Read Online Man From the USSR & Other Plays by Vladimir Nabokov - Free Book Online

Sergeyevna.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    We just wanted to peek in on you. Let’s have your little hand.
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
    That’s a very becoming little dress, Mariannochka.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    This is Olga Pavlovna’s husband.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
(dryly)

My pleasure.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    Oh, what am I saying....I believe you already know each other. Sit down, dear Yevghenia Vasilyevna. Over here. Olga Pavlovna, you want to do the honors for me? I’m such a bad hostess. Please sit down, everybody.
(Meanwhile the maid has entered with a tray. On it are a coffeepot and cups. She sets it down, says
“Bitte,”
and leaves.)
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
(to Marianna)

How are you, darling? Still making photographs?
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    Oh, Zhenya, you always mix things up! It’s called shooting. Shooting a movie....
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
    I hear you play Communists in it?
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    Please have some cake. Olga Pavlovna, would you cut
it? Yes, it’s a very interesting film. Of course it’s hard to judge, because it’s being shot—please have some—in bits and pieces.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    Thanks, I guess I will have a bitty piece.
(He glances at Kuznetsoff, who has walked, with his cup, to the settee in the comer.)
Why do they have to make movies about those scoundrels?
    Â 
    OLGA PAVLOVNA
    Victor Ivanovich, how is your tavern doing?
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    And why are you changing the subject, Olga Pavlovna? I repeat, these characters ought to be strangled, not trotted out onto the stage.
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
    I could strangle Trotsky with my own hands.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    Of course, art is above politics, but they have besmirched everything—beauty, the poetry of life....
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
    I hear they have some great poet—Blok or Bloch 5 —or whatever his name is. A Jew futurist. Well, they maintain that this Bloch is better than Pushkin-and-Lermontov.
(She says it like “Laurel-and-Hardy.
    Â 
    OLGA PAVLOVNA
    Come, come, Yevghenia Vasilyevna—Alexander Blok died a long time ago. Besides—
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
(sailing on unperturbed)

But dearie, the whole point is that he’s alive. They lie about it deliberately. Just like they lied about Lenin. There were several Lenins. The real one was killed at the very beginning.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
(continuing to glance to the left)

Those scoundrels are capable of anything. Excuse me.... Olga Pavlovna, what’s the name and patronymic of your—
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    Alexey Matveyich. 6 At your service.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    I wanted to ask you, Alexey Matveyich—why are you smiling like that?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    To be polite. You keep looking over at me.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    Emigré talk doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea. Sir, you ought to try—
    Â 
    OLGA PAVLOVNA
    Can I give you some more coffee?
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    â€”you ought to try living the way we live for a while. You’d start talking émigré talk yourself. Take me, for example. I’m an old man. They took away everything I had. They killed my son. For more than seven years I’ve been leading a pauper’s existence in exile. And now I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Our way of thinking is very different from yours.
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
(laughing)

Why on earth are you attacking me like this?
    Â 
    MRS. OSHIVENSKI
    Mariannochka, we must be going soon,
(in a rapid sotto voce)
Sorry,
mais je ne peux pas supporter la compagnie d’un bolchevik.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    No, I’m not attacking you. It’s just hard to control oneself sometimes. The mood may be different in Warsaw. You were there, weren’t you?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    Passed through on my way. I’ve already answered that question for you.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    And you’re planning to stay here a long time?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    No, I’m leaving soon.
    Â 
    OSHIVENSKI
    And for where?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    What do you mean where? The USSR, of