STEPAN: Who is “we”?
PETER: Why, we normal men. We are going to remake the world. We are the saviors.
STEPAN: Is it possible that anyone like you aims to offer himself up to men in the place of Christ? But just look at yourself!
PETER: Don’t shout. We shall destroy everything. We’ll not leave a stone standing, and then we’ll begin all over again. Then there will be true equality. You preached equality, didn’t you? Well, you shall have it! And I bet that you won’t recognize it.
STEPAN: I shall not recognize it if it looks like you. No, it was not of such things that we used to dream! I don’t understand anything any more. I have given up understanding.
PETER: All that comes from your sick old nerves. You made speeches. We act. What are you complaining about, scatterbrained old man?
STEPAN: How can you be so insensitive?
PETER: I followed your teachings. According to yon, the thing to do was to treat injustice harshly and to be sure of one’s rights, to go ever forward toward the future! Well, that’s where we’re going, and we shall strike hard. A tooth for a tooth, as in the Gospels!
STEPAN: You poor fellow, it’s not in the Gospels! PETER: The devil take it! I have never read that confounded book. Nor any other book. What’s the use? What matters is progress.
STEPAN: No, you’re crazy! Shakespeare and Hugo don’t stand in the way of progress. Quite the contrary, i assure you!
PETER: Don’t get excited! Hugo is an old pair of buttocks. As for Shakespeare, our peasants working in the fields don’t need him. They need shoes instead. They will be given them as soon as everything is destroyed.
STEPAN (trying to be ironic): And when will this be?
PETER: In May. In June everyone will be making shoes, (STEPAN TROFIMOVICH falls into a chair, crushed.) Rejoice, ancestor,„for your ideas are going to be put into practice.
STEPAN: They are not my ideas. You want to destroy everything; you don’t want to leave a single stone standing. But / wanted people to love one another.
PETER: No need for love! Science will take its place.
STEPAN: But that will be boring.
PETER: Why should it be boring? That’s an aristocratic idea. When men are equal, they are not bored. “They don’t have a good time either.
Nothing matters and everything is on the same plane. When we have justice plus science, then both love and boredom will be done away with. People will forget.
STEPAN: NO man will ever be willing to forget his love.
PETER: Again you’re indulging in words. Just remember, ancestor, that you forgot; you got married three times.
STEPAN: Twice. And after a long interval. PETER: Long or short, people forget. Consequently, the sooner they forget, the better. Oh, but you get on my nerves, never knowing what you want! / know what I want. Half the heads will have to be cut off. Those that remain will be taught to drink.
STEPAN: It is easier to cut off heads than to have ideas.
PETER: What ideas? Ideas are nonsense. Nonsense has to be suppressed to achieve justice. Nonsense was good enough for oldsters like you. A man has to choose. If you believe in God, you are forced to say nonsense. If you don’t believe in him and yet refuse to admit that everything must be razed, you will still talk nonsense. You’re all in the same boat, and consequently you can’t keep yourselves from talking nonsense. / say that men must act. I’ll destroy everything and others will construct. No more reform and no more improvement. The more things are improved and reformed, the worse it is. The sooner people begin to destroy, the better it is. Let’s begin by destroying. What happens afterward doesn’t concern us. The rest is nonsense, nonsense!
STEPAN (rushing out of the TOOTH, terrified): He’s mad, he’s mad. . . .
(PETER VERKHOVENSKY laughs uproariously.)
BLACKOUT
THE NARRATOR: Well, so much for that! I have forgotten to tell you two facts. The first is that the Lebyatkins had mysteriously moved while Stavrogin was bedridden and had settled in a little house in the suburbs. The second is that a convicted murderer had escaped and was prowling among us. As a result, rich people did not go out at night.
The street at night, STAVROGIN is walking in the dark, unaware that FEDKA is following him.
SCENE 6
The common room of the Filipov rooming house In Epiphany Street, KIRILOV is on all fours to retrieve a a ball that has rolled under a piece of furniture. While he is in that position, STAVROGIN opens the door, KIRILOV, with the ball in his hand, gets up as he sees him come in.
STAVROGIN: You are playing ball?
KIRILOV: I bought it in Hamburg to throw it up and catch it; nothing strengthens the back like that. Besides, I play with the landlady’s boy. STAVROGIN: Do you like children?
KIRILOV: Yes. STAVROGIN: Why?
KIRILOV: I like life. You want tea? STAVROGIN: Yes.
KIRILOV: Sit down. What do you want of me? STAVROGIN: A service. Read this letter. It is a challenge from the son of Gaganov, whose ear I bit some time back, (KIRILOV reads it and then places it on the table and looks at STAVROGIN.) [Yes, he has already written me several times to insult me. In the beginning I answered to assure him that if he was still suffering from the insult I had done his father, I was ready to offer him every apology. I insisted that my deed had not been premeditated and that I was ill at the time. Instead of calming him, this seemed to irritate him even more, if I can believe what he said about me. Today I am handed this letter.] Have you read what he says at the end?
KIRILOV: Yes, he speaks of a “face I’d like to smack.”
STAVROGIN: That’s it. Hence I have to fight him, although I don’t want to. I have come to ask you to be my second.
KIRILOV: I’ll go. What should I say?
STAVROGIN: Begin by repeating my apologies for the offense done to his father. Tell him that I am ready to forget his insults if only he will cease writing me this kind of letter, especially with such vulgar expressions.
KIRILOV: He won’t accept. It’s clear that he wants to fight you and kill you.
STAVROGIN: I know it.
KIRILOV: Good. Tell me your conditions for the duel.
STAVROGIN: I want everything to be over tomorrow. Go and see him tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. We can be on the field at about two. [The weapon will be the pistol. The barriers will be ten yards apart. Each of us shall take his stand ten paces from his barrier. At the signal we shall walk toward each other. Each may shoot as he walks. We shall shoot three times. That’s all. KIRILOV: Ten yards between the barriers isn’t much.
STAVROGIN: Twelve, if you prefer. But no more.] Have you pistols?
KIRILOV: Yes. You want to see them?
STAVROGIN :” Certainly.
(KIRILOV kneels doivn in front of a traveling bag and takes out a pistol case, which he places on the table in front of STAVROGIN.)
KIRILOV: I also have a revolver I bought in America. (He shows it to him.)
STAVROGIN: YOU have many guns. And very handsome ones.
KIRILOV: They are my sole wealth.
(STAVROGIN looks at him fixedly, then closes the pistol case without ceasing to look at him.) STAVROGIN (with a slight hesitation): Are you still firm in your intention?
KIRILOV (immediately and with a most natural manner) : Yes.
STAVROGIN: I mean in regard to suicide. KIRILOV: I understood what you meant. Yes, I have the same intentions.
STAVROGIN: Ah! And when will it be? KIRILOV: Soon.
STAVROGIN: You seem very happy. KIRILOV: I am.
STAVROGIN: I understand that. I have sometimes thought of it. just imagine that you have committed a crime, or, rather, a particularly cowardly, shameful deed. Well, a bullet in the head and everything ceases to exist! What does shame matter then!
KIRILOV: That’s not why I am happy. STAVROGIN: Why, then?
KIRILOV: Have you ever looked at the leaf of a tree?
STAVROGIN: Yes.
KIRILOV: Green and shiny, with ail its veins visible in the sunlight? Isn’t it wonderful? Yes, a leaf justifies everything. Human beings, birth and death everything one does is good.
STAVROGIN: And even if . . . (He stops.) KIRILOV: Well?
STAVROGIN: If a man harms one of those children you love … a little girl, for instance … If he dishonors her, is that good too?
KIRILOV (staring at him in silence): Did you do that? (STAVROGIN shakes his head oddly in silence.) If a man commits such a crime, that is good too. And if someone splits open the head of a man who dishonored a child or if, on the other hand, he is forgiven, all that is good. When we know that once and for all, then we are happy. STAVROGIN: When did you discover that you were happy?
KIRILOV: Last Wednesday. During the night. At two thirtyfive.
(STAVROGIN rises suddenly.)
STAVROGIN: Was it you whojighted the lamp in front of the icon?
KIRILOV: It was I. [STAVROGIN: DO you pray?
KIRILOV: Constantly. Do you see that spider? I watch her and am grateful to her for climbing. That’s my way of praying.
STAVROGIN: DO you believe in a future life? KIRILOV: Not in eternal life in the future. But in eternal life here below.
STAVROGIN: Here below?
KIRILOV: Yes. At certain moments. Such a joy that one would die if it lasted more than five seconds.] (STAVROGIN looks at him with a sort of contempt.)
STAVROGIN: And you claim not to believe in God! KIRILOV (quite simply):
