Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 63

SASHA. From Siberia.

AST. What were you doing in Siberia?

SASHA. Do you not understand, Asteryi Ivanovitch? I am a criminal.

AST. Ah!

SASHA. A convict, a felon. I have escaped and come home.

AST. Of what crime have you been guilty?

SASHA. Do not ask me so many questions, but give me something to eat.

AST. But tell me this....

SASHA. There is food here. I smelt it as I came in. [_He eats the meat with his fingers ravenously, like a wild beast._]

FOMa. It is your mother's supper.

SASHA. I do not care whose supper it is. I am ravenous. I have had nothing to eat all day.

FOMa. Can this wild beast be Praskovya's son?

SASHA. We are all wild beasts if we are kept from food. Ha! and vodka, too! [_helping himself_].

AST. Are you a convict, a felon, Sasha? You who were dead? Then we have been deceived for many years.

SASHA. Have you?

AST. Some other man was murdered twenty years ago. The murderer said that it was you.

SASHA. Ah, he said that it was me, did he?

AST. Why did Adamek say that it was you?

SASHA. Can you not guess? Adamek murdered no one.

AST. He murdered no one? But he was condemned.

SASHA. He was never condemned.

AST. Never condemned? Then what became of him?

SASHA. He died.... Do you not understand? It was I who killed Adamek.

AST. You!

SASHA. We had quarreled. We were alone in a solitary place. I killed him and stood looking down at him with the knife in my hand dripping scarlet in the snow, frightened at the sudden silence and what I had done. And while I thought I was alone, I turned and saw the police-officer with his revolver leveled at my head. Then amid the confusion and black horror that seized on me, a bright thought shot across my mind. Adamek had no relatives, no friends; he was an outcast. Stained with his flowing blood, I exchanged names with him; that's the old heroic custom of blood-brotherhood, you know. I named myself Adamek; I named my victim Sasha. Ingenious, wasn't it? I had romantic ideas in those days. Adamek has been cursed for a murderer, and my memory has been honored.

Alexander Petrovitch has been a hero; my mother has wept for me. I have seen her in the graveyard lamenting on my tomb; I have read my name on the cross. I hardly know whether to laugh or to cry. Evidently she loves me still.

AST. And you?

SASHA. Do I love her? No. There is no question of that. She is part of a life that was ended too long ago. I have only myself to think of now.

What should I gain by loving her? Understand, I am an outlaw, an escaped convict; a word can send me back to the mines. I must hide myself, the patrols are everywhere.... Even here I am not safe. [_Locks the street door._]

AST. Why have you returned? Why have you spoilt what you began so well?

Having resolved twenty years ago to vanish like a dead man....

SASHA. Ah! if they had killed me then I would have died willingly. But after twenty years remorse goes, pity goes, everything goes; entombed in the mines, but still alive.... I was worn out. I could bear it no longer. Others were escaping, I escaped with them.

AST. This will break her heart. She has made an angel of you. The lamp is always burning....

SASHA [_going to the eikon corner with a gla.s.s of vodka in his hand_].

Aha! Alexander Nevski, my patron saint. I drink to you, my friend: but I cannot congratulate you on your work. As a guardian angel you have been something of a failure. And what is this? [_taking a photograph_].

Myself! Who would have known this for my portrait? Look at the angel child, with the soft cheeks and the pretty curly hair. How innocent and good I looked! [_bringing it down_]. And even then I was deceiving my mother. She never understood that a young man must live, he must live.

We are animals first; we have instincts that need something warmer, something livelier, than the tame dull round of home. [_He throws down the photograph; Foma replaces it._] And even now I have no intention of dying. Yet how am I to live? I cannot work; the mines have sucked out all my strength. Has my mother any money?

AST. [_to Foma_]. What can we do with him?

SASHA. Has my mother any money?

AST. Money? Of course not. Would she let lodgings if she had? Listen. I am a poor man myself, but I will give you ten roubles and your railway fare to go to St. Petersburg.

SASHA. St. Petersburg? And what shall I do there when I have spent the ten roubles?

AST. [_shrugging his shoulders_]. How do I know? Live there, die there, only stay away from here.

FOMa. What right have you to send him away? Why do you suppose that she will not be glad to see him? Let her see her saint bedraggled, and love him still--that is what true love means. You have regaled her with lies all these years; but now it is no longer possible. [_A knocking at the door._] She is at the door.

AST. [_to Sasha_]. Come with me. [_To Foma._] He must go out by the other way.

FOMa [_stopping them_]. No, I forbid it. It is the hand of G.o.d that has led him here. Go and unlock the door. [_Asteryi shrugs his shoulders, and goes to unlock the door._] [_To Sasha, hiding him._] Stand here a moment till I have prepared your mother.

[_Enter Praskovya and Varvara, carrying a box._]

PRAS. Why is the door locked? Were you afraid without old Praskovya to protect you? Here is the money. Now let me count it. Have you two been quarreling? There are fifty roubles in this bag, all in little pieces of silver; it took me two years.

FOMa. How you must have denied yourself, Praskovya, and all to build a hut in a churchyard!

PRAS. On what better thing could money be spent?

FOMa. You are so much in love with your tomb-house, I believe that you would be sorry if it turned out that your son was not dead, but alive.

PRAS. Why do you say such things? You know that I should be glad. Ah! if I could but see him once again as he was then, and hold him in my arms!

FOMa. But he would not be the same now.

PRAS. If he were different, he would not be my son.