Real and Phantom Pains: An Anthology of New Russian Drama. John Freedman
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falls out of BUSHY-TAIL’s apron. ORANGINA picks it up.)
ORANGINA (Photographing first the book and then BUSHY-TAIL): What are you reading?
BUSHY-TAIL: A biology textbook. I want to be a doctor
SNOWFLAKE (Gagging): Are you kidding?
BUSHY-TAIL: Why?
MANIAC: You’re too beautiful
BLIZZARD: Order something for yourself
BUSHY-TAIL: Another time
MANIAC: I’ll take care of this
BLIZZARD: Tell me, Bushy-Tail, what do you love more than anything on earth?
BUSHY-TAIL: Macaroni and cheese
BLIZZARD: Is that bizarre? I do too
BUSHY-TAIL: And boiled onions
BLIZZARD: You’re joking
BUSHY-TAIL: No, it’s true
BLIZZARD: I thought I was the only person on earth who loved boiled onions
(BUSHY-TAIL leaves, clears something from the table, brings back another order, is always efficient and on time with everything. She seems to be everywhere at once. People are walking all around. BLIZZARD is seen on the TV screen.)
SNOWSTORM: Do you have the sensation that the world revolves around you?
BLIZZARD: Non-stop almost
ORANGINA: And that everything around us is a lie?
BLIZZARD: I have the feeling people confuse the truth for what it’s not
SNOWFLAKE: She really is a pretty girl
ORANGINA: She has such delicate wrists, slender ankles and such an androgynous figure
BUSHY-TAIL (Appears): What kind of figure?
LENOCHKA: Two huge eyes
BUSHY-TAIL: I’ve never considered myself pretty. Not for five minutes
ORANGINA: You could be a trend-setter
SNOWFLAKE: God wanted to make her a handsome boy
SNOWSTORM: But changed his mind at the last minute
MANIAC: Come on, Bushy-Tail, have a drink with us
BUSHY-TAIL (Speaks and disappears): I don’t drink or smoke
LENOCHKA (To SNOWFLAKE): Did you quit smoking?
SNOWFLAKE: I never smoked to begin with
ORANGINA: You don’t know how lucky you are
SNOWFLAKE: I have lots of other flaws
BLIZZARD (To BUSHY-TAIL): Where do people like you come from?
BUSHY-TAIL (Appearing): The Far North
LENOCHKA: Just what I thought for some reason
BUSHY-TAIL: Where are you from?
MANIAC: The eternal question – whence have we come?
SNOWFLAKE: It’s because she’s so natural, sincere and photogenic
ORANGINA: How old are you, Bushy-Tail?
BUSHY-TAIL: Me? I’m seventeen. What about you?
ORANGINA: Me? I think I’m twenty-five. I don’t remember
SNOWFLAKE (Hands BUSHY-TAIL a business card): Call me this evening
BLIZZARD: Don’t be afraid
ORANGINA: BCH
BUSHY-TAIL: What’s that?
BLIZZARD: Don’t you watch television?
BUSHY-TAIL: No
SNOWFLAKE: “Love Knows no Fear”
BLIZZARD: Definitely give it a watch
(Outside. VOLODYA walks along the street looking in shop windows, shivering from the cold. He stops in a store, shakes the snow off his shoulders, looks over the men’s clothing then moves on to look at the women’s clothing. Looks at the hats, tries on one, another, a third, standing before the mirror, gazing at himself from all possible angles. Takes off the hat, puts it back in its place and walks back out onto the street.
In the café it’s warm. Someone is even dancing; someone has walked away, another has returned. Someone is still eating, someone is drinking. SNOWFLAKE reads a book, SNOWSTORM drinks whiskey on ice, smokes and people watches.)
SNOWSTORM: I was totally phased out by helplessness, uselessness, moneylessness – I left my wife. I went to another city to live with a friend. I wasn’t doing anything at the time, just playing some music, writing some poetry, and I remember how everything just came crashing down on me. I was writing these really gruesome, depressing poems with suicidal overtones. They came under the title of “Me Searching for Glory.” They were about this guy lying in a bathtub who slits his wrists and realizes that the only thing tying him to the real world is his girlfriend who he really loves and empathizes with. These poems were colored by the dramatic experiences of a friend of mine – he’d split up with his girlfriend, too. She was a ballerina. And the last line went like this:
She’ll return to me, of course,
Some other Monday morn.
But today the end is my goal.
A knife is my compass,
My heart is my atlas.
And then it all ends with a lot of howling. The only things I had to my name were a towel, three books, forty rubles and 200 records. Two hundred records was the sum of my life. That’s the exalted state I lived in at the time. I was a genuine maniac. A maniac of despair.
MANIAC (Peering over SNOWFLAKE’s shoulder): What are you reading?
SNOWFLAKE: I’m rereading Nabokov.
MANIAC: You break my heart. That’s my favorite writer.
LENOCHKA: So what do you do when you’re not working?
MANIAC: I swim. That’s why I have big shoulders
ORANGINA: That’s beautiful (Takes MANIAC’s photo.)
BLIZZARD: I like track and field, myself
LENOCHKA: You run fast?
BLIZZARD: I wanted to run to the sun when I was a kid
MANIAC: What is that food you’re eating?
BLIZZARD: Bread, mushrooms and cheese
MANIAC: I’ve got greens of some sort
LENOCHKA: Vitamins
MANIAC: I wonder who the first guy to eat greens was
LENOCHKA: Our neighbors used to complain to my mother that I sniffed the grass
SNOWFLAKE: You get in trouble?
LENOCHKA: She says, what do you sniff grass for?
MANIAC: Really
SNOWSTORM: My mom still has no idea that I smoke and use psychotropics
BLIZZARD: Is that already a beer you’re drinking?
SNOWSTORM: Beer and coffee
LENOCHKA: Ooh, yuck
MANIAC: What are your blinies with?
SNOWFLAKE: Kiwi and strawberries
LENOCHKA: Mine are with chocolate
ORANGINA: Mine are with honey and lemon juice
SNOWSTORM: Don’t non-conformists live well?
MANIAC: But we die young
(VOLODYA