Marina Carr: Plays 3 (eBook)

Suvorin This the best you can do?

Waiter We’re overbooked, sir.

Suvorin (nods to someone) This place is gone to the dogs. Next I’ll be dining with nurses. Vodka. Blini. Caviar.

Waiter Yes, sir.

Suvorin Well if it isn’t the escaped convict.

I’ve missed you.

Anton Good to be back in Petersburg. This city is intoxicating if you could get rid of the people.

Suvorin Wait till I take you to Europe.

Anton Are you taking me to Europe?

Suvorin Next month. We’re going to see Duse, we’re going to La Fenice, we’re going to Monte Carlo. We’re going to kiss Il Papa. On the lips.

Anton But I just got back. I’m broke.

Suvorin When did that ever stop you?

Anton Beginning to feel like a kept woman.

I have to settle down, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me. I have to work, read, I’m a complete ignoramus. Hong Kong was fantastic, fell for a Jap, didn’t get out of bed for three days. Have you ever done it with an Oriental?

Suvorin Have you ever done it with two Orientals?

Anton They’re very straightforward aren’t they, almost manly, none of this coyness and simpering you get from Russian women about how you’ve ruined them just because you’ve given them their first decent orgasm. Good to see you, Alexei.

Suvorin And your cough?

Anton Gone. No blood for eight months. Everyone should go across Siberia in a horse and cart.

Suvorin You’re crazy. Crazy.

Anton Yeah, so they’re saying in the papers, taking the complete piss out of me. Your hacks are the most vicious. Why do you let them take your friend down like that?

Suvorin Freedom of opinion.

Anton Freedom? We don’t know the meaning of the word. It’s a fuckin’ police state we live in. Spies everywhere, censors butchering everything I write.

Suvorin I protect you from the worst of them.

Anton Why do they hate me so much? People I’ve never met, spoken to?

Suvorin They hate you because you’re brilliant.

Anton Plenty out there good as me. They say the stupidest things. I’m a very simple man, I love lying in a field of new-mown hay, love fishing, being around beautiful women, and they want to kill me over a few little stories and plays.

Suvorin If it’s any consolation they hate me too.

Anton And so they should. You run the press. You’re a powerful man. Me? What am I? My grandfather was a slave who had to buy his own freedom, his wife’s, his son’s, he didn’t have enough to buy his own daughter back but they threw her in as a bonus – so she could do the washing-up I suppose.

Suvorin Don’t you understand that’s precisely the reason?

Anton Because my father was born a serf?

Suvorin You’re a maverick, a peasant who has risen above his station. The ones who hold the reins in this godforsaken hole of a country are all gentry or what passes for gentry. You’re an upstart, Anton Pavlovich. Why don’t you go back to your hovel and chaw on your turnip? They’re afraid of you. God knows what you might write next. They have to keep you down. Use it. Turn it on them. Drive them mad. What do they know about anything? Rotten to the core, snub me all the time. I’m one of the richest men here in Pete. Do they invite me in? I have to fight for a table in a decent restaurant. I’m here most nights and look where they put me? While Count Gaga over there dribbling into his kasha, who hasn’t paid a bill since the Napoleonic wars and won’t ever, has the pick of the room. Let him. He’ll never understand what it is to be self-made, to be born without privilege, and he’ll never, never, know the thrill of wrestling the world to the ground.

Anton It’s disgusting if that’s the way it is.

Suvorin They read you, albeit with malice, trying to catch you out, but they do read you. What more do you want?

Anton I want it all. Houses, children, I suppose that means a wife, you can’t really have children without one. But please God and his holy mother not a wife yet.

Suvorin What is it with you young men and marriage?

Anton I’d have to poison her. Waking up with this lump beside you, it’s not natural.

Suvorin Nothing wrong with a wife about the place as long as you don’t get too involved.

Anton Some of us are stupid enough to believe in love.

Suvorin It’s not important.

Anton Some die for it. Some kill. It is important.

Suvorin And how is Lika?

Anton Don’t talk to me about that one. She ran off with my friend, my ex-friend.

Suvorin Who?

Anton Potapenko.

Suvorin I thought he was married.

Anton Well, of course he is, and now the little trollop is pregnant somewhere between Paris and Berlin, writing me the most heartbreaking letters. He doesn’t give a damn about her.

Suvorin Well, he got her on the rebound.

Anton I never finished with her. I just didn’t jump when she said jump. And now I’m expected to leap into the breach and rescue her and unborn child from the whole sorry mess.

Suvorin And why don’t you?

Anton After what she’s done? No way! I’m rid of her now.

Suvorin But it rankles.

Anton She’s made her bed as they say, besides she wasn’t bright enough, and I’ve a very low tolerance for those without the spark. Anyway what use would I be to a woman? Grigorovich told me I’ll be dead by forty. (Raises his glass.) Well, here’s to an early exit.

Suvorin How dare he say that to you? I don’t care if he is Grigorovich.

Anton He dared. You know why? Because he’s lived his whole life as a dare. That gives him the right. The maestro speaking. He also blessed me. He was the first to tell me I could write, that I wasn’t a hack, and at a time when I didn’t know who or what I was. You don’t forget people like Grigorovich. You pay attention and every silver lining has its cloud. So? Live with it. Besides it wasn’t news, only confirms what I already know. (Drinks.) Sakhalin was an eye-opener.

Waiter Are you ready to order now, sir?

Suvorin Get us a better table first.

Waiter It’ll be a while.

Suvorin We have time. I’m sick watching the rats waltzing across the borscht and your chef scratching his arse with the teapot. Look at him! Look at him! When I was in prison the biggest stick they could threaten you with was Sakhalin.

Anton And well they might. I arrived at night, fires all over the island, smoke like great dragons swirling in the wind as if some God had taken off his hat and tossed his hair. It was straight out of Dante or Bosch....