THE SECRETARY: I am older than you, and I know that their love, too, can be stubborn.
THE PLAGUE: Love? What’s that? [Exit.]
THE SECRETARY: Rise, woman. I’m tired, and I want to get it over.
[VICTORIA rises. But at the same moment DIEGO falls. The SECRETARY retreats a little, into a patch of shadow. VICTORIA runs toward DIEGO.]
VICTORIA: Oh, Diego, what have you done to our happiness?
DIEGO: Good-by, Victoria. I am glad it’s so.
VICTORIA: Don’t talk like that, my love! That’s one of those horrible things men say. [Weeping.] No one has the right to be glad to die.
DIEGO: But I am glad, Victoria. I did what I was called upon to do.
VICTORIA: No, you should have chosen me, though all the powers of heaven forbade you. You should have preferred me to the whole earth.
DIEGO: I have squared up accounts with death—there lies my strength. But it is an all-devouring strength; happiness has no place in it.
VICTORIA: What did your strength matter to me? It was you—the man you were—that I loved.
DIEGO: I have burned myself out in the struggle. I am no longer a man and it is right that I should die.
VICTORIA [flinging herself on him]: Then take me with you.
DIEGO: No this world needs you. It needs our women to teach it how to live. We men have never been capable of anything but dying.
VICTORIA: Ah. it was too simple, wasn’t it, to love each other in silence and to endure together whatever had to be endured? I preferred your fear, Diego.
DIEGO: [gazing at VICTORIA]: I loved you with my whole soul.
VICTORIA [passionately]: But that wasn’t enough! No, even that was not enough! You loved me with your soul, perhaps, but I wanted more than that, far more.
[The SECRETARY stretches her hand toward DIEGO. The death agony begins, while the women hasten toward VICTORIA and gather round her.]
CHORUS OF WOMEN: Our curse on him! Our curse on all who forsake our bodies! And pity on us, most of all, who are forsaken and must endure year after year this world which men in their pride are ever aspiring to transform! Surely, since everything may not be saved, we should learn at least to safeguard the home where love is. Then, come war, come pestilence, we could bravely see them through with you beside us. Thus, instead of this solitary death, haunted by foolish dreams and nourished with words, your last end would be shared by us, we would die united in an all-consuming flame of love. But no! Men go whoring after ideas, a man runs away from his mother, forsakes his love, and starts rushing upon adventure, wounded without a scar, slain without a dagger, a hunter of shadows or a lonely singer who invokes some impossible reunion under a silent sky, and makes his way from solitude to solitude, toward the final isolation, a death in the desert.
[DIEGO dies. The women keen while a rising wind sweeps the city.]
THE SECRETARY: Do not weep. The bosom of the earth is soft for those who have loved her greatly. [She goes away. Carrying DIEGO, VICTORIA and the women move to the side of the stage. Meanwhile the sounds in the background are becoming more distinct. There is a burst of music and NADA is heard shouting on the battlements.]
NADA: Here they are, the old gang! They all are coming back: the men of the past, the fossils, the dead-enders, the triflers, smooth-tongued, comfortable—the army of tradition, robust and flourishing, spick and span as ever. So now we can start all over again, and what a relief for everyone! From zero naturally. Here they come, the tailors of nonentity, you’ll have your new suits built to order. But there’s no need to worry, their method is the best. Instead of shutting the mouths of those who air their grievances, they shut their own ears. We were dumb, we are going to be deaf. [Trumpet calls.] Look! The writers of history are coming back and we shall soon be reading all about our heroes of the plague.
They will be kept nice and cool under the flagstones. But there’s nothing to complain of; the company above the flagstones is really too, too mixed! [In the background official ceremonies are taking place, in pantomime.] Look! Do you see what they’re up to? Conferring decorations on each other! The banquet halls of hatred are always open, and the soil is never so exhausted that the dead wood of the gallows fails to rise from it. The blood of those you call the just ones still glistens on the walls—and what are those fine fellows up to? Giving each other medals! Rejoice, my friends, you’re going to have your prize-day speeches. But before the platform is brought forward, I’d like to give you mine—a few well-chosen words. That young man, whom somehow I couldn’t help liking, died cheated. [The FISHERMAN makes a rush at NADA. The Guards arrest him.] As you see, fishermen and governments may come and go, the police are always with us. So, after all, justice does exist.
CHORUS: No, there is no justice—but there are limits. And those who stand for no rules at all, no less than those who want to impose a rule for everything, overstep the limit. Open the gates and let the salt wind scour the city.
[The gates are opened, the wind is growing stronger and stronger.]
NADA: Justice exists—the justice done to my disgust. Yes, you are going to start again; but henceforth it’s no concern of mine. And don’t count on me to supply you with the plaintive, perfect scapegoat; plaintiveness is not my line. So now, old world, it’s time for me to leave you, your executioners are tired, their hatred’s gone too cold. I know too many things; even scorn has had its day. So good-by, my worthy fellow citizens, one day you’ll find out for yourselves that man is nothing and God’s face is hideous!
[NADA rushes through the wind, which has now reached storm pitch, to the jetty, and flings himself into the sea. The FISHERMAN, who has run after him, stands gazing down.]
THE FISHERMAN: The sea has closed upon him. The great sea-horses are ravaging him, choking his breath out with their white manes. That lying mouth is filling up with salt; at last it will keep silent. See how the swirling waves are glowing, like anemones! Their anger is our anger, they are avenging us, calling on all the men of the sea to meet together, all the outcasts to make common cause. O mighty mother, whose bosom is the homeland of all rebels, behold thy people who will never yield! Soon a great tidal wave, nourished in the bitter dark of underseas, will sweep away our loathsome cities.
CURTAIN
The Just Assassins
Characters in the Play
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV
Act V
O love! O life! not life, but love in death!
ROMEO AND JULIET ACT IV, SCENE 5
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
DORA DULEBOV
THE GRAND DUCHESS
IVAN KALIAYEV
STEPAN FEDOROV
BORIS (BORIA) ANNENKOV
ALEXIS VOINOV
SKURATOV
FOKA
THE GUARD
LES JUSTES (THE JUST ASSASSINS) was presented for the first time at the THÉÂTRE-HÉBERTOT, Paris, on December 15, 1949.
ACT I
The terrorists’ headquarters: a sparsely furnished apartment of an ordinary type. The morning sun is shining through a window overlooking a main street in Moscow. When the curtain rises DORA DULEBOV and BORIS ANNENKOV are standing in the middle of the room. For some moments there is complete silence; then the front doorbell rings once. DORA seems about to say something, but ANNENKOV signals to her to keep quiet. Two more rings in quick succession.
ANNENKOV: It’s he. [He goes out. DORA waits, still motionless; she has not moved at all since the curtain rose. ANNENKOV returns with STEPAN, whom he is grasping affectionately by the shoulders.] Here he is! Stepan’s back again!
DORA [going toward STEPAN and clasping his hand]: Welcome back, Stepan.
STEPAN: Good morning, Dora.
DORA [gazing at him]: Three years—just think!
STEPAN: Yes, three long, empty years. That day when they arrested me I was on my way to join you.
DORA: We were expecting you every moment. I’ll never forget how my heart sank, deeper and deeper, as the minutes ticked away. We didn’t dare to look each other in the face.
ANNENKOV: And of course we had to move at once to a new apartment.
STEPAN: I know.
DORA: And over there, Stepan, how was it?
STEPAN: Over there?
DORA: In the prison, I mean.
STEPAN: One escapes … with luck.
ANNENKOV: Yes. When we heard that you’d got through to Switzerland, well, you know how we felt.
STEPAN: Switzerland, too, is a prison.
ANNENKOV: Oh, come now! They’re free there, anyhow.
STEPAN: Freedom can be a prison, so long as a single man on earth is kept in bondage. I myself was free, of course, but all the time I was thinking of Russia and her slaves.
[A short silence.]
ANNENKOV: I’m glad, Stepan, that the party sent you here.
STEPAN: They had to. That atmosphere of smug inertia was stifling me. Ah, to act, to act at last …! [Looks at ANNENKOV.] We shall kill him, you’re sure of that?
ANNENKOV: Quite sure.
STEPAN: We shall kill that bloodthirsty tyrant! Ah! You’re the leader, Boria, and I shall obey you, never fear.
ANNENKOV: I don’t need your promise, Stepan. We all are brothers.
STEPAN: But discipline’s essential. That’s something I learned in the convict prison. The Revolutionary Socialist Party cannot do without it. We must be disciplined if we’re to kill the Grand Duke and put an end to tyranny.
DORA [going up to him]: Sit down, Stepan. You must be tired after that long journey.
STEPAN: I’m never tired. [A short silence. DORA sits down.] Is everything ready, Boria?
ANNENKOV
