Without a Dowry and Other Plays

by Alexander Ostrovsky

  KUROSLEPOV. Yes, he has to be the one, because his father’s business is ruined…

  GRADOBOEV (to Kuroslepov). You want to do the questioning? I haven’t been doing my job perhaps? Then you put on my uniform, and I’ll put in for retirement.

  KUROSLEPOV. All right, you don’t have to get mad!

  GRADOBOEV (to Vasya). So how about it, dear friend?

  VASYA. But please, Serapion Mardaryich! You can’t say you don’t know me and my father!

  GRADOBOEV. Hold on there! You just answer my question. Why is it you’ve gone in for stealing? Did you take a liking to the trade? Or did you find it very profitable?

  VASYA. But please, I, to tell the truth, came to pay a visit, and I naturally wanted to hide from Pavlin Pavlinych, because he always goes after my hair… From childhood up I’ve never had any desire to steal… Even if it’s some little thing, if it’s somebody else’s, I don’t want it.

  GRADOBOEV. Are you in this business alone or is somebody in it with you?

  VASYA. I don’t care what you say, I’m not in this business, sir.

  KUROSLEPOV. Really now! What kind of trial is this! Do you expect him to confess? And even if he does, the money’s gone! Where does it ever happen, and especially among us, that stolen money’s been found! So there’s no point in searching and nothing to have a trial about.

  GRADOBOEV. No, don’t talk like that! You’ll answer for it!

  KUROSLEPOV. What’s there to answer for! You find the money, then I’ll answer for it.

  GRADOBOEV. Don’t get me worked up! Don’t aggravate me! If I set out to find that money, I’ll find it. Now you’ve touched me to the quick.

  KUROSLEPOV. Go on, look for it! If you find it, you’ll be right, and I’ll be wrong. But what we can do is just send him off as an army recruit from the commune. He and his father are ruined in business, so he’s loitering around with no work… so that’s the end of the matter. We’ll send him off this week, but meanwhile he can stay in jail as a suspect.

  GRADOBOEV. Good enough. He can stay there meanwhile. (To the policemen.) Take him off to jail.

  VASYA. But please, what for!

  GRADOBOEV. March! No back talk!

  The policemen take Vasya away.

  KUROSLEPOV. You should pray more… (To the workers.) Go back to where you belong, why are you standing there with your mouths open!

  Silan and the workers leave.

  GRADOBOEV. Do you think someone else was in on it with him?

  KUROSLEPOV. Probably one of my own people. I’d say Gavrilka! Well, I can settle with him myself.

  GRADOBOEV. So the business is all finished?

  KUROSLEPOV. All finished.

  GRADOBOEV. Well!

  KUROSLEPOV. Well what?

  GRADOBOEV. If the business is all finished, what comes next?

  KUROSLEPOV. What?

  GRADOBOEV. Merci.

  KUROSLEPOV. What’s that merci?

  GRADOBOEV. You don’t know? That means “I humbly thank you.” Understand now? Do you really think I should go looking for that money of yours for nothing?

  KUROSLEPOV. But you didn’t find it.

  GRADOBOEV. You want me to find it yet! If I had found it, I wouldn’t be talking to you this way. Do you think I’m a little boy, to go about nights catching robbers at the risk of my life! I’m a man who was wounded!

  KUROSLEPOV. But after all, you just happened to be coming by and dropped in for a drink of vodka.

  GRADOBOEV. Vodka is vodka, and friendship is friendship, but don’t you lose sight of proper order! You know you wouldn’t sell anything without a profit. Well then, I’ve worked out my own system of getting a benefit from each case. So you give me a benefit! If I indulge you, the others will take liberties too. You eat, and I want to eat too.

  KUROSLEPOV. Well, all right then, maybe tomorrow…

  GRADOBOEV. Feel welcome to drop in for a cup of tea, only make it early.

  KUROSLEPOV. All right, I’ll drop in.

  GRADOBOEV (gives him his hand.) So long. Send Silan to me tomorrow. I have to question him. (He leaves.)

  KUROSLEPOV (loudly). Gavrilka!

  Gavrilo sings loudly by the window: “Neither Papa, Neither Mama.”

  You’re off-key, you can’t fool me! Gavrilka!

  Gavrilo enters.

  GAVRILO. If you’re going to grab me by the hair again, then you might as well fire me!

  KUROSLEPOV. In fact I’ll fire you right now. Silanty! Silanty! Hey!

  Silan enters.

  Throw his trunk out on the street, and throw him out too.

  GAVRILO. But where can I go at night?

  KUROSLEPOV. What’s that to do with me! My house isn’t a home of charity for undeserving people. If you don’t know how to live, then off you go, good riddance.

  GAVRILO. But you owe me a hundred and fifty rubles in back wages.

  KUROSLEPOV. Big deal, a hundred and fifty rubles; I’ve lost two thousand. A hundred and fifty! Or do you want to go to prison?

  GAVRILO. But what’s going on? I’m a poor man!

  KUROSLEPOV. It’s exactly the poor people who steal.

  GAVRILO. Give me my money! I don’t want to die from hunger.

  KUROSLEPOV. Try and get it from me. Oh, these damn people! Here I wanted to have supper, but now I don’t feel like it any more. And he talks about dying from hunger… and a hundred and fifty rubles! I wouldn’t let you give me a thousand rubles for this confusion. Come with me, Silanty, I’ll give you his papers. (To Gavrilo.) You stay here and you’ll end up in prison. (He goes off with Silan.)

  GAVRILO. What a bolt from the blue! Oh Gavrilka, where can you go now! Wherever you show up they’ll say you were kicked out for stealing. It’s shame on my poor head! I’ve lost everything and been slandered too. What can I do now? A straight line, out the gate and into the water. Right to the bottom, up come the bubbles. Oh, oh, oh!

  (Silan comes out.)

  SILAN. There’s your papers. You’re free as a Cossack now. Myself, I think it’s for the best. Want me to gather your belongings for you?

  GAVRILO. Please, get them for me, friend. I don’t have much stuff, it can go into one bundle; right now I feel helpless. But don’t forget the guitar. I’ll sit on this pile while I wait.

  Silan leaves. Gavrilo sits down on a pile. Parasha comes out.

  PARASHA. Daddy’s carrying on something fierce. What terrible thing happened to you?

  GAVRILO. I can’t make it out. I’ve been fired altogether.

  PARASHA. What do you mean, altogether?

  GAVRILO. By altogether I mean that I don’t have a kopeck. All that work for nothing, and I’m off to the four winds.

  PARASHA. You poor boy!

  GAVRILO. Even so it’s not too bad for me, but they’re sending Vasya into the army.

  PARASHA (with horror). The army?

  GAVRILO. He’s in jail now, but in a few days they’ll send him off.

  PARASHA. No! What did you say! Because of me they’ll make him a soldier?

  GAVRILO. It’s not because of you but because they found him here in the yard and falsely supposed he’s the thief, that he’d stolen that money.

  PARASHA. But it’s all the same, the same thing, because it was for me he came here. Because he loves me! Oh Lord! How awful! He came to see me, and so they’re sending him into the army, away from his father and away from me. His old father will be left all alone, and they’re driving Vasya away, driving him away! (She cries out.) Oh how miserable I am! (She grabs her head.) Gavrilo, stay here, wait for me a minute. (She runs off.)

  GAVRILO. Where’s she going? What’s the matter with her? Poor girl, the poor thing! Here she is with her father and mother, but she’s just like an orphan! She always has to look out for herself. There’s nobody to sympathize with her in her orphan maiden grief. How could a man not love her! Oh how it all hurts; my tears are choking me. (He cries.)

  Silan comes out with a bundle and guitar.

  SILAN. Here’s your
hat. (He puts it on him.) Here’s your bundle, and here’s your guitar. And so, my friend, good-bye. Don’t think badly of me; think well of me.

  Parasha comes out in a cloak and with a kerchief on her head.

  PARASHA. Let’s go, let’s go.

  GAVRILO. Where, where are you going? What is this!

  PARASHA. To him, Gavrilushka, to my dear boy.

  GAVRILO. But you know he’s in jail. How can you, what are you doing!

  PARASHA. I have some money, look! I’ll give it to the guards, and they’ll let me pass.

  GAVRILO. You can do that in the morning, but where are you going to spend the night? (He bows down at her feet.) Stay here, my dear girl, stay here.

  PARASHA. I’ll spend the night with my godmother. Let’s go! Let’s go! There’s nothing to discuss.

  SILAN (to Parasha). You want to see him beyond the gate, is that it? All right, see him there. That’s a kind thing to do. He’s all alone in the world.

  PARASHA (turning toward the house, she looks at it silently for some time). Good-bye, home of my childhood! How many tears I’ve shed here. Good Lord, how many tears! And now you’d think at least one little tear would drop, for after all I was born here, and it was here I grew up… It wasn’t long ago I was a child, and then I thought there was nothing in the world nicer than you, my home, but now I don’t care whether I ever see you again. You can go to the devil, my maiden prison! (She runs off, Gavrilo following.)

  SILAN. Wait! Where are you going? (He makes a gesture of helplessness.) It’s none of my business! (He locks the gate.) What a life! Nothing but punishment! (He strikes the watchman’s metal plate.)

  ACT THREE

  Square at the town exit. To the left of the audience is the police chief’s house with a porch. To its right is a jail with iron bars in the windows; at its gate an invalid soldier stands guard. Straight ahead is the river and a dock, beyond which is a rural view.

  Aristarkh is sitting on the dock, fishing with a rod. Silan approaches and looks on silently. A crowd stands near the porch of the police chief’s house.

  ARISTARKH (not noticing Silan). Just see how clever he is, oh, he’s the sly one! But you just wait, I’ll outsmart you yet. (He takes out the rod and adjusts the hook.) You’re tricky, but I’m trickier. A fish is tricky, but man is very wise, by God’s will… (He casts the line.) To man such cleverness was given that he is master of everything, what’s on land and beneath the land and in the waters… Come here! (He pulls up the rod.) What? You got caught? (He takes the fish off the hook and puts it into a fish pond.)

  SILAN. That’s the way to catch them!

  ARISTARKH (turning around). Greetings, Silanty!

  SILAN. When you cast a spell like that… really… You know a lot of all that spell business, but I don’t know it yet, so I don’t catch the fish.

  ARISTARKH. What spell?

  SILAN. It’s a prayer, they say, or something, some kind of words. I’ve heard them, but didn’t understand. But the fish come when they hear them.

  ARISTARKH. No, Silanty, what spells! I was just talking to myself.

  SILAN. So what! If you know the right words, that makes it even better… It’s like prayers… You say the words with nothing special in mind.

  ARISTARKH. Did you come to do some fishing too?

  SILAN. Fishing! I’m here to see the chief of police.

  ARISTARKH. What for?

  SILAN. At home everything’s an awful mess. It’s as though Khan Mamay passed through… Some money’s disappeared… that’s the first thing. Then your god-daughter’s run off.

  ARISTARKH. That’s not surprising! Anyone would want to leave there. Where’d she go?

  SILAN. She’s with her godmother, I dropped in there. She told me not to let her father know… As if I’d want to do that.

  ARISTARKH. But what about the money? Who could have taken it?

  SILAN. You tell me! That thief committed one sin, but our master has committed ten; how many people he’s slandered! He kicked out Gavrilo, and right now Vasya Shustry is being held in jail awhile.

  ARISTARKH. In jail? No! That’s a sin!

  SILAN. Sin is right… They’ve committed more sins than there’s grains of sand on the seashore.

  ARISTARKH. So what’s to be done? We’ve got to get Vasya out of this. Who got him in jail? The master?

  SILAN. The master! He has the power, so he can do crazy things. Has the chief of police waked up yet?

  ARISTARKH. Go find out.

  SILAN. Why go? He’ll come out on the porch himself. He sits on the porch all day, looking at the road. And what a sharp eye he has for anybody without papers! Even if you had a hundred men all bunched up together, right away he’d look at his man and wave him over: “You just come here, my dear friend!” That’s the way things are here. (He scratches the back of his head.) But I suppose I’d better go. (He goes toward the police chief’s house.)

  ARISTARKH. What goings-on in our town! What inhabitants! They might as well be Samoyeds! But even the Samoyeds must have better manners. What a crazy state of affairs! Oh my! God bless us! (He casts the rod.)

  Gradoboev comes out in his dressing gown. He has on a military cap, holds a cane and a pipe. Sidorenko is with him.

  GRADOBOEV (sitting down on the porch steps). “To God above it’s high, our Tsar on earth’s not nigh.” Have I spoken the truth?

  VOICES. Yes, Serapion Mardaryich! Yes, Your Honor!

  GRADOBOEV. But I am near to you, and that means I’m your judge.

  VOICES. Yes, Your Honor! That’s true, Serapion Mardaryich.

  GRADOBOEV. So then, how do you think I should try you now? If I should try you by the laws…

  FIRST VOICE. No, why do that, Serapion Mardaryich!

  GRADOBOEV. You speak when you’re asked, and if you start interrupting, I’ll give it to you with the cane. So, if I should try you by the laws, then we have a lot of laws… Sidorenko, show them how many laws we have.

  Sidorenko goes off and returns quickly with a whole armful of books.

  That’s how many laws! That’s just what I have, but there’s a lot more in other places! Sidorenko, put them back in their place.

  Sidorenko goes off.

  And the laws are all strict. In one book they’re strict, in another stricter yet, and in the last strictest of all.

  VOICES. That’s true, Your Honor, exactly so.

  GRADOBOEV. So, my dear friends, what do you want? Should I try you by the laws or the way I like, as God puts it in my heart?

  Sidorenko returns.

  VOICES. Judge as you like; be a father to us, Serapion Mardaryich.

  GRADOBOEV. All right, fine. Only don’t make any complaint, for if you do make a complaint… Well, then…

  VOICES. We won’t, Your Honor.

  GRADOBOEV (to Zhigunov). Are there any prisoners?

  ZHIGUNOV. We picked some up last night, Your Honor… for disorderly conduct… two tailors, a shoemaker, seven factory workers, a clerk, and a merchant’s son.

  GRADOBOEV. Lock up the merchant’s son in the store room and tell his father to come and get him out and bring the ransom. Let the clerk go, and as for the others… Do we have any work to be done in the vegetable garden?

  ZHIGUNOV. Yes. We need two men.

  GRADOBOEV. Then pick out the two healthiest-looking ones and pack them off to the garden. The others can go back to jail; we’ll decide about them later.

  Zhigunov goes off with the prisoners.

  Do we have any other cases? Come up one at a time.

  FIRST MIDDLE-CLASS CITIZEN. Here’s some money for your Honor, on a promissory note.

  GRADOBOEV. Fine, very good, one business off my shoulder. Sidorenko, put it in the table drawer. (He gives the money to Sidorenko.)

  SIDORENKO. We have a lot of this money piled up, Your Honor. Shouldn’t we send it off in the mail?

  GRADOBOEV. Send it off! What new fashion is that! It’s our job to collect it, and we’ve collected it. If somebody needs that m
oney, then let him come himself for it, and we’ll give it to him. And you want us to send it, Russia’s a big country! And if a man doesn’t come for it, that means he doesn’t need it very much.

  The second middle-class citizen comes up.

  What do you want?

  SECOND MIDDLE-CLASS CITIZEN. This is a promissory note. The man won’t pay.

  GRADOBOEV (taking the promissory note). Sidorenko, stick it behind the mirror.

  Sidorenko goes off.

  SECOND MIDDLE-CLASS CITIZEN. How come you’re sticking it behind the mirror?

  GRADOBOEV. And where else should I put it? Do you want me to frame it? Yours isn’t the only one I have there. There’s about thirty of those promissory notes stuck there. If sometime I run into your debtor I’ll tell him to pay up.

  SECOND MIDDLE-CLASS CITIZEN. But if he…

  GRADOBOEV. But if he… but if you give me any more of your lip, then you’ll see. (He shows his cane.) Clear out! (Catching sight of the third middle-class citizen) So, my dear friend, you’re here! Debts to pay, you don’t have money, but for getting drunk you do. The promissory note against you has been stuck there behind the mirror going into the second year now. It got moldy a long time ago, but you keep on getting drunk. Go into the entry and wait. I’m going to put a promissory note on your back, and I’ll take out a payment with my cane.

  THIRD MIDDLE-CLASS CITIZEN. Show God’s mercy, Your Honor! You know our means… show mercy!

  GRADOBOEV. So be it, I’ll show you mercy, beat it! (Noticing Silan.) Hey, you there! Follow me inside. You and I’ll have a long conversation. (To the others.) Well, God go with you. I don’t have the time to try you now. Anyone who has to, come back tomorrow. (He goes off with Silan.)

  All disperse. Gavrilo enters with a cloth sack on his shoulder.

  ARISTARKH. Ah! The man who was kicked out. Hello!

  GAVRILO. So you heard?

  ARISTARKH. I heard.

  GAVRILO. Where is righteousness?

  ARISTARKH. You really don’t know? Lift up your head.

  Gavrilo lifts his head.

  That’s where it is.

  GAVRILO. I know. But where should we look for justice?

  ARISTARKH. Justice is over there! (He points to the police chief’s house.)

  GAVRILO. But what if I want true justice?