Shipwreck ( Coast of Utopia-2)

Natalie runs across.

NATALIE   (offstage) Mummy thought she’d lost you! Come on, let’s wash you in the stream. (receding) Alexander! … Here! …

Ogarev still has Sasha’s fishing cane and jam jar. Distantly, the men are heard shouting to each other, calling off the search. A final distant sound of thunder.

OGAREV   Life, life … (to Sasha) I got to know your papa because of a man nearly drowning … in the river at Luzhniki.

SASHA   (interested) Really?

OGAREV   Yes, really! A Cossack who was grazing his horse on the Sparrow Hills came running down into the water and saved him, a real hero! Your father was playing by the river and saw it all, and he told his papa, who wrote to the Cossack’s commanding officer about it. The man who was saved came to your house to thank your grandpa for doing that, and so he became friends with your family. And where do I come in? Well, the man in the water later became my tutor, and one day when I was about twelve years old, he took me to meet a boy he’d come to know because of being nearly drowned, and that’s how I met your daddy, and we became best friends.

SASHA   No, you’re not, I don’t know you.

OGAREV   Why, I patted your behind before you were born! It was the happiest day of my life, that day. We knelt down together, holding hands, your mother and father and my wife and I, and … But you’re right, later I went travelling. (Pause.) No, my happiest day was another day, before that, up on the Sparrow Hills, just where the Cossack had come running down, and your daddy and I … we climbed up to the top where the sun was setting on Moscow spread out below us, and we made a promise to … to be revolutionaries together. I was thirteen then. (He gives a little laugh and looks up.) The storm has missed us.

HERZEN   (offstage) Nick … !

Herzen enters with the letter from Orlov.

OGAREV   Tell Sasha who I am.

HERZEN   Look … from Count Orlov.

He gives the letter to Ogarev, who starts to read it.

HERZEN   (cont.) (to Sasha) Nick? Nick is my best friend.

Ogarev returns the letter to Herzen.

OGAREV   (to Sasha) See?

Ogarev embraces Herzen in joyous congratulation.

Natalie enters.

A slow fade begins.

Servants enter to clear up the coffee tray, etc.

Ogarev, Herzen, Natalie and Sasha stroll away towards the house, taking the basket of mushrooms.