MOTHER: Good! And soon you will have to join the Komsomol. What will you say when they ask you if you believe in God?
KATYA (torn): I do not believe in God!
(Pause)
MOTHER: Correct…
KATYA: Mama, at school they teach us to honor Comrade Stalin who led us in the Great War against Germany. Should I also honor him who ordered my Grandfather shot?
MOTHER (holding Katya’s hand): You have to do what is expected… but always try to know yourself.
(Pause)
Now you see why we have to tell half truths?
KATYA: Yes, I have to… to survive… but Mama, what about God? Is it a sin to tell half truths?
MOTHER (hugging Katya): We call this telling… a “Saintly Lie.
THE END
CAST:OLGA— Russian, middle-aged woman
MASHA – Russian, 50-aged woman
IRINA – Russian, 55-aged woman
Place: one-bedroom apartment in a town, like Brighton or Brooklyn in America.
Time: 1990’s
SCENE:Room in a one-bedroom apartment occupied by three women who came to the U.S. from Russia illegally. Olga sleeps on the bed, her clothes are scattered all over the floor. Enter Masha, silently collects the clothing and throws it on the sleeping Olga.
OLGA: (wakes up and throws the clothes back onto the floor). Why did you throw these things on me? I’m a human being, and I’m tired. We’re in a free country. May I just be tired and have a nap? You know that I get up at 5 a.m. almost every day, and look, she throws clothes to wake me up.
MASHA: And who asks you to get up this early?
OLGA: Have you forgotten? I have to take a walk along the beach.
MASHA: Well, give up this vain pursuit. You’ll never find anybody.
OLGA: It’s not vain at all. A man on the beach has become familiar to me. He always sits on the same bench. I used to wave to him when I went by. But yesterday I took a seat on the same bench, next to him, and we had a talk.
MASHA: What were you talking about? Hi! Big waves today?
OLGA: No, not only. His mother was from Poland. He knows a few words in Polish: dzenkuyu, sginela, ne sginela. Yesterday he drew a house with a stick on the sand. But I couldn’t get whether he invited me to live in his house or not. It’s hard to flirt without knowing the language.
MASHA: And where’s your friend Irina? She promised to teach us English.
OLGA: She’ll probably come soon.
MASHA: Instead of teaching us, she talks on the phone all day long.
OLGA: She got acquainted with somebody and so she has to talk a lot. Has the right. She has to get married too to stay in America legally…
Masha takes the newspaper with ads.
MASHA: Just look where Irina has been looking for a husband. Here is the paper of ads.
OLGA: Just think! Now then, read a personal ad.
MASHA: Listen. “Man seeks a young “partner in crime”.
OLGA: What crime?
MASHA: Don’t you understand anything? He seeks the same sex President Clinton and Monica Lewinski had.
OLGA: Just think, so inventive! No, it doesn’t suit me. I love romance. Read something about sunsets…
MASHA: There’s really nothing about sunsets here. Though, here it is. “Like to walk on ocean beaches…”
OLGA: Well, come on, come on, what else does it say?
MASHA: No, this doesn’t suit you.
OLGA: Why?
MASHA: Here a man seeks another man… To hell with this paper.
Enter Irina and sinks into a chair.
IRINA. Good evening. Was there a phone call for me?
OLGA: None while I was here. Are you tired?
IRINA: Yes, I am. There are some clients who ask me to clean here and to clean there. They demand what I’m not supposed to do.
OLGA: Give up those who demand.
IRINA: And what I will send to my daughter in Moscow? Otherwise she won’t last long.
OLGA: And my son won’t last long either without my money.
MASHA: I have nobody to send money to.
OLGA: What about your husband? He is in Russia too.
MASHA: Things will settle one way or another.
IRINA: You told us that they don’t pay him anything at all.
OLGA: Masha, why don’t you want to help him?
MASHA: Because he isn’t worth it.
IRINA: Why?
MASHA: Didn’t I tell you?
IRINA: Please, tell us.
MASHA: When the “perestroika” started in our country, and they stopped paying salaries to us, some companies were founded to send people to America for babysitting. “Well, – I said to my husband, – I’d rather go to America than sit here and get nothing”.
OLGA: What did he say?
MASHA: ”Go,”– he says. Before leaving you have to pay a deposit to the company, the rest they take from your pay in America. The deposit is about three hundred dollars, plus you should collect money for the ticket. My husband and I started a small business of our own: we raised pigs and rabbits.
IRINA: Did your husband help you?
MASHA: Of course, he worked like a slave to send me to America.
OLGA: Then, why don’t you want to help him?
MASHA: Well, listen on. I myself did six jobs, and we scraped up those dollars. I flew to New York, that company met me, put me on a bus, gave three dollars in small change, a telephone number. They said that if nobody met me at the last stop I should give this number a call.
IRINA: Could you call in English?
MASHA: Of course, not.
OLGA: Yes, girls, all of us suffered when we came here.
MASHA: My employer had five children, one of them an infant in arms. Well, I worked for this family for a year, paid the company off and was going to go home. I called my husband once a month. Every time I called he said: “I miss you so badly, I miss you”… But then all of a sudden he said: “ May be you’ll work another year? Though I miss you badly…” And here I hear the small town telephone operator’s voice interfere in our conversation. The operator said: “Don’t believe him, he’s lying. No sooner you left than he brought a girl to your place the next day, and she has been living in your flat. She struts around the township in your clothes”. I froze like the Liberty Statue with the phone in my hand and hear him screaming: “Don’t believe, don’t believe her! She’ s angry because I refused to date her”.
IRINA: And what about you?
MASHA: I dead-dropped on the floor. Cried for two days and decided: I’ll find another husband.
OLGA: But they aren’t lying about.
MASHA: I called home to an old classmate. She told me that they were seen here they were seen there. She wears either my fur coat or my hat, not to mention my tights; she has probably worn them out. But I tell my friend on the phone what a great life I have over here, I traveled here, and I traveled there. And actually all my travels: were walking about downtown and back.
OLGA: Irina, this is the example we should follow.
IRINA: Yes, Masha – well done!
MASHA: Don’t interrupt me. They are having the “perestroika” in full swing, and didn’t get any salary. They ate all our pigs and rabbits; there was nothing to eat, nothing to do, and they started arguing. Then my ex-husband comes to my friend whom I call, and says, that he would like to speak to me, that he loves only me, and allegedly wants to come here to America.
OLGA: Wonderful, invite him here!
MASHA: Oh, no, let him suffer a bit; I stand firm.
OLGA: Look, while you’re standing firm, he’ll again pick up another mistress.
The telephone rings. Irina jumps and grabs the receiver.
IRINA. It’s for me. Hi, Jack! Fine!
She goes to the adjoining room to speak on the phone, first passing the phone to Masha, Masha starts to listen on the phone.
OLGA:(whispers.) What are they speaking about?
MASHA: Greeting each other. She asks how old he is.
OLGA: She’s worried about his age.
MASHA: Now about his height. He is very tall and asks her how many centimeters are in one meter.
OLGA: Why?
MASHA: Because she told him her height in centimeters. He likes to walk.
OLGA: So does she.
MASHA: He likes music.
OLGA: How splendid!
MASHA: She is making a date for this weekend.
OLGA: That’s a good girl;” grab the bull by the horns”.
MASHA: He’s very busy.
OLGA: What are they speaking about?
MASHA: Wait. He asks how often she takes a shower.
OLGA: What does he need this for?
MASHA: How she dresses, when she goes to bed…
OLGA: Well, I never! And what now?
Heard from the other room Irina raising her voice on the phone.
MASHA: Keep silent.
OLGA: Why is she yelling? Why don’t you answer?
Masha hangs up the receiver. Enter Irina, excited and angry.
IRINA: What! Did you eavesdrop?
OLGA: No, no way. I don’t understand English anyhow.
IRINA: I didn’t finish my conversation because of you; he understood this, hung up the receiver.
OLGA: Why were you yelling?
IRINA: None of your business, I don’t know what to do. I was so eager to get to know him better…
MASHA: Leave it alone! He hung up because he understood that you’re against…
IRINA: Against what?
MASHA: Against sex.
IRINA: What sex?
MASHA: Sex on the phone.
OLGA: What is this?
MASHA: The phone sex is like this: when you speak on the phone, you’re having sex at the same time… Both pleasant and safe and excites the other person too.
OLGA: Girls, I hear this for the first time. As far as I know we didn’t have this kind of sex in Moscow…
MASHA: At home telephones can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Only big bosses had them and one – at the post-office.
OLGA: Well, I never! Just think what they’ve made up.
IRINA: He didn’t say anything about this. How can you prove this?
MASHA: He didn’t really say, but hinted at it. He said to you: Now I’m lying on the bed, I have taken a shower…
IRINA: Yes, I heard.
MASHA: Well, that’s it. What more proof do you need?
IRINA: And still it doesn’t mean anything.
MASHA: A friend here, knowing that I was looking for a husband warned me against telephone sex. Such things happen here.
IRINA: I can’t believe this.
MASHA: Why did you yell at him?
IRINA: He asked me what I wear at night, and then began explain me what he calls different places…
OLGA: What places?
IRINA: The body places for sex. I began yelling. And he said: Why are you yelling, I only want to help you.
MASHA: Well, what should I say?
OLGA: Girls, it turns out that in America each person has his own kind sex!
MASHA: Well, this is too much…
OLGA: We can’t play the game not knowing the language.
IRINA: He was probably my last opportunity…now I just don’t know what to do…
MASHA: But I’ve made up my mind. (Picks up the receiver.)
OLGA: To have sex on the telephone?
MASHA: Watch your mouth! I’ll order a telephone call and speak to my dear husband.
OLGA: What for?
MASHA: To know how he is…
IRINA: Do you want to forgive him?
MASHA: I’ve looked enough at our problems… If he is so eager to come here let him come.
OLGA: Tell him to bring your fur coat!
IRINA: And your hat, and tights…
MASHA (pause): No! I need nothing! Let him come by himself… And then we shall see.
THE END
