Короткие пьесы - [49]
BORIS: Why nobody? What about Tanya?
RAECHKA: She has found a boyfriend. She has less time for me.
BORIS: I have lost all my friends too. They die, take care of grand children, wives sick, different interests…
RAECHKA: Where is your Galochka?
BORIS: I’ve found that I’ve moderated my life. She was too active for me.
RAECHKA: You have neighbors.
BORIS: Raechka, all neighbors are Americans. With my poor English I can just greet them, and mention the weather. They are always in a hurry. I think you have the same problems…
RAECHKA: That’s life, I suppose…
BORIS: Your coffee smells good. Any more coffee left?
RAECHKA (taking a coffee mug and starting to pour): Black, right?
BORIS (accepting the mug): Thanks. The Doctor says I have to cut back on alcohol and caffein. Cutting back coffee has been harder. (Pause) Some years ago I understood, I can’t live as a hermit…
RAECHKA: But I can live alone…
BORIS: You said about my neighbors… It seems as if they are afraid of me… especially after what is happened this year…
RAECHKA: The Boston Marathon bombing?
BORIS: Yes. There is a feeling among Americans that Russia is behind some of these terrorist acts… starting with the assassination of Kennedy.
RAECHKA: Boria! You are so paranoid. That’s going too far…
BORIS: How do you explain that my neighbor John, quickly strides into his house whenever I appear? For days I wanted to tell him that Chechenia, while a part of Russia, is entirely different from Russia.
RAECHKA: Boria, you have become so boring that nobody wants to talk with you.
BORIS: No. I became vigilant.. Remember our old friends and how careful we had to be in choosing them?
RAECHKA: They could be only like-minded persons, who shared our political opinions about Soviet government or Stalin…
BORIS: We only talked with our friends at the kitchen table, where we had no phone… We had to take care about our safety…
RAECHKA: When we got together, what was our toast?…
BORIS and RAECHKA: “For the purity of our ranks”…
BORIS: All understood what it means. We all knew each other so well… All our party with friends were very friendly and joyfully…
RAECHKA: Except one…
BORIS: Do you mean your birthday party when Dima brought an acquaintance? What was his name?
RAECHKA: Alexander… He started to reminisce about the World War and “Father Stalin”… I added, that Stalin was having a nervous breakdown at the beginning of the war, and Molotov had to announce the German invasion over the radio…
BORIS: Yes, now I remember… Alexander became angry and shouted: “I won’t permit having such a great leader as Stalin talked about so disgracefully!”… At that moment our good friends started to prepare to leave. Then you were so brave and said to Alexander. “You have not come to the correct address!”… Oh my God! How frightened we all were…
(Pause)
RAECHKA: I don’t understand how Dima could have brought such a person without our permission to my birth day…
BORIS: Reachka, I have to confess… Dima did ask me, and I agreed that we would meet his friend Alexander.
RAECHKA: And you have kept it a secret this whole time? You coward!
BORIS (guilty): Forgive me… Luckily, we survived…(pause) RAECHKA, I didn’t ask you an important question… Where were you, when the bombs exploded at the Marathon?
RAECHKA: I was home…
BORIS: And I was in Copley Square watching like we used to do. I was moving around trying to get a better view. I was safely far away from explore…
RAECHKA: Why should you want to be pushed around by such a crowd?
BORIS: I don’t know… I couldn’t bare to sit home alone…
(Pause)
Earlier when I arrived in America I was completely happy, but now I’ve become more and more anxious and impatient. If anybody can just make a bomb from Macy’s pans, or buy a gun at Walmart. What can we do?
RAECHKA: Here we have FBI and policy…
BORIS: We know that our phones could be listened to by the FBI… And in spite of them listening to a lot of phones the FBI could not save us from these terrorists
RAECHKA: Now I understand, why you said that you didn’t want to talk by phone…
BORIS: Right…
RAECHKA: Boria, who would be interested in your conversations?
BORIS: I don’t know… But I know, that I can talk about my inner thoughts and worries only with you…
RAECHKA: And your worries are…?
BORIS: It seems to me, now in America, the government has made us to be vigilant… (Pause) If the small boat owner was not vigilant and hadn’t seen blood on his boat the police would never have found this Chechen terrorist…
RAECHKA: So, what do you think?
BORIS (depressed): We have to be the same as we were in Russia, to care of our survival ourself…
RAECHKA: What we have to do?
BORIS: We have to be on the lookout for suspicious people, black bags, even look out our windows to see if criminals are hiding in our yard.
RAECHKA: Boria, you are really in a bad way… You are depressed.
BORIS: Do you know a good medicine for depression?
RAECHKA: Sorry! No!
BORIS: I do know that only you could make me happy. In these times we should be together.
RAECHKA: We never could be on the same page.
BORIS: You never felt sorry for me?