'

ANNA. Oh, Lord… please, don’t drink any more.

LUDWIG. Today, one may.

ANNA. Just look at yourself — sitting alone, in a dark room… with a bottle…

LUDWIG. Not a bottle — a decanter. An old Dutch decanter… Come, sit by me, professor!

ANNA. I’m not a professor.

(Wearily.)

LUDWIG. It will come soon enough! You’ll be whatever you wish to be.

ANNA. Everyone at the party had eyes only for my dress. You’re a real genius!

LUDWIG. I have long suspected some sort of genius in myself. But why should it wake up in tailoring?! It beggars belief!

ANNA. Cabinetmaker, cook, tailor! By the way, I borrowed a French magazine from the Mahovs. There are the most extraordinary shoes in it! Shoes like little boats!

(Laughs.)

LUDWIG. (almost 'horrified') Don’t tell me that you want me to make you a pair, too!

ANNA. You can do anything! With your golden hands!

(Laughs.)

LUDWIG. I used to think… that I had a golden head!

(Quietly.)

ANNA. What are these presents? A train set?

(Unexpectedly. Pause.)

Who are they for?

LUDWIG. You know.

ANNA. Don’t. Please, don’t.

(Pleading.)

LUDWIG. We must. Or I’ll go out of my mind.

ANNA. You… we… we mustn’t allow ourselves this!

LUDWIG. It’s my own money. I earned it myself!

(Pleading.)

ANNA. I understand everything, believe me! But you’re dying — alone, here, within these four walls. Afraid of everyone, afraid of everything… Brilliant, clever, talented… My gentle one! Ludya… Ludya! Let’s think of something. Shall we?

LUDWIG. Well — I could take a position at the sberkassa, perhaps… Should I? Eh?

ANNA. Perhaps! Maybe so… Once the holidays are over. There’ll be a new year ahead. I’m so afraid of leap years. Well — the fortieth year has passed, now. Nineteen forty-one lies ahead. That’s the year…

(She stops herself.)

Well — perhaps something will finally go right for us. Sure!

(Suddenly.)

Why are you looking at me like that?

LUDWIG. What you’ve become…

(Laughs.)

A champion woman!

ANNA. Ludya, Dudik! My dear! My joy, my sunshine… Will you forgive me everything? You have forgiven me everything, haven’t you?

(She embraces him, kisses him, passionately.)

LUDWIG. I have forgiven you. I will go on forgiving you… Only he will not forgive.

ANNA. Who? Chernopiatov?

LUDWIG. What has Chernopiatov to do with it? He’s ash and dust by now, most likely…

(With difficulty.)

It’s our son who will not forgive.

ANNA. Stop it! Stop torturing me! You’re mad! You’re a fiend! You ought to go back — to Kandalaksha! Back to your psychiatrist!

(Shouting.)

LUDWIG. Quiet — you’ll wake the boy.

(Calmly.)

(In answer — only a strangled, hopeless, feminine groan. And music, swelling gradually until it thunders.)

* * *

AUTHOR. It’s hard to credit, when people say that some big thing awakens in a Russian at the prospect of war. The very next day, Ludwig Karlovich went to enlist as a volunteer — but instead of the front, he was sent to KazLag, as a German, and one of the 'former people.' For two years he bombarded his superiors with requests to be sent to the front. And then — by some miracle — in October 1942, on the eve of the Battle of Stalingrad, he got his wish. He served for more than two years with a heavy artillery battery, and returned to Moscow with two wound stripes and three medals — the most glorious of them 'For Courage.'

There, you see — what war can do to a man. Perhaps all the strength stored up over so many years — the pain, the resentment, the sheer will to live — broke through at last in the soul of this quietest of men, and he became a normal hero: enduring, unbreakable, a meek and courageous soldier. No one, it would seem, could have believed in such a transformation. No one, except Anna.

* * *

(Two voices, in the night. Two happy voices.)

ANNA. Come here… closer! Come here… my sweet, my dear! Oh, kiss me again…

LUDWIG. Oh…

(Laughs.)

Have mercy on me. I may be yesterday’s soldier, but I’m an old man still! Anya… Anya…

ANNA. Say it tenderly — Nyusha! Nyurochka…

LUDWIG. No — Anna. An-na. It’s wonderful. Like the sound of a bell. An-na… an-na… Do you hear it?

(Seriously.)

ANNA. No. I don’t.

(Simply.)

LUDWIG. Oh, you funny thing. What a lucky man I am! I never knew how much I loved you. There was not a night, not a day, that I didn’t dream of you. I never thought of it, never called it to mind… how you walk — like a queen… Oh, and when you smile —

ANNA. How angry I look, you mean?

LUDWIG. Like a queen!

(Kisses her.)

Empresses are made of women like you…

ANNA. Catherine…

LUDWIG. No! She was German, after all!

ANNA. Well, then I’m German too…

(Laughs.)

For my husband’s sake!

LUDWIG. No! You are Elizaveta Petrovna. Anna Ioannovna!

ANNA. Elizaveta, then, if I have to choose.

(Quietly. Laughs quietly, happily.)

Here we are, just like everyone else — the husband gone to the front, the wife evacuated, the son…

(She breaks off.)

LUDWIG. The son… is growing up. With his grandmother.

(Quietly.)

ANNA. Don’t. Stop doing this…

(Sharply.)

LUDWIG. All right — I’ll stop.

(Silence.)

ANNA. Now you might even think about a job… after all, you’re a front-line soldier!

(Small pause.)

LUDWIG. About that, then…

(Softly.)

ANNA. What, then?

LUDWIG. Well — not now, not in the middle of the night. Should I go and present myself to some personnel department?

(Laughs.)

Was that a little frown I saw?

ANNA. They say a woman can be happy, sometimes.

LUDWIG. Are you happy?

ANNA. Oh!

LUDWIG. Happy with me? Or were you happier, out there in evacuation — without me!

ANNA. Whatever happened during the evacuation doesn’t count!

LUDWIG. So there was something, after all?

ANNA. Ugh — I need a drink! I feel as though I’ve swallowed a whole bucket of dust. You know — well-water, so cold it makes your teeth ache!

(Jumping up. Laughs.)

Why are you looking at me like that?

LUDWIG. Wait, wait! There — just like that… How beautifully the light falls on you! If only you could see yourself!

ANNA. Someone once told me I looked like a Rubens woman.

(Laughs, pleased.)

LUDWIG. If only I could photograph you. It’s quite common now, having a personal camera.

(Unexpectedly.)

ANNA. So take one, then!

(Quietly.)

Might it do you good?

LUDWIG. I’ve done enough shooting to last a lifetime.

(After a small pause)

Come here…

(Quietly.)

ANNA. But… Ludya! Ludik…

LUDWIG. Come back to your senses!

(Sternly.)

The war is over.

(Clearly, but quietly.)

(After a brief but turbulent musical interlude, an extraordinary silence falls — the kind of silence of which it is said, 'not a blade stirs in the field.' Only the drowsy heat of a July noon… the whisper of leaves, the flash of swallows flying in pairs. And then silence again, heat, languor…)

LUDWIG. Sleep, Valerochka, sleep… You’re overheated, I suppose, from the sun. And if you’ll let me, I’ll sit here with you a while. Let me just cover your back — the wind can be dangerous for you.

(He speaks quietly, seriously, calmly… almost happily. Pause.)

That’s better.

(He murmurs something to himself.)

Our mother — our dear mother — is examining students at the institute, in all this heat. Then she’ll go on to the department. And you know what times these are… all this struggle against wrong ideas, against 'cosmopolitanism.'

(Laughs softly.)

You probably don’t even know what that means. I’d explain it to you, but I dare say my explanation would sound strange. After all, I myself am something of a cosmopolitan, in my own way… Born in Warnemünde, near Rostock — that’s in Germany. Educated, one way or another, in St Petersburg, or in Riga, or in Belgium, at the Catholic University of Leuven.

(Laughs.)

Almost like my own name. But not yours — your surname, like our mother’s, is Abrikosov. You’ll be better off that way. No one will ask you again — not the police, not the queue at the shop, not the hotel clerk — 'How’s that spelled? Leva? No — not Leva. Leve.' And then all the trouble that comes with it, over one’s origins. I could spell it in French, too, if it came to that — my grandfather was a Levé, a French surname; my other grandfather was German. Both grandmothers were Jewish.

(Chuckles.)

Ha, not the best to have in one’s passport, these days.

(After a pause)

But what shall we do about a patronymic? Well — you won’t need your passport for another year yet.

(Quiet, distant music, faintly like a rumba.)

Lord, how good it is here… The quiet, the village, the sun, the green all around. And you are with me.

(Barely audible.)

With me forever.

(He pauses.)

And don’t argue with your mother. She’s the one who sent us here. It’s always been a good place. I remember — a long time ago, before you were born, fine people lived out here. I worked here myself once, you know — sent by the government. No need to judge them for it; nearly all of them died, afterwards. And you and I — we’re alive.

(Laughs, happy.)

And we have our mother. She’s a great woman. A truly great woman. She protects us. She hides us — yes, even out here, hundreds of miles from Moscow! And she does it not only for herself, but for us too. If anyone found out about you and me now — where would we be, eh? And our dear mother — head of her department, isn’t she? A Stalin laureate! She has no shortage of enemies, and you know how she deals with them.

(Laughs.)

Out of nowhere, just like that!

(Laughs.)

And here we are, quite safe, forgotten by everyone. You and I…

(Chuckles.)

…simply struck off every list. Deleted from life. But we’re alive, my boy. We’re alive! And we’re together!

(He is choked by a sudden rush of tears.)

Don’t think about any of that now. I’ll read to you in German. Remember what we agreed — you must learn your languages well, English and French — and you hear German every day, from me. So… listen. You learn just as well in your sleep, you know — even better than when you’re awake… Now then — Goethe. Faust. Where had we got to? Yes… just before the hero’s monologue, in the third act.

(He reads, at first quietly, then with growing feeling, more and more measured, reading almost royally — as though the finest, highest part of him had never left him at all.)

* * *

AUTHOR. Scientists say the human body carries a sixfold margin of biological strength — enough to live three or four hundred years. So, it is said, the people of the Bible once lived. We can hardly hope for such a span ourselves. And yet, sometimes, it seems to us that so endless a life would be more punishment than blessing. Not because of earthquakes or hurricanes, not drought or eruption, not even revolution or famine, war or plague — but because of what we call, quite vaguely, 'human relations.'

I cannot say exactly when Ludwig Karlovich died. No — I do not know. It seems that Anna Pavlovna outlived her husband by fifteen years or so. But back in the mid-60s, this elderly, cultivated couple could still be seen on Tverskoy Boulevard on almost any fine day. People turned to look at them. They dressed, almost always, in loose black clothes, and seemed to belong to another, vanished world. And yet, at the same time, they looked like survivors — like winners. They had come through so very much. They rarely spoke to one another, and yet it was obvious that they were close, and deeply devoted to one another.

* * *

LUDWIG. Forgive me, Anya. I gave you so little, in all our years together.

ANNA. You loved me. What more could there be?

LUDWIG. I promised to show you Paris. Italy… London. And you and I never got further than Kyiv.

ANNA. Is that what matters?

LUDWIG. That, too.

(After a pause.)

I have lived three lives. My youth — in Europe, before that first war. Then my first family, my first happiness, a career, some wealth… And then — a third life. Made up of nothing but you. And you — you lived only that last one. With me.

ANNA. How do you know that?

(After a small pause.)

LUDWIG. I know.

ANNA. How can you know? There was a career. Science… a name for myself. Almost glory. I’ve had many men, yes — I was beloved, and I loved.

(Sharply.)

LUDWIG. But you always came home. Where I was waiting.

ANNA. Yes… And sometimes you’d turn away, so as not to see how happy my eyes were.

LUDWIG. Or how full of hatred?

ANNA. No! That… you only imagined.

(Not immediately.)

You’ve been everything to me — father and child, and husband, and my whole heart. You. Only ever you.

LUDWIG. You have always been a cruel woman. How many people have you… have you crushed, just to step over them.

(After a pause.)

ANNA. But I had someone to protect. I regret nothing.

LUDWIG. Not even Chernopiatov’s death?

(Not immediately.)

ANNA. Right… Chernopiatov?

(Shuddering.)

He was my first love.

(Not immediately.)

LUDWIG. And here I always believed… that I was your first love?

(After a pause.)

ANNA. No… You were something else.

(Quietly.)

You, and Valeri.

LUDWIG. Don’t! We agreed — the two of us. We are cured. Both of us. Long ago.

(Sharply.)

ANNA. You! And our son!

(Stubbornly. Pause.)

He was never here — so what! He was here! He howled in our hearts. In how we cared for him. In each of us.

LUDWIG. Don’t…

ANNA. No — he’ll come. He’ll come, later on.

(Laughs.)

You see, I’m starting to talk just like you always did…

LUDWIG. Like the two of us, together.

(Laughs.)

ANNA. You see that lieutenant, over there? Tall, dark-haired… Could he have grown to be like that? Truly? Or — only yesterday, some postgraduates came to the Institute on exchange, from the GDR. One of them… well. The very image of you, at his age.

LUDWIG. You never even saw me young!

ANNA. You forgave me everything. Who else on this earth could’ve understood me so well? Even I never understood myself.

(Not immediately.)

LUDWIG. Now, it seems, you do.

(Quietly.)

ANNA. It seems so…

LUDWIG. Forgive me… but a very long time ago now. When we first met.

ANNA. Don’t!

LUDWIG. I must say it. When I had, in every sense, been lost to the world — lost to myself as a man — I saw you. And I thought, quite suddenly: even a wolf cub can be tamed!

(Persistent, but gentle.)

ANNA. Oh, worse. A she-wolf.

(Quietly.)

LUDWIG. Perhaps. And if I could do it — if I was still man enough to try — then she would become a human being. And then a whole life would no longer be without meaning. Not only mine — all of life, in general, would make sense. And carry some further meaning. Yes! If savagery can become culture… if the beast can become human… if deafness can learn to hear a melody…

ANNA. No more… I’m an old woman now. I understand a few things too.

LUDWIG. And what is it you understand?

(Laughs.)

ANNA. I understand!

LUDWIG. Well? What, then?

(Persisting.)

ANNA. I woke, once, in the night, and looked at your face — so gentle, so kind. Such a childish face! And I thought…

(After a small pause. Sighs.)

Is it truly a person’s fate — to 'devour life'? To bite into it, to crack it open? Is all of life really just one great feeding trough?

LUDWIG. Anechka…

(Kisses her.)

ANNA. No — Anna.

(Through tears.)

Remember, you once told me — 'Anna, like a bell! ' An-na… An-na… An-na…

LUDWIG. Do you see him coming towards us?

(Quietly.)

ANNA. Who? What’s wrong with you? Man… man! Get hold of yourself!

LUDWIG. Hush… he’s coming… he’s close now… look at him. Beautiful — so like you! He has your eyes. Slender, and bright, like a young poplar. Lord — it’s him. Look. It’s him… our… son!

(A short cry from an old woman… an ambulance siren… a heartbeat, resounding, catching, then another… rapid, irregular… and then, at last, silence. With, far off, music; a soft woman’s cry; some faint, almost inaudible good news. And then, as though in mockery, surfacing suddenly from a place where everyone had long since forgotten it — a rumba, from the 1920s, rising up out of Lethe…)

* * *

AUTHOR. For a long time afterwards, Anna Pavlovna remained — wayward, sharp-tongued, adrift… always seeming to listen for that one voice, which she had grown more used to than her own. Her face wore, almost always, a preoccupied look, as though she were weighing something of great importance, something she would, sooner or later, have to answer for. Later, perhaps — even in another life. We, the young, took all this for nonsense, for an old woman’s whims… I understand now that she never much cared for us; other faces stood before her eyes, another life that flickered and beckoned and vanished, 'promising only a meeting still to come.' Now I think it was she who was right, and not us. She paid so much — with her whole life — to make out, in the impenetrable fog of that brutal age, in the loneliness common to every fate, something truesome, something to be trusted… something her strange companion had shown her — her slave, her husband, her god.

And now that both of them have been gone for many years, the bright face of their son, his eyes open to the world, seems to me to rise more and more often out of the darkness, out of dreams… out of the very muteness of our own time. And sometimes, he seemingly flashes past in an evening crowd — with a smile, perhaps, or a flicker of hope, or a promise that we shall survive. That we shall be saved. Because we are not the first. And we will not be the last.

FIN