2017-09-24
A country road. A tree.
Evening.
Pavel, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting.
He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Sardalis.
PAVEL: (giving up again). Nothing to be done.
SARDALIS: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Sardalis, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Pavel.) So there you are again.
PAVEL: Am I?
SARDALIS: I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
PAVEL: Me too.
SARDALIS: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.
PAVEL: (irritably). Not now, not now.
SARDALIS: (hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?
PAVEL: In a ditch.
SARDALIS: (admiringly). A ditch! Where?
PAVEL: (without gesture). Over there.
SARDALIS: And they didn't beat you?
PAVEL: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.
SARDALIS: The same lot as usual?
PAVEL: The same? I don't know.
