FEDYA: All rescinded—
KOLYA: Because they’ve decided they’d rather turn themselves into powder kegs and blow Russia apart at the first opportunity.
FEDYA: They need a keener hand to guide them. That’s all. Someone who’ll steer them away from all this talk of destruction—
KOLYA: You’re thinking you?
FEDYA: Some sway in the order of things. A voice—
KOLYA: We’re to let them loose in government now? Keep extending political rights to those who’ve no idea what to do with them—?
FEDYA: There is in your thinking a defect that I both hate and despise.
KOLYA: Until you need my money.
We were on the same side of this once.
FEDYA: Were we?
KOLYA: You know we were.
Determined to break the power of the censors, no matter what. Pushing for the freedom of the serfs—
FEDYA: This is the history you cling to—?
KOLYA: Proof that change can come—will come—but in its time—
FEDYA: Because I don’t remember it, Kolya. You standing beside me on the scaffold while I waited my turn/ to die—
KOLYA: What chance did I have? Chained up/ in their stinking hole—
FEDYA: If I knew the students who planted the bombs, I’d not name them.
No matter the circumstances.
I would not name them.
A long beat.
KOLYA: Write your book, Fedya. Let that be the hand that guides Russia forward.
FEDYA busies himself with his papers.
KOLYA exits.
A beat.
FEDYA takes his coat. Exits to the street. Tears a flyer from the doorpost as he passes.
The sound of a roulette wheel.
SCENE SIXTEEN
The sound of the wheel morphs into the steady rhythm of a printing press. KARAKOZOV in a dark room working the presses. There are others there with him, but he is the only one we see.
STUDENT/S [off] We will be committed.
We will have no interests of our own.
No relations.
No attachments.
No possessions.
No name.
Everything in us immersed in this one singular passion…
SCENE SEVENTEEN
FEDYA and ANNA working. As ANNA takes dictation, FEDYA juggles all his scraps of papers, getting them in the right order. He is energised—barely stops for breath. ANNA struggles to keep up.
FEDYA: [dictating] …and, by some strange perversity, I made a point of putting all my money on it, taking mad risks, a terrible craving to dare possessing me. The sensation that gripped my soul, not killing my desire, no, but feeding it, stirring it, stronger and stronger, until my spirit was entirely spent, until there was nothing left of the man I knew myself to be, of the man—
ANNA: Slower!
FEDYA: Slower?
ANNA: If you have any pity.
My hand’s beginning to ache. After a whole morning at such a pace.
FEDYA: How much have we done?
ANNA: Twenty pages at least.
FEDYA: This will work.
This will work.
I can see light—I think it’s light—at the end of the tunnel.
ANNA subtly tries to work the ache from her hand.
Here. Give me your hand.
ANNA tentatively holds out her hand. He begins to massage it.
ANNA: [quickly drawing her hand away] That’s not necessary.
FEDYA: [taking her hand again] On a good day, when the ideas take hold of me, wrestle me into submission—good days that have become rarer and rarer—I need to work my own hand like this.
A beat.
It was taught to me by one of the prisoners in the camp.
He was a blacksmith. In the Engineers. The Army. Before he was jailed. He killed his father. In a jealous rage, but that’s not… His hands would cramp, particularly in the cold weather. And he would sit hour after hour kneading the rigidity from them. I used to marvel at the strength of them. His hands. Until I understood what he’d done with them.
It’s a good story for a novel, don’t you think? A man who kills his father?
ANNA: You should write it.
FEDYA: I will. I am. The ideas are here—in the shadows. They’re just waiting for me to yield to them.
A long beat.
ANNA: What was it like there?
In the prison camps?
FEDYA: You’re watched. Relentlessly. Not alone for a single minute and you… you come to hate mankind. So many souls packed into such a small space. And what’s yours—what’s left to you—you hold to yourself like a shining prize. Your thoughts—they’re all you have. And when they’re precisely what’s condemned you…
But I never knew myself so well as when I was there.
A disturbance from downstairs. The LANDLADY trying to stop someone from coming up the stairs.
ANNA pulls her hand away and stands on the other side of the room, gathering papers etc, as ELENA enters.
ELENA is oblivious to ANNA.
ELENA: Your guard-dog is a very tenacious today, Fedya. [Noticing ANNA] Aah. She obviously felt you weren’t to be disturbed.
FEDYA: Anna is the stenographer.
ELENA: Not quite what you described.
A change, at least, from the sickly virgins who usually moon after you. But isn’t she a poppet? Now I look at her more closely. But aren’t you a darling, with your cheeks all ablaze? And such pretty, pretty eyes. Aren’t they, Fedya? Surely you’ve noticed the lovely brown of her eyes.
FEDYA: What do I care the colour of her eyes? What do you want?
ELENA: Send her away.
FEDYA: We’re working.
ELENA: I was working last night—it didn’t stop you storming in—
FEDYA: I’d have turned right around—
ELENA: Once you’d done with me—
FEDYA: It was you who started it—
ELENA: Refusing to leave till you’d gone through every page, looking out for your name—
FEDYA: Then find someone other than me to write about.
ELENA: You think I haven’t anything better to write about than you? I wouldn’t set my ambitions so low.
FEDYA: What do you want?
ELENA: I need a reason to be here now?
FEDYA: We’re working.
ELENA: Whatever you want to call it.
FEDYA: Why are you here plaguing my life?
ELENA: You think I want this misery again?
FEDYA: Then go—
ELENA: On your knees you said you were—
FEDYA: You think I’d shed a tear/ if you walked out—?
ELENA: Swore you’d die without me—
FEDYA: Better dead than this—
ELENA: You destroy/ my life—
FEDYA: You crush/ my will—
ELENA: If I asked you to kill a man…
If I asked you to kill a man, would you do it?
FEDYA: Which man?
ELENA: Any man I choose.
FEDYA: Yes. Right now, yes.
A beat.
ELENA: [to ANNA] You can go.
ANNA: But the work—
FEDYA: Go. There’ll be no more work today.
ANNA realises there is no point arguing further. She exits.
A beat.
ELENA sits.
A beat.
FEDYA falls at her feet, kisses her stockings etc.