Travesties

  CECILY: That’s because I’m about to puke into your nancy straw hat, you prig! – you swanking canting fop, you bourgeois intellectual humbugger, you – artist! Marx warned us against the liberals, the philanthropists, the piecemeal reformers – change won’t come from them but from a head-on collision, that’s how history works! When Lenin was 21 there was famine in Russia. The intellectuals organized relief – soup kitchens, seed corn, all kinds of do-gooding with Tolstoy in the lead. Lenin did – nothing. He understood that the famine was a force for the revolution. Twenty-one years old, in Samara, in 1890-91. He was a boy, and he understood that, so don’t talk to me about superior morality, you patronizing Kant-struck prig, all the time you’re talking about the classes you’re trying to imagine how I’d look stripped off to my knickers –

  CARR: That’s a lie!

  (But apparently it isn’t. As CECILY continues to speak we get a partial Carr’s-mind view of her. Coloured lights begin to play over her body, and most of the other light goes except for a bright spot on Carr.)

  (Faintly from 1974, comes the sound of a big band playing ‘The Stripper’. CARR is in a trance. The music builds. CECILY might perhaps climb on to her desk. The desk may have ‘cabaret lights’ built into it for use at this point.)

  CECILY: The only way is the way of Marx and of Lenin, the enemy of all revisionism! – of opportunist liberal economism! – of social-chauvinist bourgeois individualism! – quasi-Dadaist paternalism! – pseudo-Wildean aphorism! – sub-Joycean catechism and dogmatism! – cubism! – expressionism! – rheumatism! –

  CARR: Get ’em off!

  (The light snaps back to normal.)

  CECILY: I don’t think you ought to talk to me like that during library hours. However, as the reference section is about to close for lunch I will overlook it. Intellectual curiosity is not so common that one can afford to discourage it. What kind of books were you wanting?

  CARR: Books? What books? What do you mean, Cecily, by books? I have read Mr Lenin’s article and I don’t need to read any more. I have come to tell you that you seem to me to be the visible personification of absolute perfection.

  CECILY: In body or mind?

  CARR: In every way.

  CECILY: Oh, Tristan!

  CARR: You will love me back and tell me all your secrets, won’t you?

  CECILY: You silly boy! Of course! I have waited for you for months.

  CARR (Amazed): For months?

  CECILY: Ever since Jack told me he had a younger brother who was a decadent nihilist it has been my girlish dream to reform you and to love you.

  CARR: Oh, Cecily!

  (Her embrace drags him down out of sight behind her desk. He resurfaces momentarily –)

  CARR: But, my dear Cecily, you don’t mean that you couldn’t love me if–

  (– and is dragged down again.)

  (NADYA enters, wearing a bonnet, severely dressed and carrying a book…)

  NADYA: From the moment news of the revolution came, Ilyich burned with eagerness to go to Russia … He did not sleep and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made.

  (LENIN enters, wearing a clerical collar, but otherwise dressed in black from parson’s hat to parson’s leggings. He and NADYA look at each other and despair – Chasuble and Prism.)

  But such things could only be thought of in the semi delirium of the night.

  (NADYA takes off her bonnet. LENIN takes off his hat and removes his clerical collar.)

  A passport of a foreigner from a neutral country would have to be obtained.

  LENIN (Dictating to NADYA): Letter to Yakov Ganetsky in Stockholm, March 19th, 1917.

  (NADYA writes on a pad.)

  ‘I cannot wait any longer. No legal means of transit available.

  Whatever happens, Zinoviev and I must reach Russia. The only possible plan is as follows: you must find two Swedes who resemble Zinoviev and me, but since we cannot speak Swedish they must be deaf mutes. I enclose our photographs for this purpose.’

  (CARR, with his jacket off, surfaces from behind Cecily’s desk.)

  CARR: Two Swedish deaf mutes …??

  (An unseen hand yanks him back out of sight.)

  NADYA: The plan mentioned in this letter was not realized. (LENIN produces a blonde wig from a cardboard box and puts the wig on his head.)

  (Writing in her pad) Letter to V. A. Karpinsky in Geneva, the same day, March 19th, 1917.

  LENIN (Dictating): ‘My dear Vyacheslav Alexeyevich. I am considering carefully and from every point of view what will be the best way of travelling to Russia. The following is absolutely secret.’

  (For emphasis, LENIN bangs his fist inadvertently on the bell on Cecily’s desk. CECILY pops up and disappears again without being seen by LENIN.)

  ‘Please procure in your name papers for travelling to France and England. I will use these when passing through England and Holland to Russia. I can wear a wig. The passport photograph will be of me in a wig. I shall go to the Berne Consulate to present your papers and I shall be wearing the wig.’

  (CARR reappears again, fully dressed, and eavesdrops on the LENINS.)

  (Continuing) ‘You must disappear from Geneva for at least two or three weeks, until you receive a telegram from me in Scandinavia … Your Lenin. P.S.: I write to you because I am convinced that everything between us will remain absolutely secret.’

  (TZARA enters briskly, unseen by CARR and not seeing him, and bangs the bell on Cecily’s desk. CECILY pops up from behind the desk.)

  CECILY: Jack?

  TZARA (Turning away) Cecily!

  CECILY: I have such a surprise for you. Your brother is here.

  TZARA: What nonsense! I haven’t got a brother.

  (He turns the other way and sees CARR) – Oh my God.

  (The LENINS stop and stare at these events.)

  CARR: Brother Jack, I have come to tell you that I am sorry for all the embarrassment I have caused you in the past, and that I hope very much that I do not have to embarrass you in the future.

  CECILY: Jack, you are not going to refuse your own brother’s hand!

  TZARA: Nothing will induce me to take his hand. He knows perfectly well why.

  CECILY: Jack, if you don’t shake hands with your brother I’ll never forgive you.

  TZARA: Well, don’t forgive me. Why should I care? The fact of the matter is, he is no more my –

  (At this point LENIN removes his wig and TZARA recognizes him.)

  Ah… Comrade! Do you know my brother Tristan?

  (CARR shakes hands heartily with the stunned LENINS. CARR holds his hand out to TZARA.)

  CARR: How do you do Comrade, Mrs Comrade. Brother!

  TZARA (Shaking hands): This is the last time I shall ever do it.

  CECILY: How pleasant it is to see so perfect a reconciliation. Let us leave the two brothers together.

  NADYA: The plan mentioned in this letter was not realized. (The LENINS gather their possessions and leave, CECILY going with them.)

  CARR: She is a darling. I am in love with Cecily. Which puts me in something of a moral dilemma. I must have a muffin to resolve it. You can have some tea-cake.

  (The library gives way to Carr’s room, the conversation continuing.)

  TZARA: But I don’t like tea-cake. Besides, I have sworn never to shake hands with you again.

  CARR: I don’t want you to shake hands with me when I’m eating muffins. Muffins should never be eaten with shaking hands.

  (As BENNETT enters with a muffin dish)

  Ah, Bennett. Is there anything in my correspondence that I might share with you and Mr Tzara?

  BENNETT: The odds on Lenin have shortened somewhat, sir, but you can still get a hundred to one against.

  CARR: A hundred to one?

  TZARA: Put a tenner on for me, would you, Bennett? – running the show by Christmas.

  CARR: And a tenner for me, Bennett – the dustbin of history.

  BENNETT: Yes, sir.

  (BENNETT leaves. CARR and T
ZARA help themselves to the contents of the dish.)

  TZARA: I am shocked, Henry. You are surely not going to let your so-called duty stand in the way of your love for Cecily Carruthers.

  CARR: I haven’t decided – there are still several muffins left.

  (He takes one. NADYA enters, dressed to travel, and lugging a suitcase and a bundle or two. The boundary between Library and Room is now, perhaps, obscure.)

  NADYA: On the same day, March 19th, there was a meeting of the Russian political emigre groups in Switzerland to discuss ways and means of getting back to Russia. Martov suggested obtaining permits to pass through Germany in exchange for German and Austrian prisoners of war interned in Russia. (LENIN enters, similarly dressed and similarly encumbered.)

  LENIN: March 21st, letter to Karpinsky in Geneva. ‘Martov’s plan is good. Only, we cannot deal directly with the German authorities.’

  NADYA: Therefore, Comrade Grimm, President of the Zimmerwald Committee, undertook the negotiations. March 25th – telegram from the German High Command to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. ‘No objection to the transit of Russian revolutionaries if effected in special train with reliable escort.’

  CARR: (Eating a muffin): Look – be fair. I adore Cecily, but the Americans are about to enter the war and it’s not a good moment for some Bolshevik to pull the Russians out of it. It could turn the whole thing round. I mean, I am on the side of right. Remember plucky little Poland – not Poland, the other one.

  LENIN: Our tactics – no trust in and no support of the new Government. Kerensky especially suspect. Arming of the proletariat is the only guarantee. Telegraph this to St Petersburg.

  CARR: Mind you, according to Marx, the dialectic of history will get you to much the same place with or without Lenin. If Lenin did not exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.

  LENIN: Telegram to Ganetsky in Stockholm. ‘Twenty of us are leaving tomorrow.’

  CARR: Furthermore, your Marxism is sheer pretension. You’re an amiable bourgeois with a chit from matron and if the revolution came you wouldn’t know what hit you. You’re nothing. You’re an artist. And multi-coloured micturition is no trick to those boys, they’ll have you pissing blood.

  TZARA: Artists and intellectuals will be the conscience of the revolution. It is perfectly heartless of you to eat all the muffins and leave me with tea-cakes.

  NADYA: On April 9th, at 2.30 in the afternoon, the travellers moved off from the Zahringer Hof Restaurant in true Russian style, loaded with pillows, blankets and a few personal belongings. Ilyich wore a bowler hat, a heavy overcoat and the thick-soled hobnailed boots that had been made for him by the cobbler Kammerer at number 14 Spiegelgasse. Telegram to his sister in St Petersburg:

  LENIN: ‘Arriving Monday night, eleven. Tell Pravda.’

  TZARA (Getting up): Well, do what you will. To a Dadaist history comes out of a hat too.

  CARR: I don’t think there’ll be a place for Dada in a Communist society.

  TZARA: That’s what we have against this one. There’s a place for us in it!

  (TZARA leaves.)

  NADYA: The train left at 3.10, on time.

  (LENIN and NADYA leave with their luggage. Sound of train departing.)

  (The train is heard, and perhaps seen, to leave. CECILY appears, dressed for the station platform, and waves a red handkerchief at the departing train.)

  CARR (Decisively): No, it is perfectly clear in my mind. He must be stopped. The Russians have got a government of patriotic and moderate men. Prince Lvov is moderately conservative, Kerensky is moderately socialist, and Guchkov is a businessman. All in all a promising foundation for a liberal democracy on the Western model, and for a vigorous prosecution of the war on the Eastern front, followed by a rapid expansion of trade. I shall telegraph the Minister in Berne.

  (CARR leaves. Everything black except a light on LENIN. There is a much reproduced photograph of Lenin addressing the crowd in a public square in May 1920 – ‘balding, bearded, in the three-piece suit’, as Can describes him; he stands as though leaning into a gale, his chin jutting, his hands gripping the edge of the rostrum which is waist-high, the right hand at the same time gripping a cloth cap … a justly famous image.)

  (LENIN, as the orator, is now the only person on stage.)

  LENIN (Declaiming): Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example what on earth is the use of them?! They seem as a class to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility! To lose one revolution is unfortunate. To lose two would look like carelessness!

  (OLD CARR enters, interrupting, consulting a tattered book.)

  OLD CARR (Entering): No, steady on – sorry – did you notice? Of course you did. Hello, hello, you thought, he’s doing it again. Right – well, never mind, here’s the picture. April 16th, Lenin in St Petersburg, yours truly holding the bag. I’d got pretty close to him, had a stroke of luck with a certain little lady and I’d got a pretty good idea of his intentions, in fact I might have stopped the whole Bolshevik thing in its tracks, but – here’s the point. I was torn. On the one hand, the future of the civilized world. On the other hand, my feelings for Cecily. And, don’t forget, he wasn’t Lenin thenl I mean, who was he?, as it were. There I was, the lives of millions of people hanging on which way I’d move or whether I’d move at all, another man might have cracked – sorry about that muffin business, incidentally. Be that as it may, where were we? Ah yes. (CARR opens his book, searching in it.) – Lenin on Literature and Art –

  (CARR remains on stage with the book. LENIN makes a fresh start.)

  LENIN: Today, literature must become party literature. Down with non-partisan literature! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become a part of the common cause of the proletariat, a cog in the Social democratic mechanism.

  Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading rooms, libraries and similar establishments must all be under party control. We want to establish and we shall establish a free press, free not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois anarchist individualism!

  (NADYA enters with a copy of the same book.)

  NADYA (Entering): Ilyich wrote those remarks in 1905 during the first Revolution.

  LENIN (Continuing): Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association, including the party, is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective freedom in a society based on the power of money. Socialist literature and art will be free because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, instead of greed and careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks!

  (The light goes out on LENIN.)

  CARR: And a lot more like that, but there’s a bit somewhere about bosh and nonsense – hang on – (He searches through the book.)

  NADYA: Ilyich wrote very little about art and literature, generally, but he enjoyed it. We sometimes went to concerts and the theatre, even the music hall – he laughed a lot at the clowns – and he was moved to tears when he saw La Dame aux Camélias in London in 1907.

  CARR (Sentimentally): Oh … La Dame aux Camélias…

  NADYA: Ilyich admired Tolstoy, especially War and Peace, but, as he put it in an article in 1908 on Tolstoy’s eightieth birthday…

  (LENIN enters to join NADYA)

  LENIN (Entering): On the one hand we have the great artist; on the other hand we have the landlord obsessed with Christ. On the one hand the strong and sincere protester against social injustice, and on the other hand the jaded hysterical sniveller known as the Russian intellectual beating his breast in public and wailing, I am a bad wicked man, but I am practising moral self-perfection. I don’t eat meat, I now eat rice cutlets. Tolstoy reflected the stored-up hatred and the readiness for a new future – and at the same time the immature dr
eaming and political flabbiness which was one of the main causes for the failure of the 1905 revolution.’

  CARR (Finding the place): Here we are.

  NADYA: However, he respected Tolstoy’s traditional values. The new art seemed somehow alien and incomprehensible to him. Clara Zetkin, in her memoirs, remembers him bursting out –

  CARR & LENIN: Bosh and nonsense!

  LENIN: We are good revolutionaries but we seem to be somehow obliged to keep up with modern art. Well, as for me I’m a barbarian.

  CARR & LENIN: Expressionism, futurism, cubism … I don’t understand them and I get no pleasure from them.

  CARR: That’s my point. There was nothing wrong with Lenin except his politics.

  LENIN: September 15, 1919, to A. M. Gorki, Dear Alexei Maximych … ‘I recall a remark of yours during our talks in London, on Capri, and later – namely: “We artists are irresponsible people.”’

  CARR & LENIN (Simultaneously) Exactly!

  LENIN: ‘You utter incredibly angry words – about what? About a few dozen (or perhaps even a few hundred) Cadet and near-Cadet gentry spending a few days in jail in order to prevent plots which threaten the lives of tens of thousands of workers and peasants. A calamity indeed. What an injustice! A few days, or even weeks, in jail for intellectuals in order to prevent the massacre of tens of thousands of workers and peasants. “Artists are irresponsible people!’”

  CARR: In other words, a chit from matron.

  LENIN: ‘Both on Capri and afterwards, I told you – you allow yourself to be surrounded by the very worst elements of bourgeois intelligentsia and succumb to their whining. No, really, you will go under if you don’t tear yourself away from these bourgeois intellectuals. With all my heart I wish that you do this quickly. All the best. Yours, Lenin. P.S. For you are not writing anything!’