FEDYA: No—
ANNA: What did you want? Did you want me to betray you? And now, is it that I’m supposed to deny you—?
FEDYA: Deny me?
ANNA: To give you yet another thing to mourn for—?
FEDYA: It wasn’t to test you—
ANNA: Another excuse to do nothing, to run from all you might achieve—?
FEDYA: To test my fate. My fate. To see if the past would be allowed to rest. Or if it would rise up and bury me.
ANNA: What do you want me to do? Just say. Do you want to live, Fyodor Mikhailovich? Or do you want to die?
FEDYA: Before I fell ill—in the clear moments that come before the darkness—I was again in front of the firing squad, Anna… waiting for the order to fire. And an abyss opened out at my feet. A chance to save myself. I knew I must jump—could see no other answer but to jump. But I couldn’t move. Not from the fear of it—the fear of not making it to the other side—but because of all I wasn’t yet prepared to abandon. It was trading one manner of freedom for another. One manner of imprisonment. I was frozen to the spot…
It became clear to me then. Clear as it had never been before. What I must write. How I must live. It was a revelation. That I can live again. That even among the darkest and ugliest aspects of life, I can live. As long as my soul is free—as long as my mind is not captive…
Agreeing to life, Anna—agreeing to God—they’re acts of will. Like forgiveness. Like love.
ANNA: Forgiveness can’t be deliberated, Fyodor Mikhailovich. Nor love. We can only answer what’s in our hearts.
A long beat.
FEDYA: Could she love him, Anechka?
Could she?
A beat.
ANNA leads him back to the table. Sits him down. Hands him a new notebook, a pen.
A beat.
He returns to the fire, salvages a page or two of the notebook, takes them back with him to the desk.
As ANNA continues to work to bring order to the flat,
FEDYA bends his head, begins to write.
Copyright Page
CURRENCY THEATER SERIES
First published in 2014
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia
in association with La Mama Theatre
First digital edition published in 2014 by Currency Press Pty Ltd
The Paracide copyright © Diane Stubbings, 2014
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Performance Rights
Any performance or public reading of The Parricide is forbidden unless a licence has been received from the author or the author’s agent. The purchase of this book in no way gives the purchaser the right to perform the play in public, whether by means of a staged production or a reading. All applications for public performance should be addressed to the author c/– Currency Press.
Printed ISBN: 9781925005097
ePub ISBN: 9781925004762
mobi ISBN: 9781925004779
Cover image: Vasily Perov, Portrait of F.M. Dostoyevsky. Source: Google Art Project
Cover design by Peter Mumford.