KALIAYEV: That’s no concern of yours.
SKURATOV [laughing]: Oh, come now! … Well, I’ll tell you why. An ideal can murder a Grand Duke, but it balks at murdering children. That was the discovery you made that day. But let’s carry it a stage further. If an ideal balks at murdering children, is one justified in murdering a Grand Duke on its behalf? [KALIAYEV makes a fretful gesture.] No, don’t answer me. It’s not I who am concerned in this. You will give your answer to the Grand Duchess.
KALIAYEV: The Grand Duchess?
SKURATOV: Yes, she wants to see you. And my chief reason for coming here was to make sure that this was feasible. It is. It may even make you change your mind. The Grand Duchess is a very Christian lady. Indeed one might say she makes a hobby of the soul. [Laughs.]
KALIAYEV: I refuse to see her.
SKURATOV: I’m sorry, but she will not take No for an answer. And, after all, you owe her some consideration. What’s more, it seems that since her husband’s death she has become—how shall I put it?—mentally unbalanced. So we thought it better not to oppose her wishes. [Standing in the doorway.] If you change your mind, don’t forget my proposal. I shall be seeing you again. [A short silence. He is listening.] Here she comes. You certainly can’t complain of being neglected! But it all hangs together. Imagine God without prisons! One would be lost without the other.
[He goes out. Voices and words of command in the corridor. The GRAND DUCHESS enters. She stands silent, unmoving, for some moments. The door remains open.]
KALIAYEV: What do you want?
THE GRAND DUCHESS [lifting her veil]: Look! [KALIAYEV says nothing.] Many things die with a man.
KALIAYEV: I knew it.
THE GRAND DUCHESS [in a faint, weary, but quite natural voice]: No, murderers do not know that. If they did, how could they bring themselves to kill? [A short silence.]
KALIAYEV: I have seen you. Now I wish to be alone.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: No. I, too, must look at you. [KALIAYEV shrinks away. The GRAND DUCHESS sits down; she seems exhausted.] I can’t remain alone any longer. In the old days when I was sad, he used to share my sorrow—and I did not mind suffering … then. But now … No, I cannot bear being alone and keeping silent any longer. But to whom am I to speak? The others do not know. They pretend to be distressed. And perhaps they really are, for an hour or two. Then they go off to eat—or to sleep. To sleep especially. Somehow, I felt you must be like me. You, too, don’t sleep, I am sure. And to whom could I speak of the crime, except to the murderer?
KALIAYEV: What crime? All I remember is an act of justice.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: The same voice! You have exactly the same voice as his. But, I suppose, all men use the same tone when they speak of justice. He used to say “That is just,” and nobody had a right to question it. And yet perhaps he was mistaken; perhaps you, too, are mistaken.
KALIAYEV: He was an incarnation of that supreme injustice under which Russia has been groaning for centuries untold. And in return for this he was given privileges, rewards, and honors. But, as for me, even if I am mistaken, my wages are imprisonment and death.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Yes, you are suffering. But he is dead, you killed him.
KALIAYEV: He died suddenly, unaware, A death like that is nothing.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Nothing? [In a lower voice] That’s true. They took you away immediately. I’m told that you made speeches while the police officers were surrounding you. I understand. That must have helped you. But it was different for me. I came some minutes later, and I saw! I put on a bier all that I could collect. What quantities of blood! [Pauses.] I was wearing a white dress.
KALIAYEV: Keep silent.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Why? I am telling the truth, only the truth. Do you know what he was doing two hours before he died? He was sleeping. In an armchair with his feet propped up on another chair—as he often did. He was sleeping, and you—you were waiting for him in the cruel twilight. [She is weeping.] Oh, help me now, please help me! [He stiffens up, and moves away.] You are young, surely you can’t be wicked.
KALIAYEV: I have never had time to be young.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Oh, why are you so hard, so callous? Do you never feel pity for yourself?
KALIAYEV: No.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: You’re wrong. It consoles. Yes, that’s my last, miserable consolation—pity for myself. But it doesn’t stop my suffering. Ah, you should have killed me with him, instead of sparing me.
KALIAYEV: It was not you I spared, but the children you had with you.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: I know … I didn’t like them much. [Pauses.] They were the Grand Duke’s niece and nephew. Weren’t they guilty, like their uncle?
KALIAYEV: No.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: How can you be so sure? My niece is a heartless little girl When she’s told to give something to poor people, she refuses. She won’t go near them. Is not she unjust? Of course she is. But my poor husband was very fond of the peasants. He used to drink with them. And now you’ve killed him! Surely you, too, are unjust. The world is empty, cruel as the desert.…
KALIAYEV: You are wasting your time. You want to sap my strength and drive me to despair. But you will not succeed. So let me be.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Won’t you join with me in prayer, and repent? Then we should be less lonely.
KALIAYEV: Let me prepare myself to die. If I did not die—it’s then I’d be a murderer.
THE GRAND DUCHESS [rising to her feet]: To die? You want to die? No. [Going toward KALIAYEV, with rising emotion.] It is your duty to accept being a murderer. Did you not kill him? God alone will justify you.…
KALIAYEV: What God? Yours or mine?
THE GRAND DUCHESS: The God of our Holy Church.
KALIAYEV: What has the Church to do with it?
THE GRAND DUCHESS: It serves a Master who, like you, had experience of prison.
KALIAYEV: The times have changed. Don’t forget the Church has chosen what it wanted from its Master’s legacy.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: I don’t follow.
KALIAYEV: The Church has kept to itself the exercise of grace, and left to us the exercise of charity.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Whom do you mean by us?
KALIAYEV [with shrill exasperation]: Why, those you hang!
[A short silence.]
THE GRAND DUCHESS [gently]: I am not your enemy.
KALIAYEV [passionately]: You are! You are! And so are all your kind. There is something even fouler than being a criminal; it’s forcing into crime a man who is not made for it. Look at me! I swear to you I wasn’t made to be a murderer.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: Please do not talk to me as if I were an enemy. Look! [She goes to the door and shuts it.] Now I am in your hands. I trust you. [Weeping] There is a man’s blood between us. But, even though we are parted in this world of sin and suffering, we can meet in God.… Will you pray with me?
KALIAYEV: No, I will not. [Goes toward her.] The only feeling I have toward you is pity; you have touched my heart. And now I will speak quite frankly, for I would like you to understand. I have given up counting on the agreement that I once made with God. But, in dying, I shall keep the agreement I made with those I love, my brothers, who are thinking of me at this moment. And it would be betraying them to pray.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: What do you mean?
KALIAYEV [excitedly]: Nothing—except that I shall soon be happy, gloriously happy! An ordeal lies before me, but I shall see it through. Then, when sentence has been pronounced and all is ready for the execution—ah, then, at the foot of the scaffold, I shall turn my back on you and on this loathsome world forever, and at last my heart will flood with joy, the joy of love fulfilled.… Can you understand?
THE GRAND DUCHESS: There is no love where God is not.
KALIAYEV: Yes, there is. Love for His creatures.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: His creatures are … abject! One can forgive them or destroy them—what else is there to do?
KALIAYEV: To die with them.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: One always dies alone. He died alone.
KALIAYEV [desperately]: No, no! One can die with them. Those who love each other today must die together if they wish to be reunited. In life they are parted—by injustice, sorrow, shame; by the evil that men do to others … by crimes. Living is agony, because life separates.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: God reunites.
KALIAYEV: Not on this earth. And the only meetings that mean anything to me take place on earth.
THE GRAND DUCHESS: This earth is the meeting place of dogs, who keep their noses to the ground, sniffing here and there, and never finding what they want.
KALIAYEV [looking away, toward the window]: Soon I shall know the truth. [He is silent for some moments.] And yet—cannot one picture a love existing here and now on this sad earth between two people, people who have abandoned any hope of joy and love each other in sorrow; people whose only meeting place, whose only link is sorrow? [Looks at her.] Cannot we picture them being bound together thus, in life no less than in death?
THE GRAND DUCHESS: A
