# Marina

Людмила Николаевна Ансельм

In the play Alya and Asa investigate the cause of Marina's suiside.

MARINA


CAST:


THE SENTENCING:


INTERROGATOR


SERGEY -- Sergey Efron, Marina's husband


MARINA -- Marina Tsvetayeva


SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER THE SENTENCING


ALYA -- daughter of Marina, age 43


ASA -- sister of Marina, age 61


COSTA -- Constantine Rodzevich, lover of MARINA


EISNER- friend of Sergey


SCENE I


On back screen is Sergey's photo.

Interrogator stands. Sergey is sitting. Sergey is sickly, and clearly weak.


INTERROGATOR. Attention! Sergey Efron"s case. To start with, the questionnaire is to be filled in. Get up! Your last name?


SERGEY (Stands up). Andreyev-Efron.


INTERROGATOR. Why Andreyev?


SERGEY. The NKVD gave me this last name, Andreyev .


INTERROGATOR. Your last job?.


SERGEY. NKVD agent.


INTERROGATOR. The name of your wife?


SERGEY. Marina Tsvetayeva.


INTERROGATOR. The wife"s profession?


SERGEY. Writer and poet.


INTERROGATOR. Children?


SERGEY. Daughter Alya, son Muhr.


INTERROGATOR. So, tell us about your anti-Soviet activity after 1929.


SERGEY. I have nothing to say. I had no such activity after 1929.


INTERROGATOR. What kind of anti-Soviet activity did your wife carry on?


SERGEY. My wife did not carry on any anti-Soviet activity. All her life she wrote poems and prose. Though in some of her works she expressed non-Soviet views.


INTERROGATOR. Lie! All the information where your wife lived and what she did in the 20s have been received from your daughter. It"s well known that your wife lived with you in Paris and took an active part in the newspapers and journals issued by anti Soviet-revolutionaries. It"s a fact, isn"t it?


SERGEY. Yes, it is. She was an emigrant and wrote for these newspapers, but she wasn"t engaged in anti-Soviet activity.


INTERROGATOR. It"s been proven beyond a doubt that the White Emigrant Organizations set for tactical schemes for struggle against the Soviet Union.


SERGEY. I can"t deny the fact that my wife wrote for the white emigrant press, though she did not carry on any anti-Soviet political work...


(Pause)

INTERROGATOR. ...The interrogation has lasted three and a half hours... And you are still denying everything! We will force you to talk... We have cracked tougher spirits!


SERGEY. I beg of you... Put off the interrogation. I am sick.


INTERROGATOR. A comrades of yours states that he is an agent of several foreign intelligence services and does active espionage work together with you. Do you confirm this testimony?


SERGEY. I have repeated my answer to you many times...I deny it...


INTERROGATOR. Lie! Your comrade says that the "Eurasia" newspaper, in which you played the most distinguished role, was devoted to propaganda at the Soviet Union territory and was directed toward finding opposition elements within the Soviet Union .


SERGEY. Nevertheless, this doesn"t point to espionage activity at all.


INTERROGATOR. Your comrade states that you were connected with the Russian free Masons in Paris. Was that true?


SERGEY. Yes, I had such a link, but by the direct order of the NKVD organs in Paris as I was their secret agent.


INTERROGATOR. It"s useless to deny any longer... Sooner or later you will confess all the same... Well, will you speak at last?


SERGEY. If all my friends consider me a spy and my daughter among them, then I am a spy, and I"ll sign their testimony...


INTERROGATOR. The interrogation has gone on for five hours. Will you put your signature at the end, you dirty white guard scum!


SERGEY. I cannot say anything now; I am exhausted...I ask you to put off the testimony...

(Pause)


INTERROGATOR. May be you"ll start testifying. Your partners have already completely accused you... Tell us about the one that you concealed from the Soviet institutions.


SERGEY . There was no such work. As a secret agent I was under the control of the persons who led the secret service abroad...


INTERROGATOR. Denying all, white guard scum! You don"t want to confess, and sign? We"ll force you.


SERGEY (goes silent, a glow on his face).


INTERROGATOR. Speak!


SERGEY. I beg of you to stop the questioning...


INTERROGATOR. No, you"ll talk in the end!


(The stage lightning shift to the past)


MARINA'S VOICE.

I was writing on the blackboard

and also on the tiny folds of a faded fan.

And on the trunks which have lived

hundreds of winters...

And finally - to everybody I know!

You are loved! Loved! Loved!


SERGEY. I hear the voice... of my wife...


MARINA'S VOICE. I finished by signing with a beautiful rainbow.


SERGEY. I feel quite unwell...


(Sergey sits down on the chair)


INTERROGATOR. Stand up! The indictment is being read. " The prosecution considers it established: that the defendant participated in the white guard organization "Eurasia", the aim of which was to overthrow the existing regime in the Soviet Union, that "Eurasia" established contact with the Trotskyist underground and together with the Trotskyists held a criminal activity; that the members of the organization gained the confidence of the NKVD agents living in Paris in order to penetrate into the Soviet Union. ....July, 1941. Signature! Military Board of the Soviet Union, Supreme Court"... Your last words?


SERGEY . My last words? I... I wasn"t a spy I was an honest agent of the Soviet intelligence service... All my activity has been directed in favor of the Soviet Union...


INTERROGATOR. The verdict: Capital punishment. The verdict is final, without right of appeal. The verdict is the same for all implicated in this case.


(Pause)

INTERROGATOR. Sergey Efron will be shot on October 16th, 1941.


MARINA'S VOICE. Let all the world come to the end,

I"ll wait at the church until the night service.

Rather than be led to the altar by a

Stranger

Better to the wall and shot with my lover...


SCЕNE II (16 years later)


The room on the first floor of Alya's dacha in Tarusa. Alya and Asa are drinking tea on a sofa.


ASA. I hinted on the phone how obsessed I was over your mothers" 1941 suicide notes to Muhr , to "dear camerades", and no mention of me, Marina"s only sister... My friend sent me old letter in prison, written by Marina in 1909. Alya, you do know about Marina"s failed attempt to commit suicide just two years before you were born ?


ALYA. Yes. I was ten or twelve when I ran into her haunting poem:

"Sir you waIk, as I do

eyes cast down...

Stop! It"s my grave,

Read my name...

Read, that it's grave of Marina's

And I was only nineteen years


ALYA. Asa, do you have the letter? May I see it?


ASA. Unfortunately, the letter was lost while I was in prison. But I remember some of it by heart. Marina wrote, that it was impossible to live any longer, wrote "good-bye" to me, and asked me to give away her favorite books and etchings. Then there were the words: "Never be afraid of me, I"ll never come to you as a ghost".


ALYA. Asa, why these words?


ASA. I don"t know.


ALYA. It's very strange! ... Because... Mama did come to me. She came to me in a dream the day before my second arrest in 1949. She said that they would come for me to arrest me on February twenty second. She said that my life would be difficult and dirty at first, and then the way would go better, and everything would be well. And they really came for me February 22!


ASA. And your life in prison?


ALYA. Yes, at first it was very hard at the camp, but then, when I got a job as a school cleaner, life became better.


ASA. Alya, we must talk about our experiences later. I really want to tell you about Yelabuga, where Marina died and was buried.


ALYA. I don"t want to hear anything about Yelabuga. Now I can"t go there. I am busy...


ASA. What are you so busy with?


ALYA. After I came back from the Gulag I worked on changing the incorrect verdict that Father was shot as a spy. Now I"m also writing about Mama...


ASA. I see, Marina will over take you! She will engage you all the rest of your life.


ALYA. Almost all of Mama"s belongs have remained intact. Out of her trunk, like out of Pandora"s box, there rises all of her life. I"m thinking of maybe closing all Mama"s embarrassing letters and diaries forever, so no one could ever read them.


ASA. Alya, you judge your mother in a very strict way.


ALYA. Guess, who will be visiting me tomorrow?AI


ASA. Who?


ALYA. Costa. He has come in Moscow from Paris to visit with me.


ASA. Costa Rodzevich! How Marina suffered parting with him in Prague! Alya, just tell me honestly: is Muhr his son?


ALYA. Asa, I beg of you once and forever to stop questioning. Mama always maintained that Muhr"s father was her husband Sergey. Mama was faithful to Papa all her life, even when she was unfaithful to him physically.


ASA. What does that mean?


ALYA. Mama"s "lust" only surfaced in her letters and poems. Papa was her lot, her destiny. To take care of him, to share, troubles with him - that was what Marina called faithful. She always followed after him on his White Army horse, then to Prague, Paris and finally on his Red Army horse to Moscow.


ASA. Marina had flatly refused to leave France for the USSR, when Sergey decided to go to the Soviet Union. I wrote him about "bears, devouring,etc". using the "Aesopian language", but he didn"t listen to me.


(pause)

ALYA (frightened). Do you hear? Steps. Upstairs.


ASA. Steps? No I didn't hear anything.

ALYA. Yes, it seemed to me... Asa, I am sorry, but I need to get ready for the meeting with Costa I need to collect my thoughts...


ASA. I wish I could see him. Alya just a glimpse? They say he is a strikingly attractive man.


ALYA. It"s impossible. He wants to see me without witnesses... It"s his terms. And now...


ASA. Alright. I"ll go, but I wanted to discuss with you about Yelabuga...


ALYA. Let"s put off more discussions till next time.


ASA. (slowly stands). Very well... good bye!


ALYA. (stands suddenly) Asa, what did mama write in her 1909 letter to you before her first attempt: "If you will be afraid of me, I"ll ....". I forget how she wrote : " I'll come to you or don't come?"


ASA. I don't remember... Is it important now? I"ll go... Good bye...


ALYA. It"s very important...for me...


Asa exits


SCENE III


A bedroom on the second floor in the dacha. Alya and Marina are in the room. Alya exit in the room. Marina is sitting in a armchair.


ALYA. Who"s there?... Mama? You startled me...


MARINA. Why, Alya?


ALYA. You appeared here all of a sudden...


MARINA. Alya, now I"ve been long with you... We"ll be together again just like we used to be in Moscow... right after the Bolshevik revolution...


ALYA. It was difficult time... I was always hungry and cold in Moscow... Papa had gone away to fight in White Army against Bolsheviks. We didn"t know where Papa was...


MARINA. But we really felt together. We loved each other then. You were an extraordinary girl, you wrote poems...


ALYA. Yes, I adored you... your intensity warmed me. I am so glad that you have returned... I can"t believe. How...


MARINA. Let it be a dream. You know my favorite way of relations is through the other world, through a dream, seeing a dream, my poems are as though a dream. Alya, when you were a little girl, our relationship was like a romance.


ALYA. Romance with me?


MARINA. For me every thing has it"s own soul. It doesn"t matter whether or what whom the romance is with. It may be with a man, with a woman, with a child, even with a book...a desk.


ALYA. You used to either love or hate me. We never had a simple relationship of mother and daughter...


MARINA. And when you got a bit older, you became quite unbearable, cheeky, left home, lived somewhere. I never knew where. We argued, I didn"t hesitate to slap you...


ALYA. Mama, don"t stir it up. Let"s speak about something else... Now I am writing memoirs about you... May be you"ll help me? Here are my notes.


MARINA. Let me have a look...(Turns over the pages of the manuscript). I like the way you start just like Pushkin. Chapter One: "What Kind of Person Was She?" " My mother was pert, small, with a figure of an Egyptian boy". Then about the hair, curly; the eyes. "The eyes were green, the color of grapes, edged with the brown eyelids". I wonder if I knew I had green eyes. As for brown eyelids. I hear this for the first time. "Her face seemed complete, static up to a point but full of constant inner motion". Wonderfull! Have you written this yourself?


ALYA. Yes, by myself.


MARINA. Further on: "She hated family life - for it devoured time necessary for creation; patiently she worked all her life to overcame it". All is true... "She was a person of her word, a person of business, a person of action, a person of duty". A lot of "persons", don"t you think? But the end is wonderful: "Being very modest, however, she was self-assured". (flips pages) Chapter Two: "The Way She Wrote". "Having swept aside all duties, she poured a small mug of boiling black coffee, put it on her writing desk to which she used to go every day of her life like a worker goes to his machine ".


ALYA. I like your poem " Desk":

My trusty, my faithful desk!

Thank you for walking abreast

With me, and when I wander too far,

You guard me - like a memory, a scar.


MARINA.

Thank you for nailing me to yourself

Every dawn, when I ran for my life

Thank you for hunting me down ,

Capturing me again.

Like a Shah catches a slave...


ALYA. Should I add anything else to my memoirs?


MARINA. Alya, you had beautiful notes in your childhood diary? You should by all means include them in your memoirs. They are like tiny diamonds and will sparkle in your manuscript.


ALYA. I have already included them...


MARINA. Oh, yes, here it is: "My Mother". "My mother is very strange. She is not like a mother at all. Mothers always admire their children or children in general, but Marina didn"t like children. She was sad, quick, loved poems and music, she gets angry and then loves again . She always hurries somewhere. She has a a great soul". My God, how very touching! You don"t fully understand how well you wrote when you were a little girl. You were only seven then.


ALYA. I was six.


MARINA. Well, six... Alya, you like my "Desk", perfectly described the way I worked. And what about you? As usual you get up and make yourself busy doing whatever you like... You have written less than half of all the reminiscences. You are lazy and awkward, going to the desk too late. And then your endless meetings...


ALYA. But it was You who trained me all my life to this kind of schedule. In the morning You went to Your desk, and I went to the kitchen... You yourself wrote to your acquaintance: "It is hard for Alya... All the washing, tending the stove - how can she develop? The amazing lightness of denial".


MARINA. Yes, "The amazing lightness of denial" are my words.


ALYA. You used to say: "I have already been well known. But for Alya - it is not clear. So I write, and Alya is on her own to succeed or not. "


MARINA. No, I didn"t say that. I said: "I have already been known and I cannot sacrifice my poems... But fate grabbed me suddenly by the hair with its heavy palm".

(A knock on the door)

Alya, do you hear? Somebody knocks on your door...


ALYA. I"ll get it Mama, You stay here, I"ll not be long.


Alya goes downstairs.


SCENE IV


The room downstairs. Asa and Alya are in the room.


ASA. Alya, I turned around halfway to the station.. I haven"t yet told you the most important thing.


ALYA. You have missed your train.


ASA. I"ll take the next one... I forgot to tell you that I had spoked to Lidia.


ALYA. Who is Lidia?


ASA. She was the daughter of our famous writer Korney Chukovsky. She lived in Chistipol during the War.


ALYA. Go on ...


ASA. In 1941 we, heard that the Germans were headed for Moscow. All Moscow writers were evacuated to Chistopol. But Marina had rent a room in Yelabuga with her son Muhr. Chistopol is close to Yelabuga.


ALYA. I see. I heard that all Moscow writers were lodged in Chistopol, except my mother.


ASA. There, in Chistopol Lidia met Marina. Marina came to Chistopol to find the job... And what is strange... She was promised to be given the job of a dishwasher in the writers" diner. Everything was well for her, but Marina was not happy at all... She even said to Lidia: " It"s all the same; if I find a room in Chistopol, they won"t give me a job". The question is, who won"t give her a job? Why did she react in this way? Lidia saw Marina five days before of her death.


ALYA. I don"t know. You know Marina left a note to her son Muhr: "Tell Papa and Alya that I reached a dead-end". What does " the dead-end" mean? If we understand what her words does mean we will guess why she committed suicide.


ASA. But I don't understand why you don't want to go to Yelabuga where is Marina's grave?


ALYA. Yelabuga, where Marina perished, fills me with horror that I cannot overcome. I have nothing but the repulsion for "Yelabuga...


ASA. So, I have to tell you that I"ve visited Yelabuga alone...


ALYA. Well, what was the use of your trip there?


ASA. Nevertheless, I put down a cross with the inscription: "Marina Tsvetayeva is buried in this part of the cemetery"...


ALYA. We don"t know where Mama"s grave is... And we will never know.


ASA. I got the very important news in Yelabuga. I came to the house, where Marina had lived before her suicide and spoke with the owner of the house. She told me that before the death Marina and Muhr had a kind of quarrel. But they spoke in French, and the owner didn't understand what was the matter. May be we will go to Yelabuga together and speak again with the owner of the house.


ALYA. Asa, remember, I will never go to Yelabuga.


ASA. Of course, I can't force you to go there. Good bye again...


Asa exits


SCENE V


The room upstairs. Marina and Alya.


MARINA. At last! Well, let us continue... So, the next chapter: well, here"s my romantic encounter in Crimea: "Marina met Sergey on a deserted beach in Crimea"... Yes, I remember everything: in 1911 I was 19... I was lying on the beach and digging in the sand; I said: "I"ll marry the only person, who will guess right what my favorite stone is". And that came true! On the first day of our acquaintance Sergey dug out and handed to me - the greatest rarity of a Genoese cornelian bead. I kept it all my life...


ALYA. It has miraculously remained intact up to now.


MARINA. It"s really mystic! ... Well, then you write: "Sergey and Marina got married on January 1912, and in the brief space between their encounter and beginning of the WWI there was the only period of happiness in their life"... "Then the revolution broke out"... When the street fights against the Bolsheviks started in Moscow in October 1917, Sergey had fought against Bolshevicks and the day after the defeat he left Moscow to join the White Volunteer Army... We had no trace of him for long...


ALYA. How eager we were waiting for any message from Papa... And finally, seven years later, your friend, Erenburg, found Sergey abroad and brought you a letter from Sergey...


SERGEY"S VOICE (reads the letter. While he is reading his photo is shown on the stage screen). " My dear Marina. Today I have gotten a letter from Erenburg that says you are safe and sound. After having read the letter I wandered about the town the whole day, mad with happiness. I live with the belief in our meeting. There will be no life for me without You... I won"t demand anything from You - I don"t need anything - but you being alive... During the years of our separation - every day; every hour - You were with me, inside me... Take care of yourself I beg of You. You and Alya are the last of all that I have. God save You. Yours S."


ALYA. And, Mama, you wrote in your diary: "I feel alive - since today for the first time".


MARINA. I decided within at once, we would go to Sergey. He was alive! Alive! And then I knew for certain if I really went there I"d give birth to a son in a year. And it really happened!


ALYA. I remember your meeting with Papa in Berlin. You and I came to Berlin in May, and Papa came there from Prague... For some reason we were late. His train had already arrived... The station was empty... We felt a huge sadness of this "non-meeting". You began absent-mindedly fumbling through Your purse for cigarettes, and at that moment we heard Sergey's voice: "Marina! Marina!" A tall man was running from another end of the square... You slowly opened your arms towards him... You stood for a long, long time, tightly hugging each other, of only then began to wipe each other"s cheeks wet with tear with palms of their hands.


MARINA. How well you have described our meeting!


ALYA. But Papa did not stay long with us in Berlin. Why did he go away so soon to Prague?


MARINA. He had to study hard before the beginning his third academic year in Prague University.


ALYA. Mama, while in Berlin You had an acquaintance named Vishnyak, He owned the publishing house "Helicon"... You and I often went to his office...


MARINA (Coldly) Please, don"t remind me of him... What do you have next?


ALYA. Then we moved from Berlin to Prague to be with Papa .


SCENE VI


From the room on the first floor. A knock on the door. Alya opens the door. Enters Costa.


COSTA. Alya?


ALYA. Konstantin Boleslavovich!


COSTA. Hello Alya. What a joy to see you ! So much water has flowed under the bridges. So you have just been released from prison. How are you?


ALYA. You"ve changed, but I"d recognize you in the street, or in the crowd.


COSTA. Yes, I"ve grown older, grown older... So, I"ve come from Paris to visit my relatives, but I had a strong desire to see you also. Alya.(looking around) It"s very nice here... And you got settled entirely in the country style: a stove, firewood. Do you yourself stoke the stove?


ALYA. Well, who else? And I myself carry water from the well. Fifteen years in a gulag can"t be shaken off all at once.


COSTA. Alya, you are a saint. I worship you.


ALYA. Konstantin...


COSTA. Call me Costa...


ALYA. Costa, tell me, how do you live there, in Paris?


COSTA. Alya, who could imagine me becoming a sculptor in wood? I arrange exhibitions...Now I am a member of the French Communist party, and enjoy the authority; I am among the people who lead political activity.


ALYA. Well, I am writing the memoirs about Mama and papa now. Could you tell me about those days when you and Mama...


COSTA. I haven"t told a sole about our romance for a long time...I don"t want...


ALYA. Then tell me about Papa... He liked you like a brother. Please, tell about his courage, his charming humor, his kindness... I would like Papa remain in memoirs not only like a Marina's husband ...


COSTA. What could I tell about Sergey?... He published the Eurasian journal in Paris. It was supported by the Russians in Paris by those who had nostalgia for Russia. Later he agitated the people wishing to go back to the Soviet Union.... He rushed into the gulf but could not swim...


ALYA. What was then?


COSTA. Then he met an NKVD agent, who recruited him. Sergey wanted to return home but he had to pay for this. After you, Alya, returned to Moscow, he became tied up with the NKVD and you became "a hostage".


ALYA. You would like to say, it's my gilt?


COSTA. No, no you are not right. I only spoke the situation after your return to Moscow. It was then that he was instructed to take the Reiss case.


ALYA. Ignatiy Reiss - the defector, the NKVD agent.


COSTA. Yes, in 1937 arrests of NKVD officials started. In response to Stalin's order to return to the Soviet Union Reiss refused to return to Russia. Then Sergey was one of those who had the job of shadowing Reiss. Reiss was soon assassinated, but Sergey wasn"t a killer. It were others who killed Reiss...


ALYA. I am sure Papa did not even suppose that Reiss would be assassinated, but he thought that Reiss should appear in a just Soviet court. Reiss knew so much... He had become the enemy of the Soviet power...


COSTA. After Reiss"s assassination Sergei was subpoenaed by the Paris police for interrogation. They released him. A Soviet ship was waiting for him in Gavr. He was secretly taken to the Soviet Union, with other persons who were involved in "the Reiss" case"...


ALYA. Where were you when all this happened?


COSTA . Fighting against Franco in Spain. That was 1937. I was with communists in Spain ...


ALYA. You met Marina in Prague, and then you moved to Paris.. Why did you move from Prague?


COSTA. I was really tied up with political activities... As for my job -- it was a kind of adventure, but the work was ticklish... I had to move to Paris. I fell upon hard times then... I desired to marry.... I married the woman whom I didn"t love... My wife settled me down. She organized everyday life...


ALYA. So, Paris is worth marriage, isn"t it? Really it was your political work for breaking off the relations with Marina?


COSTA. Well... It wasn"t a break it was a divergence. And I, was not able to create what she expected.


ALYA. And what did she expect?


COSTA. I wanted stability, and she - a fantasy...


ALYA. Way of life?


COSTA. Life or death... I don"t know what. She was just like an avalanche.


ALYA. Tell me about your meeting... With mama...


COSTA. The mutual passion, started between us at once, love at first sight. It was an unsettled love. We lived separately all the time... It was a real happiness at the time. But that was the love that demanded much work and devotion.


MARINA'S VOICE

A flower watered with my own blood,

You think that love is a laugh -

Like talking across a table with food?


For about an hour, then - back home?

Like these ladies and gentlemen?

Love is... a temple"s doom...

COSTA. Your voice is like Marina's. Yes, we were young then, there was an emotion, hugs, and a great passion... Our relationship lasted for two months, and then I didn"t seek to continue it...


ALYA. Mama loved you very much... And what was Papa"s attitude to your...?


COSTA. Sergey, probably, knew about Marina"s passions and accepted them... in any case, he himself had some affairs... But he never stopped loving Marina. On the whole, the relationship between Marina and Sergei was very abstract...


ALYA. What does it mean?


COSTA. The relations without physical intimacy...


(Noise upstairs)


Alya, who is upstairs? Do you hear?


ALYA. It"s a dry bough; it hits against a widow when it"s windy...


COSTA (with surprise). But... It"s not windy today... By the way, I"ve come to see you on business. I"m interested in the letters, my letters that I wrote to Marina. Can you give them to me?


ALYA. Why do you need them?


COSTA. Just to read, to remember the past...


ALYA. Will you give them back to me?


COSTA. Of course, no question.


ALYA. Mama highly valued your letters... She took them to her evacuation to Yelabuga. After her death Muhr brought them to Moscow.

(Pause)


You do know that Muhr was killed in 1944 in the War?...


COSTA. (pause) I was told about that. My attitude towards Muhr"s birth was negative. I did not want any responsibility, and had a strong desire not to be involved: "Think whatever you like, I don"t care whether Muhr is my son or not." However, Marina never told me the truth.


ALYA. I remember Mama"s words: "I"ve calculated, Muhr is Sergey's son".


COSTA. Well, you see... Alya, excuse me, I"m in a hurry, the train is leaving... I"d rather get the letters.


ALYA. I"ll give you the letters. Just one question, do you remember Mama"s poem after your separation.


MARINA'S VOICE.

Down in the pasture, the town is just a hum.

Three woman laughing at your weeping.

Your first and your last tears - weep on!

Your tears are pearls in my crown.

ALYA. Were you crying when you separated?


COSTA. Cried... I cried... Alya, the letters...


ALYA. I thinks so... Mama wrote: "My poems are a diary, my poetry is the poetry of the proper names"...


COSTA. Yes, yes, perfectly true! Alya, I am late. The letters...


ALYA. Wait! Right now... right now...I have to show you this picture Taken in 1925 in Paris...


Alya went upstairs for bringing the picture, but Costa takes the letters and exit.


SCENE VIII


Alya is looking the picture upstairs. Enters Marina.

Alya takes the picture and goes down. On the screen the photo Sergey, Costa and Muhr taken in 1929 appears.


MARINA (crying). Alya, don't try... Costa went away... I'd better tell you... All was different... I remember that day very clearly. Sergey came to me: pale, thin, but very decisive.

(Enters Sergey)


SERGEY. Marina, we have to clear it out with each other...


MARINA. What about, Sergey?


SERGEY. I am leaving you.


MARINA. Why?


SERGEY. I decided to put an end to our absurd life together...


MARINA. Sergey, what's the matter? I don't understand you.


SERGEY. You are a person of passions. It's has become a necessity to throw yourself into the storm. You are like a huge stove that requires firewood and firewood for heating... In spring of 1922 I came to Berlin to meet you and at once realized that I couldn't give you all of what you needed.


MARINA. Why did you understand this in Berlin?

SERGEY. A few days before my arrival the stove had been heated another person but not me.


MARINA. You know very well that I finished all connections with Berlin.


SERGEY. But now you have a new storm...


MARINA.Whom are you speaking of?


SERGEY. I'm speaking about Costa. I learned about him by chance. All your friends knew about your relations.


MARINA. Who told you that we are in love?


SERGEY. Are you in love?


MARINA.

My flesh and my blood -- that's love

A flower watered with my own blood,

You think that love is a laugh --

Like talking across a table with food?

For about an hour, then -- back home?

Like these ladies and gentlemen?

Love is...

A temple's doom...

SERGEY. The last phase - for me is the most painful. At the moment all your thoughts were with him... Costa is quite different from you. I also knew that in your state of mind this current lover would be a disaster. It would have been equal to death. You are bursting to death...


MARINA.

The growing drumming of your fingers

(A town square with a gallows).

To run - or to die right there

Hoping the latter would be simpler!


SERGEY. It's my hard decision, to separate... you have to leave Costa... I am both a lifebelt and a pain in your neck. My life has been a complete and utter torment...


MARINA. Sergey, what are you talking about? Separation is impossible!

The most super-meaningless word:

Separation

Just a word with four syllables,

With an emptiness behind them.

To separate means apart,

But we are joined...


SERGEY. My love was very strong and straightforward... I was only afraid of your death.


MARINA. Loved? And now? Don't you love me?

You, who loved me with the lying

the truth, and with the truth of lying,

You, who loved me so much farther,

Than nowhere - beyond the border!

You, who loved me even longer,

Than the end of time - goodbye!

You don"t love me anymore,

That's why...

But we are joined...


SERGEY. You were an integral part of myself... We had a serious argument on December 12th .


MARINA (writing in the diary). December 12th - is the end of my life... The tragic impossibility to leave Sergey... I want to die in Prague and burn my body after my death.

(Marina exit)


SERGEY (writing the letter). My dear poet and confidant Maks! The only person whom I could tell everything is certainly you ... I told Marina about my decision to separate. Marina was mad for two weeks, almost didn"t sleep, and got thinner... Then Marina told me that she can"t leave me, because the thought of me living alone somewhere gives her neither peace nor happiness... I"m waiting for the coming days and months in horror...

Well some more... it has seemed to me lately, for some reason, that I"ll soon return to Russia. Probably, because "the wounded beast" will crawl into its den"...


SCENE VIII


Room on the first floor in the dacha. Alya and Alexey Eisner are in the room.


ALYA. Eisner? Alexey...


EISNER. Vladimirovich. It"s he.


ALYA. Hard to recognize you...


EISNER. No wonder. Alya, we haven"t seen each other for almost thirty years, since you left Paris. I have read your notice in the newspapers and decided to come to see you, because I highly value Marina as a poet and as the person who never kept in step with anybody... And now Rodzevich has sent me to you with this package.


ALYA. Costa is giving back the letters as he promised.


EISNER. And here"s a private letter, too. He says it is very important.


ALYA. Costa visited me. Now I can say that I saw the man from the generation I"ve been in love with. Yes, that was a grand generation!


EISNER. Alya, I think, you are exaggerating.


ALYA. No, not a bit. My meeting with Costa was extremely touching. He cried while remembering Papa and Mama, the only genuine event in his life... Costa told me about Sergey's work in Paris. You were really very close to Papa. Tell me, please, about him.


EISNER. What I can add to his story? Sergey was a very charming man and one of the noblest persons. I grew numb in his presence.


MARINA'S VOICE. He is thin, like the first thin boughs.

His eyes are beautifully useless!

Under the wings of the wide open eyebrows

There are two abysses.


EISNER. When I got acquainted with him, he was not so handsome as in his youth. He had gone through a lot, but he acted in the way as if he were living in the happiest family. Not a word to anybody about what was going on in your home...


ALYA. No, I don"t mean this. Tell about his courage, his ineffable soul, his charming humor and his sadness... So much he has given me! Mama taught me a lot, and that didn"t stay with me.


EISNER. Well, what can I add? Sergey had always been a man of action, strove for serving one or another noble idea. While in emigration he got interested in the ideas of Eurasia.


ALYA. Yes, yes, Papa was called "the conscience of Eurasia".


EISNER. "Eurasia - disgrace" -- nothing to be said. At the beginning of the 30s the Soviet agents of the NKVD began penetrating into the Paris Eurasian group. Sergey, who became one of the organizers of the Paris "Union of the Return to the Homeland" was first muddled up, then recruited, most likely bought with the promise to return home.


ALYA. Papa dreamed to bring of benefit to his homeland, to come back as a worthy son of his motherland. He was a Soviet intelligence officer. He should have been given a medal for his work in France.


EISNER. We said at the time: "First a medal, then - a warrant". But Sergey and I got only the latter.


ALYA. It was a misunderstanding, if it were not for Beria...


EISNER. Alya, you are as starry-eyed idealistic as your father... When Sergey started working for the NKVD, he enlisted me, too. Sergey was given a salary at the NKVD rather late. For all the grievous situation of your family one could not offer him money, one had to insist: "Your homeland is giving it to you".


ALYA. Papa considered his job not as work but as service.


EISNER. I remember my first visit to your family in Paris. I was astounded to see what difficulties you had in your life. I expected to see Marina as a lady. There was no lady in her. When I kissed her hand, I noticed the traces of coal in the pores of it. At that time a kind of briquettes was sold in Paris, made of pressed coal powder... She also smoked a lot. She had yellow fingers as if she were a soldier... She didn"t care of herself at all...


ALYA. Well, no, there was a care for her, but special. Mama liked silver bracelets and rings.


EISNER. Well, what else can be added? Sergey, certainly, compromised Marina in the eyes of Russian Paris. Marina was summoned to the police, and one must say, she acted in the noblest way. She said to them: "he is the most honest, the noblest, and the most humane man." Then she cited her poem "The Tough Guy" in French.


ALYA.Yes, it is her lovely poem...


EISNER. The policemen came to the conclusion: "This half-witted Russian", and released her. One of my acquaintances saw Marina crying and repeating: "Sergey could have never ever committed a murder, it"s impossible, that"s not true"... Now I feel awfully guilty towards Marina...


ALYA. Why?


EISNER. Because Sergey and I thought that she was certainly a great poet but didn"t understand anything in politics; I needed to experience what I lived through: retain to the USSR, the Soviet prisons, the camps in order to see that she understood much better than we... We thought in this way: a just society is being built, and built in our country, so we should be there. Marina did not want to go to the USSR... I think if we didn't have such wrong ideas, Marina would be now alive.


ALYA. No, you are wrong, Mama will come to the USSR anyway... When Mama came in 1939 there was fascism in Germany. Don't forget about the war...


EISNER. All that Marina had suffered in that year: had broke her down... On leaving Paris, she wrote in her last letter: "Here I am not published, there they won"t let me write"... A tragic letter. How unwilling she was to come here...


ALYA. But Mama had always said: "There is such a country - the Lord, and Russia is bordering it. I"ll be better understood in Russia".


EISNER. Alya, and do you remember?


MARINA'S VOICE: There"s no that country on the map,

:no, in space -no.

It has been drunk as if from the saucer:

the bottom is shining!

May you come back to the house that"s been

razed?


EISNER. Well, what can be added to this? Absolutely nothing.


SCENE IX


Alya's dacha. Marina and Alya on the second floor.

.

MARINA. Alya, I cannot have any romance with you... I have found one of your letters here, and can see, that you care more about of Sergey, than about me...


ALYA. What letter are you talking about?


MARINA. You wrote to Erenburg: "Dear Ilya Grigoryevich! If You have space in your book, would You, please, write more about Papa. Write that Sergey Efron was a man of honesty, nobility and courage". Well, did "dear Ilya Grigoryevich " listen to you?


ALYA. Yes, he did... He added some words in his book: he wrote about Papa's conscience and courage...


MARINA. Just two words, not too much... Alya, you have so little time left...


ALYA. I"ll write everything. There"s still time...


MARINA. How come, Alya? Look at you, what do you look like? Your face is swollen; there are yellow bags under your eyes. Alya, you may have problems with your heart and kidneys...


ALYA (angry). Mama, I wonder what problems You would have had, if you had spent seventeen years in Gulag's camps? If you had been placed in the cold punishment cell almost naked?


MARINA (upset). Alya, I am sorry... I know, I must question you about this... It was so terrible when they took you away... I remember your arrest.


ALYA. Yes, It was on August 27th, 1939 .


MARINA. You left without saying good-bye. I shouted: "Alya, are you leaving without saying good-bye?" Your lover Mulya ran ahead. He just wanted to see your face again. You were walking and crying...


ALYA. Yes, Mulya had stayed overnight at the dacha the day before. We had already agreed: he would leave his family; we would get married and would live together. We had already rented a room in Moscow where we were going to live...


MARINA. I didn't know anything about your plans...


ALYA. It was the happiest period of my life. I had "the husband whom God gives you only once".


MARINA. "Alya, a small shadow against the huge horizon, and I say in vain: " Don"t touch her"... but they touched you...


ALYA. I was deeply convinced that my arrest was a mistake and Papa and Mulya were making efforts to get me released...


MARINA. Your father wrote a letter addressed to the people"s commissar. And after one month Sergey himself was arrested...


ALYA. The first interrogation took place on the same day I was arrested... They demanded I tell about my anti-Soviet activities and the cooperation with the foreign intelligence services. The first interrogation did not last long, about three hours. The second interrogation lasted eight hours.


MARINA. Were you beaten?


ALYA. Yes, I was beaten by rubber truncheons, the ladies" "questionnaires", I was deprived of sleep, interrogated by the twenty four hour "conveyer" system, sat on the stone floor in the punishment cell wearing only shorts, barefoot...


MARINA. What did they charge you with?


ALYA. They charged me with espionage, and did not believe that I had returned to the motherland voluntarily. They thought I had been recruited...


MARINA. Alya, how could you stand all this?


ALYA. I could not... I stood firm for a month...


MARINA. And then?


ALYA. I confessed...


MARINA. To what?


ALYA. I confessed that I was a French intelligence service agent...


MARINA. But that was not true! Alya, my dear!


ALYA. I had to confess for them to stop torturing me...


MARINA. And did they stop torturing you?


ALYA. No, they didn"t need me.


MARINA. But who? Who? You want to say...


ALYA. I understood nothing then... Why were they still beating me? And then I understood they didn"t need me... They needed my Papa...


MARINA. They wanted you to...


ALYA. Yes, they beat out all that they needed...


MARINA. That was why Sergey was arrested a month after you... Now I understand... What was it, that you told them?


ALYA. They needed not just a confirmation that Papa was a foreign agent. They needed a concrete story, facts... I did not understand that at first. And when I understood... I made up a story.


MARINA. What story?


ALYA. I made up a story... But I'm afraid to tell you...


MARINA. Alya, please... Don't worry.


ALYA. Mama, it's not easy for me to...


MARINA. Don't worry. I'll understand ...


ALYA. My story... It was in Paris... Father was sick on that day, we were alone at home... he asked me to sit on his bed... He said that he had irreparably ruined your and my lives. I thought he was speaking about the financial side of our life and began consoling him but he stopped me... he said: "You were still young, you know nothing about me. You cannot understand me. I have entangled myself as a fly in a spider web".


MARINA. Did he tell you so?


ALYA. Mama, lusten... He said to me :" You could go to the Soviet Union and settle down perfectly well. My situation is desperate as I myself could never be able to go to the Soviet Union". I did know that Papa was tied up with the Soviet intelligence service. I asked him, if he had not redeemed his past as a White Russian by his work for the Soviet Union. And here he said to me: "Not only for the Soviet Union".


MARINA. Alya, I don't believe you... there was no such a conversation!


ALYA. They tortured me so much... I could bear it no longer...


MARINA. Sergey was arrested in October. In the early morning. Muhr and I stayed in the dacha ... You couldn"t say such things...


ALYA. But that"s what I said. ...


SCENE X

The room on the first floor. Alya had visitors who shared their impressions about Marina. Alya cleans the table after the guests. Enters Asa .


ALYA (seeing Asa). Asa, is it you? I thought somebody of my guests came back...


ASA ( angrily). Yes, it is I. I met your guests on the road. Why didn"t you call me too?


ALYA. To day I have invited all who saw Mama after her arrival in Russia. I didn"t call you because at that time you were in prison...


ASA. But I have found something interesting... Well, it"s good that everybody has gone... Alya, now I know why Marina committed suicide...


ALYA. How do you know that?


ASA. I visited the owner of the room, where Marina and Muhr had lived in Yelabuga, She told me that the day before her suicide Muhr had quarreled with Marina and had "hot words with Marina", but the owner didn't understand anything..


ALYA. I know... They spoke in French...


ASA. Now I know what terrible words Muhr said to his mother...


ALYA. How did you get to know?


ASA. I met Muhr's friend and he told me about the quarrel Muhr had had with his mother. Muhr had said: "Well, one of us will really end up in a body bag in this house". Now I think, these rude words of Muhr sounded to his mother like a call for Marina's death. Her suicide was sacrificial. She understood that her death would prevent him from his death. Marina went away, so that Muhr could stay...


ALYA. Your version doesn't explain Marina's words in her last conversation with Lidia in Chistopol... But there are other possibilities... There are notes in Muhr's diary. He wrote that Marina was offered a job in the NKVD as a translator in a concentration camp for German prisoners. Marina knew German very well... But she didn"t agree to work with the NKVD people... Marina became crazy... Muhr didn't understand her behavior...


ASA. Why did she look like crazy?


ALYA. I have some connections with the NKVD officials... If they promised Marina a job, she had to be an informant... I know my Mama; she will never be an informant in the NKVD service... She refused to be a translator... I believe in my version, it explains Marina's words in Chistopol ...


ASYA. No, I insist, that it was because of the quarrel with Muhr.


ALYA. Let us drop this conversation... Well, by the way, Asa, I want to inform you of my decision about Mama"s archive. I made up my mind to close the archive up until the end of our century for nobody could touch it.


ASA. Alya, but...


ALYA. No "buts". I am firm in my decision. I have read none of Mama"s private letters. I"ve just sealed them.


ASA. My poor sister! She wasn"t published in her lifetime and after her death - the same situation...


ALYA. In general, it"s necessary to publish all of her works, and only then it"ll be possible to publish her correspondence... Besides, Costa too...


ASA ( surprising). What?


ALYA. Costa also insists on closing Mama"s archive...


ASA. Why does he insist? Marina described her relations with him in her poems... May be, there"s something else there?


ALYA. And what is it, in your opinion?


ASA. The NKVD had recruited both Sergey and Costa.


ALYA. No! They both were intelligence officers.


ASA. But, to my mind, they were the NKVD agents... Costa understands that after publishing his letters to Marina a wave of interest may give rise to his activities in the NKVD. That"s extremely undesirable for him... He is living in Paris... He came here to persuade you to close Marina"s archive. Is that so?


ALYA. Why don't you like him so much?...


ASA. I suspect that it is he, who recruited Sergey to work with the NKVD... He was Sergey's close friend... Well, it"s time for me to go. Otherwise I"ll miss the last train...


ALYA. You"ve already missed it... You have to spend the night here, and tomorrow you"ll leave...


ASA. Where? In this room?


ALYA. No, You should sleep upstairs in my bedroom.


ASA. Well, and where you will sleep?


ALYA. I"ll be here, downstairs, on the couch. Good night, Asa.


ASA. Please, give me a candle. Your staircase is so dark.


ALYA. You will find the candle upstairs on my table.


ASA. Please, wake me up in the morning... Good night, Alya.


Asa goes upstairs. Alya stays downstairs siting in a armchair.


SCENE X


Room downstairs in dacha. Alya sits in the armchair, asleep. Enters Marina.


ALYA (wakes up). Who"s there? Mama, is that you? What are you doing downstairs?


MARINA. Well, as you don"t go upstairs, then I"ve come downstairs to you.


ALYA. I thought you wouldn"t come to me after our last conversation...


MARINA. And would you like me not to come? You again spent the whole day with your friends downstairs instead of working.


ALYA. Yes, I did. And what did you do?


MARINA. I looked through your letters.


ALYA. Why have you read my letters?


MARINA. I came across a bundle of the letters, your letters to your lover Mulya. I"m still impressed... But I don"t understand...


ALYA. What is it that you don"t understand?


MARINA. Here, for example, you wrote from the Gulag's camp: "I"d like so much to be healthy and strong to be able to work better..." You wrote about your work in the camp?


ALYA. I used to meet and sometimes exceeded the daily work quota by 200%, but afterwards I soon felt exhausted... And that hurt me; I would"ve preferred not to be tired.


MARINA. And again..."The other day we went to watch the construction of a bridge. In those lights I could feel Moscow, the Kremlin, the will and the mind of our leader much stronger". Who is the leader, Alya? Is he, Stalin?


ALYA. Yes, he is. I responded to Mulya"s entreaties. Almost in every letter he begged of me not to be embittered and to understand the difficult situation in our country, the Soviet Union.


MARINA. How could you understand this while in the camp?


ALYA. I could...


MARINA. Alya, did you really remain the same after that horrifying jail, after having suffered all those things?


ALYA. What do you mean by " the same"?


MARINA. So righteous...


ALYA. Yes, I did. And even now I can say: "It"s good that there"s a country

that with great difficulties is creating a new society, and this country is mine".


MARINA. How touching your letters are! I couldn"t read them without tears.


ALY. Why have you read my letters? I"ve never read any of your private letters.


MARINA. All that I wrote in my letters I also wrote in my poems... Alya, is it true that Mulya was an NKVD agent?


ALYA. Don"t touch Mulya! I was happy only once in my life, then in Moscow.


MARINA. I loved Mulya, and Muhr loved him too... What happened to him?


ALYA. Mulya was arrested together with the other members of the Judas Anti -Fascist Committee, shot in1952... All my life, I lived for you Mama... And now again I am engaged in you. Today I invited the people, who knew you...


MARINA. Why?


ALYA. To ask them about you ..,


MARINA. You ask everybody about me except of me. I think, you are afraid me...


ALYA. ... No, not that.


MARINA. So, I am mistaken...


ALYA. Certainly, you are... And now I would like to ask...


MARINA. What is it that you don't understand?


ALYA. You asked Muhr in your farewell note to tell Papa and me that you had reached a "dead-end". What does " the dead-end" mean?


MARINA. Sh-sh. Keep quiet. It"s a secret. Nobody should know...


ALYA. We are alone...


MARINA. But over there? Upstairs?


ALYA. It"s Asa, Your sister. She is asleep. What did you mean by "the dead-end"? Why is it a secret?


MARINA. I signed... a secret paper... that nobody will know about it... Alya, you are so righteous... I"m afraid, that you don"t understand...


ALYA. And still, tell me details, please...


MARINA. Alya, I"ll better tell you how it happened... You know I was all alone that day... Everybody had gone. I went to the table and wrote farewell letters... When I put aside the pen, I looked around; and saw him standing behind me...


ALYA. Who?


MARINA. Sergey... Who else could it be? I hadn"t seen him for two years; he was so beautiful lit by the sun... His eyes were shining. You know the way his eyes shined when he was planning something. Then he said to me: "You"re right, you don"t have another way out". "All could have been different," -- I answered, -- " if I had hadn"t come back to Russia". - "You couldn"t stayed in France, the fascists would have been there". Then he came up closer to me, put his hands on my shoulders: "I won"t survive, either. They"ve sentenced me to be shot. It"s time for you, too, while there"s nobody at home". I planned to commit this in my room. I had covered the window with a shawl so they could not see me from the street ... Sergey cried out from the entryway: "Come here, it is more convenient here! Be quick!"


ALYA. No, no, he couldn"t say so! It"s your fantasies!.


MARINA. I went out in to the entryway. Sergey pointed to the iron hook above the door. He was right... I had prepared the rope beforehand... I stood up on the chair and looked down at him. Sergey smiled, came up closer to me; I bent my head, and he kissed me in the forehead, and very, very softly whispered in my ear:


SERGEY"S VOICE:

In the Kingdom of Heaven

All the sheep are safe!

Sleep, my white one!

I will not cause you any pain!


MARINA. Then he took my hand... The last thing I remember was a bright white light, and together we were flying and flying towards that light into the "blue fire". It"s amazing that all was like in my poem... Alya, do you remember what poem it is from?


ALYA. Yes, of course, it"s from your favorite poem " The Tough Guy" ... You were mistaken. It might have been somebody else, not Papa!


MARINA. Who could it be but Sergey? He was my fate, my portion. He loved my poem too. Listen:


As I am a great sinner before God,

Carry me, wenches, under the threshold.

As I am inseparable with the spirits even in

my death,

Bury me, wenches, in the fork of the roads:

In the snow, without a cross...

All happened as in my poem... Alya, there was no cross on my grave... Just a flowerpot...


ALYA. I know, why you said, that Papa was near you before your suicide. You would like to blame Papa for your coming back to Russia... And...and in... your death... No, no! Papa was not guilty in your death! I don"t believe you!


MARINA. I knew you wouldn"t believe me. You are so righteous...


ALYA. What is wrong if a human being loves his homeland and dreams to be useful for it?


MARINA. Yes, to love your homeland with a pure heart is a good deed, but you have to understand what kind of homeland you do love.


ALYA. We have only one homeland! Stop it! I don"t want to listen to you any longer! Go away! Don't come again! No! No!


SCENE XI


(Appears Asa with a candle in her hands. Marina disappears)


ASA. Why are you screaming?


ALYA. I saw my mother again...


ASA. Alya, it was your dream...


ALYA. May be... She comes to me every night... we speak...


ASA. What about?


ALYA. About everything, about life and death... Today I asked her what "the dead end" means? .


ASA. How she explanation it?


ALYA. She got very frightened...


ASA. Why?


ALYA. She told me it was a secret. She signed the document that she keep silent... After these words I believed in my version.


ASA. It doesn't prove of your version... But I will write my version in my memoirs.


ALYA. Write what you want...


ASA. What was then?


ALYA. Then Mama recited an extract from her poem ...


ASA. What poem?


ALYA."The Tough Guy". She had been writing it for a long time... It was her lovely poem she translated the whole poem into French.


ASA. What was there in this poem that she liked it so much?


ALYA. I think she wanted to solve the problem of an evil deed and a pure soul in this poem.


ASA. And what"s the poem about?


ALYA. It"s a Russian folk tale. A young girl marries a vampire, and the vampire first kills her brother, then her mother...


Not only your life

But your heart I am holding in my hands:

Yesterday I bit your brother to death

Now I"ll bite your mother to...

ASA. To death?


ALYA. The tough guy-vampire is enchanted by the evil power and loves the young girl with all his heart; the girl loves him too, but can"t break the charm. At the end of poem the young girl flows up towards her beloved one and they flow together into "the blue fire"... Marina said that she saw Papa before her death and the last thing she remembered was how she and Sergey were flying towards the "blue fire"...


ASYA. Yes, a terrible poem... If she fled together with Sergey, it means she forgave him.


ALYA. Asa, why should she forgive Papa?


ASA. You know, why Marina came to the USSR and who invited her to Moscow?


ALYA. Asa, remember at last, Papa is not guilty in Marina's death. She committed suicide, because she couldn't work in the NKVD camps and to be an informant.


ASA. It is your version... But I think...


ALYA. Asa, what do you think? May be she won't come to me again if I guessed why she had committed suicide?


ASA. Marina comes to you every night because her soul is restless...


ALYA. What does that mean?


ASA. The restless soul is from another Marina"s tale.


ALYA. Tell me the tale.


ASA. It's a very terrible tale... A girl was passing by a temple at night... She sees a light in the temple and goes in. The service is quiet, the priest is strange, and the praying folks are strange, too... Suddenly someone touches her shoulder... The girl turns round and sees her deceased godmother: "Run, little girl, your mother is here. If she sees you, she will tear you to pieces." But it"s too late: her mother sees her. The girl runs away, and her mother runs after her, and they are running in the empty fields. The daughter is running on the earth and mother is flying over her. But the godmother is very close; she is trying to save the girl. At last - the end... The roosters are crowing, mother disappears. The godmother says while parting: "Little girl, never enter the church at night, when you see the light. The restless souls offer pray with the restless priest there. If it weren"t for me you"d have been killed by your own mo..."


ALYA (crying). Stop it! Enough! I don"t want to hear more!


ASA. Why, Alya, it"s just a children"s tale, Marina always liked terrible tales...


ALYA. And when do you think, my mother will calm down?


ASA. I don"t know, but I think, probably, when all she has written is published and when they honor her for what she deserves...


ALYA. But maybe ... she will never...?


ASA. Yes, it could be... She is so restless!

THE END