Diane Stubbings - The Parricide

ANNA: You should write it.

FEDYA: I will. I am. The ideas are here—in the shadows. They’re just waiting for me to yield to them.

A long beat.

ANNA: What was it like there?

In the prison camps?

FEDYA: You’re watched. Relentlessly. Not alone for a single minute and you… you come to hate mankind. So many souls packed into such a small space. And what’s yours—what’s left to you—you hold to yourself like a shining prize. Your thoughts—they’re all you have. And when they’re precisely what’s condemned you…

But I never knew myself so well as when I was there.

A disturbance from downstairs. The LANDLADY trying to stop someone from coming up the stairs.

ANNA pulls her hand away and stands on the other side of the room, gathering papers etc, as ELENA enters.

ELENA is oblivious to ANNA.

ELENA: Your guard-dog is a very tenacious today, Fedya. [ Noticing ANNA] Aah. She obviously felt you weren’t to be disturbed.

FEDYA: Anna is the stenographer.

ELENA: Not quite what you described.

A change, at least, from the sickly virgins who usually moon after you. But isn’t she a poppet? Now I look at her more closely. But aren’t you a darling, with your cheeks all ablaze? And such pretty, pretty eyes. Aren’t they, Fedya? Surely you’ve noticed the lovely brown of her eyes.

FEDYA: What do I care the colour of her eyes? What do you want?

ELENA: Send her away.

FEDYA: We’re working.

ELENA: I was working last night—it didn’t stop you storming in—

FEDYA: I’d have turned right around—

ELENA: Once you’d done with me—

FEDYA: It was you who started it—

ELENA: Refusing to leave till you’d gone through every page, looking out for your name—

FEDYA: Then find someone other than me to write about.

ELENA: You think I haven’t anything better to write about than you? I wouldn’t set my ambitions so low.

FEDYA: What do you want?

ELENA: I need a reason to be here now?

FEDYA: We’re working.

ELENA: Whatever you want to call it.

FEDYA: Why are you here plaguing my life?

ELENA: You think I want this misery again?

FEDYA: Then go—

ELENA: On your knees you said you were—

FEDYA: You think I’d shed a tear/ if you walked out—?

ELENA: Swore you’d die without me—

FEDYA: Better dead than this—

ELENA: You destroy/ my life—

FEDYA: You crush/ my will—

ELENA: If I asked you to kill a man…

If I asked you to kill a man, would you do it?

FEDYA: Which man?

ELENA: Any man I choose.

FEDYA: Yes. Right now, yes.

A beat.

ELENA: [ to ANNA] You can go.

ANNA: But the work—

FEDYA: Go. There’ll be no more work today.

ANNA realises there is no point arguing further. She exits.

A beat.

ELENA sits.

A beat.

FEDYA falls at her feet, kisses her stockings etc.

The actor playing ELENA transtions into GRUSHENKA . As she does so—

[ELENA]: He was a difficult man to say No to, when the fire was in his eyes. The fierceness…

I knew it the first time we loved. In the grass it was. On the edge of the park at Lublino…

Within a week he’d worked me loose of my marriage and there was no going back. Not to my life as it had been…

Until his wife called him back to her—plucked at his guilt with her whining and ailing.

I thought I would die… thought I was dead… but…

There was a young man in our village. Went off to study the law. Came back certain of nothing but that it must be dragged down. And the Tsar and his nobles with it… He filled entirely the void Fedya had created in me—gave me my voice—teased out from me what I had for so long yearned to say…

It was when tuberculosis took him that I could think of nothing else but finding Fedya again.

She is now fully GRUSHENKA.

We see FEDYA . He is writing in his notebook. GRUSHENKA is present in his imagination.

We see MITYA and KATYA , just as they were in scene thirteen.

MITYA: The loan would not be to your father.

A beat.

This is a matter of business.

A loan at a judicious rate.

Some gift would need to be given in return.

KATYA: I understand.

As GRUSHENKA speaks, MITYA approaches KATYA , begins caressing her face. Lets his hands run lightly over her body. He is clearly planning to take her.

GRUSHENKA: [ to FEDYA] I know you think you love her.

I see the way you watch her.

FEDYA: Why play him off against his father? If you love him so much?

GRUSHENKA: To discover how much I love him. Is that answer enough for you? To discover how much he loves me.

Or maybe because it’s what women do.

A beat.

You’ve no need to pine over them. He won’t have her. He hasn’t the nerve. Not for this. Not for murder.

You know what must be done. Know in your heart he’s not the man to do it.

FEDYA: He said he’d kill him—

GRUSHENKA: He’s all bluster and air—

FEDYA: He wants his father dead—

GRUSHENKA: Not as fiercely as you do.

Oh, you have your reconciliation. You drink your father’s wine and tell him stories and pretend you don’t hate him—pretend you’ve forgotten the past…

He will bungle the deed and then weep when it’s done.

No, what you need is a brave man. A man who dares…

MITYA: [ stepping back fom KATYA] You can go.

KATYA: But the money?

MITYA: It’s yours.

KATYA: But I have no way to…

MITYA: Go.

GRUSHENKA: There. You see?

All bluster and air.

Night. Pounding of the printing presses.

KARAKOZOV is nailing flyers to the walls and gates of houses.

STUDENT/S: [ off ] All our resources—all our energy—must be directed towards increasing—intensifying—the miseries that people suffer.

And we will go on doing so.

Until their patience is exhausted.

Until the people are driven to rise against their oppressors.

The pounding of the printing press fades, bleeding into the next scene.

FEDYA ’s flat. FEDYA is sleeping, notes and work scattered around him. A single bang that might be the sound of a gunshot wakes him. A second banging sound (it could be a gunshot; it could be the broomstick).

LANDLADY: [ off ] Fyodor Mikhailovich!

The pounding of the LANDLADY ’s broomstick.

The Magistrate from the fourth district. The one who put that revolutionary away. Shot in his carriage.

Do you hear me, Fyodor Mikhailovich?! Who among us will be spared?

Low sound of a roulette wheel slowly spinning.

It spins faster. Louder.

FEDYA ’s flat. ANNA waiting. Eventually, FEDYA arrives bearing pastries etc. He empties the pockets of his coat as he takes it off, throws handfuls of coins on the table. There is something almost manic about him.

FEDYA: What time did you get here?

ANNA: An hour ago.

FEDYA: You were due at 10.

ANNA: The roads were barricaded. The cab needed to find another way.

FEDYA: You were due at 10.

ANNA: We’re working today then, are we?

FEDYA: There. Pastries. From the bakery on Kremensky. Nothing cheers a woman more than stuffing her face with something sweet. [ Going to the door; yelling to the LANDLADY downstairs ] What chance is there of some tea, Agafya Pavlovich?