Ivan …? He’s in Paris anyway, dreaming about the Opera!
OGAREV Yes, I’ll say one thing, Viardot can sing.
NATALIE But she’s so ugly.
OGAREV Anyone can love a beauty. Turgenev’s love for his opera singer is a reproach to us for batting the word about like a shuttlecock. (Pause.) When Maria wrote to introduce herself to you and Alexander after we got married, she described herself as ugly. I’m paying myself a compliment.
NATALIE She also wrote that she had no vanity and loved virtue for its own sake … She was no judge of her looks either, forgive me, Nick.
OGAREV (tolerantly) Well, if we’re talking about love … Oh, the letters one wrote … ‘Ah, but to love you is to love God and His Universe, our love negates egoism in the embrace of all mankind.’
NATALIE We all wrote that—why not?—it was true.
OGAREV I remember I wrote to Maria that our love would be a tale told down the ages, preserved in memory as a sacred thing, and now she’s in Paris living quite openly with a mediocre painter.
NATALIE That’s a different thing—one might say a normal coaching accident—but at least you had each other body and soul before the coach went into the ditch. Our friend here simply trails along in Viardot’s dust shouting brava, bravissima for favours forever withheld … not to mention her husband, the postillion.
OGAREV Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk about highway travel?
NATALIE Would that be less painful for you?
OGAREV For me it’s the same thing.
NATALIE I love Alexander with my whole life, but it used to be better, when one was ready to crucify a man or be crucified for him for a word, a glance, a thought … I could look at a star and think of Alexander far away in exile looking at the same star, and feel we were … you know …
OGAREV (Pause.) Triangulated.
NATALIE Foo to you, then.
OGAREV (surprised) Believe me, I …
NATALIE Now grown-upness has caught up with us … as if life were too serious for love. The wives disapprove of me, and it didn’t help that Alexander’s father died and left him quite rich. Duty and self-denial are the thing among our group.
OGAREV Duty and self-denial restrict our freedom to express our personality. I explained this to Maria—she got it at once.
NATALIE Well, she didn’t love you properly. I know I love Alexander, it’s just that we’re not the intoxicated children we were when we eloped in the dead of night and I didn’t even bring my hat … And there was that other thing, too … He told you. I know he told you.
OGAREV Oh, well, yes …
NATALIE I suppose you’re going to say it was only a servant girl.
OGAREV No, I wouldn’t say that. ‘Only a countess’ is more the line I take on these things.
NATALIE Well, it put an end to stargazing, and I’d never have known if Alexander hadn’t confessed it to me … Men can be so stupid.
OGAREV It’s funny, though, that Alexander, who goes on about personal freedom, should feel like a murderer because on a single occasion, arriving home in the small hours, he …
Turgenev stirs and raises his head.
OGAREV (cont.) (adjusting) … travelled without a ticket …
Turgenev relapses.
OGAREV (cont.) … changed horses, do I mean?—no, sorry …
Turgenev sits up, taking the creases out of himself. He is somewhat dandified in his dress.
TURGENEV Is it all right for him to eat them?
Natalie looks quickly toward Kolya but is reassured.
NATALIE (calls) Kolya! (then leaving) Oh, he’s getting so muddy! (Natalie leaves.)
TURGENEV Have I missed tea?
OGAREV No, they’re not back yet.
TURGENEV I shall go in search.
OGAREV Not that way.
TURGENEV In search of tea. Belinsky told me a good story I forgot to tell you. It seems some poor provincial schoolmaster heard there was a vacancy in one of the Moscow high schools, so he came up to town and got an interview with Count Strogonov. ‘What right have you to this post?’ Strogonov barked at him. ‘I ask for the post,’ said the young man, ‘because I heard it was vacant.’ ‘So is the ambassadorship to Constantinople,’ said Strogonov. ‘Why don’t you ask for that?’
OGAREV Very good.
TURGENEV And the young man said—
OGAREV Oh.
TURGENEV ‘I had no idea it was in Your Excellency’s gift, I would accept the post of ambassador to Constantinople with equal gratitude.’ (Turgenev laughs loudly by himself. He has a light high voice, surprising in one of his frame, and a braying laugh.) Botkin’s taken up a collection to send Belinsky to a German spa … doctor’s orders. If only my mother would die, I’d have at least twenty thousand a year. Perhaps I’ll go with him. The waters might reassure my bladder. (He picks up the Contemporary.) Have you read what Gogol’s got in here? You could wait till the book comes out …
OGAREV If you ask me, he’s gone mad.
Natalie returns, wiping soil from her hands.
NATALIE I call to him as if he can hear me. I still think one day I’ll say, ‘Kolya!’ and he’ll turn his face to me. (She wipes a tear with her wrist.) What do you think he thinks about? Can he have thoughts if he has no names to go with them?
TURGENEV He’s thinking muddiness … flowerness, yellowness, nice-smellingness, not-very-nice-tastingness … The names for things don’t come first, words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.
NATALIE How can you say that—you, a poet?
OGAREV That’s how we know.
Turgenev turns to Ogarev, silenced and deeply affected.
TURGENEV (Pause.) I thank you. As a poet. I mean, you as a poet. I myself have started writing stories now. (Turgenev starts to leave towards the house.)
OGAREV I like him. He’s not so affected as he used to be, do you think?
Turgenev returns, a little agitated.
TURGENEV You don’t understand Gogol, if I may say so. It’s Belinsky’s fault. I love Belinsky and owe a great deal to him, for his praise of my first poem, certainly, but also for his complete indifference to all my subsequent ones—but he browbeat us into taking Gogol as a realist …
ALEXANDER HERZEN, aged thirty-four, and TIMOTHY GRANOVSKY, aged thirty-three, approach, Herzen with a basket.
NATALIE (jumps up) They’re here … Alexander!
She embraces Herzen as warmly as decorum