Free Travesties by Tom Stoppard

nihilist – or at any rate to ruminate in different colours and display the results in the Bahnhofstrasse – would be hypocritical.
    CARR : (
Taken aback
): Oh! Of course, I have been rather
louche
and devil-take-the-hindmost.
    CECILY : I am glad to hear it.
    CARR : In fact now you mention the subject I have made quite a corner in voluptuous disdain.
    CECILY : I don’t think you should be so proud of it, however pleasant it must be. You have been a great disappointment to your brother.
    CARR : Well, my brother has been a great disappointment to me, and to Dada. His mother isn’t exactly mad about him either. My brother Jack is a booby, and if you want to know why he is a booby, I will tell you why he is a booby. He told me that you were rather pretty, whereas you are at a glance the prettiest girl in the whole world. Have you got any books here one can borrow?
    CECILY : I don’t think you ought to talk to me like that during library hours. However, as the reference section is about to close for lunch I will overlook it. Intellectual curiosity is not so common that one can afford to discourage it. What kind of books were you wanting?
    CARR : Any kind at all.
    CECILY : Is there no limit to the scope of your interests?
    CARR : It is rather that I wish to increase it. An overly methodical education has left me to fend as best I can with some small knowledge of the aardvark, a mastery of the abacus and a facility for abstract art. An aardvark, by the way, is a sort of African pig found mainly –
    CECILY : I know only too well what an aardvark is, Mr Tzara. To be frank, you strike a sympathetic chord in me.
    CARR : Politically, I haven’t really got beyond anarchism.
    CECILY : I see. Your elder brother, meanwhile –
    CARR : Bolshevism. And you, I suppose …?
    CECILY : Zimmervaldism!
    CARR : Oh, Cecily, will you not make it your mission to reform me? We can begin over lunch. It will give me an appetite. Nothing gives me an appetite so much as renouncing my beliefs over a glass of hock.
    CECILY : I’m afraid I am too busy to reform you today. I must spend the lunch hour preparing references for Lenin.
    CARR : Some faithful governess seeking fresh pastures?
    CECILY : Far from it. I refer to Vladimir Ilyich who with my little help is writing his book on ‘Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism’.
    CARR : Of course –
Lenin
. But surely, now that the revolution has broken out in St Petersburg, he will be anxious to return home.
    CECILY : That is true. When the history of the Revolution – or indeed of anything else – is written, Swizterland is unlikely to loom large in the story. However, all avenues are closed to him. He will have to travel in disguise with false papers. Oh, but I fear I have said too much already. Vladimir is positive that there are agents watching him and trying to ingratiate themselves with those who are close to him. The British are among the most determined, though the least competent. Only yesterday the Ambassador received secret instructions to watch the ports.
    CARR (
Ashamed
): The ports?
    CECILY : At the same time, the Consul in Zurich has received a flurry of cryptic telegrams suggesting intense and dramatic activity – ‘Knock ‘em cold’ – ‘Drive ‘em Wilde’ – ‘Break a leg’ – and one from the Ambassador himself, ‘Thinking of you tonight, Horace.’
    CARR : I think I can throw some light on that. The Consul has been busy for several weeks in rehearsals which culminated last evening in a performance at the Theater zur Kaufleuten on Pelikanstrasse. I happened to be present.
    CECILY : That would no doubt explain why he virtually left the Consulate’s affairs in the hands of his manservant – who, fortunately, has radical sympathies.
    CARR : Good heavens!
    CECILY : You seem surprised.
    CARR : Not at all. I have a servant myself.
    CECILY : I am afraid that I disapprove of