VOINOV: I don’t know what to say. I suspect I’d have done as Yanek did. But I’m not sure of myself. [In an undertone] My hands—I can’t trust them not to tremble.
ANNENKOV: And you, Dora?
DORA [emphatically]: I’d have behaved like Yanek. So how can I ask of others what I couldn’t bring myself to do?
STEPAN: I wonder if you people realize what this decision means? Two solid months of shadowing, of hairbreadth escapes—two wasted months! Egor arrested to no purpose. Rikov hanged to no purpose. Must we start that all over again? Weeks and weeks of harrowing suspense without a break; of sleepless nights, of plotting and scheming, before another opportunity like this comes our way. Have you all gone crazy?
ANNENKOV: In two days’ time, as you know quite well, the Grand Duke will be going to the theater again.
STEPAN: Two days during which we run the risk of being caught at any moment; why, you’ve said so yourself!
KALIAYEV: I’m off!
DORA: No, wait. [To STEPAN] You, Stepan, could you fire point blank on a child, with your eyes open?
STEPAN: I could, if the group ordered it.
DORA: Why did you shut your eyes then?
STEPAN: What? Did I shut my eyes?
DORA: Yes.
STEPAN: Then it must have been because I wanted to picture … what you describe, more vividly, and to make sure my answer was the true one.
DORA: Open your eyes, Stepan, and try to realize that the group would lose all its driving force, were it to tolerate, even for a moment, the idea of children’s being blown to pieces by our bombs.
STEPAN: Sorry, but I don’t suffer from a tender heart; that sort of nonsense cuts no ice with me.… Not until the day comes when we stop sentimentalizing about children will the revolution triumph, and we be masters of the world.
DORA: When that day comes, the revolution will be loathed by the whole human race.
STEPAN: What matter, if we love it enough to force our revolution on it; to rescue humanity from itself and from its bondage?
DORA: And suppose mankind at large doesn’t want the revolution? Suppose the masses for whom you are fighting won’t stand for the killing of their children? What then? Would you strike at the masses, too?
STEPAN: Yes, if it were necessary, and I would go on striking at them until they understood.… No, don’t misunderstand me; I, too, love the people.
DORA: Love, you call it. That’s not how love shows itself.
STEPAN: Who says so?
DORA: I say it.
STEPAN: You’re a woman, and your idea of love is … well, let’s say, unsound.
DORA [passionately]: Anyhow, I’ve a very sound idea of what shame means.
STEPAN: Once, and once only, in my life I felt ashamed of myself. It was when I was flogged. Yes, I was flogged. The knout—you know what that is, don’t you? Vera was there beside me and she killed herself, as a protest. But I … I went on living. So why should I be ashamed of anything, now?
ANNENKOV: Stepan, all of us love you and respect you. But whatever private reasons you may have for feeling as you do, I can’t allow you to say that everything’s permissible. Thousands of our brothers have died to make it known that everything is not allowed.
STEPAN: Nothing that can serve our cause should be ruled out.
ANNENKOV [angrily]: Is it permissible for one of us to join the police and play a double game, as Evno proposed to do? Would you do it?
STEPAN: Yes, if I felt it necessary.
ANNENKOV [rising to his feet]: Stepan, we will forget what you’ve just said, for the sake of all that you have done for us and with us.… Now, let’s keep to the matter in hand. The question is whether, presently, we are to throw bombs at those two children.
STEPAN: Children! There you go, always talking about children! Cannot you realize what is at stake? Just because Yanek couldn’t bring himself to kill those two, thousands of Russian children will go on dying of starvation for years to come. Have you ever seen children dying of starvation? I have. And to be killed by a bomb is a pleasant death compared with that. But Yanek never saw children starving to death. He saw only the Grand Duke’s pair of darling little lapdogs. Aren’t you sentient human beings? Or are you living like animals for the moment only? In that case by all means indulge in charity and cure each petty suffering that meets your eye; but don’t meddle with the revolution, for its task is to cure all sufferings present and to come.
DORA: Yanek’s ready to kill the Grand Duke because his death may help to bring nearer the time when Russian children will no longer die of hunger. That in itself is none too easy for him. But the death of the Grand Duke’s niece and nephew won’t prevent any child from dying of hunger. Even in destruction there’s a right way and a wrong way—and there are limits.
STEPAN [vehemently]: There are no limits! The truth is that you don’t believe in the revolution, any of you. [All, except KALIAYEV, rise to their feet.] No, you don’t believe in it. If you did believe in it sincerely, with all your hearts; if you felt sure that, by dint of our struggles and sacrifices, some day we shall build up a new Russia, redeemed from despotism, a land of freedom that will gradually spread out over the whole earth; and if you felt convinced that then and only then, freed from his masters and his superstitions, man will at last look up toward the sky, a god in his own right—how, I ask you, could the deaths of two children be weighed in the balance against such a faith? Surely you would claim for yourselves the right to do anything and everything that might bring that great day nearer! So now, if you draw the line at killing these two children, well, it simply means you are not sure you have that right. So, I repeat, you do not believe in the revolution. [There is a short silence. KALIAYEV, too, rises to his feet.]
KALIAYEV: Stepan, I am ashamed of myself—yet I cannot let you continue. I am ready to shed blood, so as to overthrow the present despotism. But, behind your words, I see the threat of another despotism which, if ever it comes into power, will make of me a murderer—and what I want to be is a doer of justice, not a man of blood.
STEPAN: Provided justice is done—even if it’s done by assassins—what does it matter which you are? You and I are negligible quantities.
KALIAYEV: We are not, and you know it as well as anyone; in fact it’s pride, just pride, that makes you talk as you are doing now.
STEPAN: My pride is my concern alone. But men’s pride, their rebellion, the injustice that is done them—these are the concern of all of us.
KALIAYEV: Men do not live by justice alone.
STEPAN: When their bread is stolen, what else have they to live by?
KALIAYEV: By justice, and, don’t forget, by innocence.
STEPAN: Innocence? Yes, maybe I know what that means. But I prefer to shut my eyes to it—and to shut others’ eyes to it, for the time being—so that one day it may have a world-wide meaning.
KALIAYEV: Well, you must feel very sure that day is coming if you repudiate everything that makes life worth living today, on its account.
STEPAN: I am certain that that day is coming.
KALIAYEV: No, you can’t be as sure as that.… Before it can be known which of us, you or I, is right, perhaps three generations will have to be sacrificed; there will have been bloody wars, and no less bloody revolutions. And by the time that all this blood has dried off the earth, you and I will long since have turned to dust.
STEPAN: Then others will come—and I hail them as my brothers.
KALIAYEV [excitedly, raising his voice]: Others, you say! Quite likely you are right. But those I love are the men who are alive today, and walk this same earth. It’s they whom I hail, it is for them I am fighting, for them I am ready to lay down my life. But I shall not strike my brothers in the face for the sake of some far-off city, which, for all I know, may not exist. I refuse to add to the living injustice all around me for the sake of a dead justice. [In a lower voice, but firmly] Brothers, I want to speak to you quite frankly and to tell you something that even the simplest peasant in our backwoods would say if you asked him his opinion. Killing children is a crime against a man’s honor. And if one day the revolution thinks fit to break with honor, well, I’m through with the revolution. If you decide that I must do it, well and good; I will go to the theater when they’re due to come out—but I’ll fling myself under the horses’ feet.
STEPAN: Honor is a luxury reserved for people who have carriages-and-pairs.
KALIAYEV: No. It’s the one wealth left to a poor man. You know it, and you also know that the revolution has its code of honor. It’s what we all are ready to die for. It’s what made you hold your head up, Stepan, when they flogged
