The noise of insurrection increases.
21 JUNE 1848
Street.
[From Turgenev’s Literary Reminiscences: ‘At first there was nothing particular that I could see … But the farther I went the more did the appearance of the boulevard change. Carriages became less frequent, the omnibuses disappeared completely; the shops and cafés were being hastily closed … there were many fewer people in the street. On the other hand, all the windows of the houses were open, and a great number of people, mostly women, children, maids and nursemaids, were crowded in the doorways. They were all talking, laughing, not shouting but calling to one another, looking round, waving their hands—as though in expectation of some pageant. A light-hearted, festive curiosity seemed to have taken possession of people. Ribbons of many colours, kerchiefs, caps, white, pink, blue dresses shimmered and glittered, rose and rustled in the light summer breeze … The uneven line of the barricade, about eight feet high, came into sight. In the middle of it, surrounded by other tricolour and gold-embroidered banners, a small red flag fluttered with its ominous pointed tongue … I moved a little nearer. The space just in front of the barricade was almost deserted, only a few men walking to and fro in the roadway. The workers exchanged jokes with the spectators in the street who came up to them … One of them, with a white soldier’s sword-belt round his waist, held out an uncorked bottle and a half-filled glass to them, as if inviting them to come up and have a drink; another, next to him, with a double-barrelled gun over his shoulder, yelled in a drawn-out voice, “Long live the democratic and socialist republic!” Beside him stood a black-haired woman in a striped dress, also with a sword-belt and a revolver thrust in it; she alone did not laugh … Meanwhile the sound of drums drew nearer and grew louder …’]
Natalie, carrying Kolya, the Nurse pushing a stroller containing a three-year-old (TATA), as it were, and Mother holding Sasha’s hand, hurry across the street. Sasha carries a tricolour on a pole, which encumbers him.
NATALIE Oh God—oh God—quickly … There were omnibuses full of corpses.
MOTHER You must be calm for the children …
Herzen meets them and takes Kolya.
HERZEN (to Sasha) Go with Mama. What are you doing with that?
SASHA Benoit says to wave it for the Garde Mobile!
HERZEN Go inside.
NATALIE Did you see?
HERZEN Yes.
NATALIE The omnibuses?
HERZEN Yes.
Rachel’s voice is heard again … but ‘The Marseillaise’ is drowned out in volleys of rifle fire.
27 JUNE 1848
There is a transition to the interior, with cheerful music heard from the street.
Kolya remains with Herzen and sits on the floor with his top. Turgenev is with Herzen. Benoit delivers some letters to Herzen on a salver and leaves.
TURGENEV Have you been out? It’s amazing how life settles back. The theatres are open. There’s carriages in the streets again, and ladies and gentlemen inspecting the ruins as if they were in Rome. To think it was only on Friday morning the laundress who brought my washing said, ‘It’s started!’ And then four days shut away in this awful heat, listening to the guns, knowing what must be happening and helpless to do anything … oh, that was torture.
HERZEN But with clean laundry.
TURGENEV I trust if we’re going to have this conversation—
HERZEN I didn’t invite conversation. If I were you, I’d take avoiding action. These four days could make one hate for a decade.
TURGENEV I’ll go, then. (Pause.) But allow me to express the opinion that somebody must do your laundry, too.
HERZEN Letter from Granovsky! Just wait till he hears! (He opens the letter.) All you liberals are splashed with blood no matter how you tried to keep your distance. Yes, I have a laundress, possibly several, how would I know? The whole point of the serving class is that the rest of us, the fortunate minority, can concentrate on our higher destinies. Intellectuals must be allowed to think, poets to dream, landowners to own land, dandies to perfect their cravats. It’s a kind of cannibalism. The uninvited are necessary to the feast. I’m not a sentimental moralist. Nature, too, is merciless. So long as a man thinks it’s the natural order of things for him to be eaten and for another to eat, then who should regret the death of the old order if not we who write our stories or go to the opera while others do our laundry? But once people realise the arrangement is completely artificial, the game is up. I take comfort in this catastrophe. The dead have exposed the republican lie. It’s government by slogan for the sake of power, and if anyone objects, there’s always the police. The police are the realists in a pseudo-democracy. From one regime to the next, power passes down the system until it puts its thumbprint on every policeman’s forehead like the dab of holy oil at an emperor’s coronation. The conservatives can’t keep the smiles off their faces, now they know the whole thing was a confidence trick. The liberals wanted a republic for their own cultivated circle. Outside it they’re conservatives. They cheered on Cavaignac’s butchers while wringing their hands with their fingers crossed. Well, now we know what the reactionaries have always known: liberty, equality and fraternity are like three rotten apples in their barrel of privilege, even a pip could prove fatal—from now on it’s all or nothing, no quarter, no mercy.
TURGENEV (mildly) You sound like Belinsky, adjusting some poet’s reputation … Do you think there’s something Russian about taking everything to extremes?
HERZEN No doubt. Single-minded conviction is a quality of youth, and Russia is young. (pointedly) Compromise, prevarication, the ability to hold two irreconcilable beliefs, both with ironic detachment—these are ancient European arts, and a Russian who finds them irresistible is, I would say, exceptional.
TURGENEV (disingenuously) How interesting that you should say that. Because I myself, you see—
Herzen, despite himself, laughs, and Turgenev laughs with him, but almost at once his laughter turns to anger.
TURGENEV (cont.) Putting yourself in another’s place is a proper modesty, and yes, it takes centuries to learn it. Impatience, pig-headed stubbornness to the point of destruction—yes, these are things to be forgiven in the young, who lack the imagination to see that almost nothing in this life holds still, everything is moving and changing—
HERZEN (with Granovsky’s letter, cries out) Who is this Moloch who eats his children?
TURGENEV Yes, and your taste for melodramatic, rhetorical—