Diane Stubbings - The Parricide

A crack like a gunshot.

In that moment, almost like a flash—

Tight spotlight on FEDYA . Another tight light on KARAKOZOV . Another on the SOLDIER . All the lights are incredibly bright.

Another crack. KARAKOZOV is shot. He falls.

We see the whole room again. We hear the LANDLADY ’s broom banging.

LANDLADY: [ off ] They’ve executed him, Fyodor Mikhailovich. That bastard student is dead.

Another crack.

In that moment, like a flash—

Tight spotlight on FEDYA . Incredibly bright. Tight spotlight on the SOLDIER , his gun aimed at FEDYA. FEDYA waits for it to fire. The SOLDIER fires into the air.

We see the whole room again.

ANNA: Fyodor Mikhailovich—

What can I do?

The room is overwhelmed by shadows.

Reality gives way to FEDYA ’s imagination.

The moment where the two worlds of the play merge: he is unsure whether it is ANNA or KATYA who is standing in front of him; he is the third brother in his novel of the parricide, speaking to the woman he refuses to admit he loves.

FEDYA: Why do I cling to it? This misery?

Because it’s the substance of my life—forever suspended between belief and disbelief… God and…

If you could sow within me one grain of faith… one grain—if we could live for this world alone… But with all we know—the more we know—there can be no truth. No truth. It changes from one day to the next and…

A man sees such things, such a complex reality, such events, a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, full of such astonishing details, beginning with the most exalted manifestations of the human spirit to the last button on a dress front…

He is close to ANNA / KATYA now. An intensely intimate moment.

The blood’s still here. The blood’s still on my hands. How is it I’m left to live? When I too wanted him dead? When I’m as guilty as him?

The light holds for a moment. Seeps to a deep blood red.

We see the whole room again.

FEDYA falls to his knees.

The first moments of a fit.

Darkness.

Then silence.

A light in the darkness. A small fire burning.

FEDYA ’s flat.

FEDYA is asleep on the sofa.

ANNA is tidying the room—she has made a few inroads into the mess, though the disarray is still evident.

FEDYA stirs.

FEDYA: I thought you were leaving.

ANNA: Today. I’m leaving today.

FEDYA: The novel?

ANNA: Taken to the notary.

FEDYA: Not to Stellovsky?

ANNA: He couldn’t be found.

The notary has it. He knows your side of the bargain was kept.

A beat.

I found your notebook. The one you were asking for.

Here.

She hands him his notebook. He riffles through the pages.

FEDYA: How do I write, Anna?

How do I turn what’s in my head into words? Words that warrant an ounce of anyone’s attention?

ANNA: You sit at your desk, Fyodor Mikhailovich. You put your pen to the paper.

FEDYA tears pages from the notebook, throws them on to the fire.

ANNA: Fyodor Mikhailovich—?

FEDYA: It’s not what I thought it was.

ANNA: So you destroy it?

FEDYA: If there’s anything in it—anything of merit—a fire’s not going to destroy it.

A long beat.

ANNA: [ gathering her things to leave ] I’ll ask the landlady to bring you soup. Whatever you need.

FEDYA: I had a dream, Anna Grigorevna. A good dream it seemed. A dream that seemed to promise good things. I was organising my papers. Trying to. Amongst all the mess I found the strangest thing. Buried underneath piles and piles of papers. A tiny diamond. Tiny. But with such a fierce light. I knew I’d treasure it to the end of my days.

What do you think it might mean?

ANNA: A dream is a dream.

FEDYA: I’m wrong to think it might herald some happiness to come?

ANNA: Elena Petrovna is a very beautiful woman. I’m sure she’ll bring you great happiness.

FEDYA: Elena has gone to Paris. I don’t expect ever to see her again.

A beat.

FEDYA: I thought I might work it into a novel. A pitiable man who dreams of such a treasure. Who spends all his life searching for it. Who ends by discovering it’s been in the one place—the one place closest to his heart—where he has always failed to look.

Would you believe that possible, Anna? If you read such a novel?

ANNA: In the pages of a novel… yes, I’d believe it.

But I feel you’re teasing me, sir—

FEDYA: Sir?

ANNA: Playing with me—

FEDYA: Why would I do that?

ANNA: To judge how a young woman—an inexperienced woman, if you will—might react to such words.

FEDYA: How would she react?

ANNA: I don’t know how to unriddle you—

FEDYA: How would she react?

ANNA: I could work for you every day for the rest of my life and I’d never understand you.

FEDYA: Tell me, Anna. How?

ANNA: I don’t know. What do I know? What does she know? But that this man was four weeks ago—four days ago—on fire with such a passion… That he would watch this other woman walk into the room and the desire that would… What do I know? But that I have been abused and tried and tested… So much good… So much good, Fyodor Mikhailovich has been crushed out of me. Crushed out of all of us. Between these bombs and executions and hatreds that speak nothing of my life. It seems impossible to know anymore—what is right. What is good. It seems that it’s only in the pages of a novel that anything good can survive. That hope can survive.

You tested me—

FEDYA: No—

ANNA: You tested my loyalty to you—

FEDYA: No—

ANNA: What did you want? Did you want me to betray you? And now, is it that I’m supposed to deny you—?

FEDYA: Deny me?

ANNA: To give you yet another thing to mourn for—?

FEDYA: It wasn’t to test you—

ANNA: Another excuse to do nothing, to run from all you might achieve—?

FEDYA: To test my fate. My fate. To see if the past would be allowed to rest. Or if it would rise up and bury me.

ANNA: What do you want me to do? Just say. Do you want to live, Fyodor Mikhailovich? Or do you want to die?

FEDYA: Before I fell ill—in the clear moments that come before the darkness—I was again in front of the firing squad, Anna… waiting for the order to fire. And an abyss opened out at my feet. A chance to save myself. I knew I must jump—could see no other answer but to jump. But I couldn’t move. Not from the fear of it—the fear of not making it to the other side—but because of all I wasn’t yet prepared to abandon. It was trading one manner of freedom for another. One manner of imprisonment. I was frozen to the spot…

It became clear to me then. Clear as it had never been before. What I must write. How I must live. It was a revelation. That I can live again. That even among the darkest and ugliest aspects of life, I can live. As long as my soul is free—as long as my mind is not captive…

Agreeing to life, Anna—agreeing to God—they’re acts of will. Like forgiveness. Like love.

ANNA: Forgiveness can’t be deliberated, Fyodor Mikhailovich. Nor love. We can only answer what’s in our hearts.

A long beat.

FEDYA: Could she love him, Anechka?

Could she?

A beat.

ANNA leads him back to the table. Sits him down. Hands him a new notebook, a pen.