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?
Natalie leaves. Emma takes the basket and upends it. A single virulent toadstool falls out.
HERZEN I idolised Rousseau when I was young … Man in his natural state, uncorrupted by civilisation, desiring only those things which are good to desire …
GEORGE Oh, yes.
HERZEN … and everybody free to follow their desires without conflicts, because they’d all want the same things …
EMMA Where’s Natalie?
GEORGE Didn’t she come back?
HERZEN She’ll be rounding up the nurse and the children.
GEORGE (to Emma) My love, what do you think? We’re going to share a house with Alexander and Natalie in Nice! He’s going to go on ahead and find a place.
EMMA Why … why leave Paris?
HERZEN We belong to Egypt, not to the Promised Land. The people faltered. I wouldn’t insult them by absolving them. They had no programme, and no sovereign brain to carry one out. The Sovereign People are our invention. The masses are more like a phenomenon in nature, and nature isn’t interested in our fantasy that ink is action. Ask George. We’re dupes.
Natalie enters.
HERZEN (cont.) (to Natalie) I’m a dupe. Well and good. We, too, will look to our faults—our passions and vices—and prepare ourselves by living by our ideals in a republic of our own. We are many!—Nine, counting my mother and the children.
NATALIE The children must be hungry. I’m starving.
TURGENEV It’s going to rain.
HERZEN (to Natalie) George has offered to escort you and the children on your journey south. (to Emma) Your husband is kindness itself.
GEORGE (to Emma) And when you’ve had the baby, you’ll join us.
EMMA (to Herzen) There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.
NATALIE Come on—we can go in that empty cottage.