Out of the Wings

Cartas de amor a Stalin (c.1998), Juan Mayorga Ruano

Love Letters to Stalin : SCENE ONE , SCENE TWO , SCENE THREE

Love Letters to Stalin, translated by Nara Mansur

SCENE ONE

Context:

This is the start of the play. The writer Bulgakov writes to Stalin, complaining about the fact that his works are being censored.

Sample text

(BULGAKOV is writing. He signs. Realizes that his wife is looking at him.)
BULGAKOVA: (Touching him with a love which he returns.): You’ve started writing again, Mikhail. You haven’t for months. Not a single word since The Heart of a Dog. Do you know how much I’ve wanted this moment to come? What is it? A comedy?; (BULGAKOV shakes his head.)
BULGAKOVA:: A novel? The second part of The White Guard?; (BULGAKOV shakes his head.)
BULGAKOVA:: A poem?
BULGAKOV:: A letter.
BULGAKOVA: (Disappointed.): A letter?
BULGAKOV:: Do you want me to read it to you?
BULGAKOVA:: You know I like to be the first to know about your writing. A letter is something else, of course. Seeing you with your pen set to paper. I thought … But you’ve sat down here again, that’s what’s important. The important thing is that you’ve come back to the place where you wrote Zoika’s Apartment. Of course I want to, read me that letter.
BULGAKOV: (Reading.): ‘Dear comrade. (Pause.) My play Flight, the premiere of which was marked down for next September, has been banned during rehearsals. Performances of The Crimson Island have been forbidden. The Days of the Turbins has been banned after three hundred performances. Zoika’s Apartment has been banned after two hundred performances. Therefore, in the present season, my four plays have been banned. The publication of my book of stories had already been forbidden before. The publication of my satirical essays has been forbidden. The public reading of Chichikov’s Adventures has been forbidden. The publication of my novel The White Guard in the magazine Rossia has been forbidden. (Pause.) I do not feel capable of living any longer in the USSR knowing that I cannot have my works performed or published. I am writing to you to ask to be expelled from the USSR together with my wife (Pause.) Signed: Mikhail Bulgakov. Moscow, July 1929’.; (Pause.)
BULGAKOVA:: Who are you writing to?
BULGAKOV:: Stalin.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Love Letters to Stalin by Nara Mansur is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

SCENE TWO

Context:

Bulgakov continues to write letters to Stalin. He is frustrated because Stalin will not reply. In an effort to help her husband, Bulgakova offers to perform as Stalin.

Sample text

(BULGAKOV is reading a letter to his wife. She is working – sewing a jumper?, or cleaning the bookcase? – for him.)
BULGAKOV:: ‘Dear comrade. (Pause.) In the last ten years I have counted three hundred and one articles about me which have appeared in the Soviet press. Out of them, three were laudatory; two hundred and ninety-eight insulting. Alexei Turbin, the main character in Days of the Turbins has been called a “bastard”. And the author of the work, in other words, me, has been described as a “gaga old dog”. I have been described as a street cleaner of the theatre, busy picking up leftovers from the table after the guests have puked up on it. “Bulgakov is a writer who goes rummaging around in the rubbish”, that is how they portrayed me in issue number eight of Izvestia. In number fourteen of the Komsomolskaia Pravda it was said that Bulgakov was a neo-bourgeois who spat poisoned but harmless gobs at the working class. All my writing has received acerbic commentaries in the newspaper Pravda. I have even been insulted in the Soviet Encyclopedia. (Pause.) I have not quoted these examples to complain about critics. My aim is different. What I want to prove is that the Soviet press and together with it, all the institutions responsible for the control of the theatre, have unanimously and with extraordinary ferocity, devoted themselves to demonstrating that the works of Mikhail Bulgakov should not exist in the Soviet Union. They are, in all likelihood, totally right.’ (Interrupts his reading, irritated.) Can you stop that? Can’t you take this seriously?; (His wife stops what she is doing.)
BULGAKOVA:: I’m listening to you. I’ve been listening all this time.
BULGAKOV:: I need more. What I need … Why doesn’t Stalin answer my letters? Can you tell me? What am I not doing properly? What words should I use so he listens to me? Do I need to know how Stalin will react when he reads a sentence such as this? (Reads.) ‘What I want to prove is that the Soviet press and together with it, all the institutions responsible for the control of the theatre, have unanimously and with extraordinary ferocity, devoted themselves to demonstrating that the works of Mikhail Bulgakov should not exist in the Soviet Union. How will Stalin react when he reads these words?; (Pause.)
BULGAKOVA:: I don’t know Stalin. The nearest I’ve ever been to him was for the premiere of The Days of the Turbins. He shook my hand. Did you take a good look at his hands? At the way he moved his hands?; (She tries to imitate the way STALIN moved his hands. Pause.)
BULGAKOVA:: If it helps you, I can … Pretend I’m Stalin and wonder how he’d react to your letter. Put myself in his position.
BULGAKOV:: Put yourself in his position? You in the position of the man who has banned my writing?
BULGAKOVA:: If it helps you …
BULGAKOV:: He’s almost driven our friend Zamyatin mad. He executed Pilniak. He made Mayakovsky commit suicide
BULGAKOVA:: I want to help you.
BULGAKOV:: Would you be able to get inside the skin of the man I hate? The man you hate.
BULGAKOVA:: I hate him with as much as I can. But even the most horrible men think they have reasons for doing what they do. And you, Mikhail, need to find out these reasons.; (Pause. BULGAKOV accepts.)
BULGAKOV:: Let’s pretend you’re Stalin.; (His wife listens, making a real effort to be STALIN.)
BULGAKOV:: ‘Dear comrade.’

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Love Letters to Stalin by Nara Mansur is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

SCENE THREE

Context:

At the end of scene 2, Bulgakov receives a phone call, apparently from Stalin. Stalin suggests they meet, only for the line to go dead. Since then, he has not left his apartment, obsessed with the hope that Stalin will phone back.

Sample text

(Next to the phone, BULGAKOV is writing. A moment later, his wife enters, having come in from the street.)
BULGAKOVA:: There you are. Registered, just as you wanted. In three days it’ll be in Stalin’s hands. An awful queue. At this time of year, people go mad sending presents to their families. Do you know who I met in the post office? Zamyatin’s wife.
BULGAKOV: (Reading to his wife what he has written.): ‘Dear Yosif Vissarionovich. (Pause.) Dark rumours are slithering around me like snakes. In the last ten years …’
BULGAKOVA: (Interrupting him.): Zamyatin got a positive reply.; (BULGAKOV is shocked.)
BULGAKOVA:: Zamyatin wrote to Stalin and, after a week, they got an official letter from the Foreign Affairs Committee. They can leave the USSR as soon as they want.; (Pause.)
BULGAKOVA:: Aren’t you going to congratulate him?; (BULGAKOV does not answer. He writes.)
BULGAKOVA:: Oh, I know: you have to stay near the telephone. You can’t telephone your friend either. Nobody should touch this telephone. Stalin could call at any moment.
BULGAKOV:: ‘We should meet to have a chat’, he said. He told me how he’d got my letters, and read them with his comrades. He probably meant Molotov and the others in Government: ‘You want to leave, to go abroad, is that it?’, he said.
BULGAKOVA:: Everybody in Moscow is telling that story. You’ve told everybody who comes here. That Stalin called you and what you talked about.
BULGAKOV:: Is that wrong? Is it wrong that people avoid me like the plague? Before I was a writer who’d fallen into disgrace, but now many writers envy me. How many of those have Stalin telephoned? How many have been told: ‘We should meet to have a chat?’
BULGAKOVA:: Are you sure it was him? Couldn’t it have been a practical joker?
BULGAKOV:: What are you saying? It was him. Of course his voice didn’t sound like it does on the radio. It was hoarser. He seemed to be ill. On the other hand, it was him, with his strong Georgian accent.
BULGAKOVA:: And what if he didn’t call you back?
BULGAKOV:: That’s impossible. We still had a lot to say to each other.; (BULGAKOV takes pen and paper.)
BULGAKOVA:: Another letter?
BULGAKOV:: I need to find out Stalin’s reasons and turn them against him. Zamyatin managed to find them. He came up with the right words.
BULGAKOVA:: Why don’t you copy them? The words Zamyatin wrote to Stalin.
BULGAKOV:: Do you think he’s stupid? Stalin knows very well who is Zamyatin and who is Bulgakov. I would never write in that pompous, slushly style …
BULGAKOVA:: It’s only a letter.
BULGAKOV:: Only a letter? I’ve never written anything so important. My plays, my novels … what value can they have compared to a letter like this? Everything I’ve written up until now is child’s play compared with a letter to Stalin.; (He starts writing again.)
BULGAKOVA:: You’ll have to take it to the post office yourself. Will you dare? Will you even dare to go up to the post box on the corner? Can you remember what’s on the other side of that window? Moscow, the city you loved so much.; (She makes BULGAKOV look in the direction of the street.)
BULGAKOVA:: Moscow is beautiful this evening. Let’s have a walk before it gets dark.; (Something attracts BULGAKOV’s attention, beyond the window. His wife looks at him as if to say: What’s wrong?)
BULGAKOV:: I thought … On the other side of the street, in the trees. I thought I saw comrade Stalin.

Copyright