BELINSKY (embarrassed) When I said Paris was a swamp of bourgeois greed and vulgarity, I meant apart from my dressing gown.
NATALIE It’s beautiful, you were right to get it. (showing her shopping) Now, see here, look—you can’t go home without something for your daughter …
BELINSKY Thank you …
SASHA Look, Kolya …
NATALIE Leave it alone! Come on, out you go … (to Nurse) Prenez les enfants …
SASHA (to Belinsky) They’re all girls’ things.
BELINSKY Yes … I had a little boy, but he died.
MOTHER Come on, my lamb, let’s go and see Tata … come, Sasha … a big boy like you, you want to play all the time …
HERZEN Oh, let him be a child, Maman.
Turgenev takes off the dressing gown. Natalie takes it and wraps it loosely.
NATALIE (to Turgenev) You’ve been in London?
TURGENEV Just for a week.
NATALIE Don’t be mysterious.
TURGENEV I’m not. Some friends of mine, the Viardots …
NATALIE You went to hear Pauline Viardot sing?
TURGENEV I wanted to see London.
NATALIE (laughs) All right, then, tell me what London is like.
TURGENEV Very foggy. Streets full of bulldogs …
Meanwhile, Mother, Sasha and Kolya negotiate their way out with the Nurse. Kolya leaves his top behind.
They encounter MICHAEL BAKUNIN entering. He is thirty-five, grandly bohemian. He greets Mother, kisses the children, and helps himself to a glass from the Servant’s salver.
BAKUNIN The Russians are here! (He kisses Natalie’s hand.) Natalie.
HERZEN Bakunin. Who’s with you?
BAKUNIN Annenkov and Botkin. We kept our cab—they’ve gone for two more.
NATALIE Good—we’re all going to the station.
BAKUNIN Sazonov! Mon frère! (confidentially) The green canary flies tonight—ten o’clock—usual place—pass it on.
SAZONOV I told you.
BAKUNIN (to George and Emma) I knew George was here. I could smell eau de cologne in the street. You’re supposed to drink it, you know, that’s the whole thing about German water—(to Belinsky) You didn’t waste your time in Salzbrunn dabbing it behind your ears, I hope. Turgenev! (He draws Turgenev aside.) This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.
TURGENEV No.
BELINSKY Is it time to go?
HERZEN Plenty of time.
BAKUNIN Belinsky!—Herzen says your letter to Gogol is a work of genius, he calls it your testament.
BELINSKY That doesn’t sound too hopeful.
BAKUNIN Listen, why go back to Russia? The Third Section’s got a cell all ready for you.
NATALIE Stop it!
BAKUNIN Bring your wife and daughter to Paris. Think of it—you could publish free of censorship.
BELINSKY That’s enough to put anyone off.
BAKUNIN What are you talking about? You could publish your letter to Gogol, and everyone would read it.
BELINSKY It wouldn’t mean anything … in this din of hacks and famous names … filling their columns every day with their bellowing and bleating and honking … it’s like a zoo where the seals throw fish to the public. None of it seems serious. At home the public look to writers as their real leaders. The title of poet or novelist really counts with us. Writers here, they think they’re enjoying success. They don’t know what success is. You have to be a writer in Russia, even one without much talent, even a critic … My articles get cut by the censor, but a week before the Contemporary comes out, students hang around Smirdin’s bookshop asking if it’s arrived yet … and then they pick up every echo the censor missed, and discuss it half the night and pass copies around … If the writers here only knew, they’d pack their bags for Moscow and St Petersburg.
He is met with silence. Then Bakunin embraces him, and Herzen, mopping his eyes, does likewise.
EMMA Sprecht Deutsch, bitte! [Speak German, please!]
Herzen, still moved, raises his glass to the room. The Russians soberly raise their glasses, toasting.
HERZEN Russia. We know. They don’t. But they’ll find out.
The Russians drink the toast.
BAKUNIN And I never said goodbye to you when I left.
BELINSKY We weren’t speaking.
BAKUNIN Ah—philosophy! Great days!
NATALIE (to Belinsky) Now, what about your wife?
BELINSKY Cambric handkerchiefs.
NATALIE That’s not very romantic.
BELINSKY Well, she’s not.
NATALIE Shame on you.
BELINSKY She’s a schoolteacher.
NATALIE What’s that got to do with it?
BELINSKY Nothing.
BAKUNIN (to Belinsky) Well, I’ll see you soon in St Petersburg.
HERZEN How can you go home? You’ve been sentenced in absentia for not going home when they summoned you.
BAKUNIN YOU forget about the revolution.
HERZEN What revolution?
BAKUNIN The Russian revolution.
HERZEN I’m sorry, I haven’t seen a paper today.
BAKUNIN The Tsar and all his works will be gone within a year, or two at the most.
SAZONOV (emotionally) We were children of the Decembrists. (to Herzen) When you were arrested, by some miracle they overlooked me and Ketscher.
HERZEN This is not a sensible conversation. There will have to be a European revolution first, and there’s no sign of it. There’s no movement among the people here. The opposition has no faith in itself. Six months ago meeting Ledru-Rollin or Louis Blanc in a café felt like being a cadet talking to veterans. Their superior condescension to a Russian seemed only proper. What had we got to offer? Belinsky’s articles and Granovsky’s lectures on history. But these celebrities of the left spend their time writing tomorrow’s headlines and hoping that someone else will make the news to go with them. And don’t they know what’s good for us! Virtue by decree. They’re building prisons out of the stones of the Bastille. There’s no country in the world that has shed more blood for liberty and understands it less. I’m going to Italy.
BAKUNIN (excitedly) Forget about the French. Polish independence is the only revolutionary spark in Europe. I’ve been here six years and I know what I’m talking about. I’m in the market for a hundred rifles, by the way, payment in cash.