Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

HERZEN   Natalie, examine your heart calmly, be open with yourself, and with me. If you want me to go, I’ll go—I’ll go to America with Sasha—

Natalie becomes almost hysterical.

NATALIE   How can you! How can you! As though such a thing were possible! You’re my homeland, my whole life. I’ve lived on my love for you as in God’s world, without it I wouldn’t exist, I’d have to be born again to have a life at all—

HERZEN   Plain speech, for God’s sake! Has Herwegh—known you?

NATALIE   If only you could understand!—you would beg my forgiveness for what you’re saying.

HERZEN   Has he taken you?

NATALIE   I have taken him—to my bosom like a babe.

HERZEN   Is this poetry or infantilism? I want to know if he’s your lover.

NATALIE   I am pure before myself and before the world—I bear no reproach in the very depths of my heart—now you know.

HERZEN   (exasperated) Now I know what?

NATALIE   That I am yours, that I love you, that my affection for George is God-given—if he went away, I would sicken—if you went away, I would die! Perhaps

I should be the one to go—to Russia for a year—Natasha is the only one who would understand the purity of my love. Oh, how did this happen? How did this innocent world of my loving heart shatter to fragments?

HERZEN   Christ! Just tell me without the double-talk!—Is Herwegh your lover?!

NATALIE   He loves me, yes—he loves me—

HERZEN   Is he your lover? Have you been to his bed?

NATALIE   Oh—I see. You have no objection if I take him to my heart, only to my bed—

HERZEN   Precisely. Or his bed, or a flower bed, or up against the back of the town hall—

NATALIE   Alexander, Alexander, this is not you, this is not the great-hearted soul I gave my tender innocent heart to when I—

Herzen shakes her.

HERZEN   Tell me, damn your speeches! Is it true?

Natalie collapses weeping.

HERZEN   (cont.) It’s true, then. Say it. Say it.

NATALIE

   He is my lover! There!

HERZEN   Thank you. That guttersnipe—that unctuous, treacherous, lecher—that thiefl—

NATALIE   Oh my God, what have we done—and the children!

HERZEN   There was a time to think of that before you besmirched all of us with your common little fall from grace—well, I shall go!

NATALIE   No—no!—It’ll kill him!

HERZEN   Kill him? What kind of mockery of a love affair is this?

NATALIE   I swear it—he’ll kill himself. He’s got a pistol.

Herzen laughs madly.

HERZEN   Well, he’d better clean it if it’s the one he went to war with—the barrel must be full of mud!

NATALIE   Alexander, aren’t you ashamed? I’m at your mercy, and you make a joke of a love which gave me back my life.

HERZEN   Oh—thank you! Thank you! And what was your life before I took you from it in the clothes you stood up in?

NATALIE   It was wretched. You’re right. I gave it to you joyfully, it belongs to you to do what you want with, so kill me all at once and not little by little!

Natalie collapses sobbing. Herzen sits next to her and takes her hands, his fury spent.

HERZEN   And you forgot to bring your hat. (He gives way to tears, embracing her.) Forgive me, too—forgive everything I said. They are not things I believe. I have lost something I hardly gave a thought to. My existence. My purchase on my life.

Emma enters.

EMMA   George wants you to kill him.

Herzen laughs.

HERZEN   Can’t he ask me himself?

EMMA   This is a calamity for both of us, but compare your behaviour with mine. Let Natalie go away with him.

HERZEN   Of course! If she wants to.

Emma goes to Natalie and kneels by her.

EMMA   Save him.

NATALIE

   I can’t. What strength I have, I need for Alexander. I will go wherever he goes.

HERZEN   It’s him who’s going. (to Emma) I’ll pay your fares to Genoa provided you leave in the morning.

Emma gets up.

EMMA   We can’t leave. There are tradesmen’s accounts we have to settle.

HERZEN   It will be my pleasure.

Emma runs back to Natalie and flings herself down in desperation.

EMMA   If you won’t go with George, ask him to take me when he goes!—Ask him not to abandon me!

HERZEN   You’re asking my wife to plead for you …?

EMMA   Will you?

Natalie nods. Emma gets up to go.

EMMA   (cont.) (to Herzen) Egoist!

HERZEN   But you’ve made yourself a slave, and this is where it’s got you.

Emma leaves.