Koba – Raymond Williams’s Play About Stalin

The text of this play appeared in 1966 in the first edition of Modern Tragedy.  I don’t think it was ever performed.

Koba was a pen-name used by Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, better known by his party name Stalin.  For more on the context, see Raymond Williams’s Communist Past.

Koba

By Raymond Williams

Act 1

Scene 1

Time: The Present

Principal: Very well, Next.

Secretary: The next, sir, is a boy called Joseph. A cobbler’s son. The father is dead. We have very good reports of the boy. His vicar and his headmaster both confidently recommend him for a scholarship. The mother apparently lives by going out cleaning, and the boy is what you would expect: a bit rough, of course, but quiet and serious at his work.

Principal: Political sympathies?

Secretary: None know, sir. There’s just this one occasion when he was heard expressing the usual popular sentiments, in a typically adolescent way.

Principal: My predecessor was assassinated by one of these typical adolescents. You must learn to take nothing of that kind lightly.

Secretary: Oh, I don’t take it lightly, sir. On the contrary. But it was, as I say, only this one occasion.

Principal: My predecessor was assassinated on only one occasion. However, bring the boy in.

[The secretary claps his hands. Joseph enters, carrying a book.]

Principal: Stand there. In the light. I want a good look at you.

Joseph: Yes sir. Of course.

Principal: What is that you’re carrying?

Joseph: It’s a book of ballads, sir.

Principal: Ballads? You have a taste for poetry?

Joseph: For some poetry, sir.

Principal: There is poetry that the Church recognises, and other poetry that it condemns. Which kind is yours?

Joseph: I don’t know, sir. Wouldn’t that be for the Church to say?

Secretary: Watch your tongue, boy. And stand up straight when the Principal is looking at you.

Principal: Well, Joseph, I’m waiting for your answer.

Joseph: I don’t know, sir. I love my country, and these poems are by our popular writers.

Principal: Put the book on the table. You say popular writers? These? But can you take the name of writer – that calm and beautiful name – from Homer, from Vergil, and from Dante, and give it to men like these: agitators, demagogues, criminals?

[Pause]

Principal: Have you nothing to say, boy? They did not tell me you were sullen.

Joseph: There is nothing I can say, sir.

Principal: At least you know your limitations. If you do, we can train you. Our training is strict, but it has to be. You have come here, Joseph, to be trained in the service of the Church. It is a hard service, but it is Christ’s service. You will learn what it is our duty to teach you: the difference between true glory and false.

Joseph: Yes sir, I wish to learn that.

Principal: And you will dedicate your life to it? To the hard and often lonely life of the servant of God?

Joseph: I am prepared for it to be hard, sir. And I am prepared to be lonely.

Principal: And these are your reasons for coming here, that you may be a priest of the Church?

Joseph: My mother wishes that, sir.

Principal: But you don’t?

Joseph: I didn’t say that, sir. I honour my mother, and I am eager to be trained as it necessary.

Principal: Very well. We shall see. But as your Principal, I must make certain things clear from the beginning. When you enter here you will leave the world and its business behind you. You will live your days and nights here, except on special application, when the father in charge of your class may, at his discretion, give you leave of absence for periods not exceeding two hours. Any breach of this or any other regulation is punished by confinement to the cells.

Joseph: Yes sir, I understand.

Principal: Your work each day will be your religious instruction and your prayers. When you are not working you will conduct yourself soberly and decently. And remember this, Joseph; if you hear or overhear, at any time, among your fellow students, any blasphemous language, any talk of political sedition, any incitement to revolt against those set in authority over you, then it is your absolute duty not only to resist such ideas, but to report them at once to the father in charge of your class.

Joseph: I will remember all this, sir.

Principal: Yes, you will remember it. We will see to it that you do. But still you have made a bad start, a very bad start, by possessing this book. There are good books and there are evil books. You, Joseph, are too young to distinguish them, but the Church distinguishes. This that you have brought is an evil book: a collection of idle romances glorifying criminals and outlaws.

Joseph: But the stories are exciting, sir. And they are about my own people.

Principal: Very much that is exciting is also evil. The virtues of your people are decency and humility, not rebellion and crime. These stories incite to rebellion. They have already done so, within these walls.

Joseph: The students’ strike, sir?

Principal: Yes, strike is what it was called, but that is the corrupt language of the world. Young men in the service of God refusing their duties, demanding to be taught the history and the literature of their own country, stubborn and insolent. When I called in the police, and the college was closed, eighty-seven young men, eighty -seven like you, Joseph, with all their hopes and plans for the future, had to be expelled, driven out, before the others could get back to their appropriate education.

Joseph: I know the whole story of the strike, sir.

Principal: I see. And have you drawn, I hope, the correct conclusions. This is a house of God, not a hothouse of politics. With them, ignorance and violence; with us, learning and service. It is for you to choose, Joseph.

Joseph: I wish to learn and to serve, sir.

Principal: Well, we shall see. I may seem harsh, Joseph, but I am not unkind. You come here, you young men, with an exceptional opportunity. Others, without your chances, may grow up in darkness, but for you, if you are patient, there is the road to light. Make use of your chances, Joseph. Don’t throw them away in a moment of foolishness. You are a good boy, Joseph. Your mother is hard-working and devout. She sees you already as a learned man, a priest and father in God. You will sin against her, against Mother Church, against yourself? Will you throw down that future for this: this romance of Koba the outlaw?

Joseph: But Koba, sir. He was only an outlaw because the laws were cruel and bad. He called himself the avenger of his people, sir, and Koba means the man who cannot be mastered.

Principal: He burned and he robbed and he killed, beyond reckoning. These are the facts, under the romantic cloak. Is a criminal like that to be glorified, against the blessed example of the Saviour of mankind, who called all peoples to the love and the mercy of God?

Joseph: Jesus was made a criminal, sir. The rulers crucified him.

Secretary: That was a long time ago. And it was the Jews who crucified him.

Joseph: The Romans crucified him: the imperialists. With the help of the ruling Jews. Because Jesus spoke for the people.

Principal: He spoke for a kingdom which is not of this earth. When we enter his service we leave the world behind us, beyond these doors. This is what you must learn, Joseph. This is what you will be taught. Now go and wait for the bell. I wish you well, my son.

Joseph: Thank you, Father.

[Joseph bows low and goes out.]

Secretary: Well, sir. Very much what we expected.

Principal: Not what you expected, what I expected. But he won’t be especially dangerous. They can be stubborn and bitter at first, these boys from the hovels. But why are they here, why did they come to us, if they are not willing to conform? Those who stay will change themselves, because in the end they are ambitious. They know what it is to be poor, and so they are anxious to get on in the world and to do what’s expected of them. That is the price, and in coming here they have decided to pay it. We must grant them their bitterness for a time. It is the only way in which they can learn to reconcile themselves.

Secretary: Yes, sir.

Principal: Report on him with the others, in three months. And now come, quickly, or we shall be late for assembly.

[The bell is tolling. The Principal goes out, while the Secretary stand and bows low at the door.]

Scene II

The tolling of the bell has quickened to alarm. There is distant shouting. Peter and George enter, hurrying. Peter sits where the Principal was sitting. George goes back to look out at the street. Lado and Joseph enter, but stay in the shadows near the door.

Peter: Are you sure this is safe? The police seem everywhere.

George: Nowhere is safe, but this will do. An old shed by the quay: one of a hundred. And the police have their hands full. The demonstration is enormous.

Peter: Yes, this is a great day. A great and wonderful day when after centuries of weakness these people at last learn their strength. I admit I’ve doubted it often. I’ve thought the Revolution was a thing we only wrote and talked about – a distant idea of man’s freedom and dignity. I never thought to see it here, on the streets of our own town. The ordinary people, the despised and rejected, at last with the courage to assert their humanity.

George: Yes, feel like that if you like, Peter, but this isn’t the Revolution. That’s still very distant, and as it comes nearer there will be nothing wonderful about it. Today is only a strike, with shouting and stoning in the streets.

Peter: But still it’s a beginning. We’ve scattered the seed, on ground that seemed barren and hopeless, but now, at last, the first shoots have come up.

George: Have you listened to it, Peter? This isn’t a pastoral. And it isn’t our harvest these men are gathering, it’s their own. The difference, now, is not in us but in them. They are no longer peasants, held by the quiet villages and the seasons. They are miners, railwaymen, oil workers, engineers in the factories. The machines are the seed.

Peter: You’re probably right. But still the revolution isn’t for oil and railways and factories. The revolution is for man, for his freedom and his dignity. We who were born free have a duty to teach that freedom.

George: Yes, when there is no strike, we can write and talk as we please. But when the men are in the streets, when the stones are flying, don’t go out and talk about dignity, don’t insult their anger by turning it back to an idea. All we can do now is watch and learn.

[Lado comes forward.]

Lado: Not go out? Not turn this anger to an idea? But this is weak and stupid. I say go out, put the anger on paper, print it, distribute it. Get me a printing press and I’ll make your revolution.

Peter: Lado, you’ll say anything to get your press. I think what you really like is messing about with the type.

George: It isn’t that. It’s a simple question of money. When this strike ends, as it is bound to end, these men and their families will be cold and hungry. Can we dare to spend on a press what we could otherwise spend on blankets and food? Because that is the choice.

Joseph: Then we should choose the press.

[Pause.]

Peter: Who’s your young friend, Lado? I don’t think I’ve met him.

[Joseph comes forward.]

Lado: His name is Joseph. He’s from the college.

Peter: He seems a very definite young man. Won’t you come closer, Joseph? Here, in the light, where I can see you.

Joseph: Yes, sir.

Peter: Now, Joseph, you mustn’t call me sir. I’m chairman of the organisation, certainly, but we’re all equals here, all friends and comrades. I know it will be hard for you to break the habits of the college, but you’re among very different people now, Joseph, as I’m sure you’ll learn.

Joseph: I shall lean what is necessary.

Peter: Yes, I’m sure you will. It’s ironic, isn’t it, how many recruits we get from the college. It is the desire for service, perhaps, that first led them to the Church, leading them now to us?

Lado: It isn’t to serve that they go the college. It’s to get an education. There’s nowhere else.

Joseph: In the college we learn much that is false. But at least we learn discipline there. A necessary discipline.

George: If you knew more of movements like ours, Joseph, you wouldn’t make us smile by talking of discipline. If we have fifty members then we have fifty ideas of the revolution, all different.

Joseph: Perhaps. But then why are you so pleased about it? If you have fifty different ideas then you are fifty times weaker and will get nothing done. We have to learn discipline, or we shall all be destroyed.

Lado: Yes, that’s good college talk. Not that it comes to much. In my day they had to fetch the police to us. I was the first of the eighty-seven expelled. Your generation, Joseph, is much more careful.

Joseph: Yes. Because to expose yourself to your enemy, before you are ready for him, is a stupid heroism. We must never make a move until we know we are strong enough.

Peter: Well, Lado, we’re all being rebuked, by this marvellous boy. But seriously, Joseph, what is it you want to do? Are you a writer? A speaker? What exactly?

Lado: He’s published poems.

Peter: That’s fine. We can’t have too many poets.

Joseph: We have too many already. Too many in proportion. If you read their books the revolution is just round the corner, or has even begun. And while you can write about revolution there is no need to make it. Yet put the books down and look out in the streets, there is nothing.

George: You call this strike nothing?

Joseph: It’s been badly organised. By tomorrow it will be broken and the leaders arrested.

George: It’s easy to talk, Joseph. Even one day’s victory is much harder work than you’ve ever done.

Peter: And in any case, he just told us, he’s written poems himself.

Joseph: No, I didn’t tell you. And it was three years ago, and of no importance. I grew up reading poems, and like most other boys I started copying them out, in slightly different words. I’ve come past that now, to the real work.

George: And what is the real work?

Joseph: Organisation. The people need organisers who can also teach.

George: And can you do that?

Joseph: I will do what the Party instructs.

George: Having told us, however, what the Party should be.

Lado: I’ll take you up on it, Joseph. I’ve got three groups in the railway workshops. You can take them over, from tomorrow. If you make a go of it there’s better work waiting. At the oilfield we can really organise, organise to fight.

Joseph: I shall be glad to do this.

Peter: You must realise, of course, you risk being expelled from college.

Joseph: Yes, my mother will regret that. But I’ve had more than four years there. I’ve learned what I need.

George: And it will be dangerous work, Joseph, quite apart from the risk of expulsion. It’s an unusual group, these days, without at least one member who’s being paid by the police. And it’s never easy to pick him out, except perhaps that he’s keener, more convinced and more active. You’ll need an underground name, as some sort of protection.

Joseph: Yes. You can call me Koba.

Peter: Koba the outlaw. That’s very good.

Joseph: Not Koba the outlaw, but Koba the avenger of his people. My father was born a serf. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, every man through the generations that have given me life, was a serf and was bought and sold. These are my people, and there is much to avenge.

George: It’s a dangerous emotion, though, vengeance.

Peter: I understand how he feels. And it is our duty, we who were born free, to take this bitterness and transform it to brotherhood, to a new vision of man.

Joseph: This is wasting time. We must get back to the streets. And by staying too long we risk being taken.

George: The streets are as dangerous.

Joseph: Yes, but they are fighting there.

Lado: All right. Koba.

[Joseph and Lado go out. Peter and George hesitate, and then follow.]

Scene III

Max: Jordan.

Jordan: Yes.

Max: The credentials so far are checked. They’re all in order.

Jordan: Of course. Even the police have their credentials in order. Is there any more news from the capital?

Max: What there is, is good. All the strike committees are firm. The city administration only exists on paper. The troops and police are shooting, but we have held so far.

Jordan: We must get back there quickly, as soon as this congress is over. Though it’s no use going until we’ve made our decision. How many more are to come?

Max: It’s difficult to say. There’ll have been the usual arrests, on the way here. There’s nobody yet from the South.

Jordan: Who would it be, from the South? There’s Koba, isn’t there?

Max: Koba? I don’t know. It sounds sufficiently barbarous.

Jordan: He’s done good work in the oilfields. I know no more about him.

[Joseph enters.]

Joseph: Excuse me. Are you Max?

Max: Yes, I’m Max.

Joseph: I was told to find you and present my credentials.

Max: Right, where are you from?

Joseph: From the South. I am Koba.

Max: Koba, did you say? How would I spell that?

Joseph: K-O-B-A. Is it all that difficult?

Max: Not now. But I wasn’t familiar with it. All right, give me your papers.

Joseph: Here. You’ll find them in order. But has Jordan arrived yet? I can’t wait to see him.

Max: You can’t wait, Koba? Why?

Joseph: Because Jordan is the leader. Because I’ve thought of him from a distance, in prison and exile. Because I’ve read all his writings, and learned them by heart. He is a great leader, and I have waited to see him.

Max: Well yes. If you say so. That’s how things are, I suppose, in the South. Anyway, if you want to see Jordan, it won’t be difficult. You won’t have far to go.

Joesph: Not far? Where is he then? Has he already appeared?

[Jordan steps forward.]

Jordan: Koba, I’m Jordan. I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard good reports of your work in the South.

Joseph: You? Jordan? But that’s impossible!

Jordan: Impossible? Why?

Joseph: Because Jordan is the leader. Jordan is a very great man.

Jordan: And I don’t look like a very great man? Is that it?

Joseph: Well to be frank, you don’t. That is, if you are Jordan. You’re not a bit what I expected.

Max: A giant fifteen feet high, I suppose, with a sheepskin cloak and an eagle’s feather in his cap. You’ve some primitive ideas, Koba, in the South.

Joseph: But are you really Jordan? You’re not fooling me?

Jordan: Yes, Koba, I’m Jordan, for better or worse. And I’m sorry I can’t oblige in the way of a more striking appearance. I went bald early and I’ve always lacked height. But still, as I am, you’ll have to take me.

Joseph: I didn’t mean to insult you. I apologies. And the appearance doesn’t matter though of course it would be an advantage. But even as you are, and great as you are you’re making a basic mistake. We work in the underground in silence and exile. We work in danger, where every effort seems hopeless. And what do you  think sustains us? The idea of the people of course, but the people themselves are not ready. To lead the people is to be the best of the people: to show, in yourself, all their future strength. Then you must not only be great, but seem great. You must get people asking: when will he come, when will Jordan be here? We are all only men, all equal in that. To be a leader needs emphasis, and emphasis must be organised. You shouldn’t say ‘I’m Jordan’, and step from a corner. You can’t be the father if you behave like the son.

Jordan: You’re still young, Koba, and you have, inevitably, these romantic ideas. Yes, I am leader, but not as myself. I am only leader so long as I am right. When I am wrong I am nothing. It is never one man, but history, that is leading us.

Joseph: History is made by ordinary men, and ordinary men need a cause they can see. What you call history is still in the books. We must bring it out from the books to the streets.

Max: You talk well, Koba, and in many ways you are right. But here, you must understand, we are all leaders, the vanguard of the revolution. The display you talk about would be quite out of place.

Jordan: This is wasting time. You say you are practical, Koba. Then talk about practical things. You weren’t sent from the South to make speeches.

Joseph: I speak as I find, Jordan. Even to you.

Jordan: Very well. But speak of the work. Are your people strong?

Joseph: The people are strong, or they would not have lasted. The people have always been strong, that is not in question.

Jordan: Exactly comrade. But leaving slogans aside.

Joseph: The people need slogans, to direct their strength. Yes, in the South, we are fighting, and we fight better with every encounter. We are learning unity, we are learning discipline, we are hardening ourselves under fire.

Jordan: There have been many disputes in the South. Disputes in the Party.

Joseph: We move from building to building, avoiding the police. We speak, we write, we organise, preparing the people for their tasks. This is the real work, among the people. But from outside, from the exiles, we hear discordant voices. We watch strength being dissipated in futile arguments. This we condemn.

Jordan: Condemn it if you like, Koba, but what are the facts? You’ve been, yourself, at the centre of these arguments. You’ve been fighting, haven’t you, the whole leadership of the party in the South?

Joseph: It’s the same issue. Can’t you see this, Jordan? I fight all those who are weakening the people. The leaders I have fought, and in fact beaten, are just like your exiles. The revolution for them is a speech, a pamphlet, a theoretical point. But for me, for the people, it is a fight for power.

Max: The people need eyes, Koba, to see how to use their strength. This giant has been blind. The speeches and the pamphlets are to help him to see.

Joseph: This giant is hungry, and needs bread. This giant is bleeding, and must reach for the whip.

Jordan: He has always reached, but he has never held. All that matters, now, is to learn how to hold, and this, inevitably, is what we must teach.

Josephy: Yes, this is true.

Jordan: We have all taught, and we have all been arrested. It isn’t the arrest that makes us teachers; it is only the idea.

Joseph: Since I was expelled from the college I have been twice arrested. The first time I escaped, within a week. But the second was harder. They moved me from prison to prison, and at last to the North. In the end I escaped and travelled South again, in a farm cart. I got frostbite on that journey, but it has healed.

Max: We have all been in prison, Koba. We have all been sent to the North.

Joseph: I’m not boasting. It was little enough. I had a friend, Lado, who was my first political teacher. Lado was shot, last year, by his gaolers. It is one more death to avenge.

Jordan: Not to avenge, but to justify. We are in constant danger, and we must stay calm and disciplined. The correctness of theory is calm. An educated party is disciplined. There is no room, as we are, for any other emphasis.

Max: Exactly. And it is time for the meeting. Come on, Sir Jordan, or shall I go and catch you your eagle’s feather?

Jordan: I’ll have to make do as I am. It’s a heavy agenda.

[Max and Jordan go out. Joseph waits, watching them, and then follows slowly.]

Scene IV

Enter Luke and Warder. The light is fading.

Warder: Here you are then, Luke. Here’s your happy home.

Luke: A wooden box in a desert of snow. Do you call that a home?

Warder: Well, it’s not a palace, admitted, but it’s not such a bad little place. The stove’s all right, when you get it cleaned out, and you’ll get fresh straw over the barn. You see, you’ll soon settle down.

Luke: That is always the word: settle down. But I am not in exile, I am in the heart of this country. Here, in prison, in this barren landscape, I am living the truth of this people. To be exposed and guarded, in this endless silence, where nothing grows and nothing moves: that, everywhere, is the life we are offered.

Warder: I don’t know about that. But there you are, if you don’t like it up here, you don’t have to come. It’s your own choice, you know, picking quarrels with the government.

Luke: I taught children, in an unauthorised school. That was my quarrel.

Warder: Well, there you are. I mean, things like that, the Government has to decide.

Luke: Yes, you believe that. And because you believe it you are the prisoner, a life prisoner, not even knowing your sentence.

Warder: Well, we won’t argue about that. I’ll just lock you in and get off home for some upper. There’ll be another chap in with you, in a bit. I saw them carting him to the office.

Luke: I expected at least to be alone here.

Warder: You wouldn’t say that, brother, if you knew anything about prisons. Put men on their own, they get to screaming like animals, or they just slouch and die. We’re only alone when we’re dead. You’ll find that out. Now come on, settle down.

[The warder goes out, Luke crosses to the window.]

Luke: The home in my mind. I can close my eyes and remember. I can see the ice break, on the silent river, and the deep snow melts, in that distant valley, where the black earth will breathe, in the April winds. I have closed my eyes, for that spring seems distant and hopeless. I have closed my eyes, for here where I live there is darkness. Yet will not the spring come, in this far country? Cannot the flower be known, here where the seed lies dormant? May not the darkness flower, in its own season?

[The warder re-enters, with Joseph behind him.]

Warder: Are you there then, Luke?

Luke: Yes. By the window.

Warder: Here’s the company I promised you. You’ll be glad to see him.

Joseph: That’s enough. Don’t taunt us. Do your duty and go.

Warder: Now look, brother, there’s no call to be unfriendly. I was only trying to act decent.

Joseph: You will not succeed. The whip can never be decent.

Warder: Yes, but look here, I carry the whip, but we only use it on the very worst cases, what they call the recalcitrant. Like they told you in the office, a detention centre’s got no use for violence. You just be sensible, and there’ll be no trouble.

Joseph: When you learn to be sensible, there will be trouble. But not for us. For them.

Warder: Aye, you all talk the same. Tomorrow the Judgement. Like the priest at home used to say: the last reckoning will come, and you’ll all be weighed in the balance. Just scaring the life out of decent people, that’s all it amounts to. We could see for ourselves, they don’t weight corpses, they just shove them down in the earth. Nobody gets at you past that.

Joesph: At least you’ve broken with one superstition.

Warder: Maybe I have. I’ve got my own life to live. Only now there’s your lot, and the same old story. St Peter’s gates or this great revolution: it all comes the same to us. One way or another, if we listen to you lot, we’ve got it coming to us, the day after tomorrow. But what I say is, let the future feed the future. We’ve got enough where we are, just feeding ourselves. This bloody politics kills people, I’ve seen it over and over. And don’t try and tell me, I’ve heard it too often. Making out that for me or for you things could ever be different.

Joseph: But things will be different, and you will be part of the difference.

Warder: All right, I don’t blame you, if it keeps your spirits up. Like my old aunt, she had to sleep on her own, but she’d got something much bigger, a god or something, coming up later on. Go on. Sweet dreams. I’ll just lock you in.

Joseph: You can never lock us in. We are everywhere.

Warder: Aye, well tonight you’re here, under lock and key, and every blessed night for the next seven years, God help you. So settle down, make the best of it.

Joseph: We shall make the best of it.

[The Warder goes out. Joseph puts down his things, and turns to Luke, who is still by the window.]

Joseph: Did I hear him say Luke?

Luke: Yes, Luke is my name.

Joseph: I’m Joseph. They call me Koba. Where are you from?

Luke: From the West.

Joseph: I’ve been to the West. To the Congress On my way back they arrested me. How about you? Where did they pick you up?

[Luke turns from the window and goes to sit in the shadows.]

Luke: I’d rather not talk, friend, if you don’t mind.

Joseph: Not talk? What else can we do?

Luke: I shall try to write, if I can.

Joseph: Write? Well that’s an idea. I used to write, a long time ago. In the way you mean, that is. I only write now in terms of the struggle. Afterwards, I dare say, it’ll be different. But writing is strange. I know I only write when there’s an audience waiting to be written to. Writing, for me, is just a way of talking to people. That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve known lots of writers, good writers, and all they ever thing about is getting away on their own somewhere, sitting down to write. As if writing, really, was a sort of talking to themselves. Well, there it is. You’re as good as your word. But don’t think I shall bother you. You sit there, comrade, as long as you like. Sit with your head in your hands, and when you want to, write. For me, as I said, it would be no good. When I’m away from people I’ve got nothing to write about.

[Joseph looks around and then crosses to the window.]

Only sometimes, if you like, look across as I stand by the window. Look across at me, and then look back at your writing. I am an ordinary man, but I am also the people, watching from the window and waiting. In this dark hut, in prison and exile, I stand looking out for the first sign of the light, and the chance to break free.

[Luke turns and watches him.]

You’re thinking I’m mad, standing talking like this. Only prisoners and lunatics have such great ideas of themselves. But I know I am nothing. I have no name, for I am the people.

[The stage darkens further.]

They call me Koba, but my name is not Koba, my work is Koba. Tell me what you can see, as your eyes strain in the darkness. Can you see these men, my fathers and brothers? Generation on generation, poor and hungry and dying. These men are my seed, and I am their seed.

[In the shadows near the door, men and women are moving, slowly.]

The child at the breast becomes the man at the plough, gives the earth his blood and gives others his harvest. The girl screams on the bed of straw, in new blood, in new hands, and still the harvest is taken. War and tyranny and fever and ignorance: generation on generation, taking and destroying our children. Watch now if you can. Watch. This man, this taller man, is called Lado. A teacher and a fighter, a young man.

[Lado crosses and kneels beside Joseph. The Warder enters and stands behind Lado. He draws his pistol and shoots him in the back of the neck. Then he goes out, dragging the body.]

He spoke and he was killed. He is many men. And I, Koba am many men. In myself I am nothing, but I have become Koba.

[The stage darkens completely, and there is clear silence. Joseph and Luke are alone.]

Can you not see how it is, in this darkness? Look. Watch. The generations of killing, by act of neglect. Yet our life, goes on, and our bodies have learned from this killing. Life in this darkness, has found its own answer. It has taken my body and changed it, taken my name and changed it. I have become Koba, the man who cannot be mastered. I have become Koba, the avenger of my people.

[A light appears near the window.]

Look. Watch. Do you see?

Luke:     The darkness flowers, in its own season.

The darkness flowers, passing beyond its source.

In this far instant, when the darkness flowers,

There is a new country, between earth and sun.

[The light has been growing as he speaks, and continues to brighten. There is shouting outside, coming nearer.]

Joseph: You hear the shouting. Listen now, they are shouting for peace and for bread. Listen, listen, how many are shouting.

Luke: Yes, I see you now, you are Koba, the avenger.

Joseph: Listen to the shouting. The giant has woken, and is reaching with his hands.

Luke: I can see you, Koba. The darkness has flowered.

Joseph: We’ve no time to waste. We must get away tonight. We must get to the capital.

Luke: You are the man who cannot be mastered, but they are shouting for peace and for bread.

Joseph: Yes, shouting, listen to it. And look, our door has been opened. We are free, free to go. Come on, friend, I’ll help you. Come on, come on, you can walk.

Luke: I can walk but there is nowhere to go. Or nowhere for me. Your work is Koba.

Joseph: The name doesn’t matter. Let it go back to the underground. This is the day I’ve been waiting for, the day of freedom. I must get to the capital.

[Joseph hurries out. The shouting reaches its climax. Luke stands, looking after him, and then goes out slowly, in another direction.]

Scene V

Enter George and Mark. They close the door on the shouting.

George: I tell you again, Mark, there’s nothing to celebrate, there’s everything to organise.

Mark: Yes, of course. You are an old revolutionary, The years have soured you, and you have that much excuse. But is nothing enough for you? Not even the revolution? Now, today, when the people are in the streets?

George: We can’t live in the streets. It’s easy enough, marching this way and that with your banners. But if we mean business, there are more important things to do.

Mark: We mean business all right, but without the excitement nothing real can be done.

George: The banners are fine, but it is time to put them away. The reality, now, is not banners, but committees, white papers, administration, supplies. These images of the Revolution area a luxury. We must make the real revolution.

Mark: The revolution, surely, is supplies and images.

George: Exactly. And we haven’t got the supplies.

[Enter Joseph and Ruth.]

Joseph: Is this headquarters? I am Koba.

George: Joseph! You’ve escaped then?

Joseph: I escaped three days ago.

George: I’m very glad, Joseph. We weren’t even sure you were alive. And is this your wife?

Joseph: This is Ruth, the daughter of one of our members here. She has written and sent me supplies while I’ve been in the North.

George: You must be glad to have him back, Ruth.

Ruth: Yes, I’m glad for his sake. He was there in the darkness for so many years. He used to ask me to send him post-cards, so that he could see what living country was like.

Joseph: This is no longer important. We have a great deal to do. As an elected member of the committee of the Party, I take it I’m senior here.

George: Yes, Joseph, you are senior. Or say Koba is senior.

Joseph: The name doesn’t matter. But I need to see all the reports. The city’s excited, but the real situation’s obscure.

George: You can see the reports, Joseph, and the situation will still be obscure. Never mind, come and look. I’ve got all the papers in here.

[George and Joseph go out.]

Mark: Well, Ruth? You must be very proud, to be so close to one of the leaders.

Ruth: Who? You?

Mark: Me? Good heavens, no. I’m just what they call a wild student. No, I meant Koba.

Ruth: Yes, he is one of the leaders.

Mark: You don’t sound very impressed. Don’t you like him?

Ruth: I hardly know him. When he must hide from the police, he would lodge, sometimes, with my father. But I was only a child then, before he was sent to the North.

Mark: Yet you wrote to him there?

Ruth: My father cannot write. I was glad to do what I could.

Mark: Well, Koba must have liked it, having a pretty girl writing to him.

Ruth: I’m not pretty. You mustn’t tease me.

Mark: Yes, you are pretty. You are even beautiful. But then today, really, everybody is beautiful. That is what it means, this excitement. Not that the others will see it the old ones, even Koba. They’ve been cut off for too long, from any ordinary world. They come back now like ghosts, pale and bitter and grey.

Ruth: My father says only one thing of Koba, that he is entirely reliable.

Mark: Reliable, yes. Well, there are worse things to be. But also there are better things. Don’t you feel it yourself, like your own life beginning?

Ruth: I can’t tell. I don’t know. I’m not sure what is happening. All my father says is that the situation is still obscure.

Mark: Your father says. Have you no feelings of your own?

Ruth: They say this is no time for feelings of your own.

Mark: Of course they say that. The grey disease. We shall all catch it in time. I can feel it already, as these ghosts bring it back with them.

[Joseph enters as Mark is speaking.]

Joesph: That’s enough. Be quiet.

Mark: I’m sorry, Koba. I didn’t mean to insult you. But still I speak as I find. Even to you. And don’t tell me to be quiet, as if you spoke to a dog. Those are the ways we are ending, with this revolution.

Joseph: I see. Have you finished?

Mark: Nothing is finished. This is only the beginning.

Joseph: Your name is Mark, is that right?

Mark: Yes, I am Mark.

Joseph: Then let me make this clear, Mark, to you and to others. How you are spoken to is of no importance. You are one single person, a tiny individual among millions. Can you dare to think of yourself, when lives of millions are in danger?

Mark: I think of myself because I think of those millions. You also, Koba, are only one among many.

Joseph: Yes. Certainly. As myself I am nothing. But I am here to speak for the Party, and the Party speaks for the people. We have worked and suffered to make this revolution, and nothing, now, will be allowed to defeat it. Yet we shall in fact be defeated – defeat is staring from every report – unless there is authority, discipline, order. Like you I was a student, with my dreams of the future. Like you I lived for the shout, the great shout, that would transform my world. But it doesn’t happen like that. My first political teacher, a student hardly older than myself, was shot in his cell by his gaolers. The groups I organised were raided and broken up, dragged away to prison and exile. I have learned even more clearly the strength of the enemies of the people. As you open your mouth to cry freedom, they will hit you, without pity across the face, hit you until it is not freedom but blood that jumps from your mouth.

Mark: Blood, certainly, but also freedom. Have you never learned that? That people can be trusted? That we can only make freedom by knowing it in the face of our neighbours?

Joseph: That is the ordinary piety, while the blood runs. But this struggle is desperate, and is beyond piety. The people are strong, or there would be no revolution. Yet also the people are weak, and their weakness, precisely, is the business of the Party. Where they are weak we must strengthen them, as part of themselves. We must be their eyes, their hands, the blood in their veins. Our interests as individual, our rights as individuals, are of no importance except in that duty. We exist only as eyes, hands, blood. We exist as a Party, and as the duty of the Party. And this involves from you, now, first: order, discipline, obedience.

[Peter has entered, while Joseph is speaking. He now claps his hands.]

Peter: Order, discipline, obedience. You could hardly have said better, Joseph. You said this to us first in that hut by the docks. You, fresh and young from the college, as the strike gripped the city. Do you remember, Joseph?

Joseph: I remember many things, Peter.

Peter: But order, discipline, obedience: these three, above everything. And of course you’re quite right. This is why I have come. I have authority to speak for the Revolutionary Government. To speak, plainly and urgently, to your own party. The Revolution is not only in danger, but on the edge of defeat. The army is massing against us, and we have only our spirit and our hands to fight with. Only one thing can save us: the unity of all parties in the Revolutionary Government. But at a time like this, in such desperate danger, our party, Joseph, is breaking that unity. Your whole policy is senseless. It isn’t even that you’re the strongest party, though in some centres you are strong. And since you can never hope to govern alone, you are bound to work with the rest of us, loyally, honestly. That is why I call you, Joseph, in the name of the Revolution, to discipline, order, obedience.

Joseph: We cannot be loyal both to you and to the people.

Peter: The people? But the people are divided in a hundred ways: even brother against brother, father against son. Nobody can speak for the people as a whole. That is just arrogant rhetoric. Look at the facts, Joseph. We’ve overthrown the tyranny. The essential revolution has occurred. But we are weak and divided, and the enemy is literally at the gates. We must have government, if we are to survive at all. Whatever our differences, we must unite on this.

Joseph: There can be unity for the revolution, or unity against it.

Peter: Of course. This doesn’t need saying. What I’m asking from you is unity and loyalty in the Revolutionary Government.

Joseph: On what terms, exactly?

Peter: There can be no terms. It is all too urgent for that. We must just sink our differences, for the sake of unity in the Revolutionary Government.

Joseph: You have said this before. You are merely repeating yourself.

Peter: Yes, but I want an answer, Joseph.

Joseph: An answer? To what?

Peter: To the question of your loyalty to the Revolutionary Government.

Joseph: That is perfectly clear, and requires no answer. In respect of the Revolutionary Government, we are neither for nor against it.

Peter: What absurdity is that? Can’t you listen, the rest of you, to what is being said? Can’t you speak out, honestly, against this kind of quibbling?

George: The unity of the party is necessary, Peter.

Peter: But not the unity of the government? Now, with an army marching in to destroy us?

Mark: You are asking for loyalty, as governments always ask for it. And there’s always, haven’t you noticed, an army at the gates? So never mind about terms, just be very obedient. But I see a greater danger than any army. That no sooner have we made our revolution, no sooner have we broken our chains, than we go out looking for chains, looking for authority: turning from this to that, weighing the chains in our hands, seeing which will serve. And I have to warn you of this. No revolutionary government will defeat that army. Only the people can defeat it.

Peter: Words again, just useless words. But it isn’t words at the gates of the city, that disciplined army fighting . its brutal way back to the throne and the whip. To stop them, now, needs immediate decision: for or against the Revolutionary Government.

Joseph: I have already explained this. We are neither for nor against you.

Peter: You have explained nothing. Your mind is not capable of it.

Joseph: In respect of the Revolutionary Government, we are neither for not against it. We cannot be for it: its interests are not our interests. We cannot be against it: it is the first product of the Revolution. Thus we maintain our position, neither for nor against. Our business is to strengthen the people, and, in respect of the government, to make certain demands, in the name of the people.

Peter: But what right have you to this name of the people? You are only a minority. The majority are with us and the other parties.

Joseph: We have been a minority from the very beginning. Nevertheless, we speak for the people.

Peter: Joseph, you’re out of your depth. I’m even sorry for your party that it has no more capable spokesman. While you go on with this stupidity, you’ll be simply swept aside. And in the judgement of history, you’ll only be forgiven because you are wholly forgotten. History, at least, is still rational.

Joseph: Yes, it is. And have you anything more to say?

Peter: Not to you, Joseph. Not to a stupid boy, playing his game of Koba. When will Jordan be back?

Mark: A message has just come in. He’s arrived in the city. The people met him at the station and cheered him. They’re cheering him now through the streets.

Peter: That’s much better news: Jordan at least is experienced and capable. Will he be coming here? I can wait and speak to him.

Mark: Yes, he’s on his way here.

Peter: All right, then, I’ll wait.

[Joseph turns away, and walks to the window. He is silent for some moments, and then turns back and speaks.]

Joseph: This is the headquarters of the Party. Will you show this man out?

Mark: I?

George: Joseph, be careful. He comes with the authority of the Revolutionary Government.

Joseph: I have issued an order, in the name of the Party. This man must go.

Peter: You are a fool, Joseph. A fool, no more.

Joseph: I have nothing to say to you.

[He turns away again. The others hesitate, and then Mark goes across and opens the door and stands by it. Peter looks at George, and George turns away. Peter makes to speak, but then leaves angrily. Joseph waits, and then turns to the others.]

Joseph: We have a draft to finish. We must get back to work.

Mark: But with Jordan in the city, Koba. He’ll be here any minute.

Joseph: Then the draft must be ready. Come on.

[There is a sound of cheering from outside, and then Jordan enters, followed by Max.]

Mark: Jordan.

George: Jordan.

[The cry is taken up again outside. Jordan’s name is repeatedly shouted, while he waits impatiently.]

Jordan: This is no place to do business. Can’t we have some quiet? Who’s in charge here?

Joseph: I am in charge, Jordan.

Jordan: Koba. Of course. And I’m glad to see you. Tell me what you’ve been doing. No, wait, don’t tell me, let me tell you. You’ve been sitting in an office, Koba, making lists and drafting articles. Wonderful lists, I’m sure, but bad articles.

Joseph: Bad?

Jordan: Look, I come to the capital of the revolution, and what do I find? A people needing leadership – a people confident of its power and waiting to be shown what to do. Then I look at your articles, Koba. Rudeness, yes. Neutrality, yes. Guarding the purity of the party, yes. But to the government, every attention; to the people, no attention, merely an old rhetoric. You address demands to the government, but don’t you realise you are talking to dust, down on your knees talking to it, spitting at it, begging it to become a world? The fact is, Koba, we have only one demand to make of this government.

Joseph: Yes?

Jordan: One demand: that it cuts its throat and go.

Joseph: I see. Very well.

Jordan: And this from you, Koba. You of all people. You, Koba, the man who cannot be mastered. And on your knees in the dusts, drafting and redrafting demands. But it’s time to get up, Koba.

George: This is madness, Jordan, and you know it. Taunt Joseph if you like; you can’t hurt him. But when it comes to policy, try to use your intelligence. Yes, you’ve been cheered in the streets, but it’s gone to your head. There will be no cheering, but only a people slaughtered by the army, unless all of us act, now and together.

Jordan: He calls you Joseph, Koba. He’s still back twenty years, in the old situation. The reasonable liberal, calling on all good men to unite. But now, in this city, when we can seize full power.

Joseph: If the party’s object is the attainment of power, certain steps must be taken to prepare for this attainment.

George: Is that all you can say, Joseph?

Joseph: It is all that needs to be said.

Jordon: You see. I told you. He is not Joseph, but Koba.

George: And what has he said? That if we want to boil a kettle we must light a fire. Well, of course, but that isn’t the question. What we want from you, Joseph, is an honest answer. Say, as you must, that there is no hope of power.

Joseph: I can only say that I have learned to wait.

Max: Yes, perhaps. Because you don’t understand power.

Joseph: For nearly twenty years I have been a member of the party. I have prepared the party to fight, and I have prepared myself to fight. But through all these years I have stood and listened to arguments like this one. Sometimes the arguments go this way, sometimes that. And that is right: it is the nature of arguments. But I, for my part, always wait for the argument to be finished. It is never the argument that matters. In argument, all policies are equal, but all are fruitless. A party lives by decisions, by conclusions, and by unity and energy in carrying them out. The correctness of a policy is determined by events. The test of men comes then.

Max: This is the talk of a servant, not of a political leader.

Joseph: It is the talk of the people, not of those who climb to power on their backs.

Jordan: You are both right, as you have both been before. While you are both with me, the party can know itself. But still we haven’t much time. We must get this decision. You say I am mad, George, that my head’s been turned by the excitement in the city. But Koba is right, events will decide what’s correct. And I repeat it again: alone if necessary, mad if necessary, we have to break this government, and complete the revolution. For it can only be saved if we, at any cost, take power to save it.

George: At any cost. That is always the language of madness. And this is a day of madness, the eruption of a devil, destroying the earth. For it is defeat both ways, whether we win or lose. If we lose, the revolution is lost. If we win, what world, what power, shall we in fact inherit? If we strike now, we shall set fire to ourselves and set fire to the world. The fire will spread and rage, and we shall not see the end of it. No liberty, no dignity, no rights of man, no peaceful cities, will survive this fire. We shall make with our hands only ashes, blood, death, misery, hatred. So I ask you, while there is still time: wait, consider, before you set fire to the world.

Max: This fire is here. We can only try to pass through it.

Jordan: Yes, the fire is here. It is our business to control it.

Joseph: Ashes, blood, death, misery, hatred: these, in reality, have been our history. This history can only be changed if we are not afraid of them, if we even accept them.

Jordan: And we will stake our lives on it.

Joseph: Yes.

Max: Certainly.

Mark: Yes.

George: Your own lives, yes. But have you thought of the lives of others? Of the millions who will die?

Jordan: And of the millions beyond them who will live. Certainly. That is the weight of our choice.

[Jordan puts out his hand. Max, Mark and Joseph lay their own hands on it. George moves away towards Ruth, who has been sitting in silence, away from the men. He offers to take her hand, but she gets up and moves towards Joseph. The stage darkens.]

Scene VI

Jordan, Max, Joseph, Mark, George stand facing outwards. It is still half-dark, and they are cold and tired.

Jordan: It is what he said. Yet we have the power.

Joseph: This is all that matters. The past is past.

George: In a broken country. In death and weeping. In cold and in famine.

Jordan: But still with our lives, and with the future in our hands. The grass will grow over the graves. The bruise of weeping, the bruise of anger, will fade. New hands will come to the plough, to the tractor, to the generator. We will end the cold and famine, and our people will live.

Max: But alone, Jordan. Alone. Only we have come through.

Mark: And in coming through we have changed. We are not a free people, alive and resilient. We are a hardened people, with a bitter optimism. Hope and despair make the same sound in our mouths.

Jordan: That is where we began, Mark, while you were a child. All the other ways had been tried: self-sacrifice, charity, idealism, service. Generations had tried, in the good ways: the best of humanity against the worst, and the worst always won, and could laugh, contemptuously, at each new young wave of dedication and hope. We began at that point, and we wiped the laugh from their faces. Because we watched power, watched its style and its habits, so that we could learn to destroy it. And then nobody could admire us, and nobody patronise us. We were not the good little people, easing the conscience of softness, the quick warm fellow-feeling. No friend or enemy could reach us, using our humanity as the way into compromise. When we were praised, we knew we were wrong. When we were seen as reasonable, we knew we were weak. But when they denounced us, as beyond humanity; when they went black with contempt and hating, as they described what we were: then, at last, we were a serious party. The innocents and the martyrs, in this final dialectic, lived again in our bodies, and lived as the world had shown them to live. Innocence and goodness had been tolerated in the world, on the clear understanding that they went down to defeat, to a noble and affecting defeat. But we were the change, Mark: the genetic change. Goodness and innocence passed through our minds into these altered forms; changed to survive and to grow, after the barren generations.

Mark: It is how the world sees us. But is it how we are? We have yet to prove that we too are not barren. Coldness and hatred have bred coldness and hatred, through the history of the world. Can we stand today and be sure that the chain is broken? What shall we create, as we now are?

Joseph: You are talking too soon. You are assuming a victory. But there is no victory yet. Do you think they will leave us alone, to create anything? With all the power and cunning they have they will come back and back. If we weaken for a moment, we shall be down with the innocents and the martyrs. We can only survive if we become even harder.

Max: Hardness is nothing. There is the hardness of stone and hardness of steel. Whatever we are, we can not survive on our own. And if we are to be helped from outside, if people are to see us as a revolution worth saving, then hardness alone will be nothing: just the empty gesture of the tyrant or the bureaucrat. We must be more than men, not less. We must be and become what men hope and imagine. Then in defending us they are defending their dreams.

Joseph: They would do better to wake, and to stop dreaming. Are there to be actors for this passive audience, flattering their stillness with our action? They sit and wonder, but we speak. They look round, embarrassed, while we act. And they will of course applaud, while we play the hero. They will applaud even lounder when the last act comes, and the hero is dead, but had died nobly. But I have a different ambition, without a stage and without applause. The choice is the same as it has always been. With our own hands, with our own strength, without illusions and without concessions, we will become so strong, so strong as a people, that if the enemy comes, we can smash him; if a friend hesitates, we can push him aside; if a comrade weakens, we can go on without him.

George: This is lunacy, now, when we are not even strong.

Joseph: It was lunacy, then, as you told us, when we made the revolution.

Max: You can seem hard, Koba, because you don’t understand. Have you ever watched a procession to the law courts? Back in the middle, uncertain, unimpressive, are the actual judges: too close, too committed, to the real decisions, to have time for display. But in front, Koba, they send a sort of monkey, with the symbols of power. Too stupid to know what the judgment is about, but with a fine set face, set lips, a straight back. He probably thinks, as the procession advances, that he is the power, the intelligence, the reality of judgement. In fact, of course, he is the merest hanger-on: a monkey strutting to appear as a judge.

Jordan: We’ve all seen this, Max. And it cuts both ways. I think Koba is right, that we have to be strong. But we can only become strong if we are very intelligent: subtle, flexible, ironic perhaps. That is our monkey, a clever monkey. But the judges, behind, are as Koba says: trusting nobody, without illusions, making no real concessions.

Mark: You too, Jordan?

Jordan: Yes, Mark. Finally. Don’t ever forget this.

[Mark looks at Jordan, but does not answer. Then he turns, quickly, and leaves. George looks from one to another, and then also goes out. Jordan, Joseph and Max, left together, stand watching each other. Then Joseph moves.]

Joseph: I have a great deal to do, Jordan, I must go and make a start.

Jordan: All right, Koba. Good luck.

[Joseph leaves.]

Max: He needs the luck. But this can’t last much longer. He is so stupid, he is already a hinderance. But you won’t say this. You still temporise.

Jordan: I have to temporise. Can’t you see that, Max? Yes, we need intelligence, but that’s so much more than a ready tongue, even a ready mind. Intelligence is construction: the contours of a society on the contours of a land. And I can only lead, only know, as I feel those contours.

Max: We have been right so far.

Jordan: Yes, Max, I think so. But this isn’t the old geography. The land isn’t still, it’s moving and altering under our feet. To know the contours now isa matter of genius.

Max: We have had this genius.

Jordan: You say so, Max. You are probably right. But many millions of people, after many centuries of slavery. Who can know, in the end, what they will come to build? We have brought this plan to them. We have set them free to fulfil it. But what happens now, while this burns in our minds? What happens, Max, while the contours are moving?

Max: It is God, surely? It is man as a god. To create from chaos, having first created himself.

Jordan: To stay still for a moment. To stay still and look. But the land is moving beneath us, and we too have to move. Endlessly balancing, endlessly flexible, or we fall and destroy ourselves. I can see this figure of man the creator, the towering figures on the crest of the hill. But with the land moving, with the contours shifting, he can fall and break into a thousand fragments. So strong, so sure of himself, but he can fall like a statue, the fists clenched in stone and the arms rigid in dignity’ unable, at last, even to reach out and save himself, reach out and break his fall.

Max: Yes. That is just the danger. The hardness of stone, as I said to Koba.

Jordan: You keep wanting to tell me what is wrong with Koba.

Max: No, I want you to tell me. From you, at least, people will accept the truth.

Jordan: But why are you so worried about him?

Max: I’m not worried about him. He’s so obviously mediocre, so pitifully second-rate.

Jordan: But a second-rate man can make a second-rate revolution. Is that what’s worrying you?

Max: It could so easily go wrong. Men who cannot govern by intelligence and insight can nevertheless govern: by intrigue, by organisation, by the manipulation they find natural. Have we made this revolution for a gang of scheming officials?

Jordan: We are all scheming officials. You and I too, Max. And we shall have to remain so until the people can govern themselves. That, after all, is the logic of what we have done.

Max: I deny that entirely. Our logic was an idea.

Jordan: And from the idea followed power, and from power followed the rest: intrigue, organisation, manipulation. What do you think I am, Max? The leader of a debating society?

Max: While you are right you are the leader. This is what you have always said. And being right is the power of ideas. No other power is permissible.

Jordan: And our army, Max?

Max: An army built and lead by an idea. Fighting and dying and overcoming for an idea.

Jordan: Yet still an army. Still fighting with guns.

Max: It is your own definition. And while the guns and the power simply service the idea, we are within our logic. But can you be sure this will always be so?

Jordon: No, I can’t be sure. But we had no choice. We needed the guns.

Max: And Koba?

Jordan: Yes, can’t you see? You don’t have to tell me what Koba is like. He is strong and reliable, but also crude and limited. He is, precisely, the ambivalence of power.

Max: But if ambivalent then dangerous. Will you at least not say this?

Jordan: Yes, I will say it. But in my own way and in my own time.

Max: It may be too late then. You may not even be heard.

Jordan: I think I shall be heard, Max. And if I speak now, openly, the risks are too great. We have too little strength as it is; we can throw none away. I need you, I need Koba, I need a million others. The gesture would be easy, the arms rigid in dignity. But while the earth is still moving I need this flexible, this varying power. I have been through it all in my mind, and I have hit doubting certainty. I have to govern a great country, but in chronic weakness and danger. I need every resource, Max: every kind of intelligence, every kind of power.

Max: Yes, we must keep you well, Jordan. It’s an immense burden.

Jordan: Not a burden, Max. Not a dead weight. It is all creation and movement, and the setting of limits to make the movement possible. But it is what I wanted. It is what we have lived for. Sitting up late at night, in a generation’s argument, and now the premises are men, the conclusions are men, and we are changing the history of the world.

Max: Yes, we are changing the world.

Jordan: Come on. No gestures. We have too much to do.

[Max and Jordan go out.]

Scene VII

Joseph enters, with Ruth. They settle down to work, Joseph writing and Ruth copying. There is a clear, absolute silence, then a loud rifle-shot, a pause, and a shout offstage. The shout is repeated, and Mark enters.

Mark: Koba. Come quickly. He is dead.

[Joseph looks up, but does not answer.]

Mark: Can’t you hear me, Koba? Can’t you understand what’s happened? He’s dead.

[Joseph stares, uncomprehending. Ruth gets up.]

Ruth: Who is dead, Mark?

Mark: Jordan. Jordan is dead.

[Josephy does not move. He still stares without focus.]

Mark: Can’t you say anything, Koba? Can’t you speak at all? Did you hear what I told you? Jordan, Jordan, is dead.

Ruth: How did he die, Mark?

Mark: He was shot. Assassinated. As it used to happen. Except that he was not in a carriage, or in the dress of rank. He was on the back of a lorry, in his own shabby clothes. He was addressing a meeting, and his face was pinched with the cold. Then the shot came, quite suddenly. They had just been cheering him, but this man at the window was loading his rifle. Jordan lifted his arm, to ask silence, and the shot came, as if he had given a signal. He was hit in the face, and the force of the shot spun him down. He died quickly, with us around him, on the back of the lorry.

Ruth: But that’s terrible. Impossible. Who could have done it?

Mark: Any one of thousands. We can’t count our enemies. For we are still at war, but now a war without Jordan, a revolution without Jordan. I still can’t accept it, though I watched him die. For we lived in Jordan: in his spirit and in his genius. It felt, when he died, like the end of the world.

Ruth: Yes, Mark, that is just what it feels like.

Mark: A history and a future, in this vulnerable body, this body that has died. Can’t you say anything, Koba? At a moment like this, at the death of Jordan, is there nothing you can say?

[Joseph does not move, but still stares without focus.]

Mark: Koba. Joseph. Answer.

[He is shouting down into Joseph’s face. Joseph does not move, but at last looks up at him. There is the noise of movement outside, and then George and Max enter, carrying the body of Jordan. They lay the body down, in the centre of the group. Ruth kneels at Jordan’s head, and weeps.]

George: Yes. Ruth is right. We can only mourn.

Mark: We have led a revolution, we are the voices of the people, yet we can say nothing.

George: Whatever we have expected, the end is tragedy. He was the strongest man in the world, and now he is dead.

Mark: He came down like a god from the sky. We could not believe what he said we must do. We knew only our weakness, but he lived in another dimension. What he said was possible, we discovered to be possible. The miracle happened, like all miracles, just out in the street. And while he still lived with us, in our familiar streets, a new life was possible, incredibly possible. But now he is dead, and it is again incredible.

George: The circle is drawn, the inevitable circle. What strength could do, he has done. What genius could do, he has done. But strength and genius are only human, in the end. A bullet killed them, as it can kill anything. The human body dies, and with it its spirit.

Mark: History flared for a moment, in this vulnerable body. It has happened before, but so rarely, so briefly. The hunting animal, moving out across the plains, but itself in the end hunted and killed. The foodgrowing animal, working for harvest, and the harvest is cut and the seed is buried, and the labourer is buried with the seed. The machine is shaped and set running, and the power is certain, but the hand weakens, and withdraws its control. History is made, but the man dies.

Max: We are all to blame. We failed to protect him. We set our lives to this risk, but he took the weight of the risk, he was the most exposed.

George: The end is tragedy, for this death was inevitable. Without his strength we could have done nothing. He was exposed without pity, for he had shown us a way beyond pity. His death was inevitable, in everything we have done.

Max: Not inevitable. We could have protected him. We are all to blame.

[They stand looking down at the body. There is a clear silence. Then Joseph comes forward, slowly. They all watch him, as he bends over Jordan. When he rises he begins to turn away, but then turns back suddenly.]

Joseph: The man who killed him is to blame. He will be taken and destroyed. Jordan is dead, and the loss is heavy. But Jordan is also alive, in our minds and hands. He has given us his strength, and we shall use his strength. There is no time for weakness, and no time for mourning. We commit to this man what this man was. We commit our promise to you, Jordan, as if you were still standing with us. The enemy who killed you will himself be killed. The enemy who opposed you will be opposed and broken. We promise this, Jordan. We promise this at your death. The future you fought for will go on being fought for, and it is a fight we will win. The people you spoke for will continue to speak, and more loudly, more clearly, in response to this death. We promise this, Jordan. Whoever may weaken, we shall not. Whoever may fear, we shall not. Whoever may hesitate, turn aside from his task, we shall not. We will become harder, in this rigour of your death. We have lost one man. We shall gain a million. We have fought hard before. We shall fight even harder. We promise this, Jordan. For we in this party are of a new flesh, a new blood. For the first time in history, human strength is sufficient. This is your strength, Jordan. This is the strength of our party. We promise this, Jordan. You are not dead. You can never die. In your fists clenched in death we see strength, power, an unbreakable power. We promise this, Jordan. We are a new flesh, a new blood.

[He turns to the others.]

We will bury this man as a hero, and make our whole people heroic. Take him up. Walk firmly. It is the future you are carrying.

Act II

Scene I

George and Mark enter

George: But every meeting now is the same. You can see the way it’s all going.

Mark: Yes, of course. The pressures are terrible.

George: They are human pressures. Are you afraid to name them?

Mark: No, not afraid. But I’ve lived through these years. We argued this, you and I, in the very first days. The reality now, I remember you saying, is committees, white papers, administration, supplies. And you were right, I suppose. This is what we’ve become.

George: To make a society, we needed those things. To make the people free to direct their own lives. But that purpose, now, is completely forgotten. We are building a state, but not a society.

Mark: I said this too, at the beginning. That when we had thrown off the chains of an old tyranny, we hurried to find new chains: government, authority, discipline.

George: Then you are bound to oppose what is happening now.

Mark: No, I don’t oppose it.

George: Then you are worse than anyone, because you see this evil and yet you support it.

Mark: I don’t support it. I don’t oppose it either. I have taken the weight of these years.

George: You’re like Koba equivocating, in those early days. In a crisis like this, you must either support or oppose.

Mark: Yes. Even you, George, call him Koba. The boy Joseph is forgotten.

George: Does it matter what we call him? In any movement there are these conflicts of men. But this is different. This is a conflict of ideas, of history.

Mark: Of ideas and of history in men, and so, now, in Koba. I watched, as we all did, the same conflict in Jordan, and we know how it ended.

George: With a bullet, no more.

Mark: I mean before. In the whole action we’ve been living. The first struggle for power is in a man’s own mind.

George: The struggle for an idea is in a man’s mind. And then he seeks to live the idea, and to change his world. But there are other men, always, of a quite different sort. Power for them is a fact and an end in itself. They depose, first, so that they may impose, later. And they will use anything, Mark, any idea, any cause, any suffering of others, to achieve the power that is all they are after.

Mark: These are not different men, but the same men. The struggle for an idea begins in the mind, but it can also end there, and then the idea itself is defeated. When the idea has come clear, then a man knows power as a fact in itself. He deposes, first, so that he may impose, later. And he has no choice, if the idea is fact, if he has really achieved it.

George: While the idea lasts, we are right to seek power. But it is power for the idea, not power for ourselves.

Mark: There is no separation. While we live the idea, we are committed to power.

George: But we are not living it. We conceived the idea of freeing our people. But we have not freed them. We have merely changed their masters.

Mark: And the change of masters is of no importance? Can you really think that?

George: This is what men worked for, then? This, now, is what they worked and died for?

Mark: Yes, I think so.

George: Then you know nothing about it. That is your best excuse. For if you knew, in detail, the nobility of those men, if you knew even a little of their ideals, their faith, and their passion, you wouldn’t dare to suppose this is what they fought for.

Mark: But I know what idealism is. I know what it means to have faith in my brothers. This, to me, was the real revolution. But the meaning I knew was denied at once, at the very beginning. Once Jordan spoke, we were on a different road.

George: Jordan was hard, certainly, but if he were living, now, he would be against what is happening. He never sought power for its own sake. It was power for the revolution.

Mark: For his idea was revolution, and that idea was the Party. He sought power for the party; at any cost, you remember him saying. And he warned me, directly, to have no illusions, when the illusions I had were immediate freedom, immediate dignity, immediate respect. But when we seized power, back in those days, we took a different road.

George: That may or may not have been right. At the time I was against it.

Mark: Yet you stayed with us, George.

George: Yes, I stayed. I could not oppose the revolution, even when it took the wrong road. And I thought I could help to keep us true to our principles, to speak for humanity even in the worst times.

Mark: But you don’t understand, you have never understood. Once that decision was taken, our only principle was power. How could it be otherwise?

George: But power as a means. Never simply as an end.

Mark: There is no distinction. This is what I learned. And when I look back now, I take the weight of the decision. What I felt, at that time, was a new spirit in the world: a liberation of spirit and a new stature in men. Every feeling I had was of trust, acceptance, generosity, brotherhood. And when I look back, I salute those feelings, I could not live without them. Yet Jordan, clearly, spoke a different language. Max and Koba, all the men with experience, spoke a different language. They spoke the language of power, and I felt ashamed and disgusted. But I listened. I watched what happened. And at every crisis, I discovered in detail, and against my will, that I had been wrong and that they were right. You will have to face this yourself, in the end, and I don’t envy you. It is the hardest, the deepest tragedy: this coming to terms with the world as it is, when we have seen what it might be. But there is never a choice, never a serious choice. We have to change the world in the world’s ways, or we shall not change it at all. We have to fight the enemy with the enemy’s weapons or we shall simply be beaten, as the good have always been beaten. Look anywhere in the world, and find an exception. There is none, and can be none. This is what I learned. Yes, we took power by force and fraud. Yes, we maintain power by force and fraud. But there is no alternative, anywhere. I stick to what I believe. I refuse to find names for force and fraud, that will conceal their reality. That is the business of hypocrites, and there are whole institutions devoted to training hypocrisy. I despise all that. I say force and fraud, but I say also, without them, there would be no revolution. A kinder revolution, a more open revolution: these are simple illusions and you know it. So in the end I make my choice, and it is a tragic choice. I accept force and fraud:  not coldly, not willingly, but openly and honestly. I accept them because I have been shown, in detail, that the revolution requires them, and because the revolution is necessary, if man is ever to be free.

George: I must be mad or dead, hearing you say this. For I know you are good, Mark. I have never doubted that. And I would rather be mad, better be dead, than accept what you are saying as the words of a good man in a sane world. You speak of tragedy, but you have barely touched it. Can you think what it means to see the good destroyed, by their own conception of goodness? A struggle, yes, I accepted, and I accepted suffering where it could not be avoided. But I saw the struggle as between good and evil: that was always the framework, however, the conflict might go. But now what I see is like the end of the world. I see your goodness changed into the acceptance of evil, and I might still oppose this, still fight it, but I don’t know how. Because I also see, Mark, the change in myself: not the acceptance of evil, but the loss of a language in which I can speak to my friends. I can feel now, speaking to you, as I have felt before only in pain or delirium, in the long night, lying awake, without any human contact. Then the language of good and evil is madness, is death. The memory of normality, of the ordinary connection, is the worst kind of nightmare. For if we wake and speak we shall finally confirm our condition; that among men, in the world, we are mad or have died.

[Mark hesitates, looking down, and then crosses to George. He kisses him, slowly, on each cheek. Then he puts his arm over George’s shoulders, and leads him gently away. As they are just going out, Joseph enters.]

Joseph: Mark. Is that you?

Mark: Yes.

Joseph: Wait just a minute, will you? I want to talk to you.

[Mark hesitates, but George indicates that he can go on alone, and leaves. Mark walks back to Joseph.]

Joseph: Was that George you were with?

Mark: Yes.

Joseph: Is he ill or something?

Mark: Not in the ordinary way. But he is almost broken. I feel sorry for him.

Joseph: Is that necessary? Surely he’s sorry for himself, and one is enough.

Mark: Don’t say things like that, Koba. Don’t ever say things like that. I don’t want to hate you.

Joseph: As you like, Mark. It isn’t important. And my tongue’s often rougher that I mean it to be.

Mark: That’s common enough.

Joseph: Yes. Still, I like men to be men, you know. To give and take a hard knock, without a lot of sentiment and whimpering.

Mark: I also like men to be men, Koba.

Joseph: All right, we won’t argue. There isn’t time, for one thing. We have to recall the meeting.

Mark: Already?

Joseph: Yes, already. Not that I wanted it, but the opposition don’t know when they’re beaten. The decision was made, you were there and saw it. But already they’re working against it: not just speaking, but acting. It’s getting intolerable, and we must move at once.

Mark: But Max has left for the South.

Joseph: Has he?

Mark: Well he said he was going.

Joseph: Then that makes it easier. It’s mainly Max we must deal with.

[Mark hesitates, and does not answer.]

Joseph: Well, isn’t it? You were there, at the meeting. You heard his proposals. And you voted against them.

Mark: Yes, I voted against them. I thought he was wrong.

Joseph: Well then, what’s the problem?

Mark: We can all be wrong, Koba. Now one, now another. And the party exists to make a decision.

Joseph: That’s what I was saying. The Party has made a decision. And the Party tolerate men going straight from a meeting and acting against its decisions?

Mark: It’s inevitable, surely. People have to go on doing what they think is right.

Joseph: Have to go on splitting the party, you mean? Putting their own interests above the Party’s interests?

Mark: No, Koba. This is an old trick. What they are actually doing is perfectly clear: putting one version of the party’s interests against another version. As they are bound to do, if they honestly disagree.

Joseph: Even when the Party has decided?

Mark: Decisions can always be changed. That is what the party is for.

Joseph: I remind you what Jordan said. The Party is not a debating society. We are governing a country, not settling an academic dispute.

Mark: Jordan said many things, Koba. You may find that to your cost.

Joseph: What things? What cost?

Mark: Well, it’s common knowledge that he criticised you, criticised your methods in the party. This is just what he had in mind.

Joseph: Can you prove he said this?

Mark: I know that it’s true, if that’s what you’re asking.

Joseph: Any slander can be used by the enemies of the Party.

Mark: Yes, Koba, but who are its enemies. Not its leaders, surely? Not its own trusted men?

Joseph: Trusted by whom? They are not trusted by the people.

Mark: We’ve left the people out of this pretty thoroughly already. This is no longer a struggle in the country. The people are tired, after all they have suffered. This is a struggle in the party. We can’t call in the people to resolve it.

Joseph: That’s where you’re wrong, Mark. You don’t know how wrong.

Mark: I don’t understand you.

Joseph: The Party now is the people, the best of the people.

Mark: Yes, I accept this. But the party is arguing.

Joseph: The Party has decided. That is my whole point.

[Max enters, hurriedly.]

Max: Decided what, Koba? Have there been more decisions?

Joseph: But you’ve not left. You’re here.

Max: I was warned in time. I came back at once. You suppose you’re cunning, but you’re a fool, Koba. You haven’t even the competence to conceive an intrigue, let alone carry it out. All your moves are so clumsy we see them a mile off. You’re like a farm boy at a fair, clambering noisily into the ring and throwing his punches at his opponent’s shadow.

Joseph: At his shadow, Max?

Max: This is wasting time. Act your fantasies if you like, but don’t look for me in the audience. You’ve recalled the meeting. All right, I accept this. If you want to push this to the final decision, all right. I’m ready. When the Party must choose, in any final way, I don’t doubt the result.

Joseph: Nor do I. Why should I?

Max: You think they’d choose you? Are you mad, Koba? I know you have this idea of yourself, as the efficient organiser……

Joseph: I have no such idea.

Max: Then what, at all, if not that?

Joseph: I have no idea of myself. I am no more and no less than the will of the Party. We were called megalomaniacs when we reached for power in the revolution.

Max: That was a party decision. What you’re saying is different. You’re saying that you, Koba, a single man, represent the will of the whole party. This is dangerous nonsense.

Joseph: It is simply the fact. Because I am nothing. I have no ambitions. I represent the Party as the Party represents the people. Other parties may flatter the people and win their temporary support. Other men may flatter the Party, and deceive it for a time. But the will of the people, the will of the Party, cannot fail in the end to assert itself, in its final necessity. If it has been deceived before, the final assertion is necessarily severe.

Max: Do you think you can threaten me, Koba? We are still rational men and a rational party. Only the argument, in the end, can decide.

Joseph: This is an old and common delusion. The decision will be made, not by the arguments, but by the facts.

Max: I can’t argue any more with a mind like this. Do you hear him, Mark? Can you see what this Koba is?

Joseph: He can see the facts, no doubt.

Max: All right then, damn you. Let us appeal to the facts. Let us go to the meeting.

Joseph: Yes. Certainly.

[They turn to go, but Mark hesitates.]

Mark: Just one thing, Koba, to get my own mind clear. This is obviously a crisis, and the party is divided. Yet you speak, all the time, as if this is not so. Have you any reason for this?

Joseph: The Party is not divided. But the Party has not yet purged itself of those elements within it who are against the Party.

Max: This is ludicrous doubletalk. You’re just wasting your time, Mark.

Mark: I’m not sure, Max. I know Koba well. He’s never this confident unless the facts are as he says.

Max: What facts? That’s the question. The facts are well known, to us all.

Mark: Koba is secretary of the party. And since Jordan’s death there have been, massive enrolments, and there have been expulsions.

Max: Well? Go on.

Mark: We have all know this, in a general way. But Koba is secretary. He knows the details of these changes, far better that any of us, for he has been carrying them through.

Max: I’ve watched this, of course. And I’ve watched his clumsy manoeuvring, to get his own men appointed to positions of influence. But it’s all so childish and contemptible. We are an experienced party. We shall not be shifted like that.

Joseph: You speak of manoeuvres. That is another slander. There have been no manoeuvres.

Mark: What do you call them, Koba?

Joseph: I stick to the facts. In every crisis of the revolution, as we have all seen, certain men hold, certain men break. The Party consists of the men who hold, and of new men, from the people, who emerge from obscurity to reveal their strength. As for those who have broken, the Party abandons them. It also abandons, in the pressure of crisis, all those who show signs that they are about to break, and so endanger the Party. This is nobody’s will. It is the simple logic of events.

Mark: In other words, you admit it. The party has been reshaped, to a particular policy. Your policy, Koba.

Joseph: Not my policy. Simply the needs of the revolution, the needs of the people.

Mark: Your conception of those needs.

Joseph: Not my conception. The Party’s conception.

Max: It is time to end this. We’re not talking to a man any more, but to a machine, an absurd machine with prefabricated answers.

Mark: A machine in a man, Max. That is much more formidable.

Max: What is a machine in a man, against a human mind? I tell you again, we are a rational party, an experienced party. We have made a revolution. We have changed human history. We shall not be deceived by prefabricated men.

Joseph: I agree. We shall not. So shall we go to the meeting?

Max: Yes. Yes.

[Max and Joseph go out. Mark hesitates, and then follows.]

Scene II

There is a long silence, and then Joseph enters alone. He moves slowly and quickly. When he stops, in centre stage, he holds his shoulders against the cold. Then he turns and sits at his desk.

Ruth enters.

Ruth: They told me you would be here. I’ve brought you some food.

Joseph: Yes, thank you.

Ruth: You look very tired, Joseph.

Joseph: No, I am not tired.

Ruth: It’s two days since you’ve been home. Whenever I’ve come, they’ve said not to disturb you, the meeting was still going on.

Joseph: Yes, Ruth, I’m sorry. It isn’t much of a life for you. Though I told you how it would be, when I came to speak to your father.

Ruth: You mustn’t apologies. The revolution still needs our strength.

Joseph: It is at least taking it, and still it is not enough. Every nerve, every muscle, cried out for rest. It is the end of the day, a long day, and the spirit fades with the light.

Ruth: You must try to rest, Joseph. You are more tired than anyone.

Joseph: No. Not tired.

Ruth: But how can you go on denying it? Your face is grey with tiredness, your whole body is aching.

Joseph: I can master my body. That is only the beginning. What I am feeling the whole people is feeling: the whole people, the whole world. So many years, Ruth, of struggle and suffering. The years of war, the years of famine and sickness, the years of absolute struggle, against all our enemies. Everywhere, now, the cry is for peace, for rest, for the easing of tensions. We feel the need of home, and our families, and the long evenings together. To sit back, like old men, and remember the past.

Ruth: Well, and we can remember. We have a victory to remember.

Joseph: Ashes, blood, death, misery, hatred. It is what they said it would be, when we made our decision.

Ruth: But there are other things, Joseph. Already, while we are tired, our children are growing. They are running to play in the streets and the fields where their fathers died, and as they play they shout, that hard beautiful shout, because the streets and the fields are the world they are young in. You must see these things, Joseph. They will warm you again.

Joseph: They would break me, Ruth. They would break my heart. If I look from the window, and see a child playing, I unconsciously add ten years to his age, and I see him in uniform, see him struggling in mud on our frontiers, and the shout of the enemy as they come back to our country.

Ruth: Is this really so, Joseph? Is there no hope at all?

Joseph: Yes, there is hope, but I have to kill it. While there is only hope, the child will be trampled. When I hear his shout in the street, I hear through its happiness the shout of the enemy, coming back to burn and destroy. And my body is tired, Ruth. My soul is tired. Like millions all over the world I want only to rest, to stay still. But we cannot stay still. I have to master my body. I have to master my soul. This is what it means, Ruth, to be in the party. In every crisis I have known, as far back as I remember, the moment has come when we are all tired, when every instinct demands intermission, when relaxation and compromise seem the only qualities there are. And at every such moment the party is tested, and because it is the party it is not deceived, it cannot afford to be tired. All we have done has depended on this. We have been weaker in numbers, weaker in influence. Any common calculation would have predicted defeat. But in that final moment we have not only hung on, we have struck, we have taken the initiative. In mastering ourselves we have mastered the whole situation. We have been more than nature, and so we have changed nature. And we have to do this once more, and once more, and once more again.

Ruth: What is it, Joseph, you are planning to do?

Joseph: The people are tired, and they have to work harder. The farmers have the land, and are satisfied, but millions must leave it, to work in the factories, and those who are left must grow much more food. After years of shortage, we all want more for ourselves, yet we must learn to take less than we already have. We cannot eat power stations, we cannot wear mills and foundries, but we must give up some of our food, give up hope of new clothes and furniture, go back and get poorer till the power stations, the mills, the foundries are built. Not ten or a hundred, while we keep hope alive. But thousands and thousands again, in an endless series. There will be a whole generation without any fruits of its labour that it can put in its mouth, but only the tall chimneys, the great curves of the dams, the acres of steel. And when we cry out, for rest or for comfort, we must choke the cry in the throat. The child must cry now, or in ten years he will be trampled and his children shot in the forest. And when the cry comes, when the body can stand no more, then still, here, the body must be mastered, the soul mastered. For to have pity, now, is to be without pity.

[Ruth is silent. Joseph hesitates, and then gets up and goes close to her, his hand over her shoulders.]

Joseph: Ruth, this is not what I want to say, but I have to say it.

Ruth: If it is necessary, yes.

Joseph: There is no choice at all. Only our enemies want us weak, and they are using against us all our own best feelings. Can anyone think, for a moment, that we want life so hard? That we have any real choice?

Ruth: I can’t be sure, Joseph. I have my own doubts

Joseph: What doubts? I can show you the figures.

Ruth: It isn’t the figures. I’m sure what you say is quite right. But it was your voice, Joseph, your voice as you spoke against pity.

Joseph: Not against pity.

Ruth: Against pity here and now, where we can actually feel it.

[Joseph withdraws his arm, and moves a little away.]

Joseph: Do you mean that my voice has changed?

Ruth: We have all changed, Joseph.

Joseph: I have aged but not changed, Ruth. My voice, now, is my voice in prison and exile. My voice is Jordan’s voice, in those last days, when he had to take the decision. It is not my own voice. It has never been that. It is the voice of the party, which can never be broken. It is the voice of the party, which can never be broken. It is the voice of the people, which can never be mastered.

Ruth: Koba.

Joseph: Koba is my work, but I am still Joseph.

Ruth: Koba.

Joseph: It is a party decision. It is not my decision.

Ruth: You have remade the party. The party is Koba.

Joseph: The decision was made. The party made it. It is still Jordan’s party.

Ruth: Jordan is dead.

Joseph: But the party lives, his revolution lives.

Ruth: And his people, Joseph?

Joseph: Lives.

Ruth: Take him up. Walk firmly. It is the future you are carrying.

Joseph: Lives. Lives.

[He walks slowly out, and Ruth follows him.]

Scene III

Mark enters, carrying papers. George is following him.

George: You must listen to me, Mark. A whole people is dying. They are actually choosing to die.

Mark: That is always their privilege. A fool’s privilege.

George: I won’t let you provoke me. I know the style you have got used to in power. The guards are there at the door. The generals come for their orders. And you, the political leaders, drive through the streets, in your closed cars. The speed is intoxicating, and the efficiency confirms you. You have only to reach back your hand and a secretary is ready, putting your papers between your fingers. At the long table the papers are turned, but the voices are low, there is no excitement. A man draws up his chair, and a province, a division, is drawn up with him. A paper is turned, and thousands of men move at once into action. You sit very still, at your centre of power. In your young middle age you have achieved your style. You are without emotion, but you have your ideas. You are clean, spare, dedicated men. Each face gives you back the same image of the world. You speak your own language, clipped and dry, for you have absolute power, in the turn of a paper, and they untidy language of men is forgotten, shut out, beyond the guards at the door.

Mark: Not shut out altogether, since you have come in.

George: You can let me in because I am not important. I can speak but nobody listens. Even the young don’t listen. All over the country, all over the world, young men still powerless are rehearsing your language, reproducing your gestures, asking nothing more than that they should become as you are: hard, professional, spare. And when you listen now, when I tell you of death, you are not to be moved, for you have your world. Every door you open gives the same answer. Men. Men with power. Men as they should be. All the voices are the same.

Mark: You can still make speeches. That is the old world.

George: Yes, rhetoric, tub thumping, the old kind of windbag. I know how you see me, and the guards will agree, you have only to call them. The old kind, the specifiers, parading their emotions in public, their messy emotions. The old ranters, still parading the streets, with their mob slogans, their over-excitement, their endless simplifying, their absurd and vain self-exposure. So call the guards, Mark. They’re quite certain to agree. Exhibitionists are not men, not professional men. So what will you do with us? We are inconvenient.

Mark: Not inconvenient, George. You are simply irrelevant. Whatever you think of us, we have to get things done, we have to take decisions. Only the facts count then.

[A guard enters. George and Mark turn to look at him, and then at each other. But the guard stands quite still, and Joseph and the Secretary enter behind him. The guard goes out.]

Secretary: Have you business with Koba?

George: Yes.

Secretary: But I made no appointment. I don’t think I know you.

Joseph: I know him. Leave us.

[The Secretary goes.]

George: Thank you, Joseph.

Joseph: There is no need to thank me.

George: I feel I can speak to you. To these others I am crazy. But I’ve known you from the beginning. I can still remember the boy, so shy and yet so determined, who came to us from the college.

Joseph: That was in another world.

George: Yes, those men are happy, who plan revolutions. They can look suffering in the face, because they have an answer to it.

Joseph: I can still look suffering in the face.

George: Can you? You think you can, from the window of your office. But I have been out in the country. I have seen men and women settling down like animals to die, and their children too hungry to cry, only their eyes staring without understanding. I have seen famine before. It is always terrible. But this is not the terror of nature, the drought or the storm. This is the act of men, of you as men. You have forced a meaning on them, your own meaning, and you are so sure it is right you continue to force it, to the point of their death. Perhaps your meaning is right. I can’t argue that. There has been misery before, in the great changes, and we translate it as birth pangs, the blood and pain of new life. But to see this blood on your hands, to know this pain in your own body’s movements, willed, determined, executed: this, Joseph, is what you have to answer.

Joseph: Yes, I answer for it.

George: Do you know what you are saying? Has it gone so far? I expected you to plead that you were too far away, that you didn’t know what’s been happening.

Joseph: I do not plead. I know what is happening.

George: Yet your agents lie about it. Every official word is a lie.

Joseph: In a campaign of this kind, we don’t inform and encourage our enemies.

George: But who are your enemies? These ordinary suffering people?

Joseph: Our enemies, first, are beyond our frontiers. In a matter of years they will come back and try to destroy us. Our enemies, second, are all those here, who from pity or fear or from conscious design, try to stop us paying the price of the future, the heavy but necessary price. Our enemies, third, are ourselves, all wanting the easy way out: the bland way we can call humanity; the popular way we can call responsible: all the familiar hypocrites we can quietly become, who change countries in their heads and are ashamed of work and dirt on their hands. All these are our enemies.

George: And if we are our own enemies, must we even lie to ourselves?

Joseph: There is no lying here.

George: Not even the lie about Max? You weren’t content to defeat him at the meeting. You had to drive him from the country and now you call him a traitor.

Joseph: He has left the country, and so of course he is a traitor. By his own choice, he became our enemy. But there are other enemies still here. They come to this room, and present their arguments.

George: That is another lie. I am not your enemy.

Joseph: Then are you serious at all? What sort of man are you? You have sought us out to denounce us. You have spoken very clearly and with genuine feeling. Or was it not genuine? Do you not really oppose us?

George: It was genuine and I oppose you, but I am not you enemy. I am not an enemy of the people.

Joseph: It is a familiar pattern. You are all of a piece. In any revolution, you support the idea but oppose the practice. In the same way, now, you oppose us openly, yet you say you are not our enemy.

George: I oppose a policy. Can you never see this?

Joseph: A policy may be wrong. We have in fact pressed too hard. We shall slow our pace.

George: But on the same road. With the same ends.

Joseph: Yes. Of Course.  They are the correct ends.

George: Then I continue to oppose you. This is no real change.

Joseph: Then you become our enemy. There is no change either.

George: You are trying to drive me to this. Why, Joseph?

Joseph: It is perfectly clear. It is your own decision.

George: Very well. Then I take my decision. I oppose you openly, in the name of the people.

Joseph: You have no people. You have broken with that.

George: I have broken with you. You are not the people.

Joseph: These are matters of fact. There is no point in arguing.

George: Not with you, Joseph. Not with you, Koba. But there are others, many others, millions of others.

[Joseph turns his back. George looks at Mark, who quietly shakes his head. George hesitates, making to speak to Joseph again, but then turns and goes. Joseph waits for some time, before turning back.]

Joseph: He must be arrested tonight, before he leaves the capital. Will you give the instructions?

Mark: You’re not serious, Koba?

Joseph: I was never more serious. There is not much time.

Mark: But he isn’t dangerous. He could never be dangerous. We’ve known him for years, we know what he’s like.

Joseph: He says what I hear, in my own mind. I have mastered my own weakness. I will master his.

Mark: But arrest? On what charge?

Joseph: The charge can come later. The crime is already a fact.

Mark: But what crime? Do you know what you are saying?

Joseph: He has become an enemy. In political life, that is the only crime.

Mark: And you are asking me to arrange his arrest?

Joseph: Yes, Mark, I am asking you.

Mark: You ask with a reason. What is it?

Joseph: I have said it already. We must begin with ourselves, with mastering ourselves.

[The Secretary enters, hurriedly.]

Secretary: Koba, forgive me….

Joseph: Yes?

Secretary: It’s your wife, Koba. She insists on seeing you. She came here and into my room. She seems ill.

[Joseph looks at Mark, and is silent for a moment. Then he turns to the Secretary.]

Joseph: Ill? Do you know what it is? Can she come this far?

Secretary: She wants to come here, sir. She especially said this.

Joseph: Then ask her to come.

[The Secretary goes out, Mark moves uneasily, and then turns towards Joseph. Joseph looks at him, abruptly, and then turns his back.]

Joseph: What are you waiting for? You have your duty.

Mark: There are people waiting to see me. I’d perhaps better go.

Joseph: Not people waiting. The arrest.

Mark: But we’d not finished discussing it. You must listen to me, Koba.

Joseph: There is no time. You can see there is no time.

[Mark hesitates. The Secretary enters, supporting Ruth’s arm. They stop and look across, towards Joseph, who keeps his back turned. Mark hesitates, and then goes quickly out. Ruth frees her arm, and nods to the Secretary, who also leaves.]

Ruth: Well, Joseph, won’t you turn and look at me?

[Joseph turns, slowly. When he sees her face he comes quickly across to her.]

Ruth: No, don’t touch me. I want you to stay where you’re bound to look at me.

Joseph: You’re so pale, Ruth. Shall I send for help?

Ruth: There is no need, Joseph. There is no time. I came to help you, not myself.

Joseph: Won’t you at least sit down?

Ruth: No, I must stand. You mustn’t see me as weak. I have always believed there is only tenderness in loving, only touch and kindness, all the good of the world. But now I know this is false, for I have known you, Joseph. You have grown to a man in my arms, to the strength of a man, and you have taken that strength and used it, the strength of your hands to hold down a whole people, to destroy other lives.

[She covers her face. Joseph remains quite still.]

Ruth: I haven’t much time, but I must make you know this. If I hadn’t loved you, it would be so much easier. I wouldn’t now have to die.

Joseph: You mustn’t speak about dying.

Ruth: But I am dying, Joseph. When I came in I was dying. When the message came, that I could come in and see you, I took the poison, I had it ready in my bag.

Joseph: Poison. What poison?

Ruth: It doesn’t matter. It’s too late for you to stop it. But I had to tell you like this, so what you would know the truth, and not be able to forget it. I have lived with you, Joseph, in this light of the revolution, where every feeling is clarified, where every feeling is lived. I give my life, willingly, in this same light.

Joseph: But why, Ruth, why? There is no need for you to die.

Ruth: There was no need for the others to die, but they are already dead and forgotten. You will not be able to forget me.

Joseph: I’ll take you now, and we’ll get to the hospital. They’ll be able to save you. I’ll make them save you.

Ruth: But I want to die. I have chosen death. Just as they chose death, when they slaughtered their cattle, and sat down to die. You have a terrible power, Joseph, but you know its limits. When we choose death, we are passing beyond you, and you can no longer touch us.

Joseph: But what good can this do? What possible good?

Ruth: Come close to me. I can’t talk much longer. We have loved in our bodies, and a new life has grown there. But there is another growth in the body, that we don’t understand. There is the twisting of life into a growth that destroys us: all the energy of living, the growing delight of the body, into a wrong pattern, a killing pattern, and the growth kills us.

Joseph: We shall master this also. We shall have to master it.

Ruth: There is no mastery, where I am living, Joseph. I see in myself all the others who are dying, and I choose to be with them, and you cannot prevent me. You have forced your meanings to the limits of life, but you cannot pass those limits, only we can pass them.

Joseph: Who has been speaking to you? Who has been lying to you?

Ruth: No-one has been lying, Joseph. The deaths are so many, they make their own truth.

Joseph: Was it George? That old fool. He has been coming lying to you?

Ruth: Nobody has lied to me. Even you can’t, Joseph. And your wife chooses death, beyond any lying.

[She sinks down. He kneels in front of her.]

Joseph: Ruth, listen. If you could only understand.

Ruth: I have blessed our marriage. I still want to bless it. But you have made me curse it, with a public curse. I am dying for this, Joseph. I am dying with the others, but it is my curse you are hearing.

Joseph: You will not die. I won’t let you die.

Ruth: You are Koba, my husband. You are the man who cannot be mastered. I have loved you, Koba, and my love has grown into death, just as you, who were Joseph, have grown into death.

[She falls back. Joseph kneels over her, supporting her head.]

Joseph: You must wait. You must listen. In all the world, Ruth, only you have touched me. I have served my people, and I have learned only hardness. Only you, always, have been able to touch me. You are all I have left of pity and tenderness, so you must not die. You must live and teach me, you must live and keep me alive. Don’t you see, Ruth, you must live, you must live.

[He looks down into her face. She has died while he has been holding her. He feels her face and her hands, and collapses over her body. Then he recovers and gets up, slowly. Standing above her, he lifts his voice to a shout.]

Joseph: Guard! Guard!

Scene IV

The Secretary enters, and lays papers on the table. As he sets them ready, Mark enters.

Mark: He is not here, then?

Secretary: He is expected shortly.

Mark: He always does this now, making us wait for him, making us ask ‘when will he come, when will Koba come?’

Secretary: We choose to ask this.

Mark: What do you know of choice? You are always the servant, watching in corridors, having the papers ready. In yourself you are nothing.

Secretary: It is what he says, of his own duty.

Mark: Yes, in himself he is nothing. The voice of the party, and the party is the voice of the people. Do you believe that anymore?

Secretary: I have never disbelieved it.

Mark: Yes, that’s quite true. Neither belief no disbelief: they are not in your world.

Secretary: It’s easy to talk, but I know my duty. In the world we are making there are no masters or servants: there are only the facts, of our place in the world. Other people can afford gestures. I have heard them drunk, late at night, or in the false excitement of meetings: ruled by ideas, arguing about principles, passionately declaring their beliefs and their doubts. But the rest of us watch, and we know one thing quite well: the worst thing that could happen would be the delivery of human destiny into the hands of such men. The people know this with an instinctive wisdom. Talkers, sentimentalists, every kind of emotional crank: the people reject them, for they know their irrelevance. When it comes to living, and to actual business, there are quite different men, on whom the real burden falls.

Mark: Yes. I know what you mean. But tell me one thing: does it ever worry you that you are serving a revolution; that you, in detail, administer a revolutionary change?

Secretary: Worry me? Do you really not understand? History has produced our revolutionary society. Would you have me go back, and serve different ends?

Mark: I just wondered, that’s all. Would there be a man like you in every society? At every elbow, accepting every order? Would you have been there administering the inquisition, or a feudal court, or a mining company? Would you have counted the slaves on to the ships of the traders? Would you have stood at the door, into every destiny, and called out the names, in your efficient voice, and made up the lists and ordered the records? Is there a family of you, in the whole record of man: Always correct, always efficient, always sure of your duty?

Secretary: These questions are childish. You should know better than to ask them.

Mark: Yet I do ask them. Can you do better than answer?

Secretary: I said childish, but that was wrong. Children are realists, knowing their parents, knowing their home, as grown men come to know where they actually live. But there is a stage between these, and many are fixed in it. The questions you ask are adolescent questions: neither the habit of children, nor the conscious acceptance of men, but a familiar chaos, disorganised, rootless; ridden by fantasies and without self-knowledge; a pointless enthusiasm and pointless destruction; romantics, anarchists, every kind of bohemian; the perpetual delinquents, in every society.

Mark: You haven’t answered my question, though you’ve relieved your feelings.

Secretary: It is so stupid a question there is no need to answer it. Would I have stood by a slave ship, or in a feudal court? But where are these things? They are not in my world. History has destroyed them, and there is no arguing with history. Your questions are fantasies, as your thoughts are fantasies. You can never know when a thing is finished: when history has moved on, and posed new real questions. While men like myself deal with the facts of the world, you shout in our ears about things that are over and done with. You have no observation, you have only nostalgia. You live on the cross because you have seen it painted, or in the poor man’s hovel because you have read an affecting story, or on the barricades because you still have dreams of a slogan and a flag. Can you never live where you are? Can you never see the actual facts, and the actual measures that must be taken to deal with them? You are lost in dreams and ideas because you have no nerve, ever, to face things as they are. And the practical men, bound by actual disciplines – empirical as they must be, with the facts on their tables – you think you can sneer at, to raise the laughs of your friends. You call us bureaucrats, mediocre officials, men bound by routine. But you live through us, you depend on us. You are the romantics that we who are realists have to carry on our backs.

Mark: I was a romantic. I am not one now. Would you care to look at me, at this fact by your table?

[The Secretary looks, and pauses. He moves the papers nervously.]

Secretary: I was speaking generally. You must understand this.

Mark: Yes, I do understand it.

Secretary: I have heard so much irresponsible criticism. I get carried away, by the sheer illogic of it.

Mark: Yes, I had noticed. You spoke quite passionately, when you spoke against passion.

Secretary: I got carried away. I don’t often speak out. But it’s always the same, when you get to arguing with them. They drag you down, into their own messy world. You’ll understand this, with your own responsibilities. It’s more than a man can easily take, when he’s worked to the limit with actual things. I usually manage to control myself when I hear them shouting and arguing. I come back here, where I know where I am.

Mark: Yes, I know. And I come back here. We both come, and we wait for Koba.

Secretary: It’s good when he comes, because then at last things are clear. That extraordinary power of decision, and without any gestures. I have seen foreigners come here, people who have read of our revolution. They seem to expect some wild revolutionary figures, some man from a poem. And I watch them as they come in here, and the room is quiet, and there are no interruptions, and the whole tone is businesslike: just a man at his desk, carrying  the weight of the world, but never raising his voice, listening calmly and answering calmly. It isn’t what they expect, but they quickly appreciate it. There is some hope of sanity when men are like this.

[There is a sound at the door. Joseph enters, followed closely by the Warder. He nods to Mark, and goes across to his desk. The Warder waits.]

Joseph: I’ll sign these later. I have other things to settle.

Secretary: Yes, of course. As you wish. But this top one is urgent.

Joseph: What is it?

Secretary: Confirmation of the administrative arrangements arising from yesterday’s decision of the court.

Mark: So quickly, is it? There was talk of an appeal.

Joseph: There is no appeal, in such cases. The law is perfectly clear.

Mark: He has asked to see you, you know.

Joseph: There are more than twenty of them. Can I see them all?

Mark: But he is rather different. Since you’ve known him so long.

Joseph: He should have thought of that before he became a criminal.

Mark: A political criminal.

Joseph: That is what I said.

[He turns to the Secretary.]

Joseph: Is it here I sign?

Secretary: Yes, there where the cross is. And just over the page, if you would.

[Joseph begins to sign.]

Mark: No.

[Joseph does not look up, but finishes signing.]

Mark: No, Koba, no. I won’t let you do this.

[Joseph does not look at him, but hands the paper to the Secretary, who turns to leave. Mark crosses to prevent him.]

Secretary: If you would excuse me. I have a great deal to do.

Mark: Twenty-four men. Twenty-four human beings who worked for the revolution before you had even heard of it. And you will carry your paper and they will be shot in the back of the neck.

[The Secretary looks round at Joseph, who does not even look up. The Secretary looks across at the Warder, who at once steps forward.]

Warder: Shall I take the paper?

Mark: No.

Warder: Now look, sir, he has his job to do, like we all have.

Mark: Who are you? I don’t know you.

Joseph: Mark.

Mark: Yes.

Joseph: He is the man you sent to arrest George. Do you really not know him?

Mark: I’ve never seen him before.

Joseph: You’ve been lucky, Mark. For you it all happens on paper.

Warder: You just leave it to us, sir. We know our own job.

Mark: Yes, but do I know mine? Was it really you who arrested George?

Warder: Him and the others. I don’t remember all the names.

Mark: Will anyone remember them, when you get that paper?

Joseph: Yes, Mark, the people will remember them. They will remember the criminals who endangered their country. They will remember the gang who conspired against them.

Mark: It is what they will say. You have plenty of paper. Because for you, too, it is all on paper. Would you go down yourself, to that filthy prison, and wake up George and the others, and take them out and shoot them?

Joseph: Yes, of course. They are enemies of the people.

Mark: Then why don’t you do it? Why still use these agents? Stand up, Koba, and draw your own gun.

[Joseph unlocks the drawer of his desk, and then slowly stands up, holding a revolver pointing at Mark.]

Joseph: Was this what you asked for?

Mark: Stop playing, Koba. This is the final lunacy. Yesterday it was the court, but today only the gun.

Joseph: It is what you asked for. You didn’t want it only on paper.

Mark: That is not what I meant, and you know it.

Joseph: I wonder, Mark, if you know at all what you mean. Look, I’ll put down the gun. Do you see? Now just look behind you. Do you see what has happened?

[The Warder has drawn his own gun, and is covering Mark.]

Mark: What does this prove? That you have trained him well? That he is your performing animal?

Joseph: It proves the nature of power. That is all I am saying.

Mark: Yes, but what power? Power in what name? This is what you must prove.

Joseph: You have never accepted it. You have always lied to yourself.

Mark: I have called facts by their names.

Joseph: Except this fact, Mark. Do you remember that day when we stood in the capital, and had to take the decision? We put our hands together, to complete the revolution. But that wasn’t rhetoric, Mark. It was taking the gun, as the decisive fact.

Mark: We had reason then, Koba. We were freeing the people. The army stood at the gates, to destroy our freedom.

Joseph: The army is still there, only a little further back. We’ve very little time, before they cross the frontier and march through to burn and destroy us.

Mark: Then we must hold to each other, be strong with each other. This is the way we have offered the world.

Joseph: And the world has rejected it: that is the fact we must live with. Do you suppose for a moment that I prefer the gun? You and the others can win verbal victories, without the least difficulty. The people hate war, the people hate violence. In some quite place, away from the danger, even the idea is incredible; only evil men have it. From the beginning of my life I have heard good men, honest men, despising violence. They dismiss the gun as the toy of the militarist or the whip of the tyrant. But have you watched what happens, in a besieged city, when the use of the gun is questioned. Men and women run from their homes, ordinary peace-loving men and women, and they tear to pieces the man who stands up and refuses to fight. And they have no choice; it is their own lives at stake. And if a man steals water, or cheats on his rations, or dodges his share of the work, the people turn and destroy him, for they know he is betraying them. Yes, we all hate war. We all hate hardship and shortage. But who is the friend of the people, when these things come? The liberal, the pacifist, can offer only his fantasy: saying how things ought to be, not how they are. And he is the man who makes war more likely, by showing his weakness, his willingness to compromise. We are fighting, Mark, to keep all the things that we value. At the first sign of panic, the first sign of betrayal, even the first sign of fantasy, diminishing the danger, weakening our will to resist, then the gun must be drawn, even within the city, for it is life itself we defend.

Mark: That remains to be seen. I can say no more.

Joseph: You have interfered with an order. Will you now stand back?

Mark: No, Koba, I cannot stand back. I am defending a life.

Joseph: This is your last chance, Mark. You are my friend and comrade, but don’t imagine I shall hesitate.

Mark: I know that, Koba. That is part of the choice.

Joseph: Well then?

Mark: All I know is this: that you are killing my friend and my former comrade. One by one, Koba, you have forced us to this, and you will soon be alone. Of the men who were there, when we made the decision, all are dead or in exile; only we two are left. And your wife has died, in the same action, and the rigour of death, once again, becomes your own more powerful rigour. Only think, Koba: yourself alone, only these two serving you, as they would serve your enemies if the power shifted. Is that, in the end, what you want?

Joseph: What I want doesn’t matter. It has never mattered. But don’t be stupid, Mark. Don’t slip away into fantasy. I, Koba, alone? You count yourself, Mark, but you don’t count the others. You could go to the window and shout and a people would answer you. Millions of voices, Mark, and the same answer. Could we govern this country alone? Could we plough and start the machines, over thousands of miles? Could we do anything, if we were not the people?

Mark: Yes but that, don’t you see, is the final betrayal? From the beginning you made the distinction: what is right for the people and what the people themselves may say. Through all the years, of preparation and exile, you lived by this: that you were the people, the best and the future, even when they reject you. And you were right, Koba. We were all right.

Joseph: It is the same situation. I have never changed. But the people now have a voice of their own.

Mark: Are you sure, Koba? Shall I go to that window, and shout what is happening? Shall I go to the streets, and tell the people the truth?

Joseph: You can go to the window. Go on, open it.

Mark: Yes, then the order passes.

[Joseph does not answer. Mark hesitates, and then resigns himself. He speaks to the Warder.]

Mark: Do you intend to arrest me?

Warder: I don’t look for trouble, sir. Just whatever’s necessary.

Mark: Then take me. Look, I hold out my hands. You are too late to arrest me, for I have arrested myself. When I gave the order, for the arrest of the others, I turned my own key. So take me. Accept this submission. What I started myself I will complete myself. And so it will be, Koba, in an endless process. What we write in blood we shall write in our own blood. Even you, Koba, will learn this in the end.

[Joseph nods, and the Warder at once takes Mark’s arm, holding the revolver against his back. The Secretary turns, and when Joseph nods again goes out with the order. Joseph sits to his desk, and looks down at his papers. The Warder leads Mark out.]

Scene V

Joseph is sitting alone. Beyond the window of his room the sky is alight with fires, and there is a long, almost continuous barrage of artillery. Joseph gets up, and crosses to look from the window. Luke enters, and stands watching him. There is silence in the room for some moments, and then Luke moves. Joseph at once swings round.

Joseph: Who’s there? Answer. Who are you?

Luke: Don’t you know me, Koba?

Joseph: No, I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before.

Luke: I was watching you as you stood at the window. It is how I remember you.

Joseph: You remember nothing. You are deceiving yourself.

Luke: The darkness flowers. Do you remember, Koba? The darkness flowers, in its own season.

Joseph: Get back. Keep away from me. I don’t know you.

Luke: I’m much older, Koba, and you are older. But what we saw is now fact.

Joseph: We saw nothing. I don’t know you. I have never seen you before.

Luke: You are frightened, Koba. That isn’t like you. All over the city people are watching this window, and taking what comfort they can from their knowledge of Koba. That he, at least, will never be frightened.

Joseph: I am not frightened. This is nonsense you’re talking.

Luke: The man who cannot be mastered. It is how they think of you, Koba. It is how you think of yourself.

Joseph: Those are enemy guns, at the gates of the city, and I am still here. And I will take those guns, take their noise and flame, and I will burn and deafen the men who have brought them. I will burn the city that sent them, and leave it in rubble and ashes.

Luke: I believe you, Koba. I have always believed this.

Joseph: Yet you can still insult me? Still say I am frightened?

Luke: It isn’t of that you are frightened, Joseph.

Joseph: Then what? Say it. Don’t waste my time.

Luke: There are so many voices. My own is the least of them.

Joseph: I don’t understand you. What are you?

Luke: Do you still not know me? Do you not remember my voice?

Joseph: Why should I remember your voice?

Luke: The child at the breast becomes the man at the plough, gives the earth his blood and gives others his harvest. The girl screams on the bed of straw, in new blood, in new hands, and still the harvest is taken. War and tyranny and fever and ignorance, generation on generation, taking and destroying our children.

Joseph: Those are my own words. You are repeating my own words.

Luke: They have become my words, for I am nothing. I am only a voice, speaking the words of many.

Joseph: What are you? Say what you are.

Luke: No liberty, no dignity, no rights of man, no peaceful cities.

Joseph: Answer me. Answer.

Luke: What we write in blood we shall write in our own blood. Even you, Koba.

Joseph: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know how you dare to approach and defy me.

Luke: I have loved you, Joseph, and my love has grown into death.

Joseph: No.

Luke: I am dying with the others, but it is my curse you are hearing.

[Joseph steps away, hiding his eyes.]

Luke: You have a terrible power, Joseph, but you must know its limits. When we choose death, we are passing beyond you, and you can no longer touch us.

[Joseph looks up slowly, and stands quite still. Then he moves decisively.]

Joseph: You are the last enemy, the private enemy, but you can still not make me afraid. With an army at the gates, am I to be frightened by echoes?

Luke: My voice is never an echo. It is a human passing of words, and it cannot be killed.

Joseph: Look around this room, it is the centre of power. Men have come to this room, powerful men, and been taken away, with only death in from of them.

Luke: Yes.

Joseph: I have drawn my gun in this room, as I am drawing it now.

Luke: Yes, Joseph.

Joseph: Are you not afraid? Do you think I would hesitate?

Luke: You have already hesitated.

Joseph: What are you? I don’t know you.

Luke: In myself I am nothing. I have no name.

Joesph: You were with me in exile. There, in the north, where we shared a hut.

Luke: He spoke and he was killed. He is many men.

Joesph: You were learning to write, while I stood by the window.

Luke: Not an echo, Joseph. A voice.

[Joseph crosses and looks from the window.]

Joseph: What do you want with me?

[Luke does not answer.]

Joseph: Say what you want. There’s no need to be afraid. Look, I’ve put away the gun. You can say what you want. You can speak quite freely.

Luke: I have said what I came to say.

Joseph: But it is nothing. Only words, echoes, fragments of voices from the past.

Luke: Voices speaking now.

[Joseph turns and looks into Luke’s face.]

Joseph: You are only a man. Don’t think you can frighten me.

Luke: What else would frighten you, Joseph?

Joseph: You are not even a man. You say nothing for yourself.

Luke: Yes, Joseph. We have met on that.

Joseph: I don’t understand you. I don’t know what you are saying.

Luke: The darkness flowers, in its own season. The darkness flowers, passing beyond its source. In this far instant, when the darkness flowers, there is a new country, between earth and sun.

Joseph: I don’t understand. I don’t know what is happening. But I want to kneel to you.

Luke: Not to me, Joseph.

Joseph: You have no name, and I am only Koba. You are a voice I know, and have almost forgotten. I want to kneel, not to you but to the voice.

[Luke stands watching him. Joseph prepares to kneel. There is a clear silence, as the distant gunfire ceases. Then there is a sudden salvo of guns, directly outside, and the sound of cheering.]

Joseph: What is it? You hear the shouting out there. And the guns, so close.

Luke: It sounds like victory, Joseph.

Joseph: Victory? Or the beginning of victory. Is it really true? Yes, of course it is. It is what I predicted. I had almost forgotten.

[The Secretary enters. The light of the room increases.]

Secretary: Can’t you hear then, Koba? They’re calling for you. The battle is won, the enemy has retreated. Everyone’s calling out Koba. Koba and victory are the same words.

[Joseph looks at the Secretary, then at Luke. He smiles, slaps his side, and crosses quickly to the desk.]

Joseph: It is what I said it would be. They all disbelieved me. They said I was wrong, through all those years. One after another they turned against me, but now they are dead, and this is the victory.

Luke: Not your victory, Koba. Not only yours.

Joseph: What are you? I don’t know you. You are just the latest in line. One after the other they have spoken against me, convinced they were right, that their feelings were right. But who is right now? Do you hear that shouting? They’re calling for me, for Koba, because I am right, because Koba is right. It is what Jordan said, about a man who can lead. He leads because he is right. The others may seem right, their ideas better, their feelings better. But the man who is right holds on, whatever it costs him. You heard me say, years ago, that the enemy would come. You heard me say what to do, to get ready to beat him. And now he has come, and we have beaten him. All the weak voices, all the confused ideas: where are they now, on the day of the victory?

Luke: And the men, Koba? The men who have died?

Joseph: They have died for their country. They have died for this victory.

Luke: I mean the men who were killed, in their own country by their own country.

Joseph: So that their country could live. They were wrong. The party was right. The people were right. And this is only the beginning. I have said before, we will take those guns, take their noise and flame, and we will burn and deafen the men who brought them. We will burn the city that sent them, and leave it in ashes and rubble.

Luke: Ashes, blood, death, misery, hatred.

Joseph: It is not our choice. It is the choice of history. We accept its decision, as we accepted it before.

Secretary: Will you come now, Koba? The people are waiting to see you.

Joseph: There’s no need to hurry. Let them ask when Koba will come.

Luke: Do you know what will actually come?

[Joseph looks at Luke, and then turns his back.]

Joseph: How did this man get in here? I don’t know him.

Secretary: I don’t know, sir. I simply assumed…

Joseph: Assume nothing. There are many imposters, with persuasive voices. But it isn’t the voice that decides history. You can hear the decision, outside, in the streets.

Luke: Very well. I’ll go. But I’ll see you again.

Joseph: No.

Luke: Inevitably, Koba.

Joseph: Do I have to repeat myself? No.

[The Secretary steps forward, and shows Luke out.]

Scene VI

The Doctor stand by the window, looking out. The Secretary enters.

Secretary: Doctor.

Doctor: Yes.

Secretary: He is in great pain. Will you not go in to him?

Doctor: Do I have to repeat myself? No.

Secretary: But you have sworn an oath, to relieve suffering. Can you dare to break this?

Doctor: I have already told you.

Secretary: I don’t understand you. He’s not only a man, and in pain. He’s also a leader, the leader of a people. In turning from him, you are turning from everyone.

Doctor: He will understand that. He has taught us too well.

Secretary: I don’t understand you. Don’t you know this is Koba?

Doctor: Yes, I know this is Koba.

Secretary: Have you even seen him? Have you ever spoken to him? Do you know at all what he’s like?

Doctor: I’ve seen him from a distance, on the saluting platform, I’ve seen his face at the window of the car, driving fast and closed through the city. Would you call this knowing him?

Secretary: Of course not. All you’ve seen is the image, the sign of the leader. But what you forgot, Doctor, is that there is a man behind this: a man like ourselves, a human being who is now in pain.

Doctor: It was not a man who arrested my brother. It couldn’t have been. My brother was quiet and gentle. He only thought of his work. But he went the way of the others: the sudden arrest, the camp in the north. He died there last year: a prisoner but still also a doctor, giving his life willingly for his patients, in the epidemic which in the end killed him. When you talk of a man, remember I have this idea of a man: of what a man is at his best.

Secretary: An idea, however, which you deny in yourself.

Doctor: There have been tyrannies before. It is a normal history. But this, with us, is unique. Other systems have exploited the worst in man: his aggressions, his greed, his capacity to be cruel. Our system is different. What is exploited in us is the best in man: loyalty, comradeship, self-sacrifice, the future. We have given all these beyond measure, and Koba has taken them: taken and killed.

Secretary: He has had to be hard. There has been terrible danger. But he has brought us through it.

Doctor: Do you think I am not hard? We are all hard. We have learned to be hard, in a hard history. I’m not an idealist, you must understand that. All the comfortable people outside, they forget their own history. Its blood has faded and is now never seen, under their nice modern light. We have had cruel enemies, and we have had to be hard. But still something has happened, that we’re beginning to recognise. Something has broken, in what once seemed necessary. Enemy, now, has lost its meaning: there is no such distinction. We are our own enemies, and we are destroying ourselves. Our own best people have become our enemies: the bravest, the clearest; the most articulate and the most humane. For them, as we are, destruction is certain. Death homes on them, now, with a fine logic. And the rest of us see this, and draw our conclusions. We kill all these things in ourselves, commit the suicide of the heart, so that it will not betray us, not involve us. And then the process runs faster, and we are all become Koba.

[Joseph has entered. He stands, listening, holding himself up by the door.]

Joseph: We have mastered ourselves, and we have become Koba.

[The Secretary and the Doctor watch him, but do not speak.]

Joseph: Will you not come near me? Have you nothing to say to me?

Secretary: Koba.

Joseph: You are only an echo. You can say nothing.

Secretary: This is the doctor, Koba.

Joseph: He has come too late. He can only watch me die.

Doctor: I have watched others die.

Joseph: Yes, of course. It is not significant. The death of one man is a normal business.

Secretary: But, Koba…

Joseph: It is not Koba, dying, it is Joseph dying.

Secretary: Yet a single death can be the death of a people. You are our father, Koba.

Joseph: The people is Koba, and cannot die. In myself I am nothing. I have mastered myself.

Doctor: You have mastered people.

Joseph: And they have become Koba: a people who cannot be mastered. A people strong and absolute, with a place and a future. What does Joseph matter? They can forget him or set him aside. But the power is real, and it is the power of life. I see this figure of man the creator, the towering figure on the crest of the hill.

[The Secretary and the Doctor are silent, watching Joseph as he struggles to hold himself up. Luke enters, but Joseph does not notice him.]

Secretary: Will you not help him, doctor? You can see how he needs you.

Doctor: No. He has spoken the truth. I can do nothing for him.

[Luke crosses to Joseph, who does not recognise him.]

Luke: You have lived by death, Joseph. I will kneel to your death.

Joseph: You must not kneel. Men have kneeled enough. We must learn to stand, in our own strength.

Luke: I kneel to your death, Joseph.

Joseph: Only strength matters. Does any man living deny this? We have learned to be strong, and we have become strong. We have the strength of life. We give this strength to others, and we are strong in ourselves.

Luke: I kneel to your death, Joseph.

[He kneels and lowers his head.]

Joseph: I will not die. I am Koba. I will master death.

[Luke does not move. Joseph tries to speak again, but the power to speak has left him, though he still holds himself upright.]

Doctor: Do you see his face?

Secretary: Is he dying?

Doctor: Not yet, not just yet. He is mastering himself.

Secretary: But he cannot speak. He is trying to speak, and no words will come.

Doctor: Yes, he has waited for the argument to end. Only the facts count now.

Secretary: Have you no pity at all?

Doctor: Did he have pity?

Secretary: That man kneeling has pity.

Doctor: But he is only a voice. He will not alter the facts.

[Joseph tries to speak again, but he can make no sound. In his effort he loses his grip on the door, and almost stumbles, but succeeds in recovering himself. Mark enters, with the Warder following.]

Mark: Have I come in time?

Secretary: He is as you see him. He can no longer speak.

Mark: Who is that kneeling?

Secretary: A man. I don’t know him.

Mark: I was released this morning. Did he give the order?

Secretary: Koba? No.

[Mark turns to the Warder.]

Mark: Who gave the order?

Warder: It came. I don’t question my orders.

[Mark turns to the Secretary.]

Mark: Did you give the order?

Secretary: I am only the Secretary. I give no orders.

Mark: Are we all silent? Can none of use speak any more? Is there anyone responsible? Can nobody speak?

[Joseph again tries to speak, and Mark goes across to him.]

Mark: You can still see, though you cannot speak. Do you not see how we are? Do you not see what has happened?

[Joseph looks around him, and again tries to speak. When the words do not come, he tightens his grip on the door.]

Mark: Can’t you understand me, Koba? Can’t you hear what I’m saying? Is there nothing you can say, at this last moment? Can you say nothing? Can you do nothing?

[Luke rises and turns to Mark. He takes his arm and leads him away from Joseph. They turn, and stand watching. Joseph takes his hands from the door, slowly, and stands upright, facing them. Then he falls, stiffly, face down, and lies still.

Scene VII

The body of Joseph is laid in state at the back of the stage, on a raised platform. Mark is sitting at the desk, and Luke stands facing him, The Secretary and the Warder are to the right, guarded. Joseph stands near the window, in shadow.

Mark: There is so much to do. Even before the funeral, I have given the order. There will be no more killing.

Luke: Except for these two.

Mark: They were Koba’s agents. To stop the killing, we must punish the killers.

Luke: Or when the master is dead, you will shoot the dogs.

Mark: I know what you mean, Luke, but this is a political world. Do you understand, even yet, the scale of this killing? You have seen the leaders, shot and imprisoned. But with every leader went a thousand others, and their wives and their children. There is no counting the killing. The mind breaks at its numbers. But now we must end it, and be seen to end it. Yet will anyone believe us, if its agents go free? I wish it could be different, but we are bound to punish all those responsible, for this crime that has weighed on our lives.

Luke: You mean we must punish ourselves?

Mark: Take care what you say, to a victim.

Luke: I am also a victim, but I know my own guilt. And because I accept that, I want an end to the killing.

Mark: No, you’re not guilty. You’re less guilty than I am. When Koba broke, we were all victims.

Luke: When Koba broke? But then who was Koba?

Mark: Do you need to ask? He is lying in death and in state. We have all seen him, and we have seen him change. At the time of the famine, when Ruth took poison, we saw him break. He had been hard before but it was a hardness of policy. We all saw it change to a thing in itself. He simply went mad, a rigid madness from which no-one was safe. He arrested and killed in a separate logic. Whoever opposed him, or might oppose him, he merely destroyed.

Luke: We have all done this, Mark. We are all implicated.

Mark: That is simply a lie. We have not all killed.

Luke: But we have accepted a state that was built by killing.

Mark: How far will you go? Will you go back on everything? Will you go back to the beginning, to the revolution itself, and repudiate that?

Luke: The revolution was not the beginning. It seemed like an end. But yes, I go back to it, and I see its killing. I go back to the state of the revolution destroyed, and I see its killing also. I see other countries, now ordered and peaceful, and every one of them has been built by killing, at one time or another. All of us, Mark, are involved. We can’t hide in time or in a change of name. We have killed and accepted the subsequent order, or others have killed and we have inherited.

Mark: Yet when we change our lives we change the inheritance.

Luke: When we change, yes. But it’s too easy a word. It’s more than forgetting, or the easy decision that we needn’t kill any more, because the situation is different. There’s still the inheritance, the real inheritance. That we need not kill may be just our luck.

Mark: But the change has happened. I know how people are feeling.

Luke: We are feeling easier, of course. More secure, better furnished. And we don’t want to kill; we have become strong.

Mark: Yes, certainly. This is the change.

Luke: It is no change at all. It isn’t even our luck. Luck or madness, these are simple disguises. What we have really to face is how all this happened, how we became strong.

Mark: It was not only Koba. In many ways he made us weaker.

Luke: But in other ways stronger. Do you really deny that?

Mark: Of the beginning, no, I do not deny it.

Luke: But which was the beginning, and which the end? There was the same feeling, always. He was always Koba. Once the world seized him, that old dark world, he was no longer Joseph and he was always Koba.

Mark: He was Koba and he changed. We have all seen this. But it is more than his history. It is the history of need. When the need arises, the absolute need, most men will kill. This is the history of the world. You ask us to be guilty, because it is so, but guilt is irrelevant, and we have to reject it. If we want to change, we must learn to look at the need. If we want to end killing, we must change the world in which killing is normal. Neither guilt nor pity will help us in that, but only knowing the need and meeting the need.

Luke: Koba killed beyond need. Isn’t that what you’re saying?

Mark: The need broke him, the genuine need. In any man this can happen, and he can become a killer.

Luke: It was our need. It was not only his.

Mark: The need has changed. He became irrelevant. While he served the need, the genuine need, he was changing the world, and that is what we remember. The tragedy of Koba is that the need broke him, and in the end destroyed him. What he made has condemned him. This I where we now are.

Luke: It is all very easy, while that body lies there. You can point to Koba, and he is your guilt. You can condemn him and excuse yourselves.

[Mark gets up.]

Mark: Yes, this is so, and it must be so. Unless this is so, there will be no change. Koba is dead, and his world dies with him. This is what life demands, and it is a tragic justice.

Luke: All the guilt on to him. Is that how it will be?

Mark: Yes, that is how it must be.

Luke: Then why kill these others?

Mark: Because they are part of him. Because they are Koba.

Luke: We are all Koba. You are arguing like him.

Mark: No, Koba is dead, and that is an end.

[Luke turns and walks to stand by Joseph’s body. He looks back at Mark, and then walks to the Secretary and the Warder.]

Luke: You admit that you killed?

Secretary: It’s completely absurd. I’ve killed nobody. I’ve never so much as touched a gun.

Luke: But you carried the orders to kill.

Secretary: They were Koba’s orders. I had to transmit them. It was my duty as secretary.

Luke: And you, Warder, you admit that you killed?

Warder: Yes, sir.

Luke: And must be killed in your turn?

Warder: It’s what they say, sir. But I don’t see it myself. After all it was orders. It was to look after the country. Every decent man must do that.

Luke: This is where it all starts. You’re quite right.

Warder: Or take these others, sir, now their luck’s turned. They’ll do what I did, what suits them, like anyone else.

Luke: What they think right, don’t you mean?

Warder: That’s what I said, sir. Any decent man.

[Luke turns to Mark.]

Luke:     I face these men, who face death,

                And I see in their shadowed faces,

Not the agents I know, but brothers,

Men of my own kind, men sharing my breath,

Men who have lived in ordinary places,

And have killed and forgotten their kind.

The evil cannot be shifted from them or from others,

But the judgment dies, the habit of anger dies,

For over the untold dead I cannot be blind

To the neighbour’s look in these men’s eyes.

[Mark turns away.]

Mark: They are not my brothers.

Luke: Then we shall go on killing, until we are brothers?

Warder: You’re quite right, sir, and he’d do well to listen.

Secretary: It is what we worked for, that men should be brothers.

[Mark turns back.]

Mark: You see how it is, Luke. Any feeing can be used.

Luke: And given. And given again.

[Mark stands, stiffly. Luke waits, and then crosses to kneel by the body of Joseph.]

Luke: I can say no more. I can only kneel. I kneel to this life and this death, for it has been our history and it is still our tragedy. The darkness flowered, in its own season. The darkness flowered, passing beyond its source.

[Mark looks across at the Secretary and the Warder. He lifts his hand for them to be taken away.]

Mark: You can take them away.

[Joseph steps forward.]

Joseph: Who are you? What are you?

Joseph: My name is Joseph. I’m a student.

Mark: Joseph? Come closer. Here, in the light, where I can see you.

Joseph: No. I stay here. Come closer yourself I you like.

Mark: What’s that you’re carrying?

Joseph: This? It’s a book. Why?

Mark: I’m sorry. I have to be careful.

Joseph: Because there are books the party accepts and books it rejects? Is that why you’re worried.

Mark: We’d be fools to take risks, after so much danger.

Joseph: He’s dead, isn’t he?

Mark: Is that all you can say?

Joseph: It’s all that needs to be said. He’s dead and it’s over.

Mark: You can see for yourself that it isn’t over. You can see his agents, still here.

Joseph: Which are they?

 Mark: The men guarded.

Joseph: It’s as well to know. Will you dismiss the guards?

Mark: I will certainly not dismiss them.

Joseph: Then they will have to take me.

[Mark hesitates. He looks from Joseph to the body in state. Joseph comes forward and speaks to the guards.]

Joseph: You can release these men.

[The guards hesitate, and look across to Mark. He turns away from them.]

Joseph: I asked you, friends, to release them.

[The guards again hesitate, and then release the Secretary and Warder.]

Joseph: The guards can go.

[The guards leave. Joseph moves very close to the Secretary and the Warder.]

Joseph: I wanted to look at you. But now you must go. Without office you are nothing. Go away and live as you can.

[The Secretary and the Warder wait, as if for an order.]

Joseph: You heard us. Go.

[The Secretary and the Warder leave, looking back.]

Joseph: All right. Now I’m here in the light. You can look if you want.

Mark: And your name is Joseph?

Joseph: You’re afraid because he is lying there. But who is that kneeling? Why should he kneel?

Mark: He has seen it all through. He is a good man.

Joseph: The he should not kneel. You are all so afraid of the dead.

Mark: There have been so many.

Joseph: Take him up. Walk firmly. It is the future you are carrying.

Mark: Those were Koba’s word, at the death of Jordan.

Joseph: They were terrible words. There was death in them. As there is death, now, in this room.

Mark: We are older than you. We have seen more death.

Joseph: All right, if you’re tired. Let the days pass. People will quickly forget.

Mark: And that is enough?

Joseph: It may be enough. You’ll pay your respects and have a drink after the funeral. You’ll grudge the expense of the monument, but you still put it up. The dead have to stand, overlooking the city.

Mark: Then that would be enough?

Joseph: You should take this body and burn it. You should tell the truth and then scatter the ashes, to the sun and the winds. You should fight this man dead, since you failed to fight him alive.

Mark: That’s easy to say but not easy to do. People respect the dead.

Joseph: They must respect the living.

Mark: By insulting the dead?

Joseph: We have to master our fear of them. They were men like ourselves.

Mark: You are talking like Koba. Those were Koba’s words.

Joseph: Not exactly his words, but he is not Koba. He is Joseph and dead.

Mark: You are Joseph and living. But then who was Koba?

[Luke rises, and turns to Joseph.]

Joseph: Yes, he still lives.

Luke: He is the name of our fear. A name born out of darkness.

Joseph: He is the name of our strength. A name born into light.

Luke: It is a hated name, since he used it. Even to say Koba is to say killing.

Joseph: To say Koba is to say that men will not be mastered.

[Mark crosses and stands by Joseph’s body, looking down.]

Mark: I am still afraid. I am afraid of the word. I’m afraid of mastery. I have seen what the will can do, what power can do, against flesh and blood…. When I met this man, I believed in love and in freedom. He offered to show me their world, and he taught me to kill. He taught me the method of power, the excitement of mastering life. I don’t know anymore. I am afraid of strength.

[He turns to Joseph.]

And now you have come, and I hear your voice, a young voice, and the echo disturbs me. You speak of not being mastered, and the echo disturbs me. I have seen too many die, with those words in their faces. You say I am afraid, and I admit I am afraid. I am afraid of that man who lies dead, and of you who reject him, with the same hardness and confidence. I am even afraid because your name is Joseph.

Luke: Yes, Joseph. Now that you have come I have seen the circle of tragedy. The man dies but the spirit lives. It will always be so, in the world. There is always Joseph, there will always be Koba. But I am certain of this, that I will go on witnessing. I will say tragedy when others say life. I will say tragedy when others say Koba. I haven’t the last word, but I have my own word.

[Joseph turns away, and seems to be going. But he turns back, and crosses to look down into Joseph’s face.]

Joseph: He is Joseph again. Only the action is Koba. And I am Joseph because he was Joseph, and the action has changed us. We have completed the circle, and so now we can break it. We have fought and changed. We shall mourn and change. Take him up, walk firmly, it is the past we are carrying. The action is ended, and we can make a beginning.

[Mark and Joseph take up the body, and carry it out. Luke watches them, as the curtain falls.]