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

I’ll meet you at ten o’clock sharp in the hall of the Hotel Elysium. And bring Lyulya along too. I’ll be with Taubendorf.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    You’re crazy.
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    And the four of us will go to some racy little spot.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    You’re absolutely unbelievable. One might think you’ve known me and my girl friend for a hundred years. I should never have had that liqueur. When I’m so tired, I have no business drinking liqueurs. And I am terribly tired.... These shooting sessions....And my part is the most demanding one in the whole film. The part of a Communist woman. Abominably difficult part. Have you been in Berlin long?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
About two hours.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    And imagine, today I had to repeat the same scene eighteen—yes, eighteen times. Of course it wasn’t my fault. It was because of Pia Mora. Of course she’s very famous, but, between you and me, if she is playing the lead, it’s only because ... well, in a nutshell, it’s because she’s making it with Moser. I watched her seethe when she saw I was better than her....
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
(to Taubendorf, over his shoulder)

Kolya, tomorrow we’re all going out to have a good time. Okay?
    Â 
    TAUBENDORF
    Whatever you say, Alyosha. I’m always ready.
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    Then it’s settled. And now—
    Â 
    MARIANNA
    Baron, could you find my handbag for me? I left it somewhere by the phone.
    Â 
    TAUBENDORF
    At your service.
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    And now I want to tell you something. I like you a lot, especially your legs.
    Â 
    TAUBENDORF
(returning with the handbag)

Here you are.
    Â 
    MARIANNA
Thank you, my dear Baron. I’d better go. The atmosphere is getting too romantic....The dim lighting and all...
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
(getting up)

Romance is the spice of life. Let’s go. You have to show me the way to the Pension Braun.
    Â 
    FYODOR FYODOROVICH
    Where’s your hat, Mr. Kuznetsoff?
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    Never use one. Oh-oh—the boss is snoring. I won’t disturb him. Good-by, Fyodor Fyodorovich—that’s right, isn’t it? Kolya, how much do I owe you?
    Â 
    TAUBENDORF
    A mark and a half. Including gratuities. See you tomorrow, Marianna dear. See you tomorrow, Alyosha. Eight-thirty.
    Â 
    KUZNETSOFF
    Don’t bungle things, sweetheart. I said eight.
(Kuznetsoff and Marianna leave.)
    Â 
    FYODOR FYODOROVICH
(lifting the edge of the window blind and looking out)

Amazing thing, legs.
    Â 
    TAUBENDORF
(yawning)

Oh-hoh. Doesn’t look good. I guess no one is going to come.
Come on, let’s have a game of twenty-one.
    Â 
    FYODOR FYODOROVICH
Oh well—why not.
(They sit down at the same table where Kuznetsoff and Marianna were sitting and start playing. Oshivenski is sleeping. It is rather dark.)
CURTAIN
ACT TWO
    A room. On the left a window giving on the courtyard. Door in rear wall, opening on a corridor. In the left comer, a green-colored settee with a green egg-shaped cushion. Next to it, a small table with a round lamp. By the right wall, behind a green screen, a bed: the only part of it visible to the spectator is one of the metal knobs at its foot. In the center, a round table with a lace doily. Near it, in an armchair, sits Olga Pavlovna Kuznetsoff, embroidering a silk chemise. She is wearing a very simple, not quite fashionable dark dress: it is more ample and longer than the current style. Her face is young and soft; there is something girlish about her gentle features and smooth hairdo. The room is an ordinary room in an ordinary Berlin boardinghouse, with aspirations to bourgeois comforts: a pseudo-Persian carpet; two mirrors, one in the door of a paunchy wardrobe against the right wall, the other an oval one on the back wall. In all of this there is a kind of unpleasant puffy rotundity—in the armchairs, the green lampshade, the outline of the folding screen, as if the room had developed in concentric circles,