The Essential Russian Plays & Short Stories. Максим Горький
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You are a bright man. You have a good mind. I have already told you so. And yet you hesitate. You are clever, and yet you are afraid to smash a piece of wood.
KONDRATY
If it is nothing but a piece of wood, then why go to so much trouble about it? The point is, it is not a piece of wood, it is an image.
SAVVA
For me it is a piece of wood. For the people it is a sacred object. That is why I want to destroy it. Imagine how they'll open their mouths and stare. Ah, brother, if you were not a coward, I would tell you some things.
KONDRATY
Go ahead and talk. It's no sin to listen. I am not a coward either. I am simply careful.
SAVVA
This would only be the beginning, brother.
KONDRATY
A good beginning, I won't deny it. And what will be the end?
SAVVA
The earth stripped naked, a tabula rasa, do you understand? And on this naked earth, naked man, naked as his mother bore him. No breeches on him, no orders, no pockets, nothing. Imagine men without pockets. Queer, isn't it? Yes indeed, brother, the ikon is only the beginning.
KONDRATY
Oh, they'll make new ones.
SAVVA
But they won't be the same as before. And they'll never forget this much—that dynamite is mightier than their God, and that man is mightier than dynamite. Look at them; see them yonder praying and kneeling, not daring to raise their heads and look you straight in the face, mean slaves that they are! Then comes a real man, and smash goes the whole humbug. Done for!
KONDRATY
Really!
SAVVA
And when a dozen of their idols have gone the same way, the slaves will begin to understand that the kingdom of their God is at an end, and that the kingdom of man has come. Lots of them will drop from sheer terror. Some will lose their wits, and others will throw themselves into the fire. They'll say that Antichrist has come. Think of it, Kondraty!
KONDRATY
And aren't you sorry for them?
SAVVA
Sorry for them? Why, they built a prison for me, and I am to be sorry for them. They put me in a torture chamber, and I am to be sorry for them. Bah!
KONDRATY
Who are you to be above pity?
SAVVA
I? I am a man who have been born. And having been born, I began to look about. I saw churches and penitentiaries. I saw universities and houses of prostitution. I saw factories and picture galleries. I saw palaces and filthy dens. I calculated the number of prisons there are to each gallery, and I resolved that the whole edifice must go, the whole of it must be overturned, annihilated. And we are going to do it. Our day of reckoning has come. It is time.
KONDRATY
Who are "we"?
SAVVA
I, you Kondraty, and others.
KONDRATY
The people are stupid. They won't understand.
SAVVA
When the conflagration rages all around them, they will understand.
Fire is a good teacher, old boy. Have you ever heard of Raphael?
KONDRATY
No, I haven't.
SAVVA
Well, when we are through with God, we'll go for fellows like him. There are lots of them—Titian, Shakespeare, Byron. We'll make a nice pile of the whole lot and pour oil over it. Then we'll burn their cities.
KONDRATY
Now, now you are joking. How is that possible? How can you burn the cities?
SAVVA
No, why should I be joking? All the cities. Look here, what are their cities? Graves, stone graves. And if you don't stop those fools, if you let them go on making more, they will cover the whole earth with stone, and then all will suffocate—all.
KONDRATY
The poor people will have a hard time of it.
SAVVA
All will be poor then. What is it that makes a man rich? His having a house and money, and the fact that he has surrounded himself with a fence. But when there are no houses, no money, and no fences—
KONDRATY
That's so. And there won't be any legal papers either, no stocks, no bonds, no title-deeds. They will all have been burnt up.
SAVVA
No, there will be no legal papers. It's work then—you'll have to go to work even if you are a nobleman.
KONDRATY (laughing)
It's funny. All will be naked as when coming out of a bath.
SAVVA
Are you a peasant, Kondraty?
KONDRATY
Yes, I am a peasant, sure enough.
SAVVA
I am a peasant also. We have nothing to lose, brother. We can't fare worse than we do now.
KONDRATY
How could it be worse? But a great many people will perish, Mr.
Tropinin.
SAVVA
It makes no difference. There'll be enough left. It is the good-for-nothings that will perish, the fools to whom this life is like a shell to a crab. Those who believe will perish, because their faith will be taken away from them. Those who love the old will perish, because everything will be taken away from them. The weak, the sick, those who love quietness. There will be no quietness in the world, brother. There will remain only the free and the brave, those with young and eager souls and clear eyes that can embrace the whole universe.
KONDRATY
Like yours? I am afraid of your eyes, Savva Yegorovich, especially in the dark.
SAVVA
Yes, like mine. And emancipated from everything, naked, armed only with their reason, they will deliberate; discuss, talk things over, and build up a new life, a good life, Kondraty, where every man may breathe freely.
KONDRATY
It's interesting. But men are sly creatures. Something of the old will be left over. They'll hide it, or try some other trick, and then behold! back they slide to the old again, everything just as it was, just as of old. What then?
SAVVA
Just as of old? (Gloomily) Then they will have to be wiped clean off the face of the earth. Let there be no living human being on earth. Enough of it!
KONDRATY (shaking his head)
But—
SAVVA (putting his hand on his shoulder)
Believe me, monk, I have been in many cities and in many lands, Nowhere did I see a free man. I saw only slaves. I saw the cages in which they live, the beds on which they are born and die; I saw their hatreds and their loves, their sins and their good works. And I saw also their amusements, their pitiful attempts to bring dead joy back to life again. And everything that I saw bore the stamp of stupidity and unreason. He that is born wise turns stupid in their midst; he that is born cheerful hangs himself from boredom and sticks out his tongue at them. Amidst the flowers of the beautiful earth—you have no idea how beautiful the earth is, monk—they have erected insane asylums. And what are they doing with their children? I have never yet