But how can we flee without Tarnovsky joining us? If he should escape prison, he will write a new play!

GENERAL EHRENSVÄRD
(torturing the Baroness and the prisoners)

As I am a villain, I must not resemble a human being! (He eats raw meat.)

De la Gardie and Stella escape from the prison.

ALL

Stop them! Catch them!

DE LA GARDIE

Whatever happens, we shall escape and achieve our goals! (A shot is fired.) Damn! (He drops dead.) And damn that too. For just as the author can assassinate, he can just as well resuscitate!

Charles XII appears from the dressing room and commands virtue to triumph over evil. There is universal jubilation. The moon smiles, and so do the stars.

THE AUDIENCE
(calling out to Burl, pointing at Tarnovsky)

There’s the octopus! Catch him!

Burl strangles Tarnovsky, who falls to the ground dead but immediately jumps up again. Thunder, lightning, hoarfrost, the dénouement of the play Two Mothers, or He Was Run Over by a Locomotive, mass migration, shipwreck, and the gathering of all the pieces.

LENTOVSKY

I’m still not satisfied. (He is engulfed with the rest of the scenery.)

13 I wanted to leave “Prologue,” but the editor insists that the less believable all this is, the better. Fine by me.

MARIA IVANOVNA

Ayoung woman of about twenty-three was sitting in a luxuriously furnished drawing room on a purple velvet sofa. Her name was Maria Ivanovna Odnoschekina.

“What a trite, stereotypical beginning!” the reader gasps. “These writers always begin their stories in luxuriously furnished drawing rooms! I don’t want to read this!”

I beg my reader for forgiveness, and continue. A young man of about twenty-six, with a pale, somewhat sad face, stood before her.

“Here we go again! I knew it!” the reader snaps. “A young man, and twenty-six of all things! So what comes next? I know! He spouts poetry, declares his love, and she tells him in an offhand manner that she wants him to buy her a bracelet! Or the opposite, she wants poetry, but he . . . oh, I can’t bear this!”

Be that as it may, I shall continue. The young man’s eyes were fixed on the young woman as he whispered: “I love you, you marvelous creature, even though the chill of the grave envelops you!”

Here the reader loses all patience and begins to curse. “Damn you all! You writers serve up the most idiotic piffle with luxuriously furnished drawing rooms and Maria Ivanovnas enveloped by the damn chill of graves!”

Who knows, dear reader, perhaps you are right to be angry. But then again, perhaps you are not. We live in great times precisely because it is impossible to tell who is in the right and who in the wrong. Even a jury convicting a man for committing theft does not know where the guilt lies: In the man? In the money that just happened to be lying around? In the jurors themselves for having been born? You can’t tell what’s what in this world!

Anyway, even if you are right it doesn’t mean that I am wrong. You think my story is not interesting, that it is pointless. So let’s assume that you are right and I am wrong. But I beg you at least to take extenuating circumstances into consideration. Can I be expected to write something interesting and important if I am despondent and if I have been suffering from intermittent bouts of fever?

“So don’t write if you have a fever!”

Fine. But let me get straight to the point—let’s say I have a fever and am in a bad mood, and that another author has a fever, and a third a jittery wife and a toothache, and a fourth is suffering from depression. None of us would be writing! And where do you think the newspapers and magazines would get their material? Perhaps from the tons and tons of little stories and anecdotes that you, the readers, keep sending in day after day? From the tons of piffle you send in and from which we would be lucky, lucky indeed, to extract just one salvageable piece.

We are all professional literati, not dilettantes! We are literary day laborers, each and every one of us is a person, a person just like you, like your brother, like your sister-in-law—we have the same nerves, the same innards, we are tormented by the same cares that torment you, and our sorrow is much greater than our joy will ever be, and if we wanted to we could come up with reasons not to work every day! Each and every day! But if we were to listen to your “Stop writing!”—if we were all to give in to our fatigue, or despondency, or fever, then we might as well close down all of modern literature!

But we must not close down all of modern literature, dear reader, not for a single day. Even if to you it looks pointless and dull, uninteresting, even if it inspires no laughter or anger or joy in you, literature still exists and serves a purpose. We need literature. If we walk off and leave our calling behind, even for a minute, fools in dunce caps with bells on them will replace us, bad professors, bad lawyers, and bad cadets marching in lockstep, describing their absurd amorous escapades.

I have to write, regardless of how despondent I might be or whether or not I have intermittent bouts of fever! I have to, in any and every way I can, without stopping! There are so few of us—you can count us on the fingers of one hand—and when there are so few workers in a business, you cannot ask for a leave, even a short one—not that you would be given one.

“But still, you writers could choose topics that are a little more serious! I mean, what is the point of this Maria Ivanovna? Is there such a lack of incidents to write about? Is there such a lack of important issues?”

You are right, there are many incidents to write about and many important issues to discuss, but why don’t you tell me exactly what you would like me to write? If you are so indignant, why don’t you prove to me once and for all that you are right, that you really are a serious person living a serious life. Go on, prove it to me in concrete terms, or I might be led to think that the incidents and issues you are talking about don’t amount to much, and that you are simply one of those nice enough fellows one meets who, having nothing better to do, likes to chitchat about serious matters. But I must finish the story I started:

The young man stood awhile before the beautiful woman.